Edited Again: 5/26/2015 - Grammar and Formatting

Disclaimer: I am not an owner of the characters or universes in this fanfiction. (Except for Raven, he's mine.)

"English"

"Japanese"

Thoughts

Zanpakuto

Chapter 6: Alleycat

Toshiro was the first to react, turning to look for the source of the voice. No one seemed to be paying the duo any attention, however, and he eased the tension in his shoulders to make way for confusion. That confusion cleared when the sound of someone clearing their throat drew his gaze downwards, where a black cat sat calmly.

"Ms. Shihoin." Toshiro greeted, crossing his arms over his chest, "It's good to see you. However, I have to ask. How did you even get in here?"

Yoruichi flicked her tail in disinterest, "I have my ways." Toshiro narrowed his eyes slightly, but let the dismissal pass. Hearing no further questions, Yoruichi stood and stretched, looking around curiously, "I was told you'd have a host family assigned to you. Did you scare them away already?"

Toshiro's mouth turned slightly down at the corners and his left eye twitched visibly, "No. We've just been left to our own devices until further notice."

"They left such adorably small children alone?" She asked with wide-eyed innocence, and was rewarded two-fold as not only Toshiro, but Rukia too showed visible signs of agitation. Yoruichi pushed onwards, "What if someone took you away? I mean, I know I would."

"Enough." Toshiro said firmly, his tone clipped. Yoruichi complied with an ever widening grin, sitting back down on her haunches. Taking in a deep breath to calm himself, Toshiro continued, "We're trying to pick up the last of our supplies. Would you have happened to see a wand shop anywhere?"

The black cat cocked her head to the side, and an ear flicked as she thought, "Wand shop… wand shop... Can't say I did. We're going to have to-"

She was cut off as her ears perked, her pupils narrowing as she stared off into the crowd. Toshiro and Rukia frowned, trying to look in the same direction before turning back when they didn't see anything.

"Ms. Shihoin?" Rukia asked.

Yoruichi snapped back into focus and looked up at the soul reaper. "Sorry, but would you two mind following me?"

The two soul reapers hesitated for a second, the possibilities of the question running through their heads. A second later, Toshiro nodded his consent. "Alright, lead the way."

Yoruichi got back to her feet and began sauntering into the crowd of people, weaving easily where Toshiro and Rukia had to squeeze and push their way through, apologizing under their breath along the way. Occasionally, they'd catch a break when the black cat stopped and stared at the opening of a side road, but it wouldn't be long before they were back on the chase.

After about a few minutes, Yoruichi was stopped at an offshoot again, and her tail shot up in triumph.

"This way," she called to her companions, and then she was walking down the tunnel at a determined clip. Toshiro and Rukia looked at each other, uncertain, when they finally heard it- the sniffling. It was a small voice, a child. The two quickly cast off their doubts and entered the alleyway.

The sniffling grew louder as the two ventured further into the alleyway, and the bustling of the street faded slowly away. Before they reached the source, it stopped abruptly, and the sound of a cat's meow replaced it. The small voice soon rose again in wavering laughter, "H-hey -hic- there."

I guess Yoruichi found the kid, Toshiro thought, relieved. He quickened his pace, and he and Rukia soon found themselves nearing the child, who looked around the age their gigais were supposed to be. He was sitting in a corner, his knees pulled up to his chest as Yoruichi rubbed against his pant-legs, tail flicking and a loud purr falling from her mouth.

A small smile played at the child's mouth in sharp contrast to his tear-stained face. Dark hair - the shaded alleyway made it hard to tell if it was actually black or not - fell in soft curls over his forehead. Luckily, he seemed unhurt. His clothes were in good condition, and his skin was maybe a little dusty but far from grimy. At the sound of their footsteps, the child looked up with big, slate gray eyes, which the two were surprised to find were slit like a cat's. Toshiro pushed down his confusion to comfort the child when he became more visibly panicked, and he held up his hands in a soothing gesture.

"Calm down, we're not going to hurt you," He said, hoping to soothe the youngling's obviously high-strung nerves. When there was no comprehension in the child's eyes, he realized that he had been speaking in Japanese and cursed, switching to English and repeating the reassurance.

The child understood this time, but seemed to get a little angrier at the remark, "Like I haven't heard that one before."

Toshiro frowned and started a reply when Yoruichi spoke up from beside the boy. "It's alright, you can trust them."

Toshiro watched in befuddlement as the boy's slit pupils rounded into a more human shape and he looked down without a hint of surprise, "You sure?" At the black cat's nod, his shoulders unwound and he breathed a sigh of relief. He looked back up to Toshiro, glancing momentarily at Rukia, and then back again, smiling slightly. "Sorry. There's been bad people after me for a while."

"Bad people?" Rukia asked, crouching down next to Toshiro. The kid switched his attention to her and nodded.

"Yeah, they-" The child stopped and a deeply troubled look crossed his face. He looked down and began picking at his pants, seeming to contemplate telling them. Yoruichi purred and rubbed her head comfortingly against his leg. He seemed to take courage in this and scratched Yoruichi behind the ear, looking up with sad eyes, "They took my parents."

Rukia and Toshiro both frowned, "How long ago?" Toshiro asked, hoping that it hadn't been too long. The kid's clothes looked too clean for him to have been wandering for more than a day, after all. If it was possible, they might be able to track down the kidnappers.

"I- I don't know. I haven't really been keeping track of time." The boy looked down, laying his head atop his knees. "It's been at least a couple of weeks, though. I've been trying to avoid people, but the alley tends to get really noisy on the weekends."

"Two weeks? That's... a while." Rukia frowned and inspected his clothes. "How've you been feeding yourself, if you've been avoiding people?"

The boy blinked, "Well obviously not in human form. I'm only like this now because I thought no one would find me."

At their bewildered looks, the boy turned to Yoruichi and back to them, "But aren't you with her? How can you not-" He turned back to Yoruichi, "How come they don't know what I'm talking about?"

She chuckled nervously, her tail lashing from side to side, "You see, I never actually got around to telling them. It was never the right time and-" She glanced over at the two shinigami, who had now changed their focus to her. She sighed deeply, "I guess I owe you two an explanation." The cat shifted from paw to paw nervously, and the alley fell into silence for a moment.

"That would be appreciated, yes." Toshiro prompted brusquely, his arms folded over his chest as he eyed Yoruichi with a bland look. He trusted her, so he wasn't angered to any significant degree, but he didn't appreciate things being kept from him regardless.

Yoruichi growled, the fur on her shoulders rising as her tail lashed, "I'm getting to that. Give me a second to sort it all out."

Toshiro conceded and leaned back against the wall, Rukia choosing instead to sit on a stacked pile of bricks as they waited for Yoruichi to begin. The boy looked back and forth, from the two to Yoruichi, before speaking up. "Maybe this will help to explain a little." When he saw that he had the three's attention, he took a step back and took a breath. His shape blurred and shrank fluidly within the span of a second, and when he breathed out again, the boy had become a small black cat with well-groomed long fur and gray eyes.

Immediately, Yoruichi walked over to him and began licking the top of his head, a deep purr emanating from both of the felines as they greeted each other. Rukia and Toshiro were much slower to act, and stared openly for a few seconds. "Y-Yoruichi-san, you aren't the only one, then?" Rukia stammered finally.

Yoruichi stopped her show of affection to the smaller cat and looked back at the two of them, a figurative eyebrow raised as she flicked an ear dismissively. "Of course not! What would make you think I was the only one?"

Toshiro rolled his eyes, "I don't know, I personally chalked it up to you being a freak of nature. It fits well with the rest of you, doesn't it?"

Yoruichi groaned dramatically and turned on one paw to her new feline companion, "So cruel! Do you see how these people treat me!?."

The boy chuckled and looked at her, speaking in a somewhat more feminine voice than he had had earlier, "So you've been right under their noses, and they didn't even question it?"

"Apparently not." Yoruichi grumbled, lashing her tail and shooting the two shinigami an unsavory look.

The two flinched and another moment of silence passed before anyone spoke, with Rukia finally being the one to break the silence, "Would you mind explaining it to us now?"

Yoruichi made a disgruntled noise, "There's nothing for it. I'll start with the basics." She stood and gestured to both the smaller cat and herself. "We are both from a human sub-race that calls itself the Felis, though we've gone by many names over the years. While we generally look human, we have an alternate feline form, almost always a black cat." She snorted, "That's actually where the old superstitions came from, we repaid our debts, good or bad."

"From what I can remember, the wizarding world here believes we're the result of the animagus spell gone wrong." Her tail flicked dismissively, "They're completely wrong. We've been here since the Egyptians at the earliest, long before that spell was made."

The boy nodded, taking over the narration. "For the past century or so, we've been living equally with humans. But more recently it's become somewhat of a fad among the pure-bloods to have one or two Felis as pets. That's why my parents..." The kitten flattened his ears, unwilling to go on. Yoruichi growled deep in her throat, and Rukia and Toshiro exchanged worried looks.

"Wouldn't there be laws against that?" Rukia asked.

The kitten looked up with solemn, confused eyes, "Maybe? I don't know. Most of what I know is from my parents, and they only just started getting to modern history." He shook his head. "I don't think so, though. My parents always told me not to trust the Ministry."

Toshiro frowned, "The Ministry?"

"The Ministry of Magic. The government of Britain's magical society." Yoruichi snapped, still visibly agitated over this bit of news and surprising her two human companions. "They're not the brightest group, or the least corrupt. Your parents were right to steer you clear of them." She bent down to lick the top of the kitten's head before starting to pace.

"How do you know so much about this place?" Toshiro asked, prickling a bit at not being told this information earlier.

"I was head of squad three. I know how to get info quickly." She said with an annoyed flick of her tail. "Besides, I've kept up with some of my relatives here. Our community is very tightly-knit. Though none of them bothered to tell me people were trying to turn us into pets." Yoruichi blinked and turned to the Felis beside her, "Why haven't I heard anything? Normally our kin would have been spreading the news like wildfire and calling for rebellion."

The kitten sighed, "There's a lot less of us in the English branch now than there used to be. There was a big purge - about a year before I was born - that took most of the ferals out. The only ones alive now are either too weak or too young to fight. Some of us wanted to repay our debts, like we always have, but the rest were worried about what would happen if we brought the mainland branches into it, especially after the purebloods started trying to get us."

He bent his head down and hunched his shoulders, ears flattened over his head, "So we decided to keep everything quiet. A lot of families left to join friends or relatives in other branches, but some of us stayed here to keep an eye on the situation. We tried blending in with the humans, kept our species a secret." The kitten breathed in a sharp, shaky breath, holding back a sob, "I accidentally broke transformation. That's why- that's why my parents and the others got taken. It was only my eyes but-"

Yoruichi quickly curled around the shaking body; pulling him into a feline embrace and murmuring soft encouragements in his ear. Toshiro and Rukia glanced at each other, holding each other's gaze for a moment before simultaneously nodding and turning back to the pair. Toshiro stood up from his position propped against the wall and dusted off his clothes in a nonchalant manner, catching the Felis's attention.

"Well I don't know about you all, but it sounds like our new acquaintance needs a place to stay." He looked over at Rukia, his face all business save for a raised eyebrow and a faint spark of playfulness in his eye, "If I remember correctly, you still have an open spot for a 'pet'?"

Rukia put a hand to her chin in thought and leaned back against a crate to look at the air above her, playing along, "Ah, I might remember something like that. And isn't Yoruichi-san already your 'pet'?"

Toshiro hummed an affirmative. The two shinigami then turned to their new charge, who had at first been about to run at the word pet until realizing what the two had been implying, with faux-serious expressions. His eyes were wide and hopeful as he looked back and forth between the two.

"Are you- are you serious?" He managed to squeak out. The stiff expressions fell from the faces of the soul reapers to be replaced by a wide grin and a smirk. Rukia scooped up the kitten in her arms with a happy sound and hugged him tightly.

"Of course! We can't just leave you on your own, after all. We'll take care of you." She put him down and turned to the others, "Is that settled?"

Toshiro had returned to his usual expression and only nodded in response, and Yoruichi looked like she had just eaten a particularly plump canary as she purred up a storm. The kitten was in a similarly pleased state, and Rukia smiled. "Good, then let's get out of here." She turned, but stopped short. She looked back at the young Felis with a sheepish grin, "Oh, uh- I guess it might be good to introduce ourselves first. My name's Rukia Kuchiki, the white-haired one is Toshiro Hitsugaya. You've already met Yoruichi-san."

The black kitten looked at them all with a toothy grin, "Just call me Raven."

A/N- Chapter six, done! *fanfare*

As you can see, I've brought Raven back, but with a twist (if any of you actually read the old version of this). Hopefully this will let me flesh out Yoruichi's background some more. I apologize if that was explained in cannon already. I either haven't read/watched that part (I kind of fell out of the fandom for a while after the manga got past the winter-war arc) or I can't remember it.

Also, it has been brought to my attention that there's discrepancies in the time periods of the two universes. So I'm going to pull the Harry Potter timeline into more modern years to match with the setting of Bleach. Hopefully, this'll have less repercussions than if I did the opposite.

The next chapter will have Rukia and Toshiro getting their wands, so that'll be fun. Hope you enjoyed, and tell me if you find anything (good or bad) that you'd like to comment on. I enjoy hearing from you all!