12

Chapter Text

It seemed wherever he was, cemeteries had an odd allure for him. When Kakashi finally calmed down enough to take note of his surroundings, he found himself in a park area with some trees, tall grass, and big square stones jutting out of the ground to mark graves and memorials. His head was aching, and he didn't know if it was the constant noise, the stench, or the short panic that had triggered this headache. One moment he had been with Sirius on the bridge, then the whole structure below him had started rattling, and then…

He balled his fist. Almost. He had almost lost control. He had almost killed that person on the street. The Chidori was formed so quickly. Had he caught himself just a moment later, he would've smashed through the car's hood. He didn't know how sturdy cars were, maybe the material would've stopped his advance, but he couldn't rely on that.

Kakashi!!

He closed his eyes, shaking his head to ban the memory from his mind. As he opened them, his hands were red with blood.

Rin's blood…

KAKASHI!

He jumped, as he heard her voice clear in his head. Turning around his axis, however, he was alone. Surrounded by gravestones, old trees, and poorly kept flower beds.

Was she here? Rin wasn't buried here, he knew. But could she see him anyway? Maybe the realm of the dead was connected, maybe… He turned around himself once more. Did she watch him?

"Rin?"

Trees, grass, stones, wildflowers twisted around him, like a morbid carousel.

Kakashi!

He could hear her so clearly. His hands were red from her blood. He rubbed with his fingers against his skin, dug his nails in, and scratched until it hurt, but it wouldn't wash off!

"RIN?"

A shiver ran down his spine.

There she was. Turning around, she was right behind him. Blood down her chin. Eyes wide open.

Kakashi!

Rin! He moved to catch her as she fell, but his hands only caught empty air. He overbalanced, fell on his knees. She was gone. "RIN!" Looking around, he was alone. But he could still hear her in his head. The way she whispered his name, spoke his name, screamed his name: KAKASHI!

"Where are you?" He couldn't see her! "I'm sorry, Rin." I'm sorry… He dug his bloody, dirty hands into the dry earth. The hands of a killer. And he had almost killed again.

That was what he was! He brought nothing but destruction into this world! His hands were shaking in the dirt.

Eventually, his rapid breath settled down. His blood stopped rushing in his veins. As he looked around himself, he couldn't find Rin, nor hear any voices. He seemed to be alone, but he was certain he had heard her voice. Clear as day. As if she was right next to him. But next to him, there was nothing now, nobody but an empty graveyard, old trees, gravestones sticking out of the ground.

As he dug his hands out of the earth, the blood was gone, but mud stuck to his fingers and under his nails. He wiped them off against his trousers. Then bracing himself against a tree, he pushed himself on shaky legs.

Sirius… He had lost Sirius, he realized. Searching the cemetery with his eyes, he found no black dog. He must have left Sirius on that bridge. He had panicked, left his comrade.

Not the first time you did that…

He had to find Sirius. But he had no idea where he was, how far he had run from the bridge? Was Sirius even still there? He walked through the cemetery as if he hoped to find the black dog between the gravestones, but he was the only person here.

On still wobbly legs and with slightly shaking hands he reached the center of the graveyard. There was a round plaza, with a big stone cross right in the center. Kakashi stood in front of it, staring at the formerly white stone. Like the crosses, they had in front of their churches… He touched the cold stone, but although just earlier he had thought that maybe Rin was here, maybe this graveyard would serve as a place to speak to his comrades… Now that he touched his flat hand against this stone cross, he felt no connection. A foreign cemetery in a foreign world. The souls of his loved ones seemed far away now.

He felt disappointed at that. Glowering at the cross one last time, he turned away, making his way back to where he had come from. He had to find Sirius.

** 

Sirius was a coward! He had been halfway back to the bridge, when he had turned around, fleeing again. Aurors! Aurors and dementors! Why would they send dementors to London?

He had been prepared to sneak past the obliviators of the ministry, even the aurors if they'd send them to investigate. If Kakashi had apparated, there was little he could do to trace where he had gone, but it was still the best place for Sirius to start searching. And then, he had felt the dementor. It couldn't be more than one, and it was still so far away that all Sirius felt was a shiver down his spine and the distant memory of a bloody street. But it was still enough to scare him away.

When hours later he finally had the courage to try again, it was too late. Back on the bridge, he couldn't find Kakashi. So much time had passed, that in the constant coming and going of people and traffic, even Kakashi's scent was lost to him. He ran the bridge up and down, followed every street leading away from it, turned back to the bridge, ran across multiple times until he knew every brick and every dent in the balustrade. No Kakashi.

Was he even still in London? Or had he maybe apparated back home or to a different country? If Sirius only had his wand! He could use a tracking spell. But he had no wand.

** 

Retracing his steps had been difficult for Kakashi. He couldn't remember quite which turns he had taken, and it was difficult to find his own scent in this area packed with millions of people. Still, he slowly made progress. Until…

"This way!" a gruff voice commanded. Suddenly, there was a blinding light, right in Kakashi's face. Shocked he took a step back. He shielded his eyes, blinked against the light, but it had already dimmed until it didn't blind him anymore.

A beam of yellow light came around the corner made an odd U-turn pointing right against his chest. It looked almost solid as if it wasn't light at all but a thin string made of some fluorescent material. Kakashi grabbed for it, but his hand passed right through. Light… Nothing solid, no matter how much it looked like it.

Was it dangerous?

"They say he looked like a teenager, but we didn't pick up anything at the ministry." Another voice. It sounded like just around the corner. This time it was a woman speaking.

Kakashi heard a step not far from him, brushing clothes. He made a split-second decision, retreating to the roof of the building he stood in front of. It was just high enough, that he could listen without being seen.

"If there's no trace it's not a kid, even if they said he looked like one. Might be an older—" The voice broke off suddenly. "Did you see that?"

"Yes. Did he apparate again?" the woman asked. Peering down Kakashi saw both right below him on the street, looking straight up at him.

Were they looking for him? How did they…? Only now he noticed that the odd light was still pointing at his chest. The yellow string of light, thin as a wire led down the length of the building and ended at the tip of a thin wooden stick the man was holding in his hand. Magic, he realized just as they vanished in front of his eyes.

He didn't think. Instinctively he jumped to the roof just across the street just as he heard a loud plop behind him. That was the teleportation Sirius had spoken about.

And still, the beam of light followed him everywhere he went. A tracking technique. Why they were looking for him, he didn't know. Did they figure out that he knew where to find Sirius Black? In that case, he couldn't let them catch him! Who knew what methods they had to get to his brain? A different thought occurred to him: Maybe he could lead them away.

He watched as they appeared on the roof. The man stumbled a little. Then they looked around themselves, before noticing that Kakashi wasn't on the roof anymore.

"Over there!" the woman pointed across the street to Kakashi's roof, following the string of light with her eyes. "He's quick, but that's him. Fits the description."

Kakashi turned to run again. By the time they teleported to the second roof, he was already down on the street looking up at them. Curiously, he noticed, that none of the people surrounding him paid him any attention. Neither did they seem to notice the yellow string of light essentially coming from the sky down to point at his chest. The people of London simply followed their daily business as usual. Either they were used to these things happening around them, or they were in a sort of genjutsu to keep them oblivious to anything unusual.

Kakashi looked back up to the roof, just to see the man peer over the edge and point at him. They weren't particularly fast, Kakashi thought. If they kept this leisurely pace, all their magical teleporting wouldn't help them, and he would be able to evade them for hours.

Just at that moment, an elderly woman opened the door to her apartment complex, to lead her dog out, Kakashi quickly rushed past her into the building. He broke into an apartment, making sure it was empty, then took up position at a window. Hiding behind the curtains, he peered down onto the street.

Indeed, as the witch and wizard plopped right in the middle of the street, nobody seemed to bat an eye at it. It was as if they weren't even seen by the people around them. Muggles, Sirius had called them. People who couldn't use magic.

It was the first time, Kakashi could get a clear look at the couple hunting him. The man was thin, tall, with a bushy mustache. He looked to be in his early thirties. Long dark blue robes fell loosely around his body all the way down to his ankles. A pair of polished black pointy shoes peeked out from under the cloth. The woman wore shoes with small heels, just about an inch high. With that added height, she was almost as tall as her colleague, wearing a pin-striped skirt suit. She had a face a bit like a hawk. The look in her eyes said that there were a thousand places she'd rather be than sweating in the August sun while hunting down an unknown person. She too had one of these thin wooden sticks in her hand, though there was no light coming from it.

Looking at his chest, Kakashi followed the string of light out of the door and then vanish into the corridor. It didn't go through the wall in a straight line, as if the closed window stopped it. Instead, it led out of the apartment down the stairs, and through the window, he could see it leave the building through the front door into the tip of the man's wooden stick. They nudged each other to move quickly, then they ran up the three steps leading to the front door. Kakashi heard loud banging as the front door was pushed open.

Before they had always apparated right to him. Now, curiously, they decided to walk. Kakashi left his position at the window, sneaking out of the room to peek his head out of the apartment. He could hear their voices from the stairwell.

"Damn, he's fast. But what's he doing. That's not a normal apparition," that was the woman's voice.

"It leaves no magical trace at all. And it's completely quiet. Never saw anything like it." The man answered. "You think it has anything to do with Black?"

The woman huffed. "Doubt it, but Shacklebolt's right. It's suspicious. A kid with no trace appearing in the middle of the street using some unknown spell to escape. That's fishy."

"You think it might be Dark Magic?" The man seemed skeptical.

"It's obviously somebody using Polyjuice. And Dark Magic, that would at least explain why we didn't get the typical ripple effects that would normally linger after an apparation." The woman answered though she didn't sound convinced. "Wish they wouldn't have called the dementor, but you never know, right? We don't know how Black escaped from Azkaban but might be the same method this guy is using."

Their steps were heavy on the stairs. They moved reasonably quickly, closing in on Kakashi fast.

"We sneak up on him this time. If we can't see him, he can't see us coming either."

Kakashi almost snorted at that. He had heard enough for now. It seemed like they had to see where he was, to use this teleportation technique to get to him. This tracking magic might be convenient, but it didn't give them a marker on where to teleport. That was useful information, he thought. Closing the door silently, he retreated into the apartment, then opened a window and quickly climbed out.

By the time they had entered his apartment, he was already running across the roof on the other side of the street. He quickly created distance between them, but then he waited, giving them time to catch up. He could lead them away from Black. Away from the bridge, where he had last seen Black.

**

"This guy!" There was clear frustration in the man's voice. "He's just playing with us!"

An hour had passed now. Kakashi was actually very close to them, hiding just around the corner, his eyes and ears on them. Knowing that their tracking technique only told him the path to him, instead of telling them exactly where he was, made it easy to hide from them. As long as he made sure that they couldn't see him, they would know which way he was, but not how far away from them.

"Yes, he is. That's not a child. We need reinforcements." The woman sounded frustrated and tired.

"No point really." The man disagreed. "By the time we set up a parameter and create an anti-disapparating spell around him, he might have already left completely. We don't even know if that would work against him." He raised his stick a little, just as Kakashi changed positions again.

"There… He moved again. I'm getting tired of it. Why is he even still in the area? If he just apparated a mile away, I'd lose him. But no, he makes sure to stay close."

Apparating was their form of teleportation, Kakashi knew. Learning, that the tracking spell had a maximum range was good to know.

"I'm telling you," the woman got louder with anger. "He's playing with us. Giving us a run-around."

"It makes no sense… Why risk it, if it's Black? What's he doing here anyway. I thought he was trying to get to Potter."

"Maybe it's not him, after all…"

The man grumbled something under his breath. Then he stopped in his tracks. "This is pointless." With a flick of his wooden stick, the light that connected his stick with Kakashi's chest suddenly disappeared. Kakashi quickly made sure, that it hadn't left any traces on his clothes or chest. He lifted the shirt up but saw only smooth pale skin.

"So, what do we do? Go back, view our memories and look if we can draw up a composite sketch," the woman suggested.

"Might as well, though I have no idea if that will get us anywhere. Looks like a kid, but no trace… Seems to be Polyjuice, so chances are, the composite sketch won't get us anywhere." He gave a halfhearted shrug. "If it's not Black, doubt anybody from the aurors' office will care anyway. They got their hands full, else they wouldn't ask us to do this. I'm paid too little to run around all of London looking for some idiot who thinks it's fun to apparate in front of muggles."

He turned away. The long robes he was wearing flying around him with the abrupt movement. Kakashi snuck a little closer, to make sure he wasn't missing anything. Then he almost flinched as a sudden crack in the air marked their departure. So far, he had always been a bit away, whenever they apparated. Up close… This magic was loud. How did none of the muggles surrounding the area react to that?

He quickly ran up to the spot where they had just disappeared from. "Did you see that?" he asked a random person that he grabbed by their arm. It was a teenage boy about his own age.

The kid jumped in surprise. "Jesus, where did you come from?" He stared white-eyed at Kakashi. "Just scared the bejesus out of me."

"Did you see that?" Kakashi repeated his question, pointing to where the witch and wizard had disappeared from the street.

The boy stared blankly in the direction Kakashi was pointing at. "See what, mate?"

How could he not have seen it? The boy pulled free from Kakashi's hold and continued his path, shaking his head as if Kakashi wasn't making any sense. Kakashi realized that no matter how loud the teleportation was, no matter the fact that two people had just disappeared from the middle of the road… These muggles hadn't seen anything. Then why had Kakashi?

** 

This time it took Kakashi even longer to find his way back to the bridge. He'd led the wizards, halfway across London on a constant zigzag course. He hadn't even considered, that finding his way back might be difficult. Normally, his senses were aware enough that he could easily follow his path back to where he had come from. However, this city stank and was loud and now that the day ended, it looked completely different. It didn't really get dark, instead, there was light everywhere, bright neon signs, lights in windows, traffic lights… From a huge arena, there were searchlights directed toward the sky shining a light on the clouds there. It looked completely different.

He couldn't even trust his nose. Often, Kakashi would follow familiar scents only to be disappointed when it was just another restaurant selling the same food as another restaurant that he had passed on his wild goose chase around London.

By the time Kakashi finally reached the bridge again – and he was sure it was the same bridge, even though it looked different by night – it was already long past midnight. The whole area smelled of Sirius' dog-form. Like the dog had run all around the area, rubbed his fur against every bit of wall, rolled himself over the street. His scent was everywhere, so much so it was difficult to say which direction he had gone to.

Kakashi followed a trail for two minutes until it suddenly ended at a big crossing. He followed another trail, followed it almost all the way back to the cemetery, but then lost it again. Shaking his head, he returned to the bridge. The freshest scents were already hours old. Sirius had likely found some hidden place to stay the night after he had failed to find Kakashi close to the bridge.

He climbed one of the taller buildings, tried to get a view over the area of the city surrounding the bridge. Maybe he could find an area where Sirius might feel safe to hide. But there were thousand such places just in the immediate vicinity. Small places between trashcans, abandoned alleyways, bridges, small parks, half-open gateways, public buildings, the train tracks, the cemeteries, two churches, and a few parking lots. And that was only what he could see at first glance. Who said that Sirius hadn't found a way into one of the buildings, or even left the area entirely?

Finding a stray dog here, Kakashi realized as his eyes zeroed in on one of those animals, only to be disappointed as the fur turned out a dark brown and the dog much smaller than Sirius… it was like finding a needle in a haystack. He could waste days here and still not find Sirius. No reason to panic, Kakashi thought. After all, he might not know where Sirius was, but he knew where he was headed:

Harry Potter. Sirius had named the town his godson supposedly lived in again and again. Harry Potter, in Surrey.

Finding a boy who would have no reason to hide, he decided, would be much easier than finding a fugitive convict hiding from law enforcement, or a stray dog in a city of five million people.

Notes:

How did you like it? Kakashi had his first run-in with the ministry, and now, he's looking for one Harry Potter. He'll be pretty disappointed I fear, once he finds out, that Surrey is not quite a town but a county with several towns and villages...

I mentioned it a few times already, but the last chapter was basically the moment everything fell apart a little for those two. 'Fell apart' in the sense that Kakashi and Sirius now walk different paths. The first ten chapters were all about Kakashi and Sirius getting to know each other. Now, they have lost each other. Kakashi might be able with his tracking skills, to sniff out Sirius in this city eventually. But he knows it might take him days. He also (just like Sirius) isn't 100% certain the other's even still in the area. Looking for him at Harry's place is, therefore, the best method. I was thinking a while about how they would lose each other because I always intended for them to go separate ways in London. First I thought that Sirius would just leave Kakashi at a police station and then leave, but then I realized that Kakashi would find him pretty quickly, after that. So I thought it would be more believable, if Kakashi was the one who left and Sirius looked for him because, unlike Kakashi, Sirius (despite being a dog) is not that good of a tracker. As for Kakashi, losing as much time as he did first with the panic attack, then trying to find his way back, then the goose chase, and then again trying to find his way... He takes so long to get back to the bridge, that Sirius trail is basically lost to him.

Kakashi now had his first brush with a dementor. To him, it felt a little bit like a PTSD attack the way he's already used to them. the dementor also didn't get very close nor did it specifically attack Kakashi. So, Kakashi is very sensitive to these beasts, although part of it is also, that they just trigger his old fears.

The next part of the story will actually focus a lot on Kakashi, his search for Harry, and after. I even consider bringing in Harry as a second perspective for the Kakashi-part of the story. I just think one of the most entertaining parts for me is to write how the wizards think about Kakashi. So, for as long as he's separated from Sirius, Harry will play that part.

Also, I thought a lot about how Kakashi can see magic, especially when muggles often ignore it. This is a bit of a meta-explanation, but since it will take forever for Kakashi to figure all of this out: Here's a short explanation:

In my eyes, it seems like there are three ways to hide something from muggles:

The first and most common aspect seems to be that 'muggles just don't pay attention. This is actually said multiple times in the books. About the Knight Bus or I think even when Grimauldplace 12 appears and pushes all the neighboring houses aside. It also seems to be the reason, why most of the time, muggles simply don't notice goblins or other magical beings around them as anything extraordinary. So there seems to be just a component to magic, that makes muggles prone to just ignore it, unless it's in their face and affects them personally, or is super flashy. I decided since Kakashi has trained his senses to super awareness, beyond even wizards, this doesn't affect Kakashi or doesn't affect him that much. Kakashi is very attune to his surroundings, so when something just vanishes next to him or when there's a flash of light indicating a spell, he will notice it, unless the wizards go to extra effort to conceal the magic.

2. Secondly and most common for places there are 'bans', that can hide things from side (like the Fidelius Charm) or make things look different (like Hogwarts looking like a ruin to muggles). These things affect Kakashi as they do affect other muggles.

3. wizards can use spells to make specific muggles ignorant of what happens around them. So instead of hiding something from everybody, these spells just affect individual people that are targeted by it. So this would be similar to a genjutsu for Kakashi.

If and how Kakashi can deal with methods according to 2 and 3 I will get into it in the future. for now, just know that whenever he can see something easily that other muggles ignore, it's cause he has better senses than them.