[Open Season]

[freeholding]

[You wanna play? Let's play. Leave a comment.]

Comments

and tbh John is stupider when sober, so

[freeholding]

[ This is winter morning in Chicago from the fiftieth floor of a glass and steel building on Michigan Avenue. John's internal alarm clock went off at 6:15 AM, undaunted by the hangover. He's washed up in the executive bathroom, lights dimmed low to save his eyes and to keep the mirror there dark. He's not ready for his reflection yet.

The suit he's changed into looks fit for a funeral, and his expression is not much better. The regret, far subsumed under the stoic surface, burns him to the point of pain. The full weight of how dangerous and foolish last night was is a heavy stone in his gut.

This is going to be a hell of a thing to explain to Gard and Hendricks when they arrive. ]

[ He's already drained one bottle of water and taken aspirin when Harry finally wakes up. It's hard to miss, with that exclamation. John's always enjoyed waking up with the city, feeling his heart rate climb while watching the L rumble by, the foot traffic on Wabash and Lake slowly rise. But for Dresden, he presses the button on the wall that drops the blinds from the ceiling, covering the windows and killing the sunlight.

He can see Dresden looking for things that aren't there and sighs. ] They are on the table above you. [ Along with another bottle of water and three pain pills. ]

[ And he may as well get this over with. Rip it off like a bandage. ] The price of the protection and hospitality of the Freeholding of Chicago is paid and no recourse will be sought. Any words or actions that have transpired will be kept in confidence until such time as you break that confidence. You have twenty-four hours of assured non-hostilities. [ John recites with all the enthusiasm of someone reading aloud tax code. It's all by rote, given to him by the team of lawyers who he's paid to be experts on the Accords.

There. He's done what he's had to. God willing, Dresden will be too hungover or to taken aback to give him lip. John's not in the mood. ]

[forzare]

[ Harry chooses his curse words carelessly, and strings them together in new and creative ways. He hasn't been this hung over, since -- well, for a long time. Naturally, he'd rather not drink himself into oblivion, especially with a high-stress occupation that practically begs him to drown his problems in the bottom of a bottle. Can't. Won't do. Instead, he glowers in the direction of the blinds, finding that everything is so much more tolerable when the light has been dealt with. Gradually, he extracts himself from under the table and fumbles about until he can find his clothing - only giving up his makeshift hat when he has to pull his shirt over his head. He chases the pills with the provided water, and gets to his feet in an ungainly, wobbly fashion. You know, like normal people do when they're suffering a hangover. Not dressed like it's a funeral. ]

Say what? [ The world slows for a moment, with Harry clutching his temple and staring at John like he's just grown two heads and the second one isn't spitting bullshit at him. For a moment, the wizard looks... disappointed. Him, of all people. Then the words and their meaning and the tone catches up with him in one fell swoop, and Harry's disorientation turns into a scowl. He opens his mouth, and a million-and-one things are on the tip of his tongue to say, but the only thing that comes out is: ] Yeah. I guess that just about covers it, doesn't it?

[ Harry simmers, and goes to hunt down his shoes, bouncing across the floor as he yanks them on and laces them up. Grabs his duster angrily. Shoves Marcone's jacket back into his hands and slaps the twenty bucks in his pocket down on top of the wadded folds. ] For the Thai. Get your damn accounting division to make change.

[ It's about time to make like a hurricane and slam the doors behind him. ]

[freeholding]

[ Well then.

John takes the coat and dollar because there's not much choice. And in a moment of self-pity, feels like one of the young women working in Executive Priority.

But this is for the best. Bring it all back down to the trading of debts, make their relationship about the numbers. It'll be easier this way.

John's got a poker face the likes the world has never seen. He could bluff any denizen of the Nevernever. It's a stone wall holding back a flood.

It is, after last night, cracked and crumbling and in need of so much plaster.

So John decides it's best to show a second of weakness to save face. He looks down, away, and shuts his eyes. His breath shudders as it leaves him. ] Mr. Dresden.... [ And what? What the hell to say?

He shakes his head, silent, but picks up the twenty and holds it out to Dresden. ]

harry jfc STOP IT

[forzare]

[ Harry bristles when he hears his name called out, shooting an annoyed look over his leather-clad shoulder.

Marcone looks like he's about to break into as many pieces as there are community areas and street corners, and it freaks Harry out because it's almost upsetting. John Marcone who won't back down, won't look away from anyone he's chosen to fix his eyes on, who speaks with his eyes what he won't with his voice. Subdued, sacrificing one more little thing for the greater good. Harry steps back towards him and looks at the money being given back to him. Sullenly, he quips: ] It's morning.

[ 'I'm not going to answer your questions, not until morning,' he'd said. Harry does that thing where he attempts to arch a brow like Vivien Leigh, and both of them shoot up. He looks alarmed, not coolly perturbed. The pun is a sharp barb. Harry's anger has never been merciful, and Marcone in such a state is something new that he just doesn't know how to handle:: ] But I guess we've already Accorded ourselves properly?

NO KIDDING.

[freeholding]

[ There is a sudden tension down John's arm as every muscle in it tenses. He can feel the urge to take a swing at this man for mocking him. The fact that Dresden is holding it over him, like they hadn't just spent the last night trading intimacies and secrets...

That may have been the repair that he needed.

John settles, throttling the part of himself that wants to grab Dresden and shake him or kiss him or punch him. It's just another part of himself to hold under the water until it's gone.

Steady at last, John narrows his eyes and straightens to look Dresden in the eye. ] I guess we have. So glad I've been so useful to you, Dresden. Now, if that'll be all, I believe you know the way out. If you hex my guards again, I'll buy your housing complex and turn it into a parking garage.

[ Dismissed, Mr. Dresden. ]

COMMUNICATION IS KEY IN ANY RELATIONSHIP.

[forzare]

You didn't--. [ Now it's Harry's turn to tense up like a bowstring, eyes hot and incensed by Marcone's inability to catch on to the massive fucking hint he'd just dangled in front of his face. So damn smart, and he missed the obvious. To be fair, it wasn't as though Harry'd made himself clear - and that thought was the vice clamp in his guts and the punch in the lungs. ] You missed--.

[ He sputters out, draws himself up tight inside and bares his teeth. ] It's morning, you ass! You forgot to--! [ Harry bites of the flurry of words, because his head hurts too goddamn much for this, and it's not like he can communicate in any other way, and he might as well use that knowledge and the chill pervading from the man he'd slung himself across for warmth until a mere hour ago as reason to turn on his heel and exit stage fucking front door. Hurricane Dresden, with muttered curses and sharp utterances of ventas servitas to fling doors shut and put every barrier between himself and Baron Marcone.

He pulls his collar up to hide the marks on his neck, and slogs out onto the streets of his city with the knowledge that dawn had kicked the sniffer dog to the pit whence it came. Maybe tomorrow'd kick the stupid memories of John's warmth to the curb where they belonged. Stupid, inane, foolish, wrong again. ]

/SOBBING

[freeholding]

[ Something about that-- John wonders if maybe--

But the moment is gone, with a door slam so loud that the hinges bow out from the door.

And it's over. It's gone. ]

[forzare]

[ Days blur into weeks, and Harry manages to avoid contact with John Marcone after the travesty and embarrassment that was their last meeting. Whatever he had been thinking, he was quick to put it from his mind in the days following their parting, and had only just been able to break himself of the habit he’d developed – the one where he’d haul his duster’s collar up around his neck to hide the fading bruises made by a mouth he just did not want to remember. Harry is, if anything, a master of denial. The last place he wants to be is anywhere near anything even remotely related to Marcone, but as they both occupy their beloved Chicago, that’s a laugh track and a half. In fact, he winds up in Winnetka, winded and clawed up and lost in the woods lovely dark and deep in pursuit of his latest task.

A string of disappearances, and Harry a stickler to the ideals of responsibility and duty, result in his presence in the woods. Winnetka is outside of Chicago, and the idea of running onto John Marcone’s estate grounds is both daunting and looking like it’s inevitable. In hot pursuit of the dryad he’s uprooted (heh, good one) as the culprit of the disappearances, she’d taken a quick right and vanished into the trees. It left Harry, achy and annoyed and apprehensive, to resist every urge to commit himself to a scorched earth policy and slog through the treeline with her hair wrapped in a tracking spell that went haphazard the minute before the dryad clipped him in the face with her branch and left him to stagger back to his feet – cussing and utilizing wind over fire as he ran deeper into the woods, trying to cut her off before she reached her target.

Fucking Baron and the shiny new target painted on his chest, thanks a lot Accords, oh you’re welcome Harry. Regardless, there's a lot more scuffling through the woods after her, and a moment where she ends up stuffing him into a tree. Upside-down, with a branch wrapped about his knee, and he's left to mangle the thing in the hopes that maybe he can still find her. She has to be hiding nearby. ]

[freeholding]

[John is not having a great evening.

It is absolutely freezing in Winnetka tonight, the cold doubled by how remote John's house feels. A necessary status symbol to appease the more small-minded of John's class, but it is large and empty most of the time. It is an act of calculated risk-reward that brings him out here anyway. The ninth attack was on a Chicago University boy, who went missing in one of the cities many parks and only returned a week later with sunburns. In the middle of wintertime.

Goddamned Summer Court. Once he catches this dryad, he'll nail Titania to the wall for poaching inside the Chicago Freeholding. But that requires getting the dryad somewhere else, where a firefight will not draw too much attention. And there is no better bait for a wood nymph than the only human Signatory spending the weekend outside his city.

One dryad should not've been a problem, but with Monoc business recalling Gard and Hendricks going down too quickly...

John is suited up for dance in the dark with his visitor. A chair of protective runs lays on top of his kevlar. An iron truncheon is heavy lashed to his belt, hands preoccupied with a hunting rifle. John's steps barely crunch in the underbrush as he moves methodically through the trees, sweeping the area in a clear pattern, not missing a single winding corridor of trees. There's sound, like a chase going on

until there is a sound like a distant yelp and the chase stops. To the east. John exhales slowly, bracing his rifle properly before stalking in that direction.]

[forzare]

[ Harry's still upside-down when he hears the soft crunch of leaves underfoot, and with a whuff of effort, swings up and claws for one of the branches just within his reach, vying for getting into the tree rather than out of it. If it's the nymph, come back to check on her trap, he wants to be freed, rather than treed. The splinters in the abrasions across his cheek and temple alone are enough to remind him that his position might be meritorious. Cautiously, he gets a handful of the tree limb that's wound about his knee and pulls it out of the knot long enough to wriggle his knee free.

It's definitely Summer, that's a fact he's known since he'd begun his investigations. Titania and he have no love lost between them, for there's a few events that have played them up against each other, and the ire of a Queen is long-lasting. Erring on the side of don't fall out of the tree dresden, he wraps his fingers around another branch to balance himself as he judges the distance to the ground -- and drops out of the tree as gracefully as he can. He lands in a crouch, hits a knee and remains low and quiet - a feat for him. ]

[ There's motion, and he whispers into his palms, readies the thrumming rings at the base of his long fingers and gets ready to knock a nymph into next week with a well-placed blast of force. Just wait. Hold on. She'll round that tree in just... a... second--! ]

[freeholding]

[You have to get up earlier in the morning to evade Marcone on his own property. There is a blood-soaked purpose to these woods. The trees deaden a lot of the more suspicious sounds. In a grove, in unmarked graves now grown over with brush, one might find the Vargassi heir and his father. John's killed men in these woods.

He doesn't intend Harry Dresden to be one of them, but when the man falls out of a fucking tree into John's path, the warden almost catches a bullet in the head. Christ.

John takes another silent, slow breath and aims his rifle. His finger is safely off the trigger, but the red laser sight hovers right next to Dresden's face, impossible to miss on this particular night. There's no moon, and the darkness is almost absolute, so that pinprick of light is bold and vibrant.]

[Once John has Harry's attention, he says,] Are you after the dryad as well, or has the Council elected to mount an invasion in their usual understaffed manner? [His voice is dry, but a whisper, in case the faerie is nearby.]

[forzare]

[ It occurs to him that the last time he was in these woods, lovely dark and deep, he wound up in a similar position. Marcone with the rifle, the laser sight, and all of it angled inches away from giving him a bullet to the brainpain and lights out for good. Uncanny, how the emotions he'd felt then were so similar to then. Except there was a loup-garou, not a dryad. More teeth than splinters.

Harry's own sense of mortality comes and goes when it pleases, crouched before Marcone as he is - he feels very, very, alarmingly mortal. He curls his fingers back to his palm, diffusing the hum he can feel aching at the back of his teeth and puts the focus into the shield bracelet around his wrist. Nice and agonizingly steady. Just in case the Baron decides he's still going to put his finger to that trigger. ]

The dryad. [ He answers pointedly, voice as low to the ground as he is. ] I've been chasing her all over, working a case. [ Now she was here, somewhere, on Marcone's estate and Harry's a trespasser as well. He stands slowly, his left hand out in what could have been a placating gesture, but was more likely to be him wearing his shield at the ready. ] I thought she was after you next. It wouldn't have been the first time, and on your own turf too.

[freeholding]

I've been watching it as well. [He's not going to offer the fact that he's made himself bait for the damn thing, because in hindsight that wasn't the brightest thing John had done. Next time, they'll make sure the dangerous heroics coincide with Gard's office hours.

The fact that Harry thinks John's going to shoot him would hurt if John had time to care. Perhaps the mead made that night too hazy to remember, or perhaps Dresden's gone through the usual repression. It's not the time to figure out which it is. That is the remarkable thing about them. The personal doesn't matter in times of crisis; John has always trusted Harry to act according to his nature.

That Dresden may no trust John in return anymore--

John lowers the gun and offers a hand to Dresden.] Winnetka is actually not my turf under the Accords. That was the point. [He looks Harry over, now close enough to see how the man looks.] Are you well enough for this?

[forzare]

Of course you have. [ It's less than an accusation and just about what he's come to expect from Marcone. Harry makes it a point to brush his knees clean of debris, dropping his guard the moment it's confirmed that they are on the same side. Guns aimed at him make him twitchy enough to second-guess everything, but even though the laser sighting might still angle his way, he saunters forwards and briefly touches his hand to Marcone's, agreeing to the temporary team effort.

Memories and emotions aside, there's a dryad to catch, and Harry looks out into the treeline. I've got splinters in my eye and know this is going to leave bruises in the morning, he thinks of his face and general health. He gestures to the abrasions absently and shrugs a shoulder. ] It's fine, I've had worse.

[ He puts his palm to the scope of the rifle, coaxing it down to John's side absently. It's not the man's intentions that he's worried about, not concerning something between them, nor the writ of the Accords. For all he knows, it's full of tranqs, not bullets. It's just that the rifle is a big ol' extension of Marcone's power, and Harry doesn't it want it between them when they talk low and private about their game plan. ] She hasn't killed anyone. Just watch out for the glamour-whammy, it's a doozy and you can take my word on that. We catch her, send her packing home to Summer with a message saying something like: "sincerely, warden dresden and baron marcone". Deal?

[freeholding]

[John's lips tilt upward in a very slight smile. Things are not so bad. In the future, John should probably avoid announcing his presence with a red laser sight. Especially in combat scenarios.

Harry's instant invasion of John's space is comfortable and familiar in a way it really shouldn't be. A powerful entity without a sense of personal space would earn nothing short of a bullet between the eyes if they were not Dresden. It certainly makes the night more interesting. What more could a man want with his evening but a deep, cold night, a rogue dryad, and a tall, dark and magical man who smells like smoke and static?

John of course doesn't let any of that show. Not the time, especially after their last meeting. His voice is cold and quietly furious.] She has been preying on my people, and Summer is going to pay for their trauma and injuries. If any changelings have been seeded in these last weeks, I am going to want that dryad's life along with a weregild. [There's a sound to the right, and John swings the rifle up, peering into the dark.] I imagine a wood nymph burns quite well, Mr. Dresden. I wouldn't mind finding out for certain.

[It's that moment went the fucking tree seems to take offense, slamming a branch into John's side, sending him stumbling.]

[forzare]

[ There's enough distance between them to pretend things haven't changed, and not enough to convince anyone that it's anything but a lie. He might have his hand on Marcone's rifle, but the look in his bright eyes is anything but safety-on. Harry didn't know that his people were caught in the crossfires, and that changes the tune of the evening, because he does know how viciously John takes care of what's his. If he's on the warpath, something happened that he has already weighed and tallied, and has deemed personal action necessary.

Harry's seen him like this before, has heard the stories of those who wronged John Marcone -- in comparison to those who wrong his people. Instead of protesting, he emits a faint noise. A sigh that means he might not like it, but John isn't going to be stopped. Trauma and injuries, hell. ] All right, but again: watch out for the--.

[ Whammy. She's not flighty any more it seems, their combined threat must have pushed her to aggression. Harry reacts immediately, a glance to check on John's status before he triggers the rings at his fingers and takes chunks out of the tree in question. A mortal Signatory and a boy bitten by Winter: both of them can be harmed. ]

[ Now he's in his element, eyes fever-bright and grin the only thing holding back the flames. He might have dropped his staff around the time the dryad smacked him upside the head, but he's multi-layered ready for some payback if this is how it's going to go. ] Upsie daisie, or you'll miss all the fun!

[freeholding]

[The blow is a glancing one, and John know better than to push back. He tips his shoulder downward and rolls, getting distance and his footing back in one moment. The sight of part of the tree exploding under a wave of invisible force is... remarkable. Something to replay in his mind's eye later.

The rifle comes up, the laser sight sweeping, and John is squinting into the scope. So much of him is built on John internalizing his own press, and this is a fucking junior Summer faerie taking a swipe at a Signatory. If took out the right-hand man of a Freeholding Lord. He wants its head on his wall.

There is a shadow, and John fires, and it's an iron bullet that makes contact with something that shrieks, but remains hidden.]

It's moving, Dresden, watch your back. [No time for nonsense. John moves over to stand behind Harry, covering him and in turn being covered. Harry is vibrant and ecstatic, full of fuel. It takes so little to set him off. John just hopes that they don't end up burned as well.]

[forzare]

[ Harry darts and fumbles his way across roots that try to wind their way up his legs, to immobilize him or put him to the ground where he can be pinned down. Things he hates. The moment the root touches anything higher than his knee, he shatters it with another well-placed blow and a vague snarl. Relying on force and wind, rather than his favored element, means a slight re-calculation of how to effectively attack and defend. Since he doesn't want to burn down the woods (a notion which he has oft attempted to avoid, only to commit to in the end), he's trying to hold back, to rely on John to back him up.

The dryad's shriek causes his head to swivel, and Harry backs in closer to John, one hand at the ready with shields, the other wrapping around his blasting rod to level it at the surroundings. ] You're at my back, Marcone. Are you trying to tell me something?

[ A snide, delighted little comment that precedes the act of Harry's head snapping to his left to gauge a movement he deems important enough to pay attention to. He's playing cautious and reserved because he can afford to with John practically breathing down his spine, a gun in his hands and they are the steady hands of a man well-suited to stressful situation. Dresden, on the other hand, starts whistling Tiptoe Through The Tulips while his breath mists around his sharp smile. ]

[freeholding]

[There is the role. There is the rage of having his territory poached. But there is also a rising manic feeling in John when his back is against Dresden's. Like it is transferring through touch. John chuckles, heat flooding his veins.] Lesser evils, Dresden.

[Harry's head turns, and John forces himself to mirror that, looking away from the danger, in case it's a feint. They need back-up, John knows. They are courting danger like this. The trees are against them-- why did John lure the dryad here? Obviously because it was the fastest solution, but goddammit, a tree just attacked him.

The whistling is a bigger startle than the tree was, and John turns to snap at Dresden to stop taunting the faerie.

That's when it happens. He catches the eyes of something, glistening bright in the forest, and then he's down.]

[The ground should be cold, but it's not. The grass is alive and vibrant and springy, a pillow of green beneath him

it's 15 degrees out

the sun is warm in the perfectly blue sky, so clear and cloudless, like the sky over the lake in June

it's past midnight

the hot wind warms him and ruffles his hair and seeps through his clothes and draws the cold out of his lungs

wait a minute]

[forzare]

Don't talk to me about lesser evils, Marcone. [ Harry snaps, hackles raised by more than just the other man. Being stalked was not high on his list of favorite pastimes, and the longer it took the nymph to show her face, the worse his temper got. Hence his habit of piping up when the situation didn't call for it. One more round of Rage Judo, and he was sure he'd coax her out, probably in a fit of annoyance, if anything. ]

[ His whistling cuts out when she blindsides them both. John goes down in his peripherals, and he hits dirt when the dryad takes a swing at the already-bruised half of his face. Up within a moment, he swings the blasting rod in her direction and barks an angered fuego to tell her to burn or back off. Then he gets up and moves for Marcone.

He's got a duster full of enchantments to stop bullets, but his head's still a prime target. Doesn't seem like he cares, because he drops down besides the man and fists a hand in his shirt and the other goes for the pulse at his neck. Harry shields him with his body and will with his actual shields, because he knows how vulnerable one is when whammied in such a way. ] John, [ that's the voice of the man about two seconds from slapping him across the face to see if that'll snap him out of the glamour. ] Earth to Baron John Marcone, hello! Now's not the time to go on vacation.

[freeholding]

[John starts to stir, then stops. Where is, it's so lovely, it's like nothing he's ever seen before. Even in the most meticulously up-kept parks in the most privileged areas of Chicago cannot compare. He feels like a young man again, laughing with his friends, sneaking into the Gold Coast private lawns with brown-bagged bottles of alcohol and the idea to see how much trouble they could cause, just to hear the news about it on the radio in the morning.

The grass is almost wrapping him up in fresh springtime. It's twining between his fingers, around his wrists, gentle but firm. It's not quite the best time for a vacation--

Vacation. What about it? Does it matter?

It does. Remember why.]

[forzare]

[ oh please don't make him hit you don't give him a reason just snap out of it you are so stupid

Harry shakes John with more effort, a vigorous and staccato gesture that'll practically haul the man off the dead leaves and debris and maybe bring him back from whatever pleasant state he's living in. Harry remembers Lily. It's nice there, blinded and hopped up on faerie glamour to the point where you don't care if all your emotions end up washing out of you all at once. That's what's dangerous about it. ]

[ He knows how to use anger to fight back, and while John's anger is fearsome, Harry needs it. So, Harry leans down next to John's ear and singsongs, obnoxious and as cruelly as he can, something that'll set him off, shake him out of that state because physically shaking him isn't doing the trick: ] She messed up your people. You're not even here to do a damn thing about it.

[ It's probably about that moment that the nymph lunges for the two of them. ]

[freeholding]

[Ah, yes.

That.

The memories of Chicago summers and cracking open the fire hydrants to drench the streets with cool water to dance barefoot through with rolled-up jeans and sunshine tea left on the window sill

they are nothing in the face of Nathan, likely laid up in the hospital by now. That Summer has taken people from his Barony and sent them back dazed with only sunburns and vague memories of faerie kindness, the kind that is like poisoned honey.

John comes out of it in the span of a blink, the spell shattered. There are roots, not friendly grass, reaching up from the ground to hold him down. It's only a burst of adrenaline that lets him pull his arm free.

Something leaps at them just right of Dresden's ear.

John doesn't think. Just aims and fires, to hell with the recoil that throws his arm back. With the shot comes aching as the adrenaline ceases to pick up the slack and there are roots all over him.

The rest is up to Dresden.]

[forzare]

[ Okay, if that didn't work, Harry wasn't sure what he'd do. One of them down to glamour, and vulnerable in the middle of the woods with a dryad on their combined asses now? It'd be a lot of hauling Marcone around and trying to keep him from getting crushed or something. Not the best of situations to be in, but manageable. It could always be worse, don't let it get worse, he tells himself when he's able to, and opens his mouth to hiss "John" one more time--

but he gets up.

Harry's reaction is anything but dignified. He can't help throwing his hands up when the rifle swings, fires within inches of his own body and the dryad makes some agonized sound behind him. There's something he wants to say, but no time. Just a wide-eyed look at John before he spins on his toes and rises up. She's hurt people - maybe not killed them, but systematically got into their heads and hearts and hurt them. John's people, but just because he and John weren't friends it didn't mean that the bonds either of them had formed with others were invalidated.

Harry'd do the same. So he sets the dryad on fire and watches her burn. ]

So. [ His voice is terse, and his eyes are dark when he turns from the impromptu bonfire. Returns to John's side to pick apart the roots binding him to the ground. The tightness in his jaw is less anger and more worry. ] You okay? How'd you do that?

[freeholding]

[John has never been so happy to see Dresden hurling fire magic around. It is rarely so richly deserved. John is making a mental list to present to Lady Lily or the Summer Knight, whoever he runs into first: breaching territory, entrapment, enthrallment of mortals, an unprovoked attack on a Lord. John is going to pry two weregild out of the Court, three if any changelings have been produced with this dryad's help. The victims could use the gold, at least for therapy.

It is a very difficult thing to sit still and let Dresden unwind the roots round John. Being held in place and having his mind invaded is too like--

Get it together, this isn't your first go-round.]

Nothing strenuous, just risky. I'll feel the recoil for a while, but getting a knife free would've taken too long. [Assuming Harry is speaking about the rifle shot, which is odd. It wasn't an impossible maneuver, just a painful one. John's good aim shouldn't be news.]