Title: Flawed

Rating: PG-13 orT

Summary: Harry Potter/YYH crossover. When he is targeted by a group of magic-wielding strangers as a prize for their 'lord', Yuusuke discovers a gaping weakness in his demonic defenses. Luckily, Koenma has a plan to keep the Toushin safe, even if it involves sending Yuusuke undercover into a school full of wizards...

Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor Yu Yu Hakusho.

Pairings: None.

Warnings: Some violence, slight gore, and some smatterings of foul language.

A/N: Many people have been asking questions about this story, about the timeline, various characters, and why certain things have happened as they have. I'm not ignoring those questions by any means, but those questions will be answered later on in the story, so just bear with me, ne?

A/N 2: Sorry about the long wait, but I've started college and don't have a PC yet. I have to do my writing in the Student Learning Center between classes and work, which is a pain, but I'm chugging along slowly. The slow updates won't last much longer; I should be getting my laptop in a week and a half, give or take, and then updates will be a bit faster. Thanks for hanging in there!

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)) Chapter Five: A Grim Old Place ((

Yuusuke resigned himself to yet another trip by floo, which was rapidly becoming number one on his Most Hated Things list, beating out Toguro and dying by a hefty margin. This time, however, the trip was made with Yuusuke cradling the fragile egg in his palms as he concentrated on ensuring a safe arrival for both himself and what could be considered his new charge.

Snape was waiting for him at the other end, scowling around the opulent if somewhat dusty and shabby sitting room as though the furniture had mortally offended him in some way. Mindful that he was blocking the exit from the fireplace, Yuusuke moved swiftly to one side, just in time to avoid a collision with Draco.

The blond wizard absently brushed soot off of his robes, his silver eyes scanning the room perfunctorily. "Welcome to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place," he said. "I expect we're the only ones here right now, but others will probably be dropping by every now and then. Severus and I have been assigned to keep you company until someone else comes."

Snape grumbled something. Yuusuke was not sure whether it was insulting to something or someone or merely an irritated complaint in general. Draco made some sort of reply before turning back to the Toushin.

"You might as well settle in. Nothing much around here to do other than explore the library, unless you'd rather sleep."

Yuusuke considered the slight headache growing behind his eyes and decided that, while the second option sounded tempting, it was hardly wise to let down his defenses in the still-uncertain company of the two wizards. Draco seemed friendly enough, but the blond wizard had been shooting him strange looks ever since they had left the apothecary, and Snape, sullen and withdrawn though he might be, had the unmistakable aura of someone who would make a deadly enemy. The black-eyed man seemed aware of everything around him down to the smallest details, and Yuusuke knew he would have to keep the secrets of his heritage close to his chest to avoid arousing the older man's suspicions.

They were his hosts, and they had been nothing but polite, but Yuusuke was deep within enemy territory, and he could not afford to make mistakes. Mistakes would achieve nothing except a failed mission and one dead Toushin.

Yuusuke shook himself out of such dark thoughts.

In any case, more tempting by far than the thought of sleep was the memory of the strange parcel he had found while searching through his pack in the apothecary shop; he suspected that it might contain some of Kurama's special herbs meant to soothe pain or aid in healing for demons --Ever since Yuusuke had been resurrected as a demon, he found that human pain medications just did not work for him anymore.

"Sounds good," he replied. "Show me where to go, and I'll get out of your way."

As he ascended the stairs from the entrance hall with all the natural silence of a demonically agile martial artist (Draco had warned him of the consequences of making any sort of loud noise in that particular room), his mission briefing with Koenma replayed itself vividly through his mind.

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"Oh, no. You're going to teach."

Yuusuke blinked, pondering the unlikely possibility that he had not heard his employer correctly. "...teach?"

"Dumbledore assures Genkai that he will be more than capable of finding you a place on his staff. Once he heard of your troubles with Voldemort, he was more than willing to hire you." Koenma's eyes held an amused glint. "He's probably dying of curiousity over why Voldemort wants to get his hands on you so badly."

A flicker of irritation prickled in Yuusuke's chest. He barely resisted growling as he spat, "Are you completely nuts?"

Koenma jumped, startled. "Yuusuke--"

"You are nuts! It's a freakin' miracle that I passed high school at all; how in the seven levels of Meikai do you expect me to be able to teach math, much less magic, to a school full of wizards? If you put me in such a bad position from the beginning, then the odds of me surviving this nightmare are less than nil!"

Koenma waited with ill grace until the tirade ended, his pacifier bobbling as he chewed on it restlessly. "You're remarkable faith in my mental capacity nonwithstanding, I do want you to succeed. Haven't you heard what I've been saying? Dumbledore knows that you don't know magic. He knows you're from a different discipline. He's expecting you to be abnormal, and that expectation will allow you to slip up every now and again without dire repercussions... if, that is, you can hold that charming temper of yours on a nice, short leash long enough to complete the mission!"

Beside the doorway, the dark shadow that was the Jaganshi snorted. Yuusuke growled.

Koenma smiled stiffly. "I'm glad that we could clear that up. Any questions?"

Yuusuke conceded the point irritably. "Why a school?"

"Hogwarts isn't 'a school.' It's 'Dumbledore's school,' and as insane as Voldemort may be, he's not insane enough to take on the most powerful wizard in over a century. Because of it's wards and Dumbledore's influence, Hogwarts has become something of a bastion of the Light. It's the heart of the war against Voldemort and, incidentally, the safest place on earth for someone hunted by Death Eaters."

"I just have to survive not-so-friendly fire inside the 'bastion of the Light' until the mission is over." Yuusuke mentally tallied all his recent missions and decided that this one was more hairbrained than all of the others combined. "You still haven't said what you actually want me to do. Kill Moldy-Whatsit or get the scroll? Which is it?"

The infant god huffed around the bulbous shape of his pacifier. "Voldemort is incidental. Villain chump change. If there's a low-risk opportunity to take him out... do it. Otherwise, see what you can find out, find the Akumano scroll, and get it away from the humans. Steal it, burn it, or run it through a paper shredder and give it to that bird of yours to use in a nest, but we cannot leave that lying around for someone else to find."

Yuusuke smirked. "And once I've gotten the scroll and the nice wizards and the not-so-nice wizards are duking it out?"

Koenma arched an eyebrow. "What do you think? Get the hell out of the way."

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As it turned out, Yuusuke was assigned to a bedroom located on the second of many floors, in a room that was dark, gloomy, and home to at least three things that enjoyed Going Bump in the Night: a mouse (shortly released into the basement by the Toushin), a hairbrush that insisted on combing the fringe lining the edges of a blanket atop the bed (incinerated by justified use of the room's fireplace), and one unknown being or object that was still wearing on the demon's frayed nerves nearly three days later.

The house was insane!

While exploring the rather sizeable library late in the afternoon on the first day, he had been bitten --bitten!-- by a chair! The next morning, after brushing against a set of curtains, he had been dive-bombed by a strange, furry, winged creature that he later discovered was called a doxie. While searching through his room's closet that night, he had been attacked by a swathe of purple cloth that had tried, unsuccessfully, to strangle him.

When he had gone to Draco with the latest incident --otherwise known as "the straw that pissed the camel off to extreme proportions",-- the blond wizard had seemed only mildly surprised. "Thought the Weasleys had gotten all those old cloaks out of there," he had said. "Just tuck it in a box somewhere. Someone'll find it during spring cleaning."

Yuusuke did not bother to inform the wizard that the so-called 'cloak' (What sort of lunatic made a cloak meant to strangle people anyway?) had been relegated to the bottom of the oldest, dustiest wardrobe the Toushin could find... along with the body of one squished doxie and the battered remains of an ill-tempered chair.

Not only was Yuusuke on his guard from furry, poisonous pseudo-insects, rabid furniture, and murderous clothing, he also had to deal with that bedamned portrait in the entrance hall downstairs, the one of that ugly oban who just could not learn to shut up. Whenever anyone so much as sneezed in that room, the portrait sprang to life and set about screaming fit to tumble the walls down, and that one portrait in turn set off all the other portraits lining the hall. If Yuusuke knew who had come up with the bright idea of allowing paintings to speak, he would hunt the bastard down in Reikai and force the idiot to listen to the ear-piercing rants of the late Mrs. Black... and then the Toushin would kill the dunderhead again to make sure he had gotten his point across.

It was nearly three in the morning during his third night in the Funhouse from Hell when he was yanked rudely from a light doze (all he could manage in such bizarre surroundings) by the latest shrieks of the oban portrait.

Feeling like his ears were about to bleed and already ill-tempered from the near-perpetual headache that had haunted him since his arrival, the Toushin threw his blankets to one side, letting out a furious bellow of "Damn it!"

He left the hiryuu egg nestled safely among his clothes in his bag in front of the dully lit fireplace (the hiryuu needed warmth to recover enough to hatch) and stormed out of his room, intent on experiencing at least one night of undisturbed sleep in the wizard hellhole, one way or another.

The noise increased exponentially when he slammed his door open, as though Yuusuke had stepped into a solid wall of sound, the result of the combined screams of Mrs. Black and all the other entrance hall portraits combined. The reason for the portrait's awakening was obvious upon stepping onto the balcony overlooking the entrance hall. Clad in ragged gray robes, untidy strands of gray-brown hair falling around a wan face, a man that Yuusuke recognized as one of the many 'comers and goers' of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place struggled to close the moldy curtains of the screaming portrait... and it did not seem as though he were making much progress.

Yuusuke strode down the aged, uneven stairs, foregoing the last few feet by simply vaulting over the bannister. Feeling more as though he were deaf than simply overloaded by noise, he grabbed the stranger's shoulder and pulled him away from the curtains. "Shut up those other paintings! I'll deal with her!"

The stranger pulled away from Yuusuke's grip, tawny eyes wide with surprise, but after a short second of hesitation, he turned and began rapidly to stun the other portraits as Yuusuke said. The Toushin, in turn, faced the singularly unnattractive visage of the late Madame Black.

Grabbing fistfuls of moldy cloth in either hand, he tugged forcefully on the curtains, his demonic strength overpowering whatever magic was at work trying to keep the curtains open, and the screams of the oban shut off, leaving the house silent save for the weak wails of one of the smaller portraits on the end of the row, and a swift spell from the golden-eyed man ended that quickly enough.

Yuusuke glared up at the ancient curtains, wishing that he was not under cover so he could blow the damned thing straight off the wall... or, hell, straight through the wall. He was not picky. "I'd call you a hag," he growled, "but that would be insulting Genkai."

"You're stronger than you look."

Yuusuke turned to face the friendly --if a bit weighing-- gaze of the brown-haired man. The scents of lightning and fur and illness hund heavily around him, and Yuusuke wondered if he had pet dogs, because that was certainly what he smelled like... that, and like a human with a bad cold. "I get that a lot." Yuusuke took in the weariness apparent in the man's stance and the sickly color of his skin, but decided that whatever the problem was, it could not be anything too dire since he could not smell the stale scent of Reikai around him; Koenma did so love to have his ferrygirls check up on those soon-to-be-deceased. "You know Japanese?"

The man chuckled ruefully. "Not naturally. Today only, I'm afraid, or any other day that I can convince Albus or Filius to perform the charm. I'm Remus Lupin." He smiled self-consciously. "Sorry about... her. I'm afraid that I closed one of the doors too forcefully."

"Yuusuke Urameshi." He dipped his head in a sort of half-bow; Draco and Severus had gotten very tired of bowing as a Japanese courtesy very quickly. "And it's no problem."

"A pleasure to meet you. Since Draco and Severus are out for the day, I'm here to fill in."

Yuusuke frowned. "Out?" He reached out with his senses, searching through the dizzying tangle of reiki signatures and finding that Lupin's assertion was correct. It explained why he was not currently explaining to two ill-tempered, sleep deprived wizards why Madame Black had woken up, but still! "Out where?" He had not even heard them leave! What would they need to leave for in the dead hours of the night?

"A meeting at the school." Lupin waved the question away with practiced nonchalance, and Yuusuke's instincts perked up, filing the tidbit away pending further research. A school meeting in the middle of the night? Kuwabara would have caught the lie in that. "Grades from last year, that sort of thing. Boring, really."

"Yeah." Yuusuke was already planning possible ways to attend a 'school meeting.' "Boring."

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Yuusuke was reading in the library for most of the next day. Regardless of how friendly the wizard may have seemed, something about Lupin set Yuusuke's instincts clamoring in his head, and until he could figure out why, avoidance was the best policy. He tracked the other man's reiki signature as it muddled about on the first floor of the sizeable house, going between the kitchen, the sitting room, and the wizard's bedroom at random, lengthy intervals. At the first sign of the wizard attempting to enter Yuusuke's room, Yuusuke would have intervened, but his bag now held little more than 'muggle' items. The gems and the package of herbs from Kurama were tucked into the front of his robe, and the hiryuu egg was nestled snugly inside his sash against his belly --the area he would guard instinctively in a fight.

Despite the Japanese-English language barrier that still plagued him, there were books in the library that were very interesting nonetheless. Moving pictures of dragons and wizards and strange creatures that were like and unlike demons all at once-- it was a treasure trove of knowledge that Kurama would have sacrificed a tail to explore.

... especially considering that the kitsune thief would have been able to actually read the damn things, thought Yuusuke darkly as he looked between the picture of a man swallowing what looked to be a spiny teapot blowing square-shaped bubbles and the small section of Roman text that would have explained what in the four worlds the strange picture meant.

Ba-dump. Bump-thump.

Yuusuke's eyes twitched toward the sizeable, free-standing cabinet looming in the corner of the room. He had thought that he had heard a scratching noise from the cabinet earlier, but he had dismissed it as a threat when he had felt no youki or reiki other than the standard muddle of energy signatures that lay over everything, leaving his demon side twitchy, irritable, and longing for a good brawl.

Thump. Thump-ba-dump.

There was no denying the fact that there was something in there, though, and it was against his nature to let puzzles go unsolved... even in an admittedly dangerous environment that sported biting chairs, poisonous pixies, and homicidal cloaks.

Setting his book down on a nearby table, a spindly piece of work that did not seem as though it would support it's own weight, let alone that of a book, Yuusuke rose from the lumpy chair and stretched the kinks out of his spine, his eyes intent on the cabinet. He would not be doing any harm. Draco had assured him that the last thing anyone wanted was unknown threats lurking around, and the more doxies and strangling cloaks were done away with, the better.

He approached the cabinet with the air of a cat stalking a mouse, feeling his youki levels rise slightly within him with each new bump from the unknown entity within.

Bump-thump.

Settling his hand lightly on the handle, feeling the cool metal scales of the stylized serpents' head, he waited, taking in slow, even breaths, his eyes intent and shaded with a bit more red than they had been a moment before. He waited... waited...

Yuusuke wrenched the door open, his free hand loaded with enough reiki to blow the entire cabinet to splinters if something meaner than one of those doxy things came out, but he was unprepared for the wave of blue energy that hurled him across the room and onto the dainty lamp-table he had set his book on mere moments before, shattering the wood spectacularly.

The Toushin was moving before conscious thought had caught up with events, rolling to one side, sending splinters of polished wood flying, and getting his feet back underneath himself as he spun to confront whatever abnormality the house had chosen to throw at him now, his arms raised in preparation for an attack.

Narrowed garnet eyes rose and met a feral ruby gaze that was as familiar... as his own.

Yuusuke no longer possessed a human heart, but if he had, he was certain that it would have stopped. "What the hell--"

Across the room, wild hair highlighted in the rays of the afternoon sun falling through the windows, the Toushin chuckled, fangs glinting, as he raised one black-striped arm to lick lazily at the blood staining his hands red.

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)) To Be Continued... ((

Oban: bitchy old hag

Youjutsu: black art, sorcery (Here, probably translated better as 'demonic arts')

A/N: Thanks to everyone who helped me find that long-lost story! I really appreciate it, and I feel so loved! Warm fuzzy feelings to all who reviewed!

)) Kurome Shiretsu ((