Chapter 1: An Attempt at Planning
"Sirius! No, no, no, let me go!" A teenage boy, a far cry from the flighty four year old he had been when he had met, talked to and saved Aizen Sosuke, screamed through his sleeping, dreaming state. "Sirius! No, No, No! SIRIUS!" And, as that same boy had far too many times before, Harry Potter felt wakefulness crash over him like a tidal wave at high tide, shooting onto his elbows in his bed. It was at times like this that he was truly glad he wasn't sleeping in the cupboard anymore, or he'd have bumped his head quite badly, and he didn't need any further injuries. His heart was racing, and his clothes were damp with sweat. His abused throat felt raw as he gasped air through it.
It couldn't have been a week that he was back at the Dursley's prison-house before he had started waking up screaming. It had become depressingly normal since, and he feared what would happen once he got back to school in September, just a couple weeks away. Harry glanced sideways over at the clock he had once laboriously repaired after Dudley had thrown it across a room and swore. It was barely 3 am. He'd woken up screaming for Sirius each time, to the best of his often limited ability. he refused to believed that Sirius was dead-or, at least, dead in a way where he wouldn't be able to see him. So, after a fashion, Sirius was still alive.
Somewhere, far away, somewhere called the Soul Society. The place where the people wearing the loose black clothes came from. He kept that information to himself. If they didn't declare him crazy with grief (or just plain crazy) then it would reveal a rare ability to Dumbledore the Controlling. It must be rare, given that there was absolutely nothing in the Hogwarts Library on anything like it, and that library had amazing resources on things like Parselmouths and rare Glotmancy in general. Besides, it had been practically implied multiple times to him.
Even knowing that Sirius was still around somewhere didn't mean that his absence didn't hurt. It did, and badly. Sirius was the closest thing he'd had to a father, to a real family, and his absence was still a constant melancholy. Sirius had died. There was a chance that when he got to Soul Society he wouldn't remember Harry or anyone else he had known in this life. He put a hand over the psychosomatic ache in his chest he got when he was reflecting on Sirius's death. The voice he often heard in his head sneered at him and berated him by calling him a 'sentimental weakling'. His lips quirked up as he read between the lines to see 'you need to move on with your life, dumbass' to use the language the voice probably would've.
He needed away from the Dursleys, and soon/ Preferably before they actually managed to kill him. Where would he go, then, and with whom? There were a couple people he could count on to get him away eventually, if the 'blood wards' would let them, but there was no telling how long it would take to contact them. He also had to be able to escape Dumbledore entirely if he asked for their help, and have them manage to help him in such a way that Dumbledore couldn't find them. Or know that the existed in the first place, which ruled out going to them for help.
Dumbledore was too much like that man with the false-kind eyes from when he was little to hint at that sort of power around him.
Who could he rely on, then? The mirror popped into mind. It could work, especially after he transfigured the largest piece into a mirror identical to the original, and transferred the remnants of the enchantments from all the broken pieces onto the new mirror. Not only was he not sure if the mirror was functional, but Sirius could not help him here. Perhaps he could try it once he got away, he thought listlessly, touching the little chain he had made of all the remaining mirror pieces. The broken pieces were more comforting than the refurbished mirror, for some reason.
Getting away meant 'not here', which implied leaving under the Order's collective protuberant nose. He could probably manage it for good, given the other times he'd slipped off with one or another of his friends. The tracking charms on him could be placed on his bed using the same spells as he'd used on the mirror pieces to avoid over-stretching the existing fractional enchantment on the transfigured mirror. Leaving for good meant that he needed money, so a trip to Gringotts was in order, with one of those bags with far too much space on the inside. He would need a disguise to get there, but goblins were prideful creatures and unless they were truly desperate, they wouldn't sell him out. Dumbledore wouldn't stand a chance once he handed the goblins the paper that said that Albus Dumbledore was not his true magical guardian, and in fact never had been. He had no authority to get into his vault, ever. He'd have to ask them to check for thievery. It was quite possible, given that a whole host of people had his original key (he had taken it from the Weasleys after they had once again bought his schoolbooks for him) and given that Dumbledore had given him a Potter family heirloom in his first year as a Christmas gift. If it had been in the vault, there was every chance that he had taken something for himself too. Then again, he may not have. To be found stealing from the Wizarding World's Savior would be a career killer for him.
Where was still a question, however. Then the voice came through with a pretty good idea-once, when he'd had access to Dudley's computer, he'd looked up the clothing and traced the types to traditional japanese wear, though he hadn't found anything about that specific uniform. Still, he'd found Japan before losing the tail, and as such it was a decent place to start. It was true that he knew quite a bit about the uniforms and where they came from, but he was still curious. Besides, it would be the place to find some of his honorary onee-sans and onii-sans. Thus a plan came together-money, and a trip to Japan.
Maybe, if things went his way he could see his godfather again away from the influence and interference of Dumbledore and his Order of Quacking Cuckoos, no offence intended to Fawkes of course.
Snickering, he decided to write to Snape. That man had to be curious about him by now, and he was likely less under Dumbledore's thumb than some. He was also the last person Dumbledore would think he would ask for help. Remus, on the other hand, was enthralled by Dumbledore, and was therefore useless to him, no matter how much he claimed to care. Remus probably did, but lycanthrope or not there was no reason not to send him letters at least, especially after he started at Hogwarts.
He wrote to Snape about getting out from under Dumbledore's fingers, and that he was skipping town to somewhere that anyone would be hard-pressed to track him. The man really didn't seem to want him dead despite his acerbity, and so the only way to make sure he was alive was to either keep in touch, which would mean helping him in what ways he could. He probably could too. It wasn't like Voldemort was going to suddenly forget him just because he had disappeared to some random country nine timezones away.
He also wrote Silvershear, a goblin at Gringotts. Gringotts goblins had told him about the little bit of soul stuck in his scar, given that it had shown up on a scan they had done of Harry to confirm his identity when Harry had come to listen to Sirius's Will. Harry made the connection to Voldemort, the visions from his eyes, and the pain he felt when he was near, or especially emotional. The thrice-damned piece of snake soul was trying to get back to its original soul, as it was the instinct of the soul to repair itself after injury. Silvershear had been the one to tell him about horcruxes, though he had been well-advised to stay away from them in the future, and suggest to him the procedure that would remove the soul piece.
There had never been such a thing as a living horcrux, because living things were so complicated that the ritual used to implant a soul piece in a living soul was equally complex, so it was postulated that a bit of rubble, dust even, was the true container of the soul and had been sealed into his scar by the unfortunate (but likely, in the wake of all the magic surrounding him, his mother, and the killing curses hurled in their direction) chance of it having flown inside. When the soul piece would not be able to attach itself to him, the most magically central thing in the room, it would have gone for the next closest thing, a bit of something inside his bleeding head. As far as he knew, no one had checked up on him at all after that night, he had just been placed in a basket with a blanket his mother had made (he no longer had the blanket, Dudley had once ruined it beyond what his magic could repair and thrown it away when they were six) and left to get sick in the chilly November night.
A little piece of something that the soul had connected to when he hadn't been able to connect to the soul whose body the little piece was inside was the theory. The piece had been surrounded by Harry's magic, which had detected the foreign intrusion, and given that the fight to leave his body had intensified when Voldemort was upset, it was possible that the magic keeping the soul piece in, interacting with the soul piece, was actually the source of his trouble.
Or he could in fact be a living horcrux, at which point the ritual would still be effective because the soul piece was still lodged in his scar. The goblins didn't think so, though they had no explanation for his survival of the killing curse so anything was technically possible.
The only reason he had not yet done the ritual was the necessity of a complete abstention of magic for a week, given the draining nature of the ritual. Now, though, he had that week. It was time to get that over with.
He couldn't, wouldn't contact his friends. He needed to get out of here before Dumbledore decided to trundle him off to his godfather's prison, Grimmauld Place. He might just be paranoid, but he needed to be sure that his friends were actually his friends, and would take his side over Dumbledore's. He suspected that they might not, and while it hurt him to think of abandoning them, he steeled himself to the possible necessity.
It wasn't like he could go around spouting his plans. He was only barely sixteen, and so not in his wizarding majority. If they caught him, they could force him to stay for another year. Another year was completely unacceptable. Sirius was gone, and Voldemort would only step up his attempts. This world was a dangerous place that many people were fleeing. Could anyone blame him for doing the same, really? He was a sixteen year old. A teenager. A child. A mere boy, as Voldemort had said. This was going to be a war. This was going to be a man's game, not a place for a child. He had no way of 'taking care' of Voldemort before he left. He would do something at one point, if it truly came down to him, but right now he was a sitting duck. That chance was the only reason he had deigned to take a chance on Snape. If he had been anyone else other than the 'Boy Who Lived', he would have just up and left.
What was a prophecy, anyway?
Back in Hogwarts, Professor Severus Snape's face was set in a deep scowl as he contemplated the enigma that was Harry Potter. A pile of the boy's essays from his first class on to the last of the past year sat innocently on his sitting room table. They were almost malicious in that innocence.
The discrepancy between what he had read in that thick sheaf of parchment and the classwork Potter had done was glaring. In class, Potter was a hopeless dunderhead who never stood a chance of completing a proper Beautifying Draught, an end of second-year/beginning of third-year potion, much less the Draught of the Living Death. It was obvious that he'd not inherited either of his parents' potion skills-even James Potter had been passable, if nothing else than to mix prank potions. Yet the essays could have been written by a seventh year, who was not only knowledgeable in the subject but in his want for meticulousness without going overboard (an inch or two long could be forgiven. A foot was unacceptable.) or an early Mastery student in later years. It was certainly better than Lily at his age, though not as good as himself.
In short, things weren't adding up properly and that was infuriating. The boy had to have inherited Lily's skill, and yet he chose to behave like a dunderhead in class. Severus was determined that he would figure out just why Potter was hiding his skill and how good the boy actually was. If he was good enough, he might consider taking the brat on as an apprentice. If it would not be an utter waste of his time, it would be a good way to keep an eye on the boy and to keep him out of trouble.
If the boy was good enough to be his apprentice, he could fulfill his dreams of leaving Hogwarts, since even Albus could not keep a Master from training his Apprentice. Leaving Hogwarts would get him away from Albus entirely, leaving his many manipulations in the dust. He may have loved Hogwarts as a safer place, a lesser evil, but he hated teaching the usual group of incompetent brats he saw every year. Albus didn't need a Potions Master for the first years. It would also get Potter, the boy he had sworn to protect, out of the firing range. It would benefit the boy as well-Dumbledore's manipulations weren't good for any of the targets, and while he wasn't sure what Potter had been central to, he was sure that it wouldn't benefit the boy to continue of that path.
First of all, it was Dumbledore's war with Voldemort, more than anyone else. Including and especially the titled Boy-Who-Lived, who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. People just saw that the boy survived, not thinking about the death of Lily Evans (Potter, he reminded himself) and James Potter, or that the boy was another war orphan. Dumbledore had no right to expect the child to go out into a war with no training and less support.
There had been a tapping at his door, by the owl-window. Usually owls would leave their packages in the post-slot and leave, and he could only wonder why this one was not doing so. Then he came upon the bird, the magnificent snowy owl that he recognized to be Potter's, given the scarcity of snowy owls at Hogwarts during the school year it was easily recognizable. Potter, the very conundrum he had been contemplating. He opened the parchment that had been attached to her leg quickly before sitting back. Why in the world had Potter chosen to contact him of all people was a viable question after all. He started to read. That had been an hour previously.
He was smirking when he reached the end. He thought vindictively of Dumbledore, who would have a conniption when he realized that two of his most prized and valuable pawns were now forever out of his reach. He picked up a quill, and started to pen a reply to Potter. Soon, he would be free.
In a small town in Japan called Karakura, there was a small celebration for a little boy's eleventh birthday. It was a few days belated because two of his closest friends were on trips when his birthday passed, but that didn't mean that they didn't have just as much fun when they got back home.
The boy's name was Kurosaki Ichigo, as as of yet his world was just as it always was-safe.
