Title: Not What They Seem
Author: Manetsu
Summary: AU Shinigami: On a rooftop in London, two teenage Shinigami discuss future, past, and present. HP/DC x-over.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling and Detective Conan belongs to Gosho Aoyama.
Rating: PG, for Mentions of Swearing and Death.
Notes: Kind of experimental, will eventually have a multi-part explanatory prequel explaining how Harry had come to be a minor Shinigami, and perhaps a sequel to that, describing his sixth year as a Shinigami. Conan here is based off Icka M. Chif's Shinigami Universe. Actually, the whole thing is a result of reading those one too many times and wanting to write the HP one.
Later, Conan would wonder exactly why he had been on a rooftop in London while it was 1:00 am there. Somehow he would never quite figure out why he had gone there, of all places, or why he had ditched a perfectly nice September Saturday in the park to run around in England, where it happened to be freaking cold at night.
Not that it mattered anyway. He couldn't really feel the cold.
So somehow he ended up on rooftop of some twenty-story office building or another in the dead of night. How he had managed to pick the only one with another occupant was beyond him.
The other person (Or was it a person? Conan had never seen wings so battish on any humanoid. One could go so far as to say they looked almost draconic, much like his own.) had a midnight black cloak swirling about him. The glint of polished stone from the other's chest (the creature appeared to be male) distracted Conan from his cloak, and he recognized it as obsidian. Gazing at the demon, he faintly made out a black stone star holding the robe clasped about him, almost like wings with a mind of their own. His hair was a fairly messy nest of black, with some sticking up towards the back of his head, faintly covering an odd, lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead that he didn't pay much attention to. Fangs peeked out from underneath his upper lip, and his ears were slightly pointed, with an elfish look about them. A minor god of death His green eyes were dulled (he appeared to be in some sort of trance), but still amazingly bright; they glowed through the darkness and gloom like twin emeralds set into the young man's unlined face. Peering past Conan's physical appearance, he delved deep into his mind where Shinichi Kudo lay dormant, in change in some vague sense, yet still not quite there. Startled, Conan pushed the creature of the night out of his mind, breaking his trance. Only then did he seem to notice the small boy with bat wings sitting on the rooftop not twenty feet from where he stood.
"Hello," he said, with a quizzical air, as if puzzled by Conan's very existence. "Who're you?"
"Who're you?" While quite impolite, this was the only thing Conan could think of at the time, even though it did incur an impromptu staring contest between the two. Slowly, ever so slowly, a secretive "I know more than you do" type smile creeped onto the young man's face.
"Call me Kidan. The Shinigami, Kudo Shinichi, I presume?"
"Yes..." said Conan, finding three things immediately. He could tell Kidan wasn't the Shinigami's real name, but he couldn't think of a valid reason to force a birth name out of him if the demon didn't want to one. Besides, it could be his awakened name.
Of course, a Shinigami powerful enough to break into Conan's heavily-guarded-at-all-times mind was a thing to be very, very afraid of. This was a proper god, not just some human-turned-demon from off the street. He had had professional training, most likely from other minor gods. Perhaps he lived in some sort of semi-plane?
Lastly, if his name had reached this Shinigami, Kidan must be pretty high in status. Conan, after all, lived in Japan, and he could tell Kidan was plainly British. His accent betrayed him, even if the vocabulary was perfect. (Somehow, even when they're from opposite sides of the planet, two gods will always find some way to communicate. Slightly freaky, but hey, the whole business was reincarnated from freakiness.)
And Kidan chose that moment to begin giggling. Of all the things he could have done to creep Conan out a little more, he had to giggle. The unearthly sound rose high into the air and echoed unnaturally all around them.
"What's so funny?" He demanded.
"You're -giggle- scared of me."
"..."
"Oh, -hiccup- come on, you didn't really think I knew who you were, didja? You're the one who invaded my thoughts."
"I did not. You were grabbing at everything within 30 feet and pulling it in."
"Nope. You let your guard down while teleporting."
"I did not!"
This last comment sounded so high pitched and childish that Kidan began to laugh outright. Conan realized he had sounded like a second grader getting accused of stealing cookies, and had the grace to look only mildly annoyed.
When the laughter died away, Kidan asked, "How exactly did you find yourself ... chibi-fied? Didn't quite get that bit."
"If you must know," Conan responded, mustering up what was left of his bruised pride, "It was before I awakened. When I was a normal human. Err... or as close to normal as I could get."
And so, Conan found himself telling the tale of a genius teen detective who got just a little too nosy for his own good, force-fed a strange pill that was supposed to kill him, and how he woke up a few hours later with police men yelling about finding a little boy. After confusedly protesting being a "little boy," he had fled, found that he was, indeed, in a child's body. He managed to convince his next-door neighbor, a professor by the name of Agasa Hakase (Hiroshi?), that he was really Kudo Shinichi, and somehow ended up living with his girlfriend, Mouri Ran. From there, he began solving her father, Kogoro's, murder cases, and keeping an eye out for the "men in black" that had poisoned him. A year later, nothing had turned up by way of cures and assailants, but a girl by the name of Haibara Ai had revealed herself to be the creator of the drug that shrank them both and a member of the "Black Organization", Miyano Shiho. She had taken the drug (now referred to as APTX 4869) in a suicide attempt after the organization had taken her sister Akemi's life after promising to protect her. The raised hope was squashed quite soundly when their new ally had announced they wouldn't get anywhere without her research, notes and a sample. In the attempt to retrieve the data it was destroyed, and things had got quiet until a month before Shinichi's eighteenth birthday. Apparently one night Ran had sleepwalked up to the roof, waking Conan on her way. At first, Conan had silently followed her along, but when she hurled herself into the street four stories below, Conan had jumped after her and grabbed her. When an overly large pair of bat wings had sprouted from his back, he had nearly dropped her in shock. She had then woken up, said, "Conan?" noticed his wings, and started to thrash. Conan had managed to stun her with his watch and return her to her bed ("with no small amount of difficulty," Conan managed to add). When she had woken up, she thought it all a dream. Two months later when he transformed again (thus disproving his theory that it had all been a dream), Ai had shown up, announced that she was his Dark Angel, and had immediately began training Conan to use his newfound powers. [A/N: I didn't say this was going to make much sense, did I? I'll eventually have a page up titled "What You Don't Know" for the utterly lost and confused. It'll also have my views and beliefs on Shinigami and Dark and Light Angels.]
"So here I am," Conan explained. "A fully trained Shinigami in an eight year old's body."
"Tough."
"Wha?" Conan stared at him huffily. "That's all you're gonna say? I get turned into a child and a Shinigami, and all you say is 'Tough?!'"
"Hey, it's Nothing compared to my situation."
And so, Conan was told the story of a boy, who, at the age of one, was orphaned and cursed by the greatest Dark Wizard in centuries, who, in turn, was sealed from his body by the boy, whose name was Harry. Harry was sent to live with his terrible nonmagical ("Muggle," as Kidan put it) aunt, uncle, and cousin, where he was mistreated until the age of eleven, and a half-giant, named Hagrid, had informed Harry he was a Wizard, and whisked him off to a place called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He was taught magic, and viewed as famous because he sealed the Dark Wizard, whom many called "You-Know-Who." The Headmaster of the school, Dumbledore, told Harry that "Fear of the name increases fear of the thing itself," and so Harry called "You-Know-Who" his taken name, Voldemort. It was fitting, then, that in their first year, Harry and his two friends, Ron and Hermione, had gone into the bowels of the castle to protect a stone that could revive Voldemort and create a new body for him. Harry had nearly been killed in the attempt, and Ron was injured, but Voldemort did not revive. In their second year, a memory of Voldemort, sixteen years old, possessed Ron's little sister, Ginny, and set a Basilisk loose in the castle, and petrified a dozen students, including Hermione. Ron and Harry, along with their Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, went to the Chamber of Secrets, where the Basilisk was rumored to live, after Voldemort took Ginny down there to drain her energy and become reborn. Ron and Lockhart were separated from Harry when Ron's wand backfired and the tunnel caved in, and Harry had to go on alone. He somehow managed to save Ginny, kill the basilisk, and stop Voldemort from becoming embodied again, with only a phoenix, a sword, and a hat. ("The details are kinda hazy," Kidan explained, "But I do remember the sword falling out of the hat. Not quite sure how that happened.") Third year, a dangerous convict named Sirius Black had escaped from the wizard prison, Azkaban, and was rumored to be heading to Hogwarts. Harry found out that Sirius had been his parents' protector and best friend while they were alive, and that he had, supposedly, sold them to Voldemort. Kidan explained that this next part was very, very long and complicated, and he would simplify it by saying that Ron's rat was actually Peter Pettigrew, who had supposedly been killed by Sirius thirteen years before (Thus proving his innocence). But Pettigrew got away, and the next year, revived Voldemort using Harry's blood, and undoing the protection given to him by his mother when he was a baby. And, after a weird phoenix-like glowing-cage incident ("Later they told me it was Priori Incantantem," He said knowledgably, then paused, apparently confused. "At least I think. They mighta been pulling my leg." He sniffed.), he told the world about Voldemort's rebirth... - and they didn't believe him. ("They didn't believe you?" was said faintly be Conan "Story of my life." was the reply.) So her went through last year miserable, and at the end, when he, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Ginny's classmate Luna, and Neville Longbottom, a sort of class clown who never got anything right, went to a place called the Department of Mysteries, Sirius died, and he found out that there was a prophecy saying he had to kill or be killed by Voldemort. So he went back to the Dursleys' house, blew up at them, and Awakened. And, of course, the local officials ("From the semiplane where I live now.") showed up, wiggled around the Dursleys' memories, and took him home with them, and proceded to teach him how to control his abilities. So there he was, just after his return to Hogwarts.
"So. You're Harry Potter."
"Err... yeah."
"You don't act like him."
"The Awakening is a powerful thing."
"This I realize."
Kidan Stared at him. Then, of course, he just had to burst out laughing. The hair on the back of Conan's neck raised as the eerie sound again echoed all around them, making him choke on a breath he had taken (technically he didn't have to breath, but he was used to it.). When Kidan had quieted down, Conan said, "So."
"So?"
Conan smiled slyly and said, "Girl you like?"
The reaction he got was interesting, to say the least. Kidan started sputtering and attempting to start a sentence, but found he couldn't finish one. Extremely annoyed, he started swearing profusing, and finding that didn't work on the pint-sized detective, began making death threats.
Conan laughed at him... and for a moment – just a moment – they were just two more teenage boys. They didn't have problems, they weren't famous, they weren't in hiding, and they weren't Shinigami – they were just ... what they seemed.
But they were not.