Sabaku no Gaara had been having a bad day. That in and of itself was not an unusual occurrence, but it had been quite some time since he'd had a day quite as troublesome as this one.
It had been a few months since his fight with the Shitenshonin from the Takumi Village, and Konoha's blond knucklehead had left for his training mission with one of the legendary Sannin. Ever since his fateful encounter with Seimei, Shukaku had been almost completely dormant inside of him except for the occasional headache on a full moon. He hadn't even killed any of his fellow Suna citizens in a while. He had also been sleeping more often, which was a big plus. Overall, things had been going fairly well.
Things had been going well, until his past came back to bite him.
His past, in this instance, was in the form of a low-ranking Jounin from his own village, or to be more precise, that particular ninja's son. Several years prior to the Chunin exam and subsequent war, Gaara had been tormented by his 'inner demons' one night and had struck out at the first person he saw. That person just so happened to be the Gennin son of the man currently attacking him.
As soon as Gaara had seen the Genin boy, he had called his deadly sand and crushed him without hesitation. To this day Gaara regretted taking that boy's life, along with every other victim he had mercilessly and needlessly slaughtered, but that did not mean that when a kunai appeared to fly out of nowhere he didn't block it with his sand. Nor did he allow the exploding tag on the end of the kunai to burn him.
Gaara hated what he had done, but a certain blonde Jinchūriki had taught him to become a better person so that he could protect those precious to him. With that in mind, the tormented red-head parried another kunai strike from the unknown assailant, who appeared to be, from the look of his uniform, from Gaara's very own village.
The sand-user jumped back to put some distance between him and the masked Suna shinobi to plan his next move. He had been under the impression that his village had stopped trying to kill him; then again, this assassin didn't come as much of a surprise given his blood splattered past and the high rate of vendettas placed against him.
"What are you doing?" Gaara demanded in his usual straight-to-the-point way, silently planning his route of escape or plan of attack. Both would have been easier if they weren't currently in a valley, several miles from any possible back-up.
"Avenging my son! I'm gonna kill you... you monster!" This time, the infuriated ninja formed several hand-seals before several loose pebbles and rocks rose into the air in front of him and flew straight for Gaara at bullet-like speeds.
Unconsciously, Gaara's sand protected him just in time, but whilst the wall of sand obscured his view, the Jounin in front of him dove to the side to the valley's wall and jumped off of it, throwing a weapon at the person he had sworn vengeance upon. If it had been anyone weaker than a Jounin, the shuriken that had flown out the man's hand would not have not come within a foot of Gaara, but the multi-bladed weapon came so close to him that he had to use most of his sand as a precaution to stop the blade from reaching his neck.
Unfortunately for the current defender, that was only a distraction for the assailant to finish setting up his seal. Gaara's attention was drawn to the circular array at his feet that he had been lured into standing on when the symbols seemingly carved into the ground started to glow brightly.
"You demon! You took my son from me, now it's payback time!" The hysterical shinobi screamed as he jumped over the top of Gaara's sand and landed in front of the wary teen who was now gathering the sand at his feet to deal with the rogue ninja. "I'm gonna send you straight to hell!" He roared before he slapped his hand on the base of the circular seal, took his kunai, raised it above his flattened hand and with one final scream, plunged the dark steel straight through the waiting appendage.
The Ichibi host was baffled by this show of self harm, to the point of raising one of his invisible eyebrows, but refused to let whatever plan the crazed ninja had concocted happen. The insomniac gathered the rest of his sand and formed a spear in his hand, ready to kill the nuisance in his way; though, he wanted to note, it was out of self-defence and not enjoyment this time.
The former-psychopath was about to throw the lance at the pinned man kneeling only a few feet away from him, but as his arm drew back he actually dropped the sand javelin and his body convulsed with pain unlike any he had felt before as blue bolts of electricity sizzled through the doubled-over teen's body.
"Kin-jutsu: Demon world transport!" The bleeding man on the ground yelled as he used his un-impaled hand, now free of the kunai, to form a single hand sign in front of his face. After he had announced the name of his jutsu he began to laugh maniacally.
The pained teenager could do nothing to stop the forbidden-technique as it was completed and the man, who had tears streaming down his face, howled with laughter, appearing to melt into the glowing circular seal.
The man continued his uproarious cachinnation even as his face started to turn into a flesh coloured liquid and poured into the seal that was still paralyzing the immobilised host, who was now on all fours as the glowing of the markings intensified.
The light was blinding at this point for Gaara, who could hear others approaching over the crackling of the electricity. The helpless warrior could only hope that those shinobi were friendly.
As it turned out, they were about as friendly as he could have hoped for: his siblings.
The pair ran forwards, through the narrow valley, towards their crippled little brother who was struggling to stay conscious in the electrically charged field that was still subduing him.
Temari and Kankuro had both been performing their usual patrols around the village outskirts when they felt an immense burst of chakra coming from the mountains several miles away.
Without so much as requesting assistance they sped there as quickly as their feet would carry them. In any other case the pair probably wouldn't have rushed so desperately to the source of the potentially dangerous disturbance, but they could only think of one source for that magnitude of chakra and their little red-haired brother had gone out on a mission a few hours before in that general direction.
When they arrived, they were shocked to see their supposedly demonic younger brother being electrocuted by blue lightning bolts whilst writhing in a pile of his own sand inside some sort of shining array that neither of them recognised.
Gaara tried to look up at his older siblings but lost consciousness soon after they arrived, from the pain, the seal still holding him down, dragging him into darkness.
Temari gasped as Gaara's head dropped to the ground and was about to approach him to help in any way she could, but she was held back by Kankuro who quickly shouted, "Don't! You'll get caught in whatever that thing is as well!"
As soon as the black-rimmed eyes had shut the glowing of the array had intensified, unnoticed by Kankuro and Temari, until the light was bright enough for them to have to avert their gazes.
Suddenly, in the midst of the crackling of the electricity and the blowing of the wind in the valley, a boom sounded off like nothing either of the two conscious teens had ever heard before. The explosion may have been in sound only, but as soon as it had been sounded, the entire chasm they were standing in went completely silent, except for the soft echoing of the explosion.
Both of the remaining sand siblings looked back up for their teammate and family to see nothing, not even the symbols that had been carved into the rock were there anymore. The entire scene had been wiped clean. Gaara, his sand and any residual chakra was gone.
Temari looked at the scene and then after finally registering that he was gone, searched the surrounding area for any trace of her little brother's or the one-tailed beast's chakra, but found nothing. At this revelation, Temari broke down into fits of hysterical tears at the sudden apparent death of their younger brother. No matter what he had done, they had still loved him, and now he was gone.
OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Gaara awoke, or at least he assumed he was awake because of the pain, to a blackness. Not a swirling blackness or a flashing one, but an absolute darkness that made the Tanuki-host question his sight. He would have dwelled on this worry of blindness but he was interrupted by what seemed to be lacerations to his torso, then his back, then to his chest and his legs and his arms. From every conceivable angle, Gaara was cut to shreds.
Whilst this excruciating pain was tearing through Gaara's system, he felt a further inexplicable feeling, as if he was being pulled and pushed in every direction and yet still falling. All of these sensations made the battered boy almost slip into a peaceful unconscious slumber once again, but for some unknown reason sleep would not come.
Wherever the injured boy was, time didn't seem to exist, as it felt like he had been falling for hours upon hours or possibly even days or weeks, and yet there had been no change in visibility, and then, all too suddenly, he found himself outside of the darkness, still falling, but now that was the only sensation of movement.
Gaara was glad as he impacted on the relative softness of the grass combined with the sandy remains of his gourd, as the two yielding surfaces had stopped the battered ninja from breaking his neck or back after his considerable fall. Even more so, Gaara was glad because the freezing cold grass was aiding in numbing the wounds that literally covered his body.
It must have been night time wherever he had landed, Gaara surmised, because he couldn't see more than twenty feet away from himself despite the waning moon above him; then again, he was in so much pain, that to think straight enough to focus his eyes would have been a monumental and ultimately impossible task. And he wasn't sure he wanted to see that much, he couldn't have done much even with his sight at that point.
It turned out that the slashing feelings that he had endured for however long he had been in the darkness were in fact cuts littering his body. Most were relatively shallow and harmless but one or two were larger and definitely more serious if left untreated. Adding blood loss to possible hypothermia and the inability to move to help himself, things weren't looking too good for the ex-sociopath.
OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Sirius Black was by no means a precautious man, or at least he hadn't been so before, but ever since he had managed to escape from Azkaban prison using his animagus abilities he had been more careful than he had previously thought possible. That being said, it did not mean that when he was longingly staring out of the highest window of his current hideaway, the Shrieking Shack, and saw someone suddenly start to fall from the darkened sky, he wasn't going to go and try to help whoever it was.
Black ran from the bedroom he had been sitting in and morphed into his black-dog form as he reached the front of the house before pounding out of one of the small dog-sized cracks and into the cold grassy grounds outside of the most haunted house in Britain.
When the dog-formed man reached his goal it was far from what he expected. The first part of the child that caught his attention was the blazing red hair on the boy's head. Unlike the 'red' hair of the Weasley family that was more akin to, this red-head was the colour of blood. The next thing Sirius noticed was the actual blood coming from the countless wounds on the still form in front of him, even seeping through his clothes.
The sole heir of the Black name couldn't think of any spell that would have this devastating affect on a body, not even Sectumsempra left this kind of damage, nor did he want to think of a person willing to perform such a horrendous type of magic on a child. They'd have had to have spent a considerable amount of time cutting him up.
The third thing he noticed was the volume of sand surrounding the still body. As if he had been cushioned by the small desert beneath him, the boy didn't seem to have any wounds pertaining to the fall itself, only the hundreds of cuts all over his body.
The escapee looked around the surrounding area to check for dementors or worse: tourists. And after he was sure he was alone, he changed back into his raggedy human form and carried the surprisingly light child in his arms back to his hide-out.
On his way back to his temporary home Sirius couldn't help but slow down to relish the chill in the air. That was one of the few luxuries he enjoyed as a dog, a thick fur coat, but that didn't mean he wouldn't savour any rare chances to feel the cold night's chill on his skin now that he was free. When he reached the door-less house he quickly thought on his feet and used his foot to widen the hole he had been using until that point.
Once inside the rotten and run down house, the animagus went to work helping the boy who had fallen from the sky. Firstly, he removed the boy's shirt to get a better look at the wounds that seemed to get worse and worse the more he looked. The man ran into the next room and got a bowl of water to clean some of the blood off before he inspected the wounds properly. For the most part they were superficial cuts that weren't doing much damage on their own. A few may have grazed an organ or two but the only thing the man could do was wrap them tightly in the cleanest material he could find in the decrepit house and hope for the best.
As he was finishing he was at the boy's neck and after an inspection decided to wrap the slash he found there tightly too. Luckily the deep wound on the neck hadn't touched the jugular. Not that a simple wizard like he would have known about human anatomy, but he knew that if neck cut, and lots of red stuff come out, that bad. What was worrying, though, was that the gash had sliced through the boy's larynx. He wrapped up the neck and a few of the larger cuts that were visible on the boy's face before setting him down.
Whilst Black had worked on the boy's porcelain-like face he couldn't help but notice two things, other than the incredibly pale skin. Those were: the ridiculously dark shadows around his eyes that looked as if he had gone ten years without sleep, and the large red tattoo/scar on his forehead that appeared to be some foreign symbol.
As he sat back, Sirius had to admire his handiwork of the last hour and a half. The boy was covered in bandages from head to toe, and still the convict could see the boy was around the same age as his godson, if not a little younger.
The jailbird had wanted to at least see Harry as soon as he broke out of prison, having swum in the North Sea to Scotland and hoping to make it down to Surrey in a fortnight, but now he couldn't leave this boy for at least few weeks, maybe more judging by his wounds. He couldn't just leave the boy to be found either, and he didn't much fancy his chances if he brought the boy to St. Mungos.
'I just found him like this, please don't arrest me.' Probably wouldn't cut it.
He would have to put off seeing his best friend's son until he came to visit Hogsmeade in the fall as a student.
Sirius checked the boy's pocket for a wand or identification but found no sign of either. The only thing he found was some kind of bandanna with a metal plate engraved with a sort of hourglass symbol, which was attached to some kind of leather sash that had run across the boy's chest and up his back.
After a few minutes of watching the shallow breathing of the heavily wounded teenager, Sirius turned back into a dog and took a small sniff of the boy's scent and went outside into the night to see if there was anything of the boy's left out there. Startlingly, the sand that the boy had landed in smelt strongly of the red-head, as if he had been with it for years. Sirius padded up to the patch of sand covered ground and started to dig around in it to see if there was anything buried that could help identify the mysterious youth.
The dog rejoiced when he discovered something: a pouch. The small purple bag was fairly heavy when Sirius picked it up with his jaws and ran back to the makeshift front door of the Shrieking Shack. When he was back in the main room he used, where the boy was still lying, he reverted to his original form and sat down cross-legged on the floor to examine what the boy was carrying. Perhaps he could find some clue in there as to what happened.
Sirius was shocked to find several knives, star-shaped bladed weapons and pads of paper with strange writing on them. The writing was different to what was on the boy's forehead and seemed more like a pattern than actual writing. Maybe it was money? Though it didn't look like the British muggle currency he had seen years ago.
Sirius was about to pick up the stack of papers to inspect them further when he saw something move out of the corner of his eye. He looked over to see…
OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Gaara had been having the nicest dream he could remember having; it consisted of him sitting down with his mother and father, his aunt and sister and brother, and them eating all meal together. They had all talked and laughed and had a nice time with each other. No mention of shinobi or wars or demons. It was so pleasant he had wished he would never wake up. Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end.
When the panda-eyed boy woke he was immediately assaulted by the almost overpowering pain from his wounds, but pushed through the agony to look around himself. He surmised he was in an old shabby house and it was still night time. He then noticed another person in the room. In any other situation he would have jumped into a defensive stance or cocooned himself in sand, but he could do neither for lack of strength and sand. He couldn't move a muscle.
It was then that Gaara, out of the corner of his eye, saw the man rummaging through his weapons-pouch about to touch his exploding tags. With all the strength he could muster, Gaara opened his mouth and was about to tell him to stop, but nothing came out. No words, no sound, nothing. Fortunately the movement of his mouth was enough to draw the man's attention.
Sirius immediately stopped going through the other's possessions and turned towards the intensely glaring boy on the floor a few feet from him.
"Hello," Sirius started, trying to ease some of the tension he was feeling because of the gaze on him. "My name is…actually, never mind," He continued. He'd almost revealed he was the murderer wanted by the entire magical and muggle communities, though he wasn't all too sure that the boy was even a wizard. He didn't have a wand, he wasn't dressed in wizarding robes, and he had wounds that looked more like they were from a muggle weapon than a wizard's wand. That and the boy hadn't immediately recognised him from the pictures that were undoubtedly in every bar and on every shop in the wizarding world.
"I found you outside. You, uh... fell from the sky. Do you remember what happened? Could you tell me your name? Where did you come from?" The man asked, hoping for even a slither of information.
Gaara looked at the scruffy man sat across from him and once again with great effort opened his mouth to talk but couldn't utter a syllable. The red haired tanuki-host kept trying to speak but it soon became apparent that he couldn't. One of the cuts had evidently severed his vocal cords. After this, the redhead just closed his mouth and went back to sleep. He needed to conserve his energy.
The fugitive of the dementors watched this display until the boy went back to sleep, and slipped back out of the room as quietly as possible so that he could go and get some food. This had been worrying him whilst he dressed the boy's wounds. Sirius had been turning into a dog and eating in that form, rabbits and small mammals had been enough to sustain him, but now he had a fully human boy who needed to be fed.
It made Sirius laugh at the thought that he wanted to take care of Harry one day. He was fairly sure that neither boy would appreciate a dead rabbit presented to them by a large black dog for dinner.
The man came to his front door and shifted to his 'grim' form and ran off into the woods to hunt, in a manner. First Sirius dealt with his own hunger by finding a cute little bunny rabbit and eating it. After he was done there, he ran to Hogsmeade village to help his new ward.
Sirius had always been a caring person; he had been deprived of the affection he craved as a child until he met his best friend James and their various other comrades and associates. When he had been sent to that detestable prison he had been removed from anyone he cared about, and now that he was out he just wanted someone to talk to. If that person happened to be a random injured child, so be it.
It also didn't hurt that the mysterious boy looked a little like Lily, due to the hair and eye colours, and was about the Harry's age. All of that, added to the fact that for the last few weeks he had had nothing to do except skulk around as a dog or look out of the window longingly at the woods and the borders of Hogsmeade.
His musings were soon interrupted when he came upon the edge of the woods, marking the beginnings of the sole town for miles around. Sirius made his way around the outskirts until he spotted one of the back alleys he recognised.
He recognised this particular back alley because, as man may not live on bread alone, Sirius may not live on rabbit and mole alone. He had found this little gem after four days of living in the Shrieking Shack and eating nothing but woodland creatures.
Padfoot walked up to the darkened alley and sat down, waiting for a prize he was sure would be worth the time.
Sure enough a few hours later the back door opened to reveal a burly man carry out a bucket of waste materials from the bakery inside. As soon as the black dog was spotted a wide smile set itself upon the large man's and he walked back inside in haste whilst leaving the door ajar. Soon enough he returned, carrying with him a large loaf of bread, fresh from the oven.
"Here you go, pooch." The man slurred as he chucked the loaf to the ground as was routine by now. The man had discovered the dog sniffing through his shop's bins a couple of weeks before and had a soft spot for dogs. As such, he had brought it out a loaf whenever he saw it, which wasn't that often, every two or three days.
Sirius wasted no time before snatching up the bread and carrying it back through the woods as quickly as possible. He soon arrived back at the familiar shack and padded in quietly, dropping the loaf and zooming back out to get something else.
Around a quarter of an hour later he was back with a slight toothy grin around a rabbit in his mouth. He dropped that too and changed back swiftly while he carried the rabbit and bread upstairs and into the main bedroom only to see the boy was once again awake.
"I'll make you some food; do you understand what I am saying?" Sirius questioned with a smile whilst he knelt down and started to strip some of the dry wood from his surroundings to make kindling.
Whilst he worked he looked over to the other person in the room who had been looking at him with a face as unreadable as the scruffy-man had thought possible, and nodded slowly, turning his head to the ceiling.
A little while later Sirius Black was just finishing cooking the rabbit he had since skinned, cleaned and so forth, before skewering and suspending over the warm fire. It was a warm and well appreciated change from raw meat and plain bread.
Not long after the wrongly convicted man had finished his amateur cooking, he stripped the meat as best as he could and used the bread to hold it, making a few rabbit sandwiches ready to eat.
The still kneeling man moved over to the prone boy and helped him to sit up. He had been very careful with trying not to reopen any of the wounds that littered the bandaged body, then of course there was the problem of the pain that would certainty have been unbearable for any normal human.
Luckily, Gaara wasn't any normal human being; he was a shinobi who could handle pain, despite what past Chunin exams may have led one to believe.
After he was upright, Gaara attempted to eat the crudely made bunny sandwich. It was a valiant effort but what both of them had forgotten was the large gash in the hungry but injured boy's throat. After the first try, resulting in a bloodied cough and a few reopened wounds, Gaara gave up on the food in front of him; instead he turned his head and hoped the stranger would get the hint and let him back down gently. He did.
Over the next few days Sirius Black continued to take care of the bedridden mystery teen that he had been calling Lily in his head. Just a bit of an ironic joke. Though he didn't dare say that particular thought out loud because the teen was scarier than most of the Death Eaters he had met, put together. It was the eyes, they were so cold.
The falsely accused had been getting bread almost every day and making crude stews as best he could. As far as he could tell, they weren't doing any more damage to Lily's throat; but from what he had seen, Lily appeared to be mute or maybe he was just very quiet.
A week after the boy had arrived, Sirius had been astounded by the fact that he was able to stand and walk without help. Well, he was incredibly shaky and could only take a few steps, but to be able to recover from those extensive injuries in such a short amount of time was unheard of without around the clock care from a medical witch or wizard. When Sirius had redressed the wounds most of them were already healed or healing.
Just over a week after his arrival Gaara was lying where he usually did, looking over at his caretaker cooking more stew. The sand-user didn't know what meat it was but the food itself wasn't that bad. At least he was healing normally (for him). As bad as Jinchūriki had to suffer, there was the upside of super-fast healing. What irked Gaara the most was that his throat didn't seem to be healing at all, other than having closed over. He guessed his vocal chords had been fully severed and were beyond repair.
It really didn't make much difference to his already reticent persona but it would be an inconvenience in the future, he imagined.
Gaara stopped his thoughts when he heard the man speak, "My name, it's Sirius." He said clearly and concisely without any hesitation. Gaara couldn't help but wonder why the man had waited a week before revealing it. "I'm a criminal on the run. I didn't want to tell you my name because I feared you might have heard of me." It was funny how often Gaara's questions were answered without him asking anything out loud.
"I don't suppose you can tell me your name, can you?" Sirius asked rhetorically, "I actually knew someone with hair as red as yours many years ago," He continued absentmindedly. "I guess if I don't know your real name I'll just call you Lily." He said with a chuckle and a smile wide enough to show off his gruesome blackened teeth as he continued with the cooking.
The red-head grimaced. He wasn't quite as happy with the new name as his saviour, who continued with his cooking oblivious to the coldest stare he would ever receive, or more correctly, his back would receive.
It was only a few days later and Gaara was able to walk unaided which was a massive relief to him. He hadn't done anything since he had arrived except the occasional trip to the bathroom and a shaky walk around the room to stave off the worst of the muscular-dystrophy. Both of which had been painful but wholly necessary.
Gaara's first plan was to leave and go back to the Wind country or, failing that, at least get to the Fire country. Unfortunately he didn't know what land he was in or even what continent. Gaara looked over to the man who was sitting at the window, looking out forlornly like he often did when he wasn't preoccupied taking care of Gaara. He gave a little wave to get the dirty man's attention, ever-silently, before gesturing for a pen.
When Sirius looked towards his charge he was shocked to see the gesture the boy was making. He had his fingers positioned in a small grip and was waving it in a downwards movement. For most muggles and even shinobi this would have been a clear sign for a pen or a brush and ink in the latter's case, but to a fully grown wizard that was undoubtedly, and wrongly, identifiable as the gesture for a wand.
"You want a wand, Lily? Are you a wizard?" He asked flabbergasted at his own naivety. "And here I thought you were just a muggle." He laughed as he walked over and sat down.
Gaara was confused, mostly by the words "wand", "wizard" and "muggle"; he was so confused that he forgot to glare when he was called by a girl's name again. He had never come across 'muggle' and could only think of children's fairy tales when he heard the words 'wand' and 'wizard', so he was sure that he had been mistaken. In an attempt to convey his ignorance on the subject to the other he tilted his head to the side.
Sirius would have happily lent his own wand to the young 'wizard', but that was long gone. It had been snapped when he was arrested all those years ago by an angry Auror convinced of his guilt, like everybody else. "Sorry, I don't have a wand anymore."
Gaara shook his head and redid the pen gesture but slower, hoping the kind but utterly oblivious man might get the message.
"Oh a pen!" Sirius exclaimed in a rare bout of realisation and clarity. "I'll see if I can go get you one." He said as he walked to the door "Oh, and Lily," he had opened the door "-forget what I said about wands and wizards, it was all a…umm… joke." The falsely accused hoped the peeved teen might just buy the quick lie.
He didn't.
After a quick trip up to Hogsmeade and back, the dog had managed to craftily swipe a quill from an open window. It was a lucky find by any standards. By the time he got back, 'Lily' had gotten dressed in his very worn clothes and was sitting by the window. The black bandanna with the silver metal plate was now tied around his neck instead of around his large leather sash, probably to cover up the scar on his throat, or so Sirius guessed.
As per usual, Sirius had changed back into human form before re-entering the derelict haunted house. He walked over to the teen and handed the quill to him, curious as to what he was going to say first.
Gaara looked at the strangely ornate instrument, but considered that writing utensils were likely the least of the differences in their two worlds. Luckily, this foreign boy didn't think twice that a quill should have needed ink to be written with, so Sirius didn't have to explain how an 'inkless quill' functioned without divulging magic.
As soon as he got the quill, Gaara moved to the wall and started to write, 'My name is Gaara. Not Lily.' The deadly glare aimed at Sirius was all the punctuation the message needed.
With a nervous chuckle Sirius said "I think I liked 'Lily' better. So, where do you come from?"
'Sunagakure, of the Wind country' He scrawled quickly, but when he saw the questioning look on the other's face as he read it, he continued to write 'of the Elemental Nations'. Still there was no look of recognition on Sirius' face. 'Where am I?'
"You are in the Shrieking Shack, just outside of Hogsmeade village," Predictably this didn't earn any sign of acknowledgement so he added "Very close to Hogwarts." This was sort of a test to see if the boy was in fact a young wizard.
Nothing.
The boy just continued his even look before writing, 'What country?'
"England, part of Great Britain."
The red-head sat still in a considerable pause. Before continuing the partially written conversation, 'What are wizards?'
This stunned the man who was sat across from the mute teen, he hadn't expected that question. Yet, after he thought about it, he realized he should have seen it coming.
The only thing he could do was be honest now. He wasn't closely connected to any muggles so to help the boy he had no choice but to tell Gaara 'the big secret' and help him through wizarding means. Or, those means which Sirius still had access to as a wanted man.
"Okay, but first tell me what happened to you." said Sirius.
'I was attacked by someone from my village who used a jutsu that sent me through a dark place. In the dark place I got the wounds and then I landed here.' Gaara purposefully left out the part about killing the attacker's son.
"What is a jut-su?" Sirius asked, completely mispronouncing the word. The story seemed very odd to him. To be sent through some sort of portal sounded very much like magic. 'Maybe they just don't call them wizards where he comes from.' Sirius thought hopefully.
'A 'ninjutsu', a shinobi technique.' The boy wrote before shuffling over to another wall, he was running out of writing space, which he imagined would be a hindrance for the rest of his life if he was to forever be mute.
"I've never heard of a ninjutsu." The baffled man thought out loud. "And you're one of these 'shinobi'?" Sirius questioned excitedly. This was extraordinary, to find another culture that used magic completely separate from his own was groundbreaking.
'Yes.'
"Could you show me one of your jutsus?"
'Not right now. I need sand to use my techniques.' He quickly wrote on the grimy lime green wall.
As the red-head looked back at the man he saw a smile appear on his face before he got to his feet and moved to the door on the other side of the room. "Wait here." The filthy man ran out of the room quickly and, unknown to Gaara, out of the house still in human form until he was the edge of the woods where he had first discovered Lily's' body. Sure enough there was still a pile of old sand lying there on the grass.
It wasn't as pure as when it had first appeared, dirt was mixed in with it and most was damp and unusable, unbeknownst to Sirius who scooped up a large handful and ran back as fast as he could to the fascinating teen.
Sabaku no Gaara was shocked to say the least when he watched the man re-enter the room carrying a handful of sand with him. Granted, the sand was dirtier than Sirius himself and slightly damp which would have usually made manipulation impossible but the amount was so small that it should be possible to work it.
Sirius sat down cross legged just a few feet away from Gaara before turning his hand over and dropping the sand in between them, dusting his hands off to get rid of any residual sand stuck to them.
Another wave of surprise hit Gaara as he felt the familiar presence of his chakra mixed in with the sand. He knew as soon as he saw it that it was his sand, which made it all the easier to move. Gaara outstretched his hand over the sand, palm faced down, and immediately it started to rise off the ground and crumble and reform in mid air, shedding the dirt and grass and any leftover clumps of stuck together sand. Soon it was dry and pure like normal and waving around, though greatly reduced in quantity.
Sirius was astounded by this; regular wand-less magic was different from this. Usually a powerful wizard could perform the basics of spells without a wand and even then it was greatly weakened, but this boy seemed to be performing a floating charm on sand, which was difficult in itself, not only without a wand but also without saying the spell. It was unheard of.
"That's amazing!" Sirius bellowed. "I've never seen a wiza- I mean, anyone do anything like this. With something like this you could probably get into Hogwarts, even though you're over the age for first years."
'Hogwarts?' Gaara had crushed the sand into a small ball and dropped it into his pocket for later use before picking the quill back up. It was the only sand he had at this point and he couldn't even defend himself against an academy trainee with it… well he probably could but he didn't like his chances against anyone worth fighting.
"It's a school for young witches and wizards, and I think you would qualify." Sirius said. "I'll ask an old friend of mine to get you in, if you want."
Gaara was surprised by this proposition but shook his head signalling a clear 'no'. He wrote on the wall 'I have to get back to my people.' As soon as he wrote this, Sirius seemed to deflate a little, inside and out, his previous childlike excitement from the idea of being involved in Hogwarts was gone.
Dejected Sirius replied "Okay." before moving to the window to stare outside, obviously disappointed, though that didn't change Gaara's mind even in the slightest.
Gaara moved the quill back to the mouldy green wall and wrote 'What are wizards, muggles and wands?'
What followed was a lengthy; and, mostly, one-sided explanation of magic, the wizarding world and the war with 'He-who-shall-not-be-named' that still barely scratched the surface of the vast and apparently complicated culture Gaara was in and by the end of it, the silent ninja was sick and tired of magic and this country.
After the conversation Gaara washed his writing off of the wall, to keep what he said a secret. He was still first and foremost a ninja who needed to cover his tracks.
One thing was for sure, he silently bemoaned as he cleaned the detritus from the rounded quill nib. This was not his world. The stars were different and the moon, while bearing a strong resemblance to his own, was smaller and bore different craters. These astronomical signs coupled with Sirius' descriptions of a fully explored world made it clear this was not his home world.
He kept this discovery to himself, though. Sirius seemed to be a kind man but one couldn't account for reactions to such bizarre circumstances as Gaara's.