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Story: [The Cursed Potter of Ouran]
X-Over with: (Ouran High School Host Club) and (Harry Potter)
Summary: The war is over, Hogwarts is forced to close down, the Ministry is in turmoil, and Harry decides to get some distance in.
Genre: Friendship, Humor
XXX
Harry sighed.
He was happy that Voldemort had croaked, really. But the realization that his own brand of luck was considered by the Ministry of Magic to be a violation of several war-treaties, definitely put a damper on his celebratory mood.
Turns out that the 'power he knows not' was the ability to not slip in the shower and accidentally kill himself.
Even Dumbledore, with his endless schemes and thousands of back-up plans, had been taken completely by surprise by that particular turn of events. To the point where he'd – once he'd actually done his research and come to the conclusion that what had happened had actually happened – decided to retire, because he felt that he'd screwed things up even more with his actions, when he should've instead simply tried to make certain that Voldemort needed to shower as often as possible.
The Death Eaters were also disturbingly easy to get a hold of, as it turned out that several of the more influential of them had apparently also managed to kill themselves through various everyday accidents.
If Harry hadn't had a very solid alibi at the time, he might've been dragged off for interrogation on just how so many people could suffer so many accidents in such a short span of time.
As it was, the Ministry had finally started investigating the accidents with a fine comb, and realized that it was related to a Curse, much like the one placed on the position of the Hogwarts's Defense Teacher. And the source of the Curse was actually a completely accidental one.
Harry's luck.
Turns out that the Potter family were Cursed generations ago to live at least semi-interesting lives, and that – in combination with his mother's protections and surviving the Killing Curse, along with the various things he'd nearly died of since then – that Curse had mutated into something utterly bizarre.
The Curse simply couldn't accept that Harry had survived the things that ought to have killed him, and had therefore started to classify him as 'several Cursed individuals', and as such stacked the 'semi-interesting' on top of each other until it reached 'mindbogglingly chaotic'. At which point Voldemort had managed to kidnap him to resurrect himself, only to have been stupid enough to directly use his Cursed blood for the ritual, and thus been classified as 'another limb of the many cursed individuals'.
Which ought to have made Voldemort's life hectic, but not to the point where he would accidentally kill himself. Until a second factor appeared.
Voldemort had used the bones of his father, and since new blood cells come from the bones – Hermione explained the process and it was too complicated for him to remember – this meant that sooner or later Voldemort would have his father's blood in his veins instead of Harry's.
And that's when the Curse realized that it'd been tricked to infest something that wasn't a Potter, and had decided to thoroughly voice its displeasure against whoever had been foolish enough to cause this – which, since it had been done through a ritual done with the intent of 'helping Voldemort', made him the obvious target.
Which had basically consisted of the violent side of the Curse running wild, and killing off everyone who would bind themselves to the one it had decided to make an example of. Namely, the Death Eaters.
Not a single Marked Death Eater survived, and several non-Marked joined their fellows in the afterlife, before Voldemort finally slipped in the shower and killed himself.
Turns out, there had been a few magical disturbances around the countryside, many of which spoke of a specter crying out in agony before fading away, after an object of some sort had been accidentally destroyed.
Dumbledore confided in Harry that it was most likely those objects that had kept Voldemort alive during all of those years, and that there was no doubt that the Dark Lord was gone for good this time.
So yeah, Harry had suffered through a few months of Umbridge, before suddenly being whisked away by the Ministry in an effort to explain the deaths of so many prominent purebloods.
Sirius seemed to think the whole idea hopelessly amusing, until the Ministry declared that they really didn't want someone who were so Cursed to live a chaotic existence within its borders. They said something about it possibly instigating riots and the like, and gleefully showed him the door.
At which point Hermione decided that Beuxbatons had a very interesting curriculum, and managed to convince half of Hogwarts of this. Though that might've had less to do with Hermione's charisma and more to do with the fact that nearly half of Gryffindor had already been packing their bags at the time – it was one thing to give an anti-social classmate the cold shoulder for possibly doing something that they shouldn't have, and another thing entirely to stand by and do nothing as some shady politicians exiled that same classmate for accidentally saving them from a psychotic madman.
So Hogwarts had been forced to close down due to a lack of students, and Fudge had been punted out of office on his nose.
With Dumbledore recently – but determinedly – retired, Fudge out of politics, Umbridge out of work, and a large portion of the purebloods removed from the Wizengamot by the simple fact that they weren't alive anymore, there was a very obvious power-vacuum.
So Ronald Bilius Weasley had sort of just walked up to a podium and told everyone that he'd fix things so that people stopped acting so stupidly all the time, and been declared Minister of Magic damn near on the spot.
He was barely sixteen at the time, had yet to finish his OWLs, and he was from a rather extremely unimportant family, but there was just something to be said about an honest idiot deciding that everyone else were too stupid to get it right the first time around.
Percy was... well, he wasn't 'upset'. He was-... Ron had just pretty much walked up and without any effort stolen his Holy Grail right from under his nose, before he even realized that it was there to be taken.
Percy vengefully decided that two people could play at that game, and joined the Chudley Cannons as a Keeper.
He didn't let a single goal in, that entire season.
They were ten points away from winning the Quidditch World Cup when Victor Krum managed to catch the Snitch.
Ron cried at the game, and shouted himself hoarse, and told his brother that he was the single most amazing brother that he could ever imagine having.
After that year of chaos – both in the government and in the Quidditch League – despite what anyone who knew them in school would've expected from them, Ron and Percy became nearly as close as the twins.
So Voldemort was gone, Ron was Minister of Magic, the government was turning away from being the cesspit that it'd been previously, Hermione somehow managed to test for her NEWTs nearly immediately after finishing her OWLs in order to help her friend revamp the British law-system, Percy was a quidditch star that Victor Krum took his hat off to, Neville had to pretty much beat girls away with a stick after he'd revealed that he'd like to be a Healer, and Luna was seeing a lot of stick-swinging-exercise as her boyfriend was far too nice to put the necessary force behind it.
All was well.
Except, you know, Harry didn't want to go to Beuxbatons – in no small part because he'd heard rumors of Gabrielle being old enough to start, and he really didn't want to deal with the enthusiastic little girl any more than absolutely necessary – hadn't actually finished his OWLs yet, and didn't particularly want to accidentally have his Curse mess up the lives of those he cared about.
It was one thing to have a chaotic life when someone is out to kill you – it helps you keep on your toes – but it's an altogether different thing when two of your best friends were deeply involved in running a country, and your godfather needed a bit of peace and quiet to recuperate after his life on the run.
Sure, it was highly doubtful that the Curse would lash out against people again, and that it had always been a fairly benign type of Curse and was as such unlikely to ever really succeed in ruining his life unless he gave it a very good opportunity to do so – like becoming an auror, or becoming a professional adrenaline-junkie of some sort. So it would stand to reason that he shouldn't have to worry about his Curse making life difficult for his friends and family.
Except that, you know, it liked making things complicated. And the last thing you want to hear when remaking laws and trying to keep order in a society of extreme change, is that there's been unforeseen complications.
And besides, Harry didn't like the thought of helping out with politics, and was more than thankful to have a half-decent excuse to cling desperately to whenever anyone hinted at how he might be able to contribute.
But then... Harry didn't really have any other friends, and even if Ginny could be kind of entertaining to talk to, she was a bit too caught up in dating to be all that available for conversation between friends.
So Harry had cleverly decided that he'd find a school as far away from any real responsibility as absolutely possible, and then sneak his way over there without alerting anyone who'd try and guilt him into staying – like, Remus, the uncrowned king of guilt-trips.
It hadn't been especially hard to learn the new language, mostly because of some interesting things in regards to parseltongue.
Snakes speak the language that surrounds them. So, in Spain they speak Spanish, and in Britain they speak English. But they only spoke parseltongue. So, for a parselmouth, learning a new language was a bit like faking an accent, and once you got the accent down, the language that they spoke started making a disturbing amount of sense.
In other words, as long as a parselmouth could get a hold of a French snake, they could learn to speak French in days. Hermione had been both amazed and hopelessly jealous to learn that particular tidbit.
All of which explained why he was now standing in front of the building that he was standing in front of.
But really, who would've guessed that someone would paint a school pink?
Crazy ultra-rich people.
XXX
Ouran High School, in Japan. Home to highly decorated teachers, obnoxiously rich adolescents, and some outrageously obscure clubs.
Harry thought that his Curse would most definitely approve of the chaos that was bound to happen in this kind of environment. Then again, it might still be too exhausted from destroying Voldemort to properly enjoy it, even if it had actually been sentient enough to have an opinion on the matter.
Interestingly enough, quite a few magicals were connected to the place one way or another, and it wasn't unusual for discrete arrangements to be made for the sake of the more magically inclined students.
Whether that stemmed from rich people approving of magic, or if it was just Japanese people tossing all of the crazies into one single loony-bin, Harry didn't know. But considering some of what he'd heard about the rich muggle students, the latter sounded like an awfully plausible reason for there to be such a smooth transition for transferring magicals.
Then again, Harry was – through the Potter fortune and the sudden deaths of a whole bunch of rich purebloods who were related to him through a distant technicality that was enough for him to inherit – easily rich enough to fit in perfectly, so perhaps it was simply a case of 'money greasing the wheels' as it were.
XXX
Transfers were fairly normal at Ouran, since quite a number of parents didn't want to leave their kids in a foreign country, no matter how many servants they kept with them, when they could take them with them during the move.
And since a lot of the parents of Ouran's students were the type who needed to travel the world in order to do their job, a lot of its students would transfer both in and out, even mid-term.
So nobody paid all that much attention to a new student arriving, beyond the vague curiosity of how they'd be fitting in with the other students. Oh, and to see if they were attractive, because humans liked to look at pretty things.
Immaculate uniform that the newest student looked a bit uncomfortable with, messy black hair of an untameable sort, and shockingly green eyes to go along with his slightly battered pair of glasses.
The boy was attractive, in a slightly exotically rough kind of way, responded politely – if at times a bit strained – to everyone who asked questions, was apparently a fluent speaker of at least three different languages though fairly new to the Japanese alphabets and their many complications, and had chosen Ouran in an attempt to not end up in the same school as the younger sister of one of his distant friends.
When asked to explain that last one, he'd replied that he'd gotten her out of a bit of trouble when she was younger, and from the way her sister joked about it, she was planning on trying to seduce him. Since the girl in question was nearly eleven at this time, he didn't feel entirely comfortable with living at the same boarding school as her, just in case she was tempted to do something that would cause all kinds of trouble.
Their question answered, a few asked why he'd transferred to a different school at all, and received the response that his last one had closed down after a few too many 'incidents' had made half of the students pack their bags. Apparently, the school had a record of being... targeted, for various reasons.
A teacher trying to steal from the school and willing to kill all the witnesses, a venomous snake loose in the halls – it was far enough away from most civilization that it'd taken the professionals too long to get there, and one of the students had ended up killing it in self defense – a hunted criminal breaking into school grounds, two students kidnapped from a sports event by terrorists and one of them returning dead... The list was disturbingly long, and most who heard it were surprised that it'd taken the students that long to finally pack their bags.
Their scandalized reactions seemed vaguely amusing to the boy, who went on to mockingly inquire if their school could boast to have half the life-threatening situations of his old school, mentioning that it'd even managed to acquire a Curse on one of the staff positions.
Whereupon most had chuckled, and one had mentioned the Dark Magic Club, which – disturbingly enough – had piqued the boy's interest.
Tamaki explained this encounter with the new student to the Host Club with all of his usual elaborately elegant flair, and had gone on to moan piteously over not having been able to recruit the boy for the Host Club despite his belief of the boy being a natural, since he apparently wanted to take a closer look on the Dark Magic Club.
Not even Hani's offer of sharing his sweets could bring the boy out of his despair, though that was fairly normal, as Tamaki had a tendency to go overboard whenever he decided to get depressed over whatever it was that had disappointed him this time around.
XXX
Three weeks into classes, and most had grown used to Lord Harry James Potter and his vaguely peculiar ways, and fairly intriguing back-story.
The Host Club had also officially apologized for its king being bothersome in his attempts to woo Harry away from the Dark Magic Club and into the Host Club instead. Their apology had been graciously accepted, on the condition that they stopped him from sparkling all over the place.
Apparently, the young Lord had had some bad experienced with a former teacher with a sparkly smile, and had was having a bit of an issue with not reflexively lashing out violently whenever Tamaki decided to surprise him with his sparkliness.
Obviously, there was no end to the amusement derived from hearing such a thing and then being able to use it to mercilessly cut down Tamaki whenever he decided to go off on a rant over something, and the twins were as a result always happy to greet the upperclassman who was in the same grade as their king.
So it could be said that, despite Harry supposedly being highly incompatible with the Host Club and its modus operandi, Harry got along with several of the club's members.
Which probably explained why Umehito Nekozawa came to them.
Harry got along well with the close-knit circle of friends that was the Dark Magic Club, though he seemed fondly amused by most of their various Curses, rather than impressed. Though, that was perhaps to be expected considering how he'd admitted to having both a Curse placed on a position at his former school, as well as having a Curse placed on his family-line.
In fact, the Curse was supposedly potent enough that he and all of his descendants had been forbidden by law to donate blood in an effort to keep the Curse away from others, as it apparently reacted 'quite badly indeed' to such things.
So yeah, Harry could often be seen wearing the robe of the Black Magic Club, and chatting with its members, even if he remained as easily the most approachable of the members according to the rest of the school. The club-members also were quite happy to have something of an expert on the subject of Curses in it, and Harry seemed amused enough by their antics to indulge them in whatever he could dig up on the various stories surrounding the subject from the contacts he had back in his homeland.
All in all, he fit in well.
Which was why the Host Club were surprised to be visited by his club's president.
XXX
"So... you think you've been Cursed, because your heartbeat gets irregular whenever he's around?" Kaoru stared at the older boy.
"Yes." Nekozawa nodded.
"But you can't ask him to help you with it, despite him being an authority on the subject, because you keep forgetting to ask whenever you talk to him?" Hikaru continued.
"Yes." Nekozawa nodded again.
The twins shared a glance, before turning to him in unison. "Did it occur to you to check for any other possibilities first?"
Nekozawa blinked uncomprehendingly at them. "What do you mean?"
The sound of an engine spoke of the doom of the boy's innocence, as smoke billowed out through the devil-machine of a certain 'manager'.
"Love!" A female voice declared passionately through the smoke that began to clear. "It must be love!"
"Ah, she appeared." Kaoru commented lightly.
Renge ignored the Hosts and focused instead with frightening intensity on the suddenly quite nervous club president.
She was halfway through her usual rant, somewhere in between 'exquisitely forbidden love' and 'daring to live beautifully', when she was interrupted by the door opening.
"Ah, there you are." Harry ignored the peculiar girl who had tendency to rant and an inclination towards Ginny-like trigger-happiness, and focused instead on his reason for being at the most hated fangirl-appreciation-club. "We've been looking all over for you, you know. You should at least tell us if you're not planning on showing up, what with being the president of the club and all."
Nekozawa winced, looking guilty at the realization that he had indeed forgotten to inform the other members of him being otherwise occupied. "Sorry, I kind of thought of something and rushed off on my own without thinking."
Harry shrugged. "Don't worry about it, no harm done." Before typing something into his cellphone that was most likely a variation of 'found him, you can stop looking now' to the rest of the members who were apparently looking for their club president.
And as the two people made their way out of the Host Club, it was unanimously decided by all those present that Harry had to be denser than lead not to see the way that Nekozawa's face lit up with the smile of one who was hopelessly smitten.
It should perhaps be noted that he hadn't particularly noticed anyone else making eyes at him either, so the 'denser than lead' theory was looking fairly solid at the moment.
XXX
Haruhi was having a perfectly ordinary day.
Well, ordinary for Ouran anyway. There was crossdressing, being gentlemanly towards girls, keeping the twins in line, studying, and yelling at Tamaki for being weird. Normally, there was quite a lot of yelling that was necessary.
However, this also meant that she reacted to the break of monotony with the same amount of calmness as if it was perfectly ordinary. It kind of was, after all.
So she merely blinked languidly as the door swung open at dangerous speeds, and then just as quickly shut again – the process of which was bizarrely soundless.
"Huh?" Tamaki looked a bit more startled from the oddity of it all – in all likelihood due to him rarely being on the reactive side of things.
The black-haired boy sent the boy a surprisingly sharp glare, motioning for him to be quiet, as he – completely ignoring the goings on in the club – dropped himself behind an available couch.
This made Haruhi's eyebrows raise, because it wasn't every day that you saw one of the rich people of Ouran be so utterly uncaring of whatever hygiene-issues they might have with hiding behind a couch.
The door slammed open again, and this time it wasn't quiet.
"Harry! You bloody pillock! Get out here so I can yell at you properly!" An irate girl with bushy brown hair marched into the club room, just as uncaring as the previous visitor about the ongoing activities.
"Umm...?" Tamaki made to ask the girl why she was upset.
"Of all of the irresponsible things-!" The girl growled as she searched the room with her gaze, looking just a tiny bit on the rabid side.
There was no movement from behind the couch, so Haruhi was guessing that the boy in question wasn't planning on coming out to face the girl's ire. Which – from the sheer level of rage present on the girl's face – made him sound like a rather sensible kind of person.
The girl huffed, crossing her arms when it became apparent that she wouldn't be able to find him with a cursory glance.
"If you don't get out here, right this minute, I'm telling Professor Lupin that you're avoiding me!" She threatened.
The boy – whose name was apparently 'Harry' – jumped up from the space behind the wall and the couch, looking a bit ruffled, but mostly horrified. "I told Sirius! He said it was fine! Don't drag Remus into this!"
The girl actually gaped at him. "'Sirius said'? Since when is 'Sirius said' an argument for doing anything but the complete opposite of what he's saying!?"
The boy looked slightly sheepish at that. "To be fair, he's great with motorcycles."
"Only because he's an irresponsible jackass with no regard for his personal safety!" She returned.
Harry gave the unknown girl a flat look. "And-...?" He made a motion for her to continue.
The glare the girl sent his way was acidic enough to burn through iron, but with gritted teeth she continued. "And fantastic, grease-free hair."
The boy smiled triumphantly. "And he's my sort-of legal guardian, so of course I have to listen to him. It's in the law."
The girl's fists clenched and unclenched in a distinctly violence-desiring way, her glare never wavering. "You're emancipated, you git." She snarled at him.
Harry twitched vaguely, as if he had to consciously rein in his legs' desire to run for the hills, and his smile turned a bit more strained. "He's still my godfather." He tried defensively.
The girl continued to glare. "You didn't tell us!"
Harry's strained smile slipped away, and there were so many feelings flashing past his face, that Haruhi couldn't begin to make sense of them.
"'Where's Harry gone?'" The girl mimicked. "'We don't know.'" And there was hurt in her expression now. Pain and misery to go along with her earlier anger.
None of the club-members were willing to do much more than breathe, all of them feeling like they were intruding on something highly private.
"Hermione..." The boy murmured, sounding a bit lost.
"Yes! We were busy! But we're your friends! You should've told us that you were leaving the country!"
"But then you would've tried to stop me!" Harry argued.
"Yes, we bloody well would've!" She roared back, making him flinch.
An awkward silence settled, with Hermione glaring and Harry looking miserable.
Haruhi was getting close to the point where she was putting serious thought into poking Tamaki to intervene – and oh boy, wasn't that a sign of the apocalypse if she'd ever heard one – when the silence broke.
"If you tell Ron that I go to a pink-painted school, I'm telling him that you're having an affair with Sirius." The boy deadpanned.
"Wha-...!? I'm not-...!" The girl gaped at him.
Harry nodded, a small smirk appearing on his lips. "Yes, but he doesn't know that, and I've got enough blackmail on Sirius that I can probably get him to play along."
The girl continued to stare incredulously at him for a long moment, before finally starting to smile.
The next moment the two of them were hugging, though when they parted, she still smacked him soundly over the head.
It was an unusual day for the Host Club.
XXX
"So, that girl was from your old school?" Haruhi asked, feeling a little bit curious despite herself.
Harry nodded, still looking somewhat embarrassed at having interrupted their club-activities in such a way. "We've known each other since we were eleven. She's probably the only reason I didn't fail out of our classes." He admitted.
"She's good with studies?" Kaoru continued their polite interrogation of finding out what exactly had happened to have led to the scene that had played out.
"Yeah. She's brilliant." Harry nodded again, before snorting a laugh. "Brilliant but scary." He sounded like he was quoting someone. "She's already graduated though, since she had to keep Ron out of trouble."
"Another friend of yours?" Hikaru pushed the interrogation onwards.
"Yeah, he got dragged into politics when the school got closed down. Still not entirely sure how he got a job like that without graduating..." Harry's face slipped into something slightly gleeful. "She was furious at him for being that reckless."
"Wait, he got into politics without graduating?" Haruhi felt herself slightly horrified at that prospect. Because there should be some kind of limit to how far charisma and – what was most likely – family connections could take a person, right?
Harry shrugged. "I was kind of in the middle of packing at the time, so I'm not entirely sure how he managed it." His eyes twinkled with sudden amusement. "But I think the general consensus was that he's too stupidly honest not to trust. And trust goes a long way in politics."
And okay, maybe he had a point there. Even if the idea still made her uncomfortable.
XXX
A/n: I remember paging through some of the X-Overs between Ouran and HP, and being annoyed at just how much everyone insists on changing Harry in order to send him off to Ouran. So I tried writing a story where everything changed around Harry, and tried to leave him as intact as possible.
Still couldn't manage to actually finish the damn thing though.