Title: Voldemort's Daughter
Author: Tsubasa Kya
Disclaimer: I own neither the man-creatures from the "Inuyasha-sama" universe, nor the man-creatures from the world of "Harry Potter". They are solid belongings of Rumiko Takahashi and J.K. Rowling.
Note: I have brought it back. This story was originally under my "sesshoumarulover713" penname and to this day remains incomplete. I believe I started writing it after book 5, but it was so long ago I don't remember. Anyway, I know it doesn't follow book 6! In conversation with my good friend feathergriffin, a discussion upon which we delved was the meaning of the HP/IY crossovers. Well, our conversation wasn't anywhere near what I just explained, but it has distracted you from the fact that I was apologizing for bringing this abomination of the written word back into the world of fan-dom, and that was my intention all along. To contradict the above: please enjoy this piece of fine craftsmanship. By the way, if you read this before, some things may or may not have changed. – TK
Chapter one: Harry Potter Who?
"Number four, Privet Drive." The black haired girl muttered, twirling her wand in her hand absentmindedly. She looked at the surrounding area. It wasn't much to look at, but at least it was a fairly warm evening. "This is it."
She looked down at the hovering stack of luggage. Her black trunk was floating barely an inch from the ground, and atop the trunk was a small animal carrier from which a "mew" sound emitted. She bent to look in the gate of the carrier and poked her finger through the metal wires. A rough tongue licked her finger pad. "The woman abandoned me all those years ago," she whispered, dark blue eyes wandering helplessly back toward the house. "Now Professor Dumbledore wants me back here?"
"Yes, I do, Miss Higurashi." The girl jumped slightly at the suddenness of the Professor's voice. It was like he appeared out of nowhere, which—given thought to what he was—wasn't that out of place. Wizards did tend to apparate and disapparate from time to time.
Kagome pulled her sore finger from the grate of the carrier; it had gotten jammed when he startled her. "P-professor Dumbledore?" she stammered. It was pure luck that she didn't revert to speaking Japanese—her native tongue. England certainly wasn't her native land.
Everything about her screamed "foreign" from her narrowed, almond eyes to her tan skin, to her dangerously black hair with its blue tint when the sun hit it. She had tied her hair in a tight bun at the back of her head earlier on after learning that the journey she was to make wasn't the shortest one.
She stuck her hands in the sleeves of her haori, reminding herself of how one of her friends always sat. The memory made her a bit lonely when she thought about it. The haori was white, made of the finest of silks and had a sprinkling pattern of red cherry blossoms across the left shoulder. It wasn't tied shut with a sash and revealed a white blouse with embroidered green hems and a white skirt with a green stripe following the lower hem which reached halfway to her knees. White knee-high stockings and the same green colored shoes as on her skirt and blouse were on her feet. A short green tie went under the collar of the blouse and hung loosely on her chest. On the right breast of her blouse was an embroidered insignia: a wand held by a human hand, and a wand held by a dragon hand, crossing each other like an 'x'.
"Ah," Professor Dumbledore smiled and placed a gentle, comforting hand on her shoulder as if to ease away her fraying nerves. "No need to worry. I will take things from here."
As he strode up the driveway that led to Number four Privet Drive, he winked at her. She followed and the trunk with the carrier on top trailed behind her like a puppy at her heels. At the moment, it was close to eight-thirty. The family might have already eaten. Or maybe they hadn't…
"What if they're eating now?" Kagome gasped, appalled at the thought of interrupting the family's meal. Then again, what did she care?
"Do not worry, Miss Higurashi." Professor Dumbledore said again. "I will take things from here." The old man drug his fingers through his long beard. "Everything will be just fine." They reached the front door in what seemed like forever. He rapped the door-knock twice.
A thin, blond haired woman with more neck than was really needed answered the door. "May I help"—she trailed off almost instantly. Her eyes took in Professor Dumbledore and what he was wearing, then narrowed suspiciously. "We don't take kindly to your kind." She hissed abruptly. Her eyes barely glanced at Kagome before she turned her nose up.
"Ah, Mrs. Dursley, my dear. I believe you must not remember me," Professor Dumbledore said.
"I do not associate myself with your kind, so any recognition you may have of me would have just been a passing glance!" She looked scathingly at Kagome and said, "And you would do better to forget any association with his kind, before it's too late for you!"
Kagome pulled her hands out of the sleeves of the haori. She distractedly began twirling her wand in the fingers of her right hand. She bit her tongue to keep from lashing out at the woman; growing up with her friends at the Magic Academy in Japan had made her more in-tune to rebelling. Professor Dumbledore said he'd handle the situation, and a man of his stature could only be able to keep his promises.
"Ah, Mrs. Dursley," Professor Dumbledore chuckled, a sparkle of amusement in his eyes. "I would have you meet Kagome—the orphan you left on a plane bound for Japan. Thankfully a caring family took her in, but when you adopt someone…" He glanced meaningfully around him; neighbors were poking their heads out of the curtains. "Perhaps we should take this inside?"
It was the threat that her neighbors would see Dumbledore and think odd of the Dursley family that got Mrs. Dursley to open the door. "Hurry, hurry. Get in, before they notice you, then." Mrs. Dursley urged. Professor Dumbledore entered the house, and then Kagome followed with her luggage pile trailing her still.
Mrs. Dursley closed the front door and ushered them through the entry hall and into the kitchen. "Who was it Pe"—the pudgy man at the table stopped abruptly and stood, knocking his chair over in the process. A fat boy sat taking up one entire side of the table; instantly upon the sight of Professor Dumbledore and Kagome he grabbed his butt cheeks and scrabbled out of the room.
"What is the meaning of this?" the man demanded of Professor Dumbledore. He looked from Mrs. Dursley to Professor Dumbledore to Kagome and back again, as if just looking would answer all the questions crashing around in his skull.
Mrs. Dursley frowned and looked at Professor Dumbledore. Kagome took the chance to look around the spotless kitchen. Her foster mother used to keep the kitchen as immaculate. Mrs. Dursley then whispered in the man's ear. His beady eyes went wide. "No. No, and no." the man said. "She is not our problem."
Professor Dumbledore simply smiled. "Wouldn't it be such a shame if your neighbors found out you abandoned a child on a plane sixteen years ago?" It was a low blow, but it did the trick. The two adults sucked their cheeks in and silence reigned for a full minute before the man said, "Petunia?"
She nodded grimly and Professor Dumbledore smiled. He then sauntered out the door, leaving Kagome to twirl her wand in her fingers. "So…" Kagome said, drawing the word out. "My name's Kagome."
"No owls, no dressing like a… a…strange creature… We know you're not allowed to use your… your pointy stick either!" Mrs. Dursley said suddenly, as if the rules were more important than introductions. Who knows, Kagome thought, maybe they are?
Kagome looked at her wand with a frown. "Is that so?" she asked. "Well, I never knew that." She blinked at the purple look on the man's face. Why was he so angry? Didn't he know that anger was bad for the complexion? "Well, I best stop using it, eh?" she grinned ruefully, inviting them to share her joke, but they didn't smile.
Instead, they pierced her with daggers from their eyes. "Um, right then," she turned to her trunk and prodded it with her foot. "Right then, off you go." She told it. The trunk clunked to the kitchen floor with mewled protest from the inhabitant of the carrier.
"No saying the 'm' word. You will act like a normal person in this household!" Mrs. Dursley added.
The man, who Kagome assumed was Mr. Dursley as introductions seemed to be over before they began, said, "Follow me!"
Kagome watched him stalk out through another door to the kitchen before sighing. So, it would be just her to carry the trunk and her pet carrier. She'd entered into a real prize winning family, she was sure. If they made a prize for 'biggest jerks of the century'.
She struggled to drag her trunk across the kitchen floor while carrying the semi-heavy carrier. It wasn't too difficult—it only felt like she was ripping an arm out of the socket with each step she took. No magic? She thought. Who made up such a stupid rule? In Japan there wasn't a restraint against magic—not with demons and other mythical creatures a part of the populace.
The trunk groaned on the vinyl flooring, scraping at it. It certainly was a good thing the stairway Mr. Dursley was leading her to was just on the other end of the house. She was sweating by the time she was halfway there, and by the time she had reached the bottom, her haori was slipping from her shoulders. Sweat beaded down her face.
"Mr…Dursley…" she panted.
He interrupted her. "Up these stairs," he ordered, "down the hall. The door at the very end leads to the spiral case to the attic. That is where you will be!"
"Mr…Dursley…" she again panted, dropping the trunk. "If I can't use magic, won't you help me get my trunk up there?" It was just so heavy! If only she hadn't had five years worth of text books and uniforms and equipment from the Magic Academy and a lifetime of other things she thought was important inside the trunk…
Mr. Dursley gave her a look that spoke volumes of 'generosity'. He turned heel and stalked—everyone seemed to be stalking these days—away. Kagome hung her head and groaned. She sat on the edge of the trunk, breathing heavily, thinking of the faces of her friends from the Magic Academy. If things hadn't happened the way they did in the past week, she would at that moment be spending the last three weeks of vacation with Inuyasha-sama and Sesshoumaru-sama at their father's mansion.
She would have been arguing heartily with Inuyasha-sama and sneaking kisses from Sesshoumaru-sama when he least expected it. They didn't have a real relationship, of course, but she was the only one in the world who could sneak up on him while he was sleeping, using magic to hide her presence. She would straddle him and then kiss him.
She had hoped that she would get him to kiss her back this summer, but now that hope was shattered into a thousand pieces. He was now only going to be an infatuation that she'd once had. "How depressing," she muttered in Japanese to her pet inside the carrier.
"Mew…" was the response.
She stood and said, "Okay, Kiyoshi… I suppose we have no choice but to climb these blasted steps, mm?" She carried the pet carrier up the stairs first and stuffed her wand in through the grate, then climbed back down to grab her trunk.
Straining and groaning, she got to the top of the stairs before her body registered the successful climb. Her foot tried to go up another step, but no step was there and that made her off balance. "Ugn!" she cried, releasing the trunk to try to catch her fall.
The demented crashing sound that followed her descent was not her landing on the floor but her trunk bouncing merrily right down each and every one of the steps to land with a thud on the landing below. The top burst open and her things went spewing everywhere.
"Ooh!" she moaned, rolling onto her back and just lying on the floor in the middle of the hardwood hallway floor on the upper level. "Two more staircases to go," she muttered cheerfully, "Keep up the good work, Kagome!" Once more she spoke her native tongue.
The loud crashing sound had woken him from a small nap. He peered out of his bedroom door to look and see what Dudley had tossed down the stairs this time. He wasn't expecting to see a girl. She was sprawled on the floor, constantly moaning sweetly, her skirt showing more of her thighs than she probably wanted for it to do.
Her uniform—as it could only be a uniform—wasn't one he recognized. Still, he crept out of his room so as not to alert Aunt Petunia or Uncle Vernon to his being out of his bedroom. They were angry at him because he'd said the 'm' word in front of Dudley and scared the living daylights out of the boy.
"Mew…" her pet Kiyoshi said in condolence to her misery.
"I know, you'd help if you could, but you can't because you're still too little." Kagome moaned as she sat up. She stood up and her skirt fell back into proper place. A glance at the bottom of the steps made her groan yet again and lean on the railing. "Oh no! I don't need a lock… It'll only serve to keep my trunk from bursting open at the worst possible moment. So no lock."
"You're fairly cheerful," toned a boy's voice from behind Kagome. Kagome nearly tripped down the stairs she was startled so much. What was it with people appearing so suddenly behind her? Did she have a sign on her back saying 'Sneak up on me, I'm easily startled'?
She whirled around, grip firm on the railing. "I'm an optimist," she said without conviction. Her eyes took in the boy as he looked at her. His hair was black and messy, and his eyes were green—or hazel maybe, the hallway was a little too dark to tell. He was tall and thin, though not as tall as Sesshoumaru-sama, and certainly not muscular like Sesshoumaru-sama. Then what he said registered in her mind.
"Can you understand Japanese?" she asked.
"No," he said. "You were speaking English though, so it doesn't matter."
Was I really? She wondered secretly, then looked at the landing at the bottom of the stairs where her trunk was. "I hadn't noticed." She felt another sigh overtake her and she trudged down the stairs, feeling like her feet were in quicksand. "What a disappointment."
The boy moved to the top of the stairs and then she guessed he saw her trunk in disarray and so he started following her down. "What's disappointing?" he wanted to know.
"You know; that."
"Oh…that." He frowned. "That being the whole mess?" he questioned.
She nodded. "Among other things." Should have grabbed my wand from Kiyoshi's carrier, she thought. I've never let rules stop me before; I shouldn't really get into bad habits now. She righted her trunk and knelt on the floor, tossing things haphazardly into the trunk.
The boy began helping her, picking up things and setting them much more carefully into the trunk than she was doing. He looked with interest at her things—perhaps a little too interestedly as she pulled her a bra out of his fingers and tossed it into her trunk, blushing profusely.
Harry looked at a book cover, strangely bound in black and rather forbidding letters sprawled across the cover reading "Riron to Jitsuyoo no Abunai Chikara" in both Japanese kanji and in the Roman lettering. That didn't give any explanation of what the words meant, though, and Harry couldn't figure out what it was supposed to say.
The girl pulled the book from his fingers. "Thank you for your help." She said. The only book he'd seen in the whole trunk that he understood the title of was "English as a Second Language".
But there were things that he had picked up that he understood. Things that he knew no true associate of Petunia and Vernon would have. It made him a bit wary of her. Considering Voldemort had it in for Harry's life, he wouldn't bet his life that Voldemort would not stoop so low as to send a cute, innocent looking girl after him.
The cauldron, the case of potions supplies, the scale, all of these couldn't just be coincidence. 'Oh it just happened to be in my trunk, I don't know how it got there,' he could imagine the lame excuse falling from those pretty lips. Sure, he was being pretty negative, considering he just met her and everything, but the fact remained that after five years of the old hisser trying to kill him, Harry had every right to be suspicious.
Then again, "What are you trying to attempt?" Harry wondered aloud as the girl climbed atop of the trunk cover and tried to stamp it down. The sight was almost amusing, with her jumping and her skirt flapping… He really needed a new line of thought.
Kagome managed to clip the broken latches into place and smiled. Her smile disappeared when she saw the stairs, however. If her friends were there, they'd all offer to carry her things up for her. Kouga-sama and Inuyasha-sama would do it simply to make the other one look bad. Sango wouldn't do it, but she'd glare at Miroku until he did. Sesshoumaru-sama…he was another story entirely. He wouldn't do it, simply saying she needed to be a thousand times stronger.
She balled her fist up. "Alright!" she thought aloud. "I'll do it for him, and he'll say I am strong and smother me with kisses the next time I see him!" Kagome was determined to not lose touch with her friends—especially not Sesshoumaru-sama.
"Who is he?" the boy asked with suspicion in his eyes and voice. "Voldemort?" Though he couldn't picture why anyone would ever want to kiss Voldemort's ugly mug.
He was surprised when she didn't wince at the name. She gave him a confused look and said, "Who the heck is Vladimir?" She hadn't thought she spoke in English. She was so sure it was her native tongue…
"Voldemort," Harry corrected her. Yesterday if asked whether or not he'd ever have to correct someone on Voldemort's name, he would have laughed and said no. Of course, that was yesterday. "You know, evil bad guy? The antagonist to my story?"
Kagome thought hard about the name, but nothing came to mind. She'd never heard of it before in her life. Of course, she was on the other side of the world where bad guys were such a common theme that she never gave too much thought to the name. Although there was that one crazy three-eyed guy who tried to use an enchanted sword to turn the world into walking zombie-creatures. That was just such a mess.
"And who are you that you're special enough to have an antagonist of your very own?" Kagome inquired, or half-whined. Too bad she couldn't pawn her bad guy off on this boy. No, it might be frowned upon to give someone a hand-me-down antagonist-creature.
After all, years of work was put into the whole event in which the bad guy and the good guy have many scrapes and scuffles and close-calls on the good guy's part that when the final battle comes it is only too short to fulfill the vengeance boiling within the protagonist.
The boy's eyes went wide and his eyebrow's escaped into his hairline.
"You don't know who I am?" he asked her, so surprised he nearly fell onto the stairs. It was so weird meeting someone who was obviously a member of the wizard world yet didn't know his name. Didn't she pay attention to current events? Didn't the newspaper from wherever she was from tell her that he was Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived?
Now he was sounding conceited, even in his own mind. "Should I know?" she asked him.
He sighed exasperatedly and pushed his hair off his forehead. She looked at the scar as if trying to figure out what he meant by showing her. Then she pushed aside the white shirt and lifted her blouse. "I've got a nasty scar too." She said. He let his hair fall askew again and looked at her stomach. There was a scar on her stomach that extended to her left side and looked like a bite mark.
"What happened?" he asked.
She countered with her own question; "Where did you get your odd shaped scar?"
After a moment's pause, they responded almost at the same time and said the same thing: "A car accident." Harry thought, if she really doesn't know who I am, I don't see any reason to have her bow down to me like I'm some kind of god.
Kagome thought, Atarimae no Hito don't know of demons, and it's probably best I keep it that way. "Atarimae no Hito" was the term the Japanese used for "non-magic people" or "ordinary people".
It was at that choice moment that Mr. Dursley showed up again and he was livid. He looked from Kagome to Harry and back again as if by doing so, answers would pop out of his purple face. "You—Attic!" he growled, pointing from Kagome, then to the top of the stairs. He pointed at Harry. "You—Bed!"
Kagome bowed slightly to Mr. Dursley. "Yes, sir, right away sir!" she chirped. He looked dumbfounded for a moment, but seemed to realize—a little slow—that she was mocking him. She spread her arms wide in the direction of the stairs and said, "Ah, life with Atarimae no Hito! I foresee a very pleasant future in the coming weeks."
She turned to her trunk and kicked it. "Come on now, let us stop this dallying." The trunk sprang a few inches into the air and floated up the stairs. Now Harry was sure that this girl was a witch. He'd suspected it with all her paraphernalia in her trunk, but now he knew it.
Mr. Dursley actually raised his hand in anger. He cuffed Kagome, hard enough to make her fall into the stair rail. For a moment she was dizzy and her ear smarted fairly painful. Then, she glared at Mr. Dursley. "We know you can't use your pointy-stick!" Mr. Dursley bellowed.
Kagome held up her hands. "Does it look to you like I have a wand?" There was nothing in her hands, and clearly nothing up her expansive sleeves.
Harry wasn't sure what exactly he should do in this situation. In normal circumstances, he would have been shocked by what had just occurred in front of him. He would have tried to do something to stop his uncle. But he didn't know what the heck was going on, or who this girl was, or in fact anything at all it seemed.
The trunk set itself down at the top of the stairs. Harry made his decision. "That's enough," he said to Mr. Dursley. He was surprised at how level his voice was. His uncle glared at him, and he just glared right back. Harry pulled his wand from his pocket and held it at his side. "Unless you want elephant ears."
"You can't use it!" Mr. Dursley sneered. Kagome was surprised. She hadn't thought that the boy was a wizard, but he was it seemed, very wizardy. Mr. Dursley was definitely Atarimae no Hito, though, of that she was sure.
Harry laughed bitterly. "I can't?" Still very sore from the loss of Sirius, Harry knew he would in fact use his wand. If it made him feel better, he would do it a thousand times. But it probably wouldn't, which was why he hadn't. There was no way to bring Sirius back.
"You'll be expelled from that blasted school." Mr. Dursley said, sounding very smug to the knowledge.
Kagome stood up, one hand pinching the bridge of her nose and the other gripping the stair rail. "Oh, you know, I won't be expelled though. I don't go to his school." She was so dizzy she felt like she'd fall back over again and there was a ringing sound in her head, like someone had struck a gong, or rang a really loud bell. Or maybe someone hit a tuning fork…
Mr. Dursley had nothing to say to that except, "You don't have a pointy-stick. I know you can't do magic without it."
"I can't?" Kagome released the bridge of her nose and pointed at Mr. Dursley with her finger, as if it were a wand. "Want to test that theory?"
Mr. Dursley was nothing, if not obstinate. He balled his fist and hit Kagome again. She yelped this time as she landed with a corner of the staircase in her back. "Quit yammering, and do as you're told!" he yelled.
Kagome couldn't focus her eyes. He'd hit her face that time. She could feel blood pooling in her mouth from a cut on her lip. Harry thought he saw a sparkle of pink on her chest, as if it burst from the inside of her blouse. Then there was nothing.
Except Mr. Dursley started coughing. His face was hastily turning blue and he scrabbled at some invisible force on his neck. Kagome gasped and reeled against the stairs. It was only a few seconds, but it felt like an hour before she grabbed her neck. Harry was unnerved by his own lack of intervention. She pulled a strange necklace from her neck and dropped it. The instant it left contact with her, Mr. Dursley could breathe again and he staggered away.
"You're a… wizard…" Kagome breathed before slipping into unconsciousness. Harry couldn't understand it himself why she did so. He looked at the necklace she'd thrown away from her as if it were her attacker. It had black beads on it and what looked to be white teeth in a pattern. There was one jewel on the necklace, a round sphere. The jewel glowed pink, not just from the light hitting it, but it had a pink glow coming from it like it was a light of its own.
"You're a witch," he said to the unconscious girl.
"Sesshoumaru-sama, where are you going?" she asked the older boy. Well, technically he was a dog-demon, but he was still male and still older than her. She followed him as he walked through the halls of the Magic Academy at night, though it was strictly prohibited to be out of one's house between the hours of midnight and six am.
But here they both were, out of their separate houses and in the Magic Academy itself. She looked at his back, watching with fascination as the long, silver strands swayed rhythmically with his steps. "Go back to bed, girl." He told her, scorn in his tone.
"But, Sesshoumaru-sama, I want to stay up with you." She giggled quietly, catching up to him and latching onto his arm. She looked up at the side of his face rather than watch where she was walking. The maroon stripes on his cheeks made her wonder if they would go away if she licked them. They wouldn't, though.
"You're nothing more than a fan-girl." He said, crushing her spirit. They had stopped walking but the world around them kept moving, like they were on a moving platform. He turned to look at her, and his features began shifting. His beautiful, cold golden eyes filled with a cold red glow and his emotionless face suddenly flared into one of malice.
"Sesshoumaru-sama?" she asked, but she screamed as the world around them stopped moving. There was a bed behind her, and she was pushed onto it. "Help!" she cried, but no one came or heard. "Someone help!" she screamed again. The face was void of markings now, no longer that of the dog-demon she had a crush on but the face of her enemy.
He tore at her clothes viciously, not caring that he caught her with his claws, leaving four deep gouges from the center of her chest and across her right breast. "They died in the name of the Dark Lord!" he cackled with glee. Her blouse was nothing but tatters by then, and he held her down on the bed with his hands on her wrists and bit her bra, tearing it off without caring that the taut fabric scraped at her skin.
"Go away!" she kicked and struggled against him. He laughed at her puny struggles. Her skirt was never a hindrance. He had no intention of touching it anyway, but to further humiliate her he tore it off her body and threw it away just a shred of cloth now.
"They wouldn't have had to die if you'd stopped struggling and followed the Dark Lord!"
"I HATE THE DARK LORD!" she screamed at him, tears falling from tortured eyes. "He's a murderer!"
Kagome jolted upright in bed. "Murderer!" she cried and struggled to get out from beneath the weight of the blankets. She wanted to throw up. She couldn't figure out where she was. The room was too dark, and there was no moon to shine through the window. She could barely see the window was there by the way street-lamp light shone in.
She crossed the room and threw the window open. It didn't have a screen on it, for which she was grateful. She wouldn't have had patience with it if it did. She stuck her head out and—with every intention to throw up—did no such thing as vomiting. The air was cool enough to sooth her rebelling stomach.
But her shoulder burned. She placed a hand on it, expecting to feel blood there. There was nothing. Whatever it had been that the doctors at St. Mungo's had made her drink had healed the physical part of the wounds, but the psychological part was still there and it hurt like hell.
It was then that she realized she was crying. She was on the other side of the world from where her friends were. At that moment she should have been at Inutaishou-sama's home, sneaking through the halls to Sesshoumaru-sama's room. But that wasn't going to happen.
"I'll kill him," she said with venom. "If I ever see that…monster again, I'll kill him. And I'll bring him back to life just so I can kill him again and again." She leaned on the window sill, staring out at Privet Drive and the houses surrounding them.
Harry looked at the girl with half her body out the window. She'd been talking in her sleep. He'd listened as she spoke alternately Japanese and English. She'd spoken of the Dark Lord, who he could only assume was Voldemort. After all, how many Dark Lords could there be?
So either she was lying that she didn't know about Voldemort, or she was lying that she didn't know about Voldemort. Only two ways about it. But the question now was, was it Voldemort she wanted to kill? Was she a good guy or bad guy?
He sat in his desk chair, unable to sleep with the threat of Voldemort's influence possibly in his Aunt's house. He'd never seen Vernon so angry, not in all his life.
The next morning, Kagome woke in a bed that wasn't the most comfortable thing, but it was warm. She curled up against the pillow, thinking that everything had been a dream. Her bed at home was terribly uncomfortable, like there were a thousand pea balls under it. Her foster mother would open the door with a bright look on her face and say, "Come on, or you'll end up missing your ride to Inutaishou-sama's mansion!"
Then she would jump out of bed and hastily get dressed, toss her things into her trunk haphazardly, and realize she couldn't find her wand. She always had a tendency to lose that thing.
When a few minutes passed and no mother was forthcoming, she groaned and sat up. Her head smarted, and her lip felt puffy. The room she was in most definitely wasn't hers. It wasn't the one she used at Inutaishou-sama's house either. There was a plain looking bed and an even plainer desk and chair. A trunk was open on one side of the room, but it wasn't hers. It was filled with magic books, parchment scrolls, quills, potions equipment, and robes.
An owl cage was open on the plain dresser, but no owl was in sight. On the other side of the room, by the door, was her trunk and her pet carrier from which a hungry "mew" sound was coming.
She was alone in the room but for the fact that her Kiyoshi was in his carrier. Tossing the covers off, she got up and moved to the pet carrier. She opened the door and let the two-tails out. Kiyoshi was a demon; a twin-tails cat demon to be exact. He was the first of the litter of Kagome's friend Sango's twin-tails.
Completely black, save for two rings of fiery red on his tail and the fiery red flame markings in his fur on his feet, Kiyoshi was mostly fuzz still. She opened her trunk and dug around in it, trying to find her travel container for food for Kiyoshi. He preferred fresh meat and milk, but would settle for wet or dry cat food when they were traveling.
"Here we are," Kagome said and pulled the container out. She opened it and set it down for Kiyoshi. He would be thirsty too and probably had to go to the bathroom. Cat-demons were much more civil than regular cats, or at least tame ones were anyway. The tame ones would not pee indoors, and they didn't run away when they were outside. They attached themselves to their master.
When he got bigger, Kiyoshi would be able to transform, but right now he was too young.
Kagome nearly jumped out of her skin when the door opened. She scrabbled inside the carrier for her wand and pointed it at the door. Sure, she was just a little bit paranoid, but it was to be expected; the past week had been terrible for her. It was a little hard not to be frightened when people came upon her unannounced.
The door opened completely and the boy standing there quirked one eyebrow at her, so much like Sesshoumaru-sama always did. He was about to take a bite of an apple. "Whoa. That's some shiner Uncle Vernon gave you," the boy said. "Don't worry, I don't attack people with apples."
She took a deep breath and lowered her wand. "Sorry… just a little…"
"Who are you anyway?" the boy asked.
"Oh," she blushed deeply before bowing much like Dobby the House elf always did, only her nose didn't touch the floor. "My name is Kagome Higurashi. I am, or was, adopted by the Dursley family sixteen years ago but they gave me up for adoption again—or at least, that's what I was told. What's your name?"
"Harry Potter."
Her eyes went wide. This is it, he thought. This is when she starts stammering about how he was 'so brave' to stand up to Voldemort when he was only a baby. She would join the worldwide Harry Potter fan-club, and faint at his feet. Well, not everyone did that, especially at his school, but it seemed a lot of the people he met on the street did that. "Potter?" she asked.
He nodded.
"You mean, like…" He nodded.
She smiled broadly. "Really?" He nodded.
"As in Potter Demon Industries?" He started to nod, but then stopped.
He said, "Wait a minute… I think we're on a different page here. In my story, there's never been a Potter Demon Industries. What is it?"
Kagome chuckled. "Well, PDI is a Japan based company. It's a company that produces weapons and armor for demons." Kagome sat in front of her trunk again and began shifting through it. "I'll show you." He saw her hand disappear into the trunk, then her arm. Really, it looked like her hand had just gone below the bottom of the trunk and through the floor. She probably had a spell on her trunk.
He sat at his desk. Until he could figure out if she was good or bad, he wouldn't be able to sleep. Thus was the reason for the cup of rather nasty coffee in his other hand. He set the coffee on his desk. His summer homework wasn't completed yet. He also had to continue on that.
"Oooh, where is that thing?" she asked, half her torso falling into the trunk. Now he knew there was a spell on it. That was probably why it was so heavy to drag into the room last night. He'd put her in his room after she passed out.
His eyes wandered to her bottom. The skirt was rather short, and when she bent like that, he could almost see her backside. He tilted his head slightly, then shook it. Really, he shouldn't be like that. It was just way too weird.
"Got it!" she said, then yelped and fell into the trunk. Instead of hearing a crash as he should have, he heard nothing, but a bright light emitted from the top of the trunk. Curious, he moved closer and peered inside. He could see down into the trunk, but all that was there were her things. She was no where to be seen.
But in the bottom of the trunk was something odd. It looked like a door on the side of the trunk. Like a shoji door, and it was slid open. It was far down, probably nine or ten feet toward the bottom of the trunk, and didn't look large enough to just fall through since it was on the wall of the trunk. A cat might be able to fit through it, he thought.
Out of sheer curiosity, he set his apple on his bedside table and climbed down into the trunk. Once he'd reached the bottom, he was surprised because that cat sized door was now the size of a regular size door. "Huh?" he asked himself.
He walked toward the door and poked his head through. There were steps leading down to a well. Kagome sat on the lip of the well. He entered, walking down the steps. He'd never seen any place like this. What was it?
Kagome said in a low voice, "Don't speak."
Before he could ask why he shouldn't, she stood and he noticed she had a bow in her hands, an arrow knocked to the string. She took a deep breath and leveled the arrow at the open lip of the well. "It's hiding from me. Come on out, demon."
He opened his mouth to speak but then heard a low, hissing sound. A human head with fangs and six arms shot up out of the lip of the well, its body seeming impossibly long. From the bare chest, he guessed it—whatever it was—was female. It went to bite Kagome, but Harry reacted before he could think. He shoved her aside and instead the six arms enclosed on him. He felt jaws sink into his collar and the arms were squeezing him painfully enough to make him hear his bones popping.
"That was just plain foolish!" Kagome yelled, righting herself. She pulled the arrow back and shot the arrow at the demon's unending torso so that it wouldn't use Harry as a shield. Harry didn't respond. She imagined the pain of teeth latched to his shoulder was what kept him quiet, either that or he was biting his lip so he didn't scream.
The demon's torso erupted and the demon cried loudly. Its voice echoed out in the confines of the room. Harry remained silent; she wondered if he passed out or not. Did the demon have poisonous venom? She'd have to look at his wound later.
Kagome's next arrow was made purely of magical energy. The demon was having trouble staying up with a giant hole in its lower abdomen. "Let him go!" Kagome yelled. "Let him go and I'll be swift with your execution!"
"Eh, he he!" the demon cackled. "Naraku sends his best regards!"
Kagome pulled the string back on her bow. "Tell me something I don't know!" Kagome aimed for the demon's head. "Drop him!" the demon did not. "Three, two…" she released the arrow and the demon used Harry as a shield. "One." The arrow went through Harry with no residual effects on his body, but hit the demon square in the head. The demon's body started to crack and shatter as if suddenly turned to dust. Harry fell to the ground.
"Harry," she said as she knelt beside Harry. His eyes were in and out of focus, providing the point that he was most likely poisoned. She hadn't expected him to follow her when she'd fallen into her trunk. She'd seen the demon at the bottom, shifting through her things. It was searching for something, though how it got inside, she wasn't sure.
She pulled back the torn shirt collar. The bite itself wasn't all that deep. "Hang on, Harry!" she said and hurried out into her trunk. "Great, I went and got another person involved," she muttered. "I should really know better!"
Kagome shifted through her things for her first aid kit and then tromped back into the well-house. She poured Anti-Venom potion on his wound first, then bandaged the wound. His shirt was stained with blood so she just used the dagger from her first aid kit to cut it off.
After that, she made the boy drink the Anti-Venom Booster potion. Why did he shove her aside? It would have all been over with very quickly; she'd have shot her arrow directly into the demon's mouth and it would have crumbled neatly into the well and disappeared. Of course, he didn't know that. How nice of him to be concerned.
"What the…was that?" he asked, sounding delirious.
"It was a demon, sent after me by the Dark Lord's right hand man—er—demon… Naraku." She reached one hand under his neck and gently scooted so her knees were under his head, keeping his head elevated. "Sleep now…" He obeyed her command.
After that, it was a long struggle to get him out of the trunk. She managed it, and got him onto the bed in the room. She assumed this must be his room. His half-eaten apple was on the bedside table, along with her necklace.
She reached for the necklace, the Shikon no Tama on its protective rosary. Her burden and curse. She'd been born with the jewel inside her body, and a demon had used its teeth to rip it out. Unconsciously her hand went to her side. Five hundred years earlier, it was believed that Midoriko, assumed to be Kagome's ancestor, gave birth to the jewel by means of Dark Magic.
Midoriko's daughter then slew her mother and vowed to protect the jewel from those who would use it to do harm. Midoriko's daughter found a dry well and had her body burned inside it alive with the jewel before she could have children. They searched the charred remains thoroughly but there was no sign of the jewel.
Five hundred years later, Kagome was born into the curse when a demon much like the one she'd just destroyed sensed the jewel and bit it out of her. Up until then, Kagome had just been a normal girl going to the Magic Academy in Japan. She had demon friends and human friends and a major infatuation with one of her demon friend's half-brother.
Completely and totally unfair that she should have such a crush, but it was the truth. Not only that, but her relationship with Sesshoumaru-sama was a creation of her curse, so her crush was practically forbidden. Those little kisses that she wished he'd return were impossible.
With Harry situated in his bed, Kagome looked at Kiyoshi. He was curled up on top of his pet carrier, sleeping. She smiled at the cat demon before moving to explore her new home.
Later that day, Kagome drug her trunk and pet carrier up to the attic where Mr. and Mrs. Dursley wanted her originally. The door at the end of the hall led to a chamber smaller than a broom cupboard with an old, wrought iron staircase spiraling upward to a small metal landing. She found a door up there which she went through.
Through the door was cobwebs and boxes and stored items. There was a path through everything, but the path was overtaken by spiders. Her head reeled. She turned heel and made her way back down the stairs. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley had gone out that evening to go grocery shopping, but Dudley was playing games in his bedroom on his computer.
"I need help!" she gasped. He nearly broke his computer he was so startled. Well, it was about time someone else was startled witless. If he wasn't so large, he might have hidden under his desk. Fat prohibited that motion.
He backed his large girth into the corner of his room, holding his butt cheeks. His beady little eyes darted from side to side, sweeping the room for an escape. He was too large for the window. She was in the way of the door.
For once he thought ahead. She burst into his room saying 'I need help' not 'I'm going to hex you' so it wasn't too unlikely that she didn't have malice intent toward him…yet…
Hesitantly he asked, "What do you want?"
"Spiders!" she shuddered. "They're everywhere in the attic! I hate bugs!"
"But they're not bugs," Dudley pointed out. "They're a part of genus arachnid or something like that." He thought that was how it was in his biology class…
"It's a bug if I say it's a bug!" Kagome whined. "Will you please kill the bugs up there? I'll do anything to get rid of the bugs!"
That was when a smile crossed Dudley's face. "Anything?" She nodded, not looking at him, and shuddered at the thought of the spiders. "If I do this for you, you'll do anything I ask?" He puffed up his chest and released his butt cheeks. For a moment, he couldn't help but forget that she was a witch.
"Anything," she agreed.
It was an entire day later that Harry woke up. He was surprised because he was bare in his chest region except for the bandages that crossed his chest and covered his right shoulder. It hurt to move his arm. As he sat up, he stretched his arm and nearly fainted from the pain again. "What happened?" he wondered.
Glimpses of the event in the well-house came to him. "That wasn't a dream?" he wondered.
He looked around his room. The girl, Kagome's, trunk was not in his room, nor was her pet carrier. Stiffly he got up and pulled on a shirt. He could barely get his right arm through the hole, but since it was a Dudley-hand-me-down, he managed.
Hedwig had yet to come back. Harry had sent Hedwig off with a letter for Ron at The Burrow to inquire on the plans for the summer. Was Harry to go to Number 12 Grimmauld? So far he hadn't heard from them, and it made him bitter. They were probably having so much fun they hadn't thought of him.
"Okay," Petunia said, her voice firm. "I want you up in the attic. Don't even think about leaving it until I get back, and you leave my Duddy-kins alone too! Vernon's at work, unlike your kind who sits around all day waving pointy-sticks doing nothing."
"But we don't just do that." It was Kagome's voice protesting. Dudley's snickers were heard clearly. "We've got a lot of jobs. My foster mother was an Interrogator, and my foster grandfather was an Auror. My foster father worked in an extension of Gringotts. And I know lots of others with important jobs. Like Inutaishou-sama. He owns Potter Demon Industries and manufactures armor and weapons for"—she was cut off abruptly with a slap.
Harry peered in the kitchen through a crack in the door. Kagome was leaning against the kitchen table, holding her cheek. Petunia looked absolutely livid. Dudley was stuffing his fist in his mouth to keep from laughing aloud.
Kagome closed her eyes and a tear fell down her cheek. "I apologize." She said.
Harry pushed the kitchen door open. "You don't have to apologize." He said. "After all, what is there to apologize for?" Petunia glared at Harry, but he was unfazed by it. "Our kind does a whole lot more than her kind, who all sits on their bums getting fat. Dudley is a fine example of her kind."
"That's not true either." Kagome said. She looked at Dudley, catching his eyes with hers. "What you are, is a fine example of prey for the blood sucking demons. And they're coming. Oh, they're coming." Dudley paled. "I was you, I'd lose some weight. Naraku would skin you, and you'd be too slow and weak to do anything but scream."
Petunia raised a hand again to slap Kagome for scaring Dudley. Harry was so sure that blow would connect, but Kagome raised her hand and blocked the blow. She grabbed Petunia's wrist and dug her nails in. She glared up into Petunia's eyes. "I don't have to be a Seer to know how you will cry out in agony when they pin you down and torture you. You hate our kind, but it is our kind that protects you from that fate. Ungrateful though you are, we keep you from the demons and the monsters that spook in the night."
Dudley stood from his seat at the table with difficulty because of his girth. Kagome was right; they did protect muggles from horrible fates. Petunia looked at her son as he muttered something. Kagome said, "You will have to speak louder than that to be heard."
"You owe me a favor," Dudley said. "I did that for you. Do something for me."
Dudley did something for Kagome? "What did you do for Kagome," Harry asked. It seemed so odd that Dudley would do something for a witch.
Kagome smiled ironically and released Petunia's wrist. Petunia stepped back a step, massaging the abused appendage. Kagome said, "What would I do? A spell?"
"Do not say the 's' word either!" Petunia said with fear.
"Or make a potion? No, that would not work. You are going to have to work at it. Eat vegetables and fish and fruits and exercise. When the spell or potion wore off, you'd just go back to being fat."
Kagome slid with liquid grace across the floor, her hand on Dudley's shoulder. "Or… perhaps a curse…" she chuckled lowly. "I could curse you." She spoke quietly, her lips brushing his ear, but the entire kitchen still heard her. "Oh, but that's right… your mummy doesn't want me doing magic. Pity…"
Kagome slid her hands over Dudley's shoulders. Harry was sure he was the only one who saw the jewel on her necklace glowing a bit brighter. Dudley said, "Help…" before his clothes began to look too big on him.
"Duddy!" Petunia gasped.
Harry darted for Kagome. Whatever force that had tried to strangle Uncle Vernon had been released when she took off the necklace. He pulled Kagome away from Dudley and she bumped his abused shoulder. He hissed, but grasped the necklace and took it off her. He watched as jolts of electricity shot off the necklace and attacked his hand. He dropped the item to the ground, his hand numbing. It had done that before when he'd carried it to place it on his bedside table.
"Oh, not again…" Kagome tried to keep her eyes open, but they drifted shut. "Must… not sleep…" she insisted. Her finger fisted in his shirt and she pulled her lower lip into her mouth, biting on it. Slowly she opened her eyes, only slightly more alert. "I need… my guardian…"
"Who is it?" Harry asked. "Who is it?" But Kagome couldn't hear him. She was in and out of focus, and she was slipping away. He grasped her around the waist with his good arm. He remembered a name she'd said in her sleep. "Is it Sesshoumaru-sama? Is that the person?"
She didn't respond. She fell unconscious and he couldn't hold her up with his good arm so injured. He tried to kneel and place her on the ground as carefully as possible. He looked up at Dudley. The boy was much thinner and staring at his baggy sleeves as if they could give him answers to unasked questions.
Harry's eyes then went to Petunia. She was fretting over Dudley like he was a corpse. "You need to eat, Duddy!" she insisted. Wherever she had been about to go seemed to have vacated her mind.
Harry looked down at Kagome's sleeping face. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyebrows coming together. She was breathing heavily, like she was afraid. "Sesshoumaru-sama," she said over and over in her sleep.
An idea came to his mind. "Petunia! Dudley. We have to get her onto the couch in the living room." He couldn't do it himself with his injured shoulder.
Petunia scowled down at him. "Why should I help the whelp? She hurt my Duddy-kins!" She would refuse to her death, Harry knew.
Dudley insisted, "But I feel fine. I feel great, in fact!"
"Unconscious witches aren't people to insult, Petunia," Harry lied. "When they make orders in their sleep, you have to obey or they'll hex you and they won't ever know it to admit it. Right now she's saying, 'Put me on the couch' so you two will have to do it."
Petunia's hearing was more than it used to be. She rubbed her wrist and said, "She's saying that name you mentioned. Not a demand. And why don't you do it?"
Harry swiftly evaded that point by saying, "She's speaking Japanese! I took Japanese at Hogwarts last year"—greatest lie of the century—"and you didn't. I think I know what she's saying. And you have to do it because I have to get that enchanted item." There, now he didn't have to admit he was injured.
Dudley flexed his muscles. "Fine," Petunia said. "But when she wakes up, you two will remain in the attic." Like Cinderella when her boyfriend showed up, Harry thought. But he agreed to this.
"Sesshoumaru-sama, why do you and Inuyasha-sama constantly fight?" She asked her guardian one night after sneaking into his room and kissing him awake. As usual, he had turned his head away from her lips, but didn't make her move from where she sat straddling his stomach.
He had his arms locked behind his head and stared up at the velvet canopy of his bed. As usual, he had a steely gaze for the ceiling. "I find it amusing to wail on him," was the simple response she received. It was so like him to say such.
She hit his arm lightly and glared at him as best as she could. He wasn't intimidated. "That's not a reason to hit him! He's your brother"—he corrected her, "Half," but she ignored his interruption—"and family shouldn't fight!"
"Fighting is a sign of love in demons," Sesshoumaru-sama said monotonously.
"Is it really, Sesshoumaru-sama?" She hadn't known that.
He chuckled. "No, but you believed me."
She threw her lower lip out in a pout and crossed her arms over her chest. How cruel of him to lie to her again, and make her believe the lie. "Sesshoumaru-sama," she whined.
"Inuyasha and Kouga fall for that. Go use it on them." Sesshoumaru-sama said, his eyes still on the canopy.
She leaned forward to rest her head on his shoulder, kissing his neck. "But you are my guardian, not them."
His hands gripped her shoulder tightly. But that—somehow—felt wrong. He never, ever touched her before. She touched him, but he never touched her. She felt him laughing dangerously before his voice changed. He flipped her onto her back and pinned her down. The world spun and she was back in her bed instead of his. Her body was bare of covering and she was bleeding from four identical gashes on her breast.
"Sesshoumaru-sama?" she cried out, struggling to get away.
"He's not coming!" laughed the creature on top of her. "He's far too busy with my incarnations!" He dug one claw into her thigh and tore it toward her waist, creating a painful gash. She screamed. "Don't you want the pain to stop? Join the Dark Lord and it will!"
He paused in his torture to give her a moment to catch her breath. When she managed to do so, she glared at him with pain-struck eyes. "I will n-never! Your master will never have me, or the"—she screamed yet again. He was digging his claws into her wrists. He reached for the rosary on her neck but it crackled with lightning and each bolt that hit him left a blackened piece of skin.
He dug his claws into the gashes on her chest instead. It felt like a thousand years before he let up again. "Join the Dark Lord for an end to the pain."
"Sesshoumaru-sama will come for me!" she screamed.
"The Dark Lord will spare his life," the creature's red eyes burned brightly, "and yours. An end to both of your suffering."
"Shut up!" She screamed as the pain of him widening the wounds worsened. A sword entered her vision; Sesshoumaru-sama had come as she had known he would. The sword slashed at her attacker; miasma splashed her body and burned her wounded flesh.
Sesshoumaru-sama pulled the two parts of the clay doll body off her and took off his haori. He wrapped it around her body. "Can you move?" he asked her. She could see he was injured now; his left arm was missing, cut off past the elbow. He was having difficulty helping her.
"Sesshoumaru-sama, please, tend your wounds." She said. "I-I can do this…" she struggled to sit up, unaware of the tears falling down her face. "We, we aren't suffering," she had to tell Sesshoumaru-sama. "Are we?" She needed to know. She needed assurance that despite their wounds, her curse didn't kill them.
But he didn't reassure her. His normally emotionless stare was bloody and his molten gold eyes were as hazy as hers. He said nothing, but his face was deathly pale underneath those splotches of blood. He fell into her, his bone armor digging into the wounds. For some reason, the blood didn't matter anymore. The pain didn't matter.
"Sesshoumaru-sama!" she cried and tried to wake him. He was drawing in ragged breaths—
"Sesshoumaru-sama!" she jolted upright. This time she was on a couch in the Dursley's living room. She put her hand to her breast as the ghostly memory of pain grasped her until she wanted to throw up. She staggered off the couch, trying to get to a door, to a window, to anything that would lead her outside.
"Upstairs!" snapped the voice of Mrs. Dursley. "Both of you. Attic. Now."
She felt a guiding hand on her arm. "Come on, Kagome." Harry said. He pulled her up the steps and into the attic. There were boxes all over the place, but someone had done some serious cleaning, because there wasn't a spider or web in sight. Her trunk and pet carrier were by an old, moth eaten mattress. Her cat-creature was on a dingy old pillow. A scrappy blanket was on top of the bed.
Kagome fell onto the mattress. Harry noticed a small window on the other end of the attic. He went over to it and had to climb on boxes of storage items to get to it, but it opened up. The stuffy, dusty smell of the attic began to be replaced with fresh outside air.
He heard sobs; Kagome was crying. "Bastard…" she cried. "I'll kill you…"
Kagome had another nightmare that night, but Harry woke her from it before it could escalate this time. She was grateful for him waking her, but ungrateful for the interrogation she got immediately afterward.
"Who is Naraku and who is Sesshoumaru-sama?" Harry asked her, getting right to the point. He still had not yet been able to place Kagome in a category and it bothered him. He hadn't slept well because of it. He needed to know if Kagome was on his side or Voldemort's side. It was unfathomable that anyone couldn't take a side.
Kagome knew she owed this boy an explanation. She pointed to the Shikon no Tama, once more around her neck. "Naraku is the antagonist to my story," she said with a weary smile. "When I was born, I was cursed with the duty to protect this jewel from those who would use it negatively."
"Kind of like how Voldemort is the antagonist to my story," Harry said, able to relate to her a little bit. "What does the jewel do?"
Kagome grasped it in her fingers. "It will do whatever I want it to, and sometimes it does whatever it wants to, using my body as a medium. It can amplify a person's power a hundred fold, but my guardian and I made this enchanted rosary so that people with ill intent cannot use it."
"Who is your guardian, and who is Sesshoumaru-sama?" Harry was amazed, yet at the same time not amazed, that such an enchanted item could exist. At some point, someone had such extreme magical powers that they could make such a jewel.
"Sesshoumaru-sama is my guardian. He protects me, and I protect the Shikon no Tama. I know he doesn't like it, but my curse is his curse." Kagome looked at Harry. "Please, don't tell anyone."
He smiled reassuringly. "Who would I tell? Aunt Petunia?"
They were quiet for a long time, giving Kagome plenty of time to brood in her thoughts. She didn't know if Sesshoumaru-sama was okay. She desperately wanted him to be. Professor Dumbledore was the one who had found Kagome at the top of the stairs in her bedroom with Sesshoumaru-sama, trying to bandage his wounds and stop the blood flow even while she staggered from loss of her own blood.
Sesshoumaru-sama had been taken to a special clinic for the care of demons, and she had been taken to St. Mungo's in England. She'd been patched up in practically no time at all. Professor Dumbledore had argued with Inutaishou-sama outside of Kagome's hospital room about what would happen to her. Inutaishou-sama said she should go with him, like the other orphans in his district of Japan.
In Japan, the demon lord reigning in the district took in orphaned children of magical origin.
Professor Dumbledore argued that rule didn't apply since technically she still had family: the Dursley's had adopted her first and though she was abandoned, she still belonged with them. Inutaishou-sama said something about splitting Kagome from her guardian during that time of the year being a very bad idea, but Professor Dumbledore was insistent and said they could further discuss things elsewhere, but a hospital was not the place.
When their stomachs started rumbling, they began talking again. "I'm hungry," Kagome said.
"I brought up some bread and cheese and a water jug while you were asleep. It's not much, but its all Aunt Petunia would let me have." Harry smiled and held out a fresh brick of cheese, a loaf of bread, and waved to the water jug.
Kagome tilted her head at the food for a moment. "Well, I can contribute to our meal of kings," she giggled. She crawled across the attic to her trunk and flipped the lid up. She dug around for a moment and pulled out a small chest. "It's a sweets chest!" she explained, setting it on the floor. "Inutaishou-sama gave it to me."
Harry felt his smile turn genuine. She flipped the lid up and reached in the small box, taking out two dessert plates upon which sat the strangest looking cookies—five on each plate. The cookies were small and had a strange papery taste, Harry soon found out. Kagome was quiet for a long time while they ate their 'meal of kings' as she called it.
Then she said, "Who is Volimore?"
"Voldemort," Harry corrected her. She blushed prettily and mumbled an apology that he waved off. "He's the antagonist to my story," he explained. "I'm surprised you don't know of him. He's the worst wizard out there."
"If he's so bad at wizardry, what makes him an antagonist?" Kagome inquired, taking a sip from the water jug. "Where I come from, if you are very bad at magic, you don't graduate from the Magic Academy."
Harry laughed. "Oh, that's not what I mean. I mean, he's just really dangerous because he's so good at magic and all that." How could he have made such a blunder? And why hadn't Ron or Hermione written? They said they'd try to get him for the summer… Though admittedly he wasn't too keen at going to 12 Grimmauld, knowing that Sirius wouldn't be there.
"Oh… Well, in Japan, evil creatures are so common that the King of Demons keeps a task force to battle the evil alongside the rest of the magical community. Don't you have that in England?"
"We've got the Ministry of Magic and…" Harry trailed off. "Well, we're trying, I guess." He had been about to tell her of the Order of the Phoenix, but he thought better of it. If she was a spy for Voldemort, she was doing a pretty good job at tricking him. Maybe he should contact Professor Dumbledore?
"Is it true we cannot use magic here?" Kagome asked suddenly after a pause.
Harry nodded. If anything, he couldn't wait for school to start again. He missed the big breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. He missed his friends, and heck he even missed those scuffles with Draco Malfoy, because at least then he could and did use magic. And then he didn't have to choke down cookies that tasted like paper. Didn't Kagome notice the horrible taste?
"I think that's silly," Kagome threw her lip out in a pout. "In Japan we don't have to refrain from doing it."
That evening after the light had faded from the sole window in the attic, they heard noise at the base of the steps. It was Mr. Dursley. They watched from the landing at the top of the stairs as the purple-faced man installed not just one but three deadbolt locks on the door at the base of the steps.
Kagome smiled brightly. "He cannot expect to keep me inside with those."
Harry jammed his hands in his pockets. "But I think he does."
"Shame," Kagome giggled, "I'm partial to letting him have that delusion."
"They're scared of us." Harry told her.
What unnerved him most was what she said next: "Let them be." An eerie smile crossed her face.
When the moon rose to the highest point it would reach that night, Harry watched her stand up. She stretched and her strange uniform blouse lifted to show her belly and the bite scar. She reached to grab up the silk shirt with patterns of cherry blossoms on it and slid it on.
"Kiyo," she said, then muttered something he couldn't understand. The cat-creature looked at Harry with crimson eyes before looking like it was sighing and then getting off the pillow. Kiyoshi followed his owner through the door and down the wrought iron staircase.
Out of curiosity of what she would do, Harry followed. Aside from that, if the chance arose to get out of the attic, he had to admit he was hungry and he still had homework to do—said homework being in his bedroom.
She knelt at the bottom of the stairs and grabbed up her cat. After situating her cat on her shoulders where her cat wove into her long black strands, she put a hand on the door. He heard three clicks, one after another, each one as loud as the next.
But the door slid open instead of opening like a normal door. When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he could see that at the base of her neck, the jewel was glowing again. Did that mean it was taking control of her again?
"Come out, come out," she whispered, stepping through the doorway. He followed her, glad his wand was in his pocket. Just in case, he took it out.
Instead of stepping into a darkened hallway in his Aunt's house, he found himself in a forest clearing with trees everywhere. The cat jumped from Kagome's shoulder and wandered away into the trees. Kagome stood there as the cat came back and then went back into the Dursley's house.
That was when Harry saw blood. It was dripping off of Kagome's hand and she was swaying. He caught her as she fell and the world spun. When she'd fallen, he saw Voldemort was aiming his wand at her, his eyes rather maniacal. Blood began soaking her clothes, turning white cloth to a dull red. When he touched her, he felt a wrenching pull on every part of his body.
He wasn't sure when he'd fallen, but he knew he felt his head hit the floor and his injured shoulder was jarred painfully. He heard a snap and rolled to look up. Voldemort had stepped on his wand and broken it. When had he dropped it?
"Send your incarnations out again. That blasted family of dogs is really getting on my nerves." Behind Voldemort was a shadow, features obscure. They disappeared and Voldemort stepped closer to Harry. Harry recoiled in disgust and fear as Voldemort knelt before him and touched his chin.
It was strange, but Harry would almost have thought that touch was a tender touch. As if Voldemort was capable of being tender! "Right now, Tsugunai," he said. "Where is she right now?"
Harry spoke, but he didn't know whose voice he spoke with. It wasn't his own. It was high, feminine, soprano—would be beautiful, but it was crackly from tortured screams. "I don't know who you're talking about!"
Voldemort laughed cruelly and waved to Kagome's body, only it wasn't Kagome anymore. It was someone who was not recognizable to him, bloody and with the stamp of death everywhere on them. "Come now, how many more will have to die before you understand? You cannot hide her, neither could he."
Harry woke up, breathing heavily. He couldn't decide whether to hold his right shoulder or his scar; both hurt excruciatingly bad. Kagome slept fitfully next to him; they'd agreed to share the ragged mattress only because there really wasn't anywhere else to sleep. All the boxes of stored items were up here and only enough space had been cleared to put her trunk, the pet carrier, and to lay out the old mattress.
He lay back down on the ragged mattress, rubbing the back of his hand on his forehead. Kagome was on his left side; he could feel their arms touching because they were so close. Surely Aunt Petunia would calm down. They'd been up in the attic for more than a day.
A soft hooting sound, like an owl, came from above. He looked up; in the light of the moon, there was a tawny owl hopping irritably on a box. It had a rather awkward looking thing tied to its leg. He got up to find out what it was; it had Kagome's name on it with URGENT sprawled across the top. He took it from the owl and it took off back out the partially open window.
Turning the parcel over in his hands, he saw the crest for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry on the back. He would have to wait until morning to find out what it was. But he was very curious.
He propped it up against the boxes to the left of the sleeping girl and lay back down. If she wanted to murder him, she'd already had innumerable amounts of time to do it, so for now he supposed he was safe from her. "I just hope you don't work for Voldemort," Harry told the girl as she began muttering things about 'the Dark Lord' in her sleep.
It was difficult to explain his torn feelings; on the one hand he thought her too strange to work for Voldemort, and on the other he thought her ordinary enough to do so. He didn't get the feeling that she was like Draco Malfoy, or Voldemort, but he did feel like she had a dark secret that was more than dangerous.
He fell asleep once more to troubled thoughts, feeling much too like he'd been sleeping far too much lately.
When Kagome woke up the next morning, she found herself in something of a predicament. With the limited space on the very ragged mattress they were sharing, somehow during the night she'd ended up using Harry as a pillow, as he had so cruelly absconded of the entire ragged pillow himself.
It was just as well, she thought, that she was on his left side. The demon bite on his right shoulder hadn't healed properly yet. She did feel guilty about that, just a little bit, but it was his fault. She would have destroyed the demon right away if he hadn't shoved her aside in an attempt at chivalry.
Sesshoumaru-sama would be furious to know that she had let someone get involved. She paused that thought momentarily and then backtracked to adjust it. Sesshoumaru-sama actually wouldn't care that she'd gotten someone involved, because that someone was human and Sesshoumaru-sama hated humans. He despised them.
Still, in a vain attempt to save her vanity, she screamed and pushed Harry away from her. "AIYEE!" He didn't go very far what with the wall of boxes around them, but instead managed to upset one stack and the whole lot of boxes fell on them both. She couldn't let anyone touch her but her Sesshoumaru-sama, her guardian.
And that started their relationship on a good note, she thought.
They still were stuck up in the attic for the duration of their stay at the Dursleys, but at least they started to get along.
"What'd you do that for?" Harry asked, trying to get out from underneath a heavy box that pinned him to the floor. Technically they were on a mattress and not the floor directly, but it was so thin it might as well not be there.
"You attacked me!" Kagome answered irritably. "Here I am, fast asleep, when I wake up and you're hanging onto me like a bloody leech!" She kicked the boxes off of her. One of them went out the open attic door and onto the landing where it upended and fragile ornaments began falling down to smash musically on the floor below.
"Oh, bloody hell," Harry groaned, "I never did that!" Well, he couldn't exactly remember doing it, as he was fast asleep. But he figured it was best to deny it anyway, just in case it were true and he had done it. Certainly that made a whole lot of sense in an abstract way.
Kagome brushed herself off. It had mostly been only light boxes that fell on her, though one of them had a particularly sharp corner and jammed her back. "You did too!" she argued, "Just because I'm a foreigner doesn't mean I'm stupid. I know a pervert when I see one, and you fall in the category quite nicely."
"A pervert?" Harry asked incredulously. "Let me get one thing straight! I'm not a pervert!"
"Oh yes, you are." Kagome said.
"Oh no, I'm not." Harry said.
Their banter continued to grow louder and louder until Petunia screeched up the stairs that they were to clean up the broken ornaments and come down for breakfast. "And if you're not downstairs in five minutes, you'll go without!" Petunia shouted. Both witch and wizard hastened to do as bid, while glaring at the other.
After breakfast, Petunia said, "Harry, you can move your things to the attic now."
Dudley explained, "My friend will be coming over for the rest of the summer."
Harry had to spend the rest of the morning working in the attic then, moving things so that there was more room up there for his things on top of Kagome's things. He asked her to help, but her response was, "I don't make a habit of helping perverts."
So their relationship was off to a rather rocky start, if that.
He'd barely managed to clean out the last of his things from his room and move them to the attic before a much thinner Dudley showed up. Harry was in the hall, sweat strewn from all the work he'd been doing. "So," Dudley drawled. "Mum's out, dad's at work."
It was the same old tone of voice Dudley used to use before beating Harry up. Harry looked at his cousin and saw that Dudley had backup. "Go away, Duddy-kins," Harry scowled. Eerily, Dudley only smiled. "I'm not in the mood."
"But I only want to introduce you to my friends Greg Guise and Wallace Wern." He pointed over his shoulders with his thumbs. Greg was the tall, beefy, mindless type, much like Malfoy's cronies Crabbe and Goyle. Dudley seemed to always have friends like that, flat-faced, pug nosed, and able to follow orders without hesitation.
The other was short and skinny, almost frail looking. His clothes hung on his body like they were meant for someone else, or like they were hand-me-downs. He had an air of intelligence, unlike the other. Wallace held out his hand in greeting and stammered, "S-so nice t-to meet you, H-harry."
Dudley hit the extended hand and glared at Wallace. Feeling pity on Wallace, Harry stood straighter and said, "Good to meet you too."
"Mum said you're to stay in the attic while Wally and Greg are here."
Harry gave Dudley his best blank stare. "And if I don't?" he asked.
Dudley just smirked. He turned and started back down the stairs. Wallace looked from Harry, to the retreating Dudley in confusion. "Wallace!" Dudley called. Wallace stumbled after Dudley then, but he didn't look too happy to be going.
It was after midnight when Harry left Kagome alone in the attic. He had to shower, he said. It would only be about fifteen minutes. She didn't know why he bothered telling her where he was going. She went to start digging in her trunk for her sweets chest. She had hardly eaten all day. He had only been gone a minute or two when she heard footsteps on the landing to the attic.
"Forget something, pervert?" she asked. She kept digging when the door at the bottom of the trunk opened, sliding without aid. Demon! Her mind screamed. Two of them, in only a few days… Had she been found?
The footsteps continued and she saw her bow and quiver of arrows at the bottom of the trunk. She would have to climb in to reach them. Was Harry a demon?
Slowly, she turned, feeling panic rising in her chest. She saw a rat-like face, intelligent and frightening. It was like living her nightmares over as he slapped her. It reached for her neck, but black lightning attacked his hand and wouldn't let him grab the jewel he desired.
He instead pinned her to the ragged mattress. Kiyoshi hissed and scratched at the creature. He wouldn't be able to do more damage until he could transform. The creature simply grabbed Kiyoshi and bashed him into a box.
"KIYO!" Kagome cried, trying to reach into the pet carrier for her wand, forgetting completely everything her guardian had taught her about tapping magic without a wand. In a vague part of her mind she knew someone should have heard that cry for help, and someone should be coming to save her. But should wouldn't save her life. Doing would.
"I've noticed you're a lot easier to control like this. Free your hands and feet and you're confident." The creature laughed. "Naraku never said this would be so fun."
Kagome's blood ran cold at that name. "I'm so glad to amuse you!" she said as she struggled beneath him. She managed to nail his crotch with her knee and shove him off her as he gasped for breath. She grabbed up her wand, but he had already recovered. He grabbed her from behind and slashed claws down her backside.
As she screamed in pain, he took her wand and threw it aside. "Join the Dark Lord," the creature ordered.
"N-never," she gasped, eyes hazy from the pain. She could hear him licking the blood from his fingers; her blood. "Inutaishou-sama said I must keep a strong resolve, because if the Dark Lord got me, he would win."
Black lightning crackled; one of his hands was suspended over the jewel, the other steadying her waist so she didn't fall over. "The power to control canines, including canine-demons, certainly does make this bobble wanting."
"Get away from me," she breathed, frightened beyond belief but just barely able to keep her wits about her. "He must know that if I die, the jewel will disappear again for five hundred years."
"That certainly makes you wanting…" the creature cackled. "Oh, it's glowing, just for me." He tried to touch it again, but the lightning turned to black flame and that flame consumed him. His scream echoed through the house, waking the sleeping residents, but all that was left behind was a pile of ashes on the rotting mattress.
"I can't stay here," Kagome gasped. She dug in her trunk for a cloak and tied it tight around her torso. It could catch the blood at least. She was in extreme pain, but she tossed the pet carrier into her trunk and slammed the lid shut. She kicked the trunk. "G, go." She ordered it. As it began slowly making its way down the spiral stairs, she carefully dug for her cat in the box.
In examining him, she found him with a bump on his side but she would have to find an animal caretaker to examine him more thoroughly. She cradled him carefully and trot after her trunk. She passed Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, both of who were confused and angered by the screams that woke them.
She passed Greg Guise and Dudley who looked irritated that their game had been interrupted. Down the stairs she went to the first floor. Harry was just coming out of the bathroom, rubbing his head with a towel. He called out to her, to ask what was wrong. She exited Number four Privet Drive without looking back.
They found me, she thought. The Dark Lord and Naraku found me, and Sesshoumaru-sama is injured because of me. He cannot protect me. All I can do is run, run, run.
But Harry raced after her. He'd seen the blood dripping from her body. Helplessly, he watched as a black hole opened up in the middle of the darkened street. "Kagome!" he called to her, but her trunk had gone through, and she fell into it. He tried to follow, but it snapped shut.
Why did he race after her? She could be anyone, could be working for Voldemort as a spy… It wasn't unreasonable. The man had been known to use underhanded methods before.
Left over on the ground where she'd disappeared, he found a puddle of something wet. He bent to touch it, and came up with moist red blood. She had really been bleeding badly. Who was Kagome Higurashi?
Back in the attic, he found her wand was on top of the stacks of boxes. No real witch would leave her wand behind, would she? He remembered then what she had said to Uncle Vernon.
"You don't have a pointy-stick. I know you can't do magic without it."
"I can't?" Kagome released the bridge of her nose and pointed at Mr. Dursley with her finger, as if it were a wand. "Want to test that theory?"
He saw the pile of ash on the ragged mattress, the blood that seemed to be splattered in an arc, and the hole in one of the boxes of storage items. Something was beginning to unsettle in his stomach, and it certainly wasn't any form of constipation known to man. It was unease. Something was very wrong here.
Please review! I won't know to continue this if no one tells me to, and if you've read other things by me, you know that the only reason I actually post on the web isn't because I enjoy writing - which I do - but for the reviews. If I just wanted to write for the pure pleasure, I wouldn't bother sharing. So review, please!
And please, please! Don't just say 'update'! Give me some sexy-crazy, but honest opinions for once! - TK