Disclaimer: I don't own Soul Eater of Harry Potter

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They went to Dumbledore.

Hermione finally persuaded them; Seamus had died. Who knew how many else would, if they kept the teachers in the dark?

Harry wasn't happy. Neither was Ron. They knew she was right, of course – but that didn't change the fact that both boys had developed a very healthy wariness of authority figures. Harry had been thrown into the deep-end in terms of the magical world by Dumbledore since Day 1. Ron had seen the effect that such a trauma had had on his best friend. Neither were too pleased with the result.

No, Harry didn't actively hate Dumbledore. The man had helped him out more times than he could count – probably more than any of them realized.

That didn't mean he liked the man, either.

They went to Professor McGonagall first; on account of they didn't have a clue as to what the Headmaster's password would be. Hermione had given it a fair go, standing in front of it for almost three hours blurting out whatever random sweets had come to mind, but no dice. They all firmly agreed on waiting until after their timetables classes were finished to go and blab – which had been a good idea, until they realised that she wasn't in her office.

"We should have cornered her after Transfiguration," Ron moaned, staring mournfully at the closed door. They had tried knocking and shouting several times, each proving as fruitless as the last.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, equally gloomy.

They were just about to turn away when the woman herself rushed towards them, hair in disarray, robes billowing out around her. The trio stood paralysed in terror, visions of lectures and bad report-cards dancing though their heads.

Professor McGonagall stopped just before them, blinking a few times as she took in their panic-stricken faces.

"Mister Potter," she said, sounding confused. "Mister Weasley. Miss Granger. I'm afraid that I don't have much time to deal with you at this very moment. So, if you would kindly…"

"It's important, Professor!" Hermione said quickly, morphing her face into something earnest and sincere. "It's about Seamus!"

Professor McGonagall stopped from trying to move past them, blinking slowly. Otherwise, her face was completely devoid of all surprise and emotion.

"Professor?" Harry asked.

"Why am I not surprised?" she said, sounding slightly despairing. She strode past them and unlocked the door to her office with her wand. "Very well. Come inside, and tell me what you know. Albus is away at the Ministry at the moment, but I'll relay anything you tell me to him."

"Thank you, Professor!" Hermione gave her a massive, relieved smile, and followed her into the room.

As they strode forward, Pettigrew watched them with mad rat-eyes from behind the corner, waiting.

…

Kid had a headache.

It had taken him a while to convince the Death Eater that, yes, this was Crona – and, yes, those were stitch marks – and, yes, that was a screw. In his head.

Of course, it had taken some doing to cure a kishin, he had assured them, but this had been a one-off. They hadn't had access to the proper facilities and resources, he told them, and their knowledge of the madness phenomenon had been recent and badly underdeveloped. That had been years ago, he promised, nothing to worry about now – here, Crona was represented as a flawed specimen. With the proper resources, they would be able to fix their leader up, of course. No worries. They had this whole cure-the-kishin-thing set.

The moment they closed the connection, Kid rounded on Liz and started shouting at her.

"Why? Oh, Father, why him? Do you have any idea what this could mean? Kim could die! Jackie could die! They took one look at him and thought, no, this doesn't look right – maybe they're lying to us!"

"Kid…" Liz started.

"Stein, Liz – why Stein? There are so many people to choose from in this school. Admittedly, most of the Spartoi are on missions, but we have plenty of sane people in the NOT classes! Why didn't you go with a teacher, Liz? Why? I thought you liked Jackie!"

"I like Kim, too," Liz pointed out, scowling. While admittedly she shared an uneasy relationship with the Witch, that was more from a clash of money-grabbing personalities than anything else. Liz had lived her life (with Patty, of course, though her younger sister didn't take her obsession with richness to the same sort of extreme) with little more than the clothes on her back. Sometimes, even without that.

Both valued money above what many people would view to be an 'acceptable' level. That sort of thinking regularly led to glaring matches, rigged bets, catfights and – occasionally – a collaboration between the two that left everyone in Death City broke.

"It really doesn't seem so – especially since you brought Stein into this! Father, why me? Why?" Kid rolled his eyes towards the roof, looking slightly deranged.

"I'm right here, you know," Stein pointed out, a small smirk playing on his lips. He was tapping his cigarette with one finger, and even as Kid watched he took a small puff, and then breathed it out with calm deliberation. He had remained completely silent during the mini-interrogation – something for which Kid was going to be eternally grateful for – and had stared at the mirror-people with a cool sort of aloofness that hadn't betrayed anything.

Miracle of miracles, he had actually played the part.

"I don't care!" Kid snapped, pacing. Eight steps to the right, eight steps to the left; eight right, eight left. Right. Left. Eight. Eight.

Just thinking about his favourite number soothed his wary soul. Ah, the number eight; completely symmetrical, no matter if you cut it sideways or lengthways. It divided perfectly into four, which in its own turn divided perfectly into two. Two, four, eight. Such lovely numbers!

"I was looking for Marie," Liz admitted, looking sheepish. "I figured that we could use someone who was pretty-looking and friendly, with that calm wavelength of hers. She'd be able to – I don't know – foster a sense of security? She's good at stuff like that."

"And you went looking for her in Stein's labs?" Kid said blankly, frowning.

Liz gave him a Look, which clearly said, Come on, Kid, you're not this stupid, before moving on completely. Kid still felt a little lost, but obviously his Weapon wasn't going to fill him in anytime soon. "Marie wasn't there, obviously, or I would have brought her – but Stein was dissecting an pelican or something" – "Blue duck-nosed emu," Stein said serenely – "And he saw that something was wrong pretty quickly. He asked, I blurted it out, and then he insisted on coming."

Stein arched his eyebrow at her, scarred face blank in that peculiar way of his that Kid found very disconcerting. "I didn't insist on coming," he said drolly, taking another puff of his cigarette. "I offered. You were in such a rush that any candidate – no matter how unlikely – would be welcome."

"That's not true!" Liz snapped. "That's not true, Kid – I wanted to go find someone else; maybe Akane or someone, though Death-knows that Clary can't lie to save his life – but he said, and I quote, that 'You won't find someone as insanely stable as I am'."

"Would you like me to explain my reasoning, Lord Death?" Stein asked lazily, blinking at him with sleepy eyes. "It's very good reasoning, if I do say so myself."

Kid stared at him suspiciously. "Okay," he said reluctantly, knowing when he was outmanoeuvred. Besides, it wasn't like he could choose someone else, now – the Death Eater had seen Stein and associated him with Crona. Any attempt at changing that could prove to be disastrous. "And don't call me Lord Death! I'm not my father."

Stein moved his hand up to slowly crank his bolt clockwise, the grating sound echoing throughout the Death Room. Kid's teeth went on edge. "The human mind is fascinating – don't you agree, Lord Death?"

"Don't call –"

"The mind sees what it expects to see. You tell a man you have painkillers and he'll believe you, even when you're just feeding him sugar cubes. Sew up a chicken to look like a duck, and people will believe that it has been a duck its whole life, despite the stitch-marks that prove contrary to that opinion."

"Um…"

"That man will look at me and see a sewed-up man who is both deadly and intelligent. He will find comfort in the fact that the process for de-kishin-ising someone is lengthy, difficult and – generally – a waste of resources that could be better allocated elsewhere, justifying his leaving alone of what is happening to this 'Master'. He'll look at me, and he won't see my questionable sanity – he's going to see what he wants to see. A stitched-up man who had recovered from the incurable."

"Which, technically, is true," Liz pointed out hastily. "See, Kid? Was this a good decision?"

Kid stared at her. "Father, no!" he said, feeling a headache coming on, even if Death gods weren't supposed to get headaches. Maybe it was a tumour. "We've got to use Stein as our poster boy, Liz."

Liz blanched. "Death," she breathed. "What have I done?"

…

Jackie was bored.

She was unaccustomed to doing – well, nothing. With Kim in her life, there had always been something new, shiny and exciting to do. It had been hectic, insane, sometimes life threatening – but it had never been boring.

Jackie found that she would rather face another Asura than be stuck down here without her Meister.

She'd tried blasting at the walls for a bit, trying to write some stuff in scorch marks (FRANKEN STEIN WAS HERE, MAKA X SOUL, WHERE IS KIM DIEHL?) but every time her flames had hit the tiles they had just evaporated. She'd tried it a few more times, but with every failed attempt, her anger had gotten stronger.

How dare they? How dare they lock her up? How dare they experiment on Soul?

How dare they hurt her friends?

With every surge of anger, Jackie had bombarded the door with temperatures that should have made rock collapse. Within her, the dragon roared, hungry for blood and flesh and –

Abruptly, Jackie slumped against the wall, face sallow and pale. Her breath came out in short, sharp gasps, and her forehead was lined with sweat and soot from the extreme temperatures that she had forced herself to endure.

An hour passed.

Jackie didn't move.

Finally – finally – the door swung open hesitantly, and Thickesse and two other Aurors, who had their wands out and at the ready. They all pointed them towards her, but Jackie remained still and unmoving, continuing to sweat despite the fact that the room had cooled down considerably over the past hour.

"Heat exhaustion," one murmured, narrowing his eyes at her prone form. "We've got to get a Medi-witch in here quickly…"

"She's dangerous. We can't afford to expose her to someone like that," Thickesse said firmly.

"She's obviously dehydrated and weak, Pius. If we don't do something, she could die."

"The wards have been partially melted," the third Auror, who had gone over to inspect the slightly singed walls, reported. "They'll need a touch-up. Another episode like this, and she could be free."

"I doubt that's going to happen," Thickesse scoffed, pointing to Jackie. "Look at her. She's obviously weak. She won't risk another episode like this."

"I don't know, Pius," the first man said, scratching at his chin. "She looked pretty angry to me."

"She's intelligent," Thickesse said. "I might have liked her, if she hadn't been an abomination. Fine, we can't have her dying. Go and send for a Medi-witch…"

The first man nodded, and then went over and opened the door.

Jackie snapped her eyes open and shot them all with searing flames, for once not caring how badly they were burned. Wizards could do wonders with medicine, she had found, and what was a little pain if it was only going to be temporary?

Of course, the fact that they had casually admitted to her being an abomination had nothing to do with the strength of her anger. Because if they felt that she was an abomination, there was no way they had spared Soul or Maka the same kind of treatment…

All three men screamed and collapsed to the ground, trembling. Jackie was up and running towards the door in an instant, which was slowly closing due to the sudden rise of temperature in the room, and the expansion of the air particles that made up what she had been breathing in the past few days.

She managed to make it on time, and slid out just as it was about to click closed, panting. High temperatures never really bothered her, for obvious reasons, but she had had to raise her core body temperature to astronomic levels in order to force her body to react as she wanted it to. She felt dizzy from all the water that had been sweated out and evaporated, but she didn't have time to stop now.

Jackie had to find Maka and Soul, and she had to rescue them.

…

Maka was drowning in black blood.

It ate away at her clothes and skin like acid, burning at her eyes and throat as she struggled not to swallow it in. Her body trembled under the onslaught of insanity, her anti-madness wavelength desperately trying to combat such a high concentration of terror.

Maka-Maka-Maka-Maka-Maka-Maka-

Maka watched in horror as words started to appear around her, drawn in sticky red that seeped into the darkness. Her name, scratched out as though a child had taken their fingernails to a chalkboard, read over and over, madness and hope clashing within the single word that repeated itself again and again and again and again and –

"SOUL!" Maka screamed, clutching at her head. It had never been like this, before. She had always been enough to break them free. She could do it (she could she could she could) but there was so much noise (Maka-Maka-Maka-Maka-) and she couldn't even see Soul and (where are you why aren't you here Soul-Soul-Soul help-help-help –)

The wizards, Maka thought desperately, trying to gain a coherency to her suddenly incoherent thoughts. They've done something. Strengthened the black blood. It was stronger and darker and more insane than anything she had ever felt –

Soul, Maka thought fuzzily as her consciousness began to break apart under the onslaught. Soul, please, please, please…

No one came.

And Maka finally succumbed to the madness.

…

…

A/N: Hi? Sorry my last A/N was unhappy, but I've been dealing with some stuff (erugh, I hate life). Thanks everyone for the lovely comments; I came home today for the first time in a week, and they were all so lovely – they were a really nice end to what proved to be an absolutely shitty day.

So…I wrote this, like, now. Busy week (ARGH! YEAR 12!), but I did it! And it's not short! Yay! Hope it meets up to standards :)

Thanks to Krazyfanfiction1, Kim-senpai, LesbianWonderland, Jacqueline O. Lantern Dupre, Waywardneko, Tris PhantomEvans, Guest 1, Guest 2, Sup and DAMNson. I'll PM you guys later when I get some sleep :) – also, to Guest 2; I hope Stein turned out okay! I was really worried about how to write him, so I kind of…avoided it (grins nervously).

Read and review!

MM

(ALSO! KimxJackie week! Which I didn't find out about until…today, since all and tumblr sites are blocked at my school. DAMMIT! I'm going to have to WRITE SOMETHING ELSE! I'll see if I can post something on 'Oh, the Horror' this weekend. No promises!)