"Hermione nee-san?" Sasuke asked as she carried him through the village, following behind the gravity-defying silver hair. "We can't even go home to get our things?"

"I'm afraid not, Sasuke-chan," Fukurou said. "We'll have to get you some new things for until we can. I'll bet you were starting to outgrow your clothes anyway."

"Kaa-san was giving him my old clothes," Itachi supplied.

"Neglect or just stingy I wonder? Well, never mind. You can have all new clothes Sasuke-chan, how does that sound? You can pick out anything you like," Fukurou said, smiling up at the boy she was still carrying on her shoulder.

"Really Hermione nee-san? I can pick out whatever I like?" Sasuke asked eagerly, bouncing slightly at the idea.

"Five outfits," she cautioned firmly. She wasn't going to spoil him, but he needed a few rounds of clothes to wear between washes, and he was still growing, so they'd need to be replaced soon anyway.

"Hermione, Uchiha Fukurou-san?" Kakashi asked, stopped in front of a large wooden gate which had a proportionately large lock hanging from it.

"My last mission was overseas, I was required to blend in," she answered, trying not to blush. "My family helped me when I was able to visit by continuing to call me by my cover name, so that I would answer to it naturally."

"It's a really pretty name too," Sasuke added enthusiastically.

"Hm, but my mission is over now, so you don't have to call me Hermione ever again. I can just be Fukurou again," she said, distracting herself from Kakashi's attention by focusing on her youngest brother.

Kakashi just nodded and stuck a key into the lock through the door. In a village full of highly trained shinobi, locks were really just a visible request that people leave the place alone. The Hatake estate had been left alone for easily a decade, Kakashi preferring to live in an apartment if he was going to be living alone, rather than having large amounts of space resonating their emptiness all around him.

"But we can't call you Fuu-nee-san any more either," Itachi said in that dead-pan voice of his that always left a person wondering if he was being serious or not. "Hokage-sama declared you head of the Uchihas. We have to call you Fukurou-sama, and always defer to you and treat you with formality and respect, like Tou-san."

Kakashi mentally froze up. He hoped he wouldn't have to treat the Uchiha girl like he'd had to treat the other elders and clan heads he had been forced to interact with before. It would be too stressful to have that sort of thing happening every day.

Fukurou looked over at her brother, eyed him a moment, then hit him on the top of his head with the soft side of her fist, though the strike wasn't all that gentle, and Itachi was rubbing his head where he had been struck.

"You even try that sort of thing and I will be forced to think up a very creative punishment for you, and I learned a lot of very interesting things on my mission," she told him sternly. "I'm only the mighty, kunai-lodged-up-the-ass, formal and respect-demanding Uchiha Fukurou-sama if I have to go to a meeting with the elders and other clan heads. All the rest of the time, I'm just your big sister, alright? Relax Otouto," she teased.

Kakashi heaved a mental sigh of relief. "Welcome to the Hatake estate," he said, interrupting any further comments Itachi might have made to his sister by drawing their attention to their new temporary residence. "It's a bit neglected, but with a little work it should be liveable. I'll show you to some rooms you can use first, if that's alright?"

"That would be really great, Hatake-san. I haven't even had the chance to unpack from my mission yet. I just took off the disguise when I arrived in Fire Country and that was it," Fukurou said, smiling widely at the very idea.

"Did you bring back presents Onee-san?" Sasuke begged as they followed Kakashi into the building.

"Hai, hai. I always bring back presents don't I Sasuke-chan?"

"Yay!"

"You don't even know what she's brought back yet Sasuke, it might be more of those lollies that made your tongue turn purple and swell up," Itachi said with a frown.

"Hey, I didn't give Sasuke the Tonne Tongue Toffee Itachi-chan," Fukurou protested.

"I am never accepting any food you give me unless you taste it first," Kakashi stated firmly, both horrified and amused. "This will be your room, Uchiha-sama. Itachi-san, yours is three doors that way, Sasuke-kun, the second door beyond that"

"Please don't call me that," Fukurou protested quietly, not liking the sound of it from him.

"Why so many doors between us?" Sasuke asked at the same time.

"Because I have noticed that girls like to have their own bathroom," Kakashi said, addressing Sasuke. "And as the person in charge of your family, your Onee-san is going to need an office, and a place to receive other clan-heads when they come to visit her," he explained, pointing to each of the doors to indicate what was behind them. "The room between you and your Onii-san is a bathroom that the two of you will share."

"Which is your room Hatake-san?" Sasuke asked, looking along the row of rooms.

Kakashi pointed to a room two doors down from the one he had given to Fukurou. "The same one that was my room when I lived here with my family. Now, first things first, we're going to have to clean the place unless you want to be sneezing all the time because of dust, so while Uchiha-san unpacks from her mission, shall we get started?"

The boys nodded their agreement and Kakashi led the way to another part of the estate, presumably where the kitchen, laundry, and cleaning cupboard were.

Fukurou shook her head at them as they left her behind. "I have gotten lazy," she commented to herself as she pulled out the wand she had been learning to use for the past seven years. She cast a quick cleaning charm about the room and watched in satisfaction as the dust, grime and mould disappeared, leaving the room as clean and spotless as the day after the paint had finished drying, but without the smell. That done, she withdrew a box from one of her pockets that could easily have been mistaken as belonging to a doll's house. Setting it on the floor, she pointed her wand at it and watched with satisfaction as the trunk grew to its correct size. Unlocked and opened, she began the slightly tedious process of un-shrinking everything that had been contained in the trunk – various school books and equipment, the large box of chocolate frogs she had brought back for Itachi and the somewhat smaller box of things that would go bang for Sasuke. There was the broomstick that she had refrained from telling anybody on her mission that she had invested in when she had discovered that Malfoy had bought one for every member of the Slytherin Quidditch team, all of the other books she had purchased out of curiosity, and a few other bits and bobs. She had been forced to leave Crookshanks behind, but smart as the cat was, she knew he wasn't cut out for the life of a shinobi animal. She knew that Ginny would take good care of him.

Looking through all the various stuff that she had, Fukurou wondered if there was anything in there that she could give to Hatake-san, as a thank you for letting her and her brothers stay with him at his family estate. She smiled as she spotted something she had purloined from Potter while he had been, er, indisposed. It would probably be better for all involved if he never had access to his invisibility cloak ever again, and she was certain that Hatake-san would have better uses for it. She had intended to just use it herself for intelligence missions, but after all that mess with the wizards, she was ready to settle down into something a bit easier and with less likelihood of encountering more large-scale death or excessive violence. A genin team sounded appealing, or a maybe she would take a job at the Academy.

Thinking about it for a moment, she just hoped that none of his 'better uses' for the item would include playing a prank on her or anybody else that she would have to answer to if they demanded to know where he got the thing from.

~oOo~

"How did this happen?" Kakashi asked, staring at the perfectly clean passage which had, barely ten minutes ago when he left Uchiha-san to unpack, been covered in dust and dirt.

"Don't know," Itachi answered, also stunned. "But I'd really like to."

"Fuu-nee-san!" Sasuke called out. "The hall is clean, can we have presents now?"

Itachi bit on his lower lip and Kakashi smothered his laughter with a hand at the child's enthusiasm.

"I know the hall is clean Sasuke-chan. I cleaned it," Uchiha-san answered, sticking her head out of her room to answer her littlest brother. "But alright. There are a few things I want to talk to you about as well that I couldn't before because of my mission. It's case closed now though, and I am free of all restraints. I could run my mouth off and nothing spectacularly bad will happen."

Itachi and Sasuke moved eagerly toward their sister's room, while Kakashi watched, slightly awkwardly, before moving to shuffle off to clean the kitchen.

"Hatake-san, I would be honoured if you would join us too," Fukurou added, still looking out of the room even while her brothers stepped in.

Kakashi blinked in surprise before putting down the bucket in his hand and approaching the female warily.

"I'm not going to do anything horrid to you Hatake-san," she said, smiling in amusement as she stepped aside to let him in.

Kakashi blinked in wonderment, that she had been able to unpack so much stuff so quickly, and particularly when it hadn't looked like she was carrying anything at all. He didn't remember her even having a decent sized storage scroll to have pulled all this stuff from.

"Please, do sit down," she said, gesturing to a cushion she had clearly fetched from the meeting room he had indicated before, though it looked newer than he thought it should.

"We finally get to hear about your mission Fuu-nee-san?" Sasuke asked, bouncing slightly where he sat on his cushion.

"Hai, but I know you really just want your present," she answered, smiling. "Here," she said, passing the boy a box. "No setting them off inside, alright Sasuke-chan? And I will know if you do."

Sasuke accepted the box happily, pulling the lid off to reveal many different balls, boxes and tubes. Nearly all of them had fuses, and there was a small book of instructions sitting on top. Kakashi hoped the boy read the manual before setting off anything that looked as bang-inclined as that.

"Itachi," Uchiha Fukurou said, taking attention away from the boy with the new 'boom box', and drawing it to the box she was now giving the older of the two brothers. "Don't eat them all at once, alright?" she added.

Kakashi peered over to see piles of brown frogs, chocolate frogs, inside the box. Well, the older Uchiha brother was known to have something of a sweet tooth.

"Hatake-san."

He blinked in surprise.

She somehow managed to smirk sheepishly.

"I didn't go shopping for you Hatake-san. I only ever buy gifts on missions for my brothers, or the target as the deception requires. I did think, however, that we owe you a great debt for opening your home to us, and while I was unpacking thought that perhaps you might have a use for this."

Kakashi stared at a pile of cloth in Uchiha-san's hands, accepting it gingerly when she held it out to him.

"I had intended to use it myself on stealth missions, but I think you will find use for it more often than I would," she continued to explain. "It's a cloak. Please, try it on."

Kakashi stood and, letting most of the fabric fall from his fingers, wrapped the collar around his neck.

Itachi and Sasuke yelped, and he looked down. He yelped himself when he registered what he wasn't seeing.

"A rather useful thing, isn't it? I suspect that the Hyuuga would not be fooled by it, and of course, if you bump into someone, they'll feel it, but it certainly hides a person well enough generally," Uchiha-san said, chuckling. "It's got a hood too, so it is possible for you to completely vanish from sight."

Kakashi slipped a hand out of the front of the cloak, his single visible eye wide and disbelieving.

"Thank you very much Uchiha-san," he said at last. "This is a great gift, surely outweighing my simply providing you with a place to live for a while."

Uchiha Fukurou shook her head. "Just don't lose it, and if it gets damaged somehow, only bring it to me for fixing. This is a secret even the Hokage hasn't been fully informed of," she said, a little cheekily. "Not that he really wants to know all that I have learned on my mission. He doesn't much care for magic really, and I don't blame him."

For exactly five seconds, the room was dead silent, then the Kakashi, Itachi and Sasuke all burst out at the same time.

"Magic?" they said all at once.

"Yep."

"Can you teach me Fuu-nee-san?" Sasuke asked as, once Fukurou had finished explaining her mission, she had pulled out her wand and performed a few spells.

"I'll think about it," she said, ruffling his hair with a smile. "I'll definitely take you to visit the wizard shops sometime though. There's a lot of learning to be had just by watching these people after all."

Sasuke nodded enthusiastically.

"Now lets get this place cleaned up, and then how about we train for a while?"

~oOo~

Fukurou laughed and groaned simultaneously as Sasuke dumped her in the dust. Spending the last eight years in the wizarding world of England had left her a lot softer than she had feared, even with her sneaking off to get in some intensive training whenever she could. She'd really been able to properly keep up with her training the year that McGonagall had given her the time turner. It gave her whole spare days to train, but she'd had to return it at the end of the school year, and hadn't completely figured out how to make one for herself.

"You've gotten faster Sasuke-chan," she said with approval as she got up. It always helped her brothers to get at least a little bit of an ego boost while they were training. "Of course, I've gotten slower as well, so we can work on both of us getting faster together."

"Hai Fuu-nee-san!"

"Now, show me how you breathe fire," she instructed, pointing the boy towards a bare patch of dirt where nothing could burn.

"Your sister is a good teacher," Kakashi observed to Itachi as they stood in the shade for a moment, taking a quick break.

"Hai. She taught me, and now she teaches Sasuke. She has infinitely more patience than Tou-san ever did, and a gently guiding hand like Kaa-san never quite mastered," Itachi answered. "I'm only considered a genius because Fukurou nee-san taught me when I was little, and the same for Sasuke. She's the real prodigy, but she's kind and helpful as well."

Kakashi's visible eyebrow rose in quiet surprise. He had never suspected that the Uchiha boys were only as good as they were because their sister taught them, he'd just thought it ran in the family. From the sounds of it, their father hadn't realised the truth either.

"Who was her genin-instructor?" he asked. Perhaps she had learned how to teach from her teacher.

"She was apprenticed to Morino Ibiki when she was six. She was going to be placed on a regular genin team, like you were, but the mission in England came up, and she had a pile of that magic the wizards use, as well as regular chakra, so Morino-san recommended that she take the mission rather than be attached to a genin squad when she was already a chuunin, and she could learn how to interact with people her own age while still learning about this other energy source that she had. A few years ago she took the jounin exam while she was home on a break from her mission," Itachi explained, smiling as he watched his Onee-san showing his nii-chan how to breathe a fire-ball without hurting, charring or burning himself in the process.

Kakashi didn't respond to that. He honestly couldn't think of Ibiki giving lessons to anybody in anything and them coming out of it as pleasant as Uchiha-san had seemed to. He settled for just watching her to see if he could figure it out.

"First do it slowly, she'll be telling him. Do it slowly and correctly. Speed will come with practice. First get it right," Itachi added when he noticed Kakashi watching the lesson intently.

"Good advice to give while there is time to take it," he agreed. "But sometimes you have to learn things fast, or you die."

"If you rush your learning, you will die faster from your own foolishness!" Fukurou yelled over at them, her black eyes dancing.

"Uh... how did...?" Kakashi stammered.

"I have no idea," Itachi answered, just as shocked.

Fukurou and Sasuke finished up and joined the two men already under the tree – one older and one younger than Fukurou.

"Alright Sasuke-chan, I have a mission for you," Fukurou said, smiling. "You are to do a sweep and attempt to discover how I was able to hear what these two were talking about. Succeed, and I'll give you a little money to buy yourself something when we go shopping."

Beaming, Sasuke began scouring the area as only an eight-year-old would, and the three older shinobi watched him silently. This was also good learning for him – searching for something that he had no idea what it looked like, or where it might be except for that it was likely in the general area. He even climbed the tree in his search, though he had needed to ask for a lift to get to the first branch, which Fukurou had happily given him.

"I can't find anything," he called out at last, coming down to the lowest branch once more, where he hung for a moment before dropping into Fukurou's waiting arms.

"And you looked everywhere?" she questioned.

The child nodded, and Fukurou smirked.

"Would you turn around Otouto?" she requested, looking up at Itachi.

Confused, but trusting his sister, Itachi did as he was asked, looking over his shoulder as he did so.

"No fair!" Sasuke cried out.

Fukurou laughed. "Of course not, Sasuke-chan, that's the idea."

Kakashi chuckled as well, and wondered how he hadn't seen the ear stuck to the back of Itachi's shirt when they were sparring, though he wasn't sure how it worked.

Fukurou removed the ear from the shirt and a small, clear tab that had been stuck to the skin just behind her own ear. "An invention of the Weasley Twins," she said by way of explanation. Having already told them about the Weasley family as part of the mission explanation she had given them, the matter needed no further elaboration. It was an early prototype for an upgrade of the Extendible Ear, and worked much better in her opinion.