Chapter 1: The rescue

-o0o-

Five year old Harry James Potter, youngest and undoubtedly smallest, resident of No 4 Privet Drive took in a shuddering breath as he tried to ignore the pain in his body. His ribs, which had always been visible, were now sticking out of his flesh after the beating he had received from his uncle earlier that day. He took in a lungful of air and had to fight back a whimper as the action forced the ribs further out of his small frame.

It had all started when he was working in the garden. He'd been weeding his Aunt's flower bed again. He didn't mind this chore. He liked being out in the garden. It was the only time he was allowed out of the house after all. Anyway, he'd been weeding the flower bed closest to the big tree in the back yard when he'd heard it, a faint, hissing voice.

"-stupid humans….messing up my nest again…..should bite the little fat one but I'd probably get indigestion-"

Now, Harry was a five year old child and like any other five year old child he got curious easily. Unlike most children however, he knew when to keep a grip on his curiosity, something that a normal child should not have had to do. The hissing continued and finally his curiosity won over his fear of punishment so Harry carefully began to make his way over to the roots of the tree, the place where the voice was coming from. He found a little garden snake, barely a foot in length, possibly a little more but Harry wasn't sure. It was a light green in color and there were some faint markings although he couldn't make out a pattern. It was a grass snake, nothing more. So why had he heard a voice?

Just then the snake looked up at him and let out an angry hiss.

"-Stupid human hatchling!-" it said. "-Now I am going to have to find another nest…again!-"

"-I'm sorry-" Harry told it, not realizing he was slipping into Parseltongue. "-I won't move your nest if you don't want me to-"

The snake looked up at Harry in astonishment. Never before had it encountered a speaker. Sure, there were rumors of them in the snake community and who could forget about Voldemort but to actually meet one in person, and such a young one at that…

"-You can understand me?-" The little green snake asked him, just for confirmation that the kid was indeed speaking the snake language.

"-Yes-" Harry replied cautiously.

"-Then you are a speaker!-" it exclaimed, jubilant to have its suspicions confirmed.

"-A speaker?-" Harry asked, confused.

"-Yes-" the snake answered. "-You have the gift to speak to serpents. It is a rare and valuable gift. There have only ever been few speakers and many of them were a long time ago. There was one a few years ago but not many snakes followed him. He was cruel and twisted. There was a strange taste about him. Most did not like him,-" The snake paused for a moment and studied Harry, taking in his over-sized clothes, messy pitch black hair and emerald green eyes. "-Tell me hatchling, what do the humans call you? I go by the name of Sylvestra-"

Before Harry could answer the light was blocked from behind him. Sylvestra hissed and quickly began to retreat into a small hole beside a large root. Before Harry could turn around he was seized by the back of his over-sized shirt and hauled into the air. He was turned and found himself looking into the ever purple face of his 'loving' uncle. His face was purpler than usual and seemed to have taken on a slightly greenish tinge too. Harry wasn't sure how those two colors could show on his uncle's face but they were there.

"What do you think you're doing Freak!" his uncle spat, venom dripping from each syllable.

Harry froze completely, his eyes widening to the size of dinner plates. Why now? His uncle wasn't supposed to be home for another five hours at the most. Then he remembered.

His family were having guests over tonight, some important visitors. Apparently the company that they represented were interested in a partnership with his uncle's company and it had been left to Vernon to impress them. How could he have forgotten? His uncle would only be at work until two O'clock today.

"Well!" his uncle bellowed, his face turning an even nastier shade of purple as he received no answer from his nephew.

On a split decision Vernon began to make his way to the back door, slamming it open and marching into the kitchen to see his wife busily scrubbing down the kitchen work tops. Everything had to look perfect for their guests tonight after all.

"Vernon?" she questioned as he stormed past her.

"Later Pet," he told her. "I need to deal with the freak first." He said the word 'freak' as if it was the foulest curse word he knew. Petunia looked at her nephew and her eyes narrowed.

"What did he do this time?" she questioned.

"I'll explain later," Vernon replied before making his way into the living room. He removed the fine rug from the center of the floor before dropping his nephew heavily onto the cold, hard, wooden floor.

Harry had blocked most of the next hour out of his memory. The only thing he could remember after that was Vernon tossing him into his cupboard. He was glad for that small mercy at least. He wasn't sure how long he had been unconscious.

Suddenly he heard the sound of the doorbell ringing. He forced himself not to jump, that would only make the pain force. He'd learned that from experience.

The sound of thunder assaulted his young ears so he guessed that his uncle was coming down the stairs, no doubt having been looking through one of the up stairs windows to get a glance at their guests before they actually entered the house.

Carefully Harry raised himself off his dirty mattress and kneeled beside the door. His legs shook slightly but he paid them no heed as he carefully looked through the tiny peep hole in the door. He often used this little peep hole when his family had visitors and they didn't want Harry to be seen. At least he could get a look at the people entering the house.

He heard the sound of the front door opening and his uncle greeting the new comers.

"Mr and Mrs Kurosaki!" he half bellowed. "Wonderful to meet you. My name is Vernon Dursley. Please come in." The sound of many footsteps came from the other side of the cupboard door before the front entrance was closed. The family was now in the house.

"Thank you Mr. Dursley," came a light, musical voice from the doorway. Harry guessed that it was Mrs. Kurosaki. "I hope you don't mind but we brought our children with us. We were unable to find a suitable caretaker for them during this meeting."

"No problem at all!" his uncle replied jovially. "I have a son myself, Dudley. What are their names?"

"Our oldest is Ichigo. He's five while our two younger daughters are two. Their names are Yuzu and Karin. Karin has the darker hair," explained Mrs. Kurosaki. Harry could clearly hear the affection in her voice as she talked about her children. It was somehow different to what his aunt and Uncle said regarding their own son, certainly a lot different from the way they treated him too.

Soon his uncle and the Kurosakis were walking past his cupboard. Harry noticed through his little hole that the boy, Ichigo, had bright hair. It looked orange in the dim hall light. The two younger girls were holding hands and walking beside their mother. Her face was too high up for Harry to get a good few but she had long hair. One girl had light brown hair while the other had black. The father was a little shorter than the female and he had black hair and dark eyes. He gave off a playful nature. Just before passing the cupboard the orange haired boy, Ichigo, turned his head and seemed to look straight at Harry. The black haired boy's eyes widened. There was no way that Ichigo could see him was there? And yet the amber eyes were completely locked with Harry's emerald ones.

Soon everyone except Harry was gathered in the kitchen and the smell of food and the noise of casual conversation reached his ears.

-o0o-

Ichigo followed his parents into the house. He studied them as his mother introduced them all in English. He'd begun to learn it in school but he couldn't really understand what was being said.

His mother ruffled his hair as his name was mentioned and he looked up at her, giving her a smile.

As they made their way into the house Ichigo looked around. The first thing that he noticed was that the place was far too clean. What did they do all day? Just sit clean the house?

As he passed the cupboard under the stairs he looked at it. He thought he saw something. There it was. Two green shapes in the dark. They looked like eyes. He felt his eyes lock with the pair under the stairs. Who was that?

Soon they were all gathered in the living room. He looked around and saw a lot of pictures of a fat kid about his age. There were some photos of when the kid was younger but he ignored them for the moment. He noticed, yet again, that the room was spotlessly clean. Did these people have an obsession with cleanliness or something? It was beginning to look like it.

Soon the big man's wife and the kid in the photos came into the room. The kid looked bigger in real life than he did in the photos and the woman was tall and bony with a horse shaped face. He privately thought that she wasn't nearly as nice looking as his mother.

Soon they were all gathered around the dining room table and the adults were having their own conversation, leaving the children to their own devices for the moment. Ichigo looked around again. There were plenty of pictures of Dudley, the fat boy, but there were no other pictures. Who did those green eyes under the stairs belong to?

He looked around again. The fat kid was wailing about something and the horse faced woman was trying to keep him quiet by giving him a plate of ice-cream. It was the biggest plate of ice-cream that Ichigo had ever seen. It made him slightly sick to look at it actually. How could anyone eat so much?

He looked at his mother and quietly asked if he could go to the bathroom. He didn't want to watch Dudley eat the ice-cream.

His mom relayed the message to horse-face and was given instructions. She repeated them to him and he smiled and began to make his way to the bathroom. He entered the room and as he expected it was completely spotless. This was just creepy.

Soon he was finished and making his way back down the stairs. He paused when he reached the bottom and peered carefully into the cupboard, looking through the tiny crack from which he'd glimpsed the green eyes. As he got closer he noticed a smell that he'd not noticed before. It was slightly faint, covered over by layers of spray. It was sweet and slightly sickly was a bitter tang. He recognized that smell. It was blood.

He rushed back to the dining room where the adults were talking and immediately went for his father. His mom was great but his dad was a doctor. If there was blood then he'd know what to do. He always knew what to do when there was blood.

-o0o-

Harry heard the sound of light footsteps pass his cupboard. He looked through the tiny hole and noticed that it was the boy, Ichigo, coming down from the bathroom. He hadn't noticed him to upstairs but that wasn't really surprising. He'd curled up on his mattress when he couldn't understand what the adults were talking about. His body really hurt this time. His uncle had been rougher than usual.

He heard Ichigo say something to the adults but he didn't recognize the words that were spoken. His aunt had said that the guests were Japanese. He'd looked that up in the school library.

His teachers said that he was pretty smart for his age, smarter than his cousin anyways. He'd been thrilled at that, until his aunt and uncle found out about it that is. He'd received a beating when his and Dudley's report cards had come home and he'd scored much higher than his cousin. Lets just say that he made sure to always do worse than his cousin in school from now on. Out of school was another story however. He spent as much time as he could in the library reading. It was one of the only places that he was safe from Dudley and his gang as they did not want to set foot inside the building. Harry couldn't understand why though. He loved the library, but I digress.

Anyway, Harry had looked up Japan in the library. It was only a children's dictionary but it had been enough to get him curious. He'd spent the next few hours of his time looking up Japan in the library. He was fascinated. It sounded like an amazing place to the five year old. He wished he could go there.

Footsteps brought him back to the present and he sensed that there were people outside his cupboard door. Then he heard his uncle's voice.

"There is no blood in this house, the boy must be imagining things," His uncle was saying.

"I don't think so," came the voice of Mrs. Kurosaki. "I can smell it also. It is rather hard to miss when you concentrate on it. Now Ichi, where did you say the smell was coming from?"

Small steps came closer to his cupboard and something tapped against the door, a hand perhaps?

"Are you sure Ichi?" asked Mr. Kurosaki.

Ichigo must have nodded because Harry heard the sound of the lock on the outside of the door being unlocked.

"Now see here," his uncle began. "This is my house! You have no right to search it."

"And I am a doctor," said Mr. Kurosaki. "It is my right as a doctor to investigate anything that looks suspicious. A locked door and the smell of blood is pretty damn suspicious to me now move out of my way!"

The last part was accompanied by the noise of something being shoved out of the way. Finally the door to the cupboard was opened.

Harry lifted his arm to shield his eyes to the bright light. He heard gasps from the woman and he suddenly felt a shadow over him. He opened his eyes and found himself staring into the amber eyes from earlier. The eyes of Ichigo Kurosaki. Soon Ichigo was pushed out of the way by his father who immediately began to study Harry carefully.

"Now see here!" his uncle said again. "I demand you leave at once!"

"Oh, don't worry Mr. Dursley," said Mrs. Kurosaki. Her voice was cold enough to freeze liquid nitrogen. "We plan on leaving. And we're taking this boy with us. You are clearly not fit to take care of him."

"You will do no such thing!" came his aunt's shrill cry from the kitchen. "The freak will stay here!"

"Why do you call him a freak?" asked Mrs. Kurosaki. "Is he not your family?"

"That brat is no family of mine!" his aunt spat. "He's the spawn of my disgusting freak sister! She and her useless oaf of a husband went and got themselves killed and we got saddled with the brat! I swore to get rid of that freakishness when we took him in!"

"Freakishness?" Mr. Kurosaki asked, still concentrating on Harry. The five year old could feel himself beginning to lose consciousness from the blood loss. Why did he feel so heavy?

Meanwhile Isshin Kurosaki's mind was racing. Freakishness? Did that mean that the boy could see spirits? If so then that would explain a lot. The boy seemed to have an aura of reiatsu around him but it was wild and un-accessed, like Ichigo's at the moment. It looked like it would be strong though. The child would be gifted, that was a certainty. He had to get the kid out of here.

The injuries were bad. It was a miracle that the child was still alive let alone awake. The bright green eyes were looking around, first studying him then his wife and finally settling on Ichigo. Ichigo smiled at the green eyed boy and Isshin was surprised when the green eyed boys' lips twitched upwards slightly before he closed his eyes.

"We're taking him," Isshin said with finality as he stood up, child bundled in his arms. "Masaki, grab Karin and Yuzu. Ichigo, follow me to the car."

His son did as asked and together they made their way to the rental car with his wife and daughters behind him. Masaki put Karin and Yuzu into the back of the rental car while Ichigo climbed into the other side. Masaki climbed into the driver's side. Isshin would hold the child in his arms until they reached the nearest hospital. He wanted the child checked out as quickly as possible.

A bellow was heard behind him and he turned to see Vernon Dursley at the front door with Petunia just behind him.

"Fine!" Vernon bellowed. "But don't expect to bring the freak back here! If you take him you deal with him. He's nothing but trouble!"

"We'll be the judges of that," Isshin said coldly before climbing into the car and almost slamming the door shut.

Soon the family were on the road heading for the closest hospital. Isshin looked down at the bundle in his arms. He would take care of this child. There was no doubt about that in his mind.

In the back seat Ichigo was having similar thoughts. He'd seen the black haired boy first. He'd felt something when their eyes had met. He wasn't sure what it had been but there was one thing he knew for sure. He was going to protect him. No matter what.

His mom always said that when something was important to you then you should do all you can to protect it. The bundle in his dads arms was important to him. He wasn't sure how or why he felt this way but he did and nothing was going to change his mind.

Harry Potter was now a part of the family.