Overlapping Thorns

Chapter One

"And now I want brimstone in my garden
I want roses set on fire and I, well I want what's best for me
and I, I think I know just what that means
just what that means."
–Little Pistol, Mother Mother

I.

James and Lily Potter stared down at their newborn son.

"He looks just like you," James grinned, utterly thrilled.

"Yes… don't you think he seems very aware?" Lily asked, a little concerned.

James studied how his redheaded baby boy's eyes darted around and sharpened whenever he gazed at his parents. James figured he was familiarizing himself with his surroundings, but Lily was right, there was a sharp intelligence lurking behind that baby face….

"He'll be a genius, Lil!" James exclaimed. "Our son is a genius! Harry James Potter, genius at pranks and schoolwork!"

Lily laughed, all of the tension finally seeping out of her body.

Then, of course, Sirius had to choose that exact moment to come barging in.

II.

Yoko Kurama sighed when his human parents finally left him in his crib.

It had only been a few months since he had been born as Harry James Potter, and he was already exasperated with this whole 'being a baby' business. When he'd been fleeing the Spirit World hunter that had shot him, he'd been so weak that he knew that he had two choices: die (which was unacceptable), or take refuge in the womb of a female. And since he hadn't wanted to be born to a demon, as they had the tendency to abandon their young (and there was a good chance that he would die if that happened, which was unacceptable), he had decided to use a human female, since he'd heard that they grew attached to their young.

And if the female he chose happened to be one of the more unsavory humans, he would just have to wait a few years until he was stronger and dispose of it.

Fortunately, Kurama had chosen a pair of humans who obviously wanted a child very much, and treated him well. Unfortunately however, he was already fed up with the helplessness of his human body. He had to rely on the humans for food and water and cleaning; it was significantly diminishing his pride.

Though he would admit that his human parents had been doing their best to make him happy: when Kurama had paid absolutely no mind to the various toys around him, they had tried many things (the most humiliating of which were 'Patty Cake' and 'Peek-a-Boo') until they had finally started to read to him. This was good; it kept his mind occupied, because even if the literature was childish, he was teaching himself English characters. He'd found it easy to adjust to English instead of Japanese (he'd known the bare basics of English already; becoming fluent was easy) but he'd never bothered to learn how to read English.

He'd also been able to learn many things about his new parents, like the fact that they were a witch and wizard.

III.

Demons had never paid much attention to witches and wizards. Their magic (tiny energy blasts coming from waving around their cute little sticks) had no effect on demons; magic was weak, whereas demon energy was much stronger, so when a demon (whether of the lowest class or the highest) is hit with a blast of magic, the demon energy just filters the magic through the body and dissipates it.

Witches and wizards were also not specifically hunted by the more carnivorous demons either, simply because they tasted no different than an ordinary human. Plus, ordinary humans were more abundant, so they made an easier meal.

Kurama didn't know what the witches and wizards thought of demons, or if they even knew they existed. He hoped they didn't. It would be easier for him to live however many years he had to in his human parents' magic world before he would go back to Demon World and continue his thieving ways.

Kurama yawned, his eyelids drooping. He had so little energy as a baby, and was desperately hoping that he would require less sleep as his human body grew older.

IV.

James peered over his wife's shoulder, "Who're you writing to Lils?"

Lily startled in her seat at the dining table, "James, you prat! Don't sneak up on me like that!" She whacked him on the arm.

"Who's the letter for? And why have you got Muggle stamps out? Are you not using a post owl?" James asked, taking a seat beside her.

Letting out a heavy sigh, Lily set her quill down. "I'm writing a letter to my sister. Well, I'm trying to, but… she's a hard person to write to."

"Well, your sister hates anything to do with magic right? So just tell her about all the non-magic stuff going on, like Harry's first word and how he's already starting to crawl." James said. "Then for a post script, say something like, 'By the way, I won't be able to able to send you letters anymore – which I know is heartbreaking for you, even though you never bother to reply – because the Wizarding World is kinda in a war right now and the Big Bad got really pissed at me and my handsome husband for not accepting his offer to join his ranks, so we're a bit busy trying to stay alive. Buh-bye!'"

"James Potter!"

"You could add in a picture of Harry and – ow! Ouch, Lil, I was just kidding – ow – really, you can stop hitting me!"

Kurama watched as his human mother hit his laughing human father repeatedly from where he was sitting on the sofa, a picture book with moving dragons in front of him.

V.

Kurama found himself gaining a reluctant fondness for his parents, like one does for a pet they hadn't really wanted but were taking care of anyway. He'd seen a few other humans, his fathers' friends (Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew), but he didn't care about them. His parents though, they held a certain charm.

Lily, he'd found, was the easiest to handle for prolonged periods of time. Probably because she would either read to him or just chatter at him most of the time. He liked it when she would talk to him, because since she didn't expect him to understand what she was saying, she would talk about her fears, the war that was going on in the magic world and other more 'adult' things.

James had a more wild quality to him that Kurama liked. Though Kurama saw him less because James was doing his best to help with the war, as an 'Auror' (whatever that was), whenever James was home, he did his best to spend every minute with his family. Kurama found it amusing when James would turn into a stag, and had decided that if he had magic himself, he would do his best to learn the Animagus transformation.

Really, Kurama thought, I could have chosen a much worse family to house me.

VI.

"Avada Kedavra!"

The green light came into Kurama's body first through the head, then it travelled down his torso before branching off to each limb. Kurama could feel it try to dissipate; feel his demon energy try to oppress it until it simply didn't exist anymore. But he wasn't strong enough, not yet, so instead Kurama grabbed hold of the magic and reversed its course, bringing it all back to his head, where he then shoved it back out and sent it directly back at its originator.

Kurama was left with the vague taste of sour apples.

The vile man who had dared to murder his human parents disintegrated, but from the black ash he had become a twisted and unstable wraith sprung violently with an enraged wail. It spun around sharply and zoomed out through the window of Kurama's nursery, unknowingly leaving behind a small chunk of its soul.

When the small piece of Voldemort's soul stuck itself to his forehead, Kurama felt a wrinkle of rage before he smoothed it out. He would have to wait to get rid of it: if he couldn't even manage to dissipate a pathetic little Killing Curse, there was no way he would be able to get rid of a piece of a soul. Souls were much more stubborn than magic, having varying levels of sentience, so Kurama wouldn't even be able to expel it as he had done with the Killing Curse. He would have to bide his time; wait for the day that he had more of his demon energy restored. Then he would pluck the little parasite out from his forehead and destroy it, along with however many others the abomination named Lord Voldemort had to have made to make his soul so unstable.

Voldemort would pay for taking the lives of his parents.

Voldemort would pay for taking what was his.

VII.

His father's friend Sirius Black found him first, and Kurama was relieved. He had been worried that one of Voldemort's followers – Death Eaters? – would come to finish the job, in which case Kurama would have been practically defenceless.

When he was then handed off to a giant of a man called Hagrid, Kurama was less than impressed with Sirius, the man who was supposed to be his godfather. Really, handing him off to the first person you see is not responsible guardian material; Kurama was almost glad Sirius had shown how capable he was of caring for a child so soon, because obviously Sirius wasn't capable.

Okay. Maybe Kurama was being a little harsh. Sirius was distraught, he had just lost two of his very good friends, so of course he would be acting a little irresponsible. Kurama had a really bad headache though (from that disgusting soul piece lodged in his forehead) so he didn't really care if he was thinking unkind thoughts about one worthless human.

VIII.

The fact that he was riding in a flying motorcycle was not endearing him to this new giant man Hagrid.

(Could he be an actual giant? No… they were much taller – taller than trees – so maybe this Hagrid is only half giant? Maybe a quarter giant?)

Kurama got bored on the way to wherever the half giant was taking him. He was uncomfortable too. The wind was too harsh on his baby-soft skin, and the engine was much too loud for his not only demon enhanced hearing, but his sensitive baby eardrums. It seemed everything about his new form was delicate.

Kurama ended up falling asleep, and when he woke up, he was still in the flying motorcycle.

It was only a little while later, a few minutes perhaps, when the motorcycle came to the ground and landed with a stutter.

"Hagrid," an old voice said. "At last. And where did you get that motorcycle?"

"Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore, sir. Young Sirius Black lent it to me. I've got him, sir." Hagrid said.

"No problems, were there?"

"No, sir – house was almost destroyed, but I got him all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He took a nap as we were flyin', but he's awake now."

An old man with a long white beard and half-moon glasses peered at Kurama, and Kurama assumed this must be Dumbledore. There was also an old woman with black hair in a bun. They both appeared to be staring at his forehead.

"Is that where—?" Whispered the woman.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. "He'll have that scar forever." What? Kurama thought in dismay, I already have a scar in this form? And on his face too… everybody would remember a boy with a scar on his face….

"Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?"

"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. Well – give him here, Hagrid – we'd better get this over with." Kurama seriously doubted that his scar could 'come in handy.' Maybe once Kurama had removed the soul piece, he would be able to heal the scar.

Kurama was taken into Dumbledore's arms and brought towards a front door of a house, but instead of knocking on the door like Kurama had expected the old man to, he laid Kurama on the doorstep and tucked a letter inside his blankets. Then the old man walked away.

"Well," Kurama could faintly hear Dumbledore say, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations." What celebrations? What was there to celebrate?

"Yeah. I best get this bike away. G'night, Professor McGonagall – Professor Dumbledore, sir."

An engine came to life and let loose a roar that slowly got more distant.

"I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall."

Then Kurama, who to anyone looked like a completely normal, helpless baby that was just entering toddler stages, was left alone on the doorstep of someone he doesn't know. Kurama sighed; he wasn't even surprised. Wiggling his arms out of his blankets, Kurama was able to grasp a hold of the letter. He ripped it open and scanned the contents. It was short. It was addressed to a Mrs. Petunia Dursley, and it basically said that Harry's parents had been killed by a terrorist, and that Dumbledore had set up specific wards that would protect her family (who may become a target because they were related to Harry), but the wards would only work if they housed Harry. The wards would also only work until Harry's seventeenth birthday.

The problem there would be that if there was a magical ward connected to Kurama, as he grew older in his human body, his demon energy would too. His demon energy would eat away at the foreign magic connecting itself to him, and by the time he was ten, the ward would be non-existent. Also, from what Kurama remembered of his mother's sister, who must be this Petunia, she didn't have a very high opinion of magic in general. Ergo, she would not want a child with magic – and Kurama could only assume he did, he had no idea how to check – in her house, and the fact that she was being practically forced to take Kurama into her house for the safety of her family would only beget more ill feelings, which she would more than likely turn against him.

To Kurama, it also seemed much more likely that the Dursley family would be targeted by Voldemort's Death Eaters if they did house him, considering he was the reason Voldemort was semi-dead. And when the wards inevitably became obsolete, there would be nothing stopping Death Eaters from blowing the door down and killing the Dursleys just as they had his parents – not that he cared one whit about the Dursleys – and then with the humans dead, Voldemort's followers would come to kill Kurama, and though Kurama took great pride in his skills, at the moment, he was unsure if his infant body could survive anymore Killing Curses, with the pitiful amount of demon energy he had stored.

Kurama stood up, took a wobbly step away from the front door to the Dursley house, and slowly made his way to the sidewalk.

It would be best for me to just fade into the non-magical part of Human World, Kurama thought as he dropped Dumbledore's letter into a nearby storm drain and made his way to a different house in the neighborhood that would hopefully just drop him off in a random orphanage somewhere in London.

IX.

Janine Hollander woke up the morning of November first exhausted. The night before, Halloween, had been a long one. Her ten year old daughter Hailey had been hyper on the sweets she kept pinching from the pillowcase that held all of the Halloween candy she was getting from the neighbors, and she kept complaining that the fairy wings Janine had handmade were itchy, and not even halfway through the night had taken them off for Janine to carry.

Which was difficult, considering Janine had to carry Nigel, her five year old son, because he was sleeping in his pumpkin costume. It was made even more difficult by Janine's five-months-pregnant belly, but she'd just managed. She found that she was doing that a lot lately: just managing.

It was all because of her bastard soon-to-be ex-husband Jerry. If he hadn't flaked out on her when they found out she was pregnant again because it was 'too much responsibility', the night would have gone fine. She could have gone out with the kids for an hour, and then headed back home to rest her aching feet.

On top of the easily won custody battles, the yet to be finalized divorce papers, the child support agreements, and being pregnant, Janine's rotten neighbors kept whispering and giving her disapproving looks, as if she was at fault for her husband being a cowardly rat bastard who was running off with his personal assistant. So she was moving.

She'd picked a nice place closer to London, enrolled Hailey in a new school, and found Nigel a Primary to go to. Janine considered that to be the only luck she'd had all year besides the fact that she'd been able to get a transfer to a different hospital for her nursing job, one that was near her new house.

Everything was packed into moving boxes, and the next day Janine would finally be able to pack everything into a moving truck and get away from Privet Drive. She had elected to keep Hailey home from school, so they could do a last minute check of the house for any possessions they could have forgotten to pack, and also so Janine could sleep in.

She'd really needed a lie in too, but she'd forgotten turn her alarm off, so at exactly six o'clock in the morning on November first, her alarm started doing its usual annoying BEEP-BEEP-BEEP! When Janine looked over to the clock and saw the time, she said, "Oh for the love of – you've got to be kidding me…."

Knowing that she would never be able to get back to sleep, Janine slapped her alarm clock off, got out of bed and wrapped a robe around herself before making her way downstairs, dodging moving boxes, and opened the front door to get the paper on auto pilot.

She had just started to bend down when she remembered that she had cancelled the paper, but before she could even fully process the thought, she saw that though there was no paper at her door like she'd suspected, there was something that had been left on her doorstep.

The adorable redheaded, green eyed baby stared up at her.

All Janine could do was slump against the door frame, look up at the pre-dawn sky, and ask: "Seriously?"

X.

"—and when I opened my door this morning, there he was! Just left there for who knows how long, with no identification papers! I would have taken him in, but I have two children already, and another one on the way. There was just no way I would be able to…."

"It's alright Missus—"

"Miss—"

"Yes, Miss Hollander. As I said, it's completely fine. He's still at an age where it's very likely he'll be adopted right away. Bringing him here was the responsible thing. Much more responsible than leaving him on a doorstep in the middle of the night."

"Are you going to name him? Or wait for someone to come and adopt him so they can name him?"

"One of the staff here at St. Mary's orphanage will name him, just in case he doesn't get adopted. If he does get adopted and the parents want to change his name, they can."

"Oh. Alright then."

"Once again, thank you for bringing him here."

Janine hesitated, then abruptly turned and headed back to her car where her children were waiting.