Disclaimer: Don't own D. Gray man blah blah lbankanfklvn,v...
Summary: Lavi is sent to Hogwarts to record the new rising magic war, having to leave all his friends and a certain swordsman behind. But will it stay that way?...
Lavi sighed as the train flew down the track, rain sleeting against the frozen windows. As he stared blankly out into the soggy countryside blurred by rain, he thought of his current predicament. He was to temporarily suspend his Exorcist duties in order to record this magical war happening. At least it was still in England, and was predicted to be short. He looked forlornely at Ozuchi Kozuchi, the hammer strapped to his thigh. It looked out of place with his bookman clothes, though they were exactly the same as what he wore at the order, except for the silver embedded coat, which was placed in a secret compartment in his luggage.
Bookman had resigned himself to that fact that Lavi had grown attatched to the Order members and said that he could keep in minimal contact, which in bookman terms meant every few months, maybe even years so that the communication didn't affect bookman observations.
Bookman had told him to leave everything of any sentimental value behind, which wasn't much, but altogether too much for a bookman to carry on his unbiased journey. Even so, Lavi couldn't help himself, not only with keeping a memento of the order but also of all his friends...
flashback..
"Here."
A small black box was dropped into partially gloved fingers.
"What's this?" Lavi smiled lopsidedly, trying not to show any sort of reluctance to leave, lest his friends try to stop him. If they did that, he might not be able to leave anyway. He opened the small parcel and found several earrings.
One was a fang, obviously to remind him of Krory the stumbling vampire Exorcist, another a clock hand, courtesy of Miranda, who had gained confidence through-out the war and was now standing there, in the crowd of friends he had gathered, back straight. One was a simple black earring, one of Lenalee's favourites; he couldn't believe he was being given something so special, as apparently it was the first thing her brother had given to her apart from her treasured hair slide. Another was one of Jerry many silver cuffs, and a communication earring from the science department to that he could always contact them in emergency.
Reminding himself to get his ears more pierced he looked up and gave a running leap into the crowd, 'Lavi' style. Amidst laughs and death hugs, he spotted a glint of a katana in the shadow of an archway. He shook his head furiously, 'Yuu-Kanda is dead, he isn't coming back, isn't..' he couldn't finish the thought; he instead focused on saying goodbye to his remaining friends, all knowing that two very important ones were missing...
end flashback...
Lavi smiled weakly, feeling all the earrings sit heavy in his flesh, the few new holes itching with repairing skin. He placed his boots on the oppsite seat in the empty compartment, having arrived early so that he could pull down the blinds and lock the door. A few stragglers, obviously with nowhere to go persisted in knocking for a few minutes, but had eventually left. Lavi gave no mind to them, having resolved that since he had left his friends to be a real bookman, he would be a proper one, and not have any other attatchments than the ones he had already garnered. No more aliases or fake emotions, just the unbiased blank face of a bookman-in-training observing the struggle of war; Lavi would be the only Alias left unscrubbed from time and memory.
He lifted his worn orange scarf, and clutched the talisman Yuu had given him after a mission once. It was a small, silver 'ohm', much like that of Yuu's curse, and he felt that even if he had to give up all other symbols of attatchment, he would never give up this; the one thing that proved to him that Yuu cared, and valued him as a friend or maybe even more. Of course it was given in a typical Yuu-like way, secretly and without words, a snarl and a motion of violence preceeding it.
He was glad of his eidectic memory, that the faces and times with his friends would never fade and could be relived always.
Except of course, he thought agitatedly, when certain annoyances kept knocking at the door.
"We know someone's in there!" A voice called, prim and very shrill. Definitely a girl, perhaps a know-it-all, very concientious of looks, Lavi determined. Also very irritating.
"We've been all the way down the train in every compartment, EVEN the Slytherins! There is no room anywhere else and the train always has enough room, it's in Hogwarts;A history! So someone must be in there hogging the seats!"
Great lover of books, Lavi noted, slightly more inclined to open the door, despite his foul mood.
"Hermione, you won't get them to open the door that way. Just unlock it and go in." A loud male voice sounded now.
"But Ron what if it's a new teacher? We might get in trouble."
"More likely we'll get in trouble for creating a disturbance, just open the door Hermione!"
A long put upon sigh was uttered. The girl seemed to mutter something, presumedly a magical incantation, and the door unlocked itself and slid open.
Not two but five annoyances stumbled in, completely ignoring him, chattering away and chucking luggage about. Until a short girl with bushy brown hair, seemed to finally notice him.
"So I was right there was someone in here."
The girl looked incredibly proud for deducing something so simple, Lavi thought. But at this exclamation the rest of the group turned and stared at him, like he was some sort of incredibly facinating object. As an Exorcist, he was used to attracting attention, but this was a little much, he thought bemusedly and even when they moved to sit down, they never took their eyes off him. Finally the bushy haired one stood up, brushed herself down, walked over and stuck her hand hand into his face.
"Hermione Granger, pleased to meet you. And you are...?"
He looked amusedly at the slightly trembling hand. What and odd girl he thought before speaking.
"Bookman." He replied, deciding to play infuriate the children. His sense of humour had become more like Lavi's, their discrepencies melting into each other until they became one person. But his humour was slightly more sadistic, and more petty than Lavi's. But his persona now, like Lavi would use light humour to distract from his job. After all, people don't usually take kindly to people not being interested personally in their wars.
"Huh?" A rather tall redhead, more ginger than him looked incredibly confused at him.
The girl sighed. "Stop being dumb Ron, it's obviously his last name."
"Nope." She whirled around and stopped.
"What? Then what is it? Your first name?" She looked sceptical, as if he was tricking her into thinking she was wrong, when she 'obviously' wasn't.
"Wrong again." A bright smile accompanied this, making the girl blush slightly. This in turn made the lanky ginger throw a sour look at Lavi.
This time a scruffy looking boy with glasses butted in.
"A nickname?" He seemed to be judging Lavi, green eyes focusing on his face. Lavi adopted a look of childish innocence and shook his head wildly.
"It's his profession," came a dreamy voice from behind the brunette girl with stress issues, judging by the look of her bitten nails. Lavi, calling on his childish side, leaned dramatically with a pouty yet curious expression on his face.
"Awww, how'd ya guess?" he whined taking in almost white Allen-like blond hair, dreamy blue eyes, a happy, vacant expression and an assortment of strange objects dangling from various places. She smiled at his ear.
"My father has travelled with the bookmen while searching for crumple-horned snorkhacks. He says they have an excellent teeth-cleaning regime, even up in the furthest mountains of Tibet."
Lavi grinned, remembering a tall, very, very eccentric blonde man searching for something of that name while he and Gramps were travelling through Tibet to record a small civil war in the farthest eastern stretch of Russia.
"Your father had many facinating stories of the wizarding world miss Luna."
"How do you know her name?"
This came from the boy with the glasses and superiority complex, who was now looking at Lavi suspiciously.
"Her father mentioned her once when he was talking about the Yetii tribe in northern Mongolia."
"There's no such thing as Yetiis." The girl snapped dismissively, sitting down next to a soft framed boy with sticky out ears and an extremely shy disposition, shown by the fact he had yet to say anything or look at Lavi more than out of the corner of his eye.
"But there are, it's actually in this months Quibbler, how apparating even in England can cause the Yetiis lack of sleep due to their sensitive hearing of all magical things." Luna, passing a ragged looking magasine to Lavi who took it with joy.
"Oooh a wizarding magasine, shiny."
And he dived into what he knew to be completely false but certainly entertaining reading. Hermione looked put out then spoke up.
"You really shouldn't believe anything you read in that..Bookman," A glare from Luna, "I..I-I mean it's very well-researched and written but these things just don't exist in reality!" She finished looking both timidly at Luna and pleadingly at Lavi.
He looked suprised at her. If she so loved books, why was she such a stubborn sceptic? Books proved you could never know everything, and that things were discovered every day.
"How do you know they don't exist?" He said. She blinked, then frowned confusedly.
"W-well because they can't! There's no proof and no-one in history has ever proved that they might be real!"
Seeing the cross hanging from her neck he laughed.
"What?" she said indignantly crossing her arms and leaning forward, unknowingly highlighting the object of Lavi's mirth.
"Is God real?" He said, looking pointedly at her necklace. She looked down and gripped it.
"Yes, yes I think God is real. Such wonderous things happen, how can't he be?"
"Well by your argument, God CAN'T be real either?"
By now only Luna, himself and Hermione were interested in this conversation, the other boys playing a silent game of muggle snap, so as to not irritate Hermione.
"How so? There's thousands of years of evidence of people believing in God but only two people believe in crumple-horned snorkhacks."
"There were thousands of people believing that white people were genetically superior to white, yet does that mean they were right? There is no proof of the existance of god, nor snorkhacks. You can't say one can exist and the other can't. That's hypocritical."
Hermione flushed. "W-w-well I-I-..."
Luna reached over and patted her friend on the hand. "Be careful Hermione or the nargles will feel your confusion and nest in your hair."
"Great! Now that that's done,...who are all you people?" Lavi asked, grinning. Everyone looked up.
"Ronald Weasley mate, call me Ron." The ginger waved from his seat, holding a (literally) smoking pack of cards. The mousy boy next to him smiled nervously, making Lavi want to hug him ALL day.
"N-Neville Longbottom."
"Fantastic. New aquaintances are always fun." He looked at the surly looking brunette boy next to the seat opposite him, adjacent to his propped up feet.
"And you are..?"
The boy looked up in suprise. So did the rest of them actually. Why, were they completely gobsmacked at the notion he didn't know who the boy was? Was he particularly famous? Super smart? Great at sports? Genius artist?
"I'm Harry Potter." This was said with a surly reluctance as if Lavi knowing his name was some great chore.
"Okay...good for you."
Ron gaped. "You don't know who Harry Potter is? Are you even a wizard?"
Lavi raised a thin, red eyebrow. "Um, no, no I am not."
This time everyone stared in confusion.
"How can you be on this train and not be a wizard. You can't be a muggle, they aren't allowed on this train."
"Are you a squib?" This was said with trepidation, as if offence was meant with the very word. The eyebrow went higher.
Luna giggled. "He's a bookman silly. They go where they want!"
For some reason everyone ignored this and kept verbally blasting at Lavi. Tiring of this, he remembered the books Bookman packed for him to read on wizard culture and the history of causes of the war. He held up his hands and reached up and grabbed the handle of his suitcase pulling it down onto his lap. Flinging it open, he ignored the gaping at the sight of the mostly book contents of his things and extracted a hefty, handwritten book that covered the general look of the war. Fiicking through the pages he reached the chapter on major participants of the war.
He got to the right page and recited, in extremely bored tone, "Harry Potter, born 31st July to James Potter and Lilly Evans nee Potter in 1980 who, when one year old, defeated the militia leader Lord Voldemort of the extremist blood supremicist group the Death Eaters by repelling the Avada Kedavra curse, also known as the killing curse, back onto Voldemort rendering him powerless and unto a non-corpreal form. In his first year of Hogwarts, through the flouting of several major school rules and the endangering of others, he stumbled onto a teacher at the school conspiring with Voldemort to steal the philosophers stone. After preventing this by taking the stone himself, he then repelled the spirit and killed the teacher. In second year Potter..."
Harry stared dumbly at the person reciting his whole life, in such detail and completely unbiasedly. He became angry at the bored tone the redhead seemed to be taking on at the trials of his life. It wasn't enough he lived them, this guy had to then trivialise them by giving them a blow by blow? Fed up of the talking boy, he reached over and snatched the book away from him.
"Alright we get it, you have a book on me, yay for that." Harry spat, grumbling at the thought that people took such avid interest in his life. Luna squeaked and tugged it off him hastily returning it to the stunned looking bookman.
"He didn't mean it! He's a bit thoughtless, please forgive him Bookman!" The redhead blankly stared at the blonde.
Then he smiled goofily. "For such a lady how could I not? And it's Lavi Kotori-chan!"(1)
Luna nodded sagely, as if it couldn't be anything else. Hermione looked slightly indignant.
"Why didn't you say that in the first place?"
Lavi smirked. "What fun would that be?" And with that he opened Master Bookman's log of Hogwarts and tuned everything out...
"..Lavi...Lavi!" Lavi tensed as he glimpsed a hand descended onto his shoulder. Before they could touch him, he obtusely yawned and knocked it away. Blinking, he looked up into the face of Hermione Granger dressed in plain robes with red and gold trim.
"Hmm? So you're in Gryffindor eh?" He mumbled, remembering from the tome he'd just been reading.
"Lavi, I would really like to know how you got on this train." Hermione said.
"Me? I walked on." Seeing her face become more irritated he added, "With an invitation from Albus himself."
"The headmaster? Why would he invite you to Hogwarts? Are you going to school here? If so you should be in your robes, the train's already stopped.." Hermione was interrupted from her scolding by a flapping hand.
"Nah, I've no use for school. He invited me here to observe."
And with that he grabbed his suitcase and strolled out, humming a Japanese lulluby Kanda had taught him (more like had found in a book and had sung badly to his Yuu-kun;then been beaten by Kanda until he could pronouce it properly).
"Observe what?" Hermione pondered aloud as she swept up and down the train, checking for stragglers as part of her prefect duties.
What was that strange boy doing here?...
Review! I have very little idea of what I'm doing with this so comments and plot points would be EXTREMELY useful.
Also I can't help but decide for a little Lavi/Luna friendship, they go so well together ne?
(1) Kotori-chan= little bird, with chan being a japanese honorific for a girl (familiarly aquainted)