A/N So, this will be a Bleach/Harry Potter crossover that I fully intend to finish. For anyone following it, I have no plans to discontinue my other story I just fid it easier to work on two things simultaneously as it means I don't have to tie myself to a single idea indefinitely. As for the story itself, I've seen a couple of stories with the idea of their relation and decided to do my own take on one. The Bleach in this story will be kind of Au but it should (mostly) all be there in a kind of altered way. I'd also like to note that I really hate putting A/Ns at the beginning of chapters and don't regularly do it at the end. So without further ado (apart from maybe a disclaimer) we shall get on with the story. ~We'reAllABitOdd

I do not own, nor do I claim to, either of the franchises used in this work. I am neither Japanese nor male and am, therefore, not Tite Kubo. Also, while I am female and British I am neither old enough nor rich enough to be JK Rowling.

You aren't as alone as you think

Chapter 1: Finding common ground

It had happened all too quickly; all too violently; all too effectively. Ichigo Kurosaki could do nothing but watch as his life was torn bit from bit and his family was torn limb from limb, every single one of them. Blood stained the walls, the floor, him, the murderer, the corpses cast across the floor from whom the blood had come. The clinic had, at that moment, became a murder scene. A place of healing had quickly become one of irreparable and awful damage and destruction. And the only one left in the midst of it all was a boy.

He was petrified, eyes wide and too scared to move or even shed a tear to his felled family members. He could not bring himself to watch as the monster exited calmly, as though it had not done what it had, sparing him entirely intentionally with only a skeletal hand brushing across his hunched shoulder as it made its way out. His amber eyes were unfocused and what little they saw was like a liquid, flowing smoothly between red, white, and a mixture of the two.

But suddenly, he fell. Heavily, he hit the floor - knees first and gasping in wordless despair as he clutched desperately at his little-sister's ice-cold hand as it lay limp on he carpet, half a foot from the black-haired girl's body. His mother had been killed at the hands of one monster only a short while ago and then another had came to finish the job began by the first. He held his eyes open, not willing to see the bright, menacing beams of light that passed across he darkness every time it came. The first monster: he had seen only the after affect, the lifeless body of his mother cast atop him protectively. The second: he had been forced to bear witness as the monster carelessly shot beams of light across the room to everyone but himself, his father, his sisters, before the monster smiled at him with malicious intent not at all masked on his ghost-white face - that same face was serpentine and disgustingly distorted - and began to tear their already dead bodies apart with the aid of only his jagged talon-like nails.

So much blood.

So much death.

So little left.

He had been found later by a man with long, white hair and a beard to match, trailing down his extravagantly cloaked midriff. The garb that was draped across him, a rather regal shade of purple with glittering stars printed at random, was certainly the sort that would draw the attention of passers-by on the street. Of course, the pointed had that elevated his rather short height greatly did absolutely nothing to aid him in this problem, rather it worsened it greatly.

This man, eccentric as he may appear with a glance and, most likely, a relationship, mournfully and morosely examined the devastation that lay before him through half-moon spectacles perched towards the end of his dreadfully crooked nose. The eyes that watched from behind those lenses had lost the sparkle that was said to be found in them at any given time, instead it was replaced by a dull reflection that was constantly causing them to fluctuate between light and dark.

It was rather disgustingly artistic, he couldn't help but think. The deep crimson that had found is way into just about every nook and canny of the once stark white room was morbidly beautiful. The same could be said of the very obvious display of familiar love that had caused tear tracks to ride the slopes and wrinkles of his elderly face. Of course, the brightness in the room, the small figure huddled in fitful sleep with a dismembered hand clasped tightly in his hand wearing nothing but black, was plain cruelty - an insult to injury if you will. For the boy shone like a sunray amongst the impenetrable fog of darkness, both literal and figuratively, that had formed over the scene. His hair was bright orange, glowing amidst everything like a beacon; though whether it was a beacon of hope or one to foretell of further deaths was unclear as of that moment in time.

Praying that the boy was not injured, that the blood he was bathed in was not his own, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore levitated the nine year old so that he could move him easily as he was suspended in the air right ahead of his face. His face was not at peace despite his body being at rest, his mouth was turned down at the corners; his eyes twitching slightly beneath the lids; his eyebrows draw together to complete the deep-set scowl that the boy seemed to already have adopted as a neutral expression. The neck of his black t-shirt had been torn slightly, causing it to slip down over his left shoulder and revealing something not dissimilar to a brand upon the tan skin of the child's torso. The mark was a cold, icy blue that had been printed into the shape of something greatly representing a hand - it was too slim to be such, though, and the components of the appendage seemed to have been meticulously stripped down to their bare skeleton.

"My my, Ichigo Kurosaki. Neither you or harry Potter could ever really be called a child, could you? You have been stained with death since birth, the dead have found a companion in you: Mr Kurosaki, but do not let that fool you. It is not in the best interest of a child of human nature to seek relations among the dead as they do the living. death itself is not temporary but, without extenuating circumstances, the dead do not linger among us for too long. It will be the same with your family. Do not cling to the dead." Speaking the words to a sleeping child way well seem useless to many but Dumbledore could only hope that the boy's contradictory state of restless rest had allowed for the absorption of outside information.

The Dursleys were happy to say that they were completely normal thank you very much. It was a lie, they knew it was but they were happier to disperse the false image of themselves that they had created publically than the image far beyond their control that was what they were really like.

It was the second time in her lifetime that Petunia Dursley had found a nephew with whom she wished to have nothing to do with sleeping on her doorstep with a letter tucked into the blankets that cloaked them. She couldn't see much of the boy but what she could see, some of the features of his already angular face, were distinctly similar to those of Rose. No, that was wrong. When Rose left she left her name behind along with her belongings; those were the features of Masaki Kurosaki, not those of Rose Evans.

No normal person faced his situation even once and here she was, facing it for the second time and still intending to call herself entirely normal.

Huffing, she picked up the sleeping nine-year-old with some difficulty due to his rather impressive height (though how skinny he was certainly helped to allow that to be overlooked somewhat) and carried him inside, yelling up to her husband, son, and despised nephew that they were to have another nephew join their family. Of course, that hadn't fooled a single one of them - this was a child whom they could overuse, make his life all work and no play so that theirs didn't have to so much as border on being anywhere close.

Harry Potter had sat and stared at the figure, constantly stirring but never waking, as petunia read through the letter, unknown to him, it was written in the same neat, spidery writing as the one that had accompanied him upon his arrival about eight years before. He could see no similarities between the face he stared down at and his own - the boy was Asian to begin with, his features were sharper, his expression unwelcoming. The other boy was taller too, taller and maybe just as slim. Though there was not much one could do as they saw the boy as he was, huddled with the knees of his obviously lengthy legs pulled up to his chest wrapped in a heavy, pale-blue blanket. Even the top of his head was covered by the blanket draped around the entirety of his body.

"Ichigo Kurosaki? A name like that, an appearance like that in our immediate family? Why did Rose have to be such a wanderer?"

Harry wasn't going to lie, the other boy's name had hit his ears oddly and he had not been able to remember it due to its foreignness. At least not right away, it had taken him a fair few blocky, awkward mispronunciations to get there, each had been accompanied with a glare from the boy he had failed to address correctly.

After Petunia passed her judgement on him due to what little she knew and her distaste for her sister the boy had awoken from his unsettled sleep: shooting up with a wheezing intake of breath and a stuttering mumble of what sounded suspiciously like names. The boy's eyes were amber and squinted at everything in what was clearly a permanent expression of distaste that had began to adorn his features so early into life. But that wasn't what had drawn the attention of the other members of the household, they were all staring slightly higher up than that with a variation of expressions on their faces. Petunia was shocked, Vernon angry, Dudley impassive, and Harry amused. The boy's hair was essentially highlighter orange and spiked up randomly and messily, making him come across rather negatively - perhaps as a street-tough. He also looked far older than harry had been told he was: the face he wore, the height he had, the features he owned, the eyes that scrutinized everything they saw, the hair that could only have been bleached.

"Ichigo," The boy cringed slightly as Petunia's mouth clumsily wove the syllables together "why did you bleach your hair?"

He crinkled his nose and left a minute before he began his response "It's natural! Why does everybody ask that?" Unsurprisingly, should the name have been anything to go off of the words were coloured ever so slightly with an accent that caused a slight lilt to his vowels. Still, it was rather impressive that such a young child could already speak the language he would be required to know in his new area.

harry himself had shuffled up to the strange boy once Dudley had left for Pierce's and his parents had began their commute. He had nervously looked at the boy and spoken with a prominent stutter: a thing that had never filtered his words before. "I'm H-Harry Potter."

The boy didn't smile and eyed his extending, welcoming hand in poorly concealed confusion and intrigue. Hesitantly, he took it and tightened what had already been a vice-like grip on Harry's hand.

"Ichigo Kurosaki. Why do I already think that I know what's going to happen. Are we slaves, are we underpaid workers or are we kids who life decided that it didn't like."

"The world isn't merely as nice as we'd hope, we want much more but no such luck.