Reign of Ice

Chapter One: A Legend Dawns

The two Shinigami walked slowly down the street towards the wrecked house. One, a blonde woman with an insanely large bust, flicked her hair out of her face and pouted, "Man, this guy Voldemort is a real pain. We've been deployed out here thousands of times in the last few years. What do you think Renji?"

Her companion, a tall man with a tattooed forehead, a pair of sunglasses and spiky red hair, nodded, "I agree, Rangiku. Do you think we should employ the Stealth Force to take him down?"

Rangiku didn't respond; instead she concentrated on the wrecked house ahead and frowned slightly. "I can feel traces of reiryoku in that house. There's someone still alive in there." She twitched slightly, "And I can feel that guy Voldemort's reiatsu. It's not much, but it's definitely there."

Renji frowned, putting a hand to the side of his head, "You're right. It's not much, almost as much as it would be if the guy just died here."

The two Shinigami glanced at each other for a moment before quickening their pace.

-RoI-

They found the source of the reiatsu upstairs in a small bedroom. A young baby boy lay in a cot, a large lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. Rangiku leaned over him and reached out to pick him up, but she heard Renji's voice behind her, "Leave him. It isn't our place to interfere with the living."

Rangiku sighed, "But Renji, he's an orphan now! We saw his father downstairs and this woman must be his mother!" She pointed to the dead redhead on the ground.

Renji shrugged, "All the same, The Captain-Commander would have our hides if we interfered with any of the living, and taking the kid would count towards that. Now let's get going!"

Rangiku sighed, "Ok, fine." She reached out and caressed the boy's cheek one last time before turning to follow Renji from the room, not noticing the glow emanating from the point of contact between her hand and the baby boy's cheek.

An enormous amount of reiatsu exploded into being in the room, driving both Shinigami to their knees and the wind from their lungs. Rangiku managed to gasp, "What… is that?" before she collapsed completely, ending up face-down on the rubble-strewn floor of the room. Or rather, as face-down as somebody of her, ahem, stature could get.

After what felt like a few hours, but was in fact only a few minutes, the reiatsu faded, allowing both of them to get up. Renji coughed, "…Where did that come from?"

Rangiku, being the more spiritually sensitive of the two, glanced back at the bed, "From him. For such a young kid, he's got an awfully large amount of reiatsu. It's not as much as Captain Zaraki of the Eleventh Division, but I don't think anybody can match him."

Renji fiddled with his sunglasses for a long moment before he sighed, "Alright. Grab the brat and let's get moving."

Rangiku scowled, "He's not a brat; you're just getting grumpy because he's only a year or so old and he still managed to knock you on your can with just his reiatsu!"

Renji growled, "Rangiku! Grab the kid and let's get the hell out of here before anybody else turns up!"

Rangiku nodded, quickly grabbing some blankets from the cupboard beside the boy's bed and gently wrapping the child in them. He began to cry as she picked him up, but as soon as she hugged him close to her chest he snuggled his tiny head into her cleavage and fell asleep again.

Renji chuckled, "Wow, only about a year old and already a pervert. You're going to be a real menace to society in about a decade kid!"

Rangiku scowled, "Open the Senkaimon, I can't open it with this kid in my hands!"

Renji smirked, but drew his Zanpakutō and opened the Senkaimon. The pair of them stepped into it, the doors closed and Harry Potter disappeared from the world of the living.

As the gates closed entirely, Rubeus Hagrid entered the room just in time to see them start to disappear. He stared as they began to vanish, before finally deciding that Dumbledore needed to know about this, and very soon.

Turning, he left the room at a speed which didn't suit his physique.

-RoI-

Ten years later.

The two Zanpakutō clashed together, time and time again. Finally, the taller one leapt backwards away from the younger one's slash and held up a hand, causing him to pause, "What's wrong, Uncle Kenny?"

Kenpachi Zaraki stared down at the boy before him, "Hitsugaya, it is time to stop training for the day."

Tōshirō Hitsugaya, formerly Harry Potter, looked up at his surrogate uncle with a sulky pout, "I don't want to stop. I want to keep training!"

Kenpachi chuckled, "Sure you do, kid. Let's go, you've got Kidō class with Captain Unohana in twenty minutes."

Tōshirō sighed for a long moment before he said, "Fine… I'll see you later Uncle Kenny, Yachiru-chan!"

The small pink-haired girl emerged from behind her captain to give her friend a hug, "See you tomorrow, Tōshirō-chan!"

The boy grinned, hugging her back as some of his silvery locks fell into his eyes. When he had been brought to the Soul Society ten years ago, a side-effect of being brought through a Senkaimon not equipped with a reishi converter had turned Tōshirō's hair silver-white.

After saying goodbye, Tōshirō ran off across the Squad 11 compound towards the gates. He passed a gang of Squad 11 members halfway there, who playfully chased him for about five hundred metres before giving up on the nimble ten-year-old.

Tōshirō was well known in the Soul Society, mainly because he wasn't yet attached to any one squad but was always hanging about the separate captains and learning from them. Some of the squads, namely the Eleventh, Fourth and Second, particularly liked having him around. Everybody found the idea that Soifon, the ice-cold commander of the Stealth Force, being a doting surrogate mother to be utterly hilarious.

Retsu Unohana was sitting in her office when she heard the door slide back and looked up. She smiled happily when she saw Tōshirō Hitsugaya standing in the doorway. "Hello, Tōshirō. How was your lesson with Captain Zaraki?"

"It was great, Auntie Retsu! I'm starting to be able to actually keep up with him without getting kicked repeatedly in the face!"

Unohana smiled, "That's good, Captain Zaraki is one of the best with Zanjutsu in the Soul Society and he has been such for many years. That you can keep up with him, even for a short time, is a huge achievement on your part."

Tōshirō beamed happily for a moment before he sat down opposite her and said, "So, what am I learning today?"

Unohana laughed; a softly musical sound that few, if any, had heard in the Soul Society. Tōshirō had an odd ability to make anybody expose their true selves around him, which was one of the reasons why Soifon and Byakuya Kuchiki of Squad 6 actually thawed out around him. "I'm going to go back over the healing Kidō I've already taught you and see how you do. If you do well enough, I might look at possibly finding you somebody to practice on, but that will only be if you do exceptionally well. As you know I won't have the Fourth Division's good name sullied for malpractice."

Tōshirō nodded obediently, understanding what Unohana was trying to say to him. With healing Kidō, there could be no mistakes as you often had a person's life in your hands.

Before they could start, however, there was a cry of pain from another room. Both of them jumped up and hurried to the door.

They found the source of the cry three doors down from Unohana's office, in a room which was commonly used to store medical texts. Isane Kotetsu, Unohana's lieutenant and another woman who doted on Tōshirō when she saw him, was lying on her back on the ground, moaning with pain. She had evidently overbalanced on the ladder which lay next to her and fallen backwards, hitting her head on the edge of the desk behind her and then landing with her full weight on her back.

Unohana gave her a quick check-up before helping her sit upright and smiling at Tōshirō, "It seems fate has given us an opportunity for you to prove your skill, Tōshirō."

The ten-year-old nodded, crouching down behind Isane and placing one hand on her back, directly between her shoulder blades like Unohana had taught him. Closing his eyes so that he could concentrate, he channelled his reiryoku into Isane's back, causing the tall woman to shiver slightly at the simultaneously cold and warm feeling of his reiatsu.

Unohana watched closely as an aura of pale azure reiryoku appeared around Tōshirō's hand and he shifted it slowly down Isane's back, stopping an inch or two above her tailbone and blushing furiously as he realized what he was doing. Closing his eyes again to get his concentration back, he slowly brought his hand back up Isane's spine, before reaching out with his other hand and setting it on the back of her head.

Retsu Unohana's eyes actually widened. She herself was a master of healing Kidō, but she still needed both hands and her utmost concentration to be able to heal even the smallest wounds. Tōshirō was not only healing two injuries at once, but dividing his attention equally between them and from what she could see, succeeding.

After a couple of minutes he sat back, smiling slightly. Isane flexed her back and turned her head experimentally before smiling, "Good as new. Thank you, Tōshirō-san!"

Tōshirō simply smiled happily at her. Retsu looked down at the small boy next to her and shivered, how strong was he?

-RoI-

She dismissed Tōshirō fifteen minutes later, citing that if he was now capable of healing multiple wounds at once without breaking concentration she really had nothing else to teach him.

Nemu Kurotsuchi met him as he walked away from the Fourth Division barracks, as she was currently on the way there to drop off some medical texts that her captain had been researching to see if they could be improved.

The girl had, by order of Yamamoto, started teaching Tōshirō about the various tools the Soul Society used since he was eight years old. The day she started was also the day he met Mayuri Kurotsuchi, and a problem had quickly arisen; namely that as all the captains knew of his origins, and Mayuri was very eager to study this concept known as "magic". Yamamoto had been very concerned when Tōshirō had turned up crying in his office with his arm bleeding from several puncture marks where Mayuri had forcibly taken samples of his blood to experiment on. Yamamoto, ever protective of the child he saw as a surrogate grandson, had ordered Kurotsuchi to destroy the samples he had taken and all research associated with them, before forbidding him from contact with Tōshirō and instructing him to have his lieutenant teach him instead, since the captain of Squad 12 obviously could not be trusted with Tōshirō.

After much grumbling, which was followed by being both crushed against the floor and burnt to a crisp by the irate Captain-Commander's fiery reiatsu, Mayuri had consented for Nemu to teach Tōshirō and simply resorted to staying away from the boy whenever he was around the Twelfth Division. This didn't work out quite as well as he'd hoped it would; mainly because it turned out that "the brat", as he called Tōshirō, had developed a crush on his lieutenant, and whenever he was within earshot of Mayuri whenever he insulted Nemu, either calling her "dull-witted" or "slow", he would usually receive a very hard kick in the shins. Mayuri had been forced to admit that even though the kid was so small, he kicked harder than a foul-tempered mule. It didn't help that he usually ended up being taken to task by the ten-year-old in front of his entire squad, who usually contributed to his irritation by the amount of stifled snickers in the background.

Nemu smiled at Tōshirō as he ran up to her. Considering the emotionless husk she had been, the attitude adjustment was a big improvement. Unohana, concerned that the girl's personality was all but nonexistent and worried that it might have a negative effect on Tōshirō by extension, had asked Mayuri if he would consent to give her a personality of her own. The man had refused. Unohana had simply smiled, opened her eyes, and asked again. The man had crumbled in an instant from the unbridled killing intent radiating from the petite woman. He may have been an intimidating fellow, but Unohana was pretty much the only captain who could kill him without leaving so much as a trace of what she had done behind. Now Nemu was a lively, happy girl with a gentle and sweet personality.

"Hello, Tōshirō-san," she said as the boy approached, grinning broadly, "How are you today?"

"Brilliant, Nemu-chan!" he replied, "Auntie Retsu says she can't teach me anything else about healing Kidō at this point and I can actually keep up with Uncle Kenny in sparring now!"

Nemu smiled, beckoning to the boy with one hand before using it to steady the pile of texts in her arms, "That's excellent, Tōshirō-san. Come, I have to drop off these scrolls and then I'm free for the day. Where are you going next?"

"Auntie Soifon's, she said I could start Shunpō!"

Nemu smiled even wider, shifting the pile slightly so that she could ruffle the boy's hair, "Alright then, I'll walk you there."

Tōshirō nodded happily before moving up closer, "Can I help you carry those?"

Nemu's response was to crouch, take about eight of the texts off the pile and hand them to him. He gathered them in his arms cheerfully, before standing up and waiting for her to rise.

Unohana was pleased to have the medical texts back, and immediately went off to the private library to put them back where they came from while Nemu walked Tōshirō over to the Second Division barracks.

Soifon was happy to see him, laughing when he spotted her lieutenant chewing his way through a bag of fried rice crackers and filching it right out of his hands while he was looking at him.

Marechiyo Ōmaeda wasn't a man who let his guard down much. Inside his own barracks however, where nobody was likely to attack him, he couldn't possibly be blamed for letting down his guard. Therefore Ōmaeda was understandably confused when he reached into his bag of food, only to find said bag gone. Looking around to find it, he finally spotted the Hitsugaya boy standing next to Soifon, happily chewing on a cracker from the bag.

Embarrassed by the fact that he had just been robbed under his very nose (literally) by a ten-year-old boy when he was a lieutenant of the Thirteen Court Guard Squads and irritated by the snickering coming from the squad members and Onmitsukidō training nearby, he immediately charged forwards to regain his lost snacks.

Once again, Tōshirō Hitsugaya proved himself a talented pupil for the thirteen captains as he sidestepped Ōmaeda's charge, tripped him up so that he landed face-down on the ground, and then sat on his back. To add insult to injury, the boy cheekily finished off the crackers before upturning the bag, placing it daintily on the lieutenant's head like a floppy hat and hopping off.

Ōmaeda rose, covered in crumbs and utterly humiliated by the pint-sized Shinigami-in-training, turning to face him with a very ugly look on his face. Soifon put a stop to his bloody thoughts about revenge by saying, "Touch him, Ōmaeda, and I will kill you."

Ōmaeda glared at the boy for a long moment before snorting with derision and turning away sulkily. Soifon turned to the boy cheerfully, "Right, now if I recall you wished to learn Shunpō?"

Tōshirō nodded eagerly. Soifon chuckled at his eagerness, "Ok, here is what you have to do…"

-RoI-

A hell butterfly fluttered through the window of Yamamoto's office, landing atop the old man's desk. He looked down, picking up the small creature on his finger. The message was immediately relayed to him.

My old friend,

We need to talk urgently concerning Tōshirō/Harry.

Albus.

Yamamoto sat back in his chair, remembering a day long ago when Tōshirō had first arrived in the Soul Society, then a baby only a year old with an insane amount of reiatsu that had driven two lieutenant-class Shinigami to their knees, one flat to the floor.

Yamamoto had been sitting in his office when an equally old and bearded man appeared before him. "Albus," he said, directing his lieutenant to get the man a chair before leaving, "What can I do for you?"

Albus Dumbledore sat in the chair, wincing slightly as his old bones protested, "Genryūsai, my old friend and colleague, I find myself in need of a favour."

"Then speak."

"Well, it concerns a child that was brought to the Soul Society a little while ago."

"Yes, I recall that little one. He was brought in by Renji Abarai of Squad Six and Rangiku Matsumoto of Squad Ten, they said he had a large amount of reiatsu."

"He does? Oh well. I'm afraid I must return him to the World of the Living, Genryūsai."

"Why? Why must he return?"

"You know of Lord Voldemort?"

"Yes, he's been causing the Thirteen Court Guard Squads no end of trouble since he rose to power. Apparently they've been performing Konsō left and right out there."

"Well, Voldemort fell three nights ago… and the boy that your lieutenants brought back is the one who did it."

"Excuse me?"

"That baby's real name is Harry James Potter… and he is the saviour of the Wizarding World."

"And what are you going to do about this?"

"Harry must be placed with his relatives. Lily, his mother, invoked a certain magic when she sacrificed herself for her son, and that magic can only protect him while he lives with his relatives."

"But surely he is safer here in the Soul Society than he is in the World of the Living?"

"I would prefer for the saviour of the Wizarding World to be where he is accessible by the people. They need him to be able to stand together."

Yamamoto folded his arms, "Young Tōshirō will be trained as a Shinigami, I'm afraid."

Albus quirked an eyebrow, "Tōshirō?"

Yamamoto smiled, "Before we didn't know his name, so we named him Tōshirō Hitsugaya."

Albus simply hmmed in response before he said, "Might we reach a compromise?"

"What do you mean by a compromise?"

"I propose that young Harry… sorry, Tōshirō… spends the next ten years being trained in the arts of the Shinigami and then he comes to Hogwarts to learn magic."

Yamamoto thought for a long moment before he said, "That sounds reasonable. I will be seeing you in ten years then?"

Albus smiled, "Of course. See you then."

He stood and strode from the room.

-RoI-

Yamamoto was jerked from his thoughts by his lieutenant saying, "Yamamoto-sotaichō?"

Yamamoto shook his head slightly, "Yes, Sasakibe. If I may ask, will you please send messages to all the captains saying that they are hereby instructed to increase the intensity of Tōshirō Hitsugaya's training regime? He needs to be ready to leave Soul Society on a long term mission in about six months. By that time I would like him to have at least achieved Shikai."

As the last word fell from his lips, Yamamoto's lieutenant stumbled against the wall as an enormous tremor rocked the Soul Society. Both captain and lieutenant looked out across the balcony as an enormous pillar of reiryoku hurtled upwards from the ground in the general area of the Thirteenth Division's barracks. Before their eyes, an enormous serpentine dragon made out of ice and water surged up, coiling around the pillar and squeezing tight before its maw opened and uttered a deafening roar which shook the ground a second time.

A few seconds later, the dragon vanished, along with the pillar of reiryoku. A few seconds passed before Yamamoto's lieutenant turned to him and said, "…Are you sure you want me to give the message, sir? Because I think he's already achieved his Shikai."

Yamamoto did not respond, he simply stood up and swept from the room.

-RoI-

Tōshirō lay on the ground with his Zanpakutō at his side, panting. Ukitake crouched down next to him, "Are you alright there, Tōshirō-san?"

"Ye… yes. I-I'm fine, just a little… worn out." And with that, he passed out.

Ukitake frowned slightly before calling, "Kaien! Kiyone! Sentarō! Would you mind carrying Tōshirō-san inside so that he can rest for a while?"

The three Shinigami hurried outside, picked up the silver-haired boy and carried him inside as he dozed in their arms. Ukitake turned around to find all the other captains staring at him. "He's fine, just needs to sleep for a while after achieving Shikai."

Yamamoto stepped forwards, "This is actually a good opportunity. I received a message from an old friend back where Tōshirō comes from; he says that Tōshirō needs to return in time for a specialized school. I want each of you except for the Captains of Squads Three, Five and Nine to intensify your training regime with him, make sure he is fully capable before I send him out there. Captain Kurotsuchi, as your lieutenant is his teacher, I'm giving you a special assignment. You need to make him a special gigai that he can keep on for days at a time. I also need you to make him a gikongan which is almost indistinguishable from the real one so that he can fight off the Hollows attacking where he is going; since my old friend also mentioned to me that the amount of ambient magic around there draws them like a magnet. He usually manages to deal with them alone but there are now too many for him to handle. The gigai needs to be specially modified so that he has access to his Zanpakutō while inhabiting it as well, by the way."

Retsu Unohana spoke up, "Sotaichō, where is he going?"

Yamamoto shook his head, "Wait a couple of days, then all will be explained in a meeting."

Kenpachi shrugged, "Suits me," before he wandered off to find somebody to fight.

Soifon gave the Captain-Commander a worried look, "Will he be ok?"

Yamamoto chuckled. It was as he had heard Renji Abarai predict when he and Rangiku Matsumoto bring back Tōshirō from the World of the Living, he was going to be a total menace to society in later years. He'd already managed to corrupt all the Captains, including the normally aloof Byakuya Kuchiki and Soifon. He might make a good future captain for Squad Ten, which had been captainless for the last few years. "Perhaps after he leaves Hogwarts…"

Out loud he said, "Of course, Captain Soifon."

-RoI-

Tōshirō came back to consciousness to feel soft cold breath on his face. Opening his eyes, he found a draconic face hovering above his own.

"Wh…what?" he groaned.

The dragon tilted its head to one side, "I am Hyōrinmaru. I am the spirit of your Zanpakutō."

"Hyō… Hyōrin… Hyōrinmaru?"

"Yes. I am Hyōrinmaru. Now, I need to tell you a couple of things. First, because you have so much spiritual pressure then your Zanpakutō is going to be in a perpetual state of Shikai release. Therefore I, the embodied spirit of your Zanpakutō, will always be around."

"Really? Cool."

"No, cold." There was a faint teasing lilt to the dragon's tone as it darted downwards and twined around his arm, looping gently around his neck twice like a scarf so that its head hung over his shoulder, Hyōrinmaru's soft breath tickling his ear as he rolled over and stood up.

The door opened, revealing Kaien Shiba standing in the doorway, "Hey, you're up! How are you feeling… what is that?"

Tōshirō raised his free hand and tickled the dragon under its chin, "This is Hyōrinmaru. He says he is my Shikai release."

"An ice-type… that figures. You've had everybody really worried about you kid, did you know that?"

Tōshirō wandered over, permitting Kaien to ruffle his hair, "Come on kid, Captain Kuchiki wanted me to tell you that he wants to see you for Bakudō training as soon as you wake up."

He smirked and held out a hand, "This little guy doesn't look too dangerous, does he? He's cute!" He reached out a hand, only for the tiny dragon to lunge out and snap at his fingers.

Tōshirō scowled, putting up a hand to the small creature, "Don't insult Hyōrinmaru-san, he doesn't like it."

Kaien gave him a small grin, "Alright brat, get moving. You don't want to keep Captain Kuchiki waiting!"

Tōshirō grinned broadly, "No I don't! See you Kaien-san!" and vanished in a Shunpō.

Kaien chuckled, "He's a good kid," and wandered off to find out what his wife Miyako was up to.

-RoI-

The next few days passed briskly, and soon Hell Butterflies were going out to every Captain summoning them and their Lieutenants to a meeting, with the exception of Squad Ten, who had no Captain and therefore only their Lieutenant Rangiku Matsumoto received a Hell Butterfly.

Tōshirō was fighting with Kenpachi when he received a Hell Butterfly as well, summoning him to the Head Captain's office. Unable to shake the feeling that he'd done something wrong (again, there was that one time he pranked those four guys in the Third Division attempted to beat him up because the way they saw it, "a brat like him shouldn't be a Shinigami". All of them had been found by Lieutenant Izuru Kira lying in a twitching heap at the Third Division's barracks gate with a note tacked to them saying "Let this be a lesson; do not cross Tōshirō Hitsugaya." None of them had ever troubled the boy again after that.

When Tōshirō walked into Yamamoto's office, the first thing he saw was a man who looked a lot like Yamamoto sitting in a chair next to the elderly Captain-Commander's desk. "Yamamoto-jii-san, who is this?"

Yamamoto chuckled at the affectionate nickname his surrogate grandson had for him, that only Tōshirō was allowed to call him. "Tōshirō, this is Albus Dumbledore. He is a very old friend of mine who runs a school in the British Isles."

Tōshirō frowned, "The where?"

Albus chuckled, "I wouldn't be surprised that you don't remember the name; you were only a year old the last time you were there."

Tōshirō frowned, "I was born in Soul Society. I have no idea what you're talking about."

Yamamoto spoke up, "Actually, Tōshirō, that is not quite true. Your family were killed just over ten years ago. The two lieutenants stationed in your area at the time to perform Konsō on the killer's victims' souls found you in the remains of your house and brought you to the Soul Society when they discovered how much reiryoku you had. Anybody who can crush two Lieutenant-class Shinigami flat to the floor with just their reiatsu is bound to be highly powerful."

Tōshirō shook his head slightly in agitation, calming only when Hyōrinmaru touched his whiskered nose to his ear and murmured, "I am here if I am needed, Tōshirō."

Tōshirō raised a hand and pinched the bridge of his nose, "So, I actually come from this place called the "British Isles", right? And you want me to go to this school in the British Isles, of which I assume you are the headmaster?"

Dumbledore nodded, smiling, "Indeed. I think you have the capabilities that I am looking for, given who your parents were."

Without waiting for Tōshirō's response he turned to Yamamoto, "Genryūsai, what has he learnt?"

Yamamoto began to explain, "He has learnt Hadō under my tutelage, Hohō and Hakuda under Captain Soifon of the Second Division and the Onmitsukidō, healing Kidō under Captain Unohana of the Fourth Division, Bakudō under Captain Kuchiki of the Sixth Division, Zanjutsu under Captain Zaraki of the Eleventh Division and has gained the use of his Shikai under the guidance of Captain Ukitake of the Thirteenth Division."

Dumbledore nodded, "And what has he learnt from the Captains of the Third, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Twelfth Divisions? I know for a fact that Squad Ten has no Captain."

The Captains stiffened. Komamura voiced what they were all thinking with a growl, "And you know that how?"

Yamamoto held up a hand, "Peace, Captain Komamura." He turned back to Dumbledore, "In answer to your question, Tōshirō has learnt about the history of the Soul Society from Captain Kyōraku of the Eighth Division, moral obligation and compassion from Captain Komamura of the Seventh Division, and he has learnt about spiritual tools such as gigai and gikongan from the Lieutenant of the Twelfth Division, Nemu Kurotsuchi." The girl in question waved across the room.

As Dumbledore nodded to himself, Yamamoto turned to Tōshirō, "Part of the reason why you are going to Hogwarts, that is the name of the school, is because the concentration of magical power in the school from so many young children draws Hollows like a magnet. Dumbledore can no longer deal with them alone, and pardon me for saying this but we have no other Shinigami who would fit in there. All the others would be too old to fit in properly. You on the other hand are just the right age."

Tōshirō folded his arms quietly, listening attentively as his adoptive grandfather explained his reasoning. Finally he said, "I understand. What need I do?"

Dumbledore stood up cheerfully, "Ah, excellent. I will escort you to Diagon Alley, where we…" but Yamamoto cut him off.

"Captain Kurotsuchi, what is the status of the gigai and gikongan I assigned you to create?"

Mayuri Kurotsuchi frowned, before turning to his Lieutenant, "Nemu, bring in the gurney."

Nemu walked over to the door, opened it and pulled a large gurney inside. On it lay an exact clone of Tōshirō Hitsugaya.

Tōshirō stared blankly at it for a long moment before he blushed slightly and said, "Um, ok. How do I get into it again?"

Mayuri turned to Nemu and started berating her for not teaching Tōshirō a simple thing like putting on a gigai, only for Tōshirō to move in front of him with Shunpō and kick him very hard in the shins. "Ow! You little…" he bellowed, clutching at his shins for a second before a small hand grabbed the front of his shihakusho and dragged him down so that he was eye-to-eye with the eleven-year-old boy.

"Never," said Tōshirō in a voice that could've frozen molten steel, even as the temperature in the room decreased by about twenty degrees, "insult Nemu-san. Are we clear?"

Mayuri nodded once, deciding not to aggravate the scary little creature that had once been an innocent-looking eleven-year-old boy anymore than he already had, and Tōshirō released him, turning to the gurney and picking up the gigai by its shoulders. "Now," he said sweetly, his face adopting an expression eerily reminiscent of Unohana's usual look, "Would you please be so kind as to tell me how to put on this gigai, Kurotsuchi-taichō?"

Kurotsuchi fought down a shiver that even Kenpachi wasn't able to fully quell, "Of… of course. You hold the gigai from behind like this…" he demonstrated on Nemu, gripping her shoulders in a gentle hold. Nobody missed that his hands were shaking slightly.

"…then you push your reiryoku into the gigai to inhabit it. That's it!" he suddenly said as Tōshirō succeeded in inhabiting the gigai. He straightened up, flexing his arms and legs carefully before reaching over his shoulder and touching the hilt of the Zanpakutō sheathed on his back. As his fingers made contact with the cool hilt, Hyōrinmaru reappeared, coiling around his arm and looping around his neck like Byakuya Kuchiki's scarf before coming to rest.

"Don't ever do that again, Tōshirō."

"Heh, sorry. No choice in the matter, Hyōrinmaru."

"Grr. Oh well."

Yamamoto interrupted, "Would you mind testing your gikongan now, Tōshirō?"

Tōshirō took the pill that Nemu handed him and swallowed it. A few seconds later his spirit separated from his gigai and appeared standing beside it.

Mayuri Kurotsuchi promptly punched the gigai in the stomach, causing it to disgorge the gikongan and slump back into Renji's arms where the redhead was standing behind Tōshirō.

"And what was that for?" said Tōshirō curiously to Mayuri as he picked up the gikongan and handed it back to the boy.

"We proved it works, therefore we do not need to test it any more. As an added function, I also designed the gikongan so that anything it learns while in your gigai, you will learn when you re-enter your gigai."

Tōshirō smiled quietly, "That could be a helpful function. Don't worry though Yamamoto-jii-san, I won't use it to skive off."

Dumbledore observed this exchange quietly for a minute before he interjected, "Alright, we should be going. If you would be so kind as to enter your gigai, then we can head off to Diagon Alley to collect your things. I also want to say something else; while you are at Hogwarts, you report to me and me alone. Understand?"

Tōshirō frowned slightly at the way he was emphasising that he was higher than the Captain-Commander in the chain of command, before bowing, "I understand… headmaster."

Dumbledore smiled, his eyes twinkling at the silver-haired boy as the boy straightened from the bow and walked over to collect his gigai.

(A/N: Well, what do you think? This is an idea I came up with a very long time ago. Hopefully this story won't suffer the same fate as my other HP stories. Tell me what you think, this is my first step into the Bleach fandom and my first step into the HP fandom in a very long time. I hope you enjoyed this story.)

(A/N 2: Oh and if any of you reading this happen to be fans of Both Sides of the Kunai, I have just jumped into the trip to the Land of the Sea so the chapter should come quite soon. Until then folks, this is Leonineus saying GOODNIGHT!)