Disclaimer: I don't own DCMK or HP

Rating: T

Chapters: 1/4

Pairing: Eventual Kuroba Kaito x Kudo Shinichi [KaiShin]

Genre: Friendship/Romance/Fantasy

Summary: Shinichi is, quite possibly, the least enthusiastic student that Hogwarts has ever seen. It's quite the educational experience—for everyone.

A.N: This is another of those stories I've had lying around half done for a long time and finally got around to finishing. As noted above, it will have four chapters. I hope you enjoy it. :)

No Need for Magic

1: How it Began

In some ways, it was almost inevitable that they became friends.

They were two of only five students of Japanese descent attending Hogwarts at the time, and they were the only two of that five sharing a dormitory. This latter fact was a fluke brought about by the fact that there were only two new Ravenclaw boys that year. With so few of them, it had been decided that one of the second year boys' dorm rooms would be expanded to accommodate the two newcomers.

Add to that the fact that they looked strangely alike for two people who were not blood relatives and it was only natural that they notice one another.

For second year Ravenclaw student Kuroba Kaito, the appearance of a boy who could easily have passed for his twin was an unexpected but exciting surprise. Think of all the pranks they could pull!

On the other hand, Kudo Shinichi, though also surprised, was too busy wishing he was anywhere else to care one way or another about the existence of a lookalike.

Unlike the rest of the new students at the school, Shinichi had not wanted to go to Hogwarts (or any other wizard school), but he hadn't been given a choice. His mother had been thrilled that he had been invited to her old school and promptly packed him off. When he'd approached his father, who wasn't a wizard, for help, the man had only smiled and told him to treat it as a learning experience. In other words, he'd been no help at all. Shinichi wasn't sure why he was surprised. His father was never any help—especially where his mother was concerned.

The whole thing was monumentally unfair, he reflected, not to mention a waste of time. He already had plans for his future, and none of those involved magic, real or otherwise. He wanted to be a detective—had wanted to be one for basically as long as he could remember. And though he was well aware that that meant he had a lot to learn, he also knew that casting spells was not among the subjects necessary to a detective's education. Worse still, a glance over the wizarding curriculum revealed a distinct lack of relevant subjects. There was no science, no math, no literature, and only the history of their hidden society with nothing about the rest of the (rather more extensive) world.

So his mother was condemning him to seven years of learning nothing useful, which certainly wasn't going to get him into a proper college—forget a normal job.

To make matters worse (and it was certainly telling that they could actually get worse), the society into which she was shoving him didn't even know what a computer was, let alone the internet, which put a huge dent in his original plans to take real classes online in his spare time at Hogwarts. But that didn't mean Shinichi was going to give up. He would find a way around this setback. He just had to think.

In short, with all the issues already piled high on his plate, Shinichi had very little energy or thought space left over to care one way or another about a weird upperclassman who happened to look like his long lost brother. All he had done when Kaito initially introduced himself was to return the wild-haired boy's greeting with a polite one of his own before returning to pondering how he was going to fix this horrible twist his life had taken.

Though disappointed at the lackluster reception by his lookalike, Kaito was undaunted. He had never been good at taking no for an answer, and he made it a point never to give up on anything he wanted. He and this lookalike were going to be friends, and that was that. It would simply be too much of a waste of opportunities otherwise.

And so he set about observing the boy who was, quite possibly, the least enthusiastic first-year student Hogwarts had ever had.

Kaito noticed one thing right way about Kudo Shinichi.

Though all students in Ravenclaw had a thirst for knowledge and at least three to five books on hand at any given time, Shinichi's papery towers were always two to three times as high as anyone else's. It was as though, even seated in the corner of the Ravenclaw common room, he was determined to barricade himself away from the rest of them behind a wall of texts. And they weren't just any texts.

It took less than one week for Kaito to realize that more than half the books Shinichi was burying himself in weren't from the Hogwarts library or wizard catalogues of any kind. No. Shinichi's books were all muggle books being sent to him by someone called Professor Agasa. Many of those books were novels, but just as many were not. There were books and magazines on mathematics, all kinds of muggle sciences, law, current events and more.

"Is that your essay for Professor Longbottom?" Kaito asked when he leaned over Shinichi's shoulder to see him writing on a smooth, thin, lined paper about belladonna. Shinichi had already written several paragraphs detailing the biology of the plant and the environment in which it grew as well as its historical significance. Now, he appeared to be writing about the properties of its poison and its applications.

"No, it's not for Herbology," Shinichi replied without looking up. "It's for the life science class I'm taking."

Kaito cocked his head to one side. "Life science class?" As far as he was aware, there was no such class at Hogwarts. "I haven't heard of that one. Did they add a new first-year class or something? Who's the professor? I mean, if it's about plants, it's got to be Professor Longbottom, right?"

"It's not a class here at Hogwarts," Shinichi replied, still not looking up from his writing, though he did pause to check some of his facts with the textbook on common but dangerous plants he'd been reading. "It's a correspondence course."

Kaito blinked. "What, you mean one of those classes you take through the mail?"

"That's right."

Still puzzled, Kaito took another look at the books piled about his lookalike and realized that the life science textbook was not the only one that was not attached to any Hogwarts class. In fact, he didn't see a single Hogwarts textbook anywhere in the bunch.

"Are these all for correspondence classes?" he asked on a whim.

Shinichi checked another citation in his essay before answering with half a shrug. "Most of them. But not all."

So it seemed Shinichi wasn't reading all those muggle books just for fun. Kaito looked over the stacks again and shook his head, caught between wonder and befuddlement.

"Seriously, learning new stuff is great and all, but, if you wanted more classes, you could've talked to the headmaster. I mean seriously, why go to the trouble of taking mail order classes?"

Shinichi rolled his eyes at what he considered a ridiculously obvious question. "Because Hogwarts doesn't offer any of the classes I want to take."

"I did my research, if that's what you mean. Excuse me, but can we talk about this some other time? I have a lot of work to finish."

Kaito could see that rather obvious fact at a glance, so he magnanimously decided to leave Shinichi to his extracurricular assignments, but he fully intended to hold the younger boy to the implied promise of a future continuation of their discussion. Unfortunately, no opportune chances presented themselves until the holidays were bearing down on them. This was partly due to the fact that they did not share any classes but mostly due to the insane amount of outside schoolwork Shinichi had apparently volunteered to burry himself in. It didn't seem to matter when Kaito saw him, the younger boy was always either reading one of his muggle books or completing some project for his correspondence courses. The boy didn't even come to watch the Ravenclaw Quidditch team's first match of the year—which Kaito thought was a shame since that meant Shinichi missed Kaito's spectacular debut as the team's new seeker. Kaito had always excelled at flying, if he did say so himself, and he could play any spot on the Quidditch field. As a first year, he had often practiced with the team, subbing in whenever any of the players couldn't make a practice or were otherwise indisposed. When he'd joined the team officially, however, he had decided he wanted to be the seeker because he'd always had an eye for shiny things (besides, he often got accused of being a ball hog whenever he played as a chaser). Since he'd already more than proved his skills during his first year, no one had argued, and he'd gotten the position.

But soon the halls of the school were filled with the upbeat chatter of students eager for the holidays. Outside, the school grounds were blanketed in snow, gleaming clean and pristine as a Christmas card. On the inside, the castle's halls glowed with warmth and general good cheer. Knowing that the students were already heading off to vacation in their minds if not in body, the professors were more lenient with their assignments, and Kaito was able to catch Shinichi alone in a corner of the library one Saturday afternoon when most of the rest of the school population had gone out to play in the snow or skate on the ice that had formed on the lake.

"You're not going through textbooks today," Kaito noted as he dropped into the chair next to Shinichi's at the small library reading table. "Finally done with all that work?"

"For now," Shinichi replied, not bothering to look up from his reading. "The next set of course materials should arrive after winter break."

Having confirmed that Shinichi now had free time, Kaito just had to ask the question that had been bugging him all year now.

"Why are you taking all these muggle classes?" He picked up one of the novels Shinichi had stacked around himself and found it was a memoir written by a retired police officer who had caught a crazy serial killer some twenty years ago. He grimaced and dropped the book back onto its pile. It seemed most of the books around Shinichi were like that today—mysteries, both fictional and historical.

"I don't think I've seen you put half this much effort into your magic classes," he pointed out. "Instead, you're always working on these muggle course projects. Why?"

Shinichi frowned. Kaito wasn't the first person who had asked him about his strange and apparently ridiculous need to take muggle courses through the mail. He supposed he could see how strange it might all seem to them, but, for him, this was his way of keeping in touch with the real world. The world that existed outside of this hidden little alcove of society that didn't seem to have advanced at all in decades—maybe centuries.

But he felt that saying such things to the one person in this school that kept insisting that they were friends would probably be a little rude.

So instead he gave Kaito the other side of the explanation.

"I want to be a detective after school. So I need to learn these things."

Kaito had perked up at the declaration, indigo eyes bright with interest. "You mean you want to be an auror?"

But Shinichi only frowned and shook his head. "No. I want to be a real detective. The kind that anyone in the world can go to for help, whether they're from the magical community or the mundane muggle one."

He had half expected Kaito to laugh or make some comment about how he should most definitely be focusing on his magical studies then because good spells would be far more help than anything he could learn from a muggle textbook for someone intent on helping others solve problems. Such was the heartfelt belief of the majority of the magical community.

But, to his pleasant surprise, Kaito had only looked thoughtful.

"You know, when I listen to you talk, it's, well, it kind of sounds like you don't even like magic," Kaito said eventually, his tone the incredulous one of a person who couldn't understand how anyone with a brain could fail to see the incredible and boundless superiority of sorcery to the mundane but who thought it might be impolite to say so.

The genuine concern in Kaito's inquiry made Shinichi stop and give the comment some serious thought.

"It's not that I dislike magic," he said eventually. "It has its good points too, like being able to heal certain kinds of injuries like broken bones quickly where it would otherwise take a long time. And it allows some people to do things like turn into animals that other people can only dream about. But the thing is, for the most part, when it comes to everyday living and stuff, there's very little that witches and wizards can do that muggles can't. And, in many regards, I'd have to say that the wizarding world is rather behind the times."

He went on to explain exactly what he meant with a range of examples as Kaito listened, fascinated not so much by the contents of Shinichi's argument as the amount of thought that the younger boy had clearly put into the subject.

Take communication, for example. Shinichi pointed out that most non-wizards these days had mobile phones and emails, making long distance communication both fast, easy, and mostly reliable. Better still, anyone could learn to use these tools well in a minimal amount of time. Wizards, on the other hand, either mailed letters by owl or had to find a fireplace to stick their heads through. Maybe it was just Shinichi, but he felt it was obvious which side had the better deal, and it wasn't the side with the magic wands.

"But what about travel?" Kaito had pointed out. "With a port key, a wizard could travel from London to Tokyo in an instant. Muggle technology couldn't do that."

"No," Shinichi conceded. "But you can still make the trip in less than a day by plane."

Kaito lit up. "Hey, I've always wondered, how do airplanes stay in the air? I mean, they're made of metal, aren't they? Is there something that makes them levitate?"

Shinichi's face contorted into an expression that Kaito couldn't quite describe. It seemed somewhere between incredulous, exasperated, and maybe a little bit amused.

"There's no levitation involved," he blurted out. "It's all about air pressure. Here. I'll show you."

At which point Shinichi had run up to their room and come back a few minutes later with a book on the history of aerospace.

"It's not exactly technical," he said apologetically. "But it does talk about the basics."

And so they had spent the rest of the afternoon wrapped up in the world of muggle aircrafts, which, Kaito had to admit, were pretty cool.

That afternoon became the first of many. Though Kaito's father often drew inspiration for his work from muggle games, Kaito himself had always been more interested in his father's creations. In short, it had always been the magic that intrigued him—those little twists that transformed what might otherwise be mundane toys and games into spectacular and enjoyable works of art. Now though, he thought that maybe he should have paid more attention to his father's research materials.

Through Shinichi's books, he was seeing an entirely new world that he had never suspected existed. Much of what he had assumed or been told about muggle societies and abilities were superficial at best and often made Shinichi laugh (which was good, considering Shinichi laughed far too little to be healthy in Kaito's opinion, but which probably also meant they were wrong).

The discrepancies piqued his curiosity. Well, those and his desire to get to know his lookalike better.

X

"I've decided to take Muggle Studies this year," Kaito declared when he'd cornered Shinichi on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of his third year.

Shinichi, however, was too busy feeling morose over his failed attempts over the summer to convince his parents to let him go back to a normal school instead of subjecting him to a second year at Hogwarts, and so he only grumbled something incoherent and returned to hiding in one of his mystery novels where all problems would eventually be solved.

Unperturbed, Kaito dropped into the seat beside the younger boy and pulled out several multicolored juggling balls. These weren't just any juggling balls, however, but a prototype of his father's that he had volunteered to help test out. Grinning to himself, he began by tossing the balls up and beginning to spin them into a basic juggling circle. The instant they were in the air, the balls began to sparkle like tiny little galaxies of different colors.

Catching the flash of rainbow lights out of the corner of his eye, Shinichi looked up.

Kaito gave no indication that he had noticed his new audience, but his juggling increased in speed. The miniature galaxies inside the juggling balls expanded, spilling out of the confines of their physical dimensions and blossoming outward. One moment, they were shedding brilliant showers of tiny stars, the next they were casting gauzy veils of light through the air in rippling cascades like a localized aurora. Then Kaito broke his circle into two. One became a whirl of red and gold flames while the other faded to an icy blue before the light fractured and rippled to become a glittering vortex of snow. Then the juggling balls began to leap between the circles which were soon not circles at all but other shapes barely visible behind the expanding, ever changing illusions. In a plume of shining water and aurora-colored smoke, the circles of fire and ice collided. Waves sprayed outward like the petals of a flower blooming only to fall away as a water dragon erupted from its heart. It twisted in the air, opening its jaws in a silent roar before it too disappeared in a fall of rain that became the shimmering surface of a sea at sunset. In a blink, the images changed again as a glass castle rose up out of the water. It shattered, and out flew a great bird that flew in a great circle before darting off, leaving a handful of feathers to drift to the ground. Before they could actually touch down, however, Kaito snatched them from the air, and they were just juggling balls once more.

He turned a broad grin on Shinichi. "So? What did you think of my show?"

Shinichi started, realized he'd been caught staring, and blushed. "O—oh, um, it was cool. Do the pictures change depending on the juggling speed and the trajectories of the balls?"

Kaito beamed. "That's part of it. The number of balls being used and the number of times they are tossed by the same hand matter too. Then there's a mental aspect and a few verbal commands. My dad designed them to help performers tell stories."

"Seems like it might be difficult to use well if you aren't well coordinated," Shinichi noted.

Kaito sighed. "That is a problem we're having. So Dad's been trying out making specific balls and ball sets for specific scenes and effects that storytellers might need. It's all a bit complicated, but I think the end result should be awesome."

"It certainly will make great shows," Shinichi agreed. "Enhance oral storytelling and transform it into an entirely new art form."

"Exactly! That's what Dad wants to do with them. Reinvigorate the craft of oral storytelling and street performances."

Shinichi listened with growing interest as Kaito described some of his father's other works and games. In his brief exposure to wizarding games, he had learned about Quidditch, wizards chess, and things like Exploding Snap, but none of those games had kept his interest for long. He might have enjoyed the chess at least if the pieces weren't always so uncooperative and hard to talk to so that the fact that they moved was just an annoying and unnecessary extra to an otherwise perfectly decent game.

The wizard games and toys that Kuroba Toichi was creating, however, sounded much more like modern muggle games reborn through magic and ingenuity.

Noticing Shinichi's interest, Kaito hopped up and moved to his trunk. Some rummaging later, he returned with a copy of the Clover Kingdom catalogue. "Here."

Shinichi leafed through the catalogue while Kaito sat beside him and shared anecdotes and little facts about his father's work. He was gratified by the way Shinichi's big blue eyes lit up when they came to the puzzles part of the catalogue, and the younger boy began asking questions which Kaito was more than happy to answer. They spent the majority of the remainder of the train ride discussing Kuroba Toichi's many contributions to wizarding entertainments and the correlation between his work and modern muggle games.

"You know, if you'd like, you can come to my place over the holidays," Kaito offered. "I can show you Dad's workshop and everything."

His offer seemed to catch Shinichi by surprise as the younger boy stared at him, wide-eyed, before dropping his gaze.

"I'll have to ask my parents," he said quietly before peeking at Kaito with a shy, uncertain smile that held none of the aloofness he often barricaded himself behind. "If it's all right, I think I'd like that."

Kaito vowed then and there that he would make the trip happen no matter what.

Fortunately for everyone, the elder Kudos were quite amenable to the idea of their son going to a friend's house for the holidays. If anything, Shinichi suspected that his mother at least was overjoyed that he'd actually made a friend. In any case, they gave their permission without a second thought—which meant Kaito didn't need to employ any of the dozen or so plans he had concocted for spiriting Shinichi to his house for Christmas (it wasn't really kidnapping, he'd reasoned, if the subject wanted to go. And since he planned to put Shinichi back, he didn't see how borrowing him for a while for his own good was a problem. Admittedly, he never shared either the plans or his reasoning over them with Shinichi because he sort of suspected that his friend might not entirely agree, and the last thing he wanted to do was to scare Shinichi away right when Kaito was finally making some progress in breaking through his walls).

It was roughly a month before the aforementioned holiday trip that Kaito noticed another unforeseen result of their conversation on the train. He made the discovery quite by chance when he came upon Shinichi in the library. Of course, there was nothing unusual about finding a Ravenclaw student in the library. Everyone in their house collected knowledge like magpies. But, in the past, Shinichi had always preferred to spend any free time he had studying up on his non-wizard world materials or enjoying new novels. Today, however, Shinichi was actually collecting historical texts on subjects that Kaito knew for a fact that second years didn't cover. There were books on culture and traditions as well and even a compilation of wizard fairytales.

"Ah, we're making progress!" Kaito crowed, looking through the top few books on the pile Shinichi was making on one of the reading tables.

"What do you mean progress?" Shinichi asked more than a bit warily. "Progress towards what?"

"Towards showing you that the magical community has awesome things in it too. I mean, I'd hate to imagine how unhappy you'd end up if you spend the next six years believing that you're wasting your time. It'd just be a shame, not to mention unhealthy."

Shinichi blinked once, twice, then, much to Kaito's delighted surprise, started to laugh.

It really was, Shinichi reflected, all thanks to Kaito that he was finally able to find a silver lining on this cloud of his. First, it had been because the older boy was just so persistent and, well, friendly and easy to talk to that Shinichi had found himself opening up to Kaito completely without meaning to. And before he had known it, they had become friends. Then Kaito had shown interest in his muggle world studies and even begun studying with him. Now Kaito was even taking Muggle Studies as an elective and bringing his class books to Shinichi to discuss which parts were accurate and which were behind the times or just plain false.

From the start, Shinichi had found wizard society frustrating largely because of their lack of understanding of—and lack of a desire to understand—any part of the world that did not involve their secret lives. But such things worked two ways, and he refused to be like that himself.

So Shinichi had decided that it was time that he stopped moping and started making use of the resources he had been given. He would learn what he could from both worlds then use all that knowledge together to become the best detective that he could possibly be that anyone could go to if they were in need—anyone, including witches and wizards.

X

His first Christmas holiday at the Kurobas' opened Shinichi's eyes to a whole new side of magic. One that, he found himself forced to admit, he might actually, ever so slightly, enjoy.

The Kurobas lived in an all-wizard town tucked away in a magically hidden portion of the French countryside. The place was considerably larger than the village near Hogwarts—or so Shinichi had been told as, being only a second year student, he was not yet permitted to visit said village. It was a thriving settlement surrounded by vineyards, and it had two major exports: wine and games.

Clover Kingdom was the most famous of the game crafting workshops town, but it was far from the only one. There were specialists like The Grandmaster's Keep, a small shop situated smack in the middle of town that specialized in wizard chess sets. The craftsmen who worked there explained to a fascinated Shinichi how they carefully considered and designed the personalities of each piece in every set they made in order to create different playing experiences. The owner, Kaito told him, loved history, and his earliest customized chess sets had been based off of historical figures and been used to demonstrate the flow of old battles. Over time, he had found that learning to command different types of chess pieces was an interesting way to teach people how to lead—how to understand their teammates and how to negotiate with them in order to reach a joint goal.

"Mom set up a small local school where the kids can go to learn your basic figures and reading and stuff like that since most magic schools don't cover basics. Anyway, the guys from the Grandmaster's Keep bring new chess sets down to the school once a week, and we got to direct our pieces to help us do things like build models and negotiate with other kids for resources and things. Of course, we played chess too, but that wasn't really the point. It was about learning to interact, listen, and just grow as people."

"I guess there really can be good reasons for chess pieces to talk," Shinichi mused as they left the workshop with a brand new chess set each that had been presented to them by the Grandmaster himself after speaking to them each in private. He had instructed them not to open their sets until later, so neither boy knew what exactly their chess sets were going to be like, but there was a certain excitement in the air at the anticipation of it.

"I think I finally understand. It's not about just playing the game, it's about getting to know your team and learning to lead."

"And making friends," Kaito agreed, grinning.

The look he shot Shinichi as he said that made the younger boy blush and duck his head. "That too, I guess."

Kaito only laughed.

It wasn't, Shinichi reflected, that magic was better—no, never that. But though it wasn't better, it wasn't worse either. It was just different, with its own advantages and disadvantages like any other field of study.

The last of Shinichi's reluctance to complete his studies at Hogwarts finally dissolved then.

But he was still determined to keep up with his correspondence courses. He fully intended on going to university after Hogwarts, and that was that.

Kaito was the first to notice Shinichi's new attitude towards his studies at Hogwarts, but he wasn't the only one. Their professors noticed because he had begun to ask more questions in class, though they probably thought nothing of it. Just a student finally getting into the swing of things. Their housemates were rather more startled since, before, all Shinichi ever seemed to want to do was to read his muggle books. Now, though he still read a lot, he did occasionally agree to join their discussions and games. Wizard board games were quite popular among Ravenclaw students, and a new player who could hold his own in any strategy game was always welcome. And so, by the end of the year, Shinichi was almost surprised to realize that he had made friends other than Kaito.

There was Shiho, a cynical girl from America with a sharp tongue who was the top of the school when it came to working with potions even though she was only a fourth year. She was working on developing new potions of her own, and, to Shinichi's delight, she too was studying muggle chemistry in her spare time. They often worked on their chemistry and potions assignments—for school and for their independent studies—together while Kaito was off practicing with the Quidditch team. When she asked if he would be interested in assisting her with creating her line of new potions, he found himself agreeing, flattered by the indirect praise. After all, Shiho would never have asked if she didn't believe he could be helpful to her work.

The other friend he made was one Hattori Heiji. Like Shinichi, he had come all the way from Japan, though he was in Gryffindor instead of a Ravenclaw. Shinichi had run into him purely by accident the first time he had gone to watch one of Kaito's official Quidditch matches. The game had been between Ravenclaw and Slytherin, and so Hattori, being a typical Gryffindor and therefore rooting against the serpent house, had sat down next to Shinichi in the stands and asked him why he'd brought a book to the game. Then Heiji had noticed that the book was A Study in Scarlet and recognized it. Of course, then he'd said he preferred a different author who, he announced, was way better. The resulting argument had lasted nearly the entire game, but Shinichi did glance at the field just in time to see Kaito's moment of triumph—a.k.a. the moment he caught the Snitch, so Kaito decided that he didn't have to do something awful to Heiji after all.

Especially since, at the end of the year, it was Kaito that Shinichi came up to and, blushing a rather becoming shade of pink, invited to visit his home in Japan sometime over the summer. He'd already asked his parents, and they were okay with it even though they were currently in Hawaii themselves.

Kaito had leapt at the opportunity, swinging the smaller boy into an excited jig as he talked about how he'd always wanted to go back to Japan again. He'd been there before to visit his grandparents on his father's side before they'd passed away, and he would love to see all those cool Japanese games and robots that Shinichi's books had mentioned.

So it was that, when their parents met them at King's Cross station, they all ended up having dinner together, after which it was decided that Kaito would fly to Japan with the Kudos and spend the whole summer at their house.

Kaito could have bounced off the walls, he was so excited, especially since this would be his first time riding in an airplane. Now he knew how they worked in theory, but reading about it just wasn't the same as experiencing it.

He wasn't even really all that disappointed when he found that all he would get to do was sit on a seat and maybe look out of a tiny, round window at the distant earth below. It wasn't boring because it was new. And, when he got tired of nothing but rolling clouds and bags of airplane snacks, he got to watch Shinichi sleep in the seat beside his.

The younger boy's face was so peaceful in slumber, completely untouched by the frown that so often marred it while he was awake, and that serenity made Kaito's world still when he looked upon it. Seeing Shinichi content and so relaxed made him happy, he realized.

He also realized that, in the two years since they had first met, they had both grown, and the similarities between their faces had somewhat diminished, though they could still easily pass for brothers. Shinichi's features were just more…delicate than his own, perhaps taking after his actress mother. His lips were full and his eyes, when they were open, were the most brilliant shade of sapphire blue that Kaito had ever seen.

When the plane began to descend, Kaito was startled to find that he had spent almost half of the flight just staring at his friend's sleeping face.

Not sure what to make of that, he decided to forget that he had been thinking about how pretty the younger boy's face was becoming for now and focus on learning more about the place Shinichi had come from.

Summer flew by in sunshine and laughter, games and new friends as Kaito got his first taste of modern muggle city life.

He learned how to play soccer, though not very well since he didn't particularly like to pass the ball to anyone except Shinichi. He was in awe of the local arcade, and he dragged Shinichi there almost every day for a week to play the many games, brainstorming ways that Clover Kingdom might be able to adapt some of them for the wizard world. He also spent several long hours pestering Jii, an old friend of his father's who also lived in Tokyo, to let him learn to ride a motorcycle. But the old man had very firmly said that no, thirteen—"I just turned fourteen!"—year old children could not get motorcycle driving licenses.

"I'll own my own one day," Kaito declared, and Shinichi had to laugh.

When Kaito finally had to go back home two weeks before the start of their next term, he left with great reluctance—and a new Nintendo gaming console complete with a box stuffed full of games as well as a book on muggle magic, which he found both amusing and fascinating. He also now had his own cell phone, though they weren't sure if it would work in his town, and a basic laptop loaded with a variety of interesting programs that didn't require internet access.

He was a wizard on a mission: to learn all that he could about the latest and most entertaining of muggle technologies and culture.

TBC