Summary: Sequel to Samsara. Yet another life, though this one has the odd benefit or so.

Pairing: Tsuna/Reborn

Chapters: 8

Beta: —

Spoilers: Samsara, Katekyo Hitman Reborn, Harry Potter

Warnings: canon mangling, identity hopping, elements of crack, slash, time skips, mood whiplash

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J. K. Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc.; and Amano Akira, Weekly Shōnen Jump, and Viz Media. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. (And that other one I'm not mentioning at the moment.)

Notes:

0. This story is completely written and is now in the posting phase.

1. Why the hell not, basically.

2. There's nothing graphic with regard to the pairing and it's by no means the focus. You'll need to fill in most any juicy bits with your own damn imagination.

3. Do I really need to say that some or all of the chapters are probably weird? Writing is my form of mental therapy, after all. I finished it, so it goes up.

4. Still feeling exceptionally cynical, by the way.

5. Plenty of stuff is excerpted or used in modified form from various HP books.

6. A movie mentioned was released the year it comes up, but not until after it was mentioned in the story.

7. Uh, right. The subtitle comes from a track in Persona 5.

8. 1.0 (2018 11 08): Initial assembly.

9. (10 10 2018 - 08 11 2018)

v2018-1.0
November 2018
(10 10 2018 - 08 11 2018)

When he woke up, it was not to a depressingly familiar ceiling. In point of fact, the ceiling looked distinctly like the underside of a staircase, which lent to the forming idea that he was in a cupboard tucked in beneath a set of stairs. In addition, there was a note scrawled in the rather fuzzy dust coating the underside of the steps.

It read: Let's see how you do with an additional complication.

He sighed and shook his head slightly, absently noting that he seemed to be five years old which, with that one exception, was par for the course.

'We have a problem,' a distressed and angry-sounding Daemon said.

'Yes,' hissed Xeul (sounding disturbingly like a snake), followed quickly by a hiss from Mukuro.

'What is it, then?' he asked.

'You're possessed,' Daemon replied, 'and I don't mean by us. There's another soul in here, a partial one, and it's quite vile. Get in here, Heul, and help us take care of this.'

He blinked a few times in sheer disbelief, then turned inward so he could assist his friends. After having spent years poking around inside the minds of others (when he wasn't accidentally liquefying or exploding them) he had become quite familiar with the concept of entering his own mindscape.

He blinked again when he saw a hovering, gaseous, wavery sphere of malevolence giving off some seriously creepy vibes that brought to mind some of the psychotic whackjobs he had offed during his Varia life.

"Right," he said. "Let's drain it dry of any information it has, then banish the fucker."

His friends all grinned with equal hints of madness and nodded.

A short time later (as defined by the curious aspect of time warping inside a mindscape, which meant it could have been anywhere from ten seconds to ten hours) he was back in the real world and wondering why he had so much black gunk on his forehead. "Fuck," he muttered, then hunted around for a rag or something to clean up with, as well as get some bottled water out of storage.

'So you're most likely this Harry Potter person the shard mentioned,' Daemon commented. 'I can't think of any other reason why that thing would have been lodged in your head given what we could discern of the night in question's events.'

'Joy. I assume this is to do with the "additional complication" and that I have this so-called magic, which is capable of doing things flames cannot.'

'Uh…' Mukuro sounded oddly hesitant. 'A poke at your body's memories isn't looking good, Heul. I think you were abused before we woke up, or at least badly neglected. I expect one of us is going to have to make some changes around here.'

Tsuna rolled his eyes and sighed. 'It also means the bodies we find for you guys—'

'Magical,' Hayato said firmly. 'No fucking way are you going to some pansy-ass magical school without all of us.'

Chikusa coughed (it echoed, which was unpleasant). 'Ideas as to how to first find said bodies?'

'The school must have some way of locating students,' Ken said. 'So we break in and find out how they're doing it. Once we figure out how to find the school, anyway.'

Tsuna pondered for a short time, then said, 'All right. Mists will grab available bodies from surrounding area. That gives us four bodies to work with on this. Once we've tracked down children of the correct age to acquire… Preferably ones with parents or guardians who are freaked out by the presumable weirdness.'

'So like our situation,' Chikusa said, 'but not exactly.'

'Right.'

Tsuna was startled when someone banged on the cupboard door and screeched, "Get up! You need to make breakfast, freak!"

'That has to change as soon as possible,' Xeul said darkly.

'We need bodies first, or…' Tsuna nodded after a moment. 'I expect at this age we'll be in some sort of half-day schooling, so once we get back from that, Daemon, you take over long enough to fix the woman and anyone else, if necessary. Then we can get on with finding temporary bodies for the Mists and get our research started.'

'We should probably look into emptying out a neighboring house and anchoring a Bounding Box,' Hayato pointed out.

'Hopefully some of the bodies will be orphans,' Ken said. 'Or can be acceptably made into orphans. Then no one will get too upset when they vanish.'

More banging sounded at the door.

Tsuna rolled his eyes and opened the cupboard door, only to be dragged off into a kitchen and glared at. The woman was clearly Occidental and her accent was English, so at least he had some clue what he was supposed to be making.

The packages of bacon, carton of eggs, and loaf of pre-sliced bread were a hint, too.

A short time later he was given a crust of bread (that the woman purposefully burnt after the fact) for his breakfast, a half-filled glass of tepid water, and packed off to get dressed. It being a Saturday, there was no need to worry about school, though apparently he was in Year One.

'We need to check education laws in this country,' Chikusa said. 'If we can get out of having to deal with this nonsense, all the better.'

'Agreed,' he said. 'Once we get the woman under control, her husband this evening, and dissuade the boy from bothering us, we can hunt for Mist bodies so we can get on with acquiring a house.'

'I don't think we need to possess the woman,' Xuel stated, 'so it'd be better for me or Yeul to handle them. And getting any and all information we can out of them about the situation.'

Tsuna thought it over and nodded.

After the piglet he was privileged to call a "cousin" had wandered off outside to "play" they got to work. Tsuna let Daemon take the driver's seat so he could use his special ability to bring the giraffe-like woman of the house under their control.

Tsuna wondered at times if doing so enough times would teach his own soul how to pull off the same trick or not.

'Maybe,' was the internally-directed response.

Daemon rifled through Petunia's mind for every and any bit of information regarding their current situation. It seemed that Petunia had been to a Diagon Alley place once, when her sister Lily had gone the first time for shopping, and remembered it quite clearly. Hatred had a habit of gouging things like that firmly into memory.

'Assuming we can get out of bothering with school we'll have years to find bodies and form a proper game plan, though I'd prefer having a body sooner rather than later,' Hayato said, sounding impatient.

Tsuna hummed. 'Right. We get Vernon tonight, the boy when he comes back in for lunch. Considering that Petunia insists we're here for some blood protection thing, it'd be best if we get a house directly beside this one, or behind it, I suppose. Okay, let's get to the library to do some research.'

Daemon borrowed control again long enough to swipe a wad of cash out of Petunia's purse for general purposes, and then they were off. The library provided the necessary information—that being, home-schooling was an option in the UK. That being the case, they immediately set off to infiltrate the school and track down the people responsible for the records, so they could be altered to reflect the change, and also to get the address of the person in charge so they could be modified as well.

A short stop was made at a local fast food place to get something to eat and forge a letter (Mukuro took over for that part, as his handwriting was still the best) to be left with the headmaster-principle-whatever of Little Whinging Primary.

With that out of the way they took the time to have what masqueraded as lunch at № 4 Privet Drive, then headed back out to inspect the houses to either side. Given that nearly every house in the neighborhood was a duplicate they chose based on who lived in each of them, finally deciding to "convince" the occupants of № 6 to find a sudden, pressing need to complete a private sale—after Tsuna had converted enough gold to English Pounds, that is.

'Same old. We need to figure out a decent market price, get them out…'

Various souls inside him conveyed agreement.

'Let's go looking for potential Mist hosts, preferably amongst people who don't deserve to live in the first place. We can hop a train to London in the morning, I suppose. I'll do up an anchored disguise tonight. For now let's just head back to the library and check the history section.'

That evening he pulled a ring out of storage and anchored a disguise to it, of his original adult appearance. If by chance he should run into a mafioso who recognized Giotto di Vongola, well, a bit of memory modification would be in order. But the chances of that happening should be low.

— — —

The next morning he blew off breakfast, filched rather a lot in ready cash from the walrus, and took off for the train station, ducking into a public restroom long enough to put on his disguise. On arrival in London he went prowling via Between for likely candidates.

Daemon snagged the first one and took the chap over, a rather seedy looking fellow who squinted overmuch, but that was corrected the moment his appearance changed to one dear and familiar to Tsuna.

Mukuro went next (incidentally, while Daemon was off gathering funds), followed shortly by Xeul.

Tsuna thought it was a wonderful thing that souls could not be quantified in terms of volume, else his poor body would be incredibly cramped, and it was already quite scrawny and underfed. It was going to take a lot of damn hard work to gain muscle and correct the ravages of malnutrition.

They reconvened at a café for a meal and to discuss their plans.

"I'm thinking the house is the first thing. We have close to six years before the letter is supposed to arrive."

"What about that nonsense with you having something to do with that terrorist? Do you think the school would find it peculiar that six others are living in the house next door? Not to say that we can't fix that, but…"

Tsuna shrugged. "I'm not getting any feelings about it, but perhaps it's too soon for that. We'll fix it if it's necessary, when the time comes. So, we need to find someone who'll exchange gold for pounds, or acquire enough, whichever. I think for now we can just go two and two in the extra bedrooms."

"We'll ensure they don't even notice," Daemon said, his expression briefly settling on "I am evil, fear me" before smoothing out to one of angelic innocence.

"And now that we've been here, we can skip that horrible train ride," Mukuro said with a shudder of distaste.

"I do think we should have anchored Bounding Boxes over those two rooms," Xeul stated. "Which reminds me, we need to update their programming to ensure Vernon's sister does not come to visit until after we've acquired a house."

Tsuna nodded. "By the way, I noticed that the eye came through."

Mukuro smiled. "It's nice. I spent all that time learning how to use it, and now I get to keep it, minus the torture."

"This food is awfully bland," Daemon complained. "Are they afraid of spices or something?"

— — —

Tsuna eyed the man behind the bar with vague curiosity. He was bald, toothless, and smiled far too much for it to not be some kind of cover. Being a mafioso for so long had a way of etching suspicion onto the soul.

"I seem to have lost my brochure," he said eventually, his Japanese-accented English marking him as a tourist rather than a native. "Will you help us into the alley, please?"

"Of course! Of course!" the man said cheerfully, taking a moment to dry his hands off on a towel hanging from the belt at his waist. "It's just this way, out the back." He led them off through the pub and through a door which exited into a small outdoor alcove of sorts. The man, who had yet to offer a name, tapped his wand just so and beamed at them as the bricks began to rearrange themselves into an archway.

A serene smile slid into place and he nodded at the man. "My thanks."

"Sure! Stop in for a meal on the way back if you're hungry," the man said, then bustled off.

"Come along now, children," Tsuna said. "Let us visit a book shop, and devour it."

'And look for a decent place to step in and out of,' Hayato commented.

'Agreed.'

Four hours later they returned to the Leaky Cauldron for a meal. The place wasn't quite as clean looking as they might have liked, but it was passable. Orders for cottage pie and butterbeer were given, and once those were delivered a Bounding Box went up quietly to discourage people.

"That was productive," he said, then took a bite of his meal, only to scrunch up his nose. "Is this potato or library paste? And I specifically said cottage pie, not shepherd's pie. Why does this have lamb in it?"

Daemon set his fork back down and sighed. "All right, we'll make it disappear and eat elsewhere. Let's move on. Our present goals."

"We need a way to find bodies," Mukuro said promptly. "I imagine their government has a way?"

"Or the school," Xeul said. "We could check both."

"Well, given what we got from Petunia, they keep an eye out for underage magic, and magic in the so-called muggle world," he said. "The school is a thousand years old and the Ministry wasn't even created until well after that. So, I think the school has its own way of telling. We should check both."

'You'll need to be at both,' Chikusa pointed out, which Tsuna promptly relayed before replying, "For the Bounding Boxes, yes. The only location we have for the school is Scotland, so for that we'll have to floo to Hogsmeade."

"And hope that we can see the school," Daemon said, "otherwise you'll be leading us. If we can find someone who can access whatever method they use, however…"

Tsuna nodded. "Easy enough to temporarily convert them to an ally. The Ministry first, since it's in London. If one of you would…?"

Mukuro nodded and slipped out of the booth.

Xeul got a waterproof bag out of storage and slopped all their food into it, sealed it, and set it beside him, presumably to throw away back in the normal world. If nothing else they knew not to take names on faith when it came to magicals.

The butterbeer, on the other hand, wasn't terrible, rather like butterscotch, but mild enough not to make a person sick. Proper butterscotch was best savored in small pieces, in his opinion. He was somewhat surprised that the drink was alcoholic given that there were children in the pub drinking it.

"I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to see the school," he said idly. "After all, none of you had trouble seeing the Leaky Cauldron. Perhaps being active is considered a type of magic here?"

"Excellent point," Daemon replied as Mukuro slipped back into the booth.

"We have an entry, though it's more than a bit ridiculous. I suggest that we do that now to get our bearings, then go have a decent lunch."

"Right, we're off, then."

— — —

The Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes turned out to be a gold mine in terms of information, specifically, the records of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. While it was true that they worked equally to squash the outbursts of magical-raised and muggle-raised, it was by far more likely for them to be called out to a household in the muggle world, for children unaware they were magical in the first place, muggle-born or half-blood.

The squad was kind enough to note down details about the child in question, such as blood status, guardians, and any actions taken (such as obliviating people). They stepped away with a list of names and addresses to check into.

"All right," he said as he slid plates of food onto the table. A nearby window (showing his mindscape, amusingly enough) revealed Ken, Chikusa, and Hayato, who were eyeing the food with wistful longing.

"We should trick out a laptop or something," Hayato said. "Make it seem like we're chatting over an app or something, rather than it being what it is."

"Certainly an idea," he replied, picking up his fork. "All right, we have names. Now we need to go figure out which bodies to take. We can still check in at Hogwarts, but from what we've read, the only school in the UK is Hogwarts, so it's not like they'd be getting letters for elsewhere."

"Which makes it pretty damn obvious there's something wrong with how few children there are each year," Chikusa pointed out.

"How many of those should be muggle-born children, who end up getting killed off by Death Eaters?" Ken said. "You know, all those poor, weak-willed souls who were so easy to place under the Imperius Curse and therefore got off for the low, low price of a campaign contribution?"

Tsuna grimaced. "Well, much as I'd like to get straight to the killing of defective people, we have no way of knowing right now who does that sort of thing. Let's get bodies first, then we can go on a rampage."

"And see which, if any of them, know anything about further soul pieces," Xeul said. "If those are tethering Voldemort's spirit to the world, and allow for him to be resurrected, such as it is, we need to take care of them. They are a clear danger. If anyone ever suspected that the scar contained one…"

Tsuna grimaced again. "They'd want me dead if they were of the so-called Light—which to me sounds more like those who stick their heads in the sand—and kept alive but probably insensate by those of the Dark."

One of the Mists helpfully hovered the list near the window so those still trapped inside Tsuna's soul could get up to speed.

"Priority on those with unhappy households."

A general sound of agreement went round.

— — —

The seven of them were arrayed around the sitting room in various indolent poses, all busy reading everything they could get their hands on when it came to the wizarding world. Unfortunately, none of the muggle-born children they had borrowed had even a hint of flames. If they had them latently—for in theory every person should have at least one aspect—they were buried so deeply that Samsara couldn't find them.

Sadly, that simply meant that no one gained any additional flames to their souls.

Xeul had been the one to brave the floo system and take a trip to Hogsmeade. While there he sent spies off to the school looming in the distance across an appropriately named Black Lake. With that knowledge and an opened window, it allowed Tsuna, Daemon, and Mukuro to send their own spies and open their own windows.

Their intent was to map the school as best they could, and also search for anything of use not already owned by someone. Though, in the case of someone who was clearly defective, they certainly considered it. As it was, those people were tagged, to potentially be dealt with later, such as with tragic accidents.

Ken had become Kenton Selle, a muggle-born with very religious parents who were already looking at the child as if the Devil had come to roost. It was no trouble at all to make them believe their son had been packed off to a deprogramming facility and would never darken their door again. They had signed away any and all rights to the "manager" of the fictitious place, who just so happened to be Heul.

Chikusa was now Clay Elliot, a muggle-born orphan. He had been adopted by Heul. Daemon had become Yule Vos, Xeul had become Zane Ashwill, Mukuro was Matt Rushford, and Hayato was Hale Graver.

"You know," he said conversationally, "I'm not adverse to the Tsow—assuming he is a Tsow as he generally is—being caught dead to rights doing something naughty and ending up dead or in Vendicare after my counterpart has been born."

His guardians looked up with bloodthirsty expressions of happiness.

"Which also leads us the topic of the local Daemon."

"Right," said Daemon and Xeul in unison. "If we do this right, we could potentially get him to keep an eye on the local Tsuna, to ensure nothing happens to him."

"Since we'll have the time," Hayato said, "I think we should plan to live in Japan for some time, especially around the time the old man would try to seal him. We should check to see if there's any magic that could help, as well."

He nodded. "There's no reason why we can't disappear from the magical world after school is done with, and move on to more familiar topics. We read everything we can get our hands on, legally or illegally, and then we move against his known minions, to see what we can get out of them. Any of those soul pieces we can find ahead of time…"

"We will be restricted when we're at that school, so yes," Chikusa said. "We don't know who he was before then, though. Do you think the old man might?"

The Mists exchanged a look.

"We'll try it via window at first," Daemon said, "and if that doesn't work, I or Xeul will go in person to get the information."

Mukuro nodded complacently. His special talent—now that he possessed it—worked quite differently from Daemon's, and was better suited for other things.

"So tonight?" he asked, setting aside the book he had just finished and selecting another one.

"Yes, while everyone is asleep."

— — —

"Tom Marvolo Riddle, son of Merope Gaunt and a muggle man also named Tom Riddle, supposedly the result of a love potion union. A sad tale. She died shortly after giving birth, having lived long enough to name the boy. He was raised in an orphanage, where his peculiarities did nothing to endear him to the other residents."

"So he was bullied," Tsuna said flatly.

"And turned into a right terror because of it, potentially aided by mental instability brought on by severe inbreeding in the Gaunt line. They thought nothing of marrying brother to sister to 'keep the blood pure'," Daemon said with revulsion. "He could talk to snakes, which is an ability now thought to be a mark of evil for some stupid reason."

"Right, no letting people know I can talk to snakes, if I picked that up," he said dryly. "Or I do, and we all get into Hufflepuff."

Ken snickered. "That's also something to decide, which house gives us the most benefit with the least drawbacks. Slytherin might allow us to rule the house through sheer terror, but it would set quite a few people against us."

"Hufflepuffs are seen as loyal, hardworking duffers. Good for camouflage, but they might expect us to join the cult," Hayato said.

"Ravenclaw are the allegedly smart ones," Chikusa said, "but they might also be the sorts to ask intrusive questions and be a little too observant."

"And Gryffindor is the house of cannon fodder," Mukuro said. "It would provide cover in the event of stupidly heroic actions, though. We could get away with a lot in that house from an outsider point of view. I expect people would shake their heads and sigh, then dismiss it all as Gryffindor foolishness."

"That and apparently this body's parents were in Gryffindor," Tsuna pointed out. "People seem to take pride in that for some reason, like a relative's accomplishments are somehow theirs or reflect well on them. Also, the whole bit about allegedly offing the Dark Lord." He rolled his eyes at the simplistic thinking of magicals.

"Maybe we'll get lucky and have a room to ourselves, then," Xeul said. "There's seven of us, and an average of five per house per gender, though it's more likely two of us will end up with complete strangers."

Tsuna shrugged. "So we use clones to fake them out and all room together anyway, plus put up an anchored Bounding Box to keep everyone out."

"Will that work against those house-elf things Hogwarts: A History mentioned?" Ken asked.

"I don't see why not," he said. "They've minds." He glanced at his twins.

They nodded. "We'll check into it."

"Next order of business," he said. "Thoughts on acquiring a house in Hogsmeade?"

Approving nods went around the table and Mukuro said, "I'll take care of it, though I would like Hayato with me on that."

Hayato nodded agreeably.

"Next: research on all known minions of the Dark Lord and where we can reasonably expect to find them."

Ken and Chikusa nodded. "We'll go through the Daily Prophet archives to start," Chikusa said, "and move on to whatever we can get from the Ministry archives. Failing that, we'll need a Mist to help grease the wheels if our own flames won't quite do."

"All right. I am going to read up on Azkaban, then, since I expect we'll be needing to figure out a way in to interrogate the imprisoned minions at some point."

— — —

Breaking into Azkaban was at first a matter of finding the port of call for the boat that ran the line between the coast of Scotland and the island Azkaban was built on. Spies were set on the boatmen (for not everyone could afford a portkey to the island itself, or even get permission for one) along with a window trained on them.

From there it was a simple issue of scouring the prison levels for the Dark Lord's minions. The archives had been useful in pointing out names and general descriptions, but given the conditions the captives lived under (24/7 with dementors wasn't good for anyone's health or life span), those could only be used as basic guidelines.

There were plenty of people incarcerated there for other crimes, even minor ones, which only made it plain that wizards were, in general, disgusting wastes of humanity if they thought unending torture was the correct response to even minor infractions of the law.

'Kami-sama,' he thought. 'Even the Vindice aren't that horrifyingly cruel. The worst you'd suffer there is to be sent to sleep. They don't outright torture you every hour of every day. You're free to dream.'

It took a week to go through the entire prison, but they located a number of Death Eaters. Barty Crouch Jr was deceased, but others were still alive, having not succumbed. Antonin Dolohov, the three Lestranges, Augustus Rookwood—he was of special interest, having worked in the Department of Mysteries—Travers, and a few nonentities such as the Snyde couple.

For their first test the Mists stepped into a mostly unused corridor and Tsuna set up an anchored Bounding Box, the point of which was to determine if the dementors would be affected, and if so, if they would notice anything wrong.

Best case scenario was that they would reroute around the invisible obstruction and be generally clueless.

They were, it seemed.

Or if not, they either failed to notify the Ministry, or did so in a way that Samsara was unable to see.

"A calculated risk, but let's go for it," he said. "We need the information. Thoughts on who to go after first?"

"Let's try Rookwood," was Hayato's suggestion.

There was no disagreement, so he nodded. "All right. We know from watching the patrols that they leave them alone at night. We'll go in at two o'clock? I'll set up a Bounding Box to keep us safe, while you guys do the interrogation."

Chikusa pursed his lips and shifted. "Once we have all of them interrogated, thoughts on disposing of them?"

"Bodily or mentally?" he asked.

"Mentally would be less suspicious. If they've got no minds, even if they were broken out they'd be useless."

"I don't have a problem with it. They are the enemy of this body, after all, and it's unwise to leave a capable enemy behind to snap at your heels. Anything else…? All right, let's prep for tonight, then."

Rookwood was a font of information, especially the bit about where they stored their time turners. They may or may not come in handy, but swiping a handful was only common sense. Seven and a spare, precisely. Mukuro volunteered to empty out his storage and shove one in there to see if something horrifying would happen after they located and yanked them through a window.

Aside from that, and the information about a prophecy regarding the Dark Lord and Harry Potter, Rookwood was not of much use.

Once they had a list of names from him regarding marked Death Eaters and unmarked supporters, Daemon wiped his mind of anything resembling memories and left him as blank as an erased chalkboard.

"I wonder if a seal like the one they keep using on you would block off their magic?" Ken mused once everyone was assembled again.

"We'll see if he has the primal urge to drink, or if he'll die of dehydration. We can try a seal, though. If these people are still alive by the time we see signs of the Dark Lord being active, I vote we off them," Hayato said with a scowl. "It's still an issue of not leaving an enemy at your back, and if the news reports are at all accurate, it's only logical that Riddle would break out his people once he had the opportunity."

"In the meantime, we need to set up a system for these names," Mukuro said. "A whiteboard or something, so it's easily on display. Maybe a backup on one of the laptops."

Tsuna sighed, more out of weariness than anything else. Childish bodies did require their sleep, after all. "Yes. We'll do that first thing, and go after one of the Lestranges next."

— — —

Bellatrix revealed a very interesting tidbit of information regarding her vault; she had a soul shard in there, embedded in a fancy cup purported to once belong to Helga Hufflepuff. Well, she did not know it was any such thing, but the reverence for it in her mind spoke of just how highly the Dark Lord valued it, which meant it was worth investigating.

Once she'd been drained dry of information they moved on. Her husband and brother-in-law were less informative, but still contributed the odd name to the list before being wiped. Unfortunately, aside from names, none of the others were of much use, so they were wiped.

They would visit again in two weeks to see if any of them survived and, if they had, to be sealed. All else failing, they would kill them for being defective. Bellatrix had kept her mind, but only because they were uncertain what sort of protections the goblins had on vaults, and they might need her to get at the cup. If all went well, her mind would be also wiped.

"So, from this list," he said, eyeing the whiteboard, "we can try to classify each name as greater or lesser. Piddly minions probably don't know much or weren't trusted enough to secure one of those soul shards, never mind know where one might be or what it might be. I am assuming at this point—and feel free to laugh at me if I end up being wrong—that he would entrust these disgusting soul shards to those most enamored of him and least likely to fuck up with them."

"I'd put Lucius Malfoy near the top then," Mukuro said. "He seems the type. He's got enough money to buy his way out of nearly anything, and has influence at the Ministry."

"Karkaroff is probably out," Daemon said. "He did sell out his fellows, after all. We can leave him for later."

Xeul frowned for a moment, then looked at Tsuna. "Is your intuition willing to chime in?"

"Uh… Good question." He sat back and relaxed, staring without really seeing at the list of names. After a lot of staring one name seemed to stand out from the others, one Regulus Black.

"He's dead, though," Hayato said. "I wonder what the connection is. The Blacks are a Dark family from what we've uncovered. Wait a minute, something is wrong here."

"Yeah," Ken said, scratching his jaw. "This guy had an older brother. What happened to him? Was he a Death Eater, too? Because if so, why wasn't it in the papers?"

A look went round the table. "Okay, so we need to go back and see if he's in there. If so, we need to interrogate him. If he's not, we have to come up with a different plan. Either way, with the name being highlighted, so to speak, and the mystery of his brother, we need to research more about that branch of the Black Family. Are his parents still alive? Where did they live? Can we find a way to infiltrate?"

His twins immediately went into a huddle while Mukuro started a discussion about the best ways to hunt down the information they needed with the other three.

Several days later they met again to discuss what new information they'd gained. There was no obvious evidence of Sirius Black at Azkaban, but there was the oddity of a black dog in one of the cells, which made no sense whatsoever unless the dog in question was an animagus.

"Is it even possible to enter the mind of an animal?" he asked, and got confused shrugs in return.

"I'm not about to risk mine on the off chance it works," Mukuro said firmly. "Dying is one thing. I'd just acquire another body. But my mind being damaged? Hell no."

"If it's a person, do you suppose they would read a note and willingly transform back? Because according to the books we've read, you're not supposed to be able to do wand magic in Azkaban. Clearly, internal magic is fine, or he'd not be able to transform. And on a side note, assuming he's not guilty of whatever it is they didn't charge him with, should we have a spare body handy to leave behind as a decoy?"

Tsuna frowned. "He could be mental from being in there. Is going into the mind of the insane a danger to you guys?"

A pause interposed itself, one of mild confusion.

"We don't know?" Daemon offered lamely.

"Fuck. Okay, change of plan. I am not risking any of you for an unknown, not happening. So here's what we'll do. We figure out where Sirius and Regulus lived and search the place. Maybe we can find some clues. We also need to see about finding that vault at Gringotts. So, twins, which job do you want?"

The two exchanged a look. "The vault."

"Sure. Mukuro, will you assist me with the Black home? Ken, Chikusa, and Hayato can help with research, of course, unless there's something else you'd prefer to be checking. There's plenty to be looking into as it is."

"I saw a reference to something called the Fidelius Charm," Chikusa said. "It came up with regard to how your body's parents were hidden. I'm going to check more into that. If we do find these soul pieces we'll need to protect them. If they're in items I rather doubt they can be dispersed the same way as the one in the scar. An extra layer of security won't hurt. It's either that or we get a safety deposit box."

Ken coughed. "I know it's annoying, but we need to practice using the new names. Ken is still fine for me with the new name, and Yeul, but the rest…"

Various sighs sounded and heads nodded.

"Ugh," he said. "Harry. What a name. And I don't even dare have a nickname of Heul, just in case."

"It's a princely name," Mukuro said facetiously.

He snorted. "Sure, if the name was actually Henry. All right, let's get to work. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can learn things that will make our school years a complete and utter bore."

— — —

Bellatrix Lestrange's personal vault was not that difficult to locate in the end, merely tedious. A dragon guarded the door, but patient surveillance showed that goblins had devices called clankers and the dragons were conditioned to fear that sound. Once the twins knew that it was a simple matter of illusion to force the beast back so that Tsuna could set up a Bounding Box and have time to harmonize his way through the wall, rather than risk touching the door.

The second he was in and had a proper visual he stepped back out via Between and called up a window so that his twins could see the interior. As Xeul had yet to repack his storage, he was the one to suck the cup in to be spat out at the house for safekeeping.

With that out of the way, Bellatrix Lestrange's mind was wiped clean.

If they weren't all dead in a fortnight, they would return long enough to seal them in the hopes it would block their magic.

Research into the Ministry archives had revealed the location of the Black townhouse, so after a walk down Grimmauld Place spies were sent in. Unfortunately, if there was anyone in residence, windows were never left open, so Tsuna was forced to again harmonize through a wall in order to get a proper visual.

Mukuro promptly set to spying out the interior of the townhouse and reported back that only a small creature resided there. Given that there were similar heads all mounted on one wall, he came to the conclusion that they were house-elves, such as mentioned in Hogwarts: A History, and the living one likely territorial and belligerent.

"No matter," Mukuro said. "If I find anything of interest I'll just acquire it through the window. I'll keep an eye out for anything that looks to be related to the founders of that school."

"We can split floors?" he suggested.

Mukuro nodded. "I'll check to see if there's a basement level. If not, I'll go to the first floor."

"Right."

They found an ornate gold locket in a cabinet in the drawing room on the first floor, with a serpentine 'S' in green jewels—likely emeralds, but for all Tsuna knew they were peridots.

"Unless the thing has something to do with a member of House Black and a name starting with 'S'…" Mukuro trailed off.

"Toss it into an iron box like the cup and we'll figure out any spells we can use to see if the thing is evil," he said. "I have my doubts about being able to use our Mist Flames to do the trick, but—" He eyed Hayato. "Storm Flames might. Put it in a box and we can test if you're up for it, someplace not here."

Hayato nodded. "Yeah. And if that works, I'll take care of that cup, too. If that doesn't work, we can find some of the best acids available to try. If things were chosen based on their historical value—taken from the example of this alleged Hufflepuff's Cup—then the guy might expect that no one from the magical world would ever dare destroy the items, and instead covet them."

"I'm going to do more research on the Founders and any artifacts they were known for," Chikusa said quietly.

"I'll track down a spot we can do the test," Ken said, then got up to look at maps.

A shame Google Maps hadn't been created yet. That was nearly a decade away. Perhaps contacts in the mafia world would graciously provide passcodes to satellites presently in use. He made a note to ask the twins about that.

— — —

Once the locket and cup were destroyed—Storm Flames worked just fine, and wasn't it odd that a ghostly face appeared for each, screaming when they did—they settled in for both more research and learning about spells, runes, rituals, and so forth. One day per week was set aside for checking into mafiosi in the UK, as well as checking the state of famiglie in other countries, to establish what was the same and what differed.

Tsuna shuddered for a moment thinking of the possibility of a female Dino having to suffer through Reborn's torture. Or worse, a female Reborn.

He had no problem playfully flirting with other men, as most of them would never take it seriously. Women were another story altogether, in his experience. If Reborn were female, he couldn't flirt with him! Or accuse him of flirting with Tsuna! That would wreck at least half his fun!

"I think we're going to have to know the right spells before we go after any other of these soul pieces. We've been uncommonly lucky in my opinion," Hayato said. "They could have been cursed. The one in Tsuna's head sure as hell put up a fight from where I was watching. Imagine what the others could do if they were handled or worn. And there might be spells or whatever on them to compel someone to do just that."

Tsuna nodded. "Excellent point. In fact… Has anyone tracked down wizarding shopping areas in other countries? We could step over, in disguise, and acquire wands now. I don't think we could use them here at the house, because if this body is a celebrity, I imagine they'd be keeping an eye out for wand magic around here. Nothing saying we couldn't go to a spot outside Hogsmeade and practice."

"Just to be safe, I'll do a bit of checking at the Ministry," Daemon said. "Get the facts as are written into law, as well as get ideas on where other enclaves are we can investigate."

"So we need to buy or acquire any book we don't have that we can get our hands on."

"I'll poke around Knockturn Alley," Mukuro volunteered.

"I'm going to send a window back to the Black townhouse and more closely investigate that library there," Xeul said.

"I'm going to start compiling a list of expected spells to know by year according to those guidelines we liberated from the Ministry," Hayato stated.

Chikusa and Ken exchanged a look. "I'm going to check into the electives," Ken said, and Chikusa followed with, "And I will check into more esoteric things, such as that reference I saw to something called Occlumency."

"And I," he said, "will start on dinner. I was thinking of a roast, maybe…" The anticipatory looks on his family's faces decided him. He trotted off to the kitchen with a smile. Maybe he would also consider a cheesecake soon.

— — —

"A house has been purchased in Hogsmeade," Mukuro announced at lunch. "I'm sure the Lestranges won't mind us having 'borrowed' their gold. I was able to get a very good deal on the place, though we declined to see about getting it hooked up to the floo system. Don't see the point."

"Well, yeah," Ken said. "You guys can go Between and the rest of us can—ah, shit, should we clear that with the local Vindice, us using portals? Just because the bunch from our last life were pleased to teach us doesn't mean this lot will appreciate it, even if we all have physical bodies."

"If we use them we'll be on their radar, and they might be unhappy. If we're upfront, they might still be unhappy, but at least forewarned about activity from us and that we're perfectly aware we're active. Except, of course, if they want to know how we learned. Shit. I don't want their eyes on us so soon. No using portals unless it's an emergency. I know it potentially hampers us, but…"

The non-Mists nodded.

"If we can track down all Death Eater vaults, we could loot them bare," Xeul said, "though I have to wonder if the goblins would revolt once those poor, misunderstood pillars of society realized all their gold has gone missing. Anchored box again?"

"Um… Make them suddenly a hell of a lot more frugal with their funds," he said, "and incurious as to any discrepancies. My concern there would be having to keep a constant watch on those anchors, just in case someone isn't quite taken in and starts trying to figure out what happened. I don't have an issue with finding the vaults, or even looting the vaults of incarcerated minions—since they were sentenced to life, and a number of them have no immediate family to worry about—but I don't feel right about having so many anchors out of our immediate holdings. The idea of it makes me uneasy."

Xeul shook his head. "All right, that idea's off the table, then. I'll not quibble with your intuition. The only time it seems to fail or kick in too late is when you're about to suffer a hilariously stupid and fatal accident."

Tsuna blushed and ducked his head for a moment. "Thanks so much for the reminder," he said dryly.

Xeul smiled at him sunnily.

He sent a sarcastic one back. "I honestly wonder how many so-called pure-bloods keep vaults in their manors or homes. Maybe we should consider investigating that alongside which defectives get taken out. They couldn't very well blame goblins for missing gold if it disappeared out of their own homes, along with anything else of value. Harry Potter is still too young for anyone to ever suspect of being a thief and murderer, after all, nor his adorable little friends."

"I suggest that we start from the bottom when we do get going," Daemon said. "We might not get much out of those ones, but news of it might spread slower. The other option would be to do what you did back in the Checkers universe, when you went bugnuts."

Tsuna sent a flat raspberry at his friend. "You're referring to the thallium payloads via Mist-Earth wisps?"

Daemon nodded. "Using those, with four of us at work, we could wipe out a whole lot of them at once. We'd just need to know where to strike, who, and what to loot. Do everything via windows, shove all loot into storage until it's safe to consider selling, melting down, what have you, and then add the results to our coffers for later years and later dimensions."

"With any luck," Mukuro said slowly, "we could wipe out the lot of them, and potentially save a whole lot of innocent children in the bargain, not to mention others. I doubt we'd get them all, but still, that would be a major blow. It'd be like wiping out Estraneo early, only not so personal. Don't mistake me, I am sure that any Harry Potter out there who wasn't suborned by our peculiar circumstances would find it all very personal, but for us…?"

"I like it," he said. "So yes, we need all our ducks in a row. We need plenty of thallium—we should test that, by the way, to ensure it works the same on magicals as it does non-magicals—and have everything ready to go. Preferably well before we're in danger of getting letters. Too close to our Hogwarts debut would potentially be suspicious to some."

"Agreed."

"If the primary soul is still out there floating around the news of so many deaths might get to him, and it might accelerate any plans he has, but I think that's an acceptable risk. We have to assume he's planning to come back somehow, to get a body. The fact that he hasn't already suggests that he does not have our ability to possess people, or if he does, he's limited in some way by doing so, unlike us."

"Or," Chikusa said thoughtfully, "that his, uh, portion of soul is too small to effectively possess someone entirely."

"Plausible," Hayato said, "though I still have trouble wrapping my head around the concept of being able to split one's soul, never mind anchor bits of it to people or objects."

— — —

It took them the better part of a night to wipe out a large portion of marked Death Eaters. A number of defectives of varying (presumed) levels of magical ability had been acquired earlier, taken to a remote location, and dosed with thallium salts, and left to live or die.

They died, without fail.

Worst case scenarios during the purge saw Tsuna using his platelets trick on their overnight sweep targets, such as if a husband and wife were sharing a bed—in a semi-Victorian-era world, oh, the horror!—and one of them was not a Death Eater. He could liquefy their brain, he supposed.

He blinked. "We could liquefy the brains of the Death Eaters in Azkaban. Sort of makes me wonder what a healer would find with their spells if I did that to anyone."

"I'd suggest a test case," Daemon said, "but if they ever then checked the ones in Azkaban, they'd know just how badly their security had been compromised. Could go either way as to good or bad results."

"Or we learn everything we can about healing and run the test ourselves," Hayato said. "It's brilliant being able to use Sun Flames to heal, even though I'm not terribly good at it, but if we could all do it…"

"Something to consider later," Xeul said repressively. "We still have plenty of defects to eradicate and wealth to acquire."

Over the course of the night Malfoy Sr died, Crabbe Sr, Goyle Sr, Alecto and Amycus Carrow, Avery Jr and Sr (the elder Avery was bedridden anyway, so perhaps killing him was a mercy), Walden Macnair, and Corban Yaxley, amongst others. Some of the homes were stripped bare, while others (such as those with young children) were left mostly intact. Unmarked supporters were also targeted.

Tsuna and his Mists were each holding multiple windows in place and likewise directing multiple payloads for delivery. Hayato would occasionally chip in with disintegration of a particularly resistant wizard, or Ken would send someone's cells into uncontrolled regeneration, or Chikusa would freeze people solid when one of the Mists needed a break from both tasks simultaneously.

The wizarding world of Britain would be surprised when the Daily Prophet reported not only numerous mysterious deaths, but also that half of Knockturn Alley had apparently disintegrated for no reason. They did not need to know the various shops had been looted bare before said disintegration.

Tsuna already knew half the stuff they swiped would probably need to be destroyed, but that could wait (hopefully) until they were skilled enough at detection spells (and possibly that curse breaking stuff Chikusa had mentioned) to potentially convert such items to salable items. Or at least to know they wouldn't explode in their faces if Hayato went to town on them or they were chucked into an active volcano.

It wasn't like Dark artifacts and banned items could be loaded into a rocket and launched on a one-way trip into space easily, after all.

They slept well into the day after their quite busy night, then celebrated with pizza.

And a week off to be generally lazy.

After that it was back to learning magic, first what would be expected of them, and then anything that looked like it might be useful in the event of being attacked—or because they wanted to troll someone.

"Can anyone explain to me why this isn't simpler?" Ken complained, tapping a page in his book.

"How so?" he asked.

"This tripe about a match to a needle or beetles to buttons for transfiguration. Why is there reams of theory about this crap when it sounds like a matter of visualization, intent, and will? Why are there different incantations and not just 'change' or something similar?"

"Because mystical things aren't as mystical if they don't sound complicated and esoteric?" Hayato suggested calmly, which was mildly weird coming from a devotee of UMA sightings.

"So we do a test," he said. "Once we've obtained wands from France or wherever, we step over to the Hogsmeade house and try it both ways. Doing it there means the magic shouldn't be noticed, not in an area with plenty of adult magicals."

"Agreed," Daemon said, "though I expect when we end up at this school, we'll have to do it their way so as not to draw too much attention. And speaking of Hogwarts, we need to remember to send in spies at the start of the next school year to see how houses are chosen for new students."

"Also agreed," he said. "Knowing that would be useful. And if we can do away with the mystical trappings of spell casting—and better yet, wands altogether—it'd be just another set of tools in our arsenals that could be used discreetly wherever we go."

A few days later they were in France, wandering the streets of whatever the hell it was they called their main shopping area in Paris, poking through various shops. A wandmaker appeared on the left so they plowed across the foot traffic and entered.

One of the Mists kept the man busy not noticing any oddities while they each took turns testing for a wand. The way the man said it a wand was a quasi-sentient tool, but it made more sense to Tsuna to believe that certain materials naturally worked better for certain individuals, based on mindset, innate talent, and experiences etched on the soul.

Either way, they each gained a wand and exited so they could continue to canvas the shops still remaining. France apparently had different standards as to what could be sold openly and what was hidden away in seedy joints and darkened back rooms, so they obtained quite a few more books for their collection (including one which compared and contrasted the major wizarding schools around the world and made guesses as to their locations, plus one that helpfully pointed out major shopping areas for the intrepid tourist—Tsuna was pleased, there was a shopping area in Kyoto, which was not all that far from Namimori).

Back in Hogsmeade some time later they all brandished their wands and attempted to cast the Wand-Lighting charm, Lumos. The wand movement was a loop, simple enough that even the dogged results of pure-blood inbreeding could manage it (in theory).

"If nothing else," Mukuro said with a creepy smile as he practiced, "all these spells will give us further ideas for our flames."

Oddly, Ken was the first one to produce a steady light at the tip of his wand, but maybe it had something to do with being a Sun rather than a decent imagination. The problem then became getting the light to go away, which necessitated a re-read of the Wand-Extinguishing charm, Nox, which for some reason had a wand movement of a wave.

"This is silly." Chikusa scowled (which was so incredibly rare that Tsuna promptly stopped what he was doing to note down the time, date, and dimension it happened in) and stared at the tip of his wand as he resolutely refused to use silly movements and words to do a spell.

Tsuna tried the same, deciding in the end that if they could make it work without all the nonsensical-to-him trappings, they could fake it on the other end or use Mist Flames to confuse people into thinking they'd done it properly.

Ten minutes later he and Chikusa managed to get a feeble light going, so they flipped direction and concentrated on extinguishing said light.

They had a whole list of what the Charms Professor (a part-goblin, apparently, by the name of Flitwick, Filius) would teach first year, and the same for other mandatory classes (though History of Magic was something of a joke, it seemed, and none of them could understand the practical application of Astronomy in the magical world).

Once they could manage to get all of those down they could move on to second year.

"I'm putting in my vote again for tricking these people into believing we have the wand movements down pat," Daemon said. "Why they seem to go out of their way to complicate all this is beyond my ken. If none of this silliness is required for flame use, why would it be required for magic?"

Hayato had the grace to look mildly embarrassed over his previous insistence of shouting out technique names in his earlier years before shaking his head and getting back to work.

— — —

"A hat," he said in disbelief.

"A hat," Xeul repeated dryly. "Each student sits under a hat and is 'sorted' into their new house, which is supposed to be like a family."

"I can't tell if the ones who join up with whichever Dark Lord is rampaging around are rebelling against expectations, or just succumbing further to an almost religious fervor," Mukuro said with a sniff.

None of them were particularly impressed with the idiocy rampant in the wizarding world. The mafia world was blindingly simple in comparison. True, a parallel could be drawn between morons who thought having the blood of Vongola (and not even Giotto's blood at that) made a person into some kind of special, when it was really more about a single ability (hyper intuition), a tendency toward producing Skies (the "royalty" of the mafia world), keen business sense, and ruthlessness, cunning, and ambition.

Plenty of famiglie had a mixture of those qualities. The distinction Vongola held was that it counted to most as the founding family, and had the dubious decency to not indulge in some of the baser activities.

Tsuna had never made the mistake of thinking he was some godly being just because he had Giotto's blood running through his veins. Of course, when he sometimes ended up in bodies unrelated to the Vongola, it made it even harder to cop an attitude about the whole thing.

"So we need to ensure the … hat … sorts us all into the same house," he said blandly.

"And we mostly decided on Gryffindor as having the best benefits with the least drawbacks," Hayato reminded them.

"I suppose so. It's not like students outside Hufflepuff would be unable to locate and enter the kitchens, though I question the quality of the food," he said, wrinkling his nose.

The others also looked a bit uncertain. Everyone knew Tsuna was a world-class cook and baker, and everyone else paled in comparison.

"Look at the bright side," Daemon said sunnily. "Heul finally has an eye colour other than brown!"

He gawked at his dearest friend, then said, "Well, there is that. I've long lamented that everyone but me seems to get cool eyes. I'm jealous to this day of Enma's."