Harry Potter and The Host Club

Chapter 1

Warnings: Slash, book spoilers, manga spoilers, angst, clichés, brooding, chocolate abuse, reflected-upon child abuse, trauma, crude language, mentioned character death, Ron bashing, Ginny bashing, Dumbles bashing, eventual mild sexual situations, AU for books 5, 6, and 7 of Harry Potter.

Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling and her affiliates. Ouran High School Host Club belongs to Bisco Hatori and her (it is a her, right?) affiliates.

Features: Independent!Brooding!Isolationist!Traumatized!Harry, Clingy!Paternal!Sirius, and the host-bu guys being themselves

Chapter One

This was it. Here he was, fifteen years old, and starting school in a country as far away from home as he could get without going somewhere obvious. He loved it. He loved how it was spring when school started, instead of dreary and Fall-ish, loved how warm it was in contrast to the cold rains of England, and most of all, he loved the school he would now be attending.

Ouran Koukou, or Ouran High School, was a prestigious school for rich kids, where everyone was putting up a front of some kind and knew it. No one would think it odd that he was amazingly rich - no matter how frugal his spending normally was, he was rich - or that he was foreign; no one would mind if he seemed a bit distant. They would surely assume that he, like many others, was looking for opportunity or something. The eccentricities of his personality could easily be ironed out to make him seem like the heir to a fortune, no matter his past.

Best of all, no one here would care that he was Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived, Twice-Accidental-Slayer of Voldemort. No one would know that he had grown up in a cupboard with little to eat; they might not even notice if he was shorter than average from his malnourishment as a child, as most Japanese people didn't seem too much taller than he was. (He had, admittedly, seen a few very tall men around, but not too much taller than six feet or so.) Here, Harry didn't have to worry about Death Eaters, Dumbledore, or any little fan clubs devoted to him. It was the last place anyone expected him to go, and it was halfway around the world from Hogwarts. It was perfect.

He exited his flat smoothly, locking the door behind him and sticking the key in his pocket that had been charmed thief-proof. The lock was a magical one, so even in the average neighborhood he had purchased his flat in, there was no chance that anyone could get in and look through his things unless they too were magical people. (Sirius would be able to take them down either way, but as he wasn't likely to remain in the flat too long...) So it was with total confidence that he started down the stairs to the street level, yawning as he went.

However, when Harry yawned, he closed his eyes, as most people do. Closing his eyes was not, in fact, a brilliant idea, because he did so as he was reaching the next level down and knocked into someone. This woke him up immediately, and just as his accidental victim was going to fall over the rail, Harry grabbed their sleeve and yanked him(?) back. When righted, he noticed that it was a slightly girly-looking boy wearing a large sweater and slacks with ungainly frames on his nose that magnified already large brown eyes. Well, he assumed it was a boy, he couldn't really tell though with the unfortunate haircut and baggy clothes. Rather like him in that, but Harry's clothes were no longer baggy, nor was his hair that shaggy.

"Aa, sorry 'bout that," he rubbed the back of his neck, realized he'd spoken in English (the translation spell he'd picked allowed him to use English, but it allowed him to be fluent without constant reapplication. A useful spell, but not considered practical by most vacationers who needed translation charms to begin with because they didn't care about being fluent all the time and it required constant use of the language to maintain) and repeated the phrase in Japanese. "I wasn't looking where I was going."

The kid (well, s/he looked probably around Harry's age, and was ever-so-slightly taller than him, maybe an inch, but still) blinked his/her/its large eyes before shrugging. "It was an accident. I have to get going though; I'll be late for school if I don't." Then he/she/it turned around and jogged down the stairs, strapless satchel under his arm, before Harry shrugged too, following. He had a train to catch.