Once upon a time he had believed that finally, he had found friends.

True friends. Lifelong Companions. Someone to rely on and who relied on him.

'Friends', a term so unfamiliar that until a few years ago the word had been naught but an abstract concept, to be desired and envied from afar, especially knowing that someone like him would only ever get the opportunity to look at it from the outside, allowed to see while never a part of it. A sad fact, nevertheless one that he had surrendered to.

But then … everything changed. Slowly, one by one, he had gained friends, people that allowed him into their space and lives, peers who welcomed his presence and even seemed to genuinely enjoy spending time with him instead of being annoyed and repulsed. Suddenly, he didn't spend all his time at home, playing video games and reading mangas'. Hell, he didn't even need to hide behind closed doors anymore, fearing what new kind of cruel game his bullies had thought of know.

Someone stood up for him.

And they gave him the push to stand up for himself.

It was amazing.

He found himself enamoured with the belief that the people which now surrounded him, those treasured ones he actually, unbelievingly, shared a mutual relationship of fondness and respect with, that those cherished few hearts he held as close as humanely possible - would be his forever. They awoke possessiveness, greed, in him, that he never knew he possessed. Intense, fierce, terrifying. And he took relish in guarding them like a dragon protected his horde, those people he regarded as his friends, not as subordinates or minions, not as guardians or elements, but simply friends.

Maybe even Family.

So, slowly but surely, he opened his heart to them.

And invited pain.

Torrents of pain.

Such a crippling pain …

And more and more, those moments he cherished started to feel like a small death.

Was the pain worth the gain?

Once, Tsuna had heard a proverb about love and pain belonging together, entwined so tightly that there was neither end nor beginning to either, and that where love called home pain inevitably followed, that the pain that would take hold was but a small price to pay for the precious love one was gifted with.

So why, if they were intertwined, if neither could be without the other, why had his acceptance to let love into his heart brought only pain, while the love he so yearned for left without a word – without a second of hesitation.

Like a fleeting breeze, it caressed him and dissipated.

Leaving pain, pain, pain.

Maybe it was a lesson he had been long overdue.

But no matter why or how, this was one lesson he mercilessly engraved into his own heart, with every observed spec of cruelty he had learned over the years while his schoolmates tormented him, he burned them into his memory, committing the moments that tore him apart into his mind and soul like an unforgiving and unforgettable brand; every little bit that made him falter and stumble, that bend and bled and broke him - he never let go of them.

Because the ones that dealt the true blows, that took him apart and watched as the shattered remains were trodden down and kicked around, were not his old schoolmates, or the people on the street, not strangers he actually couldn't care less about.

No.

The ones succeeding were years of bullying mostly failed, were the ones he let into his heart and soul.

After all, it was the truest lesson he was ever taught.

Love was foolish.

And a fool, despite appearance lending itself otherwise, Tsuna wouldn't suffer needlessly.

Not even himself.

„ Dame-Tsuna, don't be so selfish. This is an opportunity your guardians need to take, and you only have yourself to blame that the same can't be extended to you. If you had worked harder you would join them. Now your guardians will be able to undertake the best training and education possible to protect you from the Family's enemies and help you lead Vongola in the future. You will stay here and finish at Namimori High. It will hopefully work better without your guardians acting as a distraction. Besides, without them there no one will recognize you as the future Decimo. I will also be elsewhere seeing as Nono has drafted my help with something different. This is the best route we can take for everyone. Don't complain and better yourself, if you don't want to be a complete laughing stock and waste of space. I won't accept you dragging my name through the mood by remaining such a no-good loser."

A teacher that had expectations but never took the time to look at his student and see who he actually was supposed to teach.

Well, hell. Why should the hitman do so, when after all the only aspect of this so-called training Reborn cared about were the results – meaning, cutting Tsuna down into a Mafia Boss despite his clear protests?

Tsuna was merely another job.

Not a person.

„ Jyuudaime, I'm so excited for this. It's an incredible, and amazing opportunity. To study at Mafia Academy and become an even better right hand man. I will do my best to make you proud, and I'm sure soon you will be able to do the same. I mean, it's not for too long, and sooner than you think, you will join us. You can even work on your Italian beforehand, I know you will get it. And when you come to Italy, let's see how your Italian has come along, si? I'm sure Jyuudaime will be even more amazing."

Hayato …

Hell, all of them. Takashi, Ryohei, Lambo, Kyouya, Chrome and Mukuro.

If they cared about him, they would listen, they would understand. How much louder would he need to scream it out, the simple fucking fact that he hated the Mafia? That he never wanted to be Decimo?

Why was it that nowadays their friendship only seemed to be mutual when they benefited from it?

… really, 'to become a better right hand man'?

He needed a best friend. He thought Hayato was it.

Shows what he knows.

… but he should have suspected. Really.

The silvernette still hadn't called him by his name. Only his supposed title.

How telling.

„ I'll await favourable results soon, Tsunayoshi-kun.I won't accept anything else from my heir, and the sooner you get your grades up, the sooner you can join your guardians in Italy."

Expectations. Expectations. Expectations.

Even the most basic of social relations was corrupted by expectations that only benefitted one party of the equation while thoroughly destroying the other.

Friends and family.

Somehow, Tsuna doubted that it was supposed to be like this.

Besides.

'Join them in Italy?'

He didn't want to move to Italy.

And then …

… the day came …

… and they left.

Just like that.

A few platitudes, a bit of sweet talking, guilt-tripping and gas lighting, and … he was alone. Just like that. Again.

How … utterly unsurprising.

And didn't that hurt even more? That their actions brought pain but no surprise? He should be used to disappointment.

His friends left him behind in Japan, without a backwards glance, pursuing their dreams in Italy, never even thinking about how he felt about the fact that they decreed his life choices for him as if his thoughts and feelings didn't matter at all. For them, he was more of a symbol, a means to an end, but not … not real. Not a person with thoughts and desires of his own. Once he had thought differently, once he would have believed that if he only worked hard enough he could save their friendship, but the last few months preparing for their departure had taught him better. He had tried to be a good friend, to be the better man and be happy for them … but every cutting remark clad in oblivious disinterest, every thoughtless hurtful act those selfish fools made in reality only drove the truth deeper home: „ It was what he represented, not who he was, that held their love, loyalty and friendship."

It wasn't Tsuna they liked and wanted around them.

It was what his undesirable connections afforded them.

Vongola. Mafia. Blood and Greed.

The sin of his blood. The bane of his existence.

The ass-holes who fixed him on the idea of friends and family, who gave him hope to hold on to, only to cut him loose, so that he could grow. Really, how often does „sink or swim" actually gets the intended results?

Rarely.

Mostly, you got the opposite.

And despite Reborn's beliefs, Tsuna had actually understood what was happening. It made him furious.

A different kind of furious than anything he had ever felt before.

Not Mukuro, nor Xanxus or Byakuran, not even the Shimon or Kawahira-Oji manage to ignite this kind of deep loathing in him.

His fury was cold.

Colder than ice, and deeper than any chasm.

It was with that crushing feeling in his chest that he watched them leave, all those he cared for but his dizzy mother leaving him. His eyes were curiously dry.

He watched those backs in growing distance, watched the excitement and laughter.

Happiness. Not an ounce of regret. Not one glance back.

His eyes remained dry and empty. He didn't say anything.

Let them.

Let them go.

It was their decision.

And as he watched those he had considered his most precious treasure turn their backs on him, he made his own decision.

He decided to completely let them go. And everything they stood for.

It was freeing.

Life went on.

Tsuna focused on school with surprising success – for his definition of it.

On ignoring the instantaneous return of his bullies.

On smothering the creeping coldness his friends betrayal still awoke when he cleaned his bully-made cuts.

On not acknowledging how empty his life suddenly was.

On lying to himself about how much his mother careless remarks and disinterest hurt.

So yes, life went on.

Until, one day, it imploded.

A life built on a lie would always be in jeopardy of collapsing like a card house.

All it took was one card shaken, one tremor to bring it all down.

He didn't get a simple tremor.

He got an earthquake.

„ My name is Harry Potter. I know you have no idea who I am, and honestly, I just learned about you myself. We are cousins. And I will admit, I looked into you before coming here, just to know if I would completely disrupt your life … which I hopefully will do in a good way. Because Tsunayoshi-kun, I hope you will consider maybe coming with me to England. I think you and I will be able to give each other the most important thing in the world. A family to call our own, no strings attached, just - belonging. Would you at least be amiable to talk about that?"

Tsuna blinked into those green green honest eyes, behind slim-rimed golden glasses, that held nothing but warmth and care … apparently for him.

It was magnetic. He couldn't look away. For the first time ever, he saw absolute sincerity.

There was no barrier there, no subterfuge meant to blind him, this was something else entirely – and it hurt that he couldn't name it. That at that moment, he couldn't even recognize the sincere compassion and understanding behind the stranger's eyes, a gaze way to knowing and understanding starring into his dimmed orange eyes. And Tsuna – he gave up pretending.

This man said he had looked into him. Looked into his life. Which meant that he most likely knew about – well, too much. His friends, his mom, his dad, the school, the bullies … it was so much to deal with alone, especially when you had a taste of leaning on someone.

Of mattering – only to suddenly, don't.

This man's eyes said it all. And suddenly, there – it was as if a dam was breaking, and everything just – escaped.

No holding in. No holding back.

Here was someone who said that they were family. That he could have a home.

And for no other reason than their apparently shared blood.

He didn't lead with expectations, he didn't try to blackmail or threaten him to do something – didn't come knocking under false pretence. Here was someone, who truly was kind and honest with him, who wanted to give Tsuna a home where the people cared about him - and Tsuna? Wanted, he wanted that like he scarcely ever wanted anything before.

Just – just maybe, this time, he wouldn't have to lose himself by opening his heart.

Could he dare?

The Vongola were Family to. They shared blood to. They dangled family and friendship before his nose. And they bloodied him in a way that scarred him permanently. Was he willing to take another of those risks? To break his resolution to let go of foolishness like love and friendship. He had been doing so well …

… or at least, he had been able to lie to himself really well.

In reality?… he wasn't doing all that well. He really wasn't.

And this man – he was different than anyone Vongola had set in his path. Tsuna didn't understand how, but he knew.

It was too much.

Against any sanity, he couldn't stop the sob escaping his constricting throat as he closed his eyes, the burning welling up behind his lids uncontrollable. Wry strong arms caught his shaking shoulders and held him against a strong slender chest.

It was the hand caressing through his hair though that really did him in and opened the flood as he buried his face in the neck of a man he had never met before … that instinctively felt more like home and family and protection than anyone ever had.

He could barely nod through the shaking of his body but this man seemed to understand because his hug strengthened noticeably.

„Welcome home, Tsunayoshi."

They talked.

About their lives.

About family.

About lies and truth.

And Tsuna made a decision.

Tsuna learned that the man who gave him his first hug in over a year was not only named Harry Potter, but that he was Lord Potter and Regent Black in a world that not many knew of anymore.

A hidden realm. The Magical World.

He learned that they were cousins through Harry's grandmother and Tsuna's birth mother, and that their relation was cemented by the fact that Harry's godfather, his padrino, was Tsuna's biological uncle, the brother of his mother. He learned of a magical world, so beautiful and terrible it was just exactly like the mundane world, filled with wonders and magic that made your head spin, your heart lurch and that enchanted you so thoroughly, you were lost. And that this beauty was marred by the memories and remnants of a war not even a decade ago won by his cousin. He learned of his own magical potential, of how his apparent abandonment by his father's family made the Japanese Ministry act and contact his birth mother's remaining family, of which Harry was the closest adult relative acceptable and capable of taking him in.

Apparently, as long as Vongola had staked a claim on him, the ministry couldn't act, couldn't contact him in any way that would still uphold the Statute of Secrecy. The mafia wasn't allowed to know about the magical world, their greed and violence to well-known even among those hidden enclaves to allow the men and women of the underworld entrance. The memory of the witch hunts was still too fresh.

Wizards and Witches were too long-lived to forget that soon.

Normally, he would have been contacted before his eleventh birthday and started attending the Japanese Equivalent of Hogwarts at eleven. The fact that Vongola was watching him then made that impossible. But once the Mafia had left him alone as completely as they did, essentially abandoning him, he was considered a normal underage wizard in need of a competent magical guardian.

He was confronted with the reality that his birth mother was a hidden Metamorphmagus, a magical shape-shifter, who could change completely, right down to his gender and reproductive organs. Hell, the one fact that completely broke his world view was neither magic nor a different world existing all-together, but rather the fact that his Kaa-chan wasn't actually his mother – fuck, the woman he had always called Kaa-Chan didn't even want or like him at all.

He was forced to accept the first betrayal his father committed, mere hours after Tsuna's birth: robbing him of the unconditionally loving mother he would never meet before he died, and throwing him into the arms of his father's former assassin-fiancée, who was nowadays so dazed with his sperm donors hidden Mist flames that she believed the child she once wanted to kill was her own.

He faced the future he could have, the possibilities laying ahead of him.

His own name.

His true name.

It was that which clinched it for him.

He wouldn't cling to the past.

Not onto the woman who he had believed to have been his mother, but who deep down enjoyed watching him suffer – and wasn't that a heart-shattering realisation, that her dismissive air-headedness was actually suppressed glee at his pain and loneliness? Harry had held him while he cried himself to sleep many nights after that discovery, after he had seen a few memories for himself.

Not onto his former friends who couldn't be bothered to call, or return his calls, not even once a month.

No, the future was there, his to take, and he only needed to choose to take it into his own hands. Seeing all that had once been hidden from him by those who should have protected and cherished him laid out like that …

Any hesitation or regret fell away. They had abandoned him first, he was doing nothing more than saving himself from the ruins they left behind. Actually washing his hands of Vongola and all they entailed – mentor, father, pseudo-brothers, friends – was just as easily done as it was said.

It was in the wake of this resolution to not beg like a dog for the past to return, that Sawada Tsunayoshi, the future Vongola Decimo, Dame-Tsuna, Tsu-Kun, Tuna-fishy, Jyuudaime, Boss, Tsu-nii – died.

… and from his ashes rose the Lord Heir Apparent, Only son of the late Regulus Arcturus Black, Izar Cygnus Black.

Five years without contact.

And suddenly, there it was.

A whisper. A piece of paper. A phone call.

Ring. Ring. Ring. Does your memory jingle?

They wanted him back.

Vongola needed him.

The guardians were ready to serve, the Famiglia in desperate demand of their heir.

The problem?

Izar Black was many things, but not a fool, and the first lesson his cousin Harry had taught him?

Dead-weight needs to go.

No compromises.

~ The End of Part I. Anyone interested in Part II? ~