Yay new chapter! I did this in like 3 hours so its kinda short. It's also short cuz I felt like ending the chapter at this point and didn't feel like writing any more.
Thanks to everyone who reviewed, I love you guys.
This chapter? Malfoy bashing. Literal Malfoy bashing. And non-literal Hermione, Ron, and kind of Neville bashing. Not so much Neville, but Ichigo gives his opinion on them all.
Hope you like the chapter. I don't own anything. If you recognize it, I don't own it.
Students leapt to get out of the way of the fuming transfer student. No one knew quite what set the boy off and no one was willing to get close enough to ask. Some thought it was the fact that Lupin had been missing from his classes, Snape substituting for him, something that would upset anyone who had to spend any more time than necessary with the Potions Master. Others thought that it was the fact that the school had had to sleep in the Great Hall after Sirius Black invasion of the castle and assault on the Griffindor painting the Fat Lady.
The older boy practically radiated anger, his face set in a fierce scowl as his long legs ate up the ground on his way to the Slytherin dorms. He paused only to give the portrait guarding the pathway the password and glare at it when it didn't open fast enough for his tastes. He headed straight for his dorm room, grabbed his cloak, and stalked back out without a glance at anyone in the common room or the dorm.
His wand was out, held in a white-knuckled grip as his eyes flashed gold, heading for the front entrance now. No one wanted to be on the receiving end of anything his wand dished out, his killing of the boggart last week already getting around the school, making the students even more wary of him. He ignored them as he always did; heading out to take his frustrations on something else that would not get him in as much trouble. He headed for the Forbidden Forest once he was out of sight of the castle, he was going to break something to calm him down, and no magical creatures had better get in his way, for their sake.
It had been hours since dinner, since Ichigo had left to take his anger out on something non-living in the Forest. He paused as he sensed a presence, his instincts not as sharp as they had been but multiple times better than those of any wizard. The howl that suddenly silenced the woods only confirmed his suspicions; it seemed Snape had been trying to tell the class something. Sneaky bastard. He did not run when the large, thin form of the werewolf topped a hill and saw him. Did not flinch as its golden eyes met his. All that happened was his grip tightening on his wand as his eyes flashed a more poisonous yellow than the wolf creature's.
The creature hesitated, unsure of this strange young human before it. The human did not look afraid, did not smell afraid, and challenged it with its eyes and posture. It let out a growl at the human but the human only looked amused. Why did the human look amused? It was a youngling. A pup. Not strong, surely. Young humans were never strong, they were weak, frightened. But this young human was not, it smelled of blood and death. Why was that? Then the human raised its stick and the werewolf snarled. It knew that humans with sticks were dangerous, they made it hurt. It would kill the human before it could hurt.
Ichigo smirked as the werewolf lunged at him, a single flick of his dark wand and, "Suffoco" was enough to halt it as the air in its lungs stilled. The werewolf's yellow eyes widened as it gasped, gripping its throat in an attempt to bring air into its lungs, a futile effort thanks to Ichigo's newest spell. It collapsed as Ichigo stayed where he was, wand still pointed at the creature, holding the spell on it. He finally released it when he noticed the creature's eyes beginning to grow dull from lack of oxygen. He scowled as it wheezed, taking in deep breaths to get more oxygen into its body.
He glared at it when it made to get to its feet and approach him and it stilled, staring into those merciless golden eyes with an instinctive fear, this human was not to be fought. It stopped and turned away from the frightening human, leaving the clearing in the opposite direction as the human.
Ichigo sat at the back of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, waiting for the class to start. The students silenced somewhat when Lupin entered, looking more haggard than usual, but continued on much to Ichigo's annoyance.
Lupin avoided Ichigo's eyes, as if knowing that the transfer's eyes were fixed on him. He could feel the weight of the young man's gaze, cold and calculating, as if he was trying to make sure of something. When he turned and made eyes contact with the orangette, he was slightly disturbed at the knowledge they held. There was a strange smugness in the transfer's gaze, one that did not bode well for him. He vaguely remembered what had happened last week during the full moon, though it was cloudy. He remembered yellow eyes and an unfamiliar spell that brought suffocating pain and feeling frightened of the boy, although his werewolf rarely feared anything, much less a third year student.
When Lupin was collecting the homework assignments from last class he blanched, looking down at Ichigo Kurosaki's assignment. It was completed perfectly, as usual, but it was the words scrawled across the top of the paper that had him unsteady, 'I know what you are, do be careful on your future trips to the Forest will you? Wouldn't want you attacking a student now would we?' He looked up and caught the eyes of the transfer, shuddering at the sadistic smile on his student's face. Then it was gone, replaced with a bright smile that was so fake it was scary. And then he was gone, leaving the classroom with long, ground-devouring strides without a second glance, face completely blank once more. Lupin half leaned, half fell against his desk once the last student left the room, trying to get control of himself, noticing that he had begun shaking. He sighed once he managed to stop the tremors, raking a hand through messy brown hair, and looked down at the faultless paper with a sense of foreboding, what was he to do with this student?
The next few weeks until the beginning of the next term were relatively quiet; Ichigo did his work and spent any time not busy with homework or training in the library, reading up on any books that caught his eye. He wasn't very impressed with the selection of curses, wanting some more drastic spells that could really do some damage. He shrugged and took out his journal, taking notes on what kind of spells he thought would be useful that did not already exist. He would work on his own, always; leaving the area or simply stop working if others came near him while he was working on his spells. Luckily most students went home for the holiday but there were a few who were very curious about him, which he didn't appreciate. He did not care for the other students, they were loud and treated magic like some sort of game, then complained when it wasn't as easy as they wanted it to be. Even the assignments weren't that hard, it was nothing compared to his high school homework that he had had to somehow complete even while performing his shinigami duties. He excelled now that he was no longer in high school or a shinigami, fully intending to jump several grades during the summer.
Ichigo found it much easier on himself if he didn't engage in anything to do with the more well known people in his classes. He wasn't going near Malfoy to begin with, unless he was going to forcibly readjust the kid's face, but he found those around Harry Potter gained just as much attention. The bushy haired girl, Hermione, was infuriatingly annoying, she would always ask dozens of questions without giving her poor victim a chance to respond, and then get mad at them for not answering. He would immediately turn and take a different route to wherever he was going if he saw her coming his way with that look in her eyes. Weasley, the youngest boy anyway, was annoying on the best of days. Ichigo didn't even talk to him and the boy pissed him off. He was insufferable, he had no idea how he was Potter's best friend. He was loud, rude, completely thick, and most of all, he always had to give his opinion about absolutely everything no matter how stupid, oblivious, and biased it was! The Neville kid was just sort of sad really, he was rather weak willed and frightened insanely easily, like how he was afraid of Snape! Not that Snape was nice about it, Snape wasn't nice about anything, he took advantage of it and didn't pass down a chance to harass the poor boy. Ichigo actually felt sorry for him and was a bit sad that the boy wasn't likely to survive this battle against that Voldemort guy everyone seemed terrified of if he didn't man up and stop jumping at shadows.
So yeah, Ichigo didn't converse much, and preferred it that way. He would speak to some of his classmates if he had to, mostly the kids in the higher grades so they'd give him ideas of what they learned so he could get a head start, but not many. Most of the student body were afraid of him, not that he cared. If they were afraid of him, they'd leave him alone, which was much appreciated. He was at Hogwarts to learn, not to play friends.
It was the first week of February when Ichigo did something that made the students truly afraid of him. he had been having a nice run around the grounds when he saw Malfoy, his goons, and the Golden Trio as Harry, Hermione, and Ron were apparently called. His eyes narrowed slightly as he got close enough to hear what was being said. The mention of Buckbeak had his eyes narrowed further under a furrowed brow. He could finally hear everything that was being said and his eyes flashed gold. Malfoy and his 'friends' were taunting the Griffindor trio about Malfoy's father apparently sentencing the hippogriff to death.
Ichgo stalked up to them, still unseen by any of the two bickering groups, and snarled, the sound rough and primal and full of rage. Both groups spun around to face him, fear on all of their faces as they turned to what must have been some vicious creature. Imagine their surprise when all they saw was the transfer student, who was looking pretty vicious at the moment with his scowl and burning gold eyes.
"W-w-what do you want Kurosaki?" Malfoy demanded, his bravado diminished by the tremor in his voice.
Ichigo scowled deeper, his beastial golden eyes fixed on the blond, who swallowed. "My problem," the students flinched at how low and hoarse his voice was, practically a growl, "is that you went and did what I specifically warned you not to do. You blamed your incompetence on an animal that simply was startled into injuring you and now what are you doing? Killing an animal because you embarrassed yourself. Because you were too pathetic to admit that it was your own stupid fault that you got injured."
Malfoy bristled, having decided that he wasn't going to tolerate a foreigner mouthing off to him. He gestured to his henchmen, his face red with anger and embarrassment.
Ichigo did not flinch when the first boy slammed a fist into his jaw. He didn't even move. The boy who punched him however, cried out in pain, holding his curled hand in the other. The other boy hesitated, but clearly did not know better than to drive his fist into Ichigo's stomach. This time Ichigo bent with the hit, only because he was lessening the impact, but the stupid boy thought he actually hurt him. His confident smirk vanished when Ichigo lifted his head, a leer on his face, right before the orange haired transfer smashed his head into the shorter boy's. The boy's legs gave out and he collapsed, out cold. Ichigo didn't hesitate, immediately lunging forward and giving Malfoy a right uppercut that would make a boxer jealous. The cocky blond's eyes rolled up in his head and crumpled to the ground. And then there was one, Ichigo turned to the boy and took one, long step towards him.
The remaining boy stared between him and the two prone figures on the ground with terror painted all over his face. He almost passed out with relief when the transfer looked at him, disgust written across his sharp features and growled, "Take them to the infirmary. You're lucky I'm in a good mood or you'd be joining them for a month. Tell Malfoy the next time he blames another for his shortcomings, he's got a lot worse coming than what I gave him today." The boy nodded so hard he would have neck pains for days after, only moving to obey the taller when he snarled, "Well? Get moving!" He got, managing to half carry half drag the two unconscious boys away as fast as he could, all too willing to get away from the transfer who fought like a demon.
Ichigo stopped to watch the boy strain under the combined weight of his friends for a moment before he turned cold eyes on the Golden Trio. Their expressions ranged between appalled, shocked, amazed, and just plain surprised, some of them more than one at a time. He snorted once and left, not caring in the slightest about what they thought of his actions. He had almost made it out of earshot when he heard Weasley (of course it was him) shout, "That was wicked!" Ichigo just groaned. How much longer until this year was over?
School was loud for the next few days, his fighting skills getting around to all of the students in a few hours (Ichigo knew they didn't have anything better to do, which was kind of sad really), and now more students were afraid of him. At the same time there were students who now looked up to him for taking down Malfoy, since not many had the guts or the courage, much less the strength, to do so. Both Snape and Dumbledore had approached him about it, but since Malfoy and the other boys refused to say what caused it, all they could do was give him a warning not to do it again. Not that a warning would stop him from whaling on someone who deserved it, but it made the teachers feel better apparently.
Ichigo had enjoyed the fact that Malfoy would flee from him if he could, avoiding his gaze if they had to be near each other, and not going near him unless it was absolutely necessary. The few jeers that a few students had made about the "Weasley haired foreigner" came to a dead halt, since they likely now feared for their well being now that he'd shown Malfoy's goons could stand up to him.
Ichigo tried to ignore it; he avoided the extra attention as much as possible. He wore his hoods again, not liking the attention, and holed up in the library in an attempt to make the year go by faster.
Ichigo avoided others like the plague for the next few months, making it to April, finally. He heard Hermione took a page from his book and hit the annoying blond Slytherin herself, which made him chuckle for a bit when he found out, overhearing it from the many gossipers of the school. He didn't bother going to the last Quidditch game of the year and didn't care that his house lost, he just tried to block out the complaining and insulting his housemates did afterwards. He once again tried to ignore his classmates, using one of his own spells on himself to block out the noise and taking silent pride that he had added two more spells to his growing list. He was sure he'd have a dozen by the end of next year, all he had to do was survive that long and with the drama that already happened this year, that was going to be a sizeable feat. All he had to do was ignore his classmates and anyone else who was being loud and therefore annoying, pass all his classes, and possibly not get into anymore fights and he'd be good for the year, then he could spend the next year studying on his own and get some real work done, he was going to jump as many grades as possible and learn as much as he could, he was finally getting somewhere.
So yay, its done. I had fun writing Ichigo take down Malfoy. I really don't like the kid. He's a prat.
Review please?
I'm going to bed.