Plot Bunnies and (rarely) One Shots

Harry (he’s pretty sure that’s his name. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia mostly call him Boy or Freak but he heard him mention that as his name one time from his cupboard, and Dudley said it once mockingly. And if it’s not, he thinks Harry is a much better name than Boy or Freak, so maybe he’d just give to himself anyway) wasn’t totally sure what was happening. Or where he was, or why it was happening to begin with.

He did know Dudley wasn’t chasing him any more, though, so that was good. Better than a second ago, anyway. 

He’s in a city. Probably. He’s never been in one, but he’s caught glimpses of them on the news while giving his Uncle beer and Aunt tea, or while his cousin watches cartoons while he tends to the garden and pretends to not sneak glances at the telly. 

It’s a lot of grey, and tall buildings, and there’s lots and lots of cars and even more people! It’s scary, actually. But he was kinda used to scary. 

He’d been running, when he tripped. Dudley had been right behind him, with his friends, in another round of Harry Hunting, and desperation had seized him instead of fear as he hit the ground. Instead of cowering into a ball as he should have to hide from the hits, he tried to do something. 

He couldn’t do anything there, though. So maybe he… went somewhere where he could?

Except where-he-could was scary, and loud, and weird. He was away from the road, in a place between two buildings and behind a bunch of metal boxes full of trash. He stayed where he was, curled up against rough brick, and stared in wonder and fear in equal amounts. 

There were never this many cars on the street back home. And they were all going so fast! And so many people, too! Old, young, going fast or slow. Some were even… like him.

Well, he wasn’t totally sure what the like for ‘freakish’ versus ‘acceptable’ were, since if he had he wouldn’t be getting in nearly much trouble with his Uncle, but he’s fairly sure Aunt Petunia would think someone with scales and rounded ears on top of their head a freak.

Did he go to where all the freaks live?

He peeks out slightly farther from behind the big metal box at the thought. The scaled man is gone now, but he can see a woman with rabbit ears! And that girl there has a tail that looks really fuzzy, and the boy she’s walking with’s teeth are super sharp! 

Does that man have a cactus for a head?

He’s so busy pondering that conundrum, he totally misses the man in full leather with bright yellow hair that goes straight up until he’s right in front of him.

“Heeeeyy, there, little listener!” Harry (because he’s giving the name to himself, since no one else will. Well, mabe his parents did, but he doesn’t really remember them, so they can’t tell him) makes a slight squeaking noise, and topples forward from where he’d been perched on his tip-toes and leaning to one side. But he never meets the ground. Instead, hands catch him by the shoulders. Leather feels weird- kinda slippery, and tough. 

“Sorry, there! Didn’t mean to scare ya, listener!” Harry instinctively freezes up at the touch, since with Uncle Vernon that always meant he’d messed up really, really badly. Being slapped was fine, and being hit until he went down was worse, but being held in place was… bad. Bad enough that the three times it’d happened he’d woken up in the cupboard hurting something awful all over. 

“Aw, it’s alright, kiddo! Just me. My name’s Present Mic.” He says it like Harry’s supposed to know what that means, but Harry doesn’t know a lot of things. It’s why he doesn’t well in school, besides all the letters and number blurring together until he can’t really see them all that well, even with the glasses Aunt Petunia got from the lost and found bin at the church when he started being even more useless than normal with his inability to figure out what was around him. 

Harry stays very still, and the man eventually lets go of him after Harry has got his balance back. Harry scoots back immediately, taking cover behind the trash box again, even though Mr. Present Mic won’t leave him alone now that he’s got his attention-nobody ever leaves the freak alone when he wants them to.  

“Oh, hey now, little listener, no need to be scared!” Present Mic says, a little less loud than last time. Which was good, because he was kinda loud, and Harry’s ears weren’t really prepared for it. Or his heart, because it reminded of Vernon towering over him or Dudley right on his heels…

Present Mic (a name that actually sort of soothes him, since it’s much more freak-ish than Harry)  crouches down, which in his leather pants sounds weird, and looks at Harry with a very large smile. “Are you lost, bud? Where are your parents?”

“Dead,” Harry answers honestly. He’s punished if he’s not honest, and Uncle Vernon and his belt aren’t here, but he does it anyways. Mostly because he does know that, and it’s nice to remind himself of what he does know. 

“Oh, I’m sorry, little listener,” Present Mic says. “Are you on your own now, bud? You’re looking a little rough.”

Harry would like to be on his own. Is that something he can just decide? If so, he’s deciding it. He doesn’t want to go back to his aunt and uncle and cousin, so this man doesn’t need to know about them. He’s on his own. And he’s Harry. He’s Harry and he’s on his own. 

“Yes,” Harry says. He wiggles a little farther back into the crevice between the trash box and brick wall. Enclosed spaces were safer, like his cupboard, mostly because no one else wanted to be in them. The dirtier the better, was his current theory, and it had yet to let him down. This one was very dirty, and small, which was ideal, really. 

Present Mic blinks twice, and his grin only drops a bit. “Okay. How about you come with me, and we’ll figure out something better than living on the streets?”

Harry squints at this guy. Men taking him somewhere alone was bad. Uncle Vernon took him places alone to use his belt, and the math teacher took him to the cleaning closet to touch him weirdly. And he doesn’t think he’ll take him anywhere good. 

“I don’t want to go with you,” Harry says quietly. “Please leave.”

Present Mic kind of rocks on his heels a little, but he doesn’t leave. But he doesn’t move to hit him either, which is weird. Harry watches him warily. 

“I’m sorry little lisner, but I’m not going to leave a little guy like you alone out here,” Present Mic says. “...How about we get some food?”

Harry likes food. The Dursleys only fed him scraps, but they took away his food the last two days because he let the pork chops that were for dinner burn. He is very hungry by now, although usually he only starts falling asleep randomly after a few more days. 

“...You’re going to get me food?” Harry asks. Present Mic nods, because he really is weird. Maybe he’s a freak like Harry, and he’s just good at hiding it? Not that Harry’s hiding it, and he doesn’t have ears, or a tail. That’d be cool, even if the idea of what Uncle Vernon would do to them makes him shiver.

“Sure will, little listener! Do you have a favorite food?”

Harry likes all food. Mostly because he’s always hungry. Sometimes when the Durselys take away his food for a long time, he even takes food out of the trash at school. 

“...I haven’t had a lot of food,” Harry says, though bread is pretty good. Not many bread-things taste bad. “Is there bad food?”

“Well,” Present Mic says, blindingly bright smile still in place. “Some people don’t like certain tastes, so foods with those tastes are bad to them, although no food is truly bad. For our food, though...hm, how about some donburi?”

Harry stares at him. “What’s that?”

Then he flinches back because freaks don’t ask questions. But no hit lands. 

“Donburi is some sort of meat, usually beef, with some vegetables over rice in a bowl,” Present Mic explains patiently. “It’s all got this tasty sauce over it, as well. Do you want to try it out?”

Harry has never said no to food in his life. “Yes,” Harry says. But he does not come out of his crevice. In fact, he goes right to the middle of it, so no one can grab him and drag him out.  

“Okay,” Present Mic says. “How about I go grab us both a to-go bowl, and I’ll bring it back here and we can eat?”

Harry stares at him before slowly nodding. 

---

When he saw a small child in too large clothes leaning out of an alley, covered in dirt, he about had a heart attack. 

He was just so tiny. His eyes were very green and very large compared to the rest of him, probably because the rest of him was sosmall. Toothpick limbs and bony joints.

So maybe he’d been walking back home from his agency. Sure, he’d just finished a shift, and was bone tired, and really felt like he needed to collapse into bed with his husband and at least three out of five cats before he felt human again, but well, the job of a hero is never done, eh? 

So now he’s going to a donburi place and hoping the kid is still there when he gets back. There was a street camera nearby, so if he leaves he could follow, but he really doesn’t want to have to do that, and freak the poor little listener out. 

He banishes any and all thoughts of luring a stray kitty out from a similar dumpster a year again with pieces of fish from a skewer stand with some difficulty, but moves quickly nonetheless. 

The place is empty, because three PM is not a popular time to grab dinner, and he gets the two small cardboard boxes pretty quickly. Inside is doubtlessly a plastic bowl with a little cover, and the food that will hopefully let the kid trust him. 

When he gets back to the alley, the kid is still there, wedged firmly between the wall of the alley and an absolutely disgusting dumpster. Hadn’t moved an inch, from the looks of it. 

“Hey, kiddo,” he says, putting his comforting kids voice firmly back up. “I’ve got the food! How about you come out here and eat it? I don’t think it’ll fit behind your dumpster, there, little listener.”

He gets about thirty seconds of extremely sceptical and heart wrenching staring before he slowly starts scooting to the entrance. He stops a few inches from the open alley, and watches him. 

He tries to think what could be going through his head. Hopefully not that he’s going to hurt him, but why did he stop? Maybe…?

“Here you go, little listener!” he says, holding out the box to the kiddo. There’s chopsticks wrapped in plastic on top, but the kid ignores them when he grabs the box, opens it with the sound of ripping cardboard, and starts shoveling the food into his mouth. 

He may have been a hero for over a decade, but seeing kids so hungry and desperate nearly brings him to tears every time. He holds himself together, though, and starts eating his own portion, to encourage the kid that he’s not weird or anything like that. Some kids have trouble with receiving things exclusively for them, and it helps to have everyone getting something.

The bowl is empty within a minute, and the kid wipes his hands clean-ish on his oversized t-shirt. It’s at least four sizes too large- he’s swimming in it, honestly. The collar is close to falling off one shoulder. The thing is already covered in dirt and grime, so honestly it’s not much of a worse situation with soy sauce and beef juices added on. 

“Good job, kiddo!” he says encouragingly. 

The kid looks up at him like the words are foreign to him, and something in Hizashi’s chest twists painfully. Still, he keeps up the gentle grin, the relaxed posture and unthreatening demeanor. 

He starts going back behind the dumpster, and his mind starts wondering about tetanus. 

“Hey, kiddo, how about you come with me? Me and my husband would love to have you! We have five cats, he’s a real sweetheart, I promise,” he tries. 

The boy pauses. Hizashi wonders where he learned to never go places alone with strange men. Hopefully from a cautious adult and not a terrible one. 

“Husband?” He says eventually, like a wonder-filled question.

“Yeah, he’s my hubby! I love him a lot, even if he keeps bringing cats home.”

The kid looks at him for a long time, like he’s staring into his soul. Then, like a decision’s been made, he holds out his hand. 

Hizashi beams. 

---

Sho should be home by now. He’ll be just getting out of the shower, getting on pajamas for a quick nap, putting in eyedrops, getting a few hours of sleep before the school day but after his night time patrol. 

He opens the door loudly, because his husband will appreciate the warning if he’s just collapsed in bed after a hard patrol. 

The little listener flinches, poor thing, but Hizashi just takes his hand gently and leads him to their kitchen, stepping over the three cats here to welcome him home. There’s a few indignant meows before they’re distracted by the newcomer. 

There’s an explanation of the layout. Central kitchen-living room- entry hall, hallway leading to an office, bathroom, and two bedrooms, one used by him and his bedroom and the other a rotating selection of heroes too tired to make it home after a mission or patrol but is now his, so they’ll have to take the couch. 

Hizashi is keeping the kid, which he’s allowed to decide because he got jump scared with each of the five cats, so this is really just payback and also him being halfway decent. 

Said kid is absolutely enchanted with the cats, and would probably be sprawled on the floor to greet them properly if he wasn’t busy sending fearful looks Hizashi’s way. He feels his heart clench, but clears his throat.

“Hey, Sho? You up?” There’s a grunt from the couch, and Shouta mechanically raised himself up into a sitting position, still looking very much half-asleep. Their newest adoption, Goblin, clings to his stomach by his shirt front, meowing indignantly at the change in position. 

“Congratulations, you’re a father,” Hizashi says cheerfully. Sho squints, brain still loading.

“What,” he croaks eventually. Hizashi grins cheekily. 

“We have a son,” he says, waving over at a deer-in-the-headlights boy. He should probably learn the little listener’s name. 

He looks up at Sho with wide eyes, then turns back to Hizashi, who beams at him. 

Then he does the only thing that could wholly and truly win Sho’s heart.

He pets the cats. 

Having apparently decided the adults were a puzzle he didn’t know how to solve, he stuck out a hand for Puddle to sniff. She did, amicably, before purring softly and rubbing her cheeks along his thumb. He grinned, and stroked her head to tail. 

Hizashi is very busy making a very pitiable face to Sho. 

“..Hizashi, we don’t have time for a kid,” Shouta finally says. “I work two jobs, you have three. Also, did you kidnap a random kid?”

“I did not,” He squawked. But before he could properly defend his case, the little listener sniffed, and spoke up.

“I was hungry and sad, and he helped me. Don’t be mad.” he said softly.

And this is heartbreaking, of course, but it’s the first heartbreaking thing the kid has done since coming into Sho’s range, and Sho has always been a sucker for kids, and so something in his frame melts. 

“...Hm. Where’d you get those clothes, kid?” he says finally. “We should have better stuff.”

The kid doesn’t seem to know what a rhetorical question is when he answers. “I got them from Dudley when he got too big for them. He usually ripped them up before I got them, though. Or puts bugs and things in them.”

Hizashi is suddenly remembered of both the ‘on the floor defeated black squiggle over head’ meme as well as the ‘try not to cry, roll over and cry a lot’ one in the same instant. But he swallows all that, and puts on a sadder smile instead. 

Shouta goes to the closet, where half is things like towels and blankets and cleaning supplies, and the other half is reserved for emergencies like this. He grabs clothes in about the right size, down to socks and underwear, and then comes back and hands them to the little guy. 

“We can get you more tomorrow,” he tells the little listener, crouched down to his level. 

“I don’t need any more,” the boy says quickly. “I don’t want to do anything for you.”

Hizashi decides he absolutely hates that implication. 

“No one has to work for necessities,” Sho says with the sage calm of a seasoned underground hero. “You can just have them.”

“...But freaks don’t get nice things…?” the boy says. “Freaks have to work for food, and be grateful.”

Shouta, Hizashi knows, is going to commit a legal murder. 

“You are not a freak.” His beloved husband says earnestly, with the tone he uses with students that leaves no argument. 

The little listener shakes his head, somehow making room around the iron-strong tone. “I am. But that’s okay, because you are too. I went to where the freaks are.” 

Okay so he’s adding more points to the cult checklist, and also resisting crying again. Poor baby. 

“You are not a freak, and you will get more things you need in the morning when the stores are open and we’ve had enough to sleep and eat,” Hizashi says. “Would you like a bath or shower? Food, water? Sleep?”

Sho, bless him, goes back over to the closet and takes out one of the hygiene kits. Then the one with small kids’ toys. 

“My name is Shouta Aizawa,” He says as he hands over a fluffy blue blanket. “And that idiot over there is my husband, Hizashi Yamada. What’s yours?”

The kid takes the blanket with reverence and wide eyes. “I decided I’m Harry,” he says. “They didn’t give me a name, and my parents are too dead to tell me my first one.”

Hizashi takes that like a blow to the chest. But he’s a pro-hero, so he adjusts. “Right,” He manages with only a slight squeak on the end. “Wanna bath kid? We’ve got bubbles.” 

“...Like when you’re scrubbing things?”

“Like when you’re scrubbing your body, little listener,” Hizashi says, taking the kid’s hand again and ignoring the flinch. “You can make them smell nice, and they’re fun for a bath.”

He can practically hear something along the lines of freaks don’t deserve baths or something equally iditoic and abusive echoing in the kid’s head, but he goes easy as anything. 

Hizashi does the whole song and dance of having the water run warm but not too warm, getting the fluffy towels, the kid’s pajamas and hygiene kit, and then has to explain to a maybe-seven year old how a bath works. After that, he also explains the brushing of teeth, flossing, mouth wash, how to properly clean your face, moisturizing, where to scrub in what order, shampoo and conditioner uses, body wash and bar soap, what the razor is for when asked, (and not for, unprompted) and how he can change the temperature of the water. It’s a harrowing experience. 

Drying him off is not as bad as he expected, (like a dog, maybe, since most children had enough energy to take over the world) he just asks for each limb and Harry lets him rub at it with the towel without complaint. The kid’s both compliant and very wary of being naked and alone with him, and also has way too many scars. 

Burns, cuts, whipmarks. Nothing that should be on such a young child, let alone one gaunt with hunger and weary with fear. 

He shows Harry the creams and lotions they have for similar marks, how to care for his stretched and split skin. Then he wraps him in an oversized sweater and decently-sized jeans (their third smallest size, meant for much younger children) and they emerge again to have a hearty meal accompanied by some hot, strong tea, because Kami does he need it. 

Shou had made soup. Well, broth with some decorations, really, but he’s got a feeling it’s all the little tyke’s stomach could take right now. 

(They’d call Chiyo, later in the night when the tired tot had succumbed to exhausted sleep, to ask what to feed him. Rice, greens, simple carbs and proteins. He would heal, with time.) 

Harry barely bothers with the offered spoon, in a repeat from the chopsticks earlier. Who has time for that when his behavior speaks of fear of the meal being snatched away any minute? No, he drinks right from the bowl instead. 

Neither of them comment, even if Shou very much uses a spoon and chopsticks for his own late dinner, and Hisahsi has a small bowl of his own to not just be sitting there awkwardly. 

Harry probably wouldn't have cared either way. He didn’t care about Hizashi helping him into the fresh set of clothes he now wore, or throwing out the old set of worn oversized shirt and stretched-out basketball shorts he’d been in before the bath. He didn’t care much for their gentle questions, either, on where he got that scar, or if he would like something else to eat. 

What he did care about was their spare bedroom. Or, how he refused to step foot into it. 

“It’s not for freaks.” He said, eyeing their linen closet in a way that made Zashi nauseous. 

But Shou was a genius of the highest order, and only slowly blinked. “Well,” He said slowly. “We’re… freaks, and we have our own room, don’t we?”

Harry stared at them. He half-turned to their bedroom, the unmade bed and abundance of cat hair. Behind him, to the guest bedroom waiting for him. 

He tucked himself in to bed, and went to sleep among the quickly bunched up sheets, all curled up and sheltered under a heavy woolen blanket like the shadows were his only shelter. 

He and Shouta stayed up for a long time, that night. With tea by their elbows, laptops in front of them with the information they needed and a phone in their ear with the person to help. 

By midnight, they had a son. Harry Yamada-Aizawa, officially their foster kid.

They also had a case file, filled with various bits and scrambled pieces of a horrific story. But they could work on that later. 

Right now it was time for cat cuddles. 

----

It starts like this; Remus Lupin falls. 

He falls from grace, from safety, from love. From trust and honor and home.

Finally, he falls through a veil. 

He would join his mate and cub, in death. His pack. As was right, he would be with them, forever.

Except he didn’t have his soul instantly torn from his body, or land in the afterlife, or maybe the afterlife’s waiting room. 

He lands on muggle pavement.

Remus Lupin did not have words to describe the full-brain shutdown he experienced in that moment. 

Supposedly, he’d been in a cult. 

Supposedly, he’d been excommunicated from said cult, due to his ongoing health condition and questioning, trouble-brewing nature. 

Supposedly, he’d stumbled from said rejection point, and wandered right into the horrified arms of a mutant-quirk activist (???) who’d rushed him to the nearest hospital in a worried rage. 

Truthfully, he just wanted to find his cub. 

He doesn’t care what story has to be told, what sacrifices need to be made, if it means he gets to hold his cub again. To be among pack. 

Still, the doctors (He remembers the night Lilly told them of the muggle world, finally put up with their cluelessness. Doctors, mediwitches, telephones, owls. It’d been a cross-eyed-including night of information-overload, but the knowledge was coming in surprisingly handy, right about now) are adamant he stay in the ‘hospital’ bed. They murmur hushedly over the scars from silver chains around his wrists and ankles, about the fur that occasionally sprouts when he can’t bear to stop it anymore. They give him potions, straight into his body, somehow, that make him dizzy and sleepy yet clear in a way he hadn’t been for a long time, where thoughts flow smoothly and without pain, and much needed rest found him. Finally, on the full moon, they meet his snarls and cowardly, mourning howls with understanding. 

They bring in another werewolf, he can only assume. Or, werecat. A woman, who is not a witch, but still shifts into the four-legged form and sits beside him with casual ease and an edge to her body language like great sadness. She coaxes him into eating the meat they bring to them, and playing tug of war, and wrestling, and attempting to put his sorrows to something chorehent, in the howls and calls they make. 

The moon falls again, and the morning dawns. The woman introduces herself as Nimi Yakumi, over a breakfast of eggs and vegetables and lots and lots of fruit. She says she has an animal-shifting quirk, just like him (????), and that he was in a hospital in Matfutusu. Oh, and it’s June 5, 2160.  

Yakumi pats him on the back as he holds his head in his hands, world spinning. She speaks, in gentle tones, of being a mutant-quirked people’s activist. Of finding him, completely out of it and all alone, on the sidewalk, and little bits and pieces he had let slip. Betrayed, hidden, stolen, killed. She figured he was from a cult of isolated people trying to be ‘normal’ in their ‘quirked’ society, and when someone with a ‘quirk’ came along, they were mistreated for it. Something about others surfacing from the same situation. She walks him through the world he’s found himself in- heroes, lots about them, and yen instead of gallons or sickles or knuts, a startling lack of magic replaced by a true mess of assorted superpowers. 

How his ‘quirk’ had been messed with illegally, and they were fixing it. Fixing it. 

Something about proper nutritional intake and healthy stimuli and self-harm and rights violations. 

Apparently it is not at all uncommon, or well, not unheard of, (or monstrous, they insist) to be able to sprout fur and fangs and claws, or to shift into a different form altogether, that of a shaggy, half-crazed wolf. A surgeon (yet another title he doesn’t know) brings in their sibling, who apparently is a wildlife reserve ranger (a term much more familiar to him from magical reserves and the like) who tells him of course he’s so pent up in wolf form, think of how bored he must be! And all the calories it would take to pull off such a transformation, it only makes sense he was hungry! Honestly, what else did he expect? 

He nods along, and eventually reaches some sort of steady point among the rapidly shifting sea. 

He decides to just take all of this as something to deal with later-if he came through the veil, and Siruis came through the veil, then his mate is here. Where is he?

“I-okay, but, I just-where is my mate?” he asks, and it comes out so much more lost than he intends. 

“Who?” Yakumi asks gently. So gentle, she’s so gentle and sad with him. 

“My mate, my-my husband, where is he?” he remembers muggle and wix terms just in time, a little warped in terminology due to his summer with the werewolves which kind of treated him like Yakumi. (They offered him pack grounds and political immunity and refugee status and so much he didn’t know what to do with, understand why they were offering. They’d probably consider him dead and give him a Wolf’s Funeral, deep in the Sacred Woods.)

“Well, what’s his name?” Yumi asks. She doesn’t even hesitate a second on the idea of him being mated to another man, not even a second. He nearly cries. 

“Siruius.” he manages. “Sirius Black.” Not that it’s a certain thing he’d even go by that name now, accursed family situation and all. He certainly wouldn’t want to reminded of their lot, if not associated with them. 

Yumi just brings out a pad of paper. “Spell it, darling,” she says, handing it to him with a pen. “I’ll look for him.”

He writes in English. Apparently he’s in Japan. Yumi just nods, pops it into ‘google translate’ on her phone, and hands it off to one of the nurses, after scrawling down the translation on a second page on the notepad, behind the first one she had to tear off. 

“We’ll find him.” She promises earnestly. 

And then he starts crying again. It’s… something.

What if his cub wasn’t here? His whole plan was to die so he could join them, but if going through the veil doesn’t kill you, and both him and Sirius are wherever this is, then Harry is still dead. And he isn’t. 

And then he’s crying again, and Yumi is hugging him again, and well, there goes the next hour of his life. 

“He’s dead,” he heaves, because the woman deserves some sort of explanation. She makes a sad sound and rocks them a little. “I couldn’t-he wouldn’t let me-they hurt him-”

His wolf was miserable after finding out his cub (because any child in the pack, nevermind blood, was the cub of anyone who would claim them, and he was pack and his cub, d*mmit) was hurt for so long, and he took it without questioning, and then couldn’t do anything about it when he did find out, five years too late. Because Dumbledore lied, and he bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. 

Sunk indeed. 

Which was a muggle expression that reminded him of Lily who he also let die, and now he’s sobbing again. So hard it apparently warrants a nurse coming to ‘check his vitals’ which involves his eyes and wrists and looking at machines, and talking to Yumi in low tones about sedating him, which he only knows is like a sleeping draught because of Lily’s insistence of them learning muggle culture, and Sirius loved it, he must love it here-

“Hey, you need to calm down, ok?” the nurse finally says to him, voice also gentle but more firm. “Your hormones are going to be thrown off and you’re in delicate condition right now.”

He doesn’t even know what a hormone is. 

She’s also the only nurse who fluently speaks English, so also the only one who can really deal with him. Her name is Ai Su, and her ‘quirk’ is making bubbles from her hands which she uses to entertain the little kids, because she’s a nurse in the child department and not even supposed to be here, but is still the only English speaker, so he’s taking her away from literal children that need her- 

Yumi hugs him close, and Ai Su does something with the machine that makes the potions go straight into him, and well, sleeping doesn’t sound so bad. 

It’s not that different from what his parents did a few times before the full moon, when they could afford a sleeping draught. His head gets all fuzzy, and dizzy, and he closes his eyes, tired, and then-

---

Sirius had very little clue what was going on. Which was better than the ‘not a one’ state he was in a few months ago, when he was pushed through the veil by a faceless Unspeakable and ended up here, and then immediately after in police custody, because he’d face planted right in the middle of a crime scene, which seemed pretty fitting. 

He didn’t really look that ‘criminal’ at the time- he was half starved, with a cold, vaguely dog-like because of an aborted animagus transformation, and was covered in blood and bruises even before the broken nose he got because, again, face planting. Which probably was why the ‘heroes’ and police at the scene were so lenient with him- he definitely looked like another victim. 

It was only through his extensive ‘roll with it’ skills and chill personality he didn’t start freaking out, and he utilized his etiquette and language lessons for the first time in years to get a basic grasp of the situation. (Who knew learning Japanese for the alliance they had with some wealthy family a continent away would actually pay off for the black sheep of the family?) There were heroes, and villains, one of which just attacked, and quirks, which were magic but appearing sooner and with much narrower abilities, and he should really let the paramedic set his nose, pretty please. 

It’d been a few months since that. He’d landed himself a half-decent apartment (the heroes assumed he’d been robbed of his valuables before his presumed kidnapping, and set him up on a victim’s fund they apparently had going) (it’s not like it was hard, he just mumbled some vague details about Askaban to a guy with a truth-telling quirk, like versitarum but without the drinking bit, and they bought it, just had some questions on how much they fed him, hardly ever being the answer, and so on) and a half-awful job that he was hoping to replace with one at the dog shelter down the street, and court-mandated therapy that he was very tight-lipped in, no matter how much the therapist used her calming quirk. 

And here he was, with a stranger on his doorstep, smiling apologetically. “Sorry to disturb you. My name’s Nimi Yakumi. Are you Sirius Black, by chance?” 

He really should get that changed. He was too out of it when immediately stumbling into police custody to answer with anything but his actual name, though. 

“I am,” he said, only wincing a little at the last name. 

“Lovely!” the woman says, “Do you happen to know one Remus Lupin? He’s been in hospital care since the first of June, he’s asking for you.” 

Just like that, his entire world grinds to a halt. 

“What?” he asks breathlessly. Then he’s shoving his feet into boots and his arms into his beloved leather jacket, and the mask that was a societal norm being practically slapped onto his face. “Where? Take me, now.”

The full moon was three days ago, he had to have transformed. Was he being treated like St. Mungo’s handled werewolves, with silver chains and lonely rooms and placating, lying smiles on the carer’s faces?

She nods. “I’ve got a cab out front. He’s in bad shape, I’m afraid.”

She glances somewhat subtly at his own frame, which has only filled out a bit after nearly a half decade in Azkaban. He ignores it with practiced ease, because he does not care because REMUS. 

“Will he live?” he asks, the same question he asked after the attack on the Bones, and the McCannons, and the Graves, and-

“Yes, we have him on various medications and an IV drip for the malnutrition, though,” she says, leading him down the stairs. She picks up on his hurried pace and is near-jogging. “He has a lot of scarring. Would you be able to tell us the source?”

Sirius hesitates. A lot of Moony’s scars are from either full moons, various times of touching silver (accidentally and not), a few prank accidents, and dueling Death Eaters. “That’s not for me to say,” he says finally, and her eyes flicker again from his face to the scars leading below the collar of his shirt and past his shirt sleeves, also from dueling His forces. 

“Right,” she says eventually, holding open the front door to the building. A cab indeed waits, and she hands over a handful of bills to the driver as they slide in. He takes it, nodding, and off they go.

He’d say it’s unspeakably awkward, but he’s honestly completely in his own head. How hurt was Remus? Had he been in this dimension (timeline?) during the full moon, or the one before that? Did their lunar cycles even overlap? What had happened to bring him here? What had happened since he got here? Before?

Was he also given an informal execution in an ‘unfortunate accident’? 

His stomach twists. 

Magic, he hopes he got scooped up by the werewolf packs that had offered them land. They were so worried about them, especially once they evidently researched the Blacks, and then more when they found out about Moony’s childhood- they kept leaving gifts, food and clothes and paperwork detailing political immunity and citizenship and so on. They got visits every other day (restraint on their part, based on their instinctual reaction to them, he thinks) whenever they were in the cottage that was also gifted by them. 

The hospital is exactly like the one he dragged himself out of days after arriving in this weirdo place- white, sterile, all hard lines and efficient, bustling staff. The woman gives a look to the receptionist and they’re waved in, and then Sirius can’t stop himself from going at a sprint towards where the Bond tells him Remus is, because it’s a Werewolf Thing once they get in range of each other. Yakumi jogs behind him to keep up, just a step behind him respectfully. 

“Black-sama,” she calls, “Lupin-sama is in delicate condition, please be careful with him.”

Like he would be anything else-he gives a quick nod and then practically throws himself into the appropriate room. 

Remus is- tucked into blankets. An IV (they’d explained what it was in rapid succession when he’d ripped his own out upon waking up in a similar position) was stuck into his arm, but otherwise he was completely unbound. No silver to be found, and even though the full moon was just days ago, there’s no scratches, bruises, or marks at all.

He feels faint. 

“Moony!” he cries, rather melodramatically, he must be taking after his mother, Lady Magic forbid. 

He looks up. The love of his life has ruffled brown hair, bedhead, really, and he’s a little scant but the transformations always took it out of him again and again, it wasn’t that unusual, and there, the excitement and fondness in his eyes. “Padfoot!”

Moony tries to get out of bed, to the great protests of a nurse in the room. No matter, because Siruius certainly comes to him, pulling himself just short to give him the world’s gentlest, cradling hug. Remmy does the Werewolf Thing of nuzzling their faces, and then hugs back, and then gets tired of that and kisses him. 

It’s awkward, and rushed, and blessedly familiar. 

Then he’s nuzzling him again, which he’s pretty sure is like a werewolf kiss, or something. “I missed you so much,” Sirius tells him reverently. 

He studies his love’s face- his eyes are puffy with tears, but his cheeks speak of the IV doing good work, and his hair is brushed and clean. Most of all, he’s here.

They take a minute to bask in that. Together, when they very, very easily could have been forever lost. 

Funnily enough, his last-minute execution was perhaps the best thing that had happened to him in a long, long time. 

“How’d you get here?” he asks, because he needs to know if they did it to him, too. 

“Wanted to be with you,” Remus says softly, then goes back to nuzzling him. Sirius laughs.

“Little good boy Remus broke in there for little ol’ me?” he says teasingly. 

“Shut up,” Remus says, in that tone he did when Siruius wanted to copy notes or play a prank that was more mischievous than usual. But he also kept nuzzling him with business-like efficiency, like it was the one thing he’s been looking forward to for ages. 

“You could have-” He chokes on his own raspy-*ss breathing, since he was a long way from recovering himself. “You could have died, Moons.”

He shrugs, which makes something ugly bloom in Sirius’ chest. “Woulda been with you, then.”

Sirius hugs him tighter like he can squeeze the thought out of his love. “Moons, Rem, no,” he murmurs. “I would never ask that of you. I would never want that for you.”

“Oh, so you didn’t want me to break into the Unspeakable Department and follow your stupid *ss?” Remus asks with the sass that made them friends and then lovers. 

And Sirius can’t disagree, because he’s a selfish, bad man. And he can only wait in impatience until Moony tells him what petty, spiteful hell he had unleashed upon the Ministry building to await it’s workers the next morning. Remy’s pranks were always delightfully thought out, and devilishly clever. Right inescapable.  

“Did you use the swamp one?” he asks into his shoulder. 

“Do you remember Lily making us watch Home Alone?” Remus asks deviously, and Sirius grins despite himself. “My parents hated that! Kreacher snitched on me.”

Remus frowns and nuzzles his shoulder some. “Your parents were dreadful.”

“Well, they were more upfront about it than yours,” Sirius quipped, then instantly regretted it. “Sorry, that was too far, I’ve accepted it, you haven’t, too far, sorry.”

Remus pursed his lips. “My parents did their best.”

“They chained you in the basement,” Sirius said, deadpan, and completely uncaring of how Yakumi was typing rapidly on her phone. “My mom might have tortured me, but at least she told me she hated me instead of pretending.”

“They weren’t pretending!” he says softly, hurt, and it hurt Sirius to hurt him, but it had to be said. 

“Moony, darling, if they weren’t, it was a sh*tty form of love,” he says softly, full with as much tenderness one can put to words. “And it wasn’t right.”

“I was a danger! I am-I’m-I’m-a monster!” Remus says lowly but at almost a snarl. 

“I figured out a better way at fourteen,” Sirius says, so, so soft, like when he talked with poor Regulus about hauntingly similar topics. “And they were adults. It’s okay, darling, you’re okay.”

Rem is still prickly, but he clearly is so relieved at the sight of him to let it go. “...I’m really glad you’re here, even if you’re still an *ss.”

“It’s a feature,” Sirius says with an easy grin. Moony just huffs and goes back to nuzzling, this time with the other shoulder, which he should mention is rather awkward a position because Remus is taller than even him-stupid werewolf height, stupid hot Remus. 

“You’re not,” Yakumi says, eventually into the silence. “You’re not a monster.” Her own cat tail swishes back and forth rapidly- Sirius hadn’t even noticed it earlier. The fur’s all sticking up, too. He remembers Lilly’s cat, Pepper Spray (don’t ask)(she was a mottled orange, there was no excuse), doing that right before she bit you for daring to pet the holy spot that was her tummy.  

“But I am an *sshole,” Sirius says, because that’s a tense topic Remus doesn’t need on top of another top-tenseness-level topic. 

Remus snorts, and the moment is broken. Yakumi’s tail is still puffed up, but the edges of each tuft blur together again as she somewhat relaxes, so he cuts his losses there. 

He hugs his partner close.

Sirius is a selfish man-he made the decision to be selfish the summer of fifth year, when his mother used the Cruciatus on him and he ran away to the Potters. And he’s never going to let go now. 

---

Draco didn’t know what was happening anymore. 

Mother had told him never to take off the silver necklace and iron bracelets, but she herself had slipped them off him with hushed reassurances. She had also told him to never go into the woodland bordering the mansion, but here they were, sheltered from the afternoon sun in it’s shade. 

He sniffed, and grabbed on to her hand slightly harder. 

She smiled, and crouched down. “It’s alright darling.” She tucked a lock of hair behind his ear carefully, and he was alarmed to see tears in her eyes. “It’s going to be okay, my dragon, you just have to trust me first.”

Mother never cried. Not when Father yelled, or when he used his wand to make her twitch on the floor with pain, or when she could no longer go out on Diagon with friends she no longer had. 

He grabbed onto her hands again as she withdrew, desperate to communicate the confusion and fear in his gut, words leaving him in an instant. She blinked rapidly.

“Oh, Draco. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But it’s not safe.” She pulls him in against her front, and she’s gloriously warm. He clumsily clutches at her, since she never hugs him, and is something to be appreciated. “Your Father-” her voice breaks briefly. “Is a bad man, okay my hatchling? He’s a bad, bad man. And I would give my life for you, darling, I love you so, so much.” She sniffs into his hair, and he hugs her tighter.

Maybe if he shows how much he loves her back she’ll stop crying?

“But I can’t keep you. It’s not safe.”

Nothing makes sense.

“Please. It’s not safe for him. Please.” She’s not speaking to him anymore, but the undergrowth past him. 

Something shifts. It smells of clay and heat now, with an edge of salt. Sand grinds under his shoes, and berries bloom a bright red on a nearby bush. Ivy crawls up a tree as he watches, rapidly climbing up the textured trunk of an elm. 

It smells like something new. 

“Please.” She says again, like a prayer. 

Draco feels his eyes widen as the faintest edge of flute song reaches his ears. He doesn’t feel them fall shut.

Harry thought the place where the other freaks were was wonderful. 

They didn’t follow any of the rules his Aunt or Uncle did, but then again, they weren’t normal. Well, Miss. Figg across the street didn’t follow those rules, but he’s fairly sure she’s not really considered a part of Privet Drive, even if Aunt Petunia considered her respectable enough to watch him while they were away. 

So he got food, because freaks may not deserve food, but they had it, and it’s worse to let it rot, and there’s no one normal to give it to! And here Freaks get bedrooms, and warm showers (warm!) and new clothes, and time to watch TV, and toys, and soft words and kindness and-

Mr. Yamada and Aizawa had introduced him to a friend of theirs, Kayama Nemuri, who insisted he call her Auntie Nem. He avoids this by not talking at all, skittishly cowering his way through every interaction with the stranger. But no one had hit him for it, or even yelled. 

He liked it here. 

They listened when he cried about going to the park, (he didn’t want to do Harry Hunting ever, ever again!)(even if they said it wouldn’t happen and he would be safe and he would be happy, it took two trips of tightly holding the adult’s hands on the bench to even start to believe it) and gave him new foods and sweet drinks, and warm, soft blankets, and brought a nice woman named Recovery Girl who made all his old aches disappear in a startling sudden lack of pain and brought him gummies and lollipops, and spoke softly, crouched down to his height. 

It was better here.

It had taken him a long time to trust that, though, which he knew must be annoying. Being so scared of going outside, or to the store, or being more than a few feet from Mr. Yamada and Aizawa…

Which led to right now. Mr. Yamada, sitting on a bench across the park, watching peacefully with some music in a really fast pace playing in his ears no doubt, but even with that reassurance the distance from someone he knew to be safe made his skin crawl. 

Still, the feeling of wind on his skin was… nice. Sunshine warmed his face, and when he turned his hands, the air felt soft with the wind’s flow. That cloud above him looked like a bunny, and there was a bird singing in that tree over there!

The trees seemed really pretty, actually. The texture of the bark almost seemed to warp as he watched, slowly turning to a darker, deeper shade his eyes couldn’t quite decipher. It was just on the edge of normal, but noticeably not. 

Mr. Yamada stood up at the bench quickly. Harry tensed from where he’d stopped to admire the scene, suddenly realizing that at some point, he’d drawn closer to the small patch of trees in the park, now less than five feet from the trunk of the nearest one. He was crouching, for some reason, and had the sudden conflicting urge to both bolt and come just a little bit closer…

Then a boy tumbled out of a knot in the wood. Harry’s not sure how- it didn’t make sense looking at it, and even less thinking about it. There was the tail end of trailing music in a triumphant flair, and vines were worked through the blonde of the boy’s hair, bright red berries dripping down over his ears and forehead. A seashell landed in the boy’s lap, and a light sprinkling of sand graced the ground around him. 

Then Harry was being yanked back, and he tenses and very nearly cries, but it’s just Mr. Aizawa, warm and steady and slightly thin but mostly strong, and his heart calms as fast as it’d sped up. 

The trees rustle. The boy makes a quiet, strangled confused noise, then passes out clear away. The trees go still, and the berry vines crowning his head almost seem to dissolve. In another second, the boy’s entire body goes lax, a peaceful expression on his face where fear had been a second ago. 

Harry gives absolutely no protest to being handed off to Mr. Yamada as Aizawa first checks over the strange boy, then scans the forest with fierce red eyes. No nefarious villain reveals themselves, and the trees move only with the wind. 

Mr. Yamada holds the strange boy in his arms tight, almost as tightly as Mr. Aizawa is holding Harry. His attack scarf whips around in the wind, but there’s no one to attack. Not one single flute note is to be heard, and the sprinkling of sand by the trees is blown away in the wind. 

Well. Mr. Yamada had been right- there had been no Harry Hunting at the park. But Harry had definitely won anyway- parks were evil and they never should have gone. 

Hopefully, he thinks as Mr. Yamada scoops up the other boy and joins Aizawa in marching to the car, it’ll be the last time they go to one. They’ll have learned their lesson.