Warnings: time dilation, blind character, house prejudice, ptsd, disdain of Wizarding World practices, half human creatures
Chapter One - A Fox From a Blizzard
Draco Malfoy, by the sound of his voice alone, was everything on Earth that Tsukino Yuki disliked in one package.
That was his name because she had heard people say variations and respond to it on and off while she'd been trying to find her way around in this crowd of nonsense. She was sure that over the next nine months the older boy would end up revealing some great trauma about his life (probably his father, every rich kid had problems with at least one parent if she went by books about this sort of thing, and it was usually the father) and she'd dredge up some pity for him and they'd become friends after she knocked his ego down a few pegs, but right now, as she heard him disembark from the train behind her, the girl was tempted to turn around and kill him. If she could hear him, she was half sure her sister could too, despite being already inside the walls of this demented ass school made of stone and mana and blood.
Part of this was a headache, she knew, the headache and the rain. The headache of being around ignorant, unknowing children who had no idea that she was blind despite the familiar loop of leather indicating her cane was right in her hand. These kids who had no idea that everything had a scent and a voice and a magical presence and there were enough in this small area to make her want to rip off her skin and squash a few.
Yuki, having self-preservation, did not do this. But she thought about it. She really did.
Instead, she clambered into a boat with a boy who smelled like a chipmunk and buzzed around like one and a girl who stank of metal and another who cried. Yuki merely budged up for them without a word. She would rather not talk if she didn't have to for at least the rest of the night.
She knew exactly what she looked like, despite not having been able to look in a mirror for over a year now. She was still small enough to look underfed, which wasn't off the mark no matter how much her family had tried. She was still pale, but with actual sunlight on her over the past three months, it almost looked tolerable and even made the scars harder to see. She knew her watery blue eyes were now ash-grey, matching the white hair she'd cut with bathroom scissors and her sister had repaired to look cute rather than rebellious. The black cloak she wore was the most well-fitting clothes she'd ever worn and it made her sick.
This place made her sick.
The crying girl sniffled into a handkerchief. She could smell that it had been bleached clean this morning, despite the snot that was probably on it now.
"Buck up," said the other girl. "It's gonna be fine. We're witches, Marnie!"
The other girl only cried harder.
Yuki resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Be self-aware why don't you?
There was a great yell of forward far ahead, boomed like a giant, and the boat moved with a clunk. Yuki dug her fingers into the boat's bench and heard it splinter ungratefully. The crying girl - Marnie - shrieked at the sound. Yuki ignored it studiously, enjoying the move away from many other people and the smell that wafted from the carriages that she'd heard clatter down the cobblestones when the train stopped.
How did no one notice that those things smelled like rotting meat? Perhaps they had some air spray to cover it. She contained a snigger at the thought.
Wizards. Air spray. Modern conveniences.
These bastards don't have period underwear.
Her sister had duly informed her they didn't have tampons or pads within two weeks either unless you talked with the nurse in advance. Their father, the gynecologist, was suitably horrified. They had rags. Or a vanishing spell. Ew.
They also didn't have the one thing her sister actually needed but that was actually sensible. How many half-dragons would be at a school anyhow?
Seriously they needed to get out of this weather. These robes were thin. If she wasn't used to days where she had forgotten what heat felt like this would be unbearable.
Very suddenly, their boat lurched. Yuki, without thinking, lunged across the small boat as the boy fell in with a squeak and a large splash. She grabbed at the back of his robes and tugged.
The girls shrieked together, twice even, as the boat, instead of falling over entirely, was splashed by something big and heavy. And slimy. It stank of sea water.
"The giant squid," someone screamed and Yuki did roll her eyes that time. Clearly, it was fine or it would have eaten them by now along with six other classes of idiots. She yanked the kid back as the boat righted itself properly.
"Thanks, squid," she told the general direction of the tentacle. She could vaguely smell it, so it was probably sentient or at least polite.
The tentacle removed itself from the boat. Rain kicked into her face.
"I hope that was waving," she told it, before settling back down in her seat and letting out a sneeze. It simply sank back down into the water with a gurgle.
Least something here had some manners.
The boy was looking at her (she assumed because that was all people did when they were unable to do things with discretion) with wonder. "That was so cool!"
"You could have drowned," she said without interest.
The boy was unperturbed. "But you're blind!"
Oh to be such an innocent little snot. "Thank you for loudly observing that," Yuki deadpanned, closing her eyes anyway. "And yes I am. I can still hear you, feel you, and smell the water."
She was half-certain that the boy was sparkling. "That's so cool."
Please kill me, Yuki begged her sister on the inside, wishing that she could hear her telepathically.
But her sister could not, so she spent the rest of her boat ride being stared at.
Tsukino Yuki was only a first year out of necessity.
If anything, they could have sent Sayo alone to Earth and been done with it. Yuki had no memories of Earth, no memories of a world that didn't want anything to do with freaks with inhuman features or weirdoes who accompanied monsters from another world. Her sister did, however, even if they were locked up somewhere in her traumatized, wiped head. She had interests that were probably earth dedicated and mattered more.
That said, you could apparently have a sixteen-year-old teacher, but not a sixteen-year-old transfer student. Which was awkward, considering she would need years of day school to even get to the amounts of knowledge required by Japanese standards, which were always inevitably too high by her father's admittance from years of living there with her great-uncle Tobio. This was also screwed up by the fact that someone had put a kill on sight order on Yuki's own head.
She knew why that order had been placed there but honestly it was starting to get troublesome (especially since by temporal standards it hadn't happened yet). She had been kidnapped, mentally tortured, blinded, and had been made to commit murder due to circumstances outside of her control. She had been ten. Whoever had decided she deserved death because of that needed their head checked.
If it was the same guy who had ordered her family evicted, she would not be surprised.
Still, apparently, Sayo had, despite a self-admitted inability to read and write past elementary school level in Japanese and bare bones grasp of English until last month, managed to figure out how to teach, learn, and work in a school setting that had all the sane culture of woolly mammoths.
Yuki was happy to not have to do that. She just had to keep speaking accented English and deal with Braille.
Why had they agreed to do this? Heck, why had the chiefs decided to go along with this time travel crap?
Probably because it was funny.
There was a loud creak in front of her, likely the doors opening to reveal the stern woman who smelled like a cat that had met her a few times before.
"Welcome to Hogwarts," she began, her accent thick and Yuki's Digivice taking a millisecond too long to make sense of it. "I am Minerva McGonagall, professor of Transfiguration and as of this year, the basics of Magical Theory. In a moment, you will be taken to the Great Hall, where you will be sorted into your houses."
Yuki tuned her out, listening to the steady thumps of the gamekeeper - Hagrid, she thought his name was, but the syllables sounded like they weren't meant to be English at all - as he went through to another door, likely to join the meal. She could hear him clearly, though few others would. He was drenched the poor man. She hoped someone would be able to give him a drying charm or whatever. He had given off his coat to the idiot in her boat who'd had all the sense of a domesticated gerbil.
Then the crowd lurched and Yuki heard layer after layer of whispering over the sounds of balloons.
"Our family? What about our family back home?"
"What a load of bollocks. Looks like that Minnie's losing her touch too."
"Should have gone to-"
Yuki rolled her eyes. After she did, someone gave her a rough jostle.
"What was that for?"
Yuki didn't even tilt her head to pretend and look when they said that. That always unnerved people, even some of those with hard hearts who had seen dead children looking at them for a week before having them all together to burn on a pyre.
Instead, she chose to laugh. "You're eleven and pampered. What do you all know about bollocks and senility? Have some respect. There's a reason she's standing here to teach you instead of letting you all drown with those pretty mermaids in the lake."
They were all staring at her again. Yuki's smile only widened, prepared to catch a headache as she took her first steps into the so-called Great Hall.
Immediately, her senses were flooded, covered in the smell and touch and taste of magic, which was what it was, leaking and new and withering and old and all sorts of colors and textures and all she could see was a rainbow until-
There was one, a center of a head probably, an ethereal shade of green, all wrong and permeating through the rest of the body.
Then the other, a solid flame of purple, sat quietly to the side of the room. It gave a soft, light flare of acknowledgment and Yuki found herself able to breathe again.
Her sister was still there, had not left to hide in the given bedroom and face the onslaught of stupidity that was semi-ordinary rich kids.
Yuki exhaled and smiled, facing the other large flares of magic, facing red and orange and yellow as it stood in the middle, upraised, likely in a chair.
Something was just in front of it, a strange murky grey… oh.
Right. Sayo had warned her. This was the Sorting Hat.
And it started to sing.
She did not listen to it, She did not want to, not really. It was one thing to brag about accomplishments, and she supposed it brought wonder to these kids and broaden their horizon. It made them feel good about themselves. However, she had better things to do, like not fall over from sensory overload.
Yuki was confident, certain, as a matter of fact, that she didn't need the things these people were selling. The things people, she needed to be confident in, were already in her life. If she added more, well and good, if not, she wouldn't care much.
After all, she was here for one purpose, and one purpose only.
"Tsukino Yuki!"
Yuki bowed her head to the stern woman, felt something change in the stare. Good. She had pronounced her name right. She would be worth respecting, worth conferring with. For now.
So she walked up the steps without tripping, made it to the chair and sat.
All the noise, all the sensation fell quiet, like a cut marionette, when the hat fell upon her head.
"Oh my, look at this."
The sound picked up again with only one voice.
"What an interesting little thing you are," said the hat with as much interest as it probably ever had. "Young and bloodstained, just like your sister. You're much easier to sort than she was."
"She's not even going to be in a house," Yuki thought with annoyance in her throat.
"No," the hat admitted. "But it gives a good cover, doesn't it? She was quite difficult, I admit. Courage and love and determination in equal measure."
"And I have none of those things."
The hat laughed. "Oh but you do. You have all of those things in spades. But you also know exactly where you need to be to accomplish what you must. And it isn't Hufflepuff."
"Unfortunately." Though she did like them by how they sounded.
"Nor is it with the ravens or the lions. No, better to be with the snakes where you can help them shed their skins, no?"
Well, that was going to be good for her self-esteem. "Or rip them off. Just hurry up."
"Very well. Off to SLYTHERIN with you."
Yuki sighed and passed the hat away, walking towards the clapping table that stank of rosemary and lavender.
She was going to keep Harry Potter alive somehow from the opposite side and win the war and all sorts of things.
All because of a woman named Cho Chang.
A/N: Incoming crack idea ahoy. You know all those 'protect Harry Potter' fics. Well, it's my turn! Except it's already derailing nine chapters in. You're welcome, everybody! Now, there are some spoilers for If the Moon Shines, but you don't need to read it to understand, I basically summed up Yuki's part of it in the chapter. I hope you like the edgiest of eleven-year-olds because I love her. If not, Harry and his friends, and some Slytherins are gonna help. You heard me. This is going to avoid bashing as much as possible. I will have to take the piss out on some Slytherins for a while though because Rowling has no sense of how people work. That does not mean the other Houses are getting a pass. Yuki is just in a bad place for a while. And a while I mean a while. Prepare for morality vs morality, and questionable teaching methods. (The government elected Umbridge who has no educational qualifications, I can stretch it.)
Please read and review if you feel so inclined. All answers will come in time.
Challenges: Epic Masterclass (OC) 6, An Epic Big Bang (Magical), Mega Prompts Quote 48, Advent 2015 day 24, Crossover Boot Camp - ten, original character boot camp - eggs, gameverse boot camp - billowy.
