Kuroshitsuji belongs to Yana Toboso, Harry Potter to JK Rowling.

This unlikely crossover idea, Cain Kruspe and the words are mine though so please don't take them.

(I wanted to add a bonus in a form of a drawing of Cain, made by kantellis on deviantArt, but it seems that I cannot add a link =( if I can add a link in a PM I can send it to people who are interested, otherwise you can go and look for her on dA, the work is called "Play with me")

Read and review!


Chapter 12: Gathering allies

Ron remained in the coma and Madame Pomfrey tentatively tried to wake him up, but without much success.

'Hey, Ron,' Hermione said quietly as he and Harry came to visit their unresponsive friend. They settled on the two chairs that Madame Pomfrey set for them the previous day.

'I really wish we talked with you first,' Harry said glumly, making Hermione roll her eyes.

'Yes, you should have. Or you should have given it a moment of thought yourself. Obviously it was very precious to him and no surprise if it was his father's diary,' she said irritably and realized, from Harry's expression, that she hadn't told him yet.

'How do you know?' he asked immediately. Hermione looked around to make sure they were alone.

'Madame Pomfrey gave it to me that day and I glanced through before Ciel came and asked it back,' she explained.

'Did you find anything? Does he know you read it?

'I didn't read it Harry. I looked at a couple of sentences, enough to realize that it's a diary and that it's describing Ciel as "son". And I hope he doesn't know I read it because,' she looked around again, then motioned Harry to come closer and whispered the rest. 'It mentions Voldemort in the form of "Dark Lord" in one sentence.'

'And only Deatheaters call him that,' Harry commented, leaning against the back of the chair.

'I don't think he knows though. I suppose he was too young to know that before his parents died,' Hermione pointed out, feeling sad for the boy as she remembered the sadness in his voice.

'You're sounding like you feel sorry for him,' Harry said with a hint of irritation in his voice and, before Hermione could say anything, he continued. 'Don't you see what he did to Ron?'

'We established that you shouldn't have tried for the diary like that,' Hermione said, her voice also strained with anger.

'Nothing gives him the right to curse another student with a curse he doesn't know the counter-curse to!' Harry almost yelled, making Hermione look away. Of course, there was no real way to defend Ciel at that point.

'You still shouldn't have gone for the book,' she said, looking back at Harry, suddenly very angry. 'Why do you always have to do something stupid, in the name of your idiotic, conspiracy theories?' she yelled and left.

Neither of them noticed a black cat, hidden under Ron's bedside table.

})i({

Dumbledore looked at McGonagall with some tiredness. Although maybe he should have been relieved? It was never proved to anybody that Vincent Phantomhive has been a Deatheater, but the spell his son had just used on Ron Weasley was a big give away clue.

Was Snape aware of what the spell was when he assigned the punishment for the boy? If he was, the punishment was a rather dangerous step into the slippery path of suspicion.

'He claims he found it in the Restricted Section,' McGonagall commented when Dumbledore gave her the essay back.

'And is that possible?'

'I went and checked myself and indeed we have this spell in a book in the Restricted Section. The book is simply called "Punishment" and it's old enough to not mention that most of what is inside is now considered dark magic.'

'Innocent until proven guilty, Minerva,' Dumbledore said with a tired sigh, wondering if there was any way to prove that Ciel Phantomhive learnt the spell before coming to school. McGonagall pursed her lips.

'I know you don't want an innocent person mixed into that, but you're a bit too lenient in this case.'

'Not at all, Minerva,' Dumbledore said, still sounding very tired. 'I believe that Vincent Phantomhive was a Deatheater, but he would have to be insane to teach a child such magic. And from what we know he was thoroughly sane and very smart.'

'That child knows how to cast a complicated, Deatheater-preferred spell without speaking the curse,' McGonagall pointed out.

'If we go out with anything but solid proof, Duke Durless will cry in public at how his dead son-in-law is attacked after death, how his name is dirtied when he cannot even defend himself,' Dumbledore pointed out. 'We know what we know, Minerva, but I think for now we better keep that to ourselves and do our best to make Ciel different than his father.'

'Right. Then I better take this to Poppy, so that she can bring poor Mr. Weasley out of that unending nightmare,' she said, hoping that the boy would forget what he dreamt of during his "coma". In the essay, Ciel Phantomhive explicitly wrote that the victim of the spell would endure horrendous nightmares for the whole duration of coma and that, as the "History of Magical Punishment" said, this spell was used as a torture in Middle-Ages, where it often brought the victims to the brink of madness. He certainly did a great job on finding a lot of information about the spell in the library and, the only downside was that McGonagall had to write him a permission to use the Restricted Section, since he said that it was there that he found the spell and if he was to describe it, he needed to go there again.

With a sigh, she left the headmaster's office and went to the Hospital Wing, unsurprised to find Harry Potter sitting next to the bed of his best friend. He looked up at her with hope.

'Do you know the counter-curse?' he asked when he saw that she carried some paper.

'Yes, Mr. Potter, but I suggest you let Madame Pomfrey do it on her own. It will be a difficult procedure and when everything is ok I'll send for you and Miss Granger,' she assured him and, somewhat reluctantly, he left the Hospital Wing.

'What is the curse, Minerva?' Madame Pomfrey, who came to see her when she arrived, asked as soon as Harry closed the door.

})i({

Ciel knocked on the door to the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom and went in without waiting for the invitation. Professor Kruspe looked up at him from a pile of essays that he was obviously grading and smiled.

'Well, come in Ciel,' he said in a cold tone that Ciel had learnt was supposed to be his "friendly" tone. 'You wanted to learn a bit more about the counter-curses from last week?'

'Yes, Professor,' Ciel said and went to sit down opposite to his teacher. He saw his note on the desk: "Could I come to discuss the duelling counter-curses? I think I missed something during the lesson."

'Well then, tell me what you missed,' Professor Kruspe asked him, unsurprised when Ciel cast a wandless silencing spell. His calmness wasn't even swayed when Ciel put his father's diary on the table between them.

'Have you read that?' the boy asked, dropping the act of a student, which earned him a raised eyebrow from the professor.

'No,' the man said simply.

'You gave it to me without knowing what it said?' Ciel asked with a hint of surprise in his voice.

'Your father sent it to me for this very purpose,' Kruspe said, as though it was obvious.

'Do you know who killed my parents?'

'No.'

'You don't believe in the Muggle theory of the Ministry?' The professor shrugged.

'They make a good case for their theory, should I not believe them?' Ciel narrowed his eyes at the teacher. Was he lying? He sounded honest enough and if he knew the truth he knew that he needed to play well.

'Why are you here?' Ciel changed the topic.

'Your grandfather asked if I could come and make sure that no harm comes to you,' Kruspe said without a hint of hesitation.

'And you dropped everything, all your obligations, all your work, just to come to Britain and teach some annoying kids?' Much to Ciel's surprise, the man smirked.

'Your grandfather mentioned also a marriage with your aunt,' he said, but then became serious. 'Your father was my friend, Ciel,' he said quietly. 'Had I suspected what was going to happen, I would have come here earlier. That was not the case, but the least I could do for your father was to make sure that his son is in good hands in the school.' Ciel wasn't sure what to say to that.

'Wasn't Snape charged with that task?' he asked finally. A shrug was his only reply and he looked down at the book before pushing it towards his teacher. 'I think you should read it,' he said. Kruspe took the book and looked at him curiously.

'What will I find there?' he asked.

'Answers, but you might not like them,' Ciel replied cryptically, seeing the curiosity of his teacher increasing.

'Alright,' he said finally.

'Let me know when you finish reading, I would like this diary back,' Ciel finished the conversation.

'Of course,' Kruspe said and there was a short pause during which he concealed the diary and Ciel lifted the silencing spell. 'Now about the counter-curses,' he continued in a teacher-voice, as though they haven't spoken until now. He smirked when Ciel groaned a little. 'I did see that you were lost during the lesson.'

'This is not the reason-'

'Yes it is. Now tell me what you didn't get lost on.' Seeing no way out of the situation, Ciel surrendered.