Three weeks into Harry's new life, John got the call he'd been dreading.
"Constantine." The voice on the other end was crisp, professional, and carried the particular kind of tension that meant someone was trying very hard not to panic. "We have a situation."
John glanced at Harry, who was sitting at the kitchen table carefully practicing his letters in a notebook John had bought him. The kid looked up at the change in John's tone, those green eyes immediately alert to potential danger.
"What kind of situation?" John asked, already reaching for his coat.
"Poltergeist activity in a North London comprehensive. Started small—books flying off shelves, doors slamming—but it's escalating. Three teachers hospitalized this morning when a blackboard exploded."
John rubbed his face. Poltergeists were tricky—usually born from emotional trauma, feeding on chaos and fear. A school full of teenagers was basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for that kind of entity.
"Any idea what triggered it?"
"That's the problem. The school says there haven't been any recent deaths, no major incidents. But the activity started two days ago and it's getting worse by the hour."
John was already running through possibilities in his head. Poltergeists didn't just appear randomly—there was always a catalyst, usually someone in emotional distress providing the psychic energy.
"I'll be there in an hour," he said, ending the call.
Harry was watching him with the careful attention of a child who'd learned to read adult moods for his own survival. "You have to go somewhere."
"Yeah." John lit a cigarette, thinking fast. He couldn't leave Harry alone—the kid was still too unstable, too likely to have a magical accident if he got scared or upset. But taking a six-year-old to an active poltergeist manifestation wasn't exactly responsible parenting either.
Then again, Constantine had never been accused of responsible parenting.
"Harry," he said slowly, "how do you feel about a little field trip?"
Harry's eyes lit up with curiosity rather than fear, which John took as a good sign. "Where are we going?"
"To deal with something that's scaring people at a school. Something supernatural." John studied the boy's face carefully. "It might be dangerous. And it definitely won't be pleasant. You sure you're up for it?"
Harry nodded eagerly. "I want to help."
"Right then." John stubbed out his cigarette and grabbed his kit bag—the one filled with the tools of his trade that weren't quite legal and definitely weren't normal. "First rule: you stay close to me at all times. Second rule: you do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you, no questions asked. Third rule: if I tell you to run, you bloody well run. Clear?"
"Clear," Harry said, scrambling to put on his shoes.
"And Harry?" John paused at the door. "This is real. Not practice, not a game. People could get hurt if we mess this up."
Harry's expression grew serious, older than his years. "I understand."
Twenty minutes later, they stood outside Holloway Secondary School watching police cars and an ambulance pull away. The building looked normal enough from the outside—red brick, institutional windows, the kind of place that had been educating London's youth since before the war. But John's supernatural senses were screaming danger.
"Can you feel it?" he asked Harry quietly.
Harry closed his eyes, concentrating the way John had taught him. When he opened them again, his face was pale. "There's something angry in there. Something that hurts."
"Good lad. That's exactly right." John shouldered his kit bag. "Poltergeist manifestation. They feed on emotional energy—fear, anger, pain. The more chaos they cause, the stronger they get."
They approached the main entrance, where a harried-looking woman in a headmistress's suit was arguing with a police sergeant.
"I don't care what your experts say," she was snapping. "This isn't a gas leak or mass hysteria. I've been teaching for thirty years, and I know the difference between teenage pranks and..." She gestured helplessly at the building.
"Ma'am," John interrupted, stepping forward with the kind of confidence that made people assume he belonged wherever he was. "John Constantine, specialist consultant. I believe you called about unusual disturbances?"
The headmistress—Mrs. Patterson, according to the nameplate on her blazer—looked him up and down with the practiced eye of someone who'd dealt with every kind of authority figure the education system could produce.
"You're not what I expected," she said finally.
"I rarely am. This is my apprentice, Harry." John put a protective hand on Harry's shoulder. "He's got a particular sensitivity to these kinds of situations."
Harry gave a small wave, managing to look both harmless and oddly professional at the same time.
"Right then," Mrs. Patterson said, clearly past the point of questioning anything that might solve her problem. "It started in the science block. Year 10 chemistry class. Beakers started exploding, then it spread from there."
As they walked through the corridors, John kept one eye on Harry and the other on their surroundings. The school felt wrong—that particular kind of wrongness that came with supernatural infestation. The air was thick and oppressive, carrying the taste of metal and old fear.
"Harry," John said quietly, "what do you think? Where's it strongest?"
Harry closed his eyes again, then pointed down a side corridor toward what looked like the older part of the building. "That way. And... down."
"Down?" John frowned. "Basement?"
"Sort of. Like... underneath everything else." Harry's voice was small but certain.
Mrs. Patterson overheard. "The old bomb shelter. From the war. We use it for storage now, but the children aren't supposed to go down there."
"Show us," John said.
The basement was accessed through a narrow staircase behind the main office. As soon as they opened the door, the supernatural pressure increased tenfold. Harry actually staggered, pressing a hand to his forehead.
"You alright?" John asked, concerned.
"It's really angry," Harry whispered. "And sad. So, so sad."
John pulled out a small flashlight and started down the stairs, Harry close behind him. The basement was exactly what you'd expect from a wartime bomb shelter—concrete walls, low ceiling, the lingering smell of decades of fear and confinement.
But there was something else. In the far corner, barely visible in the flashlight beam, was a small space that had been walled off from the rest of the shelter. And the psychic emanations were coming from behind that wall.
"Mrs. Patterson," John called up the stairs. "How long has that wall been there?"
"What wall?" She descended carefully, then followed John's light beam. "Oh, that. I... I'm not sure. It's been like that as long as I've been here."
John approached the wall carefully, running his hands over the brickwork. It was newer than the rest of the shelter, probably post-war construction. And there was definitely something behind it.
"Harry," he said quietly, "I need you to listen very carefully. Can you hear anything from behind this wall?"
Harry pressed his ear to the bricks, then jerked back as if he'd been burned. "There's someone in there. Someone small. They're scared and they can't get out and they've been waiting so long..."
John's blood ran cold. He'd encountered enough supernatural phenomena to recognize the signs, and this was looking less like a simple poltergeist and more like something much worse.
"Mrs. Patterson, I need you to get whoever built this wall. School records, construction permits, anything. And I need you to do it now."
While the headmistress hurried off to find the information, John set up a basic protection circle around himself and Harry. The poltergeist activity was getting stronger—books flying off shelves in the classrooms above, windows rattling in their frames.
"What's happening?" Harry asked, staying carefully inside the circle.
"I think someone got trapped behind that wall," John said grimly. "Long time ago. And their spirit's been getting angrier and more desperate as the years went by."
"Can we help them?"
"Maybe. But first we need to know what we're dealing with."
Mrs. Patterson returned twenty minutes later with a file folder and a grim expression. "I found the construction records. The wall was built in 1963, during renovations. But there's... there's also this."
She handed John a yellowed newspaper clipping. The headline read: "LOCAL BOY MISSING - POLICE SEEK INFORMATION."
The accompanying photograph showed a gap-toothed ten-year-old with a mischievous grin. Michael Davies, age 10, last seen playing near the old Holloway School building site.
"Christ," John muttered. "Kid got trapped during construction. Probably playing in the shelter when the work crew sealed it up."
"You think he's still...?" Mrs. Patterson couldn't finish the question.
"Yeah," John said quietly. "And he's been getting more and more desperate as the decades passed. All that fear and anger, building up with nowhere to go."
Above them, they could hear glass breaking and what sounded like furniture being hurled around.
"Can you help him?" Harry asked. "The boy who's trapped?"
John looked at the wall, then at Harry's earnest face. The kid had been trapped himself, in his own way. Of course he'd want to help another child who couldn't escape.
"Yeah," John said, opening his kit bag and pulling out chalk, candles, and a few other items that would have been difficult to explain to the local authorities. "But it's going to be tricky. He's been dead for forty years, Harry. What's left might not be very... human anymore."
"But he's still scared," Harry said with the simple certainty of childhood. "And he's still just a kid."
John began chalking symbols on the floor around the wall—protective barriers, binding circles, and a few other things designed to contain whatever they were about to release.
"Right," he said finally. "Harry, I need you to stand exactly where I put you, and whatever happens, don't leave that spot. This is about to get very unpleasant."
"What are you going to do?"
"Talk to him. Try to make him understand that he can stop being angry now. That it's safe to let go." John lit the candles, filling the basement with flickering shadows. "Sometimes that's all they need—permission to move on."
John placed his hands on the wall and reached out with his magical senses, trying to make contact with the spirit behind the bricks.
Michael, he said, not with his voice but with his mind. Michael Davies. I know you're there. I know you're scared.
The response was immediate and overwhelming—a rush of pure terror and rage that nearly knocked John off his feet. The poltergeist activity above intensified, windows exploding throughout the building.
I know, John continued, fighting to maintain the connection despite the psychic backlash. I know you've been trapped. I know you've been alone. But you don't have to be anymore.
The spirit's response was wordless but clear: confusion, hope warring with rage, the desperate need to be heard after decades of silence.
Michael, John said gently, you're dead, son. You died forty years ago when this wall was built. But that doesn't mean you have to stay trapped.
The fury that followed nearly shattered John's concentration. The spirit didn't want to be dead, didn't want to accept that his life had ended before it had barely begun.
That's when Harry stepped forward.
"Don't," he said quietly, his small voice somehow carrying through the psychic storm. "Please don't be angry anymore. I know what it's like to be trapped. I know how much it hurts."
The supernatural pressure in the room shifted, the blind rage giving way to something more focused. The spirit was listening.
"My name's Harry," the boy continued, walking slowly toward the wall despite John's sharp gesture to stay back. "I was trapped too. In a small dark place where nobody could hear me. And I was so angry and scared that I made bad things happen to people who didn't deserve it."
John wanted to pull Harry back, but something told him the kid knew what he was doing.
"But someone helped me get out," Harry said, placing his small hand on the wall. "Someone who understood that being trapped makes you angry, but that doesn't mean you're bad. You're just hurt."
The temperature in the room dropped twenty degrees, and John could see his breath misting in the candlelight. But the pressure was changing, becoming less hostile and more... pleading.
Show him, a voice whispered in John's mind—not Michael's voice, but something older and sadder. Show him the way out.
John understood. He pulled a piece of iron from his kit—not cold iron, but a nail that had been blessed and charged with protective energy.
"Michael," he said aloud, "I'm going to make a door for you. A way out. But you have to promise me something—no more hurting people. No more anger. It's time to rest."
John drove the nail into the mortar between two bricks, speaking words in a language that predated Christianity. The wall began to crack, not physically but spiritually, creating an opening that only the dead could see.
Light poured through the crack—not the harsh light of fluorescents, but something warm and golden that made the shadows seem less threatening.
Mum? The voice was young, confused, heartbreakingly hopeful.
Yes, sweetheart, came the reply, faint but unmistakably loving. I'm here. It's time to come home.
The presence in the room shifted one last time—gratitude, relief, and finally, peace. Then it was gone, moving toward whatever lay beyond the light.
The supernatural pressure vanished instantly. Above them, the poltergeist activity stopped as if someone had thrown a switch.
Harry swayed on his feet, and John caught him before he could fall.
"You did good, kid," John said quietly. "Really good."
"Is he okay now?" Harry asked, looking up at the wall where cracks had appeared in the mortar—real cracks this time, showing the first glimpse of what lay behind.
"Yeah," John said. "He's with his family now. Where he should have been forty years ago."
Mrs. Patterson stared at them both with the expression of someone whose worldview had just been fundamentally altered.
"That's it?" she asked. "It's over?"
"It's over," John confirmed, beginning to pack up his equipment. "You'll want to have that wall properly demolished and give the boy a proper burial. But the haunting's finished."
As they walked back through the school corridors, Harry was unusually quiet.
"Something wrong?" John asked.
"No," Harry said slowly. "It's just... I helped someone. Someone who was hurt like me. And it felt... good."
John looked down at his young ward, seeing not just a powerful magical child but someone who had already learned one of the most important lessons of all—that power used to help others was always worthwhile, no matter the cost.
"Yeah," John said, ruffling Harry's hair. "It does feel good, doesn't it?"
As they left the school behind, Harry Potter had taken his first real step into the world that would one day be his to protect. And John Constantine couldn't help but think that the magical world—both light and dark—had better prepare itself for what was coming.
"John?" Harry said as they waited for their taxi.
"Yeah?"
"Can we help more people like Michael? People who are stuck and scared?"
John lit a cigarette, considering his answer. He could say no, tell Harry that one rescue was enough, that he was too young for this kind of work.
Instead, he found himself saying, "Yeah, kid. I think we can manage that."
After all, everyone deserved a chance to find their way home.