Story Title: Harry Potter and the Light of the Moon
Story Summary: They hid their only offspring from Voldemort, and lost track of him. But now Date Tsukiyomi is coming to Hogwarts, and Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy couldn't be happier. His friends will never forgive him.
Chapter Title: The Arrangements
Chapter Summary: Someone is very worried about Hogwarts, and with good reason. But Hogwarts only wishes it knew what it was doing.
-x-x-x-
Koji Mia was a contented young redhead who worked as a historical and mythological professor at the local university. She was popular mostly because she managed to condense so many different subjects into interesting coursework, encouraging creativity and freethinking, and self-expression more then anything. But there was always something about Mia that seemed so sad...
The redhead was also tired.
The clocks read midnight, with the exception of the one on the wall above the door that had stopped at seven thirty two, back in ninety. All of Japan had felt, to some degree, Suzunagi's influence, drawing the armors back into the world. Her house, where they had been so long... She was surprised it had only been the clock. Was lucky it had only been the clock.
"You have an interesting collection."
And then there was that.
Mia eyed the title of the book the voice laid on her desk- she recognised the cover as one of the books from the set Ryo had gifted her from the Otherside in return for texts on Rekkashiro. It was a silkbook- the covers and every page. Firesilk, if she understood right. Old. A storybook- her favorite was about the man who chased the Sun when She fled a forced engagement. One of the good things about it was that the language of the distant phoenixes was that it was almost identical to modern Mandrian.
The saddest thing was, Mia recognised the voice from years ago. Ironically during the same time her wall-clock stopped, actually.
"Wen-san. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
Wen Shian was a Chinese scholar she had met during the counsel. He too was a professor, but he himself was not the same. Of all things Mia had expected to find back in ninety, a secret world of wizards and witches was not one of them. Although she had to admit, she liked Shian. He was sweet and caring once you got down to the bare bones, and he had stubbornly defended her place among the counsel back then.
Shian watched her, thin lips pulled into a wry smile, and skin as white as bone china, almost aglow in the dim light of her workroom. He looked entirely at home- she wasn't sure he belonged with that yellow tie, however. Polkadots did not do a young businessman any good, and western attire did even less on Shian.
"I need a bit of a favor, Koji-san." That tone told Mia she needed to pay more attention, and reluctantly, she pushed her keyboard away to focas on his words instead of sapphire eyes. He was handsome- antisocial to the degree where he only ever came out if he wanted something, but handsome made up for most bad traits.
"A favor that involves my storybooks?"
Now he looked sheepish. "Ah.. no. Not quite. Are you aware of what is occuring in the European Isles?"
"I'm afraid I don't focas on world events." She probably should have, after that bizarre conferance. But nothing had seemed particularly pressing five years ago, and she wasn't inclined to go too far out of her sphere of influence. She liked her influence, her world, in a nice tight little bow of myths that were not quite so mythical.
Like Shian's hair. How did he get it to hook in that crown? Hair should not sit that way without an ungodly amount of hairspray and styling jelly.
"Then may I badger you for a cup of coffee?"
"Of course. Suger?"
"Please."
Mia grinned.
-x-x-x-
They stayed up until three discussing foreign troubles and possible solutions, and when the coffee stopped working, Mia put the Chinaman up in one of the guest rooms, carefully avoiding the ones that belonged to the guys. She only got a few hours of sleep, getting roused again about six o'clock, when the phone stuffed under her pillow screamed something about an incoming call. She would have ignored it, save for the name it was blaring.
"Nnngg...Yulie?"
"Mia, there are no schools that actually teach magic, are there?"
Now she was regrettibly awake. "What?"
Thirty minutes later, Mia was shaking Shian awake and wondering why she hadn't gotten dressed. "Wen-san! Wake up!"
Yulie was a worrying teenager. He was unique in that he always wore the Jewel of Life, even to his kendo matches, but the trouble was not in that Yulie wore it nor it's fantastical adoption of him. It was that he had received a letter at dawn asking him to attend the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the very school they had been discussing mere hours before. So of course she was worried.
Yulie... was still human, at least in ways that mattered. But it was like the Ancient had been human, and Kayura was human. They were, and they weren't. Mia wondered if every adult member of the Ancient's clan had bleached-white hair, if every member had been sheer forces of nature. Because Mia had seen Kayura fight, and she had seen pure energy explode from Yulie's fingertips when he was in danger, after the Jewel of Life. Rowen had explained that it had tweeked his DNA, aligned more to Kayura's then what it should have been. He hadn't told Yulie himself, but the bluenette had confided to Mia and the others that Yulie's parents now had very little to do in his development.
Mia had done enough research about the Ancient people of Nara to know what that meant. And sending what could possibly the most powerful non-demonic teenager in Japan to a school that couldn't protect its students from themselves, little lone other entities...
It just wasn't a smart idea.
"Wen-san!"
Blue eyes blinked at her, all vision of sleep gone, and he was watching her. It was rather unnerving, and Mia forced herself to draw back, to relax. Shian as an antisocial sort, as he had made abundantly apparent back in ninety during the Conferance.. He didn't like to be touched. He would tolerate you talking to him for hours on end, as long as you didn't expect anything back. As long as you didn't want a reaction.
Mia kept her hands where he could see they were empty, and tried not to look when he sat up and she realised he wasn't wearing the offered sleep-shirt.
"Wen-san, I need to know everything you know of Hogwarts. Please," She added, when his guarded expression told her the answer was no. "I'll tell you everything."
Shian raised an eyebrow, and Mia hoped he knew how important a bargain this really was. But Yulie's life was more important. Shian had already told her that Hogwarts did not take 'No' for an answer. Mia wasn't going to let him go without a fight, and she was going to fix the odds. She had faced down the former Emperor of the Dynasty; Hogwarts frightend her, and she may not have had the help of another blood, but she was stubborn. Whatever Shian asked for could never amount to what he was going to give her.
"Make a pot of coffee, Shi Nu. I will tell you."
-x-x-x-
"-and then BAM-
"-never thougth I'd see-"
"-big as a house-"
"-tried making Amazon's Tonic-"
Platform Nine and Three Quarters, known to most as the very place to catch the Hogwarts Express, was a mind-boggling site to the three foreigners standing just shy of the entrance. The huge, scarlet steam engine at the far end set the bright, imposing color for the rest of the cars, all of which reminded the three of them of Cale's favorite cloak. And the amount of people!
With a disbelieving expression, Yamano Yulie looked over at their present chaperone, shifting a bit uneasily in these modern clothes. For the last eight years, he had been happily wearing traditional garb, and now the jeans and teeshirt were tight and chafing, and the collar felt like it was choking him, so he kept tugging on it. "Mashimizu-sensei?"
For the last year, Cye had been his teacher and Kayura had been... a student teacher. While Yulie hadn't known the accuracies during the War, he had quickly learned what was polite and what was downright wrong to do in public. Alone, in just the group of them, he would have called Cye the name he'd known him by forever. But Cye was a proud Samurai, and this was a crowd of foreigners who could not understand that calling him by 'Cye' was a sign of close, personal friendship and respect. So his Samurai name and the title of being his teacher went instead, because Cye would likely train him into the ground if he did otherwise.
"Yes?"
"Are these people suffering from Fox Madness?" Which was a perfectly reasonable question, even if nobody was foaming from the mouth or rolling on the ground.
And judging by Cye's wry smile, he knew it, too. After the Hogwarts letter had arrived, Cye had taken him aside for extra lessons which boggled his brain. Nobody who underwent samurai training even started learning English until late in the third year of apprenticeship, if they ever learned at all. It just wasn't necessary. And Yulie had been late to the Dojo, so he was still within his first year of training, so the foreign tongue had not been a part of the curriculum until then.
He hadn't had long to learn, but he got the bare basics. And he was gleeful that Ryuu was also present, because heaven forbid he speak to someone suffering from the madness and get infected, too.
"No," But he was grinning, and that was a plus. "But be careful, anyway. There are things just as bad as Fox Madness here in Europe. And you will do well if you take all their words with a grain of salt if you don't understand them, the both of you. Shukijo-san should be able to answer anything- he'll be waiting for you when you get to the castle," Yulie had almost forgotten Seiji, and he lit up at the mention. The man had been heavy influence for him, and had even been his teacher in the Dojo. "But if he can't, write to me and I will see what I can do to explain."
"Yes, Sensei."
"That goes for both of you." Cye added, shooting a pointed look at Ryuu, who managed a just-so smile of the Date expressions and nervously ran his fingers through his pale hair. And even though the platform was still terribly crowded, and they had at least an hour before the train was due to pull out, the Mouri man looked worried and ushured them at the train. "We should get you two settled before the cars fill up. Come on, lets go."
"Hay Tsukiyomi, do you have the latest copy of Cyber Stalker He for the train?"
"I do not." Yulie had sorely missed the sound of Ryuu's voice through the year. In the Dojo, they had been all but the best of friends, and the seperate on opposite sides of Hanshu made it difficult for them to get together. Letters and small gifts had been their only communication, because despite being lightning, Sage was firm about his belief of limited to no technology.
Which meant no phones.
But despite it all, Rowen's manga, Cyber Stalker He was a favorite of both of theirs. Rowen regularly sent Yulie the latest issues, and Yulie managed to get them to Ryuu through the mail. The fact that Ryuu looked so mournful about not having it for what was going to be an incredibly long train ride made Yulie grin. "I do."
