XXX
Story: [The Wartime Ashikabi]
Summary: Harry wasn't happy with Dumbledore, and neither were most of his friends. But then, that's what he got for without warning dumping him halfway across the world in another country.
Crossover: (Sekirei) / (Harry Potter)
Genre: Adventure, Drama
XXX
Harry wasn't in a good mood.
Ignoring the way that he'd managed to stub his toe against unfamiliar furniture far too early in the morning on his way to the bathroom, and the way that he hadn't been able to contact either of his best friends for over a week – and even then, they hadn't been able to talk about anything that was actually important – there was the way that he kept getting the feeling that he'd simply been discarded. Removed from the picture for no other reason than to get him out of Dumbledore's hair.
This wasn't to keep him safe. If the old man had wanted him safe, he would've locked him away in whatever safe house he was hiding Hermione and Ron in. No, he wanted him in a place where he would be out from underfoot, where he wouldn't be able to interfere, or complain, or actually demand that they treat him like the adult that they'd already been forcing him to act as for the last several years now.
Bloody buggering hell, you don't dump someone halfway across the planet without any way of getting back unless you're trying to get rid of them.
And maybe it wasn't his war. Maybe Dumbledore should be allowed to work on his plans and schemes in peace, maybe the Wizarding World could do with trying to straighten this mess out for themselves this time around, maybe they'd actually learn something about dealing with their own damn problems. But Harry had friends there, and they were in danger, and Voldemort wanted him dead personally, and this wasn't Dumbledore's war as much as it was Harry's.
The prophecy made that rather blatantly obvious.
No, having the scheming old man dump him in Japan of all places was definitely not something he approved of. Hell, it wasn't even something that Hermione approved of, even as she tried to make the best of it within her own limited means. Ron couldn't even quite do that, his handwriting so bad from his furiously shaking hands that Harry was surprised to realize that there were only three holes in the parchment from where he put the quill clear through it.
The thought made his mood lighten the slightest shade. Ron had always had a temper.
"Abunai!" A voice from above shouted.
Harry was halfway into wondering to himself why in the world someone would be shouting from above – he hadn't seen any bridges or anything – when his instincts screamed at him to move.
Never one to deny the instincts that had somehow managed to keep him alive for all his years at Hogwarts, Harry hurled himself away from something dropping from the sky, his hand already going for a wand that wasn't there, before Harry again found himself silently cursing Dumbledore and his plots.
A girl blinked at him from where she'd landed on the sidewalk, then she beamed a smile at him.
Listening to the girl as she started to chatter on in a language that he honestly hadn't really even been trying to learn – he'd been too busy caught somewhere between stewing in rage at Dumbledore and staring up at the ceiling in absentminded resignation – Harry tried to explain that he couldn't understand a word out of her mouth.
He wasn't sure if she was actually understanding a word out of his mouth, but perhaps that would be all that was necessary for her to connect the dots and realize their current language barrier on her own.
Then his instincts screamed at him to get away again, so he hit the ground with a roll.
Lightning flashed, the girl's voice made some kind of exclamation, and two new voices joined in with speaking that bloody language that was native in this bloody country that he bloody well shouldn't be in!
Stumbling back to his feet, and trying to ignore the way his ears were ringing from the lightning bolt that had miraculously managed to not kill anyone, Harry turned his attention towards the two new arrivals.
The new arrivals who were for some reason dressed up in leather bikinis.
Not wanting to sound like uncle Vernon – who had a great deal of many things to say about a great deal of things that he really shouldn't have an opinion of – Harry very carefully steered his thoughts away from cursing out just how bloody weird this country was. It was one thing to hate it on the principle of simply wanting to be elsewhere, but actively disliking it because of the people that resided within it was probably a bit too rude.
It wasn't like he didn't hate half the population of the UK too, and that place was still and would always be his home.
Still, if it weren't for the way the two women were quite frank about revealing their faces to the world, Harry would've taken off running by now. He'd kind of been expecting the Death Eaters to come for him, after all, no matter how safe Dumbledore claimed this place to be.
But apparently it seemed as if the two women were after the girl who'd almost landed on top of him, and perhaps the odds were a bit skewed with two against one, but Harry really didn't want to get involved.
So obviously he opened his mouth. "What the bloody buggering hell was that, you crazy bastards!" Because maybe he'd been exposed to Ron's vocabulary a bit too much.
The two women blinked at him, apparently a bit startled at having their talk with the girl interrupted.
One of them called out something in what he could only assume was Japanese, but Harry didn't even try to address the language gap.
"You can't just go throwing around bloody lightning on a busy street, you bloody buffoons!" He more specifically addressed his concerns on this matter.
The girl next to him made a weird noise, so Harry turned towards her.
"What?!" He demanded of her, feeling his temper fraying more than a bit at the edges.
Then she kissed him.
And grew wings.
It really had been a shitty day all around.
XXX
The girl had refused to leave him alone after that, even once the two women had run off to Merlin knows where.
If it wasn't for the feeling Harry was getting that she'd more or less imprinted on him akin to a duckling somehow, he would've assumed that it was because she thought that he could somehow protect her from the two women who'd been chasing her.
As it was, he was just so sick and tired of it all. Because of course the girl had managed to say exactly the wrong thing to get him tossed out of the hotel on his nose, and though Harry wasn't entirely sure what that something was, he kind of wanted to yell at her for it.
Except Dumbledore had dumped him in that hotel, and Harry kind of really wanted to make Dumbledore miserable at the moment.
So, with a defeated sigh of disgust, Harry grabbed his school trunk and started walking.
He didn't exactly have any money other than galleons, seeing how it'd been Dumbledore who'd paid for his stay, and so he couldn't exactly just move on to the next hotel.
The way that the girl next to him was more than happy to jump up to rooftops to help him look – or at least that's what Harry was guessing that she was doing, though he wasn't sure if she was actually looking for a place to stay or something else entirely – didn't actually help his mood any.
Last year he'd been dragged before court for 'revealing magic' because he'd used it next to his cousin – who already knew – and a squib – who also already knew – in order to defend himself from having his soul sucked out. He really didn't want to have to deal with going through that farce again because he just so happened to be in the presence of some crazy girl who didn't seem to understand that magical things were supposed to be kept a secret.
Glancing down at his watch, Harry suppressed a sigh. He really should get around to getting a new one, considering how this one had been broken for more than a year by now, but it wasn't as if he had any money to do that with.
Musubi – if their introductions had really worked, that was the jumping girl's name – landed next to him with a dull thud.
Suppressing the urge to close his eyes and curl up into a ball and never emerge, Harry did his best to pay attention to the girl's charades.
It seemed as if she believed that she'd found a place to sleep in.
If they were lucky, maybe they'd even take galleons. Wonders of wonders though that might be.
XXX
Harry rubbed his scar, trying to ease his rapidly building headache.
"Of course she was." He sighed in defeat to the landlady of the inn.
It definitely explained exactly why the hotel had been so enthusiastic about tossing him out on his nose. And judging by the clueless face that Musubi was making, she didn't have the faintest clue that she'd been mistaken for a prostitute.
Sometimes, he just really hated his life.
The landlady looked fairly sympathetic. "She seems a bit scatterbrained, but her heart is in the right place." She contributed her own opinion on the girl whom he couldn't understand at all.
It was nice to hear that someone else had gotten that impression as well. But Harry still had worries of his own. "Look, I don't have any money at all. The headmaster paid for the hotel-room, and I-... well, I have this." He waved at his school trunk in a kind of disgusted defeat.
The slightly worn trunk thankfully managed to look like it really belonged to someone just as broke as he was claiming to be – he did technically have what probably amounted to a small fortune in galleons, but he might as well have the fortune in tennis-shoes for all the help it was here.
The woman nodded with a concerned frown. "Do you have any way of contacting him?"
Harry felt his face twist in barely restrained anger as he was reminded of just how little contact he had with anyone, and shook his head.
Sighing heavily, the woman shook her head. "How long do you think it'll take him to notice that you're missing?"
"Probably at least a week before the first of September." Harry made a face. "But I should be able to contact one of my friends in-..." He tried to think of the likely arrival of Hedwig. "- in about another week, I think. And they'll probably manage to kick up enough of a fuss to get him to come over here and check up on me."
Unless the old man had taken to completely avoiding both Hermione and Ron, which didn't sound at all impossible, considering just how furious his two best friends were with the man.
The woman raised an eyebrow at him. "That sounds like a complicated situation." She pointed out, looking like she was a bit curious, but not as if she was planning on pushing.
Harry shook his head in disgust. "It is." He agreed, but only because it really wouldn't do anyone any good to have him spit out anything about how it wouldn't have been anywhere near this complicated if Dumbledore just hadn't dumped him halfway across the world in a hotel all by himself.
There was a sympathetic look from the woman, before she finally admitted defeat and just let him stay. Apparently she felt it would've dishonored her late husband's memory to turn someone away when they were clearly in trouble.
Harry felt a brief stab of admiration for a man he'd never met. To have been kind enough to have built an inn around that entire ideal, and lucky enough to marry a woman understanding enough to follow it even when he was gone. He sounded like a good man.
XXX
Harry woke up with a start, desperately gasping for air that wouldn't come.
Scrambling free of the sheets, Harry quickly discovered the reason for it.
Musubi had sneaked into his futon, and was now hugging him far too tightly for comfort.
Cursing at just how strong the girl was, Harry finally managed to tear himself free from her arms, and stumbled over to a wall to catch his breath.
He kind of really wanted to yell at her for invading the privacy of his own bed, but she was making sleepily miserable noises as her arms grasped emptily after him, and he kind of got the feeling that she simply hadn't considered that this was a violation of his private space.
He certainly wasn't in a position to start yelling about people lacking social graces. Tossing stones in glass houses and all that.
Grumbling to himself and doing his best to straighten out his pajamas, Harry glanced out the window and at the slowly graying sky of predawn.
To hell with it, he wasn't going to be able to fall back asleep now.
With a resigned sigh, Harry made his way out of his room.
XXX
Homura stumbled as he toed off his shoes, and pushed them around until they were in a functional approximation of orderly amongst the rest of them. There was two new pair of shoes, but he was too tired to pay much attention to it.
He really hated it when his job decided to run overtime, it always made for absolutely miserable mornings.
There was light coming from the kitchen.
Blinking stupidly, Homura decided that he could afford at least one detour on his way to answering the siren song of his soft bed.
Messy black hair, beaten up glasses, worn and ill-fitting clothes, and dark circles under his sharply green eyes.
Homura's heart skipped a beat, and he felt blood rush to his face, suddenly inexplicably unable to look away.
The boy looked up from what looked to be a cup of tea. "Ah, hello, I'm Harry." He said in English.
Homura nodded numbly, the boy's voice echoing along his spine in a way that made his knees suddenly want to buckle. "Homura." He introduced himself, not entirely sure if his voice was steady or not, too focused on the boy's brilliantly green eyes.
The boy's eyebrows drew together in mild concern. "Are you alright?"
Homura felt his breath puff out as his body suddenly started burning from the inside out, and tried to aim himself towards the nearest wall as he started to topple from his apparent inability to remain standing all of a sudden.
The slam of a chair tipping to the floor in a rush, and then the boy was suddenly right next to him, a hand on his arm to steady him.
His stomach was doing flips, and he was getting dizzy, and he couldn't think over the sound of his own heartbeat, but there was just such a horrible ache-...
Lips met lips, and the ache disappeared as wings finally – finally – stretched out behind him. They had never been allowed to stretch before, and now they could, and it was just so exquisitely wonderful.
XXX
Miya peered into the kitchen, curious about the amount of noise that was being made in there so early in the day.
Harry was cooking, silently, efficiently, a kind of calm that felt just a tiny bit determinedly forced.
Homura was hovering in the background, looking nervous and guilty and a little bit mortified.
Harry was seemingly paying absolutely no mind at all to the Sekirei. To the point where Miya was fairly certain that he was deliberately ignoring him.
Also, the way that Homura was touching his lips-...
Miya blinked. She hadn't expected that.
An Ashikabi was only as strong as the bonds between them and their Sekirei, and Harry seemed more resigned and annoyed to be the focus of Musubi's attention than anything else. And she had it on good authority that Homura was supposed to be a special case, that it would be near-impossible for anyone to be able to wing him, that it would require an immensely powerful Ashikabi.
Miya was confused.
A bit happy for the male to have finally found his Ashikabi, and a bit worried considering how said Ashikabi appeared to be giving him the cold shoulder, but mostly just confused.
XXX
Harry took another deep breath and pretended that he wasn't noticing Homura hovering in the background.
This was the second time in two days that someone had just suddenly kissed him out of the blue, and he was starting to get really sick of it. This time it hadn't even been a girl, and that was making him perhaps a tiny bit more pissed off than he would've been otherwise. Or maybe he was getting pissed off because he wasn't getting more pissed off about that? Harry wasn't sure, and he sure as hell wasn't going to go digging in that can of worms.
He needed to get home to Britain, to Hogwarts, to Hermione and Ron, and to the war. He didn't have time for being in this damn country in the first place, let alone running around and snogging everything that moved.
Weird wings made of light or no.
Rubbing briefly at his scar, Harry finally admitted to himself that his distraction in the form of breakfast-making was done. Which was probably a good thing, considering how he could hear Musubi start making noise upstairs.
The landlady was also awake, Harry noted absently as his eyes swept across the kitchen – very carefully not lingering around the fidgeting man who'd kissed him completely out of the bloody blue.
The woman was watching him with curious eyes, and Harry decided then and there that he should cut his losses early and just give up all hope of today somehow managing to end up becoming a good day.
XXX
Three days, that's how long it took until Hedwig found him again, carrying a letter with ample holes going straight through it.
Harry smiled a bit as he unfolded Ron's letter. It was always nice to see that he wasn't the only one struggling to keep his temper. Apparently Dumbledore was stubbornly refusing to listen to reason, and with Sirius gone none of the other adults really seemed quite willing to go out of their way to antagonize the headmaster for basically stealing his wand and exiling him to a different country.
It was 'safer' for him there after all.
Ron had been yelling at his mother, Hermione had been yelling at the headmaster, Ginny had been physically tackled to the floor by the twins before she pulled her wand on someone – seeing the trouble Harry had gotten into last year for using magic during the summer, that had probably been for the best – and Ron had gone after Kreacher with a chair.
All in all, it was nice to hear that he wasn't the only one disagreeing with the old man and his decisions, even if he wasn't exactly happy about just how dismissive the rest of the Order appeared to be of the situation.
Absently handing Hedwig his bacon, Harry continued reading.
Hermione was trying to sneakily find a way to reach him through muggle means, hoping that she'd be able to keep him updated, but kept being blocked by how they were all stuck in a completely magical household. Of course, she didn't mention any of that in the actual letter, but rather hidden thoroughly in code. Which meant that the Order was probably screening their letters.
Harry mumbled an apology to Hedwig at the realization that she was probably quite offended indeed at having her postal services so assaulted, even if they hadn't touched a feather on her.
Hedwig accepted his apology with a small nip at his finger, before turning her attention back to his bacon.
There was a small sound of awe from somewhere to the left of him, and Harry blinked dumbly before suddenly realizing that he was actually not in a magical household himself, despite the wings of light that had appeared when the two 'Sekirei' had been 'winged' by him.
He had no idea what to think of the Sekirei Plan and that whole mess, but couldn't really bring himself to care either way with Voldemort and his Death Eaters dangling over his head.
Glancing up at the people gathered around the breakfast table, Harry tried to go for nonchalance. "What?"
Musubi was staring with sparkly eyes at Hedwig, Miya's eyebrows were almost at her hairline, Homura was kind of gaping, and Uzume was just kind of staring.
"An owl?" Homura asked, looking like he very much wanted the world to start making sense again.
"Her name is Hedwig." Harry introduced her to them. "And yes, she's a snowy owl."
"But why?" Homura asked again, halfway into a despairing whine.
Harry wasn't sure what the hell the man was asking, so he just shrugged, before waving the letter a bit. "I'm going to have to write a response to this, and then the headmaster should finally come around and actually pay the bloody rent." He nodded to Miya.
The landlady smiled at him. "What an interesting way of communicating."
Harry wasn't sure if she was praising it, or mocking it. He didn't really care. It worked, and that was that.
The fact that it was an excuse to always keep Hedwig nearby was just a bonus really.
XXX
Matsu wasn't entirely sure why she'd been so very carefully hiding in her room.
On the one hand, perhaps it was because she had no idea who this foreigner was, but the more she looked at it the more it felt as if that wasn't the reason at all.
It wasn't that she didn't know who he was, or that she didn't know his motives or his allegiances. It was the very simple fact that she'd seen how Homura had reacted.
She knew that Sekirei reacted to Ashikabi, that was the whole point with it after all, but there was just something-... something off about it.
She couldn't put her finger on it, but perhaps it was the way that he'd simply kind of just stopped doing anything other than stare at the boy.
He didn't seem like an unpleasant individual. A stressed one, definitely, and one who was very much trying not to lash out at the people around him, but not a bad person on his own.
The question that raised was 'why was he in Japan' and 'who was this headmaster of his'. And there weren't any answers to those questions. Let alone the much more seemingly pressing one of 'why does he look like he desperately needs to be somewhere else'.
Questions and questions and more questions, and Matsu didn't like questions that she couldn't give an answer to. She was used to having answers, always knowing what was happening, except this time she didn't have the faintest clue.
So she hid, and she very much avoided paying attention to any screen that showed just what the Ashikabi looked like, even when her heart sometimes skipped a beat.
She was not going into this without having some kind of plan, definitely not.
And preferably also some way of deflecting blame away from herself in case he got angry over how she'd be the third person to suddenly decide to wing themselves on him without his consent.
Except he kept coming up with stranger things.
Like the owl. Who in the world has a pet owl? Let alone one that had been trained to carry mail.
She was beyond tempted to get a good image of the letter and then simple zoom in and read over his shoulder without him ever being the wiser, but perhaps that was private, and maybe there were some lines that she shouldn't cross if she didn't want to face all of that pressurized anger in him suddenly exploding in her face.
There was some instinct clinging to her head that was very much opposed to the idea of actually making him angry at her. And she wasn't sure if it was her desire to be winged by him, or if she this was her survival instincts deciding to come knocking.
Either way, she left the letter alone.
XXX
Homura hadn't been entirely sure how his Ashikabi had been planning on contacting his friends when he'd readily admitted to never having owned a cellphone.
When pressed on the matter – because surely everyone had something like that – he'd shrugged it off by pointing out that he spent most of his time in a boarding school that didn't allow electronics. Which was all kinds of absurd, but apparently something that still happened on certain traditional places on the planet.
When pressed further – because surely there were still people he wanted to contact – he'd bluntly told them that he was an orphan, and – beyond his two best friends – didn't really have anyone alive that he'd want to talk to.
The way that he'd stressed 'alive' left Homura feeling kind of like a heel. You weren't supposed to remind people of dead loved ones, and from the look about him, Harry had lost someone recently.
It kind of rankled a bit, that out of all of the possible Ashikabi that he might've been winged by, Homura ended up with one who pretty much completely refused to talk about himself.
Homura wanted to know the person who'd winged him, and yet was forced to dig and guess and try to analyze the teenager every step of the way. It was tiring, and he'd much rather have him simply accept that Homura wanted to help him, but it didn't seem as if that understanding would be coming around anytime soon.
But yeah, he'd been curious about how Harry was planning on contacting his friends – and vaguely curious about why he expected it to take a week to get in touch with them – and he was still kind of bizarrely awed when he saw that owl fly in through an open window and land on the dinner-table.
Ignoring the hygiene issues that had left Miya to clean said table very carefully, the way that Harry had just completely accepted Hedwig's arrival as if it was a common routine was all kinds of crazy. Not to mention the way that he was so willing to share his own breakfast with the bird – despite that he was damn near skin and bones and probably needed to eat twice the amount that he put on his plate.
The whole event had given Homura a distinct feeling of vertigo, and considering how he regularly jumped around on skyscrapers, that was saying something.
XXX
Harry hadn't been entirely sure what to expect when the orchestrator of the Sekirei Plan finally managed to contact him.
The man had been quite peeved at having to go through Homura's phone in order to get in touch with him, and had complained loudly about how people in this day and age really needed to be more in touch with the world around them.
Harry had felt vaguely disturbed by the realization that the man was speaking in English because somehow he'd managed to have enough information of Harry himself that he knew he wouldn't understand any other language, but had mostly shrugged it off. He might not like it, but he'd grown resigned to his frustratingly persistent fame years ago, even if it seemed to be completely unrelated to this newest uncomfortable situation.
Still, the grand tournament and its 'prize' didn't actually change anything as far as Harry was concerned. Yes, the man was clearly insane, and easily capable of building the whole thing on the misery and pain of the people within it, but he wasn't Voldemort. He wasn't kidnapping and killing and torturing people even now.
Being 'chosen' as an Ashikabi for the Sekirei Plan meant nothing at all, because he was still 'the chosen one' of the prophecy to bring Voldemort down. He still had a war to fight in a different country. He didn't have time to worry about some muggle with delusions of grandeur, no matter how much of an arse they were being.
But in order to fight Voldemort, he needed to get back to Britain. And in order to do that, he needed to get in touch with Dumbledore. And in order to get in touch with Dumbledore, he needed to inform his two best friend of this latest bizarre twist to his life.
He wasn't entirely sure how much he should really be saying on the matter of the Sekirei Plan though, or the winging process. He kind of really didn't want to have anyone launch themselves into a rant about random people stealing kisses from him, or reveal his own involvement in something which might end up bypassing the Statute of Secrecy.
Aliens or not, Harry was fairly certain that they still classified as 'magical', and he'd be damned before he gave anyone any more ammunition to use in order to drag him before court.
XXX
Harry felt his fingers twitch for the wand that he didn't have, and wondered – not for the first time – if perhaps Homura might be onto something about making the madman's life miserable.
He might not be Voldemort, but he was a muggle, and surely there would be ways to get him to stop being such an absolute arse about all of this.
A text-message sent to every Ashikabi – and Homura, courtesy of Harry's complete lack of any way to be otherwise contacted – about an un-winged Sekirei 'ripe for the plucking'. The fact that said Sekirei was described as a little girl-...
Dammit, he really didn't want to get involved in these things if he could help it. It probably wouldn't be helping his defense in his – very likely – future court case.
Harry got to his feet. "We just need to find her and get her out of there before anyone else can get hurt, right?"
Homura turned to him, a kind of protective wariness in his posture. "Yes, but I hope you're not planning on winging her."
Harry glared at him. "I'm not planning on winging anyone." He said with more than a little acid. "Or has your memory started to go?"
Homura blushed, and made a guilty face that Harry refused to find anything other than satisfying – he'd bloody well started it, Harry refused to feel guilty in return. "Sorry."
XXX
She looked a bit like Gabrielle, and yet not even remotely similar.
He supposed most children were like that. Similar and yet different.
However with the enemy Sekirei so quickly disabled by an overly enthusiastic Musubi, the three of them had been just as quick in legging it back out of the giant forest. No matter how much Musubi whined about not being allowed to fight any of the dozens of Sekirei that had gathered.
A clean getaway, without confrontations. Harry really didn't want the whole mess to devolve into a free-for-all with a child caught in the middle. And even if Musubi looked disappointed, she really didn't seem to voice any serious complaints about it, just whining a bit to Homura – as he was the only one who'd actually listen to what she was saying, on account of Harry not knowing what she was saying.
Still, dumping Kusano on the doorstep of the Izumo Inn, Harry was more than grateful to return to sitting around and doing nothing.
Until the little girl came pattering down the hallway to sit down next to where he was looking at the sky for any sign of Hedwig's return.
Glancing at her, and feeling vaguely satisfied that she didn't look either bruised or horribly traumatized, Harry went back to watching the sky.
It was probably beyond irrational, considering how Dumbledore would likely arrive before the owl, but it didn't feel right not to look for her. She carried his letters, and he waited for her to return to him. That was just the way things were.
Finally, Kusano seemed to grow sick of sitting around and doing nothing at all – which was probably a sign that she was a healthy kid who didn't need Harry to worry over her – and climbed back to her feet.
Then she leaned over and kissed him. On the lips.
Wings bloomed from her back, and the ever flower in the garden bloomed along with them.
Harry's eye twitched.
He really hated his luck.
XXX
Matsu stared at the screen, feeling her lips twitch helplessly into a smile.
Brave, noble, skittish, and awkward. He was an interesting kind of Ashikabi, even if she still had the feeling that he had something else to do. Some other place that needed him to be there.
A school without electronics, a headmaster who'd dump an orphan teenager halfway across the planet in a place where he didn't speak the language, two best friends who could only be contacted through owl, and a nervous energy that reminded her a bit of PTSD.
A scar on his arm as if it'd been pierced straight through, a scar on his other arm of a jagged cut, a scar on his hand spelling out 'I must not tell lies' in disturbingly deliberate lines, and a smaller scar on his forehead that seemed to ache from how often he rubbed at it.
There was something going on in Britain, and Matsu found herself desperately curious about the details.
Matsu took a deep breath.
He didn't seem to enjoy Sekirei winging themselves on him, even if he didn't really do more than give them the cold shoulder for a while and send a few glares their way, but perhaps she could actually convince him into winging her voluntarily?
It was worth a try.
XXX
Albus had always known that Harry would have to die.
Unfortunate though it was, there really wasn't any way to avoid it. Oh, there was a slight possibility that there lay some truth in the Deathly Hallows and their powers, but it was a possibility in much the same manner that jumping off a cliff onto jagged rocks without a wand might still end up with landing safely and with only a few broken bones.
More a fantastical miracle than something worth counting on.
So Albus had always known that Harry would have to die in order for Voldemort to be defeated. That was the way of such things. He wasn't exactly happy about it, and he'd grown quite fond of the boy despite his own efforts to keep the boy's dedication as a purely one-way street.
He needed Harry to trust him, but he hadn't really counted on how having the boy actually show that trust made it so difficult to stop a spark of guilty fondness from appearing within his wrinkly old heart.
He liked Harry, he was a nice boy, and he had a good heart, and a wit that had left Albus honestly chuckling more than a few times. It was sad that he'd have to die.
But thankfully Albus was fairly sure that he wouldn't live to see it. He'd be going hunting for Voldemort's horcruxes soon, now that he knew for sure that he'd indeed been making them, and had a few clues as to where to look.
No, Voldemort and his traps would probably manage to do him in long before Harry would have to sacrifice himself in order to bring the Dark Lord down once and for all.
It was a calming thought, that he wouldn't have to be there to see the boy's life snuffed out like a candle, but it still didn't rid him of the guilt.
He'd felt guilty about a great many things in his life. Some he'd had control over, others he hadn't. Regardless of whether he was to blame or not, he wasn't the kind of person who could ever entirely block out the guilt of it all.
But-... But he wanted to be able to say that he'd done the best he could for Harry. Even if he'd done nothing but hone him into the perfect weapon against Voldemort, even if everything he'd done had been heartless schemes and ruthless plots, he wanted to do-... He wanted to do something to make that inevitable death a bit easier for the boy he'd grown so fond of over the years.
So he'd broken away from his original plans, he'd bent them, and he'd allowed him to escape from the house that he so loathed.
He couldn't exactly include him in the big things, couldn't really give the other youngsters easy access to his leadership just yet, so he needed to keep him away from the Order and its headquarters. But, outside of the Dursleys, there weren't really any other places left to send him if he couldn't be there.
Until he'd come up with an idea.
Voldemort was a very local threat, at least for now. So, as long as he could get Harry away from Europe, and away from people who might contact Voldemort out of the principle of the thing, he should actually be able to let him see the world. Or at least, a tiny bit of the world that he'd otherwise never be allowed to see.
Halfway across the planet, that's where he'd decided to send him. But he knew that Harry wouldn't exactly have been happy to be placed carelessly in a new 'prison' of sorts, and after weighing the many risks involved, he'd finally decided to take the boy's wand away from him. It wasn't as if he could use it to cast spells, after all, not even if he was on the other side of the planet, the Trace was a very impressive piece of magic like that.
He'd expected to catch some grief for Harry's new placement, and he did indeed receive quite a bit of it. But that only further proved that he couldn't risk letting Harry use his leadership amongst the young ones to try to take the fight to Voldemort. It would derail too many of his plans.
Finally wrapping up the meeting that hadn't really done much of anything at all – other than assure everyone here that they were all still alive, and still fighting – Albus turned his attention to the door as it was opened and Miss Granger and Mr Weasley came almost tumbling into the room.
A glimpse of white feathers made Albus blink. They'd only just sent her off a few days ago, and it was quite unusual for Harry to write back so quickly unless he had something very specific to tell someone.
He felt his amusement at seeing the two teenagers sobering at the thought.
Halfway across the world, without a wand, and in another country, had Harry still managed to land himself in trouble somehow? Albus nearly laughed. Of course he had. He was Harry Potter, and he couldn't keep his nose out of trouble even if the fate of the entire world would've hinged on it.
XXX
Harry took a deep breath and focused on making breakfast.
Matsu was the fourth, and though she'd actually asked she'd been sneaky enough about it that he hadn't really realized what he'd agreed to until she'd kissed him.
To some degree, he really wanted to be angry at her for that, but at the same time he was getting the feeling that it'd actually been a somewhat honest misunderstanding from Matsu's side of the equation. She'd come to ask him about being winged, and he'd somehow managed to completely miss the hints that she was dropping about her 'reacting' to him.
In the end, he couldn't exactly blame her for trying to convince him to wing her – because apparently Sekirei were about as capable of keeping themselves from trying to wing themselves when reacting as the average human was in controlling when and how they sneezed – and it was really his own fault for not catching what she was actually asking from the get-go.
But it still grated.
He'd been in this country for about ten days now, and he'd been kissed four times by four different people. Why couldn't he be this popular with this kind of stuff back before the Yule Ball, when it might've actually mattered at all?
Still, he was expecting Dumbledore to drop by any moment now, and he didn't have the faintest clue about how he was supposed to deal with that mess once it arrived. Oh yes, the old man would probably pay for his stay at the inn, and that was more than welcome, but he would probably also try digging into what kind of mess Harry had managed to land himself in this time around.
And Harry still didn't actually know what kind of mess he'd landed himself in.
He knew that he'd somehow 'bonded' to four different people who weren't human, that there was some kind of grand tournament of violence with a fantastic prize at the end involved, and that the bonding process was classified by the crazy orchestrator of it all as 'marriage'.
Ignoring the legal complications of the implied polygamy, as well as the fact that Homura was very much a male, that still left the madman's claim with the rather blatantly obvious problem in regards to Kusano not even being old enough to look like a Hogwarts first year.
Harry was pretty sure that there were laws against that kind of thing. And if there weren't, then he was fairly sure that he was going to make sure that there would be laws against that kind of things the moment he got his hands back on a wand again.
XXX
Harry was the kind of person who could forgive someone for shooting him in the leg, as long as they'd been upfront and honest about it. That had been Matsu's conclusion after her observation of the teenager's behavior.
On the one hand, it was good to know that he wouldn't be blaming her for the slight misunderstanding that had led to her winging herself on him without his permission, on the other hand it again made her wonder about what exactly was happening in Britain.
Nasty scars, some of which were clearly applied through torture; nightmares of people being killed; his status as an orphan, yet seemingly entirely without any kind of legal guardian; the way he talked of his relatives, when he even bothered to mention them at all; the PTSD that most certainly didn't come from having had a peaceful life; the way he avoided physical contact like the plague; his attachment to his owl; and the way he'd sometimes pace around in his room like a caged animal.
Something was happening in Britain, something secret, something important, something dangerous, and Harry Potter was right in the middle of it. And he'd been right there in the middle of it for a very long time, because he was exhibiting an awful many signs that were consistent with child soldiers.
A British child soldier.
Matsu got the feeling that if anyone ever picked up on that, then whoever was responsible for it would've been left to hang. Possibly quite literally, even if they'd long since abolished capital punishment.
There were few places to imprison somebody like that, that wouldn't leave them open to their fellow inmates displeasure. And whilst the general rule was that it was pedophiles who were systematically killed by their fellow inmates, Matsu wouldn't put it past someone to decide that raising an innocent up to become some kind of child-soldier for reasons unknown would be classified as 'close enough' that they'd go for it.
Matsu watched as Harry almost painfully awkwardly patted Kusano's shoulder as she hugged him tight, and she decided that she wouldn't be above spreading false information.
Just in case someone wouldn't make that leap of logic without a push.
XXX
Kusano was still crying.
Their Ashikabi's headmaster had finally arrived, had paid for the teenager's rent with a friendly gratefulness to the landlady that was both honest and bittersweet. And then they had left.
Of course there'd been an argument. None of them wanted to let their Ashikabi out of their sight. But he had friends in a different country. Friends that he trusted, and for all that he was willing to forgive the Sekirei for winging themselves on him, he didn't trust a single one of them. Not even Kuu and her youthful innocence.
Their Ashikabi had left them, because he didn't understand what being an Ashikabi actually meant. He didn't understand that they'd put their lives in his hands the moment that they'd bonded themselves to him, that him dying was the same as all of them dying. He didn't understand why that should stop him from walking into what they'd all slowly grown convinced was actually an active war-zone.
Their Ashikabi could die any minute, and they couldn't do anything at all to stop it.
Kusano didn't understand that, didn't understand that he could be walking to his death any second, but she understood that he was gone, and that he wouldn't be there to make her breakfast in the morning anymore. And apparently that was more than enough.
Matsu was still desperately searching for clues – any clues – about where exactly this war-zone was, and how to get there, and how best to deal with the situation. Musubi was still too shell-shocked from being abandoned – by her Ashikabi – to do much other than stare at the wall. Homura had searched out Tsukiumi for a fight, because he honestly really needed to punch someone right then. And Miya was left to stare at them all in despair.
Harry had been a nice boy. Gentle, if a bit awkward, and both kind and brave. Yet, at first opportunity, he'd abandoned the bonds he'd made with his Sekirei for a chance to return to Britain, to his two best friends.
She couldn't really believe it. And perhaps that was why he'd left.
He didn't know what it meant to be an Ashikabi, because nobody had really sat down and talked to him about it, explained everything inherent in the bond and in the Sekirei Plan and in what it meant to be a Sekirei. They'd all thought that he'd be able to understand it himself in time, that in a few months he'd understand why they hadn't explained it to him from the beginning, that he'd needed to learn it for himself.
But he had pressing duties elsewhere, bonds that were stronger to him than the tenuous ones he's made with his Sekirei over barely a week of time. And so he'd left. He'd just left them all.
It was absurd, because even if the city wasn't in lock-down or anything, MBI would've never let an Ashikabi simply walk back out. They would've tracked him down, and they would've dragged him back kicking and screaming. Except they couldn't actually find him, he'd simply vanished of the face of the Earth, never leaving the country, but most definitely not remaining within it either.
Harry had done the impossible, and left his Sekirei to face the Plan on their own, whilst he went off to a war that she felt certain existed, but that nobody knew anything at all about.
It was horrifying in a way that she hadn't thought possible. And it'd been done because he was too loyal to leave his best friends to face the danger alone.
Truly, the path to hell was paved with good intentions.
XXX
Harry hadn't exactly been happy to leave. Not with how Kusano had started crying, not with the confused horror on Musubi's face, not with the fury that Homura had been so desperately suppressing, not with the betrayed resignation on Matsu's face.
It'd stung, to see them all so clearly despairing of his decision, even if it made him feel oddly warm to see them so desperately wanting to keep him with them. It felt nice to be wanted, even if it hurt to watch them in pain.
But that wasn't really important. He needed to get back to Britain and the war, needed to get back to Ron and Hermione. Needed to kill Voldemort.
Harry shifted, hyper-aware of the strange shape pressing against his ribs.
Matsu had told him to take it with him, begging him to keep it with him always, and though Harry still wasn't sure what the strange crystal-like thing was for, he got the feeling that it was important to her. Very important to her.
She'd in fact not looked at all happy to give it to him, as if it was something too precious for her to trust him with. But when he'd gone to pack his trunk, she'd been there to beg him to take it with him.
Harry still didn't understand at all what it actually was though.
XXX
[Time Passes]
XXX
Kazehana had never met Harry Potter, but she could sort of appreciate the weight of his accidental accomplishments.
She'd seen young little Kusano use thorn-bushes to tear cruelly into the flesh of her enemies, she'd seen Homura burn everything that came near him, she'd seen Musubi fighting with the merciless wrath of a berserker, and she'd seen Matsu dismantle MBI inch by inch almost as a side-note to her desperate search for their missing Ashikabi.
She'd seen Miya explain the Sekirei Plan and the role of an Ashikabi with eloquent ruthlessness that allowed for no misunderstandings, she'd seen Tsukiumi's endless worry as she followed Homura around and tried to douse his flames when she could, and she'd seen Uzume's pity.
Yes, Harry Potter had left many traces on the people who'd met him, or were close to someone who had.
He was the Ashikabi who'd left his Sekirei behind. He was the Ashikabi who'd abandoned his fated ones to a madman's games. He was the Ashikabi who'd abandoned Japan for a war-zone that nobody could find.
He was the Ashikabi whose Sekirei had dismantled the Sekirei Plan.
Yukari seemed to think that he was worth hating, and from how Kusano cried herself to sleep time and again, perhaps she was right. Shiina didn't seem to have it in him to truly hate though, always falling short in a sort of defeated despair.
As for herself, Kazehana's feelings on the matter were probably closer to disgust. That this Ashikabi had done so many things by simply not being there to keep his Sekirei from spiraling away into madness. It was cruelty and it was neglect, and it left a bitter taste in her mouth.
But she'd never met Harry Potter, so when a dark-haired teenager with green eyes and battered glasses appeared at the Izumo Inn's doorstep, she glanced him over curiously and wondered whom he was there to see.
XXX
He looked tired, but content. And it was only in that moment that Homura realized how truly haunted their Ashikabi had been when they'd originally met.
He'd grown taller, which was probably to be expected. Kusano had grown taller too, though the knowledge that he hadn't been there to see that happen was more than a bit painful.
He'd abandoned them. No matter how pressing his secret war might've been, no matter how kind and forgiving he'd always seemed, he'd still abandoned them. And it hurt.
Musubi slapped him, the sound of it ringing out clearly in the silence of the inn.
Harry blinked at her, a bit startled, a bit confused, a bit pained. And the worst of it was the he honestly didn't understand what he'd done.
He'd broken their hearts, all of their hearts, even if they probably shouldn't have grown so attached to him, even if only Musubi and Kusano had truly thrown themselves recklessly head-first into love.
In the end, the teenager shook it off, and turned his attention to Matsu who'd just entered the room.
"I don't know why you did it, or if you even knew, but thank you." He said it calmly, carefully, speaking the words as if they were painful and raw, but something that he still believed needed to be said.
"It activated." Matsu nodded in understanding.
The teenager closed his eyes, face tellingly blank. "Yes. I suppose that's what it did." He shook his head and stared at her again. "And I survived."
Matsu – always so grim these days – nodded again. "That was the point."
For an instant, a flash of something eerily close to hate flickered behind his eyes, before he sighed in defeat. "I see."
Homura frowned at them, trying to make sense of what they were speaking of-...
Homura paled. There had been eight Jinki, and yet one of those Matsu had stolen, except she didn't have it anymore, and it hadn't ever been taken away from her, so she must've given it away.
He'd always known she could be ruthless, he'd grown used to it as they all found different ways to cope as they tried to deal with the loss of their Ashikabi. But from the way she was speaking, she'd given him the Jinki with the express purpose of it activating somehow. Activating and keeping him perfectly unharmed.
Homura knew only one thing that the Jinki could really do to 'protect' in such a fashion. And the only thing that would do that was the exact same reaction that had killed Miya's husband. An inverted killing-sequence.
She'd sent him away with a bomb that would kill every regular human within reach – every person not Sekirei or potential Ashikabi – without him ever knowing that he was carrying it.
Musubi was still breathing heavily, her eyes wet and her face bitingly cold. Matsu remained languidly uncaring that she'd used their Ashikabi as a way to kill god knows how many people. Homura was still reeling a bit from that particular bit of news. And Kusano was staring up at him with an expression that was a complicated mix between hate and hope.
They'd all been damaged, Homura probably the least of them all. Even if he still sometimes went out just for the sake of burning something to ashes. It was hard to say who'd had it the worst.
But he was back now, and there was an indignant kind of anger to that – because they'd survived without him, and now he was back as if nothing had ever happened at all – and it made everything taste like ash in Homura's mouth.
XXX
He hadn't expected how much it'd hurt them.
He'd understood that it'd hurt them that he'd left. He'd understood that they'd wanted him to stay with them. But he hadn't really expected that pain to linger with them.
In hindsight, perhaps he should've. He wasn't sure exactly what being an Ashikabi meant, but it included some kind of bond. But he'd barely managed to keep himself alive in the war, and no matter how good Musubi was at punching things, or Homura at controlling fire, he couldn't even begin to imagine trying to track down Voldemort's horcruxes with the lot of them tagging along for the ride.
They'd needed to move, to hide, to disappear through the cracks, and a Britain ruled by Voldemort had been no place for anyone who couldn't do that. The Sekirei would've stood out like sore thumbs with their distinctive flashiness.
No, he didn't regret leaving them behind. But perhaps he could feel guilty for it, even if he didn't entirely understand why it'd hurt them so badly that he'd left them.
He'd had a war to fight, and maybe he hadn't exactly been able to share the details of the importance of that with them, but-...
Harry sighed, he wanted to defend himself, he wanted to defend his choice, but however inadvertently, he'd definitely hurt them. And they were allowed to hate him for that.
They certainly wouldn't be the only ones who hated him.
Even Hermione had been a bit horrified to learn just what his suicidal walk to his own death had ended up causing.
Oh, Hogwarts had been safe. The people hidden behind their walls perfectly protected. But the Death Eaters had never even been given a trial.
They'd died with Voldemort, and Harry... hadn't.
He still wasn't sure how Matsu could've been so certain that that magical thing hadn't killed him along with the rest of them. But he still remembered staring at Hagrid's unmoving body, and knowing that this too was on his hands.
Some kind of magical discharge, that was Hermione's best guess, and though Harry had never told her about Matsu's gift, he could guess that keeping that particular a secret had probably been for the best. Bad enough that that kind of thing had been released through some kind of accidental fluke – even against murderers – he could only imagine how much worse it might've been had they known that it'd been caused by a device that someone had given to him.
But, no matter his thoughts on the matter, the end result had been Harry alive and the war ended.
His scar didn't even so much as itch anymore.
So of course he needed to thank her, even if he might want to curse her for it.
Perhaps he should've waited a few more weeks to visit this place, to return to Japan. Perhaps he should've helped with repairing Hogwarts and the other places where the Death Eaters had run roughshod over. Perhaps he should've taken Ginny up on her offer of a celebratory kiss.
But he-... he didn't want to. He wanted to see these four people that had wanted him to stay with them.
And now he'd seen them. They'd been hurt that he'd left them, and that hurt had morphed into anger over the almost two years since he'd seen them last.
Musubi actually slapping him kind of drove that point home rather perfectly, even without the wariness on Kusano's face, or the coldly polite expression Matsu was wearing, or the way Homura's fists kept clenching as if he wanted to punch something.
He wasn't sure if he was welcome here anymore, and that hurt in a way that he hadn't quite expected.
And then Matsu opened her mouth again. "Right. Screw it."
Harry blinked dumbly at how the woman was stepping closer to him.
"Close your eyes, Harry." She ordered him, and despite his many problems with authority, he decided to actually obey. Just this once.
Something soft touched his lips, and then something wet, and then it was inside of his mouth, and Harry's arms wrapped around her waist in response, because he recognized this and even if he wasn't entirely sure how this had been how it'd ended up, at least he actually knew how to do this. So he kissed her back.
XXX
Matsu retreated with a small smile, content in a manner strangely reminiscent of an insomniac finally managing to snag a few hours extra sleep.
Then it was Musubi's turn, and when she in turn pulled back – from the now rather flustered Ashikabi – her eyes were bright and teary.
Then it was Kusano's turn, petulantly demanding despite how rather obviously wary her Ashikabi was of it, and though it was merely a peck on the lips in comparison to the much more thorough tonsil-examinations of the other two, it appeared to satisfy her.
Homura stared at his Ashikabi, at his flushed face and confused expression, at how he was watching the other two with something like incomprehension and yet with the slightest hints of dawning realization, and then Homura stepped forward as well.
They were about the same height, and from the slightly panicked look on Harry's face, it should've been awkward.
It wasn't.
And even if he'd abandoned them, he'd done it with good intentions, he'd done it unknowing of how much it'd hurt them, he'd done it because he'd already sworn himself to duties elsewhere, and he'd returned to them the moment that those were finished.
Homura stepped back out of reach, lips still tingling pleasantly, and decided that maybe that was enough.
XXX
A/n: As I've been saying time and again to people who've asked about it, there's a reason that the Ashikabi Series features a young!Harry. The reason is quite simply that placing an old!Harry in that situation is just going to end up miserable for everyone involved.
The moment Harry goes to Hogwarts, he stops being an individual and starts being a tangle of many influences. The Dursleys want nothing to do with him, and so he's free; but Dumbledore wants him for his plans, Ron and Hermione wants him as a friend, Voldemort wants him dead, and the Wizarding World wants to be saved. And that's just the first book.
The thing, you see, is that Harry owes nothing to these people, and he's an individual with half the world on his shoulders and a stubborn-streak a mile wide. He'll be far too focused on Voldemort and the war to ever bother with figuring out what the Sekirei Plan might mean to him.
And trying to drag him into it after the war, instead, would just end up with a war-veteran who'd dismantle the Sekirei Plan in like a week by cutting a bloody swathe through everyone who tried to stop him (because even in canon he's seen enough horrible things that he'd react badly to the Kusano-situation).
The reason we got this little piece is because young!Harry would be torn apart into a very confusing individual if he ended up attached to an entire harem, and old!Harry would need at least more than one person, simply because if there was only one of them, they'd probably end up going completely around the bend after he abandoned them. And he would abandon them, however much he tried to be nice about it.
Again, there's a reason that the rest of the Ashikabi Series uses a young!Harry.
PS.
As for Homura's gender never changing? Well, I'm guessing there's a general lack of 'influence' from his Ashikabi due to the distance, so he wouldn't really have started to change. He might change later, or he might not, I don't know.