Disclaimer: I do not own anything but this idea for a plot and alternate storyline. The characters and places mentioned, except for a few created by me, belong to the creators of either "Yu Yu Hakusho" or "Harry Potter" and any resemblances to people, living or dead, are purely the figment of my, or your imagination. Oh, and please don't sue me; I don't have money, I even have to go to a community college that I can't really afford either.
First off, I just want to tell everyone how happy I am for the reviews. Thank you so much to all the new reviewers, and for all the people who have continued reading this. It just makes me feel like I've actually accomplished something. Now, because of school and work and the play, I won't be updating often, but I got so many reviews that I had to. This is only the first half of the chapter, and the other half will be posted once I finish it…. I really don't have time to write, but you seem to really like the story and…. (goes off and cries happy tears) I'm also in the process of changing all of the tenses throughout the entire story.
Anyways, secondly, this chapter may be a little suggestive to possible pairings, but I assure you that the only pairings in this fic are mostly canon (Kuwabara/Yukina, Hiei/Mukuro-it actually is close to canon I swear, Keiko/Yuusuke and Kurama/Kurama-sorry, bad joke.) No, I don't count the Kurama/OC because well, I'll have Hiei explain that better later, but it wasn't love, it was just the whole "make Mother happy with grandkids" thing. Besides, the demon kids are too young for that, at least that's what Hiei and Yukina think, and Hiei's got a sword and a dragon, and if he was real and read this he'd probably try to kill me for making him a responsible father. So, without further ado…
Chapter 9
Can't Sleep, Beaked Penguin Teddy Bears with Ears for Wings Will Eat Me
The stone floor is cold beneath his feet as The-Boy-Who-Lived creeps down to the Gryffindor common room. His roommates lie asleep upstairs, and Harry envies them. He is too restless, too anxious for tomorrow, too afraid of what sleep may bring.
'Bloody hell,' his mind borrows Ron's favorite curse, 'I'm not afraid to sleep, I just don't want to.' Par of him adds that he may as well sleep through class, another wonders if anyone would care if he skipped class instead, and deep down Harry knows that the cause of his sleepless nights is right in his hand.
Or more exactly, the picture he holds in his hand. A beautiful young woman in a wedding dress stands next to her new husband with the best man moving behind them both to hold the two together, so he can mar the photo with a pair of real white, fluffy, waggling bunny ears floating over the groom's head. The bride seems to be laughing at the antics, and Harry seriously considers crumpling up the magic photo and throwing it away.
"The faces, the faces of the dead just won't go away." The boy's voice is merely a whisper, his face a contortion of anger, fear and frustration.
"And they never will. 'The dead haunt the living in order to prove that they really existed. If they are forgotten, then they never lived.'" Harry jumps at the soft voice, nearly tripping over his own feet as he lands.
Behind him, as far away as possible from the dying fires, lies the pretty aqua-haired transfer student. She stretches once on the cold stones before standing, wearing only black boxer shorts and a thin pale blue girl's t-shirt. In her arms a white pillow is clutched, 'probably the one from her bed,' Harry notes. He continues to stare a little, both in surprise at her presence, and her appearance. Smooth, well-toned muscles reveal that the girl is stronger than she looks.
"Sorry," Hina starts with a thin, tired smile, "Didn't expect anybody to get up until dawn."
"Couldn't sleep either?"
"'Course not. It's too hot in the dorms, and my brother's all the way down there somewhere." She points down and slightly to the right, and for some reason Harry doesn't ask how she knows where the Slytherin dorms are. "And my cousin's over there somewhere too." She points in a new direction slightly below where they stand.
"You miss them." It is not a question, so Hina merely explains why.
"The three of us slept in the same room for years; I kept looking at the windowsill expecting to see his silhouette, and the other girls yelled when I opened the window just in case he tried to come up here. It was driving me crazy by being empty."
"Strange." Harry replies before asking a question that has plagued him since she spoke up earlier. "What you said earlier, about the dead haunting the living, where did you hear that?"
"Keisuke's dad, Uncle Yuusuke." She stifles a laugh with the back of her hand, "There's more to it though. It ends with 'But how should I know, I just haunted my friends 'cause there was nothing else to do at the time.' You should have seen everyone's faces when he said that. Uncle Kurama and Uncle Kuwabara were nodding, but when he said that they nearly fell over. Well, Kurama pretended to and Kuwabara lost his balance when he tried to pretend to fall, so he really did." Hina finally realizes she is rambling from the funny look the boy has given her. "Anyways, there's nobody who hasn't lost somebody in my family, and we all have to learn how to deal with it on our own. But if you ever need someone to listen, I'm here."
Before Harry really knows exactly what he's doing, he thrusts the old photo at her. The Koorime looks at the happy, currently waving trio before shifting her ruby gaze back to the boy.
"Their friend Lupin gave it to me after my godfather, in the middle there, died. It's my mom and dad from when they were married." He explains, not meeting her eyes.
"Do you blame yourself for their deaths?"
"Before I heard about the prophecy, no. But then I learned that Voldemort came after and killed my parents because the prophecy said that I would defeat him. And when I went to go find the prophecy, to hear what it said and to stop Voldemort from breaking into the Ministry, my godfather Sirius tried to rescue me and fell into a magical veil, one that is supposed to kill whoever enters it. All I know is that he didn't come back out, and if he was still alive he would have found me by now." Memories of the past come unbidden to his mind.
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Sirius, his black mane blowing about wildly from the force of the many spells in the room, casted spell after spell at his cousin. Lestrange fell to the ground beaten, but she fired one last spell at the animagus. He stumbled and fell into the darkness of the ancient portal, but no 'thump' sound reached Harry's ears, and no body landed on the other side of the veil, and in that moment, Harry's entire world shattered.
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"Do you think the dead can ever come back to life?" The words are spoken raggedly, and immediately after asking it, Harry feels a small headache coming on, a reaction to his inner pain.
"They can, but only in rare circumstances." Hina's response shocks the boy visibly, and she realizes that she must choose her next words carefully or she will reveal too much of her demonic heritage. "Usually the death itself has to be a mistake or completely unexpected by the, um, God of Death. And there must be a body, and the soul has to pass a test, or at least that's what Uncle Yuusuke had to do when he died the first time."
By this point, Harry is fully shocked and can barely stammer out a response. "Kei… Kei… Keisuke's dad d… died more than once?"
"Yeah, the first time not even the greatest of the gods could predict that such a punky, ill-tempered, delinquent of a 14 year old would die to push a kid out of the way of a speeding car. Of course it became a cosmic joke since the kid wasn't even supposed to get hurt."
"And the second time?"
"Some magic bastard tried to, um, what was it again?" She pauses to fabricate a reasonable lie, "Oh yeah, he tried to summon a creature from the depths of Hell to take over the world, and Yuusuke tried to stop him and got killed. But his, ah, phoenix brought him back to life."
Harry seems to accept this, and as he continues thinking on her words, speaks again, "Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix did that to me once."
"Hen." She snorts more delicately than her brother or father would, "Too bad your ah, godfather, whatever that is, didn't leave behind a body. He can't come back to live without one."
"Yeah." He feels like punching the sofa, but decides to wait until she leaves. 'But it's not like God would let him come back just like that.'
"You can't beat yourself up over it though, they're your family, and you have to take revenge for their deaths someday soon and teach everybody not to mess with those you care about."
'Wow, she's actually encouraging me to go after Voldemort.' Harry is reminded of how he spent his summer vacation, looking blankly into a candle or reading all night. How he would sleep the day away once he could no longer hold his drooping eyelids back. A few times, Uncle Vernon had forced him to eat when Aunt Petunia expressed the concern that the wizards would kill them if Harry died from starvation even if it was his own bloody fault. He manages to turn his thoughts away from those sad times by focusing on Hina's stories. "So, was Keisuke's father some kind of auror?"
"Guess you could call him that, after all, he, my dad, Kurama and Kuwabara did work to protect normal people from monsters and those abusing their magical powers, but there isn't even a real ministry of magic in Japan."
A flash of insight hits Harry, "So the two professors are here to fight Voldemort!"
Hina figuratively grabs a bat and smashes Harry's light bulb to pieces with her next words, "Then why would they be teaching? Dad would just go find and kill the bloody bastard. They're here for a different reason, though they won't tell us what it is, and we probably don't need to know. But hey, if I figure it out and it's okay, I'll tell you." She adds the last upon seeing Harry's disappointed look. "I'm going to try and get some sleep; you should get some too Harry-kun."
She promptly throws her pillow to the ground and lies back down. Turning to go back up the stairs, the boy takes a moment to say, "See you in the morning, um, thanks, and, what did you mean by 'Harry-kun'?"
"Hen. Just ask Keisuke-kun in the morning and get some rest."
"'Kay." Harry responds before going back to bed.
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Elsewhere in the castle, deep in the dungeons, a certain young fire youkai enters the Slytherin common room wrapped up in his dark green comforter. With a shiver, he moves an armchair so it is directly in front of the large fireplace. A sudden burst of youki ignites three fresh logs, and Hiroku curls up in the chair to sleep, as close to his sister as he can get tonight.
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"Shouldn't we wake him up?" A deeply masculine voice whispers.
"No. Hopefully he'll be late for class." Those words are Malfoy's.
Hiroku hears this and the sounds of other people preparing to leave the common room. His eyes still shut; the demon decides it must be nearly time for breakfast. A presence nears him, that odd little hanyou girl, and he opens one blood-red eye before she can reach over and shake him awake.
Kit pauses and seeing that he is already awake, draws in on herself with a hoarse whisper, "I just didn't want you to eat anyone because you missed breakfast."
"People don't taste good anyways." Hiroku rolls quickly out of the chair, and scrambles down the hall to change into clean clothes. The tiny girl hesitates a moment, taking in a glare from a few other girls before heading out to breakfast alone.
To Be Continued… once I'm done fixing up the other chapters….
