A/N:

Again, my mother tongue isn't English. Inform me about any major mistakes if there is, what lazy bastard I am. Hopefully they wont distract your reading experience.

"Thoughts"

"Zangetsu"

"Hollow"

War after the war: Chapter 2

Harry was sitting in his own room thinking about his newest cousin. He had noticed fake smile what the orange-haired boy had kept on. "I think that he will fit right in." he thought. Just like Dursleys: Fake and "normal". Harry sighed. He had hoped that he would be different since his hair color was anything but normal. But what else could you expect someone who is related to aunt Petunia?

It was late evening already. Ichigo didn't wake up all day and Vernon had decided to "Let the boy to sleep". After that Dursleys went to sleep early, as per usual.

Harry was only person awake now. He heard snapping in the corner of his room: "Oh sorry Hedwig, I forgot you", he said softly and walked to owl. She was his only friend right now.. He hasn't heard anything from his school friends for the whole summer. How could they just leave him here? He felt abandoned. And frustrated.

His thoughts were interrupted when he heard a knock at the door. "Yeah come in," Harry said. Door opened and he saw orange haired boy to walk to the room. "Heya, am I interrupting anything? Hope that you wern't sleeping already?" he said and closed the door behind him so the voices wouldn't reach sleeping Dursleys.

"Ah, no! I wasn't. Just thinking … about things." Harry muttered. "Do you need something?" he was sure that boy just wanted to ask where bathroom or something equally inane is. His cousin shook his head, "Nah, I was thinking if we could talk a bit since we didn't have time earlier." he smirked. The smirk was markedly different than the smile which he showed to Dursleys. Ichigo noticed that Harry looked a bit dumbfounded.

"Soo your name was… Harry? Did I remember right?" boy nodded: "Yeah right. And you name was… Itchy…gou?" he tried to pronounce it. Ichigo just chuckled: "Almost, try again." Harry frowned: "Itchygo? No? It…Ichi… go. Ichigo!" He breathed. "Yeah now it went right!" Ichigo laughed and glanced in the corner: "Is that real?" he asked.

Harry looked at Hedwig. "Yeah she's my owl." Hedwig turned to look at him.

"I haven't often seen owls as pets! Are they common in the Britain?" Ichigo asked with amusement while stepped closer white owl.

Harry paled a bit. How was he going to explain that only wizards had owls as pets? "Oh… well. They are not common but got her as a gift few years ago." He muttered quickly. Ichigo turned to look at him. "Hmm, is that so?" and sat down to wooden chair in the Harry's room.

"Ah, hmm, how long are you going to stay here?" Harry asked.

"Maybe to the end of the month, if I don't die before that." he laughed. Harry lifted his eyebrows. "Die? What do you mean?"

Ichigo's scowl deepened: "If I hear another lesson about drills, I'm going to die of boredom! How someone could actually talk about drills three hours!" He smirked.

"B-but I heard from uncle that you were very interested in his talk!" Harry's eyes widened.

"Oh well, I guess that I'm a very good actor?" Ichigo chuckled. "These people try to be as mundane as possible, if I play along, this visit will be much more comfortable."

Harry was amazed by the similarity between their views on the Dursleys. He felt relived, he was worried that there might another Dudley moving in. They kept talking some time and then went to sleep. Harry felt that he wasn't all alone after all.

Some days passed same way. Ichigo acted in front of Dursleys and spent the evenings talking with Harry.

Ichigo was taking a walk with Harry. Both of them had just gone to the park and sat on the swings and made fun of Dudley.

It had gotten dark before Ichigo noted, "We should go back already. It's dark and I think that the Dursleys expected us to be back earlier. When they got up, they noticed Dudley saying good-byes to his gangster friends. Dudley turned around and saw Ichigo and Harry. "Hey! Ichigo! What are you doing here?" he walked towards them, "and why are you with Harry?" Dudley gave disgusted look at the smaller boy.

Ichigo just put his hands in the pocket: "Harry was showing me around" Dudley snorted: "You should ask me in the future!" Ichigo, attempting to change the topic, said "We should go now, I wonder if Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have gotten worried yet."

All three started to walk quietly back to the house. Nobody said anything and Ichigo just enjoyed fresh night air. When Harry, Ichigo and Dudley were nearing home, they reached an alley.
After that it wouldn't be long way anymore.

Just when they stepped inside the tunnel, Ichigo could swear that air got colder. It was like near Toshiro when he was pissed off.

Then he noticed that lights started to turn off in the other side of the alley. He turned around to ask that could Harry see that too.

But Ichigo froze when he saw Harry's face. He was wearing an expression of pure fear. Ichigo's eyes widened. Something wasn't right. Dudley started to shiver as the air went even colder. He shrieked: "HARRY WHAT ARE YOU DOING? TURN THOSE LIGHTS ON NOW! OR I'M GOING TO TELL MOM AND DAD!"

He glanced to other end of the underpass. He felt some weird reiatsu coming from there. It was… Evil. No other words could describe it. Harry was looking at the same direction.

Then, Dudley sprinted forward to get out of the tunnel, towards that reiatsu. "STAY STILL DUDLEY!" he and Harry yelled at the same time.

Dudley stopped. Ichigo felt relieved, but Harry yelled: "DUDLEY LOOK OUT! COME HERE!"

Ichigo shivered when he finally saw the creature that was emitting the weird reiatsu. He knew that it wasn't a hollow. It was black, and wearing some kind of black cape. It didn't walk, but it more like, levitated in the air. Ichigo started to shake. He was remembering the worst moments of his life. He gritted his teeth; it felt like the whole world was crumbling apart. There was no point in anything. He just wanted to die.

Ichigo lifted his head and saw that there was another of those things. It looked exactly same as the first one. He gulped like there was something in his throat. He shook his head. "What is this? What's wrong with me?"

Hichigo seemed to be unsatisfied with situation too: "Oi! King! Wha' the hell is going on! This place is sinkin' too quickly! Zangetsu pissed off is and we are soaked!"

Ichigo shook his head and then he turned to look at Harry just to see that he waved with something and yelled: "EXPECTO PATRONUM!" There was bright light what went straight to those black things. Ichigo gaped. What was that? He felt the sadness washing away when the silver stag chased the creature away. But, other was coming straight towards Harry, and Ichigo couldn't hesitate anymore.

He knew that Harry didn't have time to defend himself so Ichigo raised his hand and whispered. "Cero." There was small crack and screeching noise when blood-red ball formed in the tip of his finger. Ichigo didn't want to shoot full force cero since it would destroy most of the city, so he fired it when it reached the size of a grape.

It hit black thing and he heard a horrible inhuman scream. Then came horrible smell as the creature burned to ashes.

Harry looked at Ichigo with eyes as big as plates: " What did you do?" he excaimed. Ichigo sighed: "We'll take Dudley first. You have some things to explain as well. But there will be time for explanations later." he walked to pale Dudley who was lying on the ground. "What the hell happened to him? What those things were?"

Harry walked slowly closer Dudley: "They are called dementors. They are horrible creatures whose suck happiness from the air and they eat souls." Ichigo quickly turned to Harry: "So those were the dementors I have heard about! But they are nothing like hollows," he muttered to himself. "Hollows?" Harry asked, but didn't get answer.

Ichigo lifted Dudley to his shoulder and started walking to the house. "Gah! How someone actually could weight this much! Unbelievable!" he complained. Harry didn't say anything.

Soon they reached front door. Harry helped to get Dudley inside and Vernon came to corridor: "Well there you are! I was already wondering… DUDLEY!" he shrieked. Petunia ran from the kitchen: "What? OH MY LITTLE DUDDYKINS! WHAT HAPPENED!" they grasped Dudley and brought him to sit to kitchen. "Duddykins? What's wrong?" Petunia hovered over Dudley while Vernon started to turn more purplish than ever.

It kept going a while. Ichigo just stood there hands in the pockets and frowned.

"Is he going to be alright?" he whispered with low voice. Harry glanced at Ichigo: "Yeah, they didn't succeed to suck his soul or anything else."

Ichigo relaxed a bit.

"Good."

Harry walked slowly to the stairs, wanting to get out of the situation. When he got onto first step, he heard Dudley's mumbling voice: "It was… him", and when Harry turned to look at the kitchen, Dudley pointed at him.

"Damn."

"HARRY! COME BACK HERE RIGHT NOW!" Vernon yelled. Harry walked back to Vernon: "WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIM? I SHOULD HAVE GUESSED THAT IT WAS YOU!" Vernon yelled as he spitted in Harry's face.

"I didn't do anything." Harry said calmly, but his eyes were burning.

"IT WAS DEFINITELY YOU! WHAT ELSE COULD HAVE DONE THAT?"

"It was dementor, a creature that devours happiness and eats souls." Harry growled back. "D-dementor? Eats souls?" Vernon spitted suspiciously. "Liar!"

"It's true." All Dursleys including Harry turned to the voice.

Ichigo, who had been standing calmly in the corner said, "I saw that black thing too. Harry actually saved Dudley's life." He said calmly as he gazed at the Dursleys.

Vernon looked at him incredulously. After a long stare, he murmured, "Y-you saw it too? So he's not lying?"

Ichigo scowled at him: "Yeah, that's what I said. And Dudley will be totally fine in a few minutes, so would you excuse me and Harry? We would like to go to discuss in private about this matter."

There was some kind of authority in his voice, Vernon couldn't do anything other than nod.

Ichigo fotioned for Harry to come with him and they disappeared up stairs.

"So", Ichigo started when he sat on the same wooden chair he had used past days. "Tell me that what the hell is going on?" he set on intensive stare.

Harry didn't know where to begin. He had so many questions too.

"How about that we trade information?" Harry demanded. Ichigo frowned, "That's fair. But first, why there were dementors in the alley? Aren't they under supervision of the Ministry?"

Harry startled at that, "So you are a wizard too! Well, I'm not sure what happened…"

Ichigo lifted his eyebrow: "But it's not common to bump into them like that in the street, right?"

"Yeah. They really shouldn't be here", Harry said awkwardly: "But why didn't you tell me that you were a wizard too!" Harry demanded, "I'm sure you figured out something when you saw Hedwig!"

"Ah, yeah .. I am not actually, a wizard that is." Ichigo chuckled. "Well there goes the undercover mission…" It was Harry's turn to lift eyebrows: "What are you then?"

Hope you liked.