Might & Magic Summer Novella 1: Summer Madness

by thablackkuririn

Ranma's first year at Hogwarts ended with a bang. Now, Ranma is looking forward to a peaceful summer. Too bad Shampoo has other plans! And she's just the beginning of Ranma's troubles. Can Ranma deal with them and several shocking revelations?

Might and Magic:Tales of Ranma Saotome, Boy Wizard

A Ranma ½ and Harry Potter Crossover

Novella 1: Summer Madness

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters (see J.K. Rowling and Rumiko Takahashi), I'm just making up a new story with them. Please don't sue me (especially for any OOC).

Author's Notes: Conversation in Japanese is denoted by "((" and "))".

Part 1 – A Chinese Amazon in London

Chapter 1: The Trouble With Owl Post; Shampoo in a Lather

I'm soaking wet and I'm pissed off. The main reason for my bad mood is getting the angriest stare down I know how to give. A purple-haired Chinese girl is glaring murderously back at me from where I'd knocked her on her arse. She's propped up on one elbow and rubbing her chin, where a bruise is already starting to form . From the slight twitching of her eyes, I can tell that she's searching for an opening to either escape or attack. Her weapons are within a foot of her grasp on either side and I'm pretty sure she knows this. I have to admit to that she's very good. Not as good as me, of course, which is something I thought she'd have figured out by now. It's almost like she wants me to actually beat it into her head.

This Chinese girl has been a pain in my arse for about a year now, but with all the things she's put me through lately, it seems like it's been forever. Today she's managed to knock out my dad and seriously injure my friend. So, yeah, I'm angry. You'd probably be angry too if you had to defend against this girl's attempts to kill you.

It's almost laughable to think that last week, when I'd gotten off the train from school, I'd told my mum and dad I was going to have a normal and excitement free summer. I don't even know if I believed it when I'd said it. I sure had hoped it would be true, after all the craziness that I'd been up to at the end of the school year, but deep down I couldn't fool myself into thinking my life would suddenly become less complicated.

My friend Neville Longbottom has probably seen better days. He's leaning against the garden wall and trying not to look at his right arm, which is bent at a funny angle in a couple places. Neville's no stranger to painful accidents, so maybe that's why he's handling the broken arm so well. I wonder whether he might've avoided this injury completely if he didn't have the confidence boost from beating up two boys, one almost five years older than him, on the train ride from school. Many of my senseis have said that confidence is most dangerous when it's not in line with reality, and the reality here was that Neville really shouldn't have tried to challenge the Chinese girl. Even though he's learned a lot since I started teaching him martial arts, Neville doesn't know how to size up an opponent, so his injury is mostly my fault. I silently vow to teach him this to make up for his arm. I quickly glance at it, thinking both that we need to get him to a medi-wizard soon and that, for the first time, I miss the Hogwarts hospital wing and it's overbearing matron, Madame Pomfrey.

Oh right, I guess I should explain some things before I get too far into the story, otherwise you won't understand half of what I'm about to say. Then again, you probably won't believe most of it either, but I promise you that what I'm about to say is all true. At least it'll explain why a Chinese girl has followed me all the way to London to kill me.

My name is Ranma Saotome. I'm a twelve year-old Japanese boy living in London with my parents, Genma and Nodoka. That sounds simple, but believe me when I say that my life's kinda complicated. See, from pretty much when I could walk, I've been training in the martial arts. During that time, I learned and saw and did a lot of things that most people might think are impossible. My father made sure I learned to do these things, just like he could, and he made sure I learned how to use ki to do it. Ki is a kind of life energy that almost everyone has, but only a few know how to use. All of the top martial artists use it all the time (I should know, since I've fought most of them). By the time I'd turned nine, I could dent steel with a punch, jump from the ground onto the roof of a single-story house, and run as fast as a car over short distance, all thanks to my growing mastery of ki.

After I turned four, I spent seven years traveling the world with Pops (that's what I call my father), who is a pretty powerful martial artist. Pops' goal is to make me the greatest martial artist of my generation. I don't know if I am or not, but I do know that I am very good. I know a lot about fighting and I've beaten some of the best fighters in the world, even though I'm still just a kid. I'm not very popular because of this and I've got a lot of enemies around the world, mostly thanks to Pops. So complicated is something I can handle; I'm used to it by now. I still wasn't prepared for what I learned about my world.

Last year, I learned that ki wasn't the only energy that make the impossible possible. On one of our training trips, all it took was a slip and a bit of carelessness for me to suddenly learn that magic was very real. Pops and I had traveled to this place in the mountains of China called Jusenkyo. We didn't know it, but it's a magical spring with hundreds of cursed pools. If you fall into one of them, like we did, you'll turn into whatever drowned in the water. Pops turned into a big, fat panda, and I became a girl. We were pretty scared about that until we saw that hot water turned us back into our original forms. On the downside, we seem to be magnets for cold water, which always turns us back into the cursed bodies. My mum's working on curing us, but with her work as Japanese Ambassador to the British Ministry of Magic, who knows when or if we'll be cured.

Getting cursed was pretty terrible, but at least it let me see my mum again. See, Pops rushed us back to Japan, probably because he thought Mum could fix us up. She's a witch, if you haven't guessed, so it made sense that she could probably fix things. Not that Pops even told me any of this; it was enough of a battle just to get him to tell me we were going to see mum at all. The stupid git wouldn't have said anything if we hadn't gotten cursed, and I wouldn't have seen her again for years. Apparently, when I was born, my parents couldn't decide what I should do when I grew up, so they'd signed a contract about how I would be raised. Pops was supposed to train me in martial arts for seven years, then I was. to go to magic school for seven years. Mum hadn't counted on Pops trying to weasel out of the deal, though at the same time Pops hadn't counted on us running into any magic. And that's how we ended up at Mum's house one rainy day in May

Mum was pretty angry at Pops for not keeping his word and for keeping me in the dark, but I managed to keep her from killing him. She made plans for me to go learn magic at the same school she'd gone to, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Somehow, Mum managed to become Ambassador overnight and we moved to England just in time for me to get the invitation. In September, I went off to school and, for the first time I could remember, I wasn't in training. I was finally going to live like a normal person. Well, as normal as a wizard can live.

At Hogwarts, things went the way they usually do for me. I made more enemies than friends and got caught up in all sorts of trouble. For a change, though, I wasn't having to worry about people trying to beat up, arrest, or kill me. Well, okay, that last part isn't really true. Lord Voldemort, a dark wizard so terrible that people are afraid to say his name, tried to kill me and my friend, Harry Potter, through his servant, a teacher at the school that he was possessing. In the end, though, me and Harry, with the help of our friends Neville (the boy I mentioned earlier), Ron Weasley, and Hermione Granger, managed to stop his plans to return himself to full power. Oh, and we also managed to learn a bit about magic, defeat a mountain troll, basically win the House championship for our house, Gryffindor, and completely show up our rival house, Slytherin.

Even with all of that going on last year, it was actually a lot easier without Pops there to give me extra "training" (that's what he calls it when he'll bollocks things up, blame it on me, and force me to fight my way out). Still, when I got off the Hogwarts Express, I figured that, away from school, I would finally have a normal holiday like other kids my age. After all, we live in London, far from anyone I've ever counted as an enemy. Except for the unexpected and strange appearance of Ryoga (an old classmate of mine that wants to, surprise, kill me) last Christmas, none of them had showed their faces in England. As far as I knew, and it wasn't likely they would either. Even if they did, I still had magic on my side. Wizards and witches are very good at keeping Muggles (non-magic people) away, and I thought I could count on that.

Man, was I ever wrong.

And it's not like I shouldn't've known better, since trouble seems to be the only thing that I'm a bigger magnet for than water. Normally I've got some kind of warning about these things, but the first few days of the holidays were just like I'd hoped they'd be. Since I'd spent almost ten months away at school, doing only enough martial arts training to keep my skills, I was ready to get in some serious training to make up for it. Pops was just as eager. He hadn't given up on me being the best of my generation and taking over the Anything Goes School of martial arts. If you ask me, though, I think the old man really just missed our old routine of me kicking his butt every morning, then him complaining about my lack of respect and threatening to start using his real techniques. I like to yank his chain and see if he actually will because I know he's still holding back on me, and every time he lets something slip, I learn a bit more. With all the insulting and fighting, most normal people would wonder why anyone would want to go through it all, but trust me, Pops lives for it. He just loves to fight, and I don't blame him, because I do too.

The summer's training was gonna be a little different, and not just because I wanted to cram in a year's worth of training into a couple months. The first day back in London, I spent a good couple of hours arguing with Pops about the changes I wanted to make, which I thought were reasonable. I mean, it's not really a big deal if we have another person training with us, someone who I'd been working with for about five months. Besides, Neville has real potential; normal eleven year olds can't send someone flying with just one punch, especially with just five months of training. This, plus me pointing out that, as the leader of the school, I'd have to know how to teach, convinced Pops to let Neville come over to train with us. Getting him to agree to that was really the easy part. Convincing Pops to teach me the Umisenken, one of his "forbidden" techniques was...well, harder.

Now I've known about the Umisenken for a while, but unlike his other "forbidden" techniques, Pops did a really good job of hiding the scrolls from me, which is saying something. Even getting him drunk didn't get me more than the name of the technique. The fact that he went through all the trouble to keep it hidden said that, whatever it was, it was pretty powerful. I'd wanted to learn it ever since I'd heard of it, but it took facing down Lord Voldemort for me to feel like my life might depend on learning it. I couldn't tell Mum and Pops that, though, so I spent the last week at Hogwarts thinking of how to get Pops to teach me. Before, I'd just never had a bargaining chip to get it out of him, but I'd finally come up with something that he'd be stupid not to want.

While I was learning how to use my magical energy, I stumbled on a way to actually see it. I call it "mage sight" (I know, not very original, but that's pretty much what it is). If you have enough control over your magic, it's really not all that hard to do. Once I figured it out, it didn't take a genius to see that it might work the same way for ki. As good as he is, I figured the old man might have already known how to anyway. What I was sure he hadn't figured out, though, was how to see magical energy. Since he's a muggle, Pops doesn't have magical energy, so he can't detect it either. It works the same way for wizards and ki, but me and Mum are different because we have both. What I did was figure out how to see ki with mage sight and to see magical energy with ki sight. Like I said, Pops would be stupid to pass up on that.

In the end, it took the promise of teaching the ki sight and magic detection, a bit of bluffing about knowing what the Umisenken could do, and loudly doubting whether the form was even worth learning, before Pops agreed to teach me. There was a catch, though; he refused to teach me all of the Umisenken, supposedly because it was "too dangerous". He only agreed to teach me the two main techniques. I wanted to complain but, from the look on his face, I could tell that he wasn't going to give, so I took the deal before he could back out.

He gave me a scroll, warned me to keep it to myself, and told me to not bother him about the training until I'd read it ten times. Looking over the scroll, I could see why he kept it from me and anyone else. The word umisenken basically means "the art of the sneaking thief". Just the main two techniques sounded pretty dangerous, but I was right in thinking that it'd be useful to know. If what the scroll said was true, it was way more stealthy than all the ninjutsu I'd ever learned. Using the Umisenken, you could literally become invisible, using only your ki. I thought Pops was putting me on when I first read it, but then I remembered what Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world and headmaster of Hogwarts, had said about using ki. He'd called it "Muggle magic", and that's exactly what the Umisenken sounded like. Oh, and from what I read, it's one of the most complicated and difficult uses of ki I'd ever seen. I knew, after I'd read it five times, that this training was going to be long, hard, and painful. Am I weird because I was really looking forward to it?

Anyway, at that point my plan for the summer was coming along nicely, which was surprising, since I'm not exactly the planning type. I'm sure Hermione, the most organized and swotty person I've ever met, would have been impressed, especially with the parts that involved getting my summer homework done quickly and getting ahead in my reading for next term. Of course, if she also knew that most of the plan was focused squarely on improving my fighting skills, learning to make myself invisible, and illegally using magic, she'd probably never let me hear the end of it.

By the Wednesday morning, the first week back, everything was going smoothly. I'd already sent letters around to all of my friends at least once, but most of my letters were to and from Lee Jordan and Fred and George Weasley. Together, we're better known as the "New Marauders". Well, we will be, once school starts back up and we start making a little bit of noise. In the meantime, we planned to spend our free time this summer working on the "Marauders' Challenge". I guess you could say its a test for mischief-makers, created by the best ones ever to go to Hogwarts. To be honest, we're a bit frantic about that, since we only just learned that the deadline for completing the challenge is a year and a half away, and we're only a quarter of the way through solving it.

In fact, the only hiccup was that Harry hadn't answered my letter yet. I knew he had a tough home life and that his relatives hated him, but the threat of magic was supposedly enough to keep them in line. And since Harry got so little post, it wasn't like him to put off responding. I figured I'd give him another week to respond and, if he didn't, I'd try Muggle post. Knowing how his relatives were about magic, I wouldn't have been surprised if they didn't let owls in the house.

Now, anyone who knows me knows I'm not a very patient person, especially if there's training to be done. Pops, though, seems to have a hard time getting moving in the morning and needs a little encouragement. That morning, I was about to call Ten-Ten, our house elf, to ask her to wake him up when, right on schedule, Pops gave a strangled cry and flew head first down the stairs. He landed with a loud thump at the bottom of the stairs in the foyer. Pops gave a loud and, in my opinion, overly dramatic moan. I rolled my eyes at him. "Get up, old man. I've hit you harder than that." I said impatiently.

"Hmmph. At least you give me some kind of warning. Damn elf..." he grunted, flipping onto is feet and dusting himself off.

"She can hear you, you know. You're just encouraging her." I said with a grin.

"Lets get moving, boy, you're wasting time." Pops said with a scowl.

We stepped out of the house and walked out of the front yard. As we jumped over the high brick wall that surrounded the house, I could feel the tingle of magic. I looked back quickly as the illusion charm slid back into place. Seeing that bit of magic work never seemed to gets old to me. The charm made our house look just like all of the other two-story houses. Inside the wall, though, the house and garden were pretty large, enough to squeeze the other houses out to the side. Mum had said some fairly powerful spell work had made that all possible and several Muggle-repelling wards made sure that the muggles (except for Pops) didn't get too close.

We set off down the street, Pops setting a brisk pace. With his build and the big belly he has, you wouldn't expect Pops to be very fast. You'd be wrong, though, because he's one of the fastest people I've ever seen and, in a dead run, I can barely keep pace with him. Believe me, that's saying something, though I think I'll be able to easily outrun him when I grow a few more inches. We ran flat out for about five minutes, but Pops made sure that we were running on everything but the sidewalk. That sure surprised a lot of people on the street, especially when we jumped up on top of the houses and started roof-hopping.

The run was pretty easy for me, even with Pops trying to wear me out, still thinking I'd lost my edge while at school. When he finally realized I wasn't getting tired, about three or four miles later, we came to a stop at a local park. The park was one of those big city parks, where they try to hide all the concrete and cars with lots of trees. It was a perfect place for what we were doing and, early in the morning, it was almost deserted.

"Well, get to it." Pops grunted.

I dropped to the ground and started knocking off push-ups. "This ain't...fair...Pops...I'll be...dead tired...when we...spar." I puffed. Doing two and a half push-ups a second makes it a little hard to keep a steady voice.

"Stop complaining, boy." he snapped. "You don't question your sensei. Besides, you need the work more than I do."

I snorted but didn't say anything. After six minutes, I was all done and my arms were burning. For the next half hour, I went through my other warm-up, five hundred repetitions of squats, lunges, crunches, a good bit of stretching, and some strength building routines I learned from gymnastics. The more I did, the more relaxed I could see that Pops was getting. He actually thought I'd be a pushover. I smirked to myself as I finished my last repetition, knowing I was about to have fun beating him up.

It got a little ugly after that. See, our morning practice is always a warm-up and sparring, then any other training afterwards. Sparring usually only lasts about ten minutes at the most, because we go all out. At our level, ten minutes feels like forever when you're fighting at full strength. We usually only go for a few minutes before moving on, depending on how fast and how badly one of us beats the other. In this case, I put Pops down in our first exchange in less than a minute. For some reason, he kept on coming at me, so I kept on putting him down. Nothing he tried would get past me and he just kept getting more and more frustrated each time I knocked him down. Finally, he had to resort to using one of his real techniques to beat me, which was what I wanted all along, so I could see how he used it. Not that it helped me any; he disappeared into thin air while ducking a punch. The next thing I knew, he threw me headlong into a nearby pond.

"Hah, not so slow now, am I?" he called out as I sloshed out of the water, feeling plenty annoyed. I really, really hate my curse, and Pops knew it. He gave me a smug look. "You're getting sloppy, boy."

"Pops," I said, glowering at him as I wrung out my pigtail, "you're a git." Without another word, I grabbed him by his gi and flung him hard at the pond, where he landed with a big splash.

"How's that feel, you stupid panda!" I yelled, feeling slightly better. He made some angry panda noises and heaved a wooden sign at me that I just barely dodged. "Hey, you started it, old man! Now, have you had enough?"

Pops answered by stalking up to me and shaking himself, splashing me with what felt like a bucket of water. Even as a panda, he's still pretty fast, and he smacked me on the top of my head before I could react. "Show some respect, boy!" he shook his sign at me before flipping it around. "Maybe you aren't ready to learn the Umisenken..."

"Fine, fine, I'm sorry, all right?" I said quickly, not feeling sorry at all. "There, are you happy? Pops?"

I stopped and looked up, following his gaze over my shoulder. I was a bit surprised to see a medium-sized tawny owl swoop towards me. It looked a little menacing, and if I hadn't been used to getting mail from an owl at Hogwarts, I might've thought it was attacking. The owl, though, hardly stopped long enough to drop a letter on my head before it screeched and flapped away into the tree line.

"The hell?" I snatched the letter as it bounced off my head. "Stupid bird should've left this at the house, not on my head."

I flipped the letter over, but it had no name on it, aside from mine. "Boy, we're supposed to be training. Worry about your post when we get home." Pops waved the sign impatiently.

"Calm down, old man, it'll just take a second." I drew my wand from my pants pocket and removed it from the protective dragonhide cover, then slit the seal with it and unfolded the letter. The parchment was pale white, not the yellow I was used to. I'd seen this type of parchment before. The message was only one sentence, and it was written in sloppy calligraphy that I immediately recognized. "Huh? 'I find you.' What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

Ask a stupid question, right? Only I didn't expect to get an answer that fast. The words were barely off my lips when my brain and my body both screamed "DANGER!". Pops calls this "situational awareness", being able to sense danger from all directions. I've been training this skill for years and its come in useful more times than I care to remember. Before half a second had passed, I knew that someone was flying at me and that they were trying to kill me. I also knew instinctively that I didn't have enough time to get a look at whoever was attacking.

The smart thing to do would have been to just roll out of the way, especially since I couldn't see and didn't know anything about my attacker. But, let's be honest, that wouldn't have been very impressive for someone who's training to be the best of his generation. A counter-attack sounded so much more interesting in my mind. Of course, if I did try a counter and missed, I'd be wide open to the attack, but I wasn't too worried. When you're the best, you only ever miss on purpose.

That...that sounded a bit arrogant, didn't it? Sorry, modesty isn't really my strong suit. It's not really bragging if it's true, right? A lot of people, especially people that don't like me, say I'm an arrogant show-off. I think that's really unfair. Most of the time, I'm not even trying to do anything flashy, it just sorta works out that way. Like this time, I barely even thought about how my counter would look. I just did it and tried to do the best move I could. Being impressive was the last thing on my mind.

So I crouched quickly and exploded upwards directly at my attacker. This seems like a dumb idea at first, since I still had not seen them, but their movement through my ki aura, which I'd expanded, was enough for me to get a good guess at how they were attacking and what they were using. Believe it or not, I was in perfect position.

There was a surprised gasp followed by a slightly high pitched grunt as my back slammed into my attacker's chest. I'd pushed off the ground so hard that, despite suddenly catching a falling person on my back, we continued to rise. The impact stunned them enough to loosen their grip on two heavy looking swords, and a quick jab at pressure points in their forearms made them let go completely. A split second later, I'd figured out about how much they weighed and how high we were in the air. With a practiced move, I heaved them over my shoulder, throwing them so hard at the ground that I actually did a flip before letting go. This is a little move from the Saotome Ryu (Pops' side of the Anything Goes school) that I like to call the "Saotome Slam". Having been on the receiving end of one more times than I can count, I can tell you that it hurts. A lot.

Only a few seconds had passed, but in the time it took me to do that move, I learned a few things about the person who'd attacked me. I knew the person was a female, about the height and weight I am in my cursed form, which meant that I had put way more effort into the throw than I should've. Whoever she was, she was definitely a strong and serious martial artist. Oh yeah, and she was carrying enough weapons for several people. So basically, besides the fact that my attacker was a she, this described pretty much every person who has ever attacked me out of the blue. Hell, pretty much every person who's ever attacked me, period.

She landed with a startled yelp and a meaty thud, kicking up a cloud of dust on impact. I landed much easier just a few yards away. Halfway between us, her swords, two nasty looking niuweidao (the classic Chinese sword) were embedded in the ground. Considering how hard I threw the girl, I figured there was no way that she'd be getting up very soon. In fact, I was almost worried that I'd over done it. This thought lasted exactly two seconds, when she did get up. I was floored, not just because she'd recovered so quickly, but also because I recognized the girl and I really, really wished I didn't. Yeah, it was her, that crazy, purple-haired Chinese girl.

My mouth started moving before my brain, which I'm told happens an awful lot. "Oh, bloody hell, what are you doing here?" I exclaimed. At that moment, she wasn't looking very happy with me, but I wasn't exactly thrilled either.

She looked at me like she was trying to burn a hole in my face with her eyes. She smiled at me, but there wasn't anything nice about it. "I'm here to kill you, of course." she replied coldly in perfect English.

I barely had time to think about this before she dashed towards her swords. If she had been facing someone else, or if I'd been less serious, she might've gotten to them, and then I might have had something to worry about. She wasn't nearly fast enough this time. Her hands came within inches of the hilts before I batted them away and shoved her hard in the chest, sending her stumbling back several yards.

(("Oh no you don't.")) I said harshly, this time in Japanese. Past experience had taught me well enough to take away an enemy's weapons, so I did just that. Channeling ki into both hands, I pounded the hilts hard enough to drive the blades the rest of the way into the ground. A couple of quick kicks snapped the hilts off both swords.

She looked shocked for a moment, and I didn't really blame her. I mean, how often do you see forged steel snapped like a twig? She recovered rather quickly and cast a murderous glare at me as she rose to her feet. I returned her glare with a look of disbelief. (("Oh, come on, I just broke both of your swords with my bare hands. Do you really think you can win, even with all your other weapons...")) Right then I realized that I didn't see any other weapons on her, which made no sense to me at all. I'd sensed them on her and, from the way she'd moved, she had to be carrying them. The problem was that I couldn't see them at all. That didn't stop her from whipping some out to use on me, though.

I dodged flying daggers and a long chain. There was a nagging feeling in the back of my mind that usually meant I wasn't looking clearly at the situation. but I ignored the feeling in favor of not getting skewered. Instead, as the chain shot past me, I grabbed it and yanked hard, the sound of yet another startled yelp like music to my ears. I leaned to the side slightly, just barely avoiding a flying side kick to the face. My arm flashed out to the side and I hooked it up, catching her under the arm and snaking my hand around to her head to lock in a half-nelson. What followed was about a minute of hard fighting with our left hands and feet which, of course, I won. I cinched in the full-nelson pretty tight, and for a good reason. I'd been right about her; this girl was almost as strong as I was! I decided not to take any chances with her, so I wrapped my legs around her waist and leaned back, letting gravity pull us to the ground. It may have looked funny, but she sure wasn't going anywhere, no matter how hard she struggled.

(("You know, this is really getting old, you following me and trying to kill me.")) I growled between clenched teeth. (("Don't you have something better to do with your life?"))

She struggled a bit before answering with a grunt. (("This Shampoo life now, until you dead."))

Her Japanese had improved a lot in the last year, but it was still terrible. And apparently her name was "Shampoo". What kind of name is "Shampoo" anyway? I asked her and she got a little tetchy.

(("Is honored name in village. Name of great warrior.")) She sounded very proud of it. I snorted derisively.

(("I bet. And what's your mother's name, Conditioner?")) Another perfect execution of the Saotome Foot-in-Mouth technique. She got a bit restless but a bit of pressure on the full-nelson shut that down quickly. If I wanted to get rid of the girl, I had to calm her down or, at least, stop making her mad. I could feel her anger bubbling beneath the surface, but that wasn't the only thing I sensed. There was something else, something that shouldn't have been there.

"No way." I said quietly, feeling like someone had just punched me in the gut. I was so stunned that I didn't realize I'd switched back to English. "It can't be...you can't be...but I can feel it..."

Shampoo had stopped struggling. I was so distracted that I barely noticed. "I can't be what?" she asked.

"A witch...but I can feel your magic now." I replied slowly. My brain was only just starting to think of what this all meant. Shampoo was able to fight me, which meant she been been using magic the way I use ki, but I'd only sensed it when I'd gotten close. Something wasn't adding up in my head. "But why didn't I feel it before? Unless..."

"Unless I was hiding it?" I didn't need to see Shampoo's face to know she was smirking. I instinctively tightened my grip, only to see her waving her hands in front of my face in a way that reminded me of sign language. She said something in Chinese, and I could feel the magic moving through her body and to her hands. I had no idea what she was doing, but I knew I wouldn't like it. I wrenched my hands free and tried to duck, but I wasn't fast enough, for once. A pale yellow bolt of magic shot from between her hands and struck me hard in the face.

Now I've been hit by a lot of things in my life. Only a few weeks before, the leader of the forest trolls had punched me and nearly chopped me in half. I'd like to think I'm pretty used to pain. But getting hit by this spell really, really hurt. It felt like a car had slammed into my face, backed up, and slammed into it again. The force of the spell lifted me off my feet and sent me flying a good twenty or so feet. My instincts took over, flipping my body around so that I landed on my feet. I promptly went down to one knee, clutching my face and trying very hard to block out the pain that was blurring my vision. Funny enough, my entire face seemed untouched, except for the whole 'in terrible pain' thing.

I couldn't think about that too much, though, because Shampoo came at me again and this time I was the one in trouble. Only my speed kept me from getting more than a few glancing blows, and I was still being distracted by the intense pain in my face. I had to do something about that, but I first needed to put Shampoo out of commission. It was time to break out the "Old One-Two".

The "Old One-Two" is little move I created not too long ago that, as far as I know, only I can do. Like I said before, I have both ki and magical energy. Months before, I'd learned how to use one to disrupt the flow of the other. This skill, which I call "interruption", has come in useful several times. The "Old On-Two" is a combination of blows, an interrupting strike and an energy strike. The first strike interrupts the flow of energy, either magic or ki. This works very well against people or creatures with energy enhanced toughness, like this purple haired Chinese girl. The second strike hits the same spot with an energy enhanced strike. Usually, the type of energy used for the second strike is different from the energy that's being interrupted. The results can be pretty devastating, depending on what you do with the second strike.

I didn't really want to hurt Shampoo, even though she'd more than earned a world of hurt from me. Pops, wherever he was hiding, would probably have chewed my ear off if I did. So I cleared my mind as best as I could, ignoring the pain, and gathered ki into my right hand. She couldn't detect this, of course (you can't sense it if you don't have it), so she walked right into the blow. I ducked her punch and jabbed her in the center of her chest with two fingers, letting my ki go at the point of impact. I followed it with a magically enhanced palm heel strike. The breakdown of her magically enhanced toughness, followed by my wandless stunning spell, knocked her out before she could even react to the first strike.

I stumbled back and fell to the ground as the pain in my face returned with a vengeance. A glance at Shampoo's body, which twitched slightly, told me that her magic was fighting the spell. "Pops! Get over here and put that sleep shiatsu on her before she wakes up!" I yelled.

It took about five minutes, but I managed to finally break the curse she'd hit me with. This puzzled and worried me. The last time I'd been hit with a spell, I'd been able to break it in less than ten seconds. It was possible that Draco Malfoy, the idiot who'd hexed me, was just magically weak, or maybe Shampoo was just very strong. If that was true, I'd need to learn how to shield myself from spells. Five minutes is a very long time to be hurt during a fight.

"It's about time, boy." Pops shook his sign sternly at me when I'd recovered. "You should be ashamed. Not only did you fight a girl, you almost lost."

"Oh, shut it, you. I didn't know she was a witch. If I had, there's no way I'd have let her hex me." I shot back, feeling really irritated.

Pops eyes widened and he gulped noticeably, which was pretty funny coming from a panda. "She is?"

"Of course she is. Didn't you see her hit me in the face with a spell? That's why I was down for five minutes." Pops looked ashamed, and I realized, without any surprise, that he had probably been hiding well away from the fight. "Well, anyway, we've got to do something about her."

Pops had a sign ready. "Let's just leave her here."

"Are you stupid? She'd find us in no time, this close to home." I said. "I wish we could just erase her memory, but I don't even know if that's possible. Maybe we should ask Mum..."

Pops hit me on the head with his sign. "Are you mad? Do you really want your mother to know about this?"

Pops had a point. Even if most of this mess was his fault, the girl was after me for what I did, and there were a few things I didn't want Mum to know. I shook my head. "Well then, let's figure out what to do with this girl. We need to put as much distance between her and us as possible."

I thought about it a few moments. "If we could get one, we could get her on a portkey back to China. But that might look suspicions. And there's my broom..."

"What about the Floo? I'm pretty sure it does international calls..." Pops waved the sign and shrugged. I looked at him thoughtfully before a grin broke out on my face. Sometimes, and it's not that often, Pops has flashes of brilliance.

We got to the house after a very awkward run back. From the reactions of people on the street, I don't think pandas normally run down London streets. Thanks to the Muggle-repelling charms, though, none of the police or animal catchers managed to find us. As it turned out, the Floo network did work internationally, but doing more than a firecall was expensive. In this case, it was very expensive, since there were three people. Just to be safe, we flooed to several stops, including Prague, Johannesburg, and New Delhi, before dropping Shampoo off in Beijing. Thanks to Pops' suggestion that we start at the Leaky Cauldron, we were able to pay for the special powder there instead of using what we had at home. Mum would never find out.

When we finally got back home, I was exhausted, and it had nothing to do with anything physical. I flopped onto a chair in the library while Pops remained standing. I hadn't missed that he'd been holding his tongue and looking sour through the whole thing, and I knew he was on the verge of telling me off right then. I cut him off, though, because something was bothering me a lot more than the fact that I'd fought a girl. "Pops, what're we gonna do about her?" I asked.

"We don't need to do anything. We sorted her out easily enough today. We probably won't even see her again."

"She followed us all the way from China just over that stupid food you ate. You really think she won't want to get us even more now?"

Pops waved this off. "So what if she does? It took her a year to find you."

"Us. It took her a year to find us." I corrected. Pops was trying to stick me with all the responsibility, and I wasn't about to let him get away with it. "Look, she already knows we're in England. It's just a matter of time before she finds us again."

Pops grunted. "With all the experience we have with evading pursuit, you should be wondering how she found you in the first place."

I had to admit that this was a very good question, but I didn't say so to Pops. "Well, she is a witch. Who knows what spells she could've used? I mean, she even knew my name, and neither of us let that slip..."

Pops made a big show of avoiding my eyes, which was a good idea because my look probably could've killed at that moment. "Pops, you great prat," I growled. "You did, didn't you?"

He shifted nervously. "I, err, may have let it slip once." I smacked my forehead loudly and groaned. "What? It's just your name! What would a witch do with your name?"

I threw my hands up. "I don't know, there might be all sorts of scrying spells that use your name to find you! It could be anything!"

At that moment, the post bell, which Ryouko, our owl, rang when she returned with the post, clanged twice. My eyes glazed over as I realized I'd overlooked the most obvious way to find someone in the magical world. Pops seemed to have the same thought. "The owl!" we exclaimed in unison.

I fell back into my chair, feeling pretty dumb. "That's what that message meant! And I bet...Ten-ten!" Our house elf appeared with a small crack. I pulled out the now crumpled piece of parchment and handed it to her. "Ten-ten, go look in my school papers and bring me the letters written in Japanese with handwriting that looks this."

Less than a minute later, she returned with four letters, each bearing one word in terribly written kanji. Pops asked the obvious question. "What the hell are these?"

"Letters I've received over the last four or five months. Each one had just one word and I had no idea who was sending them." I said, laying the pages on the nearby table and arranging them in order of when I'd received them. I snorted when I realized what they meant. "'Soon I Find You.'"

Pops frowned. "A warning?"

"Knowing her, more like a challenge. She probably split it up to confuse me." I chose not to mention that it had worked pretty well.

"Well, then this explains why you got the letter at the park instead of here. The privacy wards wouldn't let just any letter through." Pops said before giving me a significant look. "Which means that, even if she knows we live in England, she still doesn't know where we live. And we'd better make sure it stays that way."

I nodded in agreement. I wasn't just worried about my Mum finding out about why this Shampoo girl was trying to kill me. In all of the grudge matches I've had with powerful martial artists, we managed to cause some major damage to our surroundings. With Shampoo being a powerful martial artist and a witch, our entire house would be in danger if she ever found it.

For the next few days, I was on my guard, but everything was as normal as possible. I didn't even take the chance of leaving the house, just in case an owl was waiting for me. In the end, though, I had to get on with my summer, and hiding out in the house was not the way I'd planned to spend the holiday. I had a list of things I wanted to do during the summer holiday and it did not include worrying about one of the many people who wanted to hurt me. Shampoo or no Shampoo, I was going to get on with it.

It was a very good thing I snapped out of that when I did, because I really did have a lot to do. Now, normally, I'm kinda lazy (you can't help it if you've spent any time around Pops), but I'm guessing that some of my Mum rubbed off on me. During the school year, thanks to a little problem I was having with doing magic, I had to work my bum off just to keep my grades up. After a year of that, I was pretty used to studying just as hard as I trained, and I intended to do quite a lot of both. Still, after the first couple of days of my summer schedule, even my hard working Mum was wondering if I was trying to do too much.

She couldn't have known that the run-in with Shampoo, which Pops and I had avoided mentioning when she was around, had been a wake-up call to me. It wasn't that I was afraid of her or anything, but taking one of her spells in the face reminded me that there were wizards and witches who did or would probably (knowing the usual Saotome charm) want to hurt me. Worse, some of them might actually have the skills and power to make it happen. The fact was that, even if I was already a strong martial artist, I'd also need to be a very strong "magical artist" (or whatever you want to call that) if I wanted to defend myself against the likes of Lord Voldemort.

That was the mindset I had after getting rid of Shampoo, and when a Saotome, even my lazy panda of a father, starts thinking this way, it means only one thing: training, and lots of it. This meant that I was suddenly so busy that I really didn't have time to think about her much at all. I was already going to be learning the Umisenken, training Neville, and teaching Pops to use ki sight, in addition to tightening up the skills I already knew. The magical training was a whole other problem, what with the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underaged Wizardry stopping me from doing magic outside of Hogwarts. If I wanted to get any practice in, I'd have to find out how the Ministry kept track of underaged magic use and how to get around it. Well, how to reliably get around it; the Ministry hadn't done anything after I'd stunned Shampoo, but I couldn't be sure that they'd never find out about me using magic. Luckily, I was friends with three of the biggest rule breakers at Hogwarts, and I had no doubt that they'd already figured it out. And even if they hadn't, they'd be very interested in finding out.

When I wasn't training, I was studying or working. I had decided to take Hermione's advice (which is almost always right when it comes to homework or studying) to go ahead and get my summer homework out of the way. Even though I was only going into my second year in the fall, the teachers seemed to have given enough homework for a third or fourth year. Still, this didn't keep me from helping Mum out in her potions lab. She's the Japanese ambassador to the British Ministry of Magic, but before that she worked part-time at the Japanese Ministry while running her own business as a potions mistress. Since not much gets done at the Ministry during the summer, and since I was home, Mum had decided to start up her potions business again. This made me pretty happy, since I really enjoy potion making. Plus, Mum's a thousand times better at teaching than Severus Snape, the git who is potions master at Hogwarts (someone once called him an "overgrown bat", which is an insult to bats everywhere). With all the practice I'd have by the end of the summer, I'd probably give Hermione a run for her money when school started back. And if I managed to have some free time after all of that, I made sure to write or firecall my friends.

My days usually started at five-thirty in the morning with sparring and morning exercise. After that, Pops worked with me on the Umisenken. Then, it was my turn to teach Pops how to use ki sight. After that, I'd also spend several hours doing my homework. True, the summer had just started, but I wanted it out of the way quickly. With my summer assignments done, I could eventually focus on reading ahead. It was my goal to increase my magical knowledge enough so that I wasn't always in the dark when talking with my fellow Marauders. It didn't help that Fred and George Weasley and Lee Jordan were three of the sharpest wizards in their year, so I knew I had my work cut out for me.

Neville's training occupied most of my afternoons, and I really looked forward to it every day. He would floo over over after lunch and we'd spend several hours out in the garden under the hot June sun. I even convinced Pops to join us, after I explained how Neville had sent two boys flying with a punch. Trust me when I say that this is not an easy thing to do, and I knew for a fact that Neville wasn't strong enough to do it. I was pretty sure that Neville had accidentally tapped into his magical energy, which gave him the strength to do what he'd done. This was almost unheard of from someone who'd only been studying martial arts for just half a year. It was only a guess, but I thought that learning magic had helped him learn some control of his energy, something that had taken me several years to do when I was younger. I was determined to teach Neville to further increase his control. If I was successful, and he worked hard, Neville would probably become a world class martial artist in only a three or four years.

Mum would usually make it home around seven, and after dinner we would go down into her potions lab for a couple hours to work on some of her contract orders. A year of potion making at Hogwarts had given me a little knowledge and experience, which made working with her much easier than it had been before. Afterwards, when we'd cleaned up, me, Mum, and Pops usually sat in the library, listening to the Wizard Wireless Network and talking or reading or writing letters.

With all of this going on, I just didn't have the time or energy to worry about Shampoo. As far as I knew, she was probably still in China, and our wards made sure she couldn't find our house. If she was stupid enough to face me again, I knew I could get rid of her without too much trouble. She just did not seem like a serious threat to me, so I pushed her to the back of my mind. This was a huge mistake, and it nearly got me banned from the Burrow for life.

It was the first Saturday since I'd returned from school and I'd convinced Mum to let me visit Fred and George Weasley at their home in Ottery St. Catchpole. It was much harder to do this than you might think since, as she said, I'd only just seen them the week before. She finally said yes after I assured her that we wouldn't be doing any studying at all. Weird, I know, but like I said, I really had been working hard that week. So, a couple hours after breakfast, I threw a bit of Floo powder into the fire, called out "The Burrow", and stepped into the emerald flames. A few warm and spinning moments later, I stepped out of the fire and into the most...interesting kitchen I'd ever been into.

I don't mean that in a bad way, either, it was just so different than the one back home. It was much smaller than you'd expect the kitchen of a large family would be, and a large wooden table in the middle made it feel cramped. It looked well-worn and a little cluttered, but was otherwise spotless. On one wall was a large clock with only one hand and, instead of times around the edges, were written things like Time to make tea, time to feed the chickens, and you're late. On the mantelpiece were loads of books on household magic, while a radio on the counter was tuned into the Wizarding Wireless Network.

"Oy, Mum, Ranma's here!" I heard next to me just as a hand clapped me on the shoulder. "Hey, mate. Bit early, innit?"

I shrugged. "Yeah, Fred, but the sooner we get to work, the better, right?"

He scowled at me. "Look here, we've been friends, what, six, seven months, and you're still getting me confused with George. It's getting ruddy annoying."

I rolled my eyes at the taller, red-haired, freckled boy just as his identical twin came into the kitchen. "Oh, come off it, Fred. No matter how many times you try that joke, it still won't work. Besides, when George fakes indignation, he huffs and splutters. Right, George?"

"That, sir, is a trade secret that I do not wish to divulge." said George stiffly, jerking his thumb towards the dining area and shaking his head slightly. I looked past him to see his mother bustling towards us, and I understood what he was trying to say. "Mum, this is Ranma. Ranma, my mum."

"Molly Weasley, dear, it's lovely to meet you." she said, shaking my hand with a surprisingly strong grip. Mrs. Weasley was short and plump with a kindly face that was slightly freckled. Like her sons, she had flaming red hair, and from their slight roughness, I could tell that she wasn't a stranger to working with her hands. "You're Nodoka Saotome's son, right? She started Hogwarts in my sixth year. Rather rambunctious, but I hear she settled down after Arthur and I graduated."

"That's what she says too." I replied, grinning. "I don't think she's quite up to Fred and George's standard, though. That you can keep these two in line says a lot."

Fred scowled and George huffed and spluttered, but their mother smiled knowingly. "Well thank you, dear, it is a struggle sometimes." She turned to Fred. "Go on, then, and keep the noise down; Percy's not to be disturbed. I'll send Lee on when he arrives."

"Come on, Ranma, we'll give you the two-knut tour." said George. I followed him into the living room which, like the kitchen, was small and crowded. Everything in the room looked well used. "So where's Ron?"

Fred snorted. "Out mucking about on his broom, I expect. He's on his usual Quidditch bent."

"Yeah, give it a couple more weeks and he'll be bored with it, especially since we're not going to be playing as much this summer." added George. "We're on the fourth floor."

I followed them up the strangest staircase that I'd seen since I'd left Hogwarts. They looked so rickety and uneven that they were obviously held up by magic, and different sections had been added over the years. On the third floor landing, we almost literally ran into another Weasley that I hadn't met.

"Oh right, Ranma, this is our ickle sister Ginny." George said, ruffling her hair. She slapped his hand away irritably.

"Shove off." she said before extending her hand and smiling. I shook it and looked her over quickly. The flaming red hair and freckles were present, of course, and she had a fairly pretty face. The second thing I noticed, after her looks, was that she had an air of confidence and assertiveness about her. Considering she was the youngest and the only girl, I wasn't that surprised

"So you're Ranma? I've heard a lot about you, mostly from Ron. I thought you'd be taller, but we're almost the same height. Did you really punch out a mountain troll? I hear you play Quidditch too, maybe better than-"

"Ginny! For Merlin's sake, enough of the interrogation!" Fred interrupted.

"But I just wanted to-" she protested.

"Later. We're busy." George said, pulling me up the stairs. I shrugged and smiled apologetically at her before following.

"That was close, trust me. She can talk all day if you let her." Fred assured me.

One more flight up and we had reached their floor. There were only two doors on opposite sides of the staircase, and we headed to the door on the right. I was totally unsurprised to see all sorts of warning signs, the kind you'd normally see around construction and Muggle streets, plastered over the door. The most noticeable were the KEEP OUT, DANGER!, and MEN AT WORK signs. I raised my eyebrows at them and pointed. "Do those actually keep people out?"

"No, not really." George admitted. "But the bangs and funny smells do."

Their room was a complete mess. It didn't help that it was on the small side, and even the bunk beds didn't help make the room seem any larger. Like their school trunks, there were papers and discarded wrappers from joke products all over, and their wardrobe was stuffed with unfolded clothes, shoes, and towels. The window was open, and for a good reason; a yellowish haze was slowly being fanned out by several paper fans that waved on their own. I raised an eyebrow at this.

"Err, don't worry about that, it's perfectly harmless." Fred said quickly. "And don't mind the mess."

"It's a carefully crafted mess." George added, throwing himself down onto a pile of sweet wrappers, which oddly molded itself into a small chair. "Keeps mum from spending too much time in here. She's all but given up on tidying the room."

"Doesn't the mess also make it hard to work in here?" I asked.

"Nah, there's a method to the madness. Everything's where it can be found, but only by one of us."

"The best place to hide is in plain sight, after all." Fred said sagely. "Our 'secret' lab is really all around you, if you know how to look. We'll show you as soon as Silvertongue gets here."

It was pretty obvious to me that some illegal underage magic was at work in their room, and I wasn't surprised at all. Knowing the twins like I did, and how they tended to ignore rules that didn't suit them, I was pretty sure that they'd broken the law against underage wizardry before I'd ever even seen their bedroom. What I needed to know was how they'd gotten away with it so openly.

After about five or ten minutes of small talk, there was a knock on the door. "What?" George demanded.

"It's Lee, open up." said a voice from the other side of the door.

"All right, but what's the password?"

"Password? What password?"

"No one's allowed in without the proper password." George replied in a fairly good impression of his older and more stuffy brother, Percy. Fred and I stifled our laughter as best we could.

"Open the bloody door, you idiot!" yelled Lee as he pounded on the door. The lock clicked and the door swung open, revealing a very irritated looking Lee Jordan. Though the same age as the twins, Lee stood a few inches taller. His hair was in long dreadlocks which he had pulled back.

"Huh, lucky guess." Fred commented, grinning at Lee. "Close the door, Sil, and we can get started."

Lee sighed and shook his head as he shut the door. He seemed to be used to the mess because he walked over everything just as easily as the twins did, finally throwing himself onto a pile of dirty clothes that shifted into a small recliner. Fred pulled out his wand and lazily twirled it around as he muttered something under his breath. I could feel magic suddenly flare up just as the room began to change. The boxes along the wall began expanding and growing legs as they morphed into a couple of sturdy looking work tables and two storage cupboards. Several piles of rubbish, which I'd been warned against sitting on, transformed into several cauldrons, all of which were bubbling away. When it was all done, and Fred had finished chanting, the room was now a somewhat larger and well organized workshop and potions lab. I whistled in appreciation.

"Glad you like it." George said as he closed the door and cast a locking charm on it. "It took a good while to learn to cast that glamour properly. Not to mention the other little modifications we made to the room."

But I wasn't quite as impressed with that as I was excited to see that a question of mine had probably been answered. "Yeah, it's really impressive and all," I said, looking around, "but you just did magic."

"Right..."

"But that's illegal. So how come you can do magic when they told us that we can't?"

George shrugged. "They tell us lots of things we can't do. Doesn't make it true. At least, not always."

"I know. I did magic the other day, too, but nothing's happened." I said. "After that I figured they were just putting us on, but I looked up the Decree for the Restriction of Underaged Wizardry, so I know it's real."

"Oh, it's real all right." Lee replied, sounding slightly bitter. George and Fred both chuckled, which only made him scowl. Apparently I was missing something, and I asked them what it was. George answered with a grin.

"Lee's bitter because he's received a couple of warnings from the Improper Use of Magic Office about underage magic." he explained. "He slipped up and used his wand at a dinner party, and some brown-nosing assistant to Mafalda Hopkirk saw him."

"Mafalda Hopkirk?"

"The old bint who sends out the warnings for breaking the Decree." said Lee. "And it was rubbish anyway. I was only cleaning up a drink I'd spilled. I do it all the time at home."

I nodded before remembering something. "What about the second warning?" Lee answered by pointing at the twins. That, really, was all the explanation I needed.

"In our defense, it was purely for the betterment of mischief makers everywhere." Fred said. "And, anyway, your dad smoothed it out, and you even got to keep your wand."

"A lot of good it does me, locked up over the summer and holidays!" Lee retorted.

"Better that than snapped. And, anyway, you've got us for any magic you need done."

I thought about what they'd said as they bickered for a minute. The most important things were that you were only given two chances to get caught, and the penalty for the second time was to have your wand snapped. That probably meant you couldn't just go buy another either. And, if Lee had only gotten caught when he'd been seen, that meant that there weren't any tracking charms on our wands.

"So," I said loudly, catching their attention, "does that mean they're not watching us? That we can do magic as long as it's not in front of adults?"

Lee shook his head. "No, they're definitely monitoring us all, only there's some kind of loophole for people from magical families. There are only a couple other non-muggleborn people I've heard of that've gotten warnings, and it was always because someone had seen them and ratted them out."

"This is just a theory, but we think there are detection spells near every home where there's an underaged witch or wizard. We've looked all over to find a spell that does that, and we've found some, but we've never found any that can identify a spell's caster." added George.

"Hmm..." I said, thinking out loud. "So that means that, as long as there is an adult wizard or witch living at the home, there's no telling who the spell was done by."

"Exactly." Fred seemed happy that I'd caught on so quick.

I frowned, thinking, for some reason, of Hermione. "Well that's not very fair to Muggleborns, is it? I mean, they get no practice at all over the summer while we can do all the magic we want as long as we don't do it out in the open."

Fred sighed and nodded his head. "Yeah, but it's more of a danger for them to be doing magic. Besides, that, I doubt any purebloods would want to give up that advantage over Muggleborns and Muggle-raised wizards.

I raised an eyebrow at this. I hadn't been in the magical world for that long, but I'd seen enough to know that most wizards thought they were better than Muggles, even if they didn't really say so. Most, though, didn't go out of their way to do anything about it. I'd heard of the whole pureblood superiority rubbish, thanks to Draco Malfoy and his little gang, so I wasn't really that surprised that there were adult wizards out there pushing it too. I decided not to press that point.

"All right then, since it looks like I can do magic this summer, we ought to talk about what I need to learn so I can get up to scratch with you three." I said eagerly. "After we talk Marauders business, of course."

"Sure thing. To business then." Fred waved his wand and a nearby table, along with four chairs, slid into place in front of us. When we'd all taken our seats, he dropped an old, dingy, wrinkled piece of folded parchment onto the table and spread it out, tapping it lightly with his wand. "I solemnly swear I am up to no good."

Magic ink began running along the parchment, just as I expected, but I was shocked to see the wrong names appear. At the top, it read:

Messrs. Castor, Pollux, Redtail, and Silvertongue present

The New and Improved

Marauders' Map

As this faded away, I looked at the twins with amazement. They looked pretty pleased with themselves. "It works? The map too?"

"Not quite." Fred admitted. "It'll say whatever you want it to, but there's no personality at all."

"As for the map, there's a little theory we want to test out in the field up the hill. If it works, we ought to have no problem at all with finishing the map." said George. He pulled out his wand, tapped the parchment, and said "Mischief Managed". The ink quickly disappeared, leaving the parchment as if it had never been written on. He produced a nearly identical piece of parchment, but this one already had writing on it. This was the real Marauders' Map.

This map was a real work of art created by four of the greatest mischief makers in Hogwarts history. At least that's what the four people, Messrs. Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs, claimed. It's sort of hard to argue with that claim, since the Marauders' Map really is an impressive work of magic, and also because the map itself would argue at you if you said otherwise. The Marauders had somehow left copies of their personalities in the map, and they were always quick to talk. They're pretty entertaining, but also the least useful bit of the map. The real treasure was that the map was a nearly complete layout of the Hogwarts grounds, from the lake to the highest tower. Nearly every secret passage, trick stair, and trapdoor was labeled, and if it wasn't labeled, then most likely no one knew about it. Even more amazing was the fact that you could find the location of every single person on the grounds. In other words, it was the perfect tool for any mischief maker.

It was from the map that we learned about the Marauders' Challenge, a series of four tasks that the Marauders hoped would choose their "true successors". We'd already completed Wormtail's task, finding the secret room the Marauders used as their headquarters. The other three weren't be so simple, though. For Moony's task, we would have to find a secret of Hogwarts that they hadn't found. Since the map seemed to know everything about the school, we had no idea how we were going to do it. Padfoot's task was to find out how the map was able to track people throughout the grounds and what gave the map its power. The twins had already guessed the way it was done and, early in the year, we had proved it by finding a magical beacon. Prongs' task, though, was pretty much our final exam, because we really had to finish the other three before we could do this one. Basically, we'd have to copy and improve on the current Marauders' Map.

Trying to get these done before we left Hogwarts had sounded difficult but not impossible. At least it did before I'd had a fight with the other three and stopped talking to them for months. After we'd stopped fighting and had become Marauders again, we learned that the map was punishing us by setting an almost impossible time limit to complete the challenge; just eighteen months. If we wanted a chance to finish, we were going to have to work all summer on the map alone. The other two challenges would have to wait until we got back to school.

"We'll wait to test the new map later. If it works, it should give us a good idea of how to find the other beacons back at Hogwarts." said George. "I think we should talk about what other special features we should put into the map."

We all agreed and, for the next half hour, we tossed about all sorts of ideas for the enchanted parchment. After we wrapped up our Marauders talk, George and Fred showed me and Lee around their workshop. Apparently there were some new things that had been added since the last time Lee had been there. The twins had told us earlier in the year that they hoped to open a wizard joke shop when they finished Hogwarts and, from all of the half finished ideas and experiments they showed us, they seemed pretty serious about it. I recognized a bottle full of cloudy yellow liquid that, in January, I'd used to humiliate a group of Slytherin students who'd tried to attack me.

"Right, Bird Droppings." George said with a grin after I pointed it out. "The new and improved formula. We finally got it to not react to food, so it's even easier to disguise. We're working on doing that for all the other potions we've finished." Lee and I gave each other a look and I knew that he was reminding himself to never eat or drink anything around the twins.

They went on like that for a little while and gave us a peek at some of the ideas they hadn't gotten to try yet. It all looked pretty brilliant and there were at least nine or ten things I knew that Hogwarts students would pay for. I didn't agree to it then, but I knew that before the summer was over, Lee and I would probably be working just as much on joke products with the twins as on the Marauders' Map. At the very least, it'd probably save me from getting pranked too easily by Fred and George.

I'd hoped for better, but asking the twins and Lee for advice on getting up to speed on my magic was pretty useless. Not that they didn't know anything, but they couldn't tell me anything I hadn't already thought of, like buying the set books for Charms, Transfiguration, and Potions up to year five. They suggested a few other books before I just dropped the subject. They gave the same advice for defensive magic, and it kinda shocked me to learn that they really didn't know much about it, much less offensive magic. Apparently Professor Quirrell, our last Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor at Hogwarts, had been one in a long line of bad teachers of the class.

"Well guys, add that to the list of things to do this summer." I told them.

They looked at each other apprehensively. "What, Defense? Why?" asked Lee.

I quickly told them about Shampoo. While they seemed pretty impressed by someone who could fight me, they weren't convinced about training in defense. "Okay, yeah, you've got a nutter after you, but I don't see why we need to be practicing. I mean, how often do we get attacked?" Fred said.

"I'm sure that's what Harry thought, too, before he ran into Voldemort." They all flinched. "If I didn't already know martial arts and he hadn't been distracted, I'd've been in a world of trouble."

They looked very uncomfortable for a moment before George spoke. "So...you think You-Know-Who will attack us?"

I shrugged. "No, not really. But it doesn't hurt to be ready to defend yourself." I said honestly. "And anyway, you lot could use the exercise. Don't think I forgot about teaching you three to fight either. If we're gonna be a team, you three have got to be able to keep up with me." Fred, George, and Lee groaned very loudly.

At that moment, there was a pounding on the door. "Fred! George!" Ginny yelled out from the other side. "Mum says to stop all that racket and to get downstairs for lunch!"

"Better get down there before Ron eats our share." Fred joked. With a wave of his wand, the glamour fell back over the room like a slowly falling curtain. He locked the door behind us as we headed towards the stairs.

"Why was your sister yelling so loud?" I asked.

George smirked a little. "Another brilliant little security charm that's on the door. Makes it sound like there's a lot of noise in the room."

Ron, Ginny, and Mrs. Weasley were already eating when we entered the kitchen. She'd made a mound of chicken sandwiches that even I would have had trouble finishing, as well as crisps and pumpkin juice. I piled a few sandwiches and crisps on to my plate but skipped the pumpkin juice. It was a very popular drink with wizards but, for some reason, it made me sick to my stomach. "Hey, Ron. Good flying out there?" I said as I sat down.

Ron was the next youngest Weasley and, back at Hogwarts, we were both in Gryffindor house. His hair seemed to be even more red than his brothers (if you can imagine that) and he was far more freckly in the face. He was also pretty tall for his age, nearly as tall as the twins. I wasn't surprised to see that he was almost literally stuffing his face. At school, he was known for being almost as bad an eater as I am. "Oh, heh Mwama! Ihwuz awite." he responded, spraying food a bit as he talked.

"Ronald Weasley!" Mrs. Weasley's voice cracked like a whip. "What have I told you about talking with your mouth full?"

Ron had a pained expression on his face as he took a big swallow. He looked at his mum apologetically. "Sorry, Mum." He turned back to me. "Flying was all right, but I'm a bit rusty since I didn't have my broom all last year. Anyway, how long've you been here? You should've come out to get me, we could've flown a bit."

"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. This lot kept me busy." I replied, nodding at his brothers.

"Yeah?" Ron said slyly. "With what?"

"Figuring out how to quietly get rid of an annoying little brother." Fred said. Ron's ears went red with either anger or embarrassment.

"Fred!"

"Kidding, mum, only kidding." When Mrs. Weasley wasn't looking, he looked at his younger brother and drew his thumb across his neck like a knife. Ron mouthed the word "git" in response.

Most of lunch passed like this, as Fred and George seemed to like needling Ron. I'd sorta seen that back at school, but without all the other students to distract them, the twins were really getting into it. I, like Ginny and Lee, mostly ignored it, letting Mrs. Weasley try to handle it.

In between all that, Ron did tell me that he, too, hadn't heard from Harry yet. He thought it was pretty odd for Harry to not respond right away, but he figured it was just the Dursleys being horrible and not letting him send Hedwig, Harry's owl, out. Harry had the threat of magic against them but, from the way he went on about how bad they were, it wouldn't have surprised me if they did that. Interestingly enough, as soon as we started talking about Harry and his relatives, Mrs. Weasley went off on a long rant about Harry's situation, how it was a shame that "such a nice boy" was being mistreated by "horrible muggles". While no one disagreed with her, it was a little weird for her to be so defensive about someone who, as far as I knew, didn't really know Harry at all. Weirder still was Ginny, who couldn't seem to stop talking about him.

Lee smartly changed the subject to Quidditch, which even Ginny was a big fan of. Because I'd barely been in the wizarding world more than a year, and because wizards don't have television, I had never seen a game outside of Hogwarts. Still, it was pretty easy to talk about, at least until Ron turned his attention to bothering me about trying out for the Gryffindor team in the fall. This turned into a long, play-by-play recounting of the last Quidditch match of the year, which helped our house tie for the championship. After that, I had to explain why I wouldn't play Quidditch as long as the current team captain, Oliver Wood, was in charge, and it pretty much had to do with the fact that Wood was a Quidditch obsessed git.

It took quite a bit of threatening to keep Ron from following us up to the large field at the edge of the Weasley's property after lunch. Fred and George hinted pretty hard at using their brother as guinea pig for their experiments if he didn't go away, so Ron did the smart thing and stopped following us. I felt a little bad about it; after all, he's one of my good friends and we've been through quite a lot together. Still, he wasn't a Marauder, so we couldn't have him along on Marauder business. I knew, though, if we went out and played a little pickup Quidditch, he'd be all right.

As we headed up the hill, George explained what we were going to be doing. "We've got to set up a few beacons around the edge of the field. The map's the 'brain', and it's always talking to the beacons to find out where it is in the field."

"So how's it know where we are?" asked Lee.

"We'll show you, once we get out of the wards around the house." Fred replied. "They screw the map up pretty badly if we try to activate the beacons inside them."

I thought about this a few seconds. "Uh, won't that happen at Hogwarts too? It'd be worse, even, since the wards are stronger."

"Yeah..."

"So what's the point of doing this, if it won't work at Hogwarts?"

"Baby steps, Redtail. Obviously we won't be putting out a fine piece of work like the Marauders' Map overnight, but this'll help us learn loads about how to do it properly."

I was pretty happy that I could just barely feel the magic as we left the Burrow's wards. Being able to sense magic had proven to be very useful in the past and it seemed that my ability was actually getting stronger. Once we got to the field, George handed each of us a small stone that was marked up with funny markings that turned out to be runes. Flipping the stone over in my hands, it seemed to be a pretty normal rock, except for the magical energy I could feel pulsing every second. I had to admit, whatever the twins had done, it was pretty impressive.

The field turned out to be much bigger than I expected. If they'd wanted to, and if they could hide it from Muggles, the Weasleys could've turned it into a real Quidditch pitch. We split up to place the four rocks at the four corners of the field, then met back in the middle. Fred then sat down on the ground, pulled out a quill and a bottle of ink, and started marking runes on the new map. As he did, George explained what his brother was doing. Apparently Fred was writing down a long Arithmancy formula using several types of ancient runes. He could've been speaking Greek for all that I actually understood, though, because I had no idea what Arithmancy was. After almost a half hour of writing, Fred had filled up the parchment with the weird symbols, and I wondered for a second how we'd see the map with all of the writing before the ink seemed to sink into the surface, leaving a blank page.

"All right, gents, now for the real magic." George told us, pulling his own from his pocket. Furrowing his brow with concentration, he twirled the wand at the parchment, muttering a spell that sounded unlike any I'd ever heard. It was certainly longer, since he seemed to go on for a minute. Finally, he tapped each corner of the parchment before tapping the center. As he did it, I could feel magic building up and flowing into the parchment, then flowing right back out where it had come from.

"Let's give it a spin, eh?" said Lee. He tapped the parchment and said, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."

After the first message, nothing seemed to happen. Then, very slowly, Lee's name appeared above a dot in the very center of the map. Within moments, three dots with Fred's, George's, and my name appeared as well. We all whooped loudly, clapping the twins on the back. It wasn't perfect, and there were some things we needed to work out, but it worked. Suddenly that eighteen month deadline didn't seem so hard at all.

"Hey, what's this?" Lee asked, looking closely at the parchment. He pointed at a dot that was quickly moving toward us from the southern end of the field. There was no name on it, at least no name that we could read. I could, though, recognize that it was written in Chinese characters, and it made my stomach twist into a knot. Turning to see it as it approached, I saw the same tawny owl as before swooping down towards me, clutching a letter in it's claws. I didn't even bother picking it up as the owl dropped it on my head. George did it for me and read it out loud. I watched the owl flap away, noticing that several ominous looking clouds had drifted our way.

"'No more running.'" said George. "What the hell is that supposed to mean? Ranma?"

"You three need to clear out of here." I told my friends, ignoring the first few drops of rain. My mind was racing, and I was mentally kicking myself for leading her to this house.

"Yeah, no kidding, it'll be pouring soon." Lee said, looking up at the sky. "You can tell us about that letter back in the house."

I shook my head. "No, you three really need to go without me."

"Why? What's wrong?" asked Fred uncertainly.

"She's here." I said, walking away from them. I clenched my fists, feeling the tension build up. Overhead, the clouds let loose with a light rain. I felt my body shift as my curse activated. "The Chinese girl I told you about."

"Here? But how? You took her back to China." George said, looking around warily.

"Yeah, well I guess she's back ." I could feel...something, like she wanted me to know where she was. I turned around and saw Shampoo standing just outside of the trees at the south side of the field. Though she was pretty far away and the rain made things a bit fuzzy, I could still see the owl that had just dropped off the letter perched on her left shoulder. Sunlight reflected off of the blade of a spear that she held in her right hand. The others followed my eyes as I turned to face where she stood.

"That her?" George asked quietly.

"Yeah." I nodded, walking forward slowly. "Go on back to the house and wait for me. This shouldn't take long."

Shampoo and I approached each other warily, like two rams about to charge. I didn't bother to look defensive at all. I wanted her to know that I wasn't worried about her, that she was no threat to me. Even at that distance, I knew she could see this. In fact, for a few moments, I thought that I heard her yowl loudly over the falling rain. The thought of her making such a weird sound barely registered before something terrifying happened that stopped me cold and sent me stumbling backwards onto the ground.

One moment she was walking towards me, shooting daggers at me with her eyes. The next moment, she'd morphed into a horde of angry, hissing, starved cats. I could see their matted fur hanging from their thin bodies. Their yellow eyes raked me with their hunger and their desperate yowls made my skin crawl. Inside me, sheer terror and panic were fighting for control. I didn't give either of them a chance. Instead, I scrambled backwards as fast as I could, turned, and ran faster than I could remember having ever done. Lee and the twins had told me what I'd done the last time cats had surrounded me and I couldn't stand the idea of letting it happen again.

I burst through the trees at the edge of the field, crashing through thick underbrush recklessly. A minute later I was out of it and running on a country road. The yowling had subsided some and, with it, the panic and terror that had gripped me loosened a bit, enough for me to think about what had just happened. I fingered the new locket my mother had given me to help me deal with cats. I'd lost the old one months ago. Like the old one, the locket was stuffed with enough catsbane to keep any cat far away from me. Besides that, I'd made a habit of putting more of the herb in my clothing, just in case I lost the locket. Even if the cats were really just a transfigured Chinese girl, they still should have been feeling sick from the catsbane, yet they were still chasing me. I couldn't really understand that, but I also couldn't take the time to think about it.

The cats seemed to be matching me stride for stride and only my first burst of speed had really kept a good distance between us. I had to ditch them somehow, but the only way I could think of was to just hide and hope they couldn't find me. Easier said than done, since I could only see one real place to hide, a large barn in the distance. Since the road curved going near it and the trees and summer crops were pretty tall, though, it was as good as I could get. I could only hope that Shampoo didn't keep her intelligence when she changed into the cats.

The barn turned out to be right next to an odd little house. There was a sign out front that read: "The Quibbler, Main Office". I dove into the barn, expecting some hay I could hide under, but instead I found several large machines that were noisily running. Lucky for me there were lots of barrels stacked up to the ceiling. I had noticed it immediately anyway, but the labels on the barrels of magical ink and parchment confirmed what my sense had told me already: this was a wizard's barn. I ignored my curiosity, though, in favor of hiding.

I'd barely settled into an empty parchment barrel when I heard the cats stop outside the barn. They sounded angrier than ever, and with all of the shaking I was doing, I knew I had no hope of escape if they started walking around the barn. Instead of hearing them come closer, though, I heard a girl's voice talking to the cats. It was probably the oddest conversation I'd heard before.

"Oh, hello there." said the girl in a voice that almost sounded like it was coming from a dream. The cats all seemed to yowl and hiss at the same time. "Oh, yes. She seemed rather in a hurry."

The hissing in response gave me chills. The girl, though, hardly seemed to notice. "Towards the village, I expect." As she paused, the yowling suddenly began to recede. I could hardly believe it. This girl, whoever she was, had gotten rid of them. "Do hurry, it's thingamajig season and they are rather fond of red hair." she called out.

I calmed down almost immediately but decided to wait until the girl had left before getting out of the barrel. With a little focus I was able to find her magical energy, which was headed right towards me. "You can come out now. She's gone." she said, stopping right in front of where I was hiding. She didn't give me time to respond, instead taking the lid off the barrel and peering down at me.

The girl looked about my age, maybe younger. The first thing I thought was that her eyes were rather big and, combined with her high eyebrows, it made her look surprised. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back, exposing slightly small ears and a long neck, around which was draped a necklace of bottle caps and string. She wore a light blue sun dress but was barefoot.

"Don't worry, I haven't seen any thingamajigs today. It should be safe." she said in her dream-like voice. She looked at me with a kind of knowing grin.

I had no idea what she was talking about but I hopped out of the barrel anyway. "Thanks for that. I'm a blithering idiot around cats." I said.

She quirked an eyebrow higher than I thought was possible. "Cats?"

"Yeah. The ones you just talked to, though I have no idea how you understood them."

"I didn't talk to any cats, I talked to a Chinese girl." the girl replied.

I frowned. "But I heard you talk to them. How could you mistake a horde of cats for a girl?"

"No, I'm sure it was a girl." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "Though, now you mention it, I suppose it could have been a feline poltergeist. They are rather good at illusions, after all."

"Err, right." I had no idea if what she said was true or not, but at least part of it made some sense to me. Shampoo had changed into cats and unless she was some kind of super genius at transfiguration, that should've been impossible. It had to be an illusion like this girl had said, but the girl hadn't seen the cats, so either she was crazy or I was.

"What did this Chinese girl look like?"

She proceeded to rattle off a long list of details about Shampoo, from the ornamental gold balls in her hair to the pattern on her silk shirt to the fact that she apparently had somewhat smallish feet. And she knew that Shampoo was a witch, though how she'd figured that out was beyond me.

"Yeah, that's her, all right." I said. "But why can you see the Chinese girl and I can't?"

"It must be a restless spirit. Perhaps you stepped on it's tail in your previous life?" She said seriously, her eyes seeming to bore right into me. "If I were a cat spirit, I would certainly haunt someone who did that to me"

Again, despite sounding somewhat loony, she'd said something that sounded like it could be right. "You're saying she's going after me...that makes sense, I guess, otherwise you'd have seen the cats too."

"It's too bad, as I'm rather fond of cats. I think a cat spirit would be rather nice to have following me around." the girl commented. I was only half listening while I thought back to when Shampoo had changed shapes. If it was an illusion, and it had to be, then I really just needed to recognize what sort of magical energy was going into it. This was much harder to do than it sounds. Hell, I'd been teaching myself how to do it for almost half a year and I still wasn't all that good at it. Since I knew next to nothing about the illusion, it was going to be ten times harder to figure out the type of magic. Once I did, though, I'd be able to interrupt it long enough to take out Shampoo.

I realized that the girl had gone silent and was staring unblinkingly at me, a look of keen interest on her face. "Sorry, I, er, I think I'd better get going." I said uncomfortably. "Thanks for your help..."

"Luna." She said, sticking her hand out to shake mine. "Luna Lovegood."

"Ranma Saotome." I replied. "I don't think I've seen you around Hogwarts."

"No, I expect you haven't. I start first year in September."

"Oh. Well, er, congratulations then. And I guess I'll see you around then."

"Parting is such sweet sorrow, isn't it?" Luna said, her smile not quite disguising the intensely interested look she was giving me. "Do be careful of thingamajigs, otherwise you might wake up without that lovely pigtail of yours."

I assured her I would be careful and set off down the road. Believe it or not, as odd as Luna had seemed, she was one of the more normal people I'd met since joining the magical world. Though I had no idea what they were or what they looked like in the first place., I decided to be wary of thingamajigs. I liked my braid, after all.

Finding Shampoo turned out to be fairly easy, thanks to that damn owl of hers. It had stopped raining, so the bird was flying around looking for me, I was sure. It didn't take long for me to get to the village of Ottery St. Catchpole, where I found her asking everyone she passed whether they'd seen me. I kept my distance, trying to see the magic that was affecting me. After a few minutes of hard concentration with my mage sight, I could just barely make out the the wispy gray strands of magic that floated around her. As I edged closer, the strands started to straighten out and point in my direction. Shampoo must have noticed this too, because she turned around and looked at me.

"There you are. You must be getting smarter if you're running scared from me now." she said with a smirk.

I smirked right back, stopping a few feet from the reach of the nearest strand. Whatever the spell was, it was definitely getting weaker, since I was much closer this time than I had been before. "Trust me, you're really low on the list of things I'm afraid of. It's not like I can't beat you with my hands tied."

Her face darkened. "Come closer and we'll see how brave you are!" she snarled.

"Oh, so you can use the same spell again?" Shampoo looked startled. "Yeah, I know all about it. You must really be desperate if that's all you've got."

Her face twisted into a look of anger. "Shut up! Just come and die, coward!"

"Huh. Well don't say you didn't ask for it." I said with a shrug.

My girl form is faster than my boy form for some reason and I used it to my advantage. The strands shot out at me as I dashed forward, but I wasn't worried about them. As weak as the magic was getting, I only had to use my ki to keep the spell from touching me, which pretty much meant that I had spread my ki over my skin. I knew from past practice that this wouldn't hold up more than five or so seconds, but that was more than enough time for me.

Shampoo was so confident in her spell that she didn't bother to move, even when I reared back to land a blow. She must've figured that something was wrong and started to move to counter me. It was too little, too late, though; before she knew it, I'd finished my strike, and it had hardly pushed her back an inch. She looked down at her chest, almost with disbelief, before looking back at me. "That's it? I've been hit harder by a two year old." she scoffed. "

I shook my head a little bit, holding out my hand. I could feel my ki beginning to draw back inwards, away from my skin. "I wasn't trying to hit you, I was trying to get this." Shampoo looked dumbstruck as I opened my left hand, revealing a broken yellow crystal attached to a gold chain. The same necklace that had just been around her neck, the source of the magic that had made me see my worst fear. That surprise had given me all the time I needed.

My left hand flashed out at her face, but she'd been ready for it and caught my hand. I could've hit her if I wanted to, of course, but I don't hit girls. Well, I didn't at the time, at least. Instead, I stunned her wandlessly as soon as she caught my hand and she crumpled to the ground, looking shocked. As much as I wanted to, I knew I couldn't leave her there. It wasn't because I was worried for her safety so much as my friends' safety. I needed to get her as far away from Ottery St. Catchpole as possible. It looked like I would be making another long distance Floo trip.

Fifteen minutes later, I'd made it back to The Burrow. I figured that just walking into the Weasley's kitchen with Shampoo slung over my shoulder probably wasn't the best idea, but since this was the nearest fireplace connected to the Floo network, I didn't have much of a choice. I really didn't want to explain things, though, so sneaking in was the only option. It's too bad that it failed so badly.

Now I'm not a ninja, but I've studied enough ninjutsu to sneak around like them. Regular people shouldn't be able to see or hear me when I'm sneaking around. No one told Mrs. Weasley that, though. I'd barely set foot in the house when she called out to me loudly. "Ginny, would you come here and help me with this."

I did the first thing you usually do when you think you're caught: I froze. It took me a few seconds to realize that she'd called Ginny, not me. Or so I'd thought. "Ginny, don't think you can slip away; I saw you walk by just now, young lady." She poked her head out of the kitchen and glanced down at me. "There you are. Now come alo-"

We looked at each other for a minute. Mrs. Weasley was clearly very surprised and I'd put on my best innocent face. It didn't really help. "Ranma? What on earth has happened to your hair? And who is that you're carrying?"

Is it bad that, even though I hadn't expected to run into anyone, a lie was already on my lips ? Not that it really mattered, since my friends came to my rescue at that moment. Which meant that they made things worse. "It's that Chinese bird he was talking about!" Lee exclaimed. "I can't believe we missed that fi-OUCH!"

George had kicked him, which was lucky for him because I was going to if no one else had. All the same, Mrs. Weasley looked suspicious. "Err, yeah, I can't believe we missed Ranma meeting his friend from China, who just happened to be visiting Ottery St. Catchpole." he said a little too loudly.

"I see." she said in a way that made clear she didn't see at all. "So why is the poor girl unconscious? And why is your hair red?"

"Mum, his hair does that all the time, whenever he gets hit with cold water." explained Fred. "Just hit Ranma with a bit of hot water and it goes back to normal."

"It's a Chinese curse I got last year." I admitted quickly, trying to change the subject. "And this...I mean, she's a girl I met in China last year. She fainted and I was just about to take her back to her room in Diagon Alley."

Mrs. Weasley didn't look convinced. "Oh, if that's all, I have a Pepper Up potion that'll get her back up and about."

"No!" I said a little too quickly. "No, that's okay. I'll just take her back to her room at the Leaky Cauldron. I'm sure she'll be all right if she lays down for a bit."

"Well, if you think she'll be okay." Mrs. Weasley said. "But I insist on going with you. Children your age shouldn't be traveling to the Leaky Cauldron on your own."

I opened my mouth to protest but, before I could say anything, I felt Shampoo writhe slightly and a short burst of magical energy just before I felt a hard blow between my shoulders. It wasn't enough to make me drop her, but it was just enough to distract me. Only sharp reflexes and a bit of ki helped me avoid the point blank spell, and I had to roll and throw her just to do that. Shampoo flew into the far wall with a crash, knocking over a table and sending a chair flying. She jumped back on her feet in an instant, her hands waving and a spell on her lips. I knew better than to let her finish the incantation, which I couldn't hear for all the yelling that was going on around us.

I dashed forward to grab her, but Shampoo didn't falling for my stunning trick again. She jumped and kicked me hard in the chest, sending the finished spell at me as I stumbled backwards. I bent backwards and let the spell pass over me, where it punched a hole into the chimney. I kicked myself because the fight I'd wanted to avoid at the Burrow was raging in the living room and, if I didn't stop it, was going to bring the house down. Time to stop pulling punches.

I dodged a spell. Shampoo was about to cast another when I grabbed both of her hands in the strongest grip I could manage. "You lose again, Shampoo." I said. She must've known what was happening because she kicked me very hard in the chest. At the same time, I sent two very strong stunning spells into her wrists. She looked shocked, once again, and slumped to the ground.

Behind me, plaster from the wall crashed to the ground loudly, making me jump. I turned and saw everyone, including Percy, staring at me. The twins, Lee, and Ron and Ginny looked excited, maybe even impressed. Only Ron had ever seen me really fight, and even then I hadn't been very serious about it. Percy and Mrs Weasley, though, didn't looked impressed at all. They looked absolutely pissed. I couldn't really blame them.

"Uh...sorry 'bout this." I said sheepishly. Yeah, not exactly the best thing to say after trashing someone's living room. I'd been yelled at before, but Mrs. Weasley made all the other times pale in comparison. She didn't even calm down when I told her I'd pay for any repairs. I'm pretty sure she didn't buy the lie I made up about why Shampoo and I were fighting (that we'd learned to duel together and I'd accidentally knocked her out while we were sparring). She didn't try to stop me from flooing away with Shampoo, though. Actually, I'm pretty sure she pushed us into the fire

By the time I'd gotten back home, I wasn't happy, not a bit. I didn't waste more Galleons than I had to on the Floo trip, just calling out the stop in Pai Yar Square, re-awakening Shampoo, then pushing her into the flames. Since Tom, the bar-man at the Leaky Cauldron, had recognized her, I'd figured it was a waste to try the same trick as before. She already knew I was in England and all that hopping around wouldn't have changed that.

I spent the next hour walking around Diagon Alley, trying to clear my mind and cool off. When I'd first met and become enemies with the girl, I didn't think she'd ever be this persistent. Even when she'd followed us to Japan, it wasn't as big a problem then as it had turned into now. Shampoo had started to come at me almost like she was desperate. I'd begun seriously wondering whether to just turn her into the Ministry. It was a terrible thing to do to a girl her age, but I had a bad feeling that someone was going to get hurt if I didn't do something.

Several days went by without a sign from Shampoo. I didn't leave the wards around the house, not because I was afraid, but I wasn't stupid enough to miss that she always attacked when I was away from home. I didn't fancy having Shampoo crash in on any of my other friends' houses (especially since Mrs. Weasley had very politely banned me from the Burrow), so I really didn't have anywhere else to go. All that was left to do was train, study, and train a little more, then write letters to my friends. It might've been boring without the Umisenken and training Neville to take my mind off things. As long as I stayed at home, I thought, maybe she'd give up and go back to China.

Wrong. Terribly, idiotically wrong, and it was about to cost me.

This morning had started like the last two; wake up early, spar with Pops, eat breakfast with Mum before she headed off to the Ministry. After she left, Pops and I trained the Umisenken. Around ten, Neville flooed over for his training. He and Pops went outside the wards to run while I'd waited. I didn't really like Pops going with Neville without me there to keep him in check. Pops was being extra hard on my friend and he always brought Neville back almost too tired to train. Not that Neville complained or let that stop him, which was why Pops had stopped grumbling so much about having to train him. If you want respect from a martial artist, you gotta show you're not afraid of some hard work.

They returned from their "warm up" after about a half hour. Neville looked slightly less exhausted than he had the day before. Still, his white training gi was soaked with sweat. The gi was an old one of mine that I'd given him because his grandmother didn't approve of him "wasting time" or money on muggle martial arts. I hadn't minded giving it away since I hate wearing the things. The Chinese pants and shirts I always wear are way more comfortable to fight in, and I hadn't bothered wearing a gi in over a year.

"All right, warmed up?" I asked, trying to keep a straight face because I knew he was ready to drop. Pops grunted disapprovingly behind me but didn't said anything else. Neville only nodded. "Okay, let's go back over the same form from yesterday. I broke it down to the five main bits, and I think you got them down for the most part, so we'll put it together today. Now I'm gonna go through it with Pops first, then you'll try it on me. Pops, just go slow, not like in a real fight."

I wasted my breath with that warning. Not only did he use combat speed, but Pops also took the extra time to toss me thirty feet away into the koi pond. When I hit the water, I felt a small tingle of magic on my neck but didn't give it a second thought, thinking it was just my curse activating. I sloshed out of the pond, mad as hell and yelling at Pops in Japanese, when I realized that he wasn't taunting me like normal. He didn't say anything at all. That's when I realized that someone else was in the garden, someone with a magical aura. I spun around and locked eyes with Shampoo, who was looking dangerous with a heavy bonbori in both hands.

One second, that was how long I was out of the picture. Three, if you count climbing out of the pond. Add three more for me flying through the air and yelling and wringing out my pigtail. Six seconds. That's how long it took for Shampoo to jump a ten feet high garden wall and send out three stunning spells, one for each of us. That was the tingle I'd felt, her spell missing me. Pops is one of the best martial artists I know, but from the look on his face, he never even saw it coming. As for Neville, I was pretty surprised to see him facing Shampoo, his wand out and pointed at her.

"Who-who are you?" Neville stuttered shakily. "Why did you attack us?"

Shampoo barely glanced at him as she tried to walk by, which made him angry. Neville had always hated being disregarded at school, and that's why he reached out to grab her shoulder. I yelled at him to stop and to get away, but it was too late. His left hand was on her shoulder for half a second before she whipped around and swatted him away with one of her bonbori. His arm took most of the blow, buckling and snapping loudly. Neville slammed into the wall with a surprised and pained yelp.

While all this was happening, I closed the distance between Shampoo and me. When I saw her hit Neville, though, I was suddenly filled with all of the anger I'd been holding back since she'd started invading my life in England. That she had the nerve to come into my home and attack me, my family, and my friends was unacceptable. I saw, then, the problem with how I'd handled her. I hadn't responded to her attacks hard enough and, until I did, she would keep on coming after me. This drove all of my worries about her being a girl out of my mind.

She wasn't ready for my attack. She probably only just saw it coming, but not nearly fast enough to stop it. In all the times we'd fought in the past, I'd never gone all out because I hadn't needed to, but this time I wanted to. I wanted her to know that she was not a challenge to me, that I could beat her without trying. I saw her eyes widen with shock (and maybe fear) a fraction of a second before my fist slammed into her chin. The punch snapped her head up and threw her ten or so feet away. She rolled several times, finally sliding to a stop. I hit her so hard that she'd lost the grip on her weapons, which tumbled to a stop just out of her reach.

I stood over her, just out of her striking range. She sat up slightly, propping up on an elbow and rubbing her chin, where a bruise was already starting to form. From the way she kept glancing around her, I could tell she was looking for a chance to attack. It didn't matter to me, since I could stop anything she tried. After a few minutes of staring at each other, she finally breaks the silence.

"Well, are you going to attack, or are you too afraid?" she says with contempt.

"Don't kid yourself, Shampoo. You ought to be afraid that I'll really hurt you for what you did to my friend."

"No one lays a hand on an Joketsuzoku woman and gets away with it." she replies coldly. "You should know that by now."

"Your fight's with me, not anyone else." I growl angrily.

"Yes, but you're always running and hiding." she says with contempt.

I smirk at her. "I was doing you a favor so you could save face, but you're too stupid to see that. Well not any more. I'm not running or hiding now. I'm not holding back. You have no chance of ever beating me, so why don't you just give up and go home?"

"Never. Not until you pay for defeating me." she hisses.

"It was a fair fight, you idiot! Have some honor and respect for yourself and accept the loss!" I'm almost shouting.

Shampoo actually laughs at me. "I'm an idiot? You're the one who entered our tournament without knowing the rules, and now you're complaining?"

"It was a bloody tournament, what other rules are there but to knock your opponent out?"

"Stupid Japanese girl, too bad you don't think as well as you fight, or I wouldn't have to waste my time trying to kill you." Shampoo's voice is bitter as she speaks. "Your guide warned you not to get involved, but you did anyway. And you beat me, the best fighter of my generation in the Joketsuzoku village. You beat me, you stupid Jap, in front of everyone!

"What do you know about honor? Honor to the Joketsuzoku is killing your enemies. And any outsider woman who faces a woman of the Joketsuzoku in combat is an enemy. Any outsider woman who defeats a woman of the Joketsuzoku is to be hunted until she is dead." Shampoo looks at me, anger and bitterness etched on her face. "Because you took my honor by defeating me in front of my village, I must kill you. Because of you, I'm here instead of back home, becoming a greater warrior for the village."

And just like that, my anger is suddenly very hollow. There's a sinking feeling in my stomach because, like a lot of the problems I've faced in my life, this one seems to be at least partly my own fault. Why had I entered that tournament anyway? To win some food for my greedy father? Or was it to prove that I was better? Not that it even mattered, since either way it would've still forced Shampoo to hunt me down.

Shampoo seems to sense that I'm distracted and takes the opportunity to flip to her feet before I can react. I'm suddenly on my guard, now that we're on even terms again. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't know your village had stupid rules like that. I thought it was just a regular fighting tournament." I admit this reluctantly. "Why don't we just forget about this? You go back and say I'm dead and I'll never go to China again. We don't have to kill each other over a stupid old tradition."

She shakes her head. For a moment, she doesn't look angry or hateful, and she can't disguise the regret in her expression. "My grandmother will know that you're still alive. She always knows." She shakes her head again, as if to clear away bad thoughts. "No, I will kill you. That is the only way I can return to my village with honor."

I instinctively tense as she waves her hands in some sort of pattern, but the spell she casts isn't aimed at me. Her bonbori return to her hands just as she sprints at me. I gather ki to my arms and hands as I sidestep her first swing. This time, I'm not interested in using magic to put her down. It hadn't stopped her from coming after me so far, and as bad as I feel about her situation, I have to teach her a lesson if I really want her to stop attacking me.

She's good though, even better than she was the last time we seriously fought, and the bonbori are definitely her best weapon. We trade attacks and counterattacks for a minute or so, but if she's as frustrated as I'm getting, I can't tell. When she finally scores a glancing blow off my right shoulder, I decide it's time to get rid of those annoying clubs. Instead of dodging them when she swings at me, I swipe at them hard with enough force and ki to punch a hole into concrete. Shampoo's not expecting this and the bonbori are ripped from her grip as they fly across the yard.

"You're not bad with those clubs, but let's see if you can handle me hand to hand." I say confidently. I don't give her time to even breathe before I'm on her, and this time there's no doubt that, even in my girl form, I'm much better. I'm stronger and I'm faster and she just can't keep up. At first I only try to take her down, but her recovery from being tossed around is good, like she's no stranger to getting thrown around by a better opponent. So I start trying to actually hit her, and that's when I discover just how prepared she is for a fight with me. As my first punch connects with her chest, I feel an unnatural hardness that resists my fist. I stop my follow through just fast enough to avoid breaking my hand, but it still hurts like hell. Pushing her away with my other hand, I hop backwards, clutching my now injured left hand.

"What the hell?" I exclaim. Shampoo laughs and smirks at me.

"Dragonhide, you stupid girl. You thought I wouldn't come ready for your tricks, after being stunned twice?"

I notice, for the first time, that she's wearing gloves. The rest of the dragonhide is probably under her clothes. This will make the fight harder. Her punches are going to be worse if I let them land, and she'll be almost impossible to hurt. I don't let her know that, of course. "I've got a few more tricks."

The dragonhide is my focus now, since it's getting in my way. Thankfully, she can't sense my ki, so breaking its protection is much easier, especially since she's so confident that it'll protect her. I give her the "Old One-Two" five or six times and the dragonhide on her chest is useless. I block several of her punches and do the same thing to her gloves. After a minute or so she's defenseless, only she doesn't know it. A palm heel thrust to the chest gives Shampoo the bad news about her dragonhide and a side thrust kick gives her something else to think about. Not that I give her time to think. My following strikes pound into her arms, pushing her back. That's when she literally pulls something out of nowhere.

I feel a tingle of magic and hear something slice through the air, which probably saves my neck. My arms take the saber's swipe, protected for the most part by my ki. I don't need my mage sight to know that the sword is magical; Shampoo moves it too fast for it to be a normal sword. The tables have turned on me again as she presses her advantage. It takes all of my skill and speed to avoid being sliced and stabbed. After narrowly dodging a downward swipe, I notice that the only thing moving faster on her is her sword arm, which means I can disarm her. When she swings at me again, I roll forward and jab a pressure point that paralyzes her arm for a second, then knock away the saber. It flips several times and embeds itself into the ground.

Shampoo doesn't waste time worrying about her fallen sword, instead whipping out another one. I don't wait to see if it's magical or not. Instead, I roll over to her fallen sword and grab the handle, ready to defend myself. It's a stupid mistake, and it almost gets me killed.

As soon as my hand closes around the saber's hilt, I feel magical energy grab my hand and hold it there. Then I feel a powerful jolt of electricity shoot through me, and it pushes all thoughts of the fight away. All I can think of is the pain. My body is shaking so hard that I fall to the ground, but the sword stays firmly in my hand. Somehow, in the part of my mind that's still working, I know it's killing me, and I know I have to let go of the sword quickly. I try to ignore the pain and concentrate on my ki. I can't move, but my ki can, and it's the only thing that can break the sticking charm that's holding my hand to the saber.

After what seems like an eternity, but was probably only half a minute, my ki overpowers the charm and I drop the sword. It's done it's damage, though. I feel weak and can't move without pain. My mind is scattered and I barely remember what I was doing. I flinch as I feel the tingle of a spell pass over me, but it's aimed at the saber, which goes flying away from me. Opening my eyes, I see Shampoo looking down on me, a nasty grin on her face. She's pointing the non-magical saber at my heart, and I can't do much more than tremble and wonder how the hell I can get out of this.

"Stupid, stupid girl. That blade can't be held by anyone who isn't a woman of the Joketsuzoku. It's too bad you didn't know that." she says "It won't help, Mr. Saotome. She'll be dead before you get near me, and with this sword, I can kill you too."

It's true and we knew it. This is how it was going to end for me, the boy who should be the greatest martial artist of my age, killed by a girl with half the skill, talent, and strength. No, killed by my own stupidity and arrogance. I'm going to die bringing shame to the Saotome clan.

The killing stroke never comes. Instead, I feel a surge of ki and magic mixing together, and for once it isn't mine. I hear three quick footsteps and see my mum dashing at us like I'd never seen her move before, holding the Saotome family katana with a perfect teito shisei. In a quick, practiced move, too fast for Shampoo to react to, she executes a kiri tsuke, drawing the sword from the scabbard and slicing upwards. Even from where I lay, I feel the blade sing with magical energy, and it slices through the normal saber as if it were paper. Shampoo barely has time to be shocked before my mum pushes her arm out and banishes her across the garden.

"You stay the hell away from my son." she snarls, pointing the katana at the already recovering Shampoo. Mum looks and sounds angrier than I've ever seen her and, from the way she handles the sword, she seems ready and able to fight. Shampoo gets to her feet, her magical saber still in hand and an ugly, murderous look on her face

Even if I could move, I'd still be frozen with shock and growing fear. Yeah, I'm glad to still be alive, but the situation has just become a hundred times worse. Shampoo had said that outsider women were enemies if they fought with women from her village. My mum had saved me, but doing that had signed her own death warrant. Shampoo is going to kill her, and there's nothing I can do about it.

To Be Continued...Chapter 2: Shampoo, Rinse, Repeat! Being in Hot Water is a Good Thing!

Author's Notes:

A couple definitions:

teito shisei – Holding the sword in a position of readiness to draw, with the left hand at hip level, and the left thumb on the tsuba (hand guard). Also known as keito.

kiri tsuke -Iaido technique where the sword is drawn from the scabbard and is simultaneously used to perform a strike.

Well, there you are, the first of six chapters in the summer novella. It's been a long time coming, far longer than it should've been. Hopefully it was worth the wait, but I guess you guys will just have to let me know if it was or wasn't. Seeing how long it took for this chapter, I think I'll avoid giving a deadline and just say that I'll get it out as quickly as I can. It definitely shouldn't be 7 months, though.

Oh yeah, before I forget, a quick shout out to the guys who post on the forum. These guys got a sneak peek of the chapter a few weeks ago and gave me some good feedback. I'll probably be doing something similar in the future, so make sure to check the forums for that. I also only answer questions there, so if you've asked a question in your review, I've probably answered it on the forum.

Thanks to Kim, as always. Thanks also to X-Ile, ttripled, Dumbledork, Daisuke, blackmamuth, and Penguin Lord0029 for the feedback on the forum. Finally, thanks to the reviewers and everyone who's sticking around, even after all this time. Hopefully I won't be testing your loyalty again with such a long hiatus. See you again at the end of the next chapter!