Disclaimer: I do not own KHR or Harry Potter

A/N: Hi everyone! I wanted to thank you all so much for the wonderful reviews and PMs I've received! I cherish each and every one of you and you inspire me to write! Warning for this chapter: I was so sick and tired after writing it that I didn't want to even look at it anymore. As such, it's probably full of grammatical errors. Please tell me if you find anything (preferably in a nice way) and I'll change it.

Without further ado, here is the chapter!

Fon does not see the woman for the entire next week, despite passing by the patisserie numerous times (coincidence, he tells himself. It is merely part of the most scenic route back to the base, and he has always held an appreciation for long, calming walks).

In that time, he has stolen the Rembrandt and replaced it with a fake, the operation going smoothly and seamlessly, with none the wiser, just as he expected. He hadn't even needed to kill anyone, something he was grateful for, although he has reached the point where one or ten or even fifty killings would hardly make a difference in the corruption of his soul.

(There will be no salvation for him.)

Fon would be going back with his "mother" and "father" to report to the Authority the next day. One more notch on his ledger, one step closer to freedom.

It's Thursday, and it's time for his weekly visit to the patisserie. Some might argue that with the Rembrandt now safely in hand, the escape plan formulated and secure, the authorities completely ignorant of the swap, such a seemingly unimportant part of his cover is unnecessary, but Fon is Il Prescelti Sette, and they are perfect at what they do. He will continue his cover until it is time to leave, and not one moment before.

At least, that is how he justifies it to himself.

As he approaches the patisserie, he spots the woman through the glass windows of the pastry shop, and a small, unwanted thrill races through him. She's seated at the same table he had last seen her at, but that is where the similarities end. Everything else about her is different.

Whereas last week she had been sporting a peaceful, content expression on her face, she now looks like she has not slept in a month. Her bright, viridian eyes are still stunning, but there is an exhausted air to them, and right under them are deep, dark bags. Her black hair, previously silky and hanging elegantly down her back to her waist, is now held up in a messy bun at the top of her head. To complete the look, instead of the elegant green dress he had last seen her in, she wears an old pair of jeans and a well-loved faded red jumper with a large W printed on it.

She is still somehow beautiful, but it is now a fragile, vulnerable beauty, as though she might disappear into the ether at any moment should Fon blink too long. Fon feels the familiar, protective surge of his storm flames rise up at the sight of such a powerful sky looking so vulnerable, but the martial artist only struggles for a moment before suppressing it.

(He has to wonder what damage all this suppression of his flames' - an extension of his soul and his subconscious desires - is doing to him. He makes a note to meditate after returning to China in order to once more find peace within himself).

The storm arcobaleno wonders what has happened in the last week that there has been so drastic a change in the young sky. Idly, he entertains the idea of undertaking the means to find out, but quickly dismisses the idea. Already, he thinks too much about this woman.

Entering the patisserie, he is once more overcome by the warmth of the sky flames saturating the room. He is more prepared for it this time, but he is not prepared for the agitated quality of the flames, nor for them to suddenly become tinged with overwhelming determination, the likes of which only a sky can produce. Once more his flames fight against him to reach out to the sky's flames and soothe them somehow, or, more characteristic of the storm flames, help them with what they are so determined to do, but Fon has grown to expect such a thing – as inconceivable as it had been merely a week ago - and stops them with barely a thought, gladly suffering the small twinge of pain his flames punish him with in protest. He cannot remember the last time he has been so respondent to someone else's flames- not even Luce provoked such strong reactions, especially before even sharing a conversation.

How far the mighty have fallen.

To be so provoked by a completely untrained sky – he feels 12 again, with flames more powerful than he knows what to do with and uncontrollable instincts not unlike a wild animal.

After reporting to the Authority, along with meditation, he will have make time to train to better control his flames.

Resolved to ignore this sky and the allure of her flames, he moves to the counter in a walk a tad too smooth and contained for a child. He makes an effort to proceed as normal, and to untrained and even more trained eyes he does so, but he cannot help moving ever so slightly faster than the times previous, pressured by the weight of orange flames surrounding him.

It is then that he senses the woman approach him.

Because of course she does. Evidently, he has not suffered enough. He wonders if this is a sort of divine punishment for all the lives he has taken over the years.

"Your name is Bise, right?" She asks in fluent French, the barest hint of an accent to the trained listener, which Fon is. The green-eyed woman looks over the confectionaries as she stands beside him, but unlike most friendly adults approaching a small child, she looks ill at ease, as though suffering from a great headache. Once more, Fon fights the urge to carry her off to a bed somewhere, make her chicken soup, and force her to sleep for a month.

There is a parody of a smile on her face, and her entire body is tense as though it wishes for nothing more than to be as far away from Fon as possible. Her flames scream revulsion, so strong and visceral that they make Fon pause.

Does she know who he is? The horrors he has committed? Is she disgusted because she knows he is Fon, the Silent, Fon, the Wind, Fon, the Dragon, Fon, the Last Face? It is the only explanation he can think of. And yet, if she recognizes him for his work, then that would make her linked to the mafia, and no one linked to the mafia would allow an untrained sky outside like this.

Before he can answer her question, she asks another one, "Are you thinking of buying the strawberry millefeuilles?"

Belatedly, Fon realizes that he is standing in front of the strawberry millefeuilles. He had been so caught up in the woman his body had moved on automatic towards the counter, repeating the same actions of every Thursday through muscle memory.

"Oui, madame," He answers in perfect French, and not even a trained listener would be able to detect an accent. "I am not fond of the chocolate ones, for they are too rich for me. But I confess to a weakness for strawberries and raspberries."

It is the most eloquently he has spoken while masquerading as Bise, but something inside him refuses to play dumb in front of this woman. It's probably his flames taking every opportunity to impress her; her sky attraction is entirely too dangerous to affect him on such a subconscious level like this.

Her smile is a little less painful to watch this time, and her flames lighten up ever so slightly. Fon feels as though he has accomplished something precious. "Then let me buy it for you," She says. "You deserve a reward for coming here every week by yourself."

Fon stills, though nobody would be able to tell from his expression. How did the woman know he came here very week? They had only first seen each other last week – he would have remembered her if they had even momentarily crossed paths previous.

Had she asked about him? Why would she express such interest?

She had obviously looked into him, even if only a little, in order to know the name of his cover. He wonders what exactly it is she wants with him.

Bise attempts to protest the generosity – the sooner away from this woman and her flames, the better – but she waves a hand dismissively and buys it for him anyways. She keeps the package with her and walks with him until they are just outside the patisserie, where she takes a moment to seemingly gather herself, her flames reverberating with renewed determination, and she bends down to hand him his package and look him in the eye.

Hers shine like pools of liquid emeralds, and Fon thinks a man could easily drown in them.

"Why don't you come with me, Bise?" The woman asks, smile pained. "It will only take a second, and then you can go back to your parents, all right?"

.

.

.

Disgusting.

Perhaps it is not what he imagines it to be, but the world has rarely surprised Fon in pleasant ways – if anything, just when he thinks he's seen all the rot the world has to offer, thinks he knows the worst of humanity, it seems to take a perverse pleasure in presenting him with more.

Just to be sure, Fon puts on his most gullible and naïve expression – and while not as good an actor as Reborn, Viper, or even Skull, it is still enough to fool the vast majority – and responds, "Of course, Madame. Where are we going?"

Guilelessly, completely ignorant to the fact she is signing her own death warrant, the woman responds in deceptively kind tones, "We're going to my apartment, okay? I'll bake you lots of cookies when we get there."

"Your apartment?" He repeats, and indeed the world has ways of disappointing him even when he thinks he can no longer be disappointed.

"Yes, I know it sounds boring but I promise it won't be! There's something I really need to do, and I need your help to do it."

Suddenly, Fon is glad that this woman has chosen him. He is glad that it is him and not a real child that could be deceived by a pretty face and the promise of cookies. All plans to leave her abandon him – he will be following her to her apartment, yes, but he shall be the last one to do so.

He wonders how many children she has already taken. Wonders what she does with them after she's done taking her fill. Wonders at the feelings of the children, how long they suffered for, how long their parents searched for them after.

He does not generally enjoy killing, but this… he would take pleasure in this.

.

.

.

Fon is disgusted at his flames.

Despite what he has found out, they don't quite seem to understand what manner of monster they are dealing with, because they positively thrum in excitement at the proximity of the sky as they walk to her apartment.

It is no longer quite as much of a mystery how the woman does not have any guardian bonds. Even amongst the mafia, pedophilia is viewed negatively, and pedophiles are often found in deserted back alleys, dead.

(A part of Fon worries at how his flames react to this monster's flames. Flames are merely an extension of the self, after all. Surely, surely his soul is not yet so drenched in the black tar of corruption that his flames are so eager to attempt bonding with a pedophilic sky.

For once, he is grateful for his inability to bond with others. At least there is no risk of chaining himself for life to a monster. He'd probably kill her within the first week, then commit suicide himself from disharmony.)

It is as he is clenching his teeth to suppress his stubborn storm flames that the woman suddenly stops walking, so abrupt that Fon's shoulders tense minutely, and she crouches down so that she is as close to his height as she can get without laying on the floor.

"Bise," She calls, the serious look of a mother about to impart important information onto her child. The proximity seems to pain her and Fon wonders; perhaps, instead of a pedophile as he initially assumed, she is a killer who hates children? "You can't just follow people you or your parents don't know to places, okay? Even if they promise to give you cookies."

What?

If he were not pretending to be a child, he know he'd have his eyebrows raised in surprise.

Fon is… perplexed. If she truly has nefarious intentions, there would be no need to warn him not to follow strangers in the future. He has shown no sign of wariness or protest, so she shouldn't feel the need to reassure him that she is not dangerous by supposedly warning him against other dangers.

"Does that mean I shouldn't follow you, Madame?" He questions.

The questions seems to fluster her, "Ah- no, well," She hesitates, as though uncertain of how to respond. "You should follow me, but in the future, I don't want you to follow strangers, okay? Even if they seem friendly, or they buy you cake, I want you to promise me you won't follow them, especially if they're asking you to get in their car or apartment, or any other place where it's just you and them. This is very important."

Fon nods, agrees, and walks the rest of the way in contemplative silence.

.

.

.

Fon is surprised when they finally stop in front of a small, but obviously expensive apartment. It's also located in an incredibly affluent quartier.

The apartment is decorated tastefully. A white sofa with wine-colored decorative pillows, a large window with a view over the river Seine, an enormous, fluffy tangerine orange rug covering almost the entire expanse of the marble floor. The presence of burgundy and orange are offset by creamy whites and beiges, so that despite the presence of such aggressive colours the room gives off a sophisticated, calm feeling. Hanging by the ceiling is an old-fashioned chandelier, the kind where the owner has to manually light every individual candle (how impractical), coated liberally with small crystals that capture the sunlight and reflect it in interesting ways, only adding to the peaceful feeling of the room.

Breathing in deeply, Fon feels the sky flames clinging to his skin, beckoning him in further. The young woman's flames practically saturate every piece of the apartment, coating the walls, dancing along the rug, emanating from the pillows - so much so that Fon almost feels overwhelmed.

So strong is his reaction that, for a fraction of a second, his storm flames manifest against his will.

That… has never happened before.

He is lucky that she is not looking at him, instead saying something about the mess and trying to clean a few errant papers from the floor, for the utter shock on his face would surely have blown his cover.

Fon pushes the thought away- he will handle it later. He has more pressing things to worry about now. Specifically, this sky who has just invited him into her home.

The pieces in her living room are obviously finely furnished. Instead of the gaudy opulence of so many homes of the nouveau riche, each corner of the apartment that he sees is decorated elegantly, hinting at an understated wealth. She obviously has no need to make a show of the amount of money she has, no need to impress anyone.

Old money, then.

He sends an undetectable burst of flame into the walls – thick, but not soundproof.

If she is trying to do anything strange to him, then she's obviously a novice. The thought reassures him. He is probably her first attempt at… whatever she is trying to do.

She shifts her weight nervously for a few moments before saying something about cookies and practically fleeing to the kitchen.

Fon uses the opportunity to continue his inspection of the apartment. He looks under the sofa, into drawers, quickly looks into a closet and few rooms, careful to keep an ear out for any indication the sky will come back from the kitchen. With his speed and his stealth, he manages a cursory inspection of half the apartment by the time the woman comes back into the living room.

Nothing is out of the normal; it looks like any other young woman's apartment, if the woman comes from old money and has rather impressively impeccable cleaning skills, unexpected considering the mess that is her living room. Fon suspects she hires someone to clean her apartment for.

Everything is utterly normal…

…except for the pungent, inescapable smell of blood.

.

.

.

Fon is careful to only eat a cookie after the woman herself has already agitatedly eaten two. Even should they be poisoned, there would be little difference as Fon is immune to all but the most rare and deadly of poisons, none of which what looks like a young college student unrelated to the mafia would be able to get her hands on, but hubris is man's undoing, and it never hurts to be cautious. Fon has heard enough Chinese proverbs to know it to be so.

He has already discerned that she is not carrying any weapon, and she hardly looks as though she has the physical strength to fight against a semi-proficient thug, much less the world's best martial artist.

"All right, Bise, now I asked you to come here for a reason. I'm going to do something, and I won't lie, it's going to hurt a little bit, but I need you to be strong for me, all right, darling? You're going to feel much better afterwards, I promise." The woman tries to say reassuringly, and Fon feels renewed disgust surge through him. He braces himself to subdue this woman. "And once this is all over I'll buy you as many millefeuilles as you want! Too many to count!"

Except then, the woman holds out a stick that appears into visibility as though by magic, and shouts something at him that paralyzes him. The situation is impossible – utterly inconceivable – but Fon does not waste time wondering at the impossibility of fighting it except for an initial slight widening of the eyes, instead calmly and single-mindedly fighting to regain control of his body.

He has trained and meditated for years in order to gain complete and utter control of his body. To have it so easily taken away from him is both humbling and infuriating.

He has, of course, heard shadowy rumours of the wand-wielders- he may not be Viper, but there is very little he has not heard at least a rumour of at this point – but he had never imagined this petite woman would be one of them.

And he had thought he'd gotten rid of his hubris! Clearly, he was not cautious enough.

His efforts to escape are not fruitless, and soon he manages to regain some level of movement in his left arm, but the woman gasps and uses her stick and words to immobilize him again. Fon is not dissuaded. If he was able to do it once, then he'd be able to do it again.

The woman, however, understands that his escape is merely a matter of time and ties him with rope. He nearly laughs – rope has never been able to contain him. Once he regains control of his body, he will be able to escape the rope in seconds – could even disintegrate them with his flames – and then she will only have a few second left to live.

As she ties his hands and feet, a steady stream of apologies and reassurances leaves her mouth and Fon wonders if she is completely sane, "I'm sorry, Bise, I didn't want to do this, but I need you to be very still for this to work, you understand? This is for your own good, darling, okay? I promise I won't hurt you – well, actually, I'm going to hurt you a little bit, oh, but please don't be scared it won't last long and I promise it's all necessary and, oh, Bise, I wish none of this was necessary but I promise I'm going to take care of you, and soon you're going to be all better and you'll be with your mummy and daddy and I'm so, so sorry, darling-"

She picks him up and places him on the center of the rug, and the smell of blood becomes stronger. She then has the gall to caress his head gently, almost lovingly, not unlike a mother would.

Fon nearly snarls at how, despite the situation, his flames still purr at the contact, like eager puppies reveling in their master's attention.

It is then that she says something that makes Fon pause, "It's going to be okay, Bise, all right? I promise it's going to be okay. You're very sick right now, and this is going to make you feel better. It's an hour of pain, but then you'll be free for the rest of your life. I promise. I'm going to make it all better, okay?" He momentarily stops his struggles to check her flames, and finds that they burn with truth; she truly believes what she is saying. She is either truly mentally ill, or… she knows about the Arcobaleno curse.

Fon does not have much time to think on it, however, as the woman starts chanting in Latin from what appears to be a grimoire and his word just… explodes. Searing agony the likes of which he has never felt before makes his vision go white.

He, who has withstood the harshest of tortures without so much as a word, who has been stabbed and burned and shot without the slightest change in expression, is now screaming at the top of his lungs.

It goes on for hours, years, centuries. It is so much worse than even the worst of the horrors visited upon him by the Triads during training. He feels his blood boiling, his cells individually bursting, his body burning alive. He fights, of course he does, but soon his focused, precise attacks against the force behind this sudden torture turn into a wild, frantic struggle. It is too excruciating to think, to plan, to do anything other than react like an animal.

But then… then he notices a change. He had thought himself beyond the point noticing anything, the pain too horrifying to think upon anything but the burning, but this is a change to the pressure he has spent so many hours, years upon years, studying and fighting against. The curse, the dreaded curse that has burdened him and the fellow Arcobaleno for years, that has taken their lives from them, that they have fought against so desperately yet so fruitlessly, that has never reacted to anything they have done… shifts.

Fon can scarcely believe it, think it an illusion brought upon by the pain. He barely musters up enough focus, enough distance from the agony in order to focus once again on the steady, sickening pressure of the curse.

He waits, almost loses his hope, but then… there! There it is. It happens again.

The curse… flickers.

For a second, Fon's brain blanks with the weight of what this could mean.

With renewed determination, Fon fights against the curse, as he has done so many times before, yet this time, this time he feels, whenever he pushes against the curse, feel it… give. At first, it is hardly noticeable, but soon, soon he is taking great big steps and the curse is retreating.

He completely abandons fighting against the force brought upon by the sky's incantation in favor of focusing his full efforts on the curse. The pain makes such concentration difficult – he is impressed he has been able to make a conscious decision at all – but nothing he has done has ever so much as minutely affected the curse, nothing coming even close to this, and the realization floods him with renewed strength.

Soon, he and the sky's pressure wage a war within his soul against the curse. It is agony unlike any other, but Fon could laugh with how ecstatic he is, because they are winning. The curse is leaving and they are winning and he is fighting for his freedom.

In one of the brief lulls where the pain is not quite so agonizing, Fon realizes this is the most important fight of his life.

Eons pass, battles are won and lost, territory given up and reconquered, and, finally… freedom.

The sudden lack of pain is disorienting, and he can still feel the slight tremors of his body in the aftermath, nerves still spasming violently in the aftershock. When he regains his vision, however, he is quick to rise, feeling much like a newly born deer with how unsteady his legs are. All around him elegant furniture is burning, and he recognizes his storm flames cackling around the living room, witnesses to the battle that was waged there. The rug he is on is burning, revealing odd markings done in blood.

And then… then he notices that his vantage point is completely different. Instead of seeing things from the height of a small table, he can now look at things from above. Almost disbelieving, he raises a hand in front of him, and finds it to be scarred, calloused, and… large. A man's hand.

Looking down, he finds the small clothes he had been wearing as Bise ripped and burning along with the rug. Instead, he is utterly naked, revealing a muscular, adult body… his body.

There's a ringing in his ears, but despite it he can hear the softly uttered "Oh" that leaves the mouth of the woman, seconds before she tips over dangerously and falls.

Fon moves without thinking. Perhaps it is his storm flames once again wishing to protect a potential sky, or perhaps it is the part of his body that understands that whatever she did had released a decades old curse that had been consuming his life, but before she can hit the floor, Fon has her in his arms, body shielding her from the flames.

She is light in his arms, he thinks, and completely unconscious. Asleep like this she looks even more fragile than before, long eyelashes barely shielding the dark bags under her eyes.

He had caught the woman out of reflex, without conscious thought.

But what to do now?

A/N: Urgh, such a long chapter! I hadn't initially planned for it to be this long, but I wanted to finish Fon's POV and get back to the main story next chapter. Hope you guys liked!