XXX

Story: [The Ashikabi of Fire]

Summary: An Ashikabi might be 'married' to their Sekirei, but sometimes it doesn't quite work out like that. Love can take many shapes.

Crossover: (Harry Potter) / (Sekirei)

Genre: Humor, Friendship

XXX

Harry liked fire.

The scratchy smell of smoke, the way that it made his eyes tingle, the light it brought to everywhere, the soft crackling it made as it burned.

Harry liked fire quite a bit.

He didn't, however, like being babied.

He'd survived nearly a decade of focused hatred from adults, he'd seen the worst the world could throw at him, and had still managed to wriggle himself free through a mixture of stubbornness and raw luck.

He'd survived on the street for over a week now, and he was doing fine dammit. No matter what the smoke-smelling person had to say about it. Also, if anyone was in clear need of a break, it was the man, what with how hard he was panting, and how red his face was.

The fact that he'd heard quite a bit about strange men taking away children certainly didn't help his disposition towards the man who was currently trying to convince him to give up on his perfectly functional sleeping place.

Besides that, he had things to do. Food to find and eat, people to avoid, and generally a lot of things that didn't in any shape or form include getting involved with this pretty-looking man.

Unfortunately, if the way that this was the fourth time the man had tracked him down was any clue, it didn't look like he was going to have time for those things.

Still, Harry was forced to consider one of two options.

Surrender, or mutual annihilation.

Because there was no doubt in Harry's mind that he could dodge the man's attention by yelling and screaming loudly enough for the dubious nature of this conversation to be noticed, at which point they'd probably both be taking a trip to the nearest police station. But that would also mean that Harry might get sent back to the Dursleys, and quite frankly Harry wasn't sure if it would be worth the sacrifice.

It was possible that the man was speaking the truth and was merely worried about his health, no matter how unlikely such a thing would be. But if he wasn't and was instead the front-face of some shady criminal syndicate stealing away children into slavery...

Well, he might've been treated much like a slave when he'd lived with the Dursleys, but at the very least he'd never truly had to worry about anything truly violent. They'd been far too disgusted with his very existence to be comfortable with even touching him, even if said 'touching' would've merely been a fist to his nose.

So, whilst he had some experience in a truly dreadful situation, and generally considered the life of a street urchin to be surprisingly comfortable in comparison, he had very good reason to avoid crime syndicates trying to either sell off his organs or sell him into actual slavery.

Still, the man appeared to be painfully honest about it, and the way that he had started to look surprisingly pitiful in how his harried state seemed to worsen every time that Harry managed to slip through his fingers, did lend some credit to the idea that he might be genuinely worried. Though, it was just as likely that what he was actually worried about was the money that he wouldn't be able to make unless he could sell him.

All in all, Harry trusted the smoke-smelling person just about as much as he would've trusted a sewer-crocodile.

That was his impression of the man who called himself 'Homura'.

And then everything started burning, and the man tried to explain something about 'wings' that Harry was fairly certain was going over his head, and quite frankly Harry was perfectly willing to just burn this Homura-person right back with the stick-torch that he'd been using to discourage the man from approaching further.

And somewhere in the scuffle of fire, limbs, stick, more fire, and a bit more limbs, Harry's lips knocked against the man's own.

And then there were wings.

So Harry did the sensible thing and continued to smack the crazy man over the head with his flaming stick.

His stubbornness wasn't appreciated in the least bit.

XXX

Miya stared at Homura.

The man's clothes were charred to the point where they were still smoking, he had what looked like the beginning of a black eye, he had a wad of red-tinted paper stuck in his nose, and he seemed to be warily checking the integrity of his teeth with his tongue. And under his arm he was carrying a little boy who looked as if he hadn't seen a shower for weeks, let alone a proper meal, and was just as covered in burns and bruises as Homura himself was.

"Oh my, did you fall so low as to kidnap a child, Homura-kun?" She asked with fake cheer, feeling the stirrings of displeasure towards the Feather.

"He's my Ashikabi." Homura choked out in a panicked voice.

"Then why is he tied up?" She asked pleasantly, still quite displeased.

Homura hesitated, then made a pained noise, before putting the boy down and unwrapping him from his cocoon of semi-charred clothing.

The boy's response to his sudden freedom was to deliver a rather fantastically executed kick straight to the Sekirei's jaw.

Miya made a thoughtful noise as she watched the larger person roll around on the floor in a mixture of pain and an attempt to keep away from any further kicking on the boy's part, which was perfectly understandable considering how the boy was indeed trying to kick him whilst he was down. "Homura-kun should already know this, and I'll forgive you this once, but violence in this house is prohibited."

The boy glanced up at her.

And froze, eyes widening in fright.

Then he threw a stick at her.

He would later admit that that hadn't been one of his brightest ideas.

XXX

Harry's stay in the Izumo Inn was somewhat peculiar.

Firstly, because his relationship with his Sekirei seemed to revolve at least partially around the concept of lighting things on fire and then hitting each other with them. And secondly, because his schedule was even more irregular than Homura's own, and seemingly consisted in large part of roaming the city for random scraps to eat, rather than actually partaking in the hospitality offered by his Sekirei and the landlady of their inn.

Apparently, this was somehow related to 'a man's pride' as it had been described by Seo, or 'irrational stubbornness' as it'd been described by Homura himself. However, regardless of which one was more correct, it was apparent to anyone watching that Harry was actually quite fond of spending time with his Sekirei.

Why in the world anyone would be fond of the kinds of fights that the two of them got into, none of the other residents could really comprehend, but it seemed to work out for the two of them. Even if it got them into trouble with the landlady far too often for either of their comforts.

Still, Seo carefully kept silent about the small shape in similar garb that had begun to needle its way into the rumors of the 'Guardian Sekirei'. Because it was apparently a lot easier to ignore the injuries the two of them sustained when Miya merely considered it a strange quirk in the relationship of an Ashikabi and his Sekirei.

If she found out that the stick-wielding little menace had received the cut above his eyebrow from an irate enemy Sekirei, rather than an unusually sharp pebble, perhaps she would try to stop him. And the kid was stubborn enough that he'd probably be perfectly willing to continue to help out despite it, and resourceful enough to probably succeed.

Though exactly how the boy was managing to augment Homura's flames with his own will-... Well, that was a very good question, actually.

XXX

Minato wasn't sure what to make of Harry and Homura.

On the one hand, they were apparently Ashikabi and Sekirei, but they sometimes acted more like brothers. It might've been the way that they were perfectly willing to pull pranks on one another, or the way they'd get into fire-included fist-fights, or the way that they sometimes seemed closer to each other than he was with Musubi.

Either way, it was quite obvious that Harry was the 'small Guardian', that had taken to helping out the original one. And equally obvious was that neither of them seemed to have any hidden intentions in regards to helping others.

Tsukiumi, when she arrived, seemed to be a bit jealous of the boy's relationship with her old-time rival, but also wasn't sure if she should condemn them for their willingness to get into random scuffles at the drop of a hat.

Musubi mainly kept out of the way on behalf of Harry being more than serious when he'd threatened to light her hair on fire if she tried anything funny against Homura. And perhaps that threat should've worried Minato, but at the same time he seemed like a pretty nice kid.

Even if his personality could be disturbingly similar to Tsukiumi's sometimes.

XXX

Harry and Kuu weren't allowed to sit next to each other after a rather antagonistic series of events that had left Minato coughing from smoke inhalation for hours afterwards.

Still, they seemed more than happy to ignore each other completely from their different positions at the table. Though from the way that Homura would sometimes snicker about it, the incident most certainly hadn't been forgotten.

Matsu had just been upset at having lost one of her precious cameras to the heat. And was still giving both the Ashikabi and Sekirei of Fire the cold shoulder as a result.

Which Kazehana seemed to consider to be an absolutely brilliant pun.

At least until Harry had lit her booze on fire. Accidentally. Mostly.

She seemed quite willing to join in on the 'cold shoulder'-giving after that, and that was how Minato had found himself into a position of peacemaker between Harry and three of his own Ashikabi.

Homura, again, seemed to think the whole thing hilarious, despite the ire sent his way from their landlady.

XXX

[Time Passes]

XXX

The Sekirei Plan had been interrupted, disbanded before it'd ever finished, with Minato and his quartet of love-birds being in the center of it all.

Homura had been a bit disappointed that he hadn't been able to light Minaka – the madman who'd come up with the insane idea in the first place – on fire, either in the implementation of aforementioned interruption or in the aftermath. But a chance for the remaining Sekirei to live on happily was much too pleasant an idea for him to really hold a grudge over it.

Neither Harry nor him were entirely willing to stop whining about it though, in no small part because it was something they could do to annoy the other boy, and his facial expressions were funny when he was annoyed.

Still, despite the destruction of the Sekirei Plan, the work of the Sekirei Guardian and his 'loyal sidekick' – something which Minato's little sister had insisted on calling him, and which had unfortunately stuck – had certainly not finished. There were still a certain degree of 'policing' to be done in regards to the strange mixture of personalities that had been left standing in the aftermath, and it wasn't as if there were much of anyone else left to do it instead.

Miya was still retired. Mostly. Probably. At least kind of, definitely.

And MBI was in shambles, with the Disciplinary Squad being even more 'shambled' than the company that was somewhere in between bankruptcy, heavy political scandal, and attempted hostile takeovers.

Sure, given enough time, Minato's mother would've probably managed to cobble together something like a police force capable of dealing with the Sekirei, but it would've probably included the two of them anyway, so the point still stood.

However, Harry had recently started to get letters. Written in English, on parchment, about being accepted into a school of 'Witchcraft and Wizardry', and how the senders were 'awaiting his owl'. This would've been chalked up to a rather bizarre prank, if not for the extreme insistence of whoever was sending the letters, because they were being delivered to the inn's doorstep by the bucketfuls.

Understandably, Miya hadn't been amused in being forced to wade through a virtual sea of letters in the early mornings, but even Matsu had been stumped over who could be sending them, so it wasn't as if anyone could really put the blame on Harry. Not to mention just how creepy it was to see the very specific address to Harry's sleeping place written on each letter.

And despite the embarrassment of everyone finding out about in the morning when the next batch of eerily specifically addressed letters arrived, Harry still spent his nights curled up to Homura in a desperate bid for safety from whoever was so determinedly after him.

Homura was less than amused as well, and had taken to lighting the letters on fire with gusto in the backyard.

That had all changed when a gigantic man arrived at their doorstep, speaking English, and carrying a pink umbrella.

Things got decidedly stranger from there on out.

XXX

Of course they'd had theories for why Harry could manipulate fire.

Homura was genetically... 'odd' even for a Sekirei, and it'd been suggested early on that their bond could've made some strange things happen. Then there was the reminder that every Ashikabi had a Sekirei somewhere amongst their ancestors, and the possible thought that Harry had simply had two genes clashing together in just the right way to kick-start something that allowed him a portion of what a Sekirei could do.

Obviously, they'd assumed that such possibilities were not completely impossible, and countered any arguments raised towards it and the miniscule chance of it happening with the rather sensible 'he can do it, so there must be an explanation for it'.

And now it was being revealed that he was a 'wizard'.

Needless to say, there'd been much doubt, several exclamations of deceitfulness, and a general feel of suspicion and disbelief.

Thankfully, the gigantic man was perfectly willing to demonstrate a bit of magic, though he insisted that none of them speak of it since he 'technically wasn't entirely allowed to do it', and after seeing things suddenly become other things – and after Matsu had carefully run many tests on them for hallucinogens – they'd all been forced to come to the reluctant conclusion that the man wasn't lying.

Harry was a wizard. Magic existed, and Harry could use it. Just like his parents before him.

Which of course set Harry into asking questions about his parents, and made the previously cheerfully friendly man shake in outraged fury at the thought of what the Dursleys had hidden from him.

Homura had heard a lot about the Dursleys before, but made a mental note to perhaps be a bit more thorough in making them as miserable as possible than he'd originally planned, should he ever encounter them. The rest of the gathered Sekirei though were a bit more vocal about their own outrage on this matter.

This despite the fact that at least three of them would've cheerfully kicked Harry straight into a snake-pit if they'd ever been given the opportunity.

Homura sighed. His Ashikabi could be quite talented with annoying people, when he set his mind to it. But he was still a member of the Izumo House, and a child. And everyone had long since learned that dislike or no, they were all stronger when they stuck together.

They were a family, of sorts. A makeshift and dysfunctional one, perhaps, but a family nonetheless.

XXX

Miya shook her head at the young Feather. "I understand that you'd disagree, and I know that fighting is part of how you do things, but this is a bit extreme, don't you think?"

Homura would've snorted, but his nose was broken, and he wasn't anywhere near that stupid. So instead he just glared at her absently.

"Neither of you wishes to be separated, but Harry-kun wishes to go, and you wish to stay. Of course he knows that you have a duty here, and it's not as if you would've been allowed to stay with him in his new school anyway, so this was the arrangement that made the most sense. You both agreed to that." She frowned slightly. "So I don't quite understand why you had to fight this violently over it."

"No reason." Homura muttered petulantly, not willing to try and explain the various shades of communication, reassurances, and general frustration that had led to such an unusually violent fist-fire-fight between them.

Harry was willing to leave Homura behind, Homura was willing to let Harry go on without him. There was a betrayal there, on both of their sides, and it hurt, even if they both logically agreed that it was the only course of action that made any sense whatsoever.

Harry was going away somewhere where Homura couldn't protect him. There was fear there, because Harry had needed Homura's help often enough in the past that neither of them were comfortable with the thought of such distance being in between them.

Harry was excited to learn about magic, Homura was uncomfortable with the thought of magic. Because the fire had always been something the two of them shared, and now Harry had something else and would he even remember Homura's flames anymore?

They were being separated, going different ways. And it was uncomfortable and nerve-wrecking because they'd grown so used to always being around, always having someone to talk to, someone to punch and light on fire.

A mixture of feelings, and the frustration of it all building up until there was no other choice but to let it explode.

It was stupid, and illogical, but despite Homura's broken nose and Harry's black eye, they felt better now.

They'd see each other again, come Christmas, and then they could beat each other black and blue all over again.

Silently and away from Miya's disapproving gaze, both Sekirei and Ashikabi admitted that they were looking forward to it.

XXX

Ronald Weasley's first impression of the black-haired boy had been that he smelled funny. Or rather, that he smelled as if he'd been spending a few hours sitting in front of a campfire.

In his defense, he'd been down-wind from him when he'd asked Ron's mother for directions to the platform, so he'd smelled him before he'd even seen him for the first time.

However, the lingering discoloration of a black-eye to go along with his rather obviously well-worn clothes had certainly helped set the mood for the boy's strangeness.

When one of the twins had asked him what had happened, he'd told them that he'd been fighting a friend, and that at least he hadn't been forced into a check-up with the local hospital, so there.

The boy seemed cheerfully proud of having broken his friend's nose, despite the fact that apparently the two of them had been fighting over nothing at all. Just fighting because it was fun.

Ron – who was the youngest of five brothers, and had been on the receiving side of quite a number of 'fun' fights – couldn't understand that kind of thinking at all. But was willing to admit that being able to punch back harder than you'd been hit, certainly wasn't shabby.

It hadn't been until they'd been on the train for nearly an hour that Ron remembered that neither of them had introduced themselves properly. And that's when he realized that the Boy-Who-Lived was a cheerful pyromaniac whose closest friend was twice his age and very skilled with fire magic.

Needless to say, the stories he'd heard of the famous boy pretty much just crumbled and died right then and there.

But that didn't mean that Harry wasn't a pleasant enough person to hang around with, so beyond the slight confusion over how in the Merlin's name he'd ended up halfway across the world in Japan, Ron was more than happy to make friends with him.

Even if the way that Harry's morbid curiosity in regards to the chocolate frog cards had been... well, the results had been unpleasant for both of them, as they stared in fascinated horror at the small burning card and the equally small bearded fellow residing in the picture.

Ron really hoped that the picture of Albus Dumbledore had survived the flames and escaped to a different card. He really didn't want to be blamed for ruining an entire country's worth of collectible cards, by killing the person inside of it.

Harry seemed to be thinking much the same, but was also sneakily brilliant enough that he'd quickly decided that tossing the remaining ashes out of the window was the surest way of avoiding blame.

And that was how they became the best of friends.

Unfortunately, a certain bookworm had decided that particular moment to open their compartment door in order to ask about a frog. So they'd been forced to figure out a way to silence the witness.

Hermione Granger reacted as well as one could expect an authority-dedicated girl to react, when she was suddenly thrust into the intrigue of having two possibly-insane boys include her in the experiment of burning another card.

Because, if they didn't figure out a way to include and make her an accomplice in this rather trouble-causing series of events, then she'd ruthlessly expose them both. And they were determined to actually go to Hogwarts, without being arrested or something halfway to the gates.

Hermione was surprisingly mellow about it, once she realized that technically it could be considered an experiment for the sake of science. But that just further convinced the two boys that she wouldn't hesitate to expose them if they didn't continue to include her in future experiments of this sort, and that's how the three of them became the best of friends.

Though, obviously nobody would tell anyone that their first encounter with Hermione had been to hold her at wand-point demanding to know what she'd seen, hurriedly followed by some rather desperate blackmailing from their side of things. That would've ruined the entire point of covering their tracks, after all.

XXX

Minerva McGonagall felt her lips twitch involuntarily into a smile as she watched the three First Years plotting so obviously in the middle of the hallway.

Yes, she was a teacher and therefore disapproved of plotting from the students on principle, but it was nice to see that the three of them were already such close friends.

Then again, the little brother of the Weasley twins, and the son of a Marauder, combined with the most book-smart student of their year, smelled quite fishy to her nose. And possibly explosive.

Either way, it was easy to listen in on the trio as she carefully kept out sight.

"Stop lighting them on fire!" Miss Granger hissed at Mr Potter.

"I didn't mean to this time!" The boy hissed back, eyes darting down the corridor on both sides in a distinctly nervous way.

"He's right, Hermione. He was trying to melt the chocolate." Mr Weasley agreed.

"Oh. To see if it still moved?" The girl asked, suddenly looking thoughtful.

Mr Potter nodded, before muttering. "Didn't expect it to dodge."

"Of course it would dodge, it's a frog." Mr Weasley shook his head at him.

"Yeah well, at least nothing else caught on fire this time." Miss Granger sighed.

The two boys exchanged somewhat guilty glances.

"About that." Mr Weasley started. "You remember our essay?"

The girl's face turned ghostly pale. "No." Her eyes flickered in between them. "No. Please tell me you didn't."

"Poof." Mr Potter demonstrated with his hands and a strained laugh.

And that's when Miss Granger socked him on the nose.

By the time Minerva managed to reach them, it'd devolved into a vicious free-for-all with a lot more punching, kicking, and biting than was even remotely proper to see being used in between friends. And something had briefly been caught on fire before Mr Potter had been kicked in the side.

They all ended up with detentions – after a visit to the Hospital Wing – but in the aftermath Minerva honestly couldn't recall what the three of them had been whispering about in the first place.

So they lucked out on that account.

But Minerva hadn't been a professor for as long as she had without learning a few things, which was why she'd sent a letter about their misconduct back to their homes.

XXX

Ron winced one final time as his mother's voice finally faded from the Great Hall and the Howler went up in flames.

It'd just been one fight, hardly anything to worry about, so why in the world did she have to send a howler? Why couldn't she just have sent him a stern letter about future chores that would need to be done, or something. Did she really have to yell at him about it in public?

Ron glanced to his side where Hermione was blushing at her letter from her own parents – one which thankfully wasn't vocal.

"Horrible amounts of future chores?" He guessed.

"Ah... no." Hermione blushed harder. "Apparently, if my friends can remain my friends after a fist-fight, then my parents heartily approve."

Harry made a pleased noise. "People of my own heart."

Hermione glared at him. "I don't think Professor McGonagall mentioned that you lit us on fire."

"Tried to lit you on fire." Harry corrected her with a smile. "And you can't prove anything."

Ron decided to interrupt his two friends before they got into another fist-fight right there at the breakfast table. "Hey, what about your letter, Harry?" He motioned to the also-red letter that the owl had left in front of him. "Doesn't that look like a howler?"

"Yeah, but I don't think any of them even knows how to make one, so I doubt it." Harry agreed with a shrug.

"Umm, maybe you should open it anyway, just in case." Ron suggested, looking at the letter warily.

Harry shrugged and opened the letter.

"Fighting in school is prohibited."

The eerily calm voice echoed between the walls, just as loudly as Ron's own howler had done, but without the underlying sound of an actual shout.

Ron, slightly uneasy, turned to see if Harry could explain why the message apparently stopped there.

Harry was as pale as a ghost, shivering, and looking for all the world as if he would've much rather jumped into a fiery volcano than remain where he was.

"Umm, Harry? You okay?" Ron stared at his friend.

"Scary demon landlady." Harry whimpered softly to himself.

Ron looked over at Hermione, who looked just as confused as he was. They both shrugged.

Harry was weird sometimes.

XXX

Of course Harry was going home for Christmas, and of course he spent barely hour in Shin Tokyo before he got into a fist-fight with Homura, where both of their clothes ended up being lit on fire.

But in contrast to what most who hadn't grown used to their behavior would've suspected, the next several hours were spent in a haphazard pile in front of the TV in Homura's room.

It was comforting, to be next to each other again, to be able to lean on each other again.

Theirs wasn't the most orthodox of Ashikabi and Sekirei pair, but then Homura had no intention of replicating Tsukiumi in declaring their bond as a 'marriage' – for various reasons, but in no small part because Harry was a kid, and Homura had been creeped out more than enough once he'd realized that he'd been reacting to a ten-year-old in the first place. Instead, they were perhaps something closer to brothers.

Too willing to make each other miserable on whims, and too willing to destroy anyone else attempting to do the same, for any other definition than 'family' to truly fit. Even if both Homura and Harry had been willing to agree that they were a bit more contact-prone than most siblings that they'd heard of.

It'd always felt too strange to stand a large distance away from each other, when they could just use the other person as a crutch and not have to bother with standing up all on their own.

Matsu seemed to think of perverted things whenever they tried to describe it, with Kazehana not falling far behind, and though they'd been on the receiving end of a few hints of perverted things from the rest of the residents of Izumo House, the one who'd come closest to describing it had been Minato's little sister.

Though, to be fair to the manga-obsessed weirdo, she'd managed to do so completely by accident, when she'd scoffed and simply asked if they were both too lazy to use their own damn legs for standing up.

Because... well, they kind of really were that lazy.

XXX

Ron stared with a mixture of frustration and horror at the way that Harry's eyes sparkled excitedly, before turning to Hermione in a desperate bid for sanity.

Thankfully, she seemed to be on his side of the argument as she responded rather bluntly to their best friend's excitement. "Harry, dragons are illegal to own for a reason."

Harry frowned at them. "Like what? There are flame-freezing charms to deal with the fire-breath, expanding-charms and muggle-repelling charms to deal with where to keep them, and it doesn't look like they'd need any truly massive amount of investment in order to keep it healthy."

"They're bloody dragons!" Ron hissed. "My brother Charlie is working with them on a reserve, and there's a bloody good reason for not keeping them in your bloody house!"

Harry's slightly offended frown slowly began to slip into a petulant pout. "But they're so cool."

Ron an Hermione shared a glance, before they both reluctantly shrugged in agreement. "Yeah, they are. But seriously, Hagrid really really shouldn't have one in his cabin."

"We could keep it in the dungeons?" Harry suggested hopefully.

"We're not keeping the dragon in the school!" Hermione hissed at him indignantly.

"But it's so cute." Harry argued feebly.

Both of his friends groaned in eery harmony. And at least Ron admitted silently to himself that they really should've anticipated that their pyromaniac of a friend would think the venomous, fire-breathing lizard – who'd grow up to be the size of a house – to be 'cute'.

It was probably a result of him taking too many hits to the noggin over the years.

XXX

Harry wasn't entirely sure how they'd ended up stalking around the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night on a search for a wounded unicorn, because surely there had to be some kind of limit to what students at Hogwarts were exposed to during detentions?

Still, it was a bit of an adventure, and the unicorn needed help, so he wasn't going to outright complain about it.

Until he found the unicorn, and the cloaked form bent over it.

If he'd cried and attempted to run, a centaur would've heard him and rushed to his rescue. But Harry was used to fighting. And even if his head felt like it was splitting open around his scar, that just gave him more motivation for beating the crap out of the creature who would dare to hurt such an innocent creature.

Harry had seen enough cruelties inflicted on innocents to last him a lifetime. And Homura had long since taught him that the best way of dealing with such things was to light something on fire.

And that's how the cloaked creature exploded.

In a light-show that left a sound much akin to a gunshot, the creature that had just risen to face him caught alight. Not a tiny ember that caught the hem of the cloak, not a faint smoldering from within. It was just fire. Everything burned.

It reminded Harry just a tiny little bit of those cartoons were someone was electrocuted, but instead of the skeleton being visible through the skin, the skin was burnt away like paper in the face of a flamethrower.

The stench was beyond anything Harry ever wanted to smell again, and would serve to put him off meat for days, as the bones were exposed even as they themselves caught alight from Harry's panicking magic.

The fire burned blue and white from the heat, and there was what might've been a scream over the roaring of the impossible flames.

By the time the centaur made it into the clearing, the creature was a pile of ash and charcoal, and Harry was unsteadily making his way to the fallen unicorn. Because he needed to help the innocent one, the one that needed to be protected, and it really didn't matter if his vision was tunneling and fading out all at the same time, because he needed to help.

Homura, had he been present, would've probably felt a strange mixture of pride and worry and guilt at the young boy's actions. Because there was no doubt that Harry was his Ashikabi, and he'd probably been picking up a few too many of his bad habits over the time that they'd fought side-by-side to protect the innocent Sekirei from Minaka's mad Plan.

XXX

When Harry woke up in the Hospital Wing, his first thought was that he really shouldn't have bothered with waking up quite yet at all.

He promptly attempted to rectify that, but for some reason his mind refused to properly return to sleep. Instead, it was racing through the series of events that had led him to where he was.

The detention, the cloaked figure, the fire, the unicorn, the wound, the silvery blood, the fading warmth, the desperate attempt to try anyway. Darkness.

So he'd probably exhausted himself, and passed out. Considering how he'd ended up in Hogwarts rather than in the stomach of something nasty from the Forest, Harry couldn't really feel bad about most likely worrying whoever had brought him there. He'd tried, he'd failed, but he'd tried. And sometimes people failed, that was the way of things.

Homura had failed too. And every time he'd taken it just as hard as the last.

Harry wasn't sure why it got easier for himself, and not for his Sekirei, but perhaps he was simply too practical-minded, or maybe there was something strange in his head. Either way, he was disappointed in himself for failing, and was already making plans to better his skills with first-aid, because maybe if he'd been able to heal the wound then the innocent creature could've survived, but in the end feeling miserable about it was pointless. He'd get better, he'd learn, and he would do better when a new situation like that arrived.

He'd always prided himself on his practicality in most matters.

But still, now that he was safe and there was nothing else that he could accomplish by charging ahead unthinking, the smell lingered.

Sickeningly sweet, and far too familiar than he wanted it to be.

Homura wielded fire, and his opponents had always been other Sekirei and their Ashikabi. And regardless of actual species, humans all smelled the same when they were burned.

Normally though, the targets of his Sekirei were never burned alive. Nor did they scream as they died, with their lungs filled with fire. Or carry on burning until there was nothing left but ash and charcoal.

Homura had never really killed anyone. Now, Harry had.

Harry briefly admitted that that should sincerely bother him, but he was tired, and he'd still been forced to watch and feel as the cloaked figure's victim died underneath his desperate hands. He didn't regret doing what he'd done.

But he really wished the smell of it would be fading from his nose. Preferably before he tried throwing up.

He really didn't want to move far enough to make that a viable option, and – speaking from experience – the smell of his stomach-fluids wouldn't make the other smell fade, as much as it would simply combine together with it to become something even nastier.

Harry reaffirmed his desire to go back to sleep and deal with whatever would happen some other day.

This time, he was more successful.

XXX

A/n: One of my reviewers on "The Devil Ashikabi" mentioned that it would be interesting to see the way that Harry might differ from canon due to being the Ashikabi of various different Sekirei. It was an interesting idea, and kind of stuck in my head.

So, this is the 3rd part of The Ashikabi Series. I'm not sure if I'll be able to write a fic like this for everyone (Musubi's Harry makes me kind of go Blue-Screen-Of-Death just from trying to imagine it, and Tsukiumi is probably too immediately hostile to the idea of Winging that Harry would just avoid the heck out of her if he could), and I'm not even going to try writing for all of the 108, but it's an idea that I'm entertaining, and I'm kind of curious how it'll go with Matsu, so we'll see...

Anyway, this Harry looks up to Homura as a big-brother-figure, so there's admiration and family-love and annoyance and mimicking all mixed into one. As for Voldemort... I don't even have the faintest clue, sorry.