Shadows In Your Footsteps

Words: 2,928
Crossover: Kuroshitsuji
Pairing: Sebastian Michaelis/Harry Potter
Beta: None
Warnings: None.

When he'd first received the cloak, it'd felt a little like something from a dream. The concept of receiving presents was still one that was completely foreign to Harry back then, and it was a little bit of a miracle for him to receive something as amazing as an invisibility cloak.

And it was a wondrous object - when Harry was near it almost felt to him like an embodiment of pure magic, of there ever was one. It was warm to him, but not on the skin. No, it made him feel warm somewhere in his chest, and it felt a lot like comfort.

It had been something of a novelty to Harry, and though everything had been a novelty to Harry back then - what with still being so new to magic - his cloak was exotic even by those standards. It was rare and had even been unfamiliar to Ron, who'd known nothing but magic since he was born, so naturally Harry came to the conclusion that his cloak was something incredibly special.

He'd been completely taken with the cloak, its soft, gossamer fabric, the way it slid like water through his grasp and the weightlessness of it when it lay on his shoulders like it was meant to be there. This had belonged to his father, and his father's father, for generations. It was a connection to his family, the like of which he'd never had before, and always yearned for, and for that reason alone it was the most precious thing that Harry owned - more precious than anything else.

But when the pure joy and excitement quieted, Harry began noticing strange things. He was no stranger to the feeling of odd events occurring around him - he had experienced it so many times, like the entirety of his first year, not to mention the 'I can hear voices no one else can' bit of second year.

This was different though. Different how, he couldn't tell you. Perhaps it was the fact that for once he could tell it had nothing to do with Voldemort, or that it just felt right in a way he hadn't ever felt before, and yet loved. Regardless of the reason why, by the time he was thirteen Harry was noticing that he was never really alone.

There were shadows, everywhere, following him and congregating where he slept, caressing him in his dreams. They were terrifying and terrible and everything inside him told him they were not good, but they were also constant, no matter where he was or how he felt, no matter if he was alone or accompanied by someone. Nobody else saw them, and eventually they became a comfort to him. It didn't matter if he was afraid for his life or angry at his friends, didn't matter if he was lonely or if his stomach cramped from hunger, because they were always there, and they always, always wanted him.

He didn't realise it was his cloak that had bought them to him, not until much later. In hindsight, he wondered why Dumbledore hadn't said anything of it, but he suspected the headmaster had never actually seen them. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the cloak had only been borrowed, or that he wasn't a Potter, though Harry suspected (and hoped) it was merely because Dumbledore wasn't him. He hoped it was because Harry was special, in some way that didn't have to do with the way his parents died.

But in the end, it didn't really matter because Harry never told anyone anything about them, and he knew instinctually that he never would.

In the summer of his sixth year after Dumbledore had passed, Scrimgeour showed up at the Burrow and read out the late headmaster's will to Harry and his friends. He found out he had been left the sword of Gryffindor and a Golden Snitch, except the sword was never given to him - the new Minister claiming it was a historical artefact and that he couldn't have it. The Snitch, however, was given to him, and once the house had quieted and the sky had darkened, he noticed his shadows (because somewhere along the way, they'd become his) were different.

They were still there, still his comfort and his constant, but they were clearer, and when the clouds passed over the moon they looked so real they seemed almost tangible, enough so that he reached out to touch them involuntarily, and was surprised when his hand passed straight through.

They whispered to him, words and hisses in a language he had never heard or learnt, and yet still understood on some innate, evolutionary level. He heard what they told him, felt like he was loved. Like he belonged.

And when he lay watching his friends hold hands in their sleep, and when he felt the loneliness rise up in the pit of his stomach, he remembered that feeling, and he knew the words those shadows told him to be true just as firmly as he knew his own magic.

They were always there, his shadows. They flew a dragon out of Gringotts with him and escaped the Malfoy dungeons with him. They were there when Mr Lovegood told them about the Deathly Hallows, and he felt a sense of completeness that he knew wasn't his own.

He relished being alone - a luxury that was rare with the three (and then two) of them in such close quarters. His senses seemed sharpest then, when he sat outside under the setting sun and the falling night. He felt almost like he could smell them then, felt his skin tingling in their presence. The pouch Hagrid had given him felt heavy against his chest, and inside it, his Snitch felt like it was burning a hole straight through to his heart.

When he walked to his death they walked with him. He'd guessed, by then, what lay inside his locked Snitch, but it was another thing altogether to hold it in his bare palm, to almost gasp at the sight of red eyes - nothing like Voldemort's and everything like Hell itself - staring right back at him. When he called his parents and Sirius and Remus they told him they loved him and were proud of him, and smiled and promised to walk with him. But even as they surrounded him they refused to acknowledge the figure of pure darkness that stood at his side in solidarity, and moved awkwardly around its shape as if it repelled them the way identical poles on a magnet would with the strangest looks in their eyes.

Perhaps that should have spooked him, repulsed him, because he knew this... this being wasn't anything but the purest evil, a demon of a sort that would haunt even Voldemort, but he couldn't. He'd loved even the barest shadow of this creature for longer than he'd ever loved anyone or anything else, and by now it was a part of him as intimate as his own breath. He could not deny it even if he wanted to.

He walked into the clearing with his shoulders straight and his chin up, and faced death as if it was a beginning rather than an end.

When he opened his eyes, he found himself in a place of pure white. His skin was bare, clean and unhurt - the wounds of the battle healed miraculously, and he could see clearly despite the fact that there were no glasses resting on his nose. He thought of clothes, and found himself covered in white fabric so light in weight he still felt naked, for he could barely feel it.

He looked around, trying to ascertain where he was. The last thing he remembered was dying, so was this death? But if so, then where were the people he loved? Where were his parents and Sirius and Remus? Surely they would come to greet him?

A pitiful whimper broke him out of his reverie and silently he padded, barefoot on oddly warm tiles, towards the sound. There was another pained noise, soft and pathetic, and he found that there was a creature huddled under one of the benches.

Confused, he squatted down to see better. It looked like a foetus, maybe, but at the same time it looked incredibly old. It was hurt - Harry could see the cuts that spread over his arms and back, and it curled up tight as soon as Harry reached for it as if to protect itself from his touch. As if Harry would only hurt it further.

"Let it be." A voice came from behind him, and he turned to find Dumbledore, for once wearing plain white robes instead of his usual bright, ridiculously patterned ones. He rose to stand, and with him stood the faintest shadow.

He saw Dumbledore flinch as if slapped, and the man's eyes widened in horror. "Harry," he whispered, eyes glittering in sorrow. "Oh, my boy."

"Professor?" he asked, but there it was - all the proof he'd ever needed. His shadow wasn't just bad or evil, it was an entity of darkness, the very soul of everything amoral. And though Harry couldn't stand the thought of hurting others, and though Harry hated Voldemort with a passion for all the pain and death he'd caused, he could not hate the creature standing by his side. Not even if he would be ripped limb from limb for it.

He chose to go back, of course he did. He told himself to deliberate on it anyway, and it was so tempting to just let go. But he knew he wouldn't, knew he had unfinished business. Besides, his shadow couldn't thrive in this place, and what would he do without his shadow?

In the last moments, he could see Voldemort's eyes widen in horror, and he knew he Dark Lord had seen him. His shadow was there as he fought, caressing his hip and face with beautiful caricatures of hands and lips, and when Voldemort finally saw - like his eyes were a camera suddenly in focus - that's when Harry had seen true, bald fear in his pathetic imitation of crimson eyes, and that's when Voldemort's spell faltered and his death warrant signed.

He'd taken the wand then, trying not to touch it, and left as quickly as he could to somewhere quieter. When hoards of celebrating, injured fighters rose from the ashes of battle and looked for the boy who had saved them all, he was nowhere to be found.

In all these years, he'd never once actually spoken to his perpetual companion. He'd always looked for them, flickering in and out of the corner of his eyes, and his shadows had touched him almost constantly, though he'd always felt it on a level beyond physical. Now though, as he ran his fingers over the wand that had left a long, bloody trail through history, he saw the shadows assume the shape of a tall, handsome man, and he could not stop himself.

"You've always been here," he whispered softly, almost as if he was afraid someone else would overhear. This conversation, his first words towards this being, were intensely private, and he could not bear if anyone else heard them, and heard the emotion in them.

"You are mine." Those words should scare him, make him rebel. So many people had wanted him, all in different ways. So many people who had tried to claim him and his freedom when he'd only ever wanted to belong.

"Who are you?" he asked. That question had been on the forefront of his mind forever - or at least ever since he realised nobody else would ever see his shadows, and probably nobody ever had. His breath stuttered as the man's hands came up to caress his face, smoothing fingers over his jaw and lips ever so slowly until Harry felt like he was drowning, and he didn't want to be saved.

"I am whoever you want me to be."

Harry frowned, almost pouting. "Your name," he insisted, drawing a low laugh from his shadow, who looked upon him fondly.

"Sebastian will do, my dear," he told Harry gently, tucking a loose lock of hair behind Harry's ear and trailing a finger down the shell.

Harry shivered. "Sebastian," he repeated. It was a handsome name, he supposed, a good name for someone so... fluid. So inhuman.

"You belong with me," Sebastian growled in response, and Harry did. They were nothing alike, not even on the same plane of existence, but Harry belonged with it, him, the way the stars belonged with the moon, completely and wholly. The shadows were darker in the light, and though Harry was no innocent, he may as well have been the purest being in existence in comparison to he who was standing before him.

The man before him smiled, fangs sharp as knives glinting in the moonlight, as if he knew what Harry was thinking, and no, he wasn't a man at all.

'A demon,' Harry corrected himself, and yes, that was right.

"Why you?" he asked, tilting his head to the side. The demon frowned and bent forwards to put their faces at a more even level.

"Who else?"

Harry smiled. "You are not Death," he replied. "You are Evil, and aren't these supposed to be Death's Hallows?"

His demon smirked, his eyeteeth catching the moonlight again. It took Harry's breath away, the casual show of power and danger. It made his heartbeat quicken.

"What do humans know of the Ancient magic?" he chuckled, voice low and sarcastic. "For all they could tell, these may as well be Heaven's Hallows ."

Harry reached into his pockets, smoothed his fingers over the cloak and stone, and felt the stiff presence of the wand where it now lay along his forearm. They radiated with an ancient magic, true, but he was realising now that so did Sebastian - almost as if he'd made them.

He looked up, eyes wide and Sebastian was exactly where he'd been before, leaning ever closer to his face.

"For all they could tell, they may as well be Hell's Hallows," he murmured, and Harry's breath hitched as his cheeks flooded with blood.

The demon brought its hand up now, stroking along Harry's jaw as if petting him, and his touch felt like fire across the ice of Harry's skin. He tried to collect his thoughts, to form a coherent thought, but it was so difficult when he was faced with pure temptation, when all he wanted to do was reach up and touch his lips to the ones growing ever closer.

He shook his head. "Hell," he murmured, "it has a master?"

"Hell has a King, my dear," the other corrected. "And we, his loyal subjects."

Saying so, he immediately dropped down onto one knee, looking up at Harry teasingly, and Harry became incredibly aware of how close his mouth was to Harry's crotch. He flushed, the bright red of blood rising to the surface of his skin and heating it to the touch. Even kneeling, the demon was tall enough to reach the middle of his chest, and if Harry leaned down enough he could still kiss him, just like this. If he wanted.

"King," he whispered. This time it was his hand on Sebastian's jaw, tracing the bone down to the tip of his chin and then up until his index finger rested on his lower lip.

"My king," the demon purred, and then licked seductively at the tip of the finger at his mouth.

Harry felt as if he had been electrocuted. He gasped, and then - almost faster than he could perceive - Sebastian was holding Harry in his arms, and he smelled so good, so strong, like the night and sex and masculinity, and Harry had never wanted anything as much as he wanted the strong body wrapped around him.

He opened his mouth, helplessly, before Sebastian's lips had even descended on his own, eyes wide in desperate desire and lust. He stuck his tongue out, and Sebastian leaned down with half-closed eyes gleaming the bright red of hellfire, tongue entwining with his own before their lips had ever even touched one another's.

There was magic there, in every move and every touch Sebastian made, as if the brushing of his palm against Harry's back was a brush against his very soul, and he wanted so desperately to be one with the being before him - had wanted it before, for so long, but never like this. Never with all this fervour.

He felt hot, electric, sensitive to the touch. He was almost hyperaware of the touch of Sebastian's hand against the swell of his arse, of long white fingers entwined with the wild black curls of his hair, of the intimate embrace of their mouths, and he felt like he could die of all the pleasure.

His demon pulled back slightly, eyes still staring right into Harry's. He didn't let go of Harry, just kept them like that - his leg between Harry's thighs and his chest tightly pressed to Harry's own.

"Take me away," Harry pleaded, grip tightening in the fabric stretched tight across his demon's back. He leaned up and pecked Sebastian's lips slowly, gently. Wanting. "Please."

And Sebastian grinned as if that was all he'd ever wanted, and all he'd ever asked for. "Yes," he laughed. "My Lord."