Blowing Sand

Chapter 4: Dying is fun!

Written (mostly) by Lady Inari
Beta-ed (a little) by anime-luney

Inari- I dedicate this fourth chapter to Bloodcherry! She is the only one that has reviewed all the chapters! But I know that there are more readers then just you, Bloodcherry! Last time I checked the hits for this chapter, It had more than 150! I know that it can't be that terrible, can it? Except for that one anonymous flamer who criticized me for 'mary-sueing' Yuki! If that person is reading this story still, please at least have the guts to send me a signed review next time!

Luney-Gutless wimps.

Inari- Well at least I've blown off some steam, right Luney?

Luney-Yeah, but they're still spineless little jerkoffs. D:

Inari- Oh yeah, and there's some minor yaoi stuff here, but nothing explicit.

A silence stretched. Harry's mouth fell open, while Malfoy forcibly closed his.

Yusuke stuttered, "Ano… let me rephrase that. Draco is… ano… possessed, let's say, while I'm not exactly sure about Harry."

Kagome blinked. "Then maybe I can help."

Hiei 'hn'ed. Kurama grinned. He loved translating Hiei's one word into something understandable. "How?"

Kagome rolled her eyes, but didn't answer. Sasuke, who had been thinking about her the past few days ((Inari- Not like that, perverts! Luney- Don't worry, I thought that too --;; )) answered. "The term, 'Those in Hiding' has many meanings, doesn't it, Kagome?"

She nodded, "Yeah, it does, dear brother."

Hiei and Gaara snorted, then glanced at each other and smirked.

Kagome looked at them, then continued. "But I can't tell where you're getting this from, Yusuke. I don't sense anything different about him."

Yusuke looked perplexed.

Kurama's cold, gold eyes moved around the room, and up and down Harry. "You don't suppose, Yusuke, that Harry could be like you were, do you?"

"You mean a half breed?" Hiei and Gaara flinched, neither had had that name thrown out before like that.

Kurama tilted his head to the side, "Yeah, I suppose that is what I'm saying. Can you tell what kind of demon he could be?"

Harry and Dracowere lost as soon as Yusuke had said that they were demons.

Yusuke walked around his desk and stood nose to nose with Harry. Harry looked up into his eyes and found himself being mesmerized by the colors of Yusuke's eyes as they slowly turned red, and his hair silverized. Kurama pulled Draco away from next to them, and to his side.

Yusuke pulled Harry's chin up and slowly began to kiss him. Harry gasped and Yusuke pushed his tongue into the boy's mouth.

Harry found himself growing more and more passionate, and feeling as though he was being placed under a spell.

Kurama broke the spell by saying, "Yusuke, that's quite enough!"

Yusuke abruptly broke the kiss. He stepped away, turned around and shuddered. "I know what he is. He's… He's… He's a bat. Quite possibly one of Kuroune's."

Kurama gasped. "Kuro? Are you sure, Yusuke?"

"100 percent." He turned his head and grinned at Kurama. 'Of course I'm sure—bats taste horrible!'

Kurama yipped, transformed into his fox form and leapt onto Yusuke. $- You did it, Yusuke! You did it! You found him! -$

"Yeah, yeah, I know. Just get off me, you overgrown fox. We should transform him, you know."

The bell rang and everybody jumped.

Hiei snapped at Malfoy, "Don't you have to be somewhere?" And without waiting for a reply, dragged Malfoy out of the room.

"You should go, too Potter."

"Yeah, I have to go to Herbology, then I have two free periods after lunch."

Kurama looked at Harry sideways, then said, "Lucky you! I have to go that way myself. I suppose that I have permission to leave, right, Yusuke-sama?" He didn't even wait for a reply before he, too, dragged Harry out of the classroom.

Yusuke jumped to his feet, shaking a fist at Kurama's retreating, white-clad back, "That's right! You'd better call me sama! And meet us at the Whomping Willow after lunch!"

Kagome, Gaara and Sasuke stared at him. The toushin turned slightly pink under their stares.

Gaara scoffed, and stalked out of the room, followed by Yuki in fox form, Sasuke, and Kagome, whose hands were folded behind her head. She turned her upper body and looked at him, and said, "Your class is waiting, Yusuke-sensei." And, indeed, Yusuke's sixth year class was watching him with mild interest.

After lunch, at the Whomping Willow

Harry was a little late getting to the tree. Ron had been very reluctant to let Harry out of his sight after what their teacher had said during Transfigurations. Luckily, Hermione had intervened, before she had to run off to her Ancient Runes class.

But before he got with twenty feet of the willow's flailing branches, he found himself being shot by a dozen blue balls of light. He reached into his robes pocket, but his wand was gone! A split second before the light hit him, he rolled to the side, the spheres making a small crater in the ground.

'Not light,' he realized, 'but energy!' Unfortunately, this thought a second too late in the making, because one of the energy spheres hit him in the back. He couldn't even let out a moan of agony, because it hurt so much. He laid on his stomach, gasping for breath. 'It was strange,' he thought, 'I thought dying would hurt more.'

Harry was indeed dying, but not in the traditional way. His heartbeat was slowing down, but he felt as though he were growing stronger. His shoulder blades began to pulse, and the wound on his back healed. But pain hit him again as his shoulders split open and black, leathery bat wings spread. They were covered in his own blood, making the leather seem even more darker.

Startled, he sat up and pulled on one of the wings. It shuffled onto his back. Dimly, in some corner of his mind, he recognized that it was connected to him. A chilling wind swept open him wings, swirling cold air onto his uncovered back. Shivering, he pulled his newly found wings around his body.

$- Yusuke! I found him! He's by the willow! -$

Kurama ran out of the forest, his tails flying. Yusuke came out from another spot.

- Oh, kami-sama! What in all Makai happened here? -

Harry looked up at the lion and the kitsune. They were blurry, so he took off his glasses and found that he could see perfectly now. Harry couldn't see it, but in the way the light was hitting his face, his eyes looked violet. "I don't know."

$- Well, what happened? Maybe we can sort it out if you tell us. -$

"It was so sudden. I was walking towards the Whomping Willow, and then blue balls of light attacked me. My wand was gone, so I dodged most of them, but one hit me in the back, and I felt like I was going to die. I think I did die."

Yusuke and Kurama began to laugh. It was the funniest sound, because Yusuke was roaring (literally) and Kurama was yipping. Yusuke changed to human and sat on the ground, legs halfway stretched in front of him, and hands holding him up from falling on the ground.

"What?" Harry was starting to get annoyed.

Kurama walked behind Harry and set his head on Harry's shoulder. $- My dear boy, is your heart beating? -$

Harry put a hand over his heart. It wasn't beating. "B-b-but, that's impossible!"

"Tch. I said that too, at first." Yusuke grabbed Harry's wrist and put it over his own heart. "Still think it's impossible?"

Gently, a mysteriously humanized Kurama pulled Harry into his lap and out of Yusuke's grip. He whispered something seductively into Harry's ear. Harry paled.

"Kurama! Now is not the time!" Yusuke roughly pulled Harry away from the kitsune.

Yusuke hissed curses furiously at Kurama in Makai.

"But Yusuke," Kurama whined at him, "It's fall, and you know how I get in the fall. Or," he grinned, "Are you jealous that I wasn't trying to seduce you?"

"No! But just because he looks like Kuroune doesn't mean that you automatically get him."

Kurama's tail hairs rose, he growled savagely, "You're gonna pay for that!" He jumped at Yusuke's throat, long claws outstretched.

Harry, who was still unwittingly sitting on Yusuke's lap, squeaked. He fell forward onto Kurama, accidentally getting one of his wings trapped beneath Kurama. Their bodies were pressed against each other, Harry's legs between Kurama's, noses pressed together.

Screaming, Harry frantically beat his free wing against the ground, his new instincts telling him to get away from the fox. He cried out in pain, however as a resounding crack sprang from the wing.

Gasping, he beat his fist on Kurama's chest. "I hate you!" He cried, "I hate you both!" He shoved Kurama away from him and pulled his unbroken wing to his back. The broken one, however, flopped on the ground uselessly.

Slowly, as if he were in pain, Harry clambered to his feet. He cut a pitiful figure, as he started to walk to the castle, then stopped, spun around and walked into the Forbidden Forest.

"Don't you dare follow me!" He shouted to the two still stunned demons.

"We can't follow him, Yusuke."

"Of course we can. I'm going after him!" Yusuke stood up and began to walk after him.

Kurama grabbed Yusuke's wrist to stop him from going. "You can't. I accidentally broke one of Kuroune's wings. He walked off just like Harry did, and I followed him. He cut me straight through the chest with his bare claws. His bare claws, Yusuke! Me! Someone like me, who you just can't do that to!" He let go of Yusuke's wrist, and tried to wipe the tears from his eyes.

Yusuke gaped. Kurama never cried. He crouched down next to his friend and pulled him into a hug. Kurama pushed his face into Yusuke's shirt, and cried into Yusuke's shoulder.

Anxiously, Yusuke pulled Kurama's chin up into the light; and pressed their foreheads. "Look at me, Kurama." He looked with tear-swollen eyes. ((Inari- Those, beautiful, golden eyes. Oh, wait; I'm distracting the readers, aren't I? Luney- don't worry, a little distractions fine. ))

Yusuke smiled gently, but more tears formed and Kurama looked down. "I'm worthless."

Abruptly, Yusuke shoved himself away from Kurama, and slapped him. Once, twice! "Now, either pick yourself up off the ground, or you can stay here and be discovered by students, crying on the ground. I'm going to go get Harry back." He stood up, spun around and walked into the forest.

He transformed the instant he saw inside the forest. His lion form had a much better sense of smell.

He followed Harry's scent trail to a small clearing. Harry was there, lying on his stomach, his back spiked with arrows… centaur's arrows. Saddening, he thought, that even his good wing was stuck to his back with another arrow. They had come up from behind and ambushed him.

Gently, Yusuke moved so that he was under Harry, and lifted him up. He managed to get out of the forest fairly quickly, while not damaging the right broken wing anymore. - Kurama! Come here, I need you to help me! -

Kurama came running, eyes a little red. "What happened to him!"

- Centaurs ambushed him. I figure they could smell his demon blood, and attacked him because they thought he was a threat. -

"Where should we take him to get him healed? Neither you nor I can heal."

- We'll have to take him up to the Infirmary in the castle. Can you grow a plant to cover his face? We don't want people to freak out if they see who it is. -

"Yeah, sure." And within seconds, a large, almost gauzy leaf was settled over Harry's calm face.

Luckily, it was the middle of most of the students' class, so there weren't many people outside orin the halls, and they made it to the Infirmary before they were spotted. Unluckily, however, neither managed to see the trail of blood.

Kurama opened the doors for Yusuke to pad in; then closed them behind them. "Hey! We need some help!" Madame Pomfrey came running out of her office.

"Oh my goodness, what happened? Who is that?"

Yusuke looked at her, then Kurama, who nodded. - I'll explain later. Where can I put him? -

"Oh. Right here on the bed." Kurama carefully picked the batboy up and laid him on his stomach. He lifted up the broken wing, and Yusuke used his huge head to push another bed under it.

Madame Pomfrey looked at the two demons, "Can you two remove the arrows from his back?" Yusuke returned to his human form and nodded. Carefully and slowly, the toushin and the kitsune began to remove arrows from the boy's back, while the witch splinted the black, leathery, broken wing, preparing it for healing.

Finally, the wing was healed, and the last arrow to be removed was the one that was stuck through his left wing and into his back. "Damn," Yusuke muttered, "It's buried too deep."

"Here, let me try." Kurama gently moved Yusuke's hands aside. He wrapped the palms of his hands around the wooden arrow shaft. Within ten seconds, Kurama had extracted the arrow with the head intact.

"Good job. Now all we have to do is clean and bandage the punctures." Madame Pomfrey had finished healing the wing. She stood up and walked around the room. Kurama, however, moved over to Harry's right wing. Gently, he extended it with the ease of long practice, and folded it back it.

"You didn't fold his wing back up right. It was putting too much strain on the muscles." He unfolded out the left wing next, and checked the thin membrane. As gently as possible, Kurama ran his fingers around the hole. Instinctively, the wing jerked back in as Harry groaned.

Yusuke gently picked up the nurse. "I'll tell her. You stay here and wait for him to wake up. Should be about five minutes." He walked into the nurse's office, but left the door ajar.

Kurama pulled a chair next to the bed, and sat down. He reached over and traced the edge of Harry's ears. Slowly, the tips of his ears were starting to grow out into a point, his hair growing longer. He let his claws trace down the middle of his back. Harry groaned again and Kurama felt his insides twist.

Slowly, the boy lying next to Kurama on the bed began to wake up. But his gradual return to consciousness was abruptly cut short as the Infirmary doors burst open, and Ron ran into the room. "Harry!" He yelled, and Harry sat up suddenly, the leaf covering his face fell off. Unfortunately oblivious, Harry stretched his wings out and rubbed his neck, then confusedly pulled at a few strands of his new shoulder-length hair.

Ron gawped. "Harry?" Harry squeaked and fell forward onto Kurama, who caught him. He whispered, "It's Ron, isn't it?"

"Yeah."

"What should I do?"

"I think you should tell him. He's your friend, and Ron is going to find out sooner or later." Harry sighed, sat up, and turned around to face his first friend. His head was bowed, hiding his face, and was trying as hard as he could to hide his wings.

"Yeah, Ron?" Ron walked forward towards Harry, concerned. Harry, however, shrunk more into himself.

"Harry, what happened to you?" He moved backward to escape Ron's touch. Kurama, however, stopped him from moving back; he gently pushed his thumbs into the spot where Harry's wings melted into his shoulder blades. Like an umbrella, the wings snapped open, one crinkling flat against the wall.

"Agh! What was that for?" He jumped up and ran out of the room, slamming a wing into Ron's shoulder and knocking him off balance. Harry ran down the hall to the nearest window, threw it open, and jumped out.

Ron, who had followed him, thought 'Ohmygawd! This is the sixth floor!' He ran to the window and looked frantically down, where Harry was in a dive. At the last second, his wings caught the air and they snapped open, carrying him higher than the castle in less than 2.5 seconds.

Kurama watched from another window, saw him soaring in a circle and ran back into the Infirmary. "Yusuke, you've still got Puu here, right?"

"Yeah, why? Did he fly?"

"Yeah, but he's so high up that I can hardly see him."

"How about you go get Hiei? I'm busy!"

"Fine!" Kurama ran down to the dungeons, where Hiei was teaching a Potions class. "Hiei!" Hiei looked at him, before the half-koorime was pulled out of the dungeon classroom. He told Hiei what had happened quickly.

"So," Hiei raised an eyebrow, "You want me to go get the boy that got himself killed and now he has wings, and you want me to get him?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Fine, but you have to watch my class and you owe me, fox." He blinked out of eyesight, into the grounds and changed into a huge blue-black Chinese dragon. He flew into the air and found Harry with little trouble. You need to get down on the ground. Harry spun around in alarm. His wings faltered, and he fell a few feet.

"I'm not going." He turned and glided away. Annoyed, Hiei puffed a small stream of fire at the boy. Sighing, the winged boy started to spiral to the ground, going faster and faster, until he was in a dive. However, Harry pulled up at one of the tower windows. "Dangit. It's locked from the inside." He pushed off the window ledge, and hovered for a few seconds. Then, almost as an afterthought, he pulled off his sneakers, set them on the window ledge, and knocked gently on the glass. He pulled a mid-air flip, and dive for the ground again.

A breeze was blowing toward the castle from the lake, so Harry glided to a stop in it. He stretched his wings above his head--- they would have more than doubled his height if they were stretched fully. But it was starting to get dark and the blackness of the membrane made the wings almost invisible.

Hiei landed beside him with a muffled thump; then changed back into his regular hot-tempered self. Snorting, he pulled off his black cloak and handed it to Harry. "Here, use this to cover up your wings until we can find you a proper cloak to wear over them."

Shrugging, Harry pulled on the cloak, but it wasn't long enough to hide the last two feet of his wings.

"Oh well, let's hope nobody notices."

Inari- Yeppers! The bold print is Makaian. This is chapter four! We actually got 3 reviews for chapter 3, so this is why it's going up so early! Besides, I found it really easy to type, so this is an omen that I'll get writers block soon!

Luney-That's not good, and you probably shouldn't tell the readers that!

Inari- Well, that's all, folks!

Luney-Yep, Bugs Bunny has joined the crew. 3 Ain't it great?

Signing off, Lady Inari and Anime Luney, superheroes of fanfiction writing!