Disclaimer: I am neither J. K. Rowling, nor Rumiko Takahashi and I do NOT own the Harry Potter universe or the Inuyasha universe. No matter how much I want to.

Rating: M, for adult themes, mild swearing, violence and lemon

Warnings: This is probably going to turn into a crack fic.

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Night had fallen over the forest. A white shape was moving between the dark silhouettes of the trees. Even though the moonlight and the stars did not reach through the dark canopy, the pale, long silhouette appeared to be shimmering with silvery light. On top of it, could be distinguished a small black shape that, upon further scrutiny, resembled strangely a human body. The tree parted for a brief moment and the two shapes entered a clearing. The outline of a horse-sized white dog could now be made, a thinly built man on its back.

"Can you remind me why we're walking?" asked the man in a tired voice.

"We are not walking," the huge white dog replied with a slightly sarcastic feminine tune that did not match at all the impressive fangs that glinted in its mouth.

The man sighed again, throwing a look at the feet of the white dog that were performing a walking motion… thirty inches over the ground.

"Right. Can you remind me why we're floating?"

"You're slower than an imp-toad," replied the dog with a smug grin that the man did not see although the smugness was hearable anyway. "A blind grandmother imp-toad. So we float."

The man sighed for a third time, annoyance clearly audible now, and spoke again:

"A what… no, wait, could you just answer my question, please?"

"I could."

Again, the smug grin was audible.

"I'd like it if you stopped messing with my head, Tenseiga. Now can you answer my question? You told me you could teleport us directly to wherever your body is, no matter the distance."

"I did."

"So, why are we walking?"

"Floating."

Sirius remained silent, decided not to enter Tenseiga's game. He tightened his grip on her fur, hoping she would answer. Eventually.

After her outburst, she had regained her composure and apologized to him. The formality of her bow and the stiffness in her voice had been a hint that she was truly embarrassed to have broken apart like she had. He had abundantly reassured her that he saw no shame in crying a bit from time to time. She had thanked him very softly, very politely and, when she had gotten up, he was sure he had seen her blush. Dusting some imaginary dust from her sleeves, she had then turned into a white dog and asked him to hop on.

The snarky comments had soon followed.

Sirius liked dogs – he hadn't chosen the dog as his animagus form for nothing – but he had to admit that mounting a horse-sized white beast with sneering wits, was not the most quieting experience he had ever went through. Her sudden change in personality was more than a bit perplexing, but he too did not think and act the same way when he morphed. So, he decided not to worry about it too much. He guessed that she was trying to get rid of the embarrassment.

He himself distinctly remembered – when he was still a student back in Hogwarts – having morphed a few time to blow off some steam.

"I can only teleport to my body," Tenseiga suddenly mentioned, extracting him from his memories. "And I don't know where my body is right now. Maybe we're very close. Maybe it is weeks of travel away. I have no way to know, so I'm not taking the risk of going off-tracks."

"Off-tracks?" Sirius inquired.

"Yes. There's someone I need to talk to before I bring you to my wielder. He is an old hermit, and he provided the wood for my scabbard. I know he would be able to see and hear us… and he might also be willing to provide some answers about the bond."

Sirius' eyes fell on the red thread linking his pinky with the dog's massive paw.

"You think?"

Tenseiga nodded.

"He's very knowledgeable. And old. Very, very old. Older than my lord and wielder, older than the Inu no Taisho, even older than elder Myoga."

The names meant nothing to him, but he assumed they were of old persons. His eyes fell on the pale fur under his fingers. So Tenseiga's wielder was an old man… Why would he need a sword? Unable to find a reason, he shrugged the question aside and mentally filed the information.

Tenseiga's muzzle lifted to point before them, at the towering shape of a small mountain. Its dark silhouette was hiding the night sky, like the set piece of a shadow play.

"You see that hill?" she asked and he gave a grunt in acknowledgement. "Bokuseno resides on top of it. That is the reason we are floating. I would rather walk for a while than risk to prolong our travel by teleporting us to the opposite of the country."

Sirius nodded. It made sense. Especially since she had admitted not being able to speak with her wielder in spirit form. Even if the man in question possessed the power to resurrect Sirius, it would do no good if they could not ask him for help once they would have reached him. What would they do? Haunt him?

So it was a lot less annoyed Sirius that let himself be carried across the forest on the back of a horse-sized white dog spirit.

A good thirty minutes later – he did not carry a watch but he had a good sense of time – they had reached the hill and begun the slow ascension. When the ground regained a mostly horizontal feature, Tenseiga gently but firmly asked him to get down and use his own feet. She kept her dog form but her pace did slow down significantly.

"There are not many people with whom I can interact," she woofed softly, "and Bokuseno is very close to me. I remained with him for a quite while, after the Inu no Taisho's death…"

Her steps slowed and she paused. Sirius raised an arm and stroked the soft fur of her shoulder. She turned her massive head to him. Her golden eyes had become pools of cold ore. A world of unspoken pain quivered in her silence.

"Will you … tell me?" he whispered.

Her ears slumped down a bit.

"My maker, Totosai, was honor-bound by his promise to the Inu no Taisho to hand me and my sister down to his two sons. Me, to his eldest, and my sister, to his youngest. But Totosai the blacksmith is terrified of the Inu no Taisho's eldest son. I believe he is even more so nowadays. Knowing that my lord and wielder would eventually come and visit Bokuseno for advice, Totosai left me with him."

Sirius couldn't help but comment:

"That wielder of yours sounds like a scary person."

A glint of anger sparkled in her eye and she stopped, growling in the back of her throat. He took a few steps back when he realized that she was growling at him, the fur on her back a lot spikier than before.

"Totosai is a coward," she snarled with aggravation. "A quivering, disrespectful, blabbering coward. My lord and wielder is nothing but perfect and anyone fool enough to state the contrary should be corrected swiftly."

Sirius gazed at her, flabbergasted at the sudden change of tone and demeanor. He raised his hands in a defensive posture:

"I'm sorry, Tenseiga," he began very fast but slowed his words when she seemed to calm down. "I didn't mean to offend you."

She sighed. A long, deep, wolfish sigh.

"No, it is I who apologize," she mumbled. "I should not shift Totosai's mistaken views onto you."

"It's okay," Sirius replied, offering her a smile. "I guess that your wielder must be some nice, great old man, since you speak so highly of him."

"Not as old as I am," interrupted a muffled voice not far from them.

Sirius started but the giant white dog at his side barked loudly and jumped in the direction of the voice. Sirius barely had the time to turn his head to follow the movement when the red thread pulled at his pinky and he was sent flying behind her.

He landed on soft grass and sat up straight, a bit dazed. They were in a round clearing about twenty meters wide and, in the middle of it, there was a gigantic tree towering over them. At first sight, it looked like a magnolia tree – not that Sirius was an expert botanist – but the resemblance with normal flora stopped there. It was big, about a hundred feet high, maybe more. Probably one of the biggest trees Sirius had ever seen. And its trunk was incredibly large for a tree of this species. Six men could not have encircled it with their arms.

Sirius got up and walked toward it, carefully avoiding tripping on the roots weaving in and out of the earth, as if there was not any place left underground. They looked like thick dark man-eating snakes. When he got closer, he noticed that the bark of the tree was rugged and scarred, presenting countless rifts and fissures, like rivers of dark along the coarse wood. But even without looking at it, Sirius could have told that this tree meant business.

There was an ominous aura enshrouding it, enshrouding the whole glade. And in Sirius' heart was growing the persisting feeling that something was out of place. That something was amiss and about to happen. That the tree was an entity of power.

And Tenseiga was wagging her tail at it.

"So you finally decide to pay a visit to your old uncle?" and elderly voice said and Sirius looked at the place where it had come from. He froze.

The tree had a face. A wrinkled old face, the size of a dinner plate, which stood out in the bark like the moon in the sky.

"I am sorry I did not come before," responded Tenseiga with a soft whine. "I could not abandon my wielder."

She was talking to a tree as if everything was normal and Sirius interiorly shrugged. He would just have to pretend that he wasn't talking to a tree… and in the company of a horse-sized dog, for that matter. Reluctantly, he convinced the running-in-circle part of his mind to just roll along with it. Then, he realized that he was starting to enjoy the madness, and that was never a good sign.

The wrinkled old face frowned its beak-like nose, bringing him back to the matter at hand:

"Protect me from the dogs and their loyalty…" the tree muttered in an obviously faked irritation. "Well, now that you've returned, have some manners, will you? Show me your pretty face instead of hiding it under this pelt."

If dogs could blush, then Sirius just witnessed one.

Tenseiga yelped and her white fur seemed to whirl around her like a drape and revealed her human features. Long silvery hair cascaded from her ponytail, their long strands swirling around her slender frame. The pale skin of her cheeks was harboring a now fainting blush … only her golden eyes did not change, keeping their color and depth.

Once again, Sirius was struck by how beautiful she was.

"My, my," said the tree. "I remember you when you where a small girl running around in my branches. What a beautiful young lady you have become."

The blush came back on her cheek, spreading to the tip of her pointy ears and deepening the color of her indigo markings. Sirius had to repress a snicker at the view. Her personality was definitely not the same when she was in human form. A lot more shy and… lady-like.

The old tree must have heard him, because its piercing gaze settled on him:

"And you found yourself a mate?" it stated quietly. "That is unexpected of you. But he appears rather nice, you chose well."

This time, the word "blush" could no longer be accurately applied as Tenseiga's skin turned redder than the scarlet cherry blossoms on her sleeves and she actually tried to hide her face with her hands. Which did not work because – Sirius remarked – she had such small hands.

"H-he is not my m-mate!" she stammered and Sirius could not repress a slight feeling of disappointment at the definite rejection. He wondered why. It was not like he had any views on her. Okay, perhaps he found her pretty. Very much so. But he needed to be realistic: there was no possible future for him and the spirit form of a sword.

"But you are bonded," retorted Bokuseno evenly. "The red threads of destiny do not tie strangers together without a reason."

Tenseiga eventually regained her composure and replied with a controlled expression:

"That is what I have come to ask you, dear uncle," There was a hint of fear in her voice. "You see, strange events have happened, events that I have yet to make sense of… and I hoped that perhaps I could count on your wisdom."

The look in the tree's eyes softened.

"Tell me everything, child."

And she did. She told him of the call she had felt and of her encounter with Sirius in one of the numerous beyond, she told him of the scarlet thread and of her deductions about its significance. But most importantly, she told him of her inability to go back to her body, of her fear that she would fail her wielder.

The coal sky was turning to ash, when Tenseiga eventually stopped talking. She turned to Sirius who had not dared interrupt her. At one point during her speech, she had forgotten that he was here and spoken from the bottom of her heart to the only person who she trusted entirely and even more. Now, she realized that she had allowed Sirius quite a prolonged look into her privacy and she felt ashamed and strangely euphoric at the idea. Had he known she existed, Lord Sesshomaru would never have approved of her conduct. She chastised herself mentally for lowering her guard and decided to be more careful in the future. It would not do for her to disappoint her wielder.

Bokuseno remained pensive for a while.

"Tenseiga," he eventually stated, "I believe that you were right not to return to your body. The bond would pull this Sirius in with you and the result would be disastrous."

Sirius could not help but ask.

"What would happen?"

Bokuseno looked at him, gravely:

"You are a dead soul, not a spirit. If you were to enter a physical body, you would be fused within it. Forever trapped, because your dead soul actively craves a new vessel for life. And since the Sword of Heaven is an inanimate object, it would become a prison for your soul of mortal."

The tree paused a while and its piercing gaze seemed to look at his very essence.

"You would wither, imprisoned in the steel, leaving you a husk of your former self. And Tenseiga would be greatly hurt in the process. Her powers may even be taken away."

Tenseiga muffled a short gasp. Losing her blade and her powers? The idea was too dreadful to even contemplate.

"Then what can we do, uncle? How do we break the thread?"

Again, the old tree stared in the distance, his silence covering them like a blanket.

"You must find something that can slice through anything, something whose sole, unique and most basic purpose is to cut. And then, you must use it to sever the thread that binds you. But I am afraid I do not know what on earth could accomplish such a feat. Like I said before, the ties of destiny are not easily broken."

Tenseiga turned slowly her eyes to Sirius. He was already looking at her, a look of horror in his eyes that must reflect her own.

If the most knowledgeable being she knew could not help them, then who could?

Sirius, for his part, had a grimmer thought swamping his mind.

He was dead and he was stuck. He was going to stay dead. There was no way out and he might even die a lot more than he already was. And, in the process, he might cause the death of someone else, someone who had been one of the nicest persons he had ever met.

His eyes fell on the vaporous red string encircling his finger.

Why?

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And here it is. An extra-long chapter on Sirius and Tenseiga, since we are not going to see them for a while... at least, that's the plan for now. Maybe I'll change my mind and you'll have had an extra long chapter for nothing. I'm sure you won't mind.

Anyway, I'll begin writing chapter 9 shortly, but it's going to be a complex chapter for me to write, so it might take a bit of time to come by. I'll try not to make it more than a week, though.

I must thank you for your answers regarding the pairings, they actually decided me to do one I had not intented to do, so you did influence something, be happy! Of course, being the sadistic author that I am, I will not disclose which pairing I am speaking of... let's just mention that it'll imply one of the Inu no Taisho's children...

With all that fluff raised, I wish you the best,

Sincerely,

Claywind