Chapter 14: Epilogue 1/6

Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter (rightfully owned by J.K Rowling) or Naruto (rightfully owned by Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I make any money out of this fiction. I will also add that any sections or phrases in this chapter that bear resemblance to works by either author or from movies based on works of said authors is recreated in the same spirit of free usage and is not for profit.

A/N: Here is the epilogue as promised and thus Silent Humanity has ended. This story will not be updated again, unless I happen to edit the previous chapters or something.

This epilogue turned out to be a lot longer than I had originally planned. Silent Humanity itself has ended up being almost 330,000 words long in all and has taken nearly seven years to complete. I began this undertaking in school and am now on a post-graduate degree, the results have been as varied as that passage of time would suggest.

Don't forget the first chapter of the sequel has been published as well. More on that in the author's note at the end.

For those readers in the United States of America, it may be worth noting that in Great Britain we refer to the bottommost floor as the ground floor, and the next one up as the first floor. So our 'first floor' is your 'second floor'. It's silly really but I have to stick to the conventions of my country's dialect.

I hope you enjoy.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

(Last Time)

"My name's not Lily, it's Gaara!" The irate redhead said a touch louder than his monotonous gravelly voice usually sounded.

"Ha!" Sirius declared. "Pay up." He held out his hand and Lupin dropped a handful of coins into his palm.

"You couldn't even make it to his house, Gaara?" Remus said, tucking his lighter wallet back into his robes.

Gaara was still angry, doubly so to have been tricked.

This was going to be one long summer.

0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

"Here we are! Home, sweet home." Sirius declared as he pulled up outside one among the row of connected houses and let Lupin and Gaara disembark with the redhead's trunk. Sirius darted off in his shiny black auto-mobile carriage to park it up the street, and jogged back at a sedate pace.

Looking up, Gaara didn't like the place. These "cities", much bigger than even the grandest towns in his own world, were densely packed with thousands upon thousands of civilians, most of whom seemed to drive cars all over the streets. As he peered up at the terrace of town houses, he thought they too seemed quite cramped.

The good cheer on Sirius' face, which had returned over the course of the slow drive through London, diminished with each step the man took towards his front door. Clearly he had been trying to put on a brave face for Gaara's sake. Gaara thought he could see why when they entered the house.

It was disgusting.

Every surface, including the walls, was covered in some unspecific grime. With the perfectly straight face Lupin was forcing himself to maintain, Gaara believed they had a consensus that Sirius' family home could only be an improvement from living in a cave or possibly the Shrieking Shack. Low standards, indeed.

Gaara understood that after twelve years of imprisonment, it was to be expected that a certain amount of dust would accumulate in a vacant house, but this looked like a group of homeless people had taken up residence (and must have had some grudge against the homeowner). Gaara considered asking after such a possibility but that would most likely come under the category of impolite questions that Temari had tried to explain were inappropriate to ask out loud.

It had taken him a frustratingly long time to work out that asking women how old they were wasn't an empathetic sign of his interest in their lives as intended, but instead it was somehow rude. Worse yet when he tried guessing.

If Gaara was honest, he still didn't quite understand the rules for these things but Temari had said (very loudly) that if he was unsure or if it was about something negative, he was better off staying quiet.

This past year had certainly proved that many, though not all, misunderstandings could be avoided by not speaking.

Gaara could hear Sirius cursing his family for situating their house in a muggle area as he struggled to lift Gaara's trunk up the steps to his front door. Gaara would have gone back to help but Sirius was almost there and he would feel a much greater sense of accomplishment if he managed it on his own.

Lupin was already moving further into the dark hallway, cleverly avoiding the walls and whatever was clinging to them (or growing from them). Gaara was about to follow suit and show himself around the dirty house but Sirius quietly, wheezing, told him to stay there.

Sirius was wondering if there was a simple spell he could perform to heal what he suspected was a hernia, or if he was going to need a potion and a lie down on a flat surface.

"Stay there, Gaara. Kreacher!" Sirius yelled.

Gaara was startled by the sudden shout. He'd been called a lot of things: "monster", "demon", "murderer", "abomination", "short", and any number of other unsavoury titles that each held an ounce of truth, but for Sirius to loudly declare that Gaara was a 'creature' was unexpected. Still, he knew Sirius well enough to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The explanation Gaara had been anticipating came in the form of a house elf popping into the dim hallway, presumably answering Sirius' call.

"Mistress' ungrateful, treacherous, no-good son has brought more filth into mistress' noble house." The house elf loudly muttered under its breath. Gaara thought it was quite the commitment that Sirius had styled his house elf to complement the filthy, rundown house. And apparently it had a dirty mouth to match.

"Kreacher!" Sirius admonished the unpleasant slave. "This is Gaara, my new ward. You will treat him with respect!"

Kreacher observed the newest intruder into his mistress' hallowed home but instead of yet another half-blood or blood traitor, this boy gave him pause. He was wrong. He felt wrong. Like he was a dangerous predator and an old friend. But since Kreacher didn't have friends, he knew that whatever this boy was, he was another insult to his beloved mistress.

"Yes, ungrateful brat-master. Kreacher will serve It."

Sirius pulled back his arm as if to backhand the uppity slave, but restrained himself. He may have rejected everything his parents had taught him, but a few lessons had sunk in too deep; table manners and not hitting the servants in front of company, chief amongst them.

"This is Kreacher, Gaara. A keepsake from my mother and almost as ill-tempered as the old battleaxe."

"Ungrateful, blood traitor son shouldn't speak ill of the mistress like that." Kreacher continued to mumble, perfectly audible.

"Don't pay him or his spiteful words any mind; thing's even crazier than my inbred cousin, Bellatrix. And you, you miserable little beast, you'll leave Gaara alone. No little tricks or traps. If he so much as falls down the stairs, I'll take Remus' advice and give you clothes and be done with you."

Kreacher's ear swivelled back in either fear or anger. "Master's pet beast brings shame to the master's noble and ancient name."

"Be gone with you now, I've had enough of your vile tongue for one day!"

Kreacher popped away after one more glance at the Black family ward.

With a title like Ward of the House of Black, Gaara was as good as a bastard of the family, which meant he would be much safer from the dangerously insane little elf than Remus had been on his first visit the week before. Despite Lupin's later suggested threat of freeing the servant, the werewolf had been the one to stop Sirius from murdering Kreacher.

The house elf had tried to kill Lupin with a very sharp, cursed knife, placed where the man would find it. Fortunately Sirius had been nearby but he had then beaten the smaller creature and was going to kill him until Lupin interceded.

Needless to say, Sirius had entirely run out of patience for his childhood tormentor. The spiteful mumbling he could take but threats to his friends he could not.

It soon became apparent to Gaara that Sirius hated this house even more than the redhead did as the man said Gaara was free to explore the building on his own, though he did forbid a couple of rooms as they were filled with dangerous cursed items.

Sirius winced as he walked to the kitchen, planning to borrow some of the pain potion his decrepit friend kept on hand. Remus claimed he only carried it because before and after the full moon his body went through immense strain, but Sirius knew he had it on him all through the month and dipped into his supply when the moon was entirely dark in the sky.

Gaara shrugged off his rude friend and went to look around without the host to guide him. As was to be expected, the house held little of interest to Gaara beyond the impressive personal library on the second floor. Though, while he wouldn't claim an interest, Gaara did take note of the mounted house elf heads above the staircase up to the first floor. Even he found that unsettling.

Other than the library, he found a few bedrooms, one or two bathrooms, and a couple of rooms filled to the brim with junk that Gaara assumed were the ones Sirius had told him not to enter.

He would have gone for a stroll outside to get his bearings but Sirius had warned him in the car that the house had been heavily warded by his father and it would be safer if Gaara didn't try to enter or leave the house unescorted. Gaara was not happy about that; even the Malfoys hadn't placed such restrictions on him.

Gaara walked back down the stairs to the library on the second floor and settled in for the long haul. He would need to assess what sorts of resources he had at his disposal here since he sincerely doubted Sirius knew offhand what books his family owned (or that the man had even entered the library since his release).

He picked up a stack of books and sat on the floor, not trusting the rotted chair in the corner, and started to read whatever contents pages he could find for information on his so far fruitless search for his home world. The size of the library was nothing compared to Hogwarts' but the collection of books he suspected were concerning dark magics was much higher. Hogwarts had very few truly dark magic books even in the restricted section, presumably having been cleared out for the students' sakes.

An hour after Gaara sat down, Sirius poked his head around the door. "He is here."

"I told you he would be."

"I have to say, Gaara, I had thought you might come back down to join us after you wandered around." Sirius was smiling but he was a little miffed.

"Did you need me for something?" Gaara asked.

Sirius was stumped. "Umm, well, I suppose I don't… Remus?"

Lupin entered the room after Sirius. "Gaara, I understand that you would like to continue your research, and Sirius and I will do all that we can to help you get home, but it's not healthy to shut yourself up in a dusty library every day."

Gaara agreed, but held that getting home was more important than his immediate health. Plus, it couldn't be that bad for him, he had done this sort of thing before when he had been put on leave after the Konoha-Suna war, and he had been perfectly fine. As he recalled it, he had spent a full week in the Kazekage Mansion's library, leaving only to visit the bathroom.

It didn't occur to Gaara that his brother and sister had visited him there every day with food, fresh clothes and helped to clean up after him, opening the curtains and windows so that his eyes didn't become strained and he got some fresh air. In his mind, back then, they had been irritatingly clingy after the war and his change of heart about murdering innocent people.

Gaara nodded noncommittally at Remus and turned back to his latest book. This place was looking to be a treasure trove with all of the potential avenues of research he could follow. Clearly, despite the bad reputation, dark magic was the path to his salvation.

Over the next week, Gaara was dragged out of the library at meal times and every other night Lupin would order Gaara to go to his room to sleep. Worse, when Sirius was bored he would come and sit in the library and bother Gaara. It was a dangerous game and Sirius knew it.

It was a strange dynamic they unconsciously developed, with Gaara the teenager unable (or unwilling) to take care of himself, Sirius as the goofy adult looking to connect, and Remus the 'temporary' houseguest attempting to keep both of the idiots alive.

His bedroom had still been filthy when he went to sleep there for the first time so instead he had spent the night cleaning it. Gaara didn't like cleaning.

Over the course of that first week in Grimmauld Place, owing to the state of the house, the continual insults and Kreacher calling Gaara 'It' every time they crossed paths, Gaara had ended up saying some distinctly threatening things to the house elf one afternoon. As a result, unless Sirius directly ordered Kreacher to be in the same room with Gaara, the servant had begun to avoid the Jinchūriki like the plague.

Sirius would have done something about it but honestly he was just impressed. He would have killed for the secret of how to get rid of Kreacher when he was Gaara's age.

During one of the many nights Sirius sat annoying Gaara by talking (and breathing) around him, Sirius finally asked about Gaara's extraordinary powers. "Surely not everybody in your home world can do what you can, can they?"

Gaara sighed and marked his place. "I am stronger than some, but there are others much stronger I am. I am the only one who can control sand the way I do."

Sirius couldn't believe that. He loved Gaara, he really did, but he could scarcely imagine such a being could exist in any world. "You don't have to be modest, Gaara…"

"I am not being modest. There are shinobi in my world that could defeat me in moments." Of course, those shinobi could probably be counted on Gaara's digits. Pretty much the four Kage, a couple of particularly powerful shinobi and the rumoured S-rank nuke-nin organising somewhere near Ame. Gaara was the strongest in Suna, with perhaps one or two retired exceptions, and as a high Jounin-level combatant, there really weren't that many who could beat him.

Sirius was plainly struggling to accept this truth so Gaara waited. He knew as soon as he reopened his book, Sirius would reengage him.

"You're so young; are all of these other people, who are stronger than you, are they the same age?"

"No, they're all older than I am, I believe." The only one even close to his age was about nine months older than he was, as far as he knew. October 10th.

"How did you come to be so strong, then? I'm trying to wrap my head around it, but I just don't understand. Here, a wizard might have a talent for magic, but never has there been a fourteen year old who could defeat grown, trained wizards. Not Dumbeldore, not Merlin, not even You-Know-Who, as far as I know."

This was a more difficult question. Gaara would likely have been a very powerful shinobi from birth, with his Kage lineage and strong siblings; but he would be lying if he said that his strength was from his birth, or that it was as a result of training (what little he had indulged in). He didn't like lying to Sirius.

"I have had certain gifts from birth that others do not have." Though, 'gift' was stretching it.

"Your world must be a very strange place." Sirius said, imagining a world where a teenager could develop such abilities. A place that could lead to Gaara's stunted emotional development. He had an intuition that he would never get the chance, but even if he were offered, he didn't think he would ever want to see that world.

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

'Dear Harry,

I'm glad to hear that your relatives are taking it easier on you. If they cause you any problems, I can always send them a nice friendly letter. Just make sure you don't tell them I was acquitted. And I'm sure your results will be fine. Ms Granger was helping you and Ronald, and she seemed to be exceptionally bright. They're released in August so best not to think too much about them yet.

It is very quiet here today. Remus is out doing something or other, I'm not sure what. And Gaara hardly leaves the library. He would have been better off in Ravenclaw, I think. My schedule is a bit boring these days. I mostly sit around or bother Gaara. He said he would do some very ungrateful things if I didn't entertain myself for a while so I thought I would reply to this morning's letter.

I can't go out in public at the moment. If I go the Alley, I get mobbed by people wanting autographs or money, and if I try going into muggle London I'll get arrested. The Minister never got around to telling the muggle PM to call off the manhunt for me. If you want to know how I found this out, I'll tell you when I see you. I think some of the scenes would be better acted out.

You'll be visiting in a couple of weeks, what foods do you want Kreacher to make for you? Your room here will be cleaned by the time you arrive (and not a second before!)

The next match between Transylvania and Haiti is going to be brutal, make sure you don't miss it. The last time those two faced each other in the World Cup, only one player from the Haitian team made it out alive. Although, from what I hear, half of the Transylvanian team was dead to begin with.

I'm gonna finish here as I want to set up my new trap for Remus before he gets back. I'll tell you how it went and what I did in my next letter.

Yours sincerely,

Sirius Orion Black (lucky S.O.B)

Of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, etcetera.'

After that was a rather sizable and elaborate crest that Sirius stamped at the bottom of all of his letters, even if the crest took up more space than his godfather's often short messages. At the very bottom of the page, after the ridiculous crest, Sirius included a post-script:

'p.s. If your uncle gives you any more trouble over your radio, tell him I will set Remus on him. Muggles are terrified of werewolves as well, right?'

Harry didn't intend to do that since he had already levelled the threat of a mass murderer on them and any further scares might just hasten his aunt's inevitable mental breakdown. They hadn't given him any more trouble since Sirius had a word with Vernon, so Harry just relaxed and lamented his poor luck. Right now he could be helping prank Professor Lupin rather than reading a letter.

Sirius had been sending letters at least every other day, sometimes twice a day, giving Hedwig more of a workout than she appreciated.

The Dursleys, despite the looming fear of Sirius Black, had wanted to object to the frequent, noticeable flights of Hedwig to and from their house. They couldn't very well go admitting to their freakish, criminal nephew having such a strange and exotic pet and them allowing it free roam about the place. It had eventually led to Petunia telling all of their nosy neighbours that the owl was a rare and endangered breed and had taken up nesting in the Dursley's loft because of its exceptional state of cleanliness. Sadly, they couldn't remove it by law.

As disgustingly abnormal as it was to have a wild animal living in their loft, it was the best alternative to the truth. The neighbours dutifully pretended to be awed by the special circumstances and Petunia pretended to be pleased. It all ended with tea and cakes and a few backhanded compliments.

Vernon was still mad as all hell about it so Harry had taken waiting until nightfall to send his replies so Hedwig wasn't spotted too often. Especially since owls were supposed to be nocturnal. Luckily, it seemed no one on Privet Drive knew anything about ornithology, despite the few older gentlemen that had claimed to be bird watchers at local barbecues, had bought some expensive binoculars and other paraphernalia, and had yet to actually go out and watch birds.

Draco had sent Gaara two letters in their first week off, and a third by the time Gaara deigned to respond, which was shorter than any of Draco's long and cursive messages. Luna also sent one, which wound up being over eleven pages long and filled with many anecdotes that might have suggested she could benefit from a visit to St. Mungo's mind magic specialists.

He had sent both replies halfway through the second week of the holiday. Gaara's response to Luna hadn't reached a full page despite his efforts to pad it out. He had done very little worth reporting. She had appreciated the effort nonetheless.

Draco had not.

Gaara had simply taken the opportunity to send them when he had a moment's peace from Sirius' needy interruptions or Remus' attempts to make him more comfortable. Remus was taking Sirius to Diagon Alley to get his new wand that afternoon and Kreacher would stay out of sight, meaning Gaara was alone for a change and had free reign of the house.

He might have waited until something else of interest came up to write about, but Draco's third letter was already starting to sound upset. Plus the full moon was tomorrow so he figured he should write now or else Luna would expect some description. Such things, pertaining to his transformations, were not pertinent.

As soon as Gaara had sent off the two owls (Sirius' and Remus') to the two addresses, he had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water. If Kreacher weren't deadly afraid of him, he could have ordered the house elf to fetch him things and do menial tasks like sending off the owls, but with the way the deformed little servant had spoken to Gaara that first week he hadn't been able to restrain himself or his words.

He wasn't that good at creative threats so he had just listened in on what Shukaku had been screaming at the time. It had done the trick and more.

He heard the door open and shut, signalling his guardian's return, so he was about to leave his glass of water and make a break for the stairs. With his speed and stealth, he should have been able to make past the hallway without either of the grown men seeing him. They had been bugging him to venture outside with them since he arrived, and while he had been allowed out a few times with supervision, during the night when no one would see him, they insisted he should go on an outing with them during the day. Somewhere "fun"…

Hence why he was avoiding them as much as he could during the daylight hours.

His hand was on the kitchen doorknob when he heard the screeching that started up by the front door. Suspecting an attack, Gaara continued to wrench the door open and run into the hallway. Instead of an attacking witch or a banshee, Gaara watched as the two responsible adults in his life wrestled with drapery.