Disclaimer: I own nothing recognised as belonging to someone else.

Notes:

Incuba is the plural form of incubus. I think the plural of succubus is either succubi or succuba.

I'm going to try to keep Shyam/Neko-Chan an unknown wild card. They probably won't find out what he is for quite a while.

Thanks for the fey information goes to Katharine Briggs 'A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures'(1976).

33 reviews! BOOYA!

In which we find Youko is alive.

Crane work up the next morning feeling like a mouse the cat had yet to kill.

His neck hurt, he was having hot and cold flashes, his boxers had ridden down so low they were barely covering anything and sometime during the night his head had wound up at the foot of the bed with his feet under the pillow.

Even Neko-Chan had vacated the usual position next to his neck in favour of a bed that didn't move.

Taking all of this into account, it really wasn't surprising that the Crane that turned up for breakfast sat in the corner, drinking from a large mug of straight black coffee and glaring at an unoffending speck of dirt on the table.

The only one not worried by this bout of ill-humour was Luna, who sat quite contently next to him and smiled peacefully at nothing.

(space)

Luna was normally not considered a threat because of her placid nature and tendency to say odd things at odd moments.

However, a little known aspect of her personality was an obsessive compulsion to hoard information and find out everything she could about people by simply observing.

People were just full of little idiosyncrasies; Crane Black was no exception.

Luna honestly liked Crane: she liked how he would tilt his head just so when he was thinking, or how his left eyebrow tilted down slightly when he was remembering, or how he picked dirt from under his nails when he was planning on how to ruin someone's life and/or reputation…

…Where was she?

Oh, right.

She also liked how he used his body-language. When he was trying to fade into the background, you would barely notice he was there, but when he was being threatening or angry, then you didn't notice his short height of barely 5'2.

But what she really loved about him was when he dropped all pretences and let his natural body-language show.

Even if he weren't powerful, intelligent or filled to the brim with odd abilities, Crane's body-language said 'PREDATOR: WILL EAT THE UNWARY HAND'. A surprising about of bluffing and lying was done through body-language, and that was an art he had down to a T.

Everything about the way he moved, every gesture, every shift, every twitch in facial expression said he had power and he damned well knew how to use it, thankyouverymuch.

But right now, to Luna's undying curiosity, Crane was very much irritated and looking like he wasn't in the best mood to put up with idiots.

…Speaking of idiots, here came one now.

(space)

Today was Herbology, followed by Divination after lunch. He was really hoping Herbology would calm him down like it usually did. He was really going to be pissed if someone bothered him now.

"Hey, loser! What's a lil brat like you doing trying to get into a place like this? You should quit while you're ahead!"

…Like that.

Crane took a deep breath and levelled a truly arctic glare at idiot in front of him.

He was big and menacing, wearing the uniform of Durmstrung.

Deciding it was too early for a testosterone high, Crane set down his now empty mug and uncrossed his legs. Still seated, the booted left foot of the demon host arched up from the floor and kicked the Durmstrung boy in the balls.

Crane stood and stretched before reaching down and snagging three hairs from his victim before wandering off to get ready for class.

Given the situation and his own mood, the slight youth decided Tatter Rags would put an end to the boy's chances of getting into the school quite nicely.

Luna smiled dreamily before she, too, made her leave.

(space)

There was nothing taught in Herbology that Crane didn't already know. Unfortunately, his hopes of relaxing were shot into infinitesimal pieces by the moron to his left; a Beauxbatons boy if he wasn't mistaken. What was his name? Pierre something-or-other.

After the first ten minutes of the practical part of the class, Crane wanted to smack the boy silly. How hard was it re-pot plant fire-breathing snapdragons after they'd been taught the spell to render them immobile?

Noting the speculative glances Crane was giving his pruning knife, the gentle, lady-like teacher, Florimell Chloris, asked him to come and help her trim the Blood of Lethe Roses in a side room when he finished long before the others.

Lunch was a nightmare. He ate his sandwich quickly and bade a hasty retreat from a pair of identical twin blonde bimbos (born vampires, if he wasn't mistaken) and hid in his room for the rest of the hour.

The Divinations Teacher, Rishi Akatsuki, covered the theory of Runes and Knucklebones in the first hour and moved onto Tarot cards for the next hour and a half, going over the variations of the decks, naming the more popular Tarot cards and asking students with different decks to explain the differences between their decks and the standard deck.

Crane's deck was 144 strong. Tarot cards, when not given as a gift, attracted bad spirits. While he, himself, did not know this, Walburga had and had pointed him in the direction of her great-great-grandaunt's gold-guilt deck in the hidden safe behind one of her ancestor's portraits upstairs, telling him to take it as a gift. There had been an instruction journal with the names and meanings of each card with it in the gold-panelled wooden chest. While having the standard 52 cards for the wands, pentacles, cups and swords, there were a further 92 other cards varying from totally different cards to variations of the standard decks.

Crane loved his deck and Akatsuki found it to be a very specific deck when it came to divining, rating a rare compliment from him.

The rest of the period class was focused on Trance and Dream Divining. Dreaming, Crane had looked into during the year when he had been passing the dreams sent to him from Voldemort down the Twin Link to Gary. Since they hadn't technically been Sight-induced dreams, his copy of Dictionary of Dreams hadn't been reliable to decipher from. However, his attempts to find out what the dreams meant, and the corresponding drive behind his search, had imprinted much of the knowledge he'd looked into deep in his mind, just waiting to be used.

Trancing Crane knew nothing about, so it came as a surprise to him when he was the first to fall under whilst staring into Kuronue's Pendant, even before others who had done it before. He wasn't even aware of it when it happened.

-Trance-

Everything suddenly took on a red-hued gem-like quality. Looking around suddenly, he found the room empty, but still distinctly red.

'You're Trancing.' Crane started as Kuronue appeared next to him. The bat smirked. 'Think of something, someone.'

Crane looked around before focusing on the one person he was truly curious about: Youko Kurama.

Here was a brief moment of vertigo and the sense of movement before the red-hue lessened and the two found themselves in a muggle hospital room.

There were two people in the room; a black-haired Japanese woman with a kind but sickly face and warm brown eyes and at her bedside, tending a vase full of perfect red roses, was a boy of twelve or thirteen with dark rose-red hair and eyes more of a grass green than Crane's emerald orbs. This boy was strikingly pretty, true, but the one he was looking for was not in sight.

Frowning and not noticing his other's keen regard of the boy, Crane willed himself to Youko Kurama.

The vision of the world shifted a moment before resettling.

A moment later, the red-headed boy had turned sharply and was regarding the room with the eyes of a ruthless predator. A pale shape momentarily flickered around the boy and both darker being flinched back.

…Did this mean that Youko, too, had died…?

Less than a year after Kuronue had, apparently.

"Suichi? Is everything alright?"

The boy-who-was-Youko turned and smiled at the woman reassuringly. "Yes, Mother. One of the nurses just startled me, is all." The boy sat at her beside and took her hand.

The woman smiled weakly, but there was true affection there that was absent from Lily's voice and posture when speaking to Crane.

Watching Youko with his human mother made the darker boy a little envious of the redhead.

A clatter of noise from the doorway caused all four occupants of the room to turn as a doctor came in.

"We're ready to begin the treatment now. I'm sorry, Minamino-san, but you're going to have to leave for a while."

The boy nodded his acknowledgement, patted his mothers hand one last time and stood.

"Very well. I will see you soon, mother."

There was a shimmer of energy and Crane was jerked back to his body, Kuronue being dragged behind like he was attached by a bungy cord.

-End Trance-

The boy blinked his eyes a few times before lowering the faintly glowing Pendant and nearly blushed when he found the class was gone and his teacher leaning against the desk in front of his, arms folded and looking entirely too amused.

"That was a deep Trance, Mr Black. Class finished twenty minutes ago and I believe you are later for an appointment with Dr Akai."

Crane nodded, packed up his belongings and almost scurried out the door.

Rishi smiled. That one would be fun to teach.

(space)

Ten minutes later, Crane rapped on the Doctor's door.

"Come."

Opening the door, Crane took in the four figures in the room and felt his stomach drop.

Dr Akai was sitting at his desk and half-turned towards the door, the sunset behind him and his tome and notepad before him.

Standing by the wall and at attention were two adult male bat chimera wearing the Northern Clans' dark blue, black, silver and the warriors' royal purple.

But what really shot his mental equilibrium to pieces was the fire-eyed female warrior lounging in the chair by Akai's desk, waist-length thick, wavy black hair waving around her leather-clad form and smirking at him.

'Is that-?'

'Ya-ha.' Kuronue sounded just as flabbergasted as Crane felt.

Kurai, Ruling Lady of the Northern Bat Chimera Clans, re-known psychotic amazon warbitch from the Deepest, Darkest Pits of Hell, oldest and only daughter of Kage and Kiko and Kuronue's massively overprotective Big Sissy, was giving Crane the same self-satisfied smirk a cat gave a previously occupied birdcage.

'Fuck.' Kuronue swore. 'She's never gonna let go of someone as cute as you.'

'DAGNAMMIT! How'd she find us?'

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