Here's Chapter 3. Edits are mostly done with this one, but I'm still not quite sure it works. It's good for now though I think.

There are some major edits to this chapter, but again, they are subject to change.


To Mend a Broken Heart

Chapter 3


Once everyone was asleep, Kagome slowly made her way downstairs to the common room. The floors creaked only slightly, but she paused over each one just in case. She didn't want to risk being heard. When she finally made it to the last step, she noticed Harry was already waiting for her. Smiling slightly, she made her way to the couch in front of the fire and sat down.

"I hope you weren't waiting too long." She said.

Harry shook his head. "No, not really. I only just came down about five minutes ago."

Kagome smiled for a moment before suddenly turning serious. "Harry, what I'm about to tell you no one but my family knows, and even they don't know everything that went on. Some of the things I've experienced and witnessed were extremely dangerous…and I was afraid to tell them, fearing they would try and keep me away." She looked straight at him. "Please don't tell anyone about what I'm about to tell you. Not even Ron and Hermione. I will tell them when I feel the time is right."

Harry looked at her questioningly. "Then why tell me?"

"Because I feel that I can trust you. I don't know why, but there's something about you that makes me feel like we're very similar. Almost like we've witnessed some of the same things, things that you feel no one else would understand. I may have only known you for a day, but it feels like I've known you for years."

He looked down at his lap. "Yea…I guess that might be true."

"So do you still want to know?" she asked, and he nodded. Sighing, she looked into the fire before saying anything, trying to collect her thoughts.

"This is hard for me to tell…" she began, "It started a little more than a year ago, on my birthday actually. Our cat had gotten lost in the well house that sits on our property and my brother Souta was too scared to go in by himself." she laughed. "It was rather amusing actually. He came and got me as I was heading off to school, and I went with him to get the cat. Well, you can guess that something didn't go quite the way it was supposed to. As I was walking by the well, which was sealed with old sutras, a large centipede woman came out of the well and grabbed me. Souta and the cat ran off, but I was dragged into the well. She kept saying something about having the Jewel of Four Souls. I tried to get away, but she just gripped me tighter, so I pushed her way from me using my hands, when they suddenly started glowing. There was a blast of light, and when I opened my eyes I was at the bottom of the well, and the centipede's arms were lying around me."

Harry shuddered. "You mean the same kind of attack you used on Malfoy, right?"

Kagome nodded. "Yes, but at that time I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never done anything like it before, so I was a bit freaked out. Anyway, I climbed out of the well, but something was off. I was no longer at the shrine where we lived. Instead of concrete and temples around, along with my house, I was surrounded by green. I was in a forest, and not just any forest. Sure, I was still technically on my family's shrine, but I was five hundred years in the past, the Warring States Era. Of course I didn't know this; I thought it was just some dream."

"Wait," Harry interrupted, "You were transported five hundred years to the past?"

"I was, but I didn't find this out until later. I wandered off into the forest, thinking if this was a dream, I should be waking up any minute. I hadn't gotten very far when I came to the largest tree in the forest. It's still standing today at my family's shrine, actually. We call it the Goshinboku. This is how I figured I was at least still in Japan, but what really got me was that there was a boy pinned to the tree by an arrow. It looked like he'd been there for quite a while, since there were vines growing on him, but he looked so peaceful, almost like he was asleep. And he had the most beautiful silver hair. He also had cute little dog ears on his head." She giggled. "I couldn't resist, I started playing with them, that is, until some of the villagers came and tried to shoot me. They tied me up and brought me to the village priestess, Kaede. I think they thought I was some kind of demon or something, but I guess it was mostly for how I was dressed. Girls' school uniforms aren't exactly the most conservative…"

"But if they thought you were a demon, why didn't they just kill you?"

Kagome sighed. "Apparently, I looked like the previous priestess, Kikyo, Kaede's sister. I'll explain later. Anyway, Kaede took one look at me and thought I was Kikyo, but that obviously couldn't be. She explained to me that her sister had died fifty years earlier, and yet I was her spitting image. I asked her about the boy who was pinned to the tree. She called him Inuyasha, a half dog demon, or hanyou. He had been in love with Kikyo, and supposedly betrayed her, so she shot him with an arrow, and he'd been there for fifty years. Then she asked if I believed in reincarnation. I never got a chance to answer her though, because the centipede woman had returned, and she was destroying the village. Knowing that it was me she wanted, I ran off toward the light I saw in the forest. When I reached the Goshinboku, Inuyasha wasn't exactly sleeping anymore. He was wide awake, and boy did he look angry."

"So that's why you said that demons do exist. You've actually encountered them before." Harry said suddenly. "I thought you were just trying to scare Ron."

She laughed lightly. "No, they really do exist. They just avoid contact with humans."

"I see. So what happened next?"

"When I saw Inuyasha awake I couldn't help but stare at him. He had bright amber eyes that you could just get lost in, but they looked furious. He called me quite a few names I will not repeat, called me weak, and then, what really got me was when he called me Kikyo. Boy was I mad. I grabbed his hair and yelled at him and told him my name was Kagome, not Kikyo. By now the centipede had caught up to us and had grabbed me, tearing a hole in my side with her teeth." Kagome lifted up her shirt up to the top of her hip bone, revealing a large scar on her side.

Harry winced. "That had to hurt."

"It did. A lot. But out of my side came a pink jewel. The Shikon no Tama, or Jewel of Four Souls. This is what the centipede demon had wanted from me, and when she was done with me, she ate the jewel. Inuyasha wanted the jewel for himself, so he was quite upset by now. For a moment nothing happened, but within seconds she had turned into a more grotesque form, and had slammed me into Inuyasha, holding us to the tree with her body and trying to kill us. The villagers had gotten there just as she had torn open my side and were trying to kill the demon, but she was too strong for them. They all lived, but they didn't get away without at least a few scrapes. Inuyasha told me to remove the arrow from his chest, telling me he would easily be able to destroy the demon. I, being the naïve girl I was then, grabbed the arrow and it vanished, freeing Inuyasha. I don't really remember what happened after that, it happened so fast. But within a few minutes the centipede demon was dead, and I grabbed the jewel before she could regenerate. Inuyasha then turned on me though; he wanted the jewel."

"Why would he need the jewel?" Harry asked, confused. "If he was already strong enough to kill that demon, why would he need it?"

"Inuyasha's a hanyou, a half-demon, half-breed, what everyone else considered to be scum. The names people used to call him were horrible, just because of his heritage. The shikon jewel has the power to turn a half-demon into a full-demon. But, you will most likely lose your soul along with it. That's why he attacked me. He wanted to become a full-demon, and finally have respect. Kaede made a rosary and put a strong incantation on it, placing it around Inuyasha's neck, and told me to say one word that would subdue him. Of course, this is kinda hard when you've got a demon trying to kill you, but I called out the first thing that came to my head." Kagome grinned. "What do you tell a dog when you want him to sit?"

"Uh…'sit '"?

Kagome laughed. "Exactly. I panicked, so I shouted the first thing that came to my head, and he fell face first into the dirt."

Harry laughed. "I guess that's one way to handle a demon."

Kagome nodded. "Yea. He didn't attack me after that, but we didn't become friends either. He still hated me. I think it was because I looked like Kikyo."

"Didn't he love her though?"

"He did…he does…fifty years previously they had been in love. She offered him the jewel to make him human and they would live out their lives as man and wife. But Naraku, I'll explain him later, made them think they had betrayed one another. He posed as Inuyasha, and fatally wounded Kikyo. Then he went and posed as Kikyo and shot at Inuyasha. He then stole the jewel from the village, and Kikyo shot him and pinned him to the tree. She died shortly after, and the jewel was burned with her remains. I guess when I came along, some unwanted memories returned. Still, he saved my life." Kagome looked into the fire. "We eventually became friends, or at least, as friendly as he could be. Like I said earlier, during that time hanyou's were considered the scum of the earth. So it took quite a while for him to even slightly open up to me."

Harry looked down at his hands. "It's similar here with wizards. Those that are squibs, wizards that can't really do magic well, are usually looked down on. And of course the muggles that know of us are either afraid of us or hate us."

Kagome nodded. "People that are different are disliked. That's simply how it works. I don't like it, but society won't change so easily."

"I guess so."

"Anyway, there's quite a bit that happened after I first met Inuyasha, but I think I'll summarize most of it. The first thing that happened was the jewel shattered. During a fight with a crow demon I accidentally broke the jewel, and the shards went all over Japan. To this day we still have no idea how many shards there actually are, but we have most of them. But that moment is really how my adventure started. When the jewel broke, it really was my job to put it back together." Kagome pulled out what looked like half of a pink jewel from under her shirt. "This is the Shikon jewel. Well, a little more than half of it. This is what has caused so much death, this tiny jewel. It's still so hard to think that something this small could actually the cause of so many problems."

"It seems so harmless." Harry said, looking at the jewel carefully. "Almost like a regular piece of jewelry."

"Sadly, thousands have died because of this jewel. And all of my friends in that era have seen so much pain and suffering because of it."

Harry looked at her quizzically. "How many people were you travelling with?"

"We first met Shippo, a fox demon kit, whose parents had been murdered by two demon brothers that wanted the jewel. Inuyasha killed the Thunder Brothers, as they were called, and I adopted Shippo as my own son. We met Miroku shortly after that. He's a monk that we sorta met by accident. He stole my bike." Kagome started laughing at the memory. "He's also quite lecherous, always asking any beautiful girl to bear his children. But, he's also cursed by a wind tunnel that's been passed down through the males in his family. It's a black hole in his hand that as it grows bigger will eventually suck him in. It comes in quite handy during a battle, but unless we kill Naraku, who started the curse, his fate will be the same as his grandfather and his father. Finally we met Sango, a demon slayer. Her village was attacked by demons while she, her family, and the best of the demon slayers from her village were called away to a supposed castle that was home to a powerful demon. No one in the village survived, and the group that was at the castle had been pulled into a trap by Naraku. Her younger brother, Kohaku, was suddenly possessed and murdered everyone, including their own father. Sango was presumed dead and buried along with the rest, but she lived. When she was told by Naraku that Inuyasha had caused her family's death, she came after us. It took quite a bit of fighting and talking before she finally saw we were telling the truth."

"Why wouldn't she believe you?"

"Naraku can be very persuasive, if you know what I mean." Kagome said sadly.

Harry frowned. "Sounds exactly like Voldemort." Kagome looked at him confused. "He's an evil wizard; he killed my parents, and many others."

Kagome nodded in understanding. "Anyway, so I guess after we all started traveling together things just fell into place. They became my second family, and it may have been inevitable, but I fell in love with Inuyasha. I don't know when or how, but I did. Everyone seemed to know, but him." Kagome laughed bitterly. "He was so dense. But he also still loved Kikyo. She had been, in a way, brought back from the dead. This was before we met Sango or Miroku. I am actually still missing a small piece of my soul, which is currently residing in the clay form of Kikyo."

"You…you lost your soul? How is that possible? I thought only Dementors had that power…" Harry looked at her slightly shocked. "It's also supposed to be the most painful thing to endure…"

"I don't really know…I was sort of in a trance I guess, and I don't remember anything from the time I went into said trance to the time I woke up. From what Kaede has told me, being in close proximity to my soul, and having a strong will to live, called it back to me. I don't know. It's all very confusing and complicated."

Kagome looked at Harry. "What exactly are Dementors?"

Harry shuddered. "I don't really know what I would call them. They feed off your happiness, leaving you with only your worst memories, and eventually leave you broken and insane before sucking away your soul." Kagome's eyes widened in horror. "During my third year, my godfather, Sirius Black, had escaped from the Azkaban, the wizard prison. He was an innocent man convicted of murdering thirteen people. But because he was the first to ever escape, they had some of the Dementors placed around Hogwarts. I think everyone reacts differently to them, depending on their past. I was the only one to pass out, hearing my mother screaming as she died. That is the power of a Dementor."

Kagome shuddered, wide-eyed, as if trapped in a lost and forgotten memory. "I may have seen one…" she muttered, "Back when I was still a child…it was so cold…" She closed her eyes, wanting to forget. "They're big black creatures covered in black cloaks, right?"

Harry nodded slowly.

'Somehow I knew my father's death wasn't an accident.' Kagome thought. 'I won't trouble him with that memory though. It's all in the past now.' "I guess I'll continue on with my story, though there really isn't much else to tell." She laughed.

Harry smiled and chuckled slightly. 'She sure does know how to lighten the mood, even during a dark subject. But…we really are similar…both of us are surrounded by death and expectations…'

"I guess the next three parts shall be the last, since they are really the last parts with any importance. There are two people I have yet to introduce; Koga, and Sesshoumaru. Sesshoumaru is Inuyasha's half brother, but he's a full demon and they absolutely hate one another, and he hates humans as well."

"Does that go back to the whole 'half demon' issue?" Harry asked.

"Yes. Now, I don't really know a whole lot about him, so I'll just tell you what I know." She said. "In the beginning, we met him when he was trying to find their father's grave. That is also when Inuyasha finally inherited the sword that his father left him. The Tetsaiga. It transforms into a large fang-like sword when used to protect humans. During their fight, Inuyasha told me to stay back and let him protect me. When he said that, it was almost like the sword had a mind of its own, and it transformed into a large fang as he cut his brother's arm off." Kagome looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully, placing a finger on her chin. "I think he's changed somewhat since then. He seems gentler and I've even seen him smile once or twice."

"How does someone that coldhearted change? If he hates his own flesh and blood?" Harry asked.

"He saved a human girl." she said simply.

"I thought you said he hated humans though."

"He did. But I think Rin, the small child he saved, has softened him a little. He's very protective of her." Kagome giggled. "It's rather cute actually; like a father watching over his daughter."

Harry shrugged. "I don't really know much about a parents love. I grew up with my aunt and uncle, who hate me. The closest thing I have to a family really is Ron's family and my godfather." He said quietly.

Kagome leaned over slightly and pulled Harry into an embrace. He stiffened slightly, not knowing how to react, but he slowly relaxed as she started to speak. "It must've been hard, not knowing why you were hated as a child, and not growing up with someone who cared for you." She let go, but leaned her head on his shoulder. "I may not know what it's like to grow up without my family, but I do know what it's like to lose a parent. My father died when I was young, but that's a memory I won't go into."

Harry nodded, blushing slightly when he realized she wasn't moving away from him any time soon.

"Oh! Koga!" she laughed softly. "He's certainly an interesting person. He's a wolf demon who, unfortunately, thinks I'm his woman and is constantly asking me to marry him."

Now it was Harry's turn to laugh. "What made him start doing that? I'm sure that was awkward."

"Oh it was, believe me." Kagome laughed. "I had barely known him for five minutes before he suddenly claimed me as his and he kidnapped me. I helped him and his pack defeat a group of Harpies, and Inuyasha came and rescued me. He comes and finds us somehow at least once a month, maybe once every two or three months sometimes, and tries to get me to go with him. I refuse every time, and of course, a fight breaks out."

Harry smiled. "Sounds like fun."

Kagome nodded. "It was actually. Every time Inuyasha and Koga would fight over me though, I thought that just maybe he loved me too."

Harry looked down at the smiling girl leaning on his shoulder. "What do you mean?"

She sighed. "This is the final part of my tale, and the somewhat of the reason I am here. Somewhere down the road, I fell in love with Inuyasha. It seems silly of me to actually fall in love with someone who calls you names, and is constantly arguing with you, but I did. He had his moments, where, when it was just the two of us, he would be so kind and gentle to me. Whereas Miroku is like a brother to me and is there when I'm upset, Inuyasha was always the one that made my heart flutter when I saw him. Every time I saw him with Kikyo it broke my heart, but I thought that maybe with time he would see that I loved him for who he was, and not want him to change, like she did. When he got severely injured he would sometimes turn into a full demon, but I was always the one to bring him back and comfort him when he realized he had killed someone innocent. The most recent time, though still quite some time ago, I didn't know what to do. His human form had been separated and trapped in a mirror. So while he was losing his mind to his demon half, I did the only thing I thought would bring him back. I kissed him." She paused, trying to collect her thoughts.

"Did he come back?" Harry asked quietly.

She nodded. "He did. He even kissed me back. I truly thought after that that maybe there was a chance after all, that we could be together. He began to act different around me; much more gentle and caring. He let me go home when I had a test in school, and he would come back to get me a few days later, or he would be waiting for me at the well when I came back. I guess I didn't notice when he started to see Kikyo again. I really was naïve." Her voice broke slightly.

"You're not naïve, you fell in love." Harry said suddenly, but caught himself, blushing slightly.

Kagome laughed bitterly, a sound that shouldn't come from someone so kind. "I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back." She pulled away from Harry and lifted up her sleeve to and her shirt to her side so that the bandages on her still healing wounds were. "I'm sure you recall I also had an arrow in my back." She said quietly as she pulled her shirt back down. "The day I fell here, I had planned on telling him how I felt. Imagine my surprise when I saw him embracing Kikyo, telling her he loved her and saying he would do anything to be with her. And then hearing her say she wanted me dead, and him saying he'd do it." Harry remained silent. "I ran. I had already dropped off the new food and medical supplies at the village, so I ran back toward the well, but I didn't get there in time. While I was running, Kikyo shot me with an arrow and I fell. I know I felt the pain in my back, but I still had enough strength to get up and try to run again. This time, Inuyasha caught me, using his claws along my side and catching my arm along as well." She closed her eyes. "I'll never forget the look of hatred in his eyes. After I fell to the ground, I realized that he never loved me, and he wouldn't ever love me. I guess I lost hope, and was ready to give up. I didn't though. I didn't want to lose those dear to me, and I didn't want to give him the satisfaction of seeing me so helpless, so I got up, told him to sit, and jumped into the well. The blood loss and the pain got to me though, and I lost consciousness. The last thing I heard was voices as I fell." She ended, feeling one lone tear fall down her cheek, but wiped it away quickly, hoping he hadn't noticed, and started laughing lightly. "And from what I understand, I fell on your table."

Harry grinned, but it soon turned into a slight frown as he looked at the carefree girl beside him. She had gone through so much, and yet, was still able to smile and laugh like it was nothing. She looked at him questioningly as he watched her with sadness and pulled her into a tight hug. "Don't hold it in. You can cry if you want. You shouldn't have to keep it in."

Kagome sat rigid, but then returned the embrace as tears started falling down her cheeks. She choked back small sobs as he rubbed her hair gently and held her. Never being one to cry openly, she let her sobs come out silently as she hiccupped and held onto his shirt. Harry just continued to hold her and let her cry. He didn't know when she finally stopped, but after a while, her breathing evened out and her grip loosened, signaling she'd fallen asleep. Harry smiled as he looked down at her. She looked so serene and calm, even with the tear streaks running down her face.

As he went to get up, her grip tightened again and she whimpered slightly. "Don't go…"she whispered. Harry looked down to see her eyes slightly open and glazed over. "Don't go…" she whispered again.

Sighing, Harry stayed where he was and Kagome moved closer to him, leaning her head against his chest. As her eyes closed once again and her hand fell across his lap, Harry heard her breath out a quiet "Thank you" before they both fell into a comfortable slumber.


A few interesting spots in this chapter. I can't, and won't, divulge any information. All things will be revealed in good time.