Day Off

Harry's Day Off is a short story in The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher. It is set between Small Favor and Turn Coat. It was originally published in Blood Lite and later included in the anthology Side Jobs.

Plot
Harry Dresden and the Alphas are gaming: Harry is a buff barbarian with a huge sword, Billy is a wizard, Georgia is a druid priestess, and Andi is an agile thief. After Harry complains about the incorrect portrayal of magic in the game, the game is interrupted; with Harry paying for the beer.

Dresden announces that his next day is off, absolutely free from work, tasks or errands; he has planned to spend it with Anastasia Luccio. When leaving, Andi asks Dresden for his help with a problem she has got, but he is not going to deal with it until after his day off is over.

In his home's parking lot, Dresden meets a group of youngsters waiting for him; he apparently had undone a curse they've cast on a woman they've disagreed with. He quickly deals with them. Later that morning, Molly Carpenter arrives at his home to practice potion-making alone in his basement lab, even though she's not yet ready. Harry yields and lets her go downstairs. Harry goes back to sleep only to awake just before Luccio's arrival; an explosion in the laboratory shows that Molly has taken a bigger task than she can handle.

Andi and Kirby appear at Harry's home, undressed, disheveled and in bad shape: Andi complains that in wolf form they suffer from what Dresden diagnoses as being psychophagic mites; tiny creatures feeding off the life force of people they're infesting, and causing them to lose control on themselves. The situation is then complicated by Molly's problems in the lab, and by the youngsters Harry met earlier dropping a smoke bomb in the apartment. Harry has barely managed to chaos in his apartment, when Luccio arrives and starts helping with the situation's resolution, which takes the whole day. In the end, Luccio and Dresden manage to get a few hours together.