Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction ❯ Higher Learning ❯ Restricted Section; Kitsune Tails ( Chapter 5 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Arigatomina 
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Drama / Romance | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 12.14.2004 | Updated On: 12.14.2004 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.9K | Visits: 935 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Yu Yu Hakusho Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Drama / Romance | Type: Crossover | Uploaded On: 12.14.2004 | Updated On: 12.14.2004 | Pages: 5 | Words: 6.9K | Visits: 935 | Status: Work In Progress
Author’s Notes: To Mizuki Ishida, I tend to think of ‘Ningenkai’ as the official name of the anime ‘human realm’ in YYH – Japanese, yes, but only because YYH is in Japanese. It’s sort of like Hiei having a Japanese name – the English speakers don’t translate his name into Flying Shadow because it’s a proper name, of a person or a place. I’ll try not to have wizards referring to the Ningenkai by name in the future, but I’m not going to capitalize ‘human world’ – that’s not the proper name of the place, just a description of it in English. I’m a stickler when it comes to Japanese names – they don’t sound as official (real) in translation. ;p
Category: Harry Potter-YYH crossover
Warnings: none
Author: Arigatomina
Email: arigatoumina (a) hotmail . com
Website: www . geocities . com / arigatomina
Higher Learning
Part 5: Restricted Section; Kitsune Tails
The halls had never seemed so dark when looking out from beneath Harry’s invisibility cloak. Hermione knew it was just a difference of feeling hidden versus vulnerable, but that didn’t stop the school from looking much darker than she’d expected. It seemed to take hours for her to get to her destination, and every dark corner she passed appeared to be watching her. Disconcerting, creepy, and-
‘All in my imagination,’ she thought firmly. ‘I’m not used to this sort of thing, that’s all.’
A person would think after being friends with Harry and Ron for so many years that she’d have grown accustomed to sneaking around and breaking the rules. She’d certainly done her share of restricted potions and spells for the sake of their exploits. But this was different. She wasn’t sneaking across the school to save lives or the world. She was after a book for the sole purpose of appeasing her curiosity.
It really shouldn’t have surprised her that Harry had refused to help. He didn’t exactly have anything to gain, since she wasn’t playing hero. Settling her curiosity was a private mission, so it was just as well that she went alone to do it.
She was still angry with him. She’d stay resentful until she was safely back in the Griffindor common room, and no amount of reasonableness on her part would change that. She’d asked a simple favor, the first ever, and he’d refused to help. She still couldn’t believe his gall.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t helped him with each and every one of his hair-brained ideas. And she hadn’t even asked him to break the rules with her, the way he and Ron had done to her so often in the past. No, she’d simply asked to borrow his cloak for a quick run to the library. And his response? Absolutely not, unless he and Ron went with her, like always.
After all they’d been through together, she’d have thought he would trust her a little. It wasn’t as if she’d be seen by anyone. And he’d already had his cloak confiscated more than once – he always got it back again. She honestly didn’t see what the problem was. All she knew was that the one time she’d asked a favor of him, he’d refused outright and even had the nerve to tell her she shouldn’t break the rules for something as small as curiosity.
‘Like he has any room to talk. I’ve never met such an unreasonable, infuriating and hypocritical git in all my-’
“Lumos…”
Hermione jumped and spun, her wand arm bumping into the shelf behind her and sending a small book down on her head. She bit her tongue and stared dumbly at the glowing light a few feet from her, watching as it drew close enough for her to see the holder.
“What are you doing bumping around in the dark?” asked Ron.
“I told you she’d get caught on her own,” Harry muttered, pulling his cloak off his shoulders and frowning around the dark library.
“Harry…! Ron, what do you think you’re doing? I said I didn’t need your-”
“Right,” Ron said, waving a hand at her, “you don’t need our help. That’s why you’re looking for a book in the dark, is it? Makes perfect sense to me.”
Hermione bristled, not about to forget that she’d specifically said she didn’t need help from them, or that they were doing exactly what she’d told them not to do – breaking the rules for her sake.
“For your information,” she said testily, “I know exactly which book I want – I don’t need to wave a light around to get it. Unlike the two of you, I don’t have a cloak to hide under, so I can’t afford to draw attention to myself. Which means, either put that out or go away before you get me caught!”
Harry winced at the resentful yet bossy glare Hermione sent them. He’d known she’d react that way, really he had. And he’d told Ron before they left that they should just stay back and watch to make sure no one spotted her – she wouldn’t have known they were there, and they’d have had time to toss the cloak over her if anyone came around. Leave it to Ron to blow that plan without a second thought.
“Don’t be sore,” Ron said warily. “We just want in on it. If something’s got you curious enough to break into the restricted section, it’s bound to be interesting. We’re here to learn, too, you know.”
Silence passed over the three of them as they looked at each other. Ron was holding onto his sincere expression until it threatened to crack around the edges, Harry holding his breath so he wouldn’t snort at the ridiculous lie, and Hermione trying her best to stay mad at the two of them. After a moment, she heaved a long sigh and gave up.
“Fine,” sighed Hermione, “but do put out that light. I don’t feel at all comfortable sneaking around with the two of you over this book. If we get caught, it’ll be entirely on my head for dragging you into it.”
Ron extinguished his wand and ducked closer so he could almost see Hermione in the near pitch-black library. “All right, but you know if we got caught we’d just say we followed you to try and talk you into going back to the dormitory. That scored points when Neville tried it. Who knows, we might even make up what we lost in Potions.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Hermione scoffed.
She shook the sleeve of her robe back and held out her left hand as she waved her wand. “Accio ‘Wallabin’s Guide to Muggle Superstitions’.”
“Muggle what?” asked Ron, shock making his voice a little louder than he’d intended. “All of this trouble for a book on muggles?!”
Hermione shushed him irritably and caught the thick book that floated over to her outstretched hand. “Really, Ron. I’ll explain when we get back.”
“It better be good,” Ron grumbled. “You break the rules for a restricted book on muggles – you live with them…! As if there’s anything you don’t already know. Didn’t you take Muggle Studies last year?”
Harry sighed and didn’t voice his agreement. He’d expected something risky like a forbidden spell book, but since it was Hermione, he couldn’t be too surprised that she’d go to so much trouble for something so simple. It was no wonder she hadn’t told him what she was after. He’d never have agreed to give her his cloak over a book on muggles.
“Can we go now?” asked Harry.
“I’m going,” Hermione snipped. “Whether you come or not is up to you.”
“Oh, really,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “We should just leave you here if you’re going to be like that.”
“Well, if you’d wait till we’re safe, I’d explain exactly what’s so important about this book,” Hermione shot back. “Do you really think I’d risk getting in trouble over a simple muggle history book?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Ron.
“It most certainly would be-”
“I’m leaving now,” Harry said warningly, pulling his cloak up.
His friends sent mutual looks of ‘this isn’t over yet, just you wait’ and joined him under the invisibility cloak. It was almost enough to make him smirk, or maybe sigh in resignation. He could always tell when Hermione got angry about something – she didn’t let go until she had a nice bicker session, usually with Ron since he was so quick to volunteer himself. Harry preferred to stand back and let them have at it. Arguing with Hermione was as fun as Advanced Potions, a bloody awful headache and no fun at all.
They shuffled a little at first, the usual bit of getting close enough to move together under the cloak, and in sync enough not to trip each other up while they walked. Then they edged over to the door of the library and sent a quick look down the hall. Harry immediately tensed and jerked his friends back inside and out of sight.
“Did you see that?” he asked quietly, slipping a folded parchment out of his robes. “That thing at the corner of the hall?”
“I didn’t see anything,” Hermione frowned.
She exchanged a suspicious look with Ron and the two peaked back out the door. The hall was just as dark as it had been earlier, almost eerily dark. But after a few minutes of intense staring, they saw what had spooked Harry. There was something at the end of the hall. The only question was what? Ghost, professor, a new moving statue that had wandered into the wrong hallway – in Hogwarts it could be anything.
“It’s not showing on the map,” Harry said grimly.
He’d spread out the Marauder’s map and was scowling down at it, the tip of his wand illuminated just enough to make out the little names and dots that represented people. Hermione and Ron joined him, and he was relieved to toss the cloak over all three of them. That blocked out the light of his wand and gave him more time to really study the map.
“It’s right here,” said Harry. “But the closest person to that spot is…Lupin!”
“That’s no where near the office he used last time,” Hermione noted. “If he’s too ill to teach his class, he shouldn’t be up this late.”
“That’s a classroom,” said Ron, “isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Hermione, “at least, it was a classroom last year. I suppose they may have changed it since then…”
“But that doesn’t settle the thing that’s standing out there,” Harry frowned, brushing his wand over the spot at the end of the hall.
“It might have been a statue,” Ron said, his voice not very certain at all. “Maybe…”
“Well, it can’t be a person,” said Hermione. “That map shows everyone in Hogwarts.”
“Come to that, why is Filtch in his room?”
Harry looked over to the spot Ron was pointing at and frowned in confusion. “He’s not patrolling the halls. No one is…!”
“That is strange,” Hermione whispered.
“Blimey,” Ron blurted, shoving a finger against the map. “Who is that? Shoochey Minah-minnow?”
“Shuuichi,” Hermione corrected. “It’s Japanese…”
“All right,” said Ron, “but what’s he doing in the Forbidden Forest? You think it’s one of those strangers out for a stroll in s-spider infested…woods in the middle of the night…?”
“Whoever it is, he’s coming towards the castle,” said Harry. “We need to get back to the dormitory before he gets inside. No one else is moving on here, so if anyone sees us, it would be him.”
He frowned a bit longer, still staring at the empty spot at the corner of the hall. Then he wiped the map and folded it away resolutely. The map had yet to fail them, so he saw no reason not to trust it. And they were in Hogwarts, after all. Moving pictures, moving statues, those things did happen.
Despite his resolution that the map couldn’t be wrong, Harry hesitated when they reached the doorway. It was still there, a dark lumpy thing at the end of the hall he could swear was just waiting for them to venture out. He heard Ron gulp beside him and knew they saw it as well. Then Hermione took a deep breath and prodded his back. Harry grimaced and started walking toward the thing.
They were five feet from it when they saw what it was. Ron froze, nearly knocking Hermione over, and Harry shot an arm out to keep the cloak from slipping. None of them dared to so much as breathe.
It really was a thing, as Harry had thought. But it was also a person. More accurately, it was a person perched on top of a thing. The thing was a two-foot tall, dark lumpy growth of plants all twisted onto each other with just a few leaf-like tendrils curled on the outside of the mass. The person perched on top of the mass was the small dark-haired stranger they’d seen in their classes earlier that day.
As far as Harry could tell, the stranger was staring right at them. When they tentatively inched forward, those dark red eyes followed.
Harry was filled with an absurd urge to laugh. There they were, inching past someone who he just knew could see them as clearly as Moody had, or Dumbledore himself. But the stranger didn’t move anything but his eyes, and he didn’t make a sound.
The moment they were around the corner, Ron let out a trembling sigh and pushed on Harry’s back, urging him to make a quick run back to the Griffindor tower. His friend took two steps forward and the cloak was tugged off. Hermione, who had been behind the two boys, was the first to turn. She choked and fell onto her backside, taking Ron and Harry down with her.
Hiei raised an eyebrow at the ridiculous pile of ningen children, the incandescent cloak hanging limp from his hand. “Are you all morons?”
Harry blanched and bristled at the same time. The stranger wasn’t a professor but he could still turn them in. That didn’t mean he had to like being insulted when he already felt foolish for being caught.
“There is a curfew,” Hiei continued, his eyebrow twitching when they made no move to extricate them from that clumsy pile. “Roaming the halls, you may be taken for an enemy.”
Hermione shot a wary look at Ron and gently pushed the boy a little to the left so she could pull her leg out from under him. She’d dropped her book and the thought of losing it, after all the trouble they were in now, was unacceptable. She inched a hand toward it and shuffled her robes so they obscured what she was reaching for. It was a wasted effort.
The girl Kurama had taking an immediate liking to glared when Hiei swiped the book. He scowled at the thing, turning it in one palm. Then he shot Hermione a disgruntled look.
“You’re out here for a book?” asked Hiei.
“Yes,” Hermione said quickly, her mind flying a mile a minute. “I f-forgot it in the library during my break. I know we aren’t supposed to break curfew, but I just had to have it to complete my assignments for tomorrow. My grades are the most important thing in the world to me, you see. I can’t fail my first assignment, I just can’t! So you see I had to have my book and my friends only followed me because they hoped to stop me. They knew I was wrong to have snuck out after curfew and it won’t ever happen again because I would die before getting either of them into trouble on my account. And now that I have my book back I just have to go finish my assignment or I’ll never get it done in time. I promise I’ll never do this again, really I won’t!”
Ron’s lips twitched, but he forced his face to stay frozen in a fearful expression. If he’d so much as glanced at Harry, they’d both have broken into laughter at the impossibly airheaded tone Hermione managed to put on. No one who had ever spoken to the girl would fall for that. But the stranger was staring at her with an almost queasy expression, his left eyebrow twitching visibly as he leaned further away from her.
Hiei had heard some outrageous spiels in his time, but this one made his stomach flip over. He shoved his hand out, nearly hitting the babbling girl in the face with the book. “Go. Don’t let me see you out after curfew again.”
“Oh, thank you ever so much,” Hermione gushed, her face a little sore at the desperate smile she plastered on it. “And if my friend could just get his cloak back I promise-”
“Enough,” Hiei growled irritably. “Take it and go.”
The girl beamed at him and snatched the cloth up, tossing it around her and her friends and hurrying them off down the hall. Hiei stared after them, absolute relief making his shoulders slump. She was a better babbler than Botan, and far worse liar. That was a nasty combination. He was just glad to have them gone.
Oh, but Kurama was going to pay for this one…
Hiei scowled and stalked down the hall after the bumbling children. He didn’t get far before he found the person he was looking to rail at. Unfortunately, Kurama was looking happy and playful, and that was the last thing he wanted to deal with at the moment.
“Some watch guard you are,” Hiei growled. “Didn’t you sense the moment they came out of their tower?”
“Of course,” Kurama said cheerfully. “But it was just Hermione and her friends. You know what Lupin said about them, they’re driven by curiosity.”
“Right. Curiosity that took them right past your Mirosira.”
Kurama stared at the frustrated anger tugging across Hiei’s face. Then he gave a slow smirk and folded his arms over his chest. “Hiei, did you really think I was so distracted I couldn’t tell the difference between a threat and students? It only recoiled because I knew you were there, where you shouldn’t have been in the first place. You didn’t have to protect them from it. Though, it was very…humane of you to do so.”
Hiei’s hands curled into fists and he clenched his teeth down on the urge to growl. Sometimes it was far too tempting to strangle the joker, especially given Kurama’s penchant to tease him when he was already in a foul mood.
“Regardless,” Hiei spat, “you should have come back as soon as they entered the hall. The might have taken any manner of…book. There are no wards on their little restricted section.”
“You’re just mad because you wasted your time being nice when you didn’t have to,” Kurama said, waving a hand at Hiei’s frustrated glare. “I had a good idea what she was looking for, and why her friends followed her. There wasn’t any danger to or from them. Why are you awake, anyway?”
His friend blinked and looked away, face screwed up in his typical ‘I don’t want to talk about it and you can’t make me so stop looking at me like that’ expression. Kurama raised an eyebrow.
“I know for a fact you haven’t gotten more than three hours of sleep in the last week,” Kurama lectured. “And you’re starting to yawn so much you’ll end up swallowing an owl at breakfast, if you aren’t careful.”
“This isn’t about me,” Hiei sniffed, shooting a glare at Kurama. “It’s about you not watching well enough.”
“So you’re just roaming the halls to clean up after me,” Kurama mocked. “I suppose I should leave you alone, then. After all, if you’re eating owls, at least you’re eating meat.”
“They’re too fat and pampered to be considered meat.”
Kurama smirked, a silent laugh shaking his shoulders. His friend let out a little sigh and sent him a tired look. He quickly wiped the smile off his face. “Well?”
“I don’t like the dreams,” Hiei admitted.
“Ah.”
Hiei turned and started down the hall, slowly enough for Kurama to fall into step beside him. Patrolling the school was a very boring task, but they’d made a routine of it. Now he knew why his friend kept showing up even when it wasn’t his turn to keep watch.
“I never considered the effect Kedavin would have on someone who doesn’t forget things,” said Kurama. “But the side effects only last two months, less for full koorime. You should be over it in a few more weeks. I can make you something to get rid of the dreams, but I doubt you’d take it.”
Hiei gave him a knowing look and sniffed in distaste. “No. In a sleep too deep for dreams I’d be useless if there was an attack.”
“Right.”
“I’m not as tired as I act,” said Hiei.
Kurama gave a wide smile, his eyes glittering merrily. “I noticed. You’re really enjoying this, driving him up the wall. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were starting to like him.”
“Hn. He acts like Yomi with Mukuro’s condescension, but he flusters too easily.”
“And you’re never one to miss an opportunity,” Kurama smirked. “You know he’s blaming me for your behavior. You’re going to make it very difficult when we switch.”
“I know.”
Hiei was giving him a smug look and Kurama sighed. He really wasn’t looking forward to the full moon, not as irritable as Hiei would make Snape by that time. But he understood Hiei’s reasoning.
The Potions Master had a way of instinctively rubbing people the wrong way, and he’d turned that on Hiei the first time they’d met. Of course Hiei had automatically gone on the offensive, that was just the way he was. And as often as Hiei had argued with Kuwabara, he was very good at knowing just how to rile a person with a short temper. Snape had never stood a chance.
“Why don’t you go kill something in the forest,” suggested Kurama. “If you go deep enough I don’t think anyone here would hear it. That would give you a nice three to four hours of downtime.”
“Maybe next time,” Hiei sniffed. “The horses are annoying after you go through and the old man doesn’t want me killing any of them.”
“Centaurs and Dumbledore,” Kurama corrected automatically.
“Whatever.”
- - -
Ron started in the moment the portrait closed behind them, his grin almost wider than his face. “That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Hermione, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Never knew you had it in you!”
“Neither did I,” Hermione admitted, a little sheepish now that they were back in their common room, book secure and punishment free. “But he was new, so he couldn’t have known anything about me. I could tell from his expression that he was quite uncomfortable, so all I had to do was keep talking until he wanted nothing more than to have us gone.”
“You sure can talk, too,” Harry commented, giving her a funny look. “I thought you only did that when you argued or lectured us about not studying enough.”
“Really,” Ron sighed, “I didn’t think we’d make it out of that one. And why didn’t he show up on the map? The bloke was sitting right there the entire time and not even a dot on the map.”
“That is rather odd,” Hermione admitted, her flush calming into a thoughtful frown. “And if he was inside, I don’t know who the one outside was. Kurama introduced himself to me, so I know his name isn’t Shuuichi. If there are three of them, Dumbledore is really doing something strange this year, not having said a word about them to us.”
“Forget your new idol for a minute,” Ron scoffed. He rolled his eyes, thinking of how quick Hermione was crush on any good looking older boy – or professor – she laid eyes on. It really did a number on her otherwise sensible head.
“The question,” Harry agreed, albeit less rudely, “is why he didn’t show on the map.”
He pulled the parchment out and set it over the table closest to them, Ron and Hermione following so they could study it together. The professors were still in their rooms, Filtch as well. The only moving blip was the one they’d seen earlier, Shuuichi Minamino, going down the hall toward the Slytherin dorm. They watched it until it turned and started back up the hall, the pace never shifting.
“New patrol?” Ron guessed. “That would explain Filtch not watching the halls.”
“Possibly,” Hermione frowned. “But Kurama isn’t on here, or that stranger. He couldn’t have left the castle that quickly.”
“Maybe he’s a mix of something,” Harry offered. “The house elfs don’t show on the map, but we know they’re here. Maybe he’s a dwarf.”
Hermione shot him a very dark look, not the least bit amused at his lack of study. “Have you ever seen a dwarf, Harry?”
“No…”
“They’re two feet tall,” Hermione lectured. “And even if he were half dwarf, he’d still show on the map. Hagrid does, and he’s half giant.”
“All right!” Harry said quickly, raising his hands in defense. “It was just a guess.”
She sighed and slowly let her shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t take my frustration out on you. It isn’t like we’ve actually studied dwarves in class, so you wouldn’t know. And it was a reasonable guess. If he weren’t human he might not show on the map.”
“Mrs. Norris does,” said Ron.
Hermione blinked and abruptly scowled again. “You’re right.”
“Maybe she’s an exception,” said Harry. “She’s been here since…since the map was made, so it’s useful to have her labeled. None of the other pets are marked. The only animals that show up are animagus wizards – and Lupin, of course.”
“Let’s face it,” Ron sighed, “we don’t know what that bloke is and we’re not going to figure it out by staring at this map all night.”
He straightened and flattened his palms against the table, sending Hermione a pointed look. “Now about this muggle book we risked our necks for…”
Hermione’s eyes narrowed and she lifted her nose, just a bit, in disdain. “It isn’t really a muggle book, Ron Weasely. And even if it were, there’s no reason to say it like that makes it useless.”
Ron blinked, color rising over his face. “Easy, ‘Mione, I didn’t mean it like that…”
“The name just doesn’t sound restricted,” Harry explained, eager to avoid an argument that would keep them up all night without ever letting them find out why they’d snuck out in the first place.
“I know it doesn’t,” Hermione admitted, dropping her eyes with a little frown. “But it was the only reference I could find for the word I was looking for. Youko. An old muggle myth.”
She glanced up, almost blushing despite her stubborn frown. “A fairy tale story, that’s what muggle superstitions are.”
Ron gave an uneasy look, struggling not to say anything that would set her off again. “So you wanted to look up a story? But it’s not a real thing?”
“Witches and dragons are fairy tale creatures according to muggle superstitions,” Hermione explained. “But we exist as much as goblins do. I couldn’t find anything in the library about multi-tailed foxes except for the word youko. So if I have to look in a fairy tale to find out what they are, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Why are you so set on reading about youkos?” asked Harry.
“Multi-tailed,” Ron said, before she could answer. “You’re talking about that guy! Really…I might have known.”
“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione sighed, “just because I had a crush on a professor once, that doesn’t mean I turn into a twit every time an interesting stranger is involved. For your information, Kurama is not and cannot be an animagus. An animagus takes the form of a non-magical animal. There are no foxes with more than one tail, not non-magical ones. That only leaves this word, youko. And before you ask when I heard it, he thought it to me. Yes, thought it to me. Laugh all you like, that’s precisely why I didn’t ask the two of you to go with me tonight.”
Harry and Ron glanced at each other, struggling to wipe the smiles off their faces. It wasn’t just what she’d said, but the way she said it. Once Hermione got going, her face turned an interesting shade of dark pink and her nose started twitching like some sort of rabbit. They’d never tell her about it, but it was very funny to watch.
“Sorry,” Harry managed. “So what does the book say about this youko?”
Hermione took a deep breath. Then she gave a wide, pleased smile. “One way to find out.”
She opened the book and skimmed over the first few pages, before flipping to the back and skimming those as well. Then she split it open to the middle and started skimming again. It only took a few minutes for her to find what she was looking for. She gave a little pleased laugh and turned it so they could see the picture.
“It’s organized just like a real book,” she said happily, “a muggle book, I mean. There’s an index and everything. I really can’t stand how disorganized Hogwarts’ library is without even a card catalog to go by. It’s no wonder students hate having to study, they spend their entire breaks just trying to find the right book out of the thousands there. And even if they know which book to look for, the choas of so many people using accio at once would- ”
“Tell us about the youko,” Harry interrupted, giving a quick smile to the way Hermione blinked in surprise.
“Right,” said Hermione. “Well, you see the picture? That’s a youko.”
She let them stare at the little muggle-made photocopy of a very old painting, complete with fading and aged wrinkles on the yellowed edges. It was hard to make out the small reddish fox that stood in the dark background of the shot, the tails blurring into the sky behind it. Then she turned it back and read for a moment before speaking again.
“The legend of the youko goes back to this one, the Youko Kyuubi. He was-”
Hermione stopped suddenly, frowning at the page. “It says he was huge…nearly twenty feet tall… That can’t be right. He is described as having anywhere from nine to fifteen tails and being immortal…?”
Ron and Harry exchanged a look and moved so they stood behind her, where they could read over her shoulder. The multi-tailed fox they’d seen was barely two and half feet tall with five tails – the size of a small dog at best. The thing Hermione described sounded more like a monster.
“It says here that they couldn’t kill him,” Hermione continued, her voice small with uncertainty. “They had to seal his spirit in a newborn baby. It was ‘the first reported incident of transmigration’ and the source of the term youko, or spirit fox.”
“What a crock,” Ron laughed. “A thing that big in a baby?”
“His spirit,” Hermione said, though she was as doubtful as he was. “It says if they hadn’t sealed it in, it would have taken possession of the infant “while keeping its sense of self.” I suppose if they couldn’t kill it, locking it away might have worked…”
“You don’t buy this, do you?” asked Harry.
“It does sound silly,” Hermione admitted. She skimmed further, giving them the gist of what was written.
“There were reports of another more modern youko, but it was passed off as a myth. A young youko – they call it young here, but that’s up to four hundred years old, this is beyond silly…was rumored to have controlled one ninth of the earth at one point. But he was never seen by anyone who lived to bare testimony, only the legend was passed on.”
“One ninth of the world,” Ron grinned, “and no one ever saw it. Why can’t we read things like this in classes?”
Hermione continued doggedly, though she’d also begun to wonder if there was any point to it. “He was said to be a white youko with a humanoid form, proof that he was younger than Kyuubi who “had aged beyond the recollection of such an infantile aspect” – whatever that means. This is contradictory…if it started as a fox and evolved to a humanoid aspect, why would it revert back to the animal form again as it aged…?”
“You’re thinking too hard about it,” Ron said softly. He could see the miserable slump to Hermione’s shoulders, and he had an idea she was setting herself up to be moody for who knew how long.
“Well,” Hermione sighed, “it says there’s an artist depiction of the young one in the back, along with better look at Kyuubi.”
She flipped to the page given. And the three of them stared in disbelief. It wasn’t an artist depiction, and it certainly wasn’t a muggle shot. The page was filled with a vibrant wizard photograph. If any proof was needed of the creature’s existence, they had it.
“Wow,” Ron breathed.
“It’s huge,” Harry echoed, staring in disbelief.
The book had a title beneath it that was blurred with age, the only thing readable being the name Kyuubi and the word Hokage. But the photo was as new as the day it had been taken. The fox towered over the heads of the strangely dressed men who surrounded it, long almost serpentine red tails writhing so much it was hard to count them. It ducked forward as they watched, immense claws swiping a man and sending him spinning away in a spray of blood. And it grinned out of the photograph, revealing sharp teeth as long as a man’s arm. It looked as if it wanted nothing more than to leap out at them. Ron gulped.
“Okay,” Ron said quickly, “looks like you were right again, Hermione. Can we turn the page now?”
Hermione shook herself out of a light trance, blinking at those writhing tails. For a second there she’d gotten the distinct impression they were talking to her, some rhythmic message in that living sway. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and flipped the page.
This was an artist’s depiction, in full charcoal sketch and faded, smeared watercolors. It was a man with long white hair, ears, and a tail, but the features were almost comical.
Harry grinned when he saw the bloody fangs on the man, whose face looked like nothing so much as the vampire posters for old movies he’d seen as a child. Its fingers were curled bloody claws holding streams of jewels and what was probably intended to be entrails. It looked more like colored banners in the painting. And he was standing on a hoard of wealth and jewelry, all mixed in with body parts and green streaks that might have been grass of some sort.
Ron snorted softly and Harry broke. He muffled his laugh in a hand, hoping Hermione wouldn’t be too offended by it. The painting really was silly compared to the real danger in the previous photograph.
“What’s it say there?” asked Ron, grinning as he pointed to the wrinkled title beneath the photo.
Hermione shrugged. She was fighting her own helpless smile at the painting, only because it really did look ridiculously overdone. What had been intended as frightening came out absurd. The edge of the page was crinkled and broken too much to read.
“Reparo,” she murmured, waving her wand at the mutilated paper.
It straightened out, fixing itself back into a smooth page. And the writing, though faded and splotched, was legible. She stared at it blankly until Harry prodded her shoulder.
“Well?” asked Harry. “What does it say?”
‘It’s like some colossal joke and I don’t know the punchline…’
Ron raised an eyebrow and leaned forward to see Hermione’s blank expression. “You okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” Hermione muttered crossly. “What it says is ‘Youko Kurama; scourge of the underworld’ and don’t you dare ask me what that means.”
- - -
TBC
--notes--
Anyone who’s seen the Makai Arc of YYH knows what Hiei’s recurring dream features. If you don’t know, I won’t spoil it for you. When I said one-ninth of the world, I meant one-third of the Makai, which is one-ninth when you consider the three realms. The other two-thirds were governed by Raizen and Mukuro – Yomi didn’t get strong and take over until after Kurama sent the assassin to blind him. Before that, Yomi was just one of Youko Kurama’s underlings. The reference to Kyuubi comes from the anime Naruto, namely because it’s the only other anime I’ve seen that features a youko. About Ron and Hermione – my favorite friendships are the ones that are not smooth, so I love to see these two bicker. It isn’t a romantic pairing in my fic, it’s just canon that Ron gets jealous of Hermione to the point of squabbling. I like squabbling between friends, it’s fun.
Next up, Draco teaches Hermione about demons. o.O
Category: Harry Potter-YYH crossover
Warnings: none
Author: Arigatomina
Email: arigatoumina (a) hotmail . com
Website: www . geocities . com / arigatomina
Higher Learning
Part 5: Restricted Section; Kitsune Tails
The halls had never seemed so dark when looking out from beneath Harry’s invisibility cloak. Hermione knew it was just a difference of feeling hidden versus vulnerable, but that didn’t stop the school from looking much darker than she’d expected. It seemed to take hours for her to get to her destination, and every dark corner she passed appeared to be watching her. Disconcerting, creepy, and-
‘All in my imagination,’ she thought firmly. ‘I’m not used to this sort of thing, that’s all.’
A person would think after being friends with Harry and Ron for so many years that she’d have grown accustomed to sneaking around and breaking the rules. She’d certainly done her share of restricted potions and spells for the sake of their exploits. But this was different. She wasn’t sneaking across the school to save lives or the world. She was after a book for the sole purpose of appeasing her curiosity.
It really shouldn’t have surprised her that Harry had refused to help. He didn’t exactly have anything to gain, since she wasn’t playing hero. Settling her curiosity was a private mission, so it was just as well that she went alone to do it.
She was still angry with him. She’d stay resentful until she was safely back in the Griffindor common room, and no amount of reasonableness on her part would change that. She’d asked a simple favor, the first ever, and he’d refused to help. She still couldn’t believe his gall.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t helped him with each and every one of his hair-brained ideas. And she hadn’t even asked him to break the rules with her, the way he and Ron had done to her so often in the past. No, she’d simply asked to borrow his cloak for a quick run to the library. And his response? Absolutely not, unless he and Ron went with her, like always.
After all they’d been through together, she’d have thought he would trust her a little. It wasn’t as if she’d be seen by anyone. And he’d already had his cloak confiscated more than once – he always got it back again. She honestly didn’t see what the problem was. All she knew was that the one time she’d asked a favor of him, he’d refused outright and even had the nerve to tell her she shouldn’t break the rules for something as small as curiosity.
‘Like he has any room to talk. I’ve never met such an unreasonable, infuriating and hypocritical git in all my-’
“Lumos…”
Hermione jumped and spun, her wand arm bumping into the shelf behind her and sending a small book down on her head. She bit her tongue and stared dumbly at the glowing light a few feet from her, watching as it drew close enough for her to see the holder.
“What are you doing bumping around in the dark?” asked Ron.
“I told you she’d get caught on her own,” Harry muttered, pulling his cloak off his shoulders and frowning around the dark library.
“Harry…! Ron, what do you think you’re doing? I said I didn’t need your-”
“Right,” Ron said, waving a hand at her, “you don’t need our help. That’s why you’re looking for a book in the dark, is it? Makes perfect sense to me.”
Hermione bristled, not about to forget that she’d specifically said she didn’t need help from them, or that they were doing exactly what she’d told them not to do – breaking the rules for her sake.
“For your information,” she said testily, “I know exactly which book I want – I don’t need to wave a light around to get it. Unlike the two of you, I don’t have a cloak to hide under, so I can’t afford to draw attention to myself. Which means, either put that out or go away before you get me caught!”
Harry winced at the resentful yet bossy glare Hermione sent them. He’d known she’d react that way, really he had. And he’d told Ron before they left that they should just stay back and watch to make sure no one spotted her – she wouldn’t have known they were there, and they’d have had time to toss the cloak over her if anyone came around. Leave it to Ron to blow that plan without a second thought.
“Don’t be sore,” Ron said warily. “We just want in on it. If something’s got you curious enough to break into the restricted section, it’s bound to be interesting. We’re here to learn, too, you know.”
Silence passed over the three of them as they looked at each other. Ron was holding onto his sincere expression until it threatened to crack around the edges, Harry holding his breath so he wouldn’t snort at the ridiculous lie, and Hermione trying her best to stay mad at the two of them. After a moment, she heaved a long sigh and gave up.
“Fine,” sighed Hermione, “but do put out that light. I don’t feel at all comfortable sneaking around with the two of you over this book. If we get caught, it’ll be entirely on my head for dragging you into it.”
Ron extinguished his wand and ducked closer so he could almost see Hermione in the near pitch-black library. “All right, but you know if we got caught we’d just say we followed you to try and talk you into going back to the dormitory. That scored points when Neville tried it. Who knows, we might even make up what we lost in Potions.”
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Hermione scoffed.
She shook the sleeve of her robe back and held out her left hand as she waved her wand. “Accio ‘Wallabin’s Guide to Muggle Superstitions’.”
“Muggle what?” asked Ron, shock making his voice a little louder than he’d intended. “All of this trouble for a book on muggles?!”
Hermione shushed him irritably and caught the thick book that floated over to her outstretched hand. “Really, Ron. I’ll explain when we get back.”
“It better be good,” Ron grumbled. “You break the rules for a restricted book on muggles – you live with them…! As if there’s anything you don’t already know. Didn’t you take Muggle Studies last year?”
Harry sighed and didn’t voice his agreement. He’d expected something risky like a forbidden spell book, but since it was Hermione, he couldn’t be too surprised that she’d go to so much trouble for something so simple. It was no wonder she hadn’t told him what she was after. He’d never have agreed to give her his cloak over a book on muggles.
“Can we go now?” asked Harry.
“I’m going,” Hermione snipped. “Whether you come or not is up to you.”
“Oh, really,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “We should just leave you here if you’re going to be like that.”
“Well, if you’d wait till we’re safe, I’d explain exactly what’s so important about this book,” Hermione shot back. “Do you really think I’d risk getting in trouble over a simple muggle history book?”
“It wouldn’t be the first time,” said Ron.
“It most certainly would be-”
“I’m leaving now,” Harry said warningly, pulling his cloak up.
His friends sent mutual looks of ‘this isn’t over yet, just you wait’ and joined him under the invisibility cloak. It was almost enough to make him smirk, or maybe sigh in resignation. He could always tell when Hermione got angry about something – she didn’t let go until she had a nice bicker session, usually with Ron since he was so quick to volunteer himself. Harry preferred to stand back and let them have at it. Arguing with Hermione was as fun as Advanced Potions, a bloody awful headache and no fun at all.
They shuffled a little at first, the usual bit of getting close enough to move together under the cloak, and in sync enough not to trip each other up while they walked. Then they edged over to the door of the library and sent a quick look down the hall. Harry immediately tensed and jerked his friends back inside and out of sight.
“Did you see that?” he asked quietly, slipping a folded parchment out of his robes. “That thing at the corner of the hall?”
“I didn’t see anything,” Hermione frowned.
She exchanged a suspicious look with Ron and the two peaked back out the door. The hall was just as dark as it had been earlier, almost eerily dark. But after a few minutes of intense staring, they saw what had spooked Harry. There was something at the end of the hall. The only question was what? Ghost, professor, a new moving statue that had wandered into the wrong hallway – in Hogwarts it could be anything.
“It’s not showing on the map,” Harry said grimly.
He’d spread out the Marauder’s map and was scowling down at it, the tip of his wand illuminated just enough to make out the little names and dots that represented people. Hermione and Ron joined him, and he was relieved to toss the cloak over all three of them. That blocked out the light of his wand and gave him more time to really study the map.
“It’s right here,” said Harry. “But the closest person to that spot is…Lupin!”
“That’s no where near the office he used last time,” Hermione noted. “If he’s too ill to teach his class, he shouldn’t be up this late.”
“That’s a classroom,” said Ron, “isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Hermione, “at least, it was a classroom last year. I suppose they may have changed it since then…”
“But that doesn’t settle the thing that’s standing out there,” Harry frowned, brushing his wand over the spot at the end of the hall.
“It might have been a statue,” Ron said, his voice not very certain at all. “Maybe…”
“Well, it can’t be a person,” said Hermione. “That map shows everyone in Hogwarts.”
“Come to that, why is Filtch in his room?”
Harry looked over to the spot Ron was pointing at and frowned in confusion. “He’s not patrolling the halls. No one is…!”
“That is strange,” Hermione whispered.
“Blimey,” Ron blurted, shoving a finger against the map. “Who is that? Shoochey Minah-minnow?”
“Shuuichi,” Hermione corrected. “It’s Japanese…”
“All right,” said Ron, “but what’s he doing in the Forbidden Forest? You think it’s one of those strangers out for a stroll in s-spider infested…woods in the middle of the night…?”
“Whoever it is, he’s coming towards the castle,” said Harry. “We need to get back to the dormitory before he gets inside. No one else is moving on here, so if anyone sees us, it would be him.”
He frowned a bit longer, still staring at the empty spot at the corner of the hall. Then he wiped the map and folded it away resolutely. The map had yet to fail them, so he saw no reason not to trust it. And they were in Hogwarts, after all. Moving pictures, moving statues, those things did happen.
Despite his resolution that the map couldn’t be wrong, Harry hesitated when they reached the doorway. It was still there, a dark lumpy thing at the end of the hall he could swear was just waiting for them to venture out. He heard Ron gulp beside him and knew they saw it as well. Then Hermione took a deep breath and prodded his back. Harry grimaced and started walking toward the thing.
They were five feet from it when they saw what it was. Ron froze, nearly knocking Hermione over, and Harry shot an arm out to keep the cloak from slipping. None of them dared to so much as breathe.
It really was a thing, as Harry had thought. But it was also a person. More accurately, it was a person perched on top of a thing. The thing was a two-foot tall, dark lumpy growth of plants all twisted onto each other with just a few leaf-like tendrils curled on the outside of the mass. The person perched on top of the mass was the small dark-haired stranger they’d seen in their classes earlier that day.
As far as Harry could tell, the stranger was staring right at them. When they tentatively inched forward, those dark red eyes followed.
Harry was filled with an absurd urge to laugh. There they were, inching past someone who he just knew could see them as clearly as Moody had, or Dumbledore himself. But the stranger didn’t move anything but his eyes, and he didn’t make a sound.
The moment they were around the corner, Ron let out a trembling sigh and pushed on Harry’s back, urging him to make a quick run back to the Griffindor tower. His friend took two steps forward and the cloak was tugged off. Hermione, who had been behind the two boys, was the first to turn. She choked and fell onto her backside, taking Ron and Harry down with her.
Hiei raised an eyebrow at the ridiculous pile of ningen children, the incandescent cloak hanging limp from his hand. “Are you all morons?”
Harry blanched and bristled at the same time. The stranger wasn’t a professor but he could still turn them in. That didn’t mean he had to like being insulted when he already felt foolish for being caught.
“There is a curfew,” Hiei continued, his eyebrow twitching when they made no move to extricate them from that clumsy pile. “Roaming the halls, you may be taken for an enemy.”
Hermione shot a wary look at Ron and gently pushed the boy a little to the left so she could pull her leg out from under him. She’d dropped her book and the thought of losing it, after all the trouble they were in now, was unacceptable. She inched a hand toward it and shuffled her robes so they obscured what she was reaching for. It was a wasted effort.
The girl Kurama had taking an immediate liking to glared when Hiei swiped the book. He scowled at the thing, turning it in one palm. Then he shot Hermione a disgruntled look.
“You’re out here for a book?” asked Hiei.
“Yes,” Hermione said quickly, her mind flying a mile a minute. “I f-forgot it in the library during my break. I know we aren’t supposed to break curfew, but I just had to have it to complete my assignments for tomorrow. My grades are the most important thing in the world to me, you see. I can’t fail my first assignment, I just can’t! So you see I had to have my book and my friends only followed me because they hoped to stop me. They knew I was wrong to have snuck out after curfew and it won’t ever happen again because I would die before getting either of them into trouble on my account. And now that I have my book back I just have to go finish my assignment or I’ll never get it done in time. I promise I’ll never do this again, really I won’t!”
Ron’s lips twitched, but he forced his face to stay frozen in a fearful expression. If he’d so much as glanced at Harry, they’d both have broken into laughter at the impossibly airheaded tone Hermione managed to put on. No one who had ever spoken to the girl would fall for that. But the stranger was staring at her with an almost queasy expression, his left eyebrow twitching visibly as he leaned further away from her.
Hiei had heard some outrageous spiels in his time, but this one made his stomach flip over. He shoved his hand out, nearly hitting the babbling girl in the face with the book. “Go. Don’t let me see you out after curfew again.”
“Oh, thank you ever so much,” Hermione gushed, her face a little sore at the desperate smile she plastered on it. “And if my friend could just get his cloak back I promise-”
“Enough,” Hiei growled irritably. “Take it and go.”
The girl beamed at him and snatched the cloth up, tossing it around her and her friends and hurrying them off down the hall. Hiei stared after them, absolute relief making his shoulders slump. She was a better babbler than Botan, and far worse liar. That was a nasty combination. He was just glad to have them gone.
Oh, but Kurama was going to pay for this one…
Hiei scowled and stalked down the hall after the bumbling children. He didn’t get far before he found the person he was looking to rail at. Unfortunately, Kurama was looking happy and playful, and that was the last thing he wanted to deal with at the moment.
“Some watch guard you are,” Hiei growled. “Didn’t you sense the moment they came out of their tower?”
“Of course,” Kurama said cheerfully. “But it was just Hermione and her friends. You know what Lupin said about them, they’re driven by curiosity.”
“Right. Curiosity that took them right past your Mirosira.”
Kurama stared at the frustrated anger tugging across Hiei’s face. Then he gave a slow smirk and folded his arms over his chest. “Hiei, did you really think I was so distracted I couldn’t tell the difference between a threat and students? It only recoiled because I knew you were there, where you shouldn’t have been in the first place. You didn’t have to protect them from it. Though, it was very…humane of you to do so.”
Hiei’s hands curled into fists and he clenched his teeth down on the urge to growl. Sometimes it was far too tempting to strangle the joker, especially given Kurama’s penchant to tease him when he was already in a foul mood.
“Regardless,” Hiei spat, “you should have come back as soon as they entered the hall. The might have taken any manner of…book. There are no wards on their little restricted section.”
“You’re just mad because you wasted your time being nice when you didn’t have to,” Kurama said, waving a hand at Hiei’s frustrated glare. “I had a good idea what she was looking for, and why her friends followed her. There wasn’t any danger to or from them. Why are you awake, anyway?”
His friend blinked and looked away, face screwed up in his typical ‘I don’t want to talk about it and you can’t make me so stop looking at me like that’ expression. Kurama raised an eyebrow.
“I know for a fact you haven’t gotten more than three hours of sleep in the last week,” Kurama lectured. “And you’re starting to yawn so much you’ll end up swallowing an owl at breakfast, if you aren’t careful.”
“This isn’t about me,” Hiei sniffed, shooting a glare at Kurama. “It’s about you not watching well enough.”
“So you’re just roaming the halls to clean up after me,” Kurama mocked. “I suppose I should leave you alone, then. After all, if you’re eating owls, at least you’re eating meat.”
“They’re too fat and pampered to be considered meat.”
Kurama smirked, a silent laugh shaking his shoulders. His friend let out a little sigh and sent him a tired look. He quickly wiped the smile off his face. “Well?”
“I don’t like the dreams,” Hiei admitted.
“Ah.”
Hiei turned and started down the hall, slowly enough for Kurama to fall into step beside him. Patrolling the school was a very boring task, but they’d made a routine of it. Now he knew why his friend kept showing up even when it wasn’t his turn to keep watch.
“I never considered the effect Kedavin would have on someone who doesn’t forget things,” said Kurama. “But the side effects only last two months, less for full koorime. You should be over it in a few more weeks. I can make you something to get rid of the dreams, but I doubt you’d take it.”
Hiei gave him a knowing look and sniffed in distaste. “No. In a sleep too deep for dreams I’d be useless if there was an attack.”
“Right.”
“I’m not as tired as I act,” said Hiei.
Kurama gave a wide smile, his eyes glittering merrily. “I noticed. You’re really enjoying this, driving him up the wall. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were starting to like him.”
“Hn. He acts like Yomi with Mukuro’s condescension, but he flusters too easily.”
“And you’re never one to miss an opportunity,” Kurama smirked. “You know he’s blaming me for your behavior. You’re going to make it very difficult when we switch.”
“I know.”
Hiei was giving him a smug look and Kurama sighed. He really wasn’t looking forward to the full moon, not as irritable as Hiei would make Snape by that time. But he understood Hiei’s reasoning.
The Potions Master had a way of instinctively rubbing people the wrong way, and he’d turned that on Hiei the first time they’d met. Of course Hiei had automatically gone on the offensive, that was just the way he was. And as often as Hiei had argued with Kuwabara, he was very good at knowing just how to rile a person with a short temper. Snape had never stood a chance.
“Why don’t you go kill something in the forest,” suggested Kurama. “If you go deep enough I don’t think anyone here would hear it. That would give you a nice three to four hours of downtime.”
“Maybe next time,” Hiei sniffed. “The horses are annoying after you go through and the old man doesn’t want me killing any of them.”
“Centaurs and Dumbledore,” Kurama corrected automatically.
“Whatever.”
- - -
Ron started in the moment the portrait closed behind them, his grin almost wider than his face. “That was the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. Hermione, you’ve outdone yourself this time. Never knew you had it in you!”
“Neither did I,” Hermione admitted, a little sheepish now that they were back in their common room, book secure and punishment free. “But he was new, so he couldn’t have known anything about me. I could tell from his expression that he was quite uncomfortable, so all I had to do was keep talking until he wanted nothing more than to have us gone.”
“You sure can talk, too,” Harry commented, giving her a funny look. “I thought you only did that when you argued or lectured us about not studying enough.”
“Really,” Ron sighed, “I didn’t think we’d make it out of that one. And why didn’t he show up on the map? The bloke was sitting right there the entire time and not even a dot on the map.”
“That is rather odd,” Hermione admitted, her flush calming into a thoughtful frown. “And if he was inside, I don’t know who the one outside was. Kurama introduced himself to me, so I know his name isn’t Shuuichi. If there are three of them, Dumbledore is really doing something strange this year, not having said a word about them to us.”
“Forget your new idol for a minute,” Ron scoffed. He rolled his eyes, thinking of how quick Hermione was crush on any good looking older boy – or professor – she laid eyes on. It really did a number on her otherwise sensible head.
“The question,” Harry agreed, albeit less rudely, “is why he didn’t show on the map.”
He pulled the parchment out and set it over the table closest to them, Ron and Hermione following so they could study it together. The professors were still in their rooms, Filtch as well. The only moving blip was the one they’d seen earlier, Shuuichi Minamino, going down the hall toward the Slytherin dorm. They watched it until it turned and started back up the hall, the pace never shifting.
“New patrol?” Ron guessed. “That would explain Filtch not watching the halls.”
“Possibly,” Hermione frowned. “But Kurama isn’t on here, or that stranger. He couldn’t have left the castle that quickly.”
“Maybe he’s a mix of something,” Harry offered. “The house elfs don’t show on the map, but we know they’re here. Maybe he’s a dwarf.”
Hermione shot him a very dark look, not the least bit amused at his lack of study. “Have you ever seen a dwarf, Harry?”
“No…”
“They’re two feet tall,” Hermione lectured. “And even if he were half dwarf, he’d still show on the map. Hagrid does, and he’s half giant.”
“All right!” Harry said quickly, raising his hands in defense. “It was just a guess.”
She sighed and slowly let her shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, Harry. I shouldn’t take my frustration out on you. It isn’t like we’ve actually studied dwarves in class, so you wouldn’t know. And it was a reasonable guess. If he weren’t human he might not show on the map.”
“Mrs. Norris does,” said Ron.
Hermione blinked and abruptly scowled again. “You’re right.”
“Maybe she’s an exception,” said Harry. “She’s been here since…since the map was made, so it’s useful to have her labeled. None of the other pets are marked. The only animals that show up are animagus wizards – and Lupin, of course.”
“Let’s face it,” Ron sighed, “we don’t know what that bloke is and we’re not going to figure it out by staring at this map all night.”
He straightened and flattened his palms against the table, sending Hermione a pointed look. “Now about this muggle book we risked our necks for…”
Hermione’s eyes narrowed and she lifted her nose, just a bit, in disdain. “It isn’t really a muggle book, Ron Weasely. And even if it were, there’s no reason to say it like that makes it useless.”
Ron blinked, color rising over his face. “Easy, ‘Mione, I didn’t mean it like that…”
“The name just doesn’t sound restricted,” Harry explained, eager to avoid an argument that would keep them up all night without ever letting them find out why they’d snuck out in the first place.
“I know it doesn’t,” Hermione admitted, dropping her eyes with a little frown. “But it was the only reference I could find for the word I was looking for. Youko. An old muggle myth.”
She glanced up, almost blushing despite her stubborn frown. “A fairy tale story, that’s what muggle superstitions are.”
Ron gave an uneasy look, struggling not to say anything that would set her off again. “So you wanted to look up a story? But it’s not a real thing?”
“Witches and dragons are fairy tale creatures according to muggle superstitions,” Hermione explained. “But we exist as much as goblins do. I couldn’t find anything in the library about multi-tailed foxes except for the word youko. So if I have to look in a fairy tale to find out what they are, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Why are you so set on reading about youkos?” asked Harry.
“Multi-tailed,” Ron said, before she could answer. “You’re talking about that guy! Really…I might have known.”
“Honestly, Ron,” Hermione sighed, “just because I had a crush on a professor once, that doesn’t mean I turn into a twit every time an interesting stranger is involved. For your information, Kurama is not and cannot be an animagus. An animagus takes the form of a non-magical animal. There are no foxes with more than one tail, not non-magical ones. That only leaves this word, youko. And before you ask when I heard it, he thought it to me. Yes, thought it to me. Laugh all you like, that’s precisely why I didn’t ask the two of you to go with me tonight.”
Harry and Ron glanced at each other, struggling to wipe the smiles off their faces. It wasn’t just what she’d said, but the way she said it. Once Hermione got going, her face turned an interesting shade of dark pink and her nose started twitching like some sort of rabbit. They’d never tell her about it, but it was very funny to watch.
“Sorry,” Harry managed. “So what does the book say about this youko?”
Hermione took a deep breath. Then she gave a wide, pleased smile. “One way to find out.”
She opened the book and skimmed over the first few pages, before flipping to the back and skimming those as well. Then she split it open to the middle and started skimming again. It only took a few minutes for her to find what she was looking for. She gave a little pleased laugh and turned it so they could see the picture.
“It’s organized just like a real book,” she said happily, “a muggle book, I mean. There’s an index and everything. I really can’t stand how disorganized Hogwarts’ library is without even a card catalog to go by. It’s no wonder students hate having to study, they spend their entire breaks just trying to find the right book out of the thousands there. And even if they know which book to look for, the choas of so many people using accio at once would- ”
“Tell us about the youko,” Harry interrupted, giving a quick smile to the way Hermione blinked in surprise.
“Right,” said Hermione. “Well, you see the picture? That’s a youko.”
She let them stare at the little muggle-made photocopy of a very old painting, complete with fading and aged wrinkles on the yellowed edges. It was hard to make out the small reddish fox that stood in the dark background of the shot, the tails blurring into the sky behind it. Then she turned it back and read for a moment before speaking again.
“The legend of the youko goes back to this one, the Youko Kyuubi. He was-”
Hermione stopped suddenly, frowning at the page. “It says he was huge…nearly twenty feet tall… That can’t be right. He is described as having anywhere from nine to fifteen tails and being immortal…?”
Ron and Harry exchanged a look and moved so they stood behind her, where they could read over her shoulder. The multi-tailed fox they’d seen was barely two and half feet tall with five tails – the size of a small dog at best. The thing Hermione described sounded more like a monster.
“It says here that they couldn’t kill him,” Hermione continued, her voice small with uncertainty. “They had to seal his spirit in a newborn baby. It was ‘the first reported incident of transmigration’ and the source of the term youko, or spirit fox.”
“What a crock,” Ron laughed. “A thing that big in a baby?”
“His spirit,” Hermione said, though she was as doubtful as he was. “It says if they hadn’t sealed it in, it would have taken possession of the infant “while keeping its sense of self.” I suppose if they couldn’t kill it, locking it away might have worked…”
“You don’t buy this, do you?” asked Harry.
“It does sound silly,” Hermione admitted. She skimmed further, giving them the gist of what was written.
“There were reports of another more modern youko, but it was passed off as a myth. A young youko – they call it young here, but that’s up to four hundred years old, this is beyond silly…was rumored to have controlled one ninth of the earth at one point. But he was never seen by anyone who lived to bare testimony, only the legend was passed on.”
“One ninth of the world,” Ron grinned, “and no one ever saw it. Why can’t we read things like this in classes?”
Hermione continued doggedly, though she’d also begun to wonder if there was any point to it. “He was said to be a white youko with a humanoid form, proof that he was younger than Kyuubi who “had aged beyond the recollection of such an infantile aspect” – whatever that means. This is contradictory…if it started as a fox and evolved to a humanoid aspect, why would it revert back to the animal form again as it aged…?”
“You’re thinking too hard about it,” Ron said softly. He could see the miserable slump to Hermione’s shoulders, and he had an idea she was setting herself up to be moody for who knew how long.
“Well,” Hermione sighed, “it says there’s an artist depiction of the young one in the back, along with better look at Kyuubi.”
She flipped to the page given. And the three of them stared in disbelief. It wasn’t an artist depiction, and it certainly wasn’t a muggle shot. The page was filled with a vibrant wizard photograph. If any proof was needed of the creature’s existence, they had it.
“Wow,” Ron breathed.
“It’s huge,” Harry echoed, staring in disbelief.
The book had a title beneath it that was blurred with age, the only thing readable being the name Kyuubi and the word Hokage. But the photo was as new as the day it had been taken. The fox towered over the heads of the strangely dressed men who surrounded it, long almost serpentine red tails writhing so much it was hard to count them. It ducked forward as they watched, immense claws swiping a man and sending him spinning away in a spray of blood. And it grinned out of the photograph, revealing sharp teeth as long as a man’s arm. It looked as if it wanted nothing more than to leap out at them. Ron gulped.
“Okay,” Ron said quickly, “looks like you were right again, Hermione. Can we turn the page now?”
Hermione shook herself out of a light trance, blinking at those writhing tails. For a second there she’d gotten the distinct impression they were talking to her, some rhythmic message in that living sway. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and flipped the page.
This was an artist’s depiction, in full charcoal sketch and faded, smeared watercolors. It was a man with long white hair, ears, and a tail, but the features were almost comical.
Harry grinned when he saw the bloody fangs on the man, whose face looked like nothing so much as the vampire posters for old movies he’d seen as a child. Its fingers were curled bloody claws holding streams of jewels and what was probably intended to be entrails. It looked more like colored banners in the painting. And he was standing on a hoard of wealth and jewelry, all mixed in with body parts and green streaks that might have been grass of some sort.
Ron snorted softly and Harry broke. He muffled his laugh in a hand, hoping Hermione wouldn’t be too offended by it. The painting really was silly compared to the real danger in the previous photograph.
“What’s it say there?” asked Ron, grinning as he pointed to the wrinkled title beneath the photo.
Hermione shrugged. She was fighting her own helpless smile at the painting, only because it really did look ridiculously overdone. What had been intended as frightening came out absurd. The edge of the page was crinkled and broken too much to read.
“Reparo,” she murmured, waving her wand at the mutilated paper.
It straightened out, fixing itself back into a smooth page. And the writing, though faded and splotched, was legible. She stared at it blankly until Harry prodded her shoulder.
“Well?” asked Harry. “What does it say?”
‘It’s like some colossal joke and I don’t know the punchline…’
Ron raised an eyebrow and leaned forward to see Hermione’s blank expression. “You okay in there?”
“I’m fine,” Hermione muttered crossly. “What it says is ‘Youko Kurama; scourge of the underworld’ and don’t you dare ask me what that means.”
- - -
TBC
--notes--
Anyone who’s seen the Makai Arc of YYH knows what Hiei’s recurring dream features. If you don’t know, I won’t spoil it for you. When I said one-ninth of the world, I meant one-third of the Makai, which is one-ninth when you consider the three realms. The other two-thirds were governed by Raizen and Mukuro – Yomi didn’t get strong and take over until after Kurama sent the assassin to blind him. Before that, Yomi was just one of Youko Kurama’s underlings. The reference to Kyuubi comes from the anime Naruto, namely because it’s the only other anime I’ve seen that features a youko. About Ron and Hermione – my favorite friendships are the ones that are not smooth, so I love to see these two bicker. It isn’t a romantic pairing in my fic, it’s just canon that Ron gets jealous of Hermione to the point of squabbling. I like squabbling between friends, it’s fun.
Next up, Draco teaches Hermione about demons. o.O