The Dresden Files/Heartwarming

Grave Peril

• At the end of Grave Peril, Susan has been half-vamped by the Red Court and has to constantly resist the urge to drink blood, so she leaves town. She sends Harry a card. Awwww...

Death Masks

• In The Dresden Files book, Death Masks, we are first introduced to The Archive. Although she's an seven-year-old girl, she's got the sum total of all human knowledge and wisdom, as well as the collective life experience of every Archive before her. She proceeds to unnerve Harry with her maturity and power despite looking like she could almost be his daughter. But when she sees Mister, Harry's cat, she squeals "KITTY!" like a little girl should and starts playing with him.
• In Death Masks, the very last lines. "I took Susan's picture down. I put the postcards in a brown envelope. I picked up the jewel box that held the dinky engagement ring I'd offered her, and that she'd turned down. Then I put them all in my closet. I laid the old man's cane on my fireplace mantle. Maybe some things just aren't made to go together. Things like oil and water. Orange juice and toothpaste. Me and Susan. But tomorrow was another day."
• In Death Masks, Marcones' visit to the hospital where "Persephone" is being cared for. He brings her a teddy bear, reads to her from a book for an hour, and then lays the Shroud of Turin over her. The clincher is at the end, as Harry is watching.

I hadn't ever pictured John Marcone praying. But I saw him forming the word please, over and over.

• Shiro lies tortured, broken, dying, his life taken to fuel a monstrous curse, his blood defiling the airport chapel. But the Denarians couldn't take his dignity, nor his purpose.

"Remember. God sees hearts, boy. And now I see yours. Take it^[1]. Hold it in trust until you find the one it belongs to."

Blood Rites

• While it doesn't seem like much at the time due to Thomas also giving selfish reasons to help Harry through the first few books, it all takes another meaning when you (and Harry) find out that Thomas is Harry's half-brother and has been subtly looking after him. The Reveal via soulgaze was heartbreaking in the good way.
• In Blood Rites, after Harry and Thomas share the soulgaze where they both get to see their mother, Harry has a brief but powerful moment:

The aching, lonely old hurt was overflowing me. But I suddenly found myself laughing. I had seen my mother with my Sight. I had seen her smile, heard her voice, and it was something I could never lose. Something no one could ever take away from me. It couldn't wholly make up for a lifetime of loneliness and silent grief, but it was more than I ever thought I would have.

Dead Beat

• In Dead Beat, the conversation between Harry and the spirit of his father.

Malcolm Dresden: Yes. I'm dead. But that doesn't mean that I'm not here. It doesn't mean that I don't love you, boy.

• • This great line, from the same conversation:

Malcolm Dresden: Son. Everyone dies alone. That's what it is. It's a door. It's one person wide. When you go through it, you do it alone. But it doesn't mean you've got to be alone before you go through the door. And believe me, you aren't alone on the other side.

• Also from Dead Beat, when Harry is trying to convince an EMT to talk to him, the man is initially worried that Harry will think he's crazy for reporting it, and doesn't trust him...at least until he remembers where he'd seen Harry before, when he and Michael had been arrested for breaking into the maternity ward a few years back. He says the hospital they're in, Cook County, was suffering the highest rate of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome in the country, up until that night. Ever since then, they haven't lost a single baby - and he realizes that it was Harry and Michael who "did something" to stop it. It's a small but powerful scene that shows how what Harry has been doing has really been helping people and that his struggles aren't going unrecognized.
• Butters helping Harry rehabilitate his badly burned hand ^[2] by buying him a guitar and a copy of Guitar for Total Idiots. Harry settles back to read it, and casually lights some candles using magic.

I stopped and blinked-first at the candles and then at my burned hand.
"What?" Butters asked.
"Nothing," I said, and opened the book to look over it. "You know, Butters, for a mortician you're a pretty good healer."
"You think so?"
I glanced at the warm, steady flame of the candles and smiled. "Yeah."

Proven Guilty

• While it's the type of thing that goes under the radar, there is a very moving moment in Proven Guilty when Harry is using his Sight on one of the victims of the phobophages and he turns to look at Murphy. He sees Murphy with the stains of her life as the head of SI and then: "She smiled at me, a sunny light in it, though her body's face remained a neutral mask." I missed it the first time I read through and it made me do a double take when I reread it because it conveyed faster then almost any scene in the series that Murphy is Harry's friend and loves him.
• Molly's return home, from the same book. Michael's first reaction on seeing his daughter come home with rainbow-coloured hair, dressed "like Frankenhooker", covered in tattoos and with piercings in pretty much every place where it is possible to have one, is to hug her.

Michael: Harry, am I just too old?
Harry: Hey, let he who hath never stonewashed his jeans cast the first stone.

• Also from the same book, the scene in which Harry finds out that the fetches have taken Molly to Arctis Tor, Mab's capital and the stronghold of literally half of Faerie. Harry states that the mission has just gotten more difficult, and he doesn't expect Thomas, Charity or Murphy to still come. Without a word, they step up to his side, willing to do it anyway. To quote Harry: "A bolt of warmth, fierce with joy and pride and gratitude, flashed through me like sudden lightning. I don't care about whose DNA recombined with whose. When everything goes to hell, the people who stand beside you without flinching- they are your family. And they were my heroes."
• Later on in the same book, after rescuing Molly from Arctis Tor a weary Thomas asks Harry and Murphy why they just went through all of that. Harry and Murphy exchange a smile and draw Thomas' attention to Charity and Molly. Thomas' response: "Oh. Right."
• Michael's reaction after learning that Harry was willing to take on essentially the entire White Council to protect Molly.

"Greater love hath no man," he said. Nothing I can say would be enough. She's my daughter, Harry. Thank you."

White Night

• White Night has Harry's final conversation with Lasciel, where he makes her realize that she does have a choice and that she can redeem herself. And then, in the final confrontation, she accepts the psychic backlash from escaping the mind-control spell, effectively sacrificing her existence for the sake of Harry's. Redemption is, indeed, a beautiful thing.
  • Minor clarification: It wasn't Lasciel the Fallen, but Lash, the "shadow" living in Harry's head. Harry actually gave her a portion of his soul, and her sense of self in the process, which just makes it more heartwarming.
• The final conversation of the book between Ramirez and Harry, with Ramirez saying he's with Harry 100%, especially when Harry watches over him sleeping the whole night because "you don't leave an injured friend alone."
• Molly, terrified and more than a little scarred, finally learns why Harry fights, and still steps forward to fight as well. Her father's daughter, indeed.

Small Favor

• And then in Small Favor, when she's an eleven-year-old, she, Harry and company are meeting the big Nasties at the local aquarium when she goes missing for a few minutes. Harry quickly figures out where she is, though: watching the otters at play.
  • Also in Small Favor, when the Archive is kidnapped and Dresden writes her a note.
    • "....I got your letter. Thank you."
• Gentleman Johnny Marcone gets one when, after having been tortured by the Denarians for a week straight, he silently demands that Harry and the Knights save Ivy first. Then he turns around and shelters her and makes sure she is the first one to get on the rescue helicopter.
  • Glimpses of Marcone's inner good nature always end up being CMoHs. The best is in White Night, when Marcone is providing an extraction route for Harry and the battle gets heated. Marcone tells Harry he didn't sign on for a war. Harry responds by going up to him and saying:

"People are dying, John. Help me save them. God, please, help me."
"Who do you think I am, wizard?"
"Someone who can help them. Maybe the only one."
He stared at me with empty, opaque eyes. Then he said very quietly, "Yes."

• Michael gets these all the time but one that really stands out doubles as a moment of awesome as well. After he was shot and had some of his organs shredded by a fallen angel shooting him and spending hours if not days in the hospital in critical condition. The first thing he does after waking up is ask if Harry was okay.
• One in Small Favor that really got me: during the hob attack in the subway, Harry and Michael burst into a room where an attendant ushered some trapped travellers to protect them, and is furiously praying for help and protection. When Michael, Knight of the Cross, busts in with a shining holy blade emitting pure white light, she begins crying tears of shocked, hopeful joy, to which Michael replies, "Of course He is there. Of course He is listening. Granted, He doesn't always answer this quickly..." The quiet power and beauty of that one scene, where amidst all the horror and Grimdark of the Dresden Files, the heroic Knight in Shining Armor really does show up to save the day, and the effect he has on the ordinary people, always makes me want to cry. That one paragraph summed up everything you need to know about the Knights of the Cross and what they do, and firmly and forever cements them as the unquestioned Good Guys in an otherwise very grey setting.
  • Later on, when Harry is having his mental breakdown when he learns that Mab had taken his blasting rod and Mindraped him into not remembering it, Michael leans down over him and prays to break the enchantment....and the power of either God or simple faith in that prayer is enough to utterly shatter the geas on Harry's mind. Really shows both the power of Michael's friendship toward Harry and the strength of his faith, as well as the raw power of good in a setting overrun by evil.
  • Another from Small Favor: There's a moment near the end after Michael has been badly wounded and is in the hospital, Harry tries to leave Charity and Molly to wait for news without him, given that he thought they would be mad at him. Charity grabs him and tells him that "family stays." Given Harry's relationship with Charity (one of unmitigated anger from her towards him) its pretty touching.
• Not all heartwarming moments must be between friends. After the chaos on the island, after all the mind games and traitors and manipulating, Harry's conversation with Eldest Gruff is so gloriously honest it melts the heart.

“They tell children stories about you guys, you know,” I said.
“Still?” he said.

Turn Coat

• Turn Coat has a bunch, but my particular favorite is Harry and Murphy, in Chapter 35.

She reached up with both hands, put them on the sides of my head, and pulled me down a little. Then she kissed my forehead and my mouth, neither quickly nor with passion. Then she let me go and looked up at me, her eyes worried and calm. "You know that I love you, Harry. You're a good man. A good friend."... "My world would be a scarier place without you in it."
Then I bent down and kissed her forehead and her mouth, gently, and leaned my forehead against hers. "Love you, too," I whispered.

• Another one that got me in Turn Coat happens just after Peabody is killed and Morgan is dying on the ground. He explains to Dresden why didn't turn Molly in to the Wardens for using psychomancy:
  • "Do you know why I didn't? Why I came to you?" I shook my head. "Because I knew," he whispered. He lifted his right hand and I gripped it hard. "I knew that you knew how it felt to be an innocent man hounded by the Wardens." Considering how Morgan was the one who had dogged Dresden the most in an effort to prove him being a warlock, it made the moment of empathy all the more striking to me.

Changes

• Several lines from Changes, including most of Harry's conversation with Uriel (in a weird way) but especially, "Whatever you do, do it for love. If you keep to that, your path will never wander so far from the light that you can never return," Especially when you realize he is preparing Harry to become the Winter Knight. and a few lines from the end, when Ebenezar says "Oh, Hoss," and when Leanansidhe promises to see to Susan's body Harry comments, "A direct promise from one of the Sidhe is a rare thing. A kindness is even rarer. But I guess I shouldn't have been surprised: Even in Winter, the cold isn't always bitter, and not every day is cruel."
  • Lea's bit, while small, is significant because it comes right after Harry kills Susan. This act of kindness, from a being who is usually anything but, demonstrates that life and love go on. It's stunningly effective simply because it's Lea; it wouldn't have worked half as well from, say, Ebenezar, because it's just what we expect from him. We don't expect it from the crazy death Sidhe lady.
  • A crazy death Sidhe lady who genuinely loves Harry - in her own weird Faery way - and probably loved his mother too.
• Also from Changes, Harry's conversation with Molly--she has always known that Daddy would Show Up when she needed him. But because of the events of Small Favor, although he's still there, Michael isn't combat-capable anymore.

Harry: "Tell you what,grasshopper. You ever need rescuing, I'll handle that."

• In Changes when we get to hear Mouse talk thanks to Lea, and he tells her that Harry didn't 'win him' it was the other way around, Mouse won Harry.

Ghost Story

• Ghost Story has Harry learning that Mouse is now protecting Maggie. Just the mental image is enough to make one want to sob happy tears--especially when Harry speculates that he's "probably spending half his time pretending to be a pony." And this is before we learn that the "home" that Forthill found for Maggie is the Carpenters' residence, ringed with Guardian Angels.
  • The most touching part is Harry watching Maggie sleeping peacefully; it shows that all of the hardship that Harry endured, all of the choices he made, did have a positive outcome.
  • And even more touching when you realize that this is the way Father Forthill and Michael chose to repay Harry for all the things he's done for them. Harry asked Forthill to find her a good family. He did.
• Uriel offering Sir Stuart's shade the opportunity to work for him protecting free will. Made even more poignant by the fact that Stuart turns and looks to his descendant, Mortimer, who has steadily been becoming more and more badass throughout the book, and deciding that the once-cowardly ectomancer can stand on his own, and agrees.
• The seven words Uriel says to Harry in order to balance what was done to him form a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming crossed with Crowning Moment of Awesome.

Uriel: Lies. Mab cannot change who you are.

• Minor in comparison to some of the others, but in Ghost Story, when Harry is trying to prove to Murphy and company that, yes, he really is a ghost, and yes, he really is there, Mister wanders into the room. The cat stares at him and looks shocked for a second, then barrels into him and starts purring.
• Doubles as a Tear Jerker, but Murphy's utter denial that Harry is dead. She refuses to believe it, despite all accounts to the opposite, and when she finally accepts it, she holds her emotions in until after everything has simmered down.
  • And while she's breaking down in tears, Mortimer Lindquist, cowardly ectomancer who took 50 bajillion levels in badass shields her grief and attempts to hide her so her pride is not damaged.
• Harry barely even thinks before possessing Molly to help her fight off the turtlenecks.
• A quiet one for Marcone. In the six months since Harry's death, he essentially built a functional monument to everything Harry stood for and fought for on the ruins of his house.
• It's a small one, but the scene in Ghost Story where we get a flashback to when Harry arranged for Kincaid to kill him. Before Harry's told him what the call is about,Kincaid actually seems pretty darn happy that it was Harry calling.
• Yes, we know -- and Harry finds out later -- that he's an utter bastard, but there's something genuinely touching about Justin Du Morne giving young Harry a baseball glove and going outside to play catch. It's all in how Harry describes it. He grew up an orphan, the only gifts he'd ever gotten were given anonymously and randomly. Seeing little Harry's joy at being given a gift that's really meant for him is enough to bring tears to your eyes.
  • Course this is kind of destroyed when we remember that line about Justin teaching him about shield spells by throwing baseballs at him.
  • The tiny scene that follows, where Harry recovers his magic. Jim Butcher is really coming along as a writer.

I opened my eyes, standing on a random Chicago sidewalk, immaterial and unseen. I turned my right hand palm up and focused upon that sudden kindling of light and hope, crystallized by the memory of that moment of triumph and joy.
"Flickum bicus," I whispered.
The fire was every bit as beautiful as I remembered.

• Father Forthill's death angel in general, and not just Harry's interactions with her.

Short stories, and general

• From the short story It's My Birthday Too, Harry gives Thomas Rock'em Sock'em Robots for his birthday. Why? Because when he was at the orphanage, he saw a Christmas commercial of two brothers playing with the toys.

Harry: "That was a year when I really, really wanted to give those stupid plastic robots to my brother."
Thomas: "Because it would mean you weren't alone."

• In the short story Love Hurts, Harry and Murphy are hit with a love curse, and rather than accept it and live happily ever after, they destroy the curse to save all the people whose minds were being destroyed
• In the short story The Warrior, Uriel tells Harry exactly how he's doing good by pointing out how seemingly insignificant actions throughout the story would ultimately have life-changingly positive impacts: noticing a bruise on a little girl's cheek helped her mother realize that her husband was abusing the child, stopping an electrician from working while drunk lead to his getting off the sauce and saving his marriage and his young daughter's life, and cheering up a teenager who felt useless on her softball team would lead to her becoming a counselor who would help hundreds of children herself.
  • It really hits home when Uriel points out that these are just some of the most recent and insignificant examples, pointing out that all of this doesn't even begin to cover the lives that Harry's saved, the pain he's averted and the darkness he's banished in all his countless battles beforehand. Given Harry's frequent musings on how often it seems that in spite of his best efforts he can't make the world a better place, he has a tremendous impact all the same.

1. ↑ Fidelacchius, the Sword of Faith
2. ↑ Harry burned it severely in a previous adventure, and has spent most of Dead Beat too traumatized to use his fire spells.