The plan was to have Goblet of Fire as the book most concerned with Allen and Kanda, their opinions and back story, so this arc should be long.
So, I wasn't going to start updating the chapters for the next (Goblet of Fire) book until I had completed writing it out from start to end. Then I realized just how many chapters I had pre-written, finally decided on the order of events after changing it three times, and thought that people probably wouldn't mind if it went on break later when I finally ran out of written chapters, which should hopefully take a while.
In other words, here it is and I hope you enjoy.
Kanda sat next to the giant garbage bin covered in papers, hiding. His lower face was buried in the soft, white, hair of the boy in his arms, but his eyes were wide and watching.
In, out, in, out; the continuous rhythm of the Moyashi's quiet, sleeping breath was comforting in that it let him know the boy was safe and alive. The boy was sleeping calmly, for once, in his arms as they huddled under the layer of papers that served as both a source of warmth and camouflage as they hid.
Damn that woman.
You got them amongst all humans, magical or otherwise. Those bigoted people who believed that their way was the only way and everyone had to follow it, or else. Those sickly-sweet people who would run like poison in your veins, slimy and greasy, who tried to convince you that they were right so just give in to the death that was stalking their footsteps.
They were the kind of people that had a habit of attacking his Moyashi, the kind that unconsciously sort him out, the kind he brought the worst out of.
This one was persistent. She had trailed the boys as they moved from city to city, living on the streets, trying to talk them into going into foster care and homes for troubled boys. When they had refused her "kind offer" she had tried to use force to get them into the system.
But they couldn't afford to be in the system.
In, out, in, out, silence. A hitch in the pattern that informed him that the Moyashi's dreams had taken a less than pleasant turn.
It was time to move, and hope the holidays would pass just that little bit quicker.
How Kanda hated playing human.
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A week after the start of the Holidays Harry and Sirius were sitting on the floor of the living room, eating a sort of picnic dinner that Kreacher had made. The last week had been spent learning about each other and explaining the various things that would have to be organised in order for this arrangement to work. The house was now incredibly well protected, and for once Harry was completely aware of all the measures that were in place.
During the week they had fallen into an easy routine of cleaning and homework, things had gone incredibly smoothly after all the worst of the trouble causing portraits had mysteriously disappeared sometime during the first day. Kreacher, the house elf, had a room to himself, that Harry had managed to talk Sirius into giving him, that was full of all the things he wanted to keep from the clean up and some of the other "inhabitants" that the elf claimed were his pets. For the first time in his school career Harry had all his homework completed within the first week, Sirius, it turned out, was incredibly helpful, despite his history as a trouble maker.
There was also a clean room for Dudley.
Yesterday the Dursley's had been officially deemed incapable of raising children by both wizards and muggles alike. Dudley was to arrive tomorrow, and Harry was not happy. He understood why it was necessary, and he knew that with Sirius as the adult figure things would be different from how it had been at the Dursley's, but he couldn't help but worry about the arrival of the boy who had bullied him mercilessly for the majority of his life at one of the few places he might have been willing to call home, if given the chance.
All in all, everyone currently in the house knew that things were about to get interesting.
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A month after living with both Sirius and Dudley, Harry had learnt a lot about the people around him, specifically those he was now living with. He had also been forced to learn and recognise certain things about himself, but he had been going through that since he had first arrived at number 12 Grimmauld Place. When he had first been rescued by Ron and the Twins in second year, he had realised that the way the Dursleys had treated him was wrong, but it wasn't until he had had Sirius as a reference for how any family he was a part of should act that he had realised their treatment had actually had an effect on him.
It had taken two days of knowing Dudley under the influence of Sirius for him to realise that the same could be said for him.
Away from his parents cloying presence Dudley had proved to be a rather nice boy, once he actually understood the difference between right and wrong; something that had been missing from his previous education. After a rocky start and an incident that involved some dishwashing, Harry had come to understand that Dudley wasn't bad, he just didn't know how to be good, which turned out to be something Sirius was surprisingly adept at teaching. It helped that, unlike the Dursleys, Sirius didn't play favourites, not even with Harry.
At the end of the first month that the three of them (plus Kreacher) had spent living together, Harry felt like Dudley had somehow become more of a brother than a cousin.
Now if only he could fix Kreacher's dislike of Muggles and those who were Muggle born, then their little mis-matched family really would be perfect.
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The day that Dudley had first arrived at the town house that looked more like a mansion the boy had realised two things with certainty; this person was richer than his parents, and he had no idea why everyone was making such a fuss. A small part of his mind said that things were going to be very different to what he was used to if the people from the government had been right, but he didn't think there was anything different or wrong with how things had been. His parents had gone to great lengths to impress upon him just how perfectly normal they were, with one exception.
When he had arrived home from school he had entered straight into a week of being questioned by people he didn't know and a whole heap of strangers investigating his school reports, home life from the perspective of the neighbours, and lots of other things that he didn't really understand, or think were any of these people's business. Then Dudley had found himself in a car on his way to live with his Wizard of a cousin, Harry, and Harry's God father Sirius, who he thinks looks an awful lot like that escaped prisoner they had had on the news during the holidays.
At first, he had thought that this other Wizard would play favourites with Harry, like his parents had done with him. When he saw that, while the man was affectionate to his cousin, he wasn't really going out of his way to make sure Harry had absolutely everything he wanted he realised this wouldn't be the case. He then thought that things would be the same as they had been before, with him being given the proper treatment he deserved and Harry being given his proper treatment for being the freak he was, it simply didn't occur to him that he was thinking in extremes and a balance was what was actually require, that was the only thing he had known and he didn't see anything wrong with it.
When his first night there rolled around and he was told to take his own plate and cutlery to the sink so that Sirius could wash them while both he and Harry dried them; he had felt like the floor had been removed from under his feet. His protests and attempts to weasel his way out of it had been met with firmness and a very mild punishment, so had Harry's laughter much to his surprise.
Over that first week he had been exposed to both the Wizarding and Muggle world in a new light. He had learnt, and surprisingly understood, that his parents' behaviour was wrong. Now that he wasn't protected by his parents' blindness and after a few reports sent to his new Guardian by the school he had been made to realise that his status as a bully was not something he should be proud of, and neither was his weight. This week was all it took for Harry and Sirius to change Dudley from a fourteen-year-old whale of a bully into a surprisingly thoughtful kid that had agreed to go on a diet and exercise plan.
The government, Sirius, Dudley and his parents had agreed that he would be able to spend Saturday day with his parents while under supervision. The first Saturday when he was allowed to visit his parents he had change so much in his outlook that they couldn't recognise him, or him them. The original arrangement of weekly visits had to be changed after the Dursleys had to be taken away as they raved about "Enchantments" and "Brainwashing" and Dudley had told the authorities that he didn't think it was a good idea for him to see them again and that these Saturdays should be stopped, at least for a while.
The end of the month saw him as a surprisingly good friend of Kreacher, closer to Harry than he had ever thought possible, and the realisation that his parents' hatred of magic was caused by jealousy and not really something to judge the entire culture by. It also saw him with the promise from Sirius that if he managed to loose enough wait he would consider finding out if his relation to Lily meant that he had enough traces of magic to be able to fly a broom, and maybe even buy him his own.
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By the first morning of living with Harry under his roof, Sirius had learnt three things; one was that he needed to pick up some books on raising children if he really did want to do this properly, two was that it was a good thing that Kanda and Allen had given him that talk, and three was that he hated the Dursleys almost as much as he hated Wormtail.
The first day Harry had been up early and making breakfast with a very surprised Kreacher looking over his shoulder. As the day wore on the boy would hesitate for a slit second before he did certain things, look surprised at random moments, and actually flinched once when Sirius was talking to him about something he had done.
As they had talked about various things, Sirius had had to come to grips with the fact that even with three years of attending Hogwarts and occasionally spending part of the holidays away from those people, old habits die hard, and Harry's childhood had cut the boy deeper than even he seemed to know.
He was in two minds about accepting the muggle child into his home when he thought about the way both children must have grown up, but decided that he may as well see if this Dudley could be a decent person when told about the difference between right and wrong. He could see that Harry was concerned about the situation, but had enough trust in him, even after only a week of living together, that he was willing to give it ago.
Sirius, despite expectation, did not play favourites with the boys living under his roof. Neither was treated as a slave but both were expected to help with chores and cleaning. He could do it all by magic, and Kreacher was there, but Harry needed to learn the difference between chores and slave labour and Dudley had to learn the value of hard work and that you did need to do somethings for yourself in order to truly appreciate them.
It turned out that Allen and Kanda had been right; there was a nice boy hiding under all that fat, maybe even a hansom one if he actually survived the diet and exercise his school nurse had suggested.
By the end of that first month of the three of them and Kreacher living together they could almost resemble a family. Both boys had become friends and those parenting books had been a surprising help, so had Allen and Kanda when they occasionally dropped by to offer advice and check that everything was alright, with only Sirius knowing of course.
He really should remember to thank them for getting rid of his mother's portrait at some stage.
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Kanda watched as the boy seamlessly moved through the crowed and slipped paper bills in and out of pockets.
A month had passed since their second year of school had finished, and still that woman followed them, even as they moved using so many methods most would have been lost in moments. They were lucky that Allen's sense of direction had improved from when they first met.
Allen, the name sent his body ablaze. The white haired boy was his, no one else's.
They didn't need to live on the streets, didn't need to steal, but the streets were Allen's home in a way that no box of concrete ever could be. The streets and the skills needed to survive there were something he had learned to appreciate. The cultures and organisations that thrived below the surface, missed entirely when viewed from above. The vibrant pulse of life that struggled and fought for the right to exist, the means and ways people resulted to in order to keep it going. The skills that were created, practiced, cultivated, that were needed to ensure that you were still around to see tomorrow. Skills, he had learned, that had other applications.
It was here in the filth that Allen shone the brightest, in this struggle that Allen thrived; this was their home in ways that others would never understand, especially that woman.
Two weeks until things started happening. Two weeks of dodging that bitch. Then they could leave.
Allen finished his "practice" and it was time to move on.
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Frank the care taker had entered the house and was listening in to the conversation in great confusion. First these intruders had seemed to be talking about eating, or food, or being hungry, or something else like that. Then they had rambled on about things that seemed to be day to day stuff (who, or what, on earth was Nagini?) and traveling, they seemed to intend to stay a while in this house they didn't own. After that the conversation got really twisted with strange words he didn't understand. Eventually they started talking about someone called Harry Potter and substitutes and loyalty and a whole lot of other rot. They were even talking about killing people at one stage!
'She was fit for nothing after my questioning, quite useless. In any case, things would be very awkward for you if she had gone back to the Ministry to report your location. Wizards wanted for murder and other crimes would do well not to run into Ministry of Magic witches while traveling …'
From there they talked of altering memory, Frank faded out as he thought about calling the police but came in again to hear the end of the conversation.
'Harry Potter is as good as mine, Wormtail.'
'Even with the Meddlers at Hogwarts, my lord?'
'The Meddlers? You mean those children you claim are so much trouble? They will be nothing to my Faithful servant.'
'My lord, they are not normal. Even this person you speak of may have trouble …'
'It is decided. There will be no more argument. But quiet … I think I hear Nagini …'
After the snake arrived there was only a few more words spoken as they discussed his fate, then Frank died and Harry Potter woke up.
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