Yay! First chapter of the fifth-book-crossover! I hope you all enjoy. =] This chapter and the next chapter will sort of be pre-book beginning, mostly because I don't have OoTP with me. I let my dad borrow it and I don't see him until the weekend...

I don't own RK or HP.

Chapter One

"Oi, Kenshin, get up!" Hiko yelled, knocking on the door. A groan greeted him from the other side, a creak of a floorboard, and a crash. "And don't forget to put on your gi!"

"OW!" With a heavy sigh, he walked away from the door, knowing that his apprentice would kill him if he came in. First day back and he'd already banged himself up. Oh well, better get the bruising started early—they were sparring later that day whether the kid liked it or not.

"S-sorry about that, Master," the boy said about twenty minutes, hair sopping wet from the recent shower. "The, uh, bed back at Hogwarts is wider, so when I went to put my hands down…"

"You were met by nothing and fell, toppling sideways since you sleep sitting up."

"Basically." Kenshin slid into the seat across from him. "I hate jetlag. Now I can see why everyone complains about traveling. Anyway, good morning."

"Good morning," Hiko answered, serving the breakfast. Normally he'd make the kid do it, but not the day he came back. "And happy late birthday."

Kenshin blinked. "Oh yeah, I forgot, I'm fifteen, aren't I?"

"Yes, but that doesn't excuse you from training. Now finish quickly. I expect to find you warming up within the next fifteen minutes." Surprisingly, he received nothing but a short smile and an increase in eating speed. Fifteen minutes was not needed apparently—five was considered enough. The kid grabbed his katana and left immediately.

"I'll do my dishes later!"

Hiko was left standing there, rather shocked by the enthusiasm his student had just shown—it was very rare to see him look like that. Then again, he hadn't been able to train properly for a eleven months. It would've made him act like that, too. At least this meant he'd be able to beat Kenshin to the ground sooner than he hoped. As he did his own dishes, he wondered if the boy had gotten rusty at all but knew that he probably hadn't. Then he wondered if the kid still lost it while fighting. Well, he'd out in a bit.

He watched out the window for a bit, assessing the stance and swings of the kata. No, he definitely hadn't gotten rusty—if anything, his good mood made him even better. Now that was a force to be feared. How was it that his idiot of an apprentice managed to surpass him? This meant he'd have to teach him the final technique…but he'd wait until his mental state had improved. What amazed him most, though, was not the perfection of his kata at all, but another form of change entirely.

Somehow, in the ten months he hadn't been looking, Himura Kenshin had grown up.

Not physically, no, in that aspect he was exactly the same. And grown up wasn't even a good way to put it…The boy hadn't matured, per say, but something close enough to it. A better way to put it would almost be to say that he came back to life. When he'd left, Kenshin had been a shell of the person he used to be, a ghost stuck inside a human body. Sometimes it was amazing the kid hadn't tried to kill himself (though Hiko was profoundly happy he hadn't). But when he smiled, there was only a hint of that sadness left. If it would ever go away was a different matter altogether. No, the boy would always have that there, but he was healing. Hiko let out a heavy sigh, grabbed his own katana, and walked outside. Now was the ultimate test, he supposed.

"Stop," he said once he drew to level with his student. "I hope that your exhaustion won't get in the way of your technique."

"I'll be fine, don't worry," Kenshin said. "Here or the river?"

"Here," he answered. The redhead sheathed his katana. "Do I still need to stop you?"

The boy hesitated, then nodded. Hiko silently swore; the danger was still there. It would always be there. Without warning, he drew his blade, but only swiped at air. Reflexes the same…he brought his weapon up, blocking his student's blow, but barely. Strength still the same, weak compared to him but strong compared to most. He attacked again, but it was blocked. Before he could disappear, he checked Kenshin's eyes—at the moment they were still blue. Good.

The next attack came flying at him and when he brought up his katana, it didn't fully stop it; a small cut opened on his right arm. The boy smiled and hopped off. It was only a second, though, before he was gone. Still like a monkey, it seemed. Parrying was becoming more difficult. Little cuts were starting to form. At least he could feel that his blade had connected a few times as well. It wasn't until he found an opening to go on offense, though, that he saw exactly what he'd been dreading:

The boy's eyes were yellow.

"Stop, Kenshin!" he called. He parried another blow. "Kenshin!"

His eyes flicked back to their normal color. He in midair. With the blunt side of his katana, Hiko slipped past his defenses and hit him hard of the shoulder. A very painful sound affirmed that Kenshin had his official reunion with the ground.

"That's going to hurt later," he said with a strained smile, standing up, clutching his shoulder. "Did you really have to hit my right one?"

"It was an opening that I decided to take. Now stop being so melodramatic. How's your head?"

"Hurts a bit, but it'll be fine in a moment."

"Move your hand and let me look at your shoulder." The boy did as told and Hiko leaned down to inspect the damage. There was a cut, but it wasn't as bad as it looked. "You're good enough that we can get the bandages later…unless, that is, you can heal it with your magic." Oh, he'd have so much fun teasing him about this.

"Can't do magic outside of school until I'm seventeen," he said. "Besides, I don't know how do that yet…oh yeah! I have to tell you about the boy that got into a ferret over dinner."

"Along with the rest of your school year, may I add." The both got into position for another match. Next time, he reminded himself, hit in a less-useful area.

"Oh, um, about that…" Hiko launched the first attack, but Kenshin just blocked it and continued speaking like it was nothing. Really, it was rather irritating having someone be better than him. The boy disappeared. "You might get slightly mad at me, so in advance I'm telling you that it's not my fault and that the world works in ironic ways." He rematerialized as he went to hit from behind. Almost succeeded, too.

"What did you do?" Block, attack, have it blocked, pupil vanish. It was good, though, that Kenshin was talking while fight—kept him in the right state of mind for a longer amount of time. "You didn't go off and join a rebel army, did you?"

"Not on purpose." A thin cut on his side. Being hit was such a degrading feeling, especially when it came from someone who didn't even reach your shoulder.

"So you're honestly part of a rebel army?"

"Not exactly. It's really confusing. Basically there's this man called Voldemort who about thirteen years ago lost power. I'll explain all that inside. He's a bit like the magical form of Hitler, that's how I think of him. Tortures, discriminates a certain group and all that oppose him, kills by the thousands, all that stuff. Anyway, he regained power on June twenty-fourth and I somehow managed to get involved. Sheer accident, I swear. If it needs to be blamed on anyone, blame Dumbledore for letting me stay with the Weasleys."

Hiko sighed. "Explain the rest during dinner. And don't leave out the ball."

"H-HEY!"

He landed his first real hit, blade connecting with Kenshin's side. The boy immediately retailed though, moving in his usual god-like speed and slicing across his back. Now that was going to definitely going to hurt later.

"Concentrate, idiot."

Three more times they sparred and each time Hiko had the stop him. It was getting ridiculous, but he really had to accept it now: The kid wasn't going to get better. He sighed.

"Get up," he said, nudging Kenshin's back with foot. No response. "This isn't funny, get up." No answer. He got on his knees and rolled the boy over, only to find his eyes closed. His temple was bleeding and a rock was right where he landed. Damn it, he'd knocked the kid out and it was almost nightfall. Apparently he'd have to make another meal without help. "First day and you're already a hassle."

It luckily wasn't too long before he came about, only twenty-minutes or so.

"What happened?" he asked, sitting up and holding his head. "Did you knock me out?"

"That last time I hit you, you hit a rock. So yes, I knocked you out." A headshake was all he got as an answer as Kenshin stood up and sat down across from him. Hiko pulled an icepack out of the freezer and wrapped into a paper towel before passing it to him. "I fixed up your injuries."

"Thanks." He put this icepack to his head and winced. Without mention that he saw it, Hiko sat down, placing a bowl of rice in front of both of them. "So you wanted to hear about my school year?"

"From start to finished."

It took a while for Kenshin to finished, as Hiko needed to frequently interrupt to ask what certain things were (magic and what it involved was difficult to understand) and there were side bits of information. Some parts were funny, like the boy turning into a ferret, and others rather disturbing, like what happened at that sporting event. By the time the story was finished, the moon was high in the sky.

"I see," Hiko said after Kenshin stopped talking. "You're right: The word works in ironic ways."

"So you aren't mad at me?" Big blue eyes looked up at him, filled with hope.

"Not about that, no," answered Hiko calmly. "As you said, it's not your fault. If anything I should be mad at the old man, but I believe it was a bad coincidence and that luck is never quite on your side."

"Heh. I get that feeling, too, sometimes."

"However," he said and Kenshin's look of hope turned to one of terror. Hiko's inner self was wearing a very evil smile at the moment—oh, he'd gone eleven months without seeing that face. "I said go from start to finish and you seemed to have mysteriously forgotten to tell me about the dance, instead only mentioning the important part."

"It's really not all that exciting," said the boy quickly. "It was just a ball that I went with a girl and I found out the gamekeeper has a giantess for a mother."

"Oh really? And who was your date?"

"Ginny Weasley." He seemed to sink a little in his chair. This would be fun, he could feel it.

"Ron's little sister?" An embarrassed nod. "Why didn't you with your other friend?"

"Hermione already had another date."

"How tragic. Tell me, did you step on Miss Weasley's feet at all?"

"No!"

"Then did you look down at the ground the entire time?"

"Yes."

"Are you dating her?"

"No and why does it matter?"

"Humor me, idiot."

"No, I'm not dating her. I don't want to date her either."

"Did she kiss you?"

"Ye—hey! That was unfair!"

Hiko laughed and waved his hand. "Go to bed now, Kenshin, or I'll wake you up before sunrise."

Kenshin mumbled something and stood up, silent as a ghost when he entered his bedroom. Hiko watched as the door swung shut behind him, capturing his silence so it could close without a sound despite its noisy hinges. His idiot of an apprentice was most certainly a strange one. Everything he'd told him about…he just hoped this next year would be calmer than the first.

It was the curse of the lonely man, he supposed, to wish happiness on the only person in his life. What the boy had for the time being was good enough, but how long could it last? What would happen, if the school found out about him? How would he deal with it?

I washed my hands. That's what he'd told his friend, wasn't it? I washed my hands. How much longer would he need to wash his hands? Hiko would be a fool if hadn't noticed that it was a habit that hadn't gone away. When it came to Kenshin, there was very little he missed. Scars in particular, were things he saw but rarely mentioned. He'd patched up the boy enough to know all the physical ones—the bullet wounds, the knife marks, the odd scratches, the ones on his hand where he'd scrubbed the skin away, the scars caused from their spars or from his random clumsy moments, the small mark from on his lower back from a little before he found him. And of course he knew the emotional scars from behind all of them.

He knew that the first bullet wound the boy had allowed happen, knew the cause behind every knife mark and how many of them haunted him in his sleep, knew the scratches were from when he tried to save the woman he still called his mother, knew that under the scars on his skin were hidden more deaths than any human alive should ever know.

"I never realized I'd done it until after it was too late," Kenshin had told him when Hiko first asked. "I hated myself for it too, for not noticing because I hated pain. It didn't happen often, though. Tomoe bandaged them two of the handful of times I've ever done it. She saw the first time. After she was dead I had to do it myself. It's surprisingly hard to bandage one hand with another hand that's already hurt. One times, when I was thirteen, it was so bad I had to get Katsura to do it for me."

"Well, I hope you don't do it anymore," he'd answered, eyeing the boy's hands. "All my medical supplies will be used on sparring. Don't expect me to go easy on you."

"I wouldn't want you to."

Looking back, he wondered if he should have said anything differently. Not anything out of pity of course, no. He didn't pity his student. In fact, he thought him to be more of deserving of the cold shoulder than anything else, but he couldn't turn him away, so why bother ignoring him? And he couldn't very well tell him it wasn't his fault because it clearly was. Maybe he should have said that there was no need to wash his hands anymore. That might have worked.

Unfortunately he couldn't going back in time to do anything about it, now could he? No, sadly not. It worried him, though, that last night he'd heard the faucet running for so long. The kid was obviously lightening up (he'd laughed which was a miracle in and of itself), so why did he have to keep washing his hands? The blood wasn't going to come off; it was a wasted effort. That didn't mean, though, that he had to continue as if he were still killing every night. Maybe this school would be the best for him. The nightmares would never go away, and neither would the blood that was still caught under his skin. That hint of sadness behind every smile would stay and it would be impossible for his eyes to stay blue forever. But maybe one day he'd realize it was just part of who he is and stop trying to change. Maybe one day he'd learn to live with it.

Maybe one day he would stop washing his hands.

--------

The kitchen floor was cold, but Kenshin didn't mind—outside was so hot that the temperature change felt nice against his bare feet. It was so good to be back in Japan, to go back to the comfortable solitude he hadn't realized how much he'd missed. He allowed himself a small smile at the thought of telling that to his master. Laughter would probably be his answer (though at the moment a glower would be more likely). Though he'd found he honestly did like his new school, nothing was better than the stillness and the silence that could only be achieved here. But going to school…he remembered a conversation he had about it once.

"If you could do anything you wanted after all this was over," Katsura had asked him after a short meeting one day, "what would it be?"

It had taken him a while to think about it. He'd just turned thirteen a few days before and it seemed almost impossible that he would ever do anything else but perform kill after kill.

"Go to school," he'd answered, looking out the window. "That's what I'd do; I'd go to school." It was something he and Tomoe had talking about and she'd made that offer. "But that's not going to happen."

Katsura put his hand on the top his head right before he left the room. "You're allowed to hope, Kenshin. Don't count yourself out." It had been the most he'd spoken since he'd come back from Otsu.

Well, his commander had certainly been right—he'd gotten what he hoped for. Not in the way he'd imagined, but he wasn't complaining. It was better than what he'd imagined; not only was he in school, but he was in a school learning things he didn't already know and it would out of the country. Perfect in its own way.

"Is lunch ready yet?" came the irritated voice of his master.

"Yeah, here it is," he said, going over the table with the two bowls in his hand. "Sorry about earlier."

"You should be." Kenshin winced at the snap in voice. Okay, that part was something he didn't miss. "Next time I tell you to stop, follow my instruction."

"I'm really sorry, honest," he said quickly. For the past few minutes he'd been trying to block out what happened, preferring to think about other things, so he wanted to get this over and done with so that he could go back to thinking over things. "You know I can't help it!"

"When your blade actually connected, though, you were already back to your senses."

Kenshin looked down at his food, the guilt he'd been trying to ignore rushing back to him. "It was momentum," he said. "I was only a few inches away. Besides, you dodged it for the most part."

"Yes, for the most part, but you still could have caused serious damaged to both of us." Kenshin blinked. What? To the both of them? "Wait, you didn't notice?"

"Didn't notice what?"

With a sigh, his master said, "From the angle you were coming down and the angle my katana was tilted, you would have sliced straight through my right arm and speared yourself through the chest. Not only was the move inappropriate for a spar, but it was also suicide, idiot."

"I-I—" His ran his fingers through his hair, shocked. "What did you say? Why didn't I snap out of it before I launched that attack?"

His master shook his head, either angry or worried. Probably angry, since the idea of him worried was inconceivable. "I yelled everything I could think of—your name, called you an idiot, told you to stop, said that Tomoe would be angry is you killed him, told you that you were about to kill yourself if you went through with it. I even went so far as to say your friends would hate you if you killed me, but you still didn't wake up. Do you have idea why?"

He shut his eyes and tried to remember what had been going through his head, but the only thing he could remember thinking was, He's going to kill me. Where the hell did that come from? That wasn't normal…maybe his nightmare the night before had been exceptionally bad—according to his master, his nightmares and his performance in sparring had some connection.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I really have no idea. How's your arm?"

"My arm is fine, the cut was shallow," his master said. "How banged up are you?"

"Well, rolling down a rock filled hill and into a the shallowest area of a river does cause a lot of injuries. And I think I might have fractured a rib. I'll be fine to keep training, though. Just maybe not…"

"Let's lay off the sparring for a few days. There's no need to repeat the performance you showed today." Kenshin averted his eyes, ashamed about the entire ordeal. What the hell was wrong with him? Oh well, he'd figure it out later. "I hope you cleaned all the cuts and scrapes before covering them."

"I did, don't worry. I really don't want to have gravel stuck in my skin when they finally heal." He finished his modest meal and collected his and his master's dishes to wash them. "I'm sorry."

"Get outside to continue your training. I want to see perfection later, understand?" his master said after he was done. Kenshin nodded. A hand was placed on his shoulder, causing him to jump. "And do me a favor and think about something else."

"O-okay."

"Now go on, outside." With a hurried nod, he grabbed his katana and scrambled out the door.

"At this rate, I'll never get the chance to show him," he heard his master say quietly right before the door was full shut.

Show me what? he wondered for a while afterwards, mechanically going through the movements. If it was anything about Hiten Mitsurugi, the only thing left was the final technique. But if it was that, did that mean his master thought he'd never be good enough to learn it? And to think he'd thought he was improving. No, he'd get better. He would get the opportunity to learn it…somehow. No matter what it took, he would surpass every obstacle to finish his training.

Damn it, he was getting distracted. Do me a favor and think about something else.

So he followed the advice, clearing his head of any negative thoughts before focusing on something else—the coming school year. What would it be like, now that Voldemort was back to power? It wasn't as if he had any news to give him any form of a hint. And who would the new DADA teacher be? Hopefully no one bad—Moody had been bad enough to last him a life time. His katana swung through the air. It was so hot out here. At least the kitchen floor had been nice and cold and there was a fan in his bedroom. If only they had air conditioning. Then inside would have been perfect.

How long he was out there, going through move after move, he had no idea. By the time he realized night had fallen, he was in a better mood than he was before. There was always something calming about training. Finally he sheathed his sword and headed back inside. The clock on the microwave read 8:46. Wow, he'd been out there for a really long time without stopping.

"I was wondering when you'd come back inside," said his master from the table, trying to shoo away the owl that was hopping close to him in an almost curious way. "I was about to come get you—this bird got here about five minutes ago and won't leave me alone."

"Oh, uh, thanks," he said and opened the letter. It read:

To Kenshin,

This is Remus Lupin. Though we have never met, I have heard much about you. According to Ron and Hermione, you said that you might like to come down the last two weeks before school. If you would still like to, I have been given the job of picking you up by way of the Floo Network on August 17th. The others say sorry for not writing to you, but by the time the owl had reached you, summer vacation would have been over. If you would still like to come, write back immediately so I can get your message in time.

Hope to meet you soon,

R.J. Lupin

P.S. There is a package of owl food attached to her leg. Please feed her.

"Who is it?" his master asked as Kenshin went into one of the kitchen drawers, pulling out an envelope, a pen, and slip of paper. Then he got a small bowl from a cabinet and filled it with water. "Can you please get this thing away from me?"

He brought the water over and the owl went to it immediately, well clear of the man. "It was about going to England at the end of August. It was from the person who would have to pick me up if I went. May I? I'll need to get my school things and I can only do that in Diagon Alley."

His master looked at him for a moment, thinking. Finally he said, "If you want to, then go. I think it's a good idea." He nodded and wrote:

Mr. Lupin,

I'll be able to make it. I'm not quite sure what you have to say to get here, though, so I suggest you asked Professor Dumbledore. I'll see you on August 17th or 18th, depending on when you come.

—Kenshin

He fed the owl as told, attached the letter to her leg, and watched her fly off.

"I ate an hour ago. Leftovers are in the refrigerator."

"Thank you. Should I continue training outside once I'm done? If I'm leaving so soon, I should get in as much as I can, right?"

"Do what you want."

A pause. Kenshin sat down with his food and ate in silence as his master read over a newspaper.

"I'm sorry," he said before he went outside again. "I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."

"Stop apologizing, idiot, and get outside."

"I'll see you in the morning, Master."

"Don't fall asleep outside like you used to."

"I won't."

He walked out into the hot July night, a small smile on his face, mind filled with racing thoughts.