Just gotta say my deepest apologises for taking so long to post this! I honestly in my hearts of hearts forgot about this story because I've been so busy with school, family, friends…life etc. ( I promise I'll try not to do it again, but anyways…sorry! And THANK-YOUUU! For all the reviews I got and helps for this chapter, which, I might had, I had a lot of trouble with P and before you all kill me once you've read this chapter, please know that half the stuff Harry Potter or Naruto say is abosulte rubbish, I made it up myself to fit in with ma story simply because I'm too lazy to research on whether its true or not. So what goes on in this chapter may or may not be possible in the Harry Potter world, but ahhh well. Who cares? It's fanfiction after all :P
Chapter 7 – Explosion! Chakra and Magic Don't Mix!
After a series of drifting in and out of consciousness and a good twenty minutes of just lying there, Harry heaved his heavy limps out of bed to the sound of talking and laughing coming from downstairs. Everyone had already left the room, although he saw Ron groaning and covering his head with a pillow in the corner. Well, at least he wasn't the last one up.
Cursing his brain for being so god damn slow on a Sunday morning, he fumbled into his casual clothes and made his way downstairs. The sudden light from the common room blinded him for a moment, but then he saw Neville, Seamus, Dean, Lee and two other Griffindor boys gathered around Naruto, who was placing a wand on the table carefully. He also noticed a bored looking Kiba sitting on a table with his dog on his lap, watching what was going on.
"What's he doing at this time in the morning?!" Harry yawned, joining the crowd.
Dean shrugged. "I dunno, but they've been at it all night…"
"Really? Who's been at it all night? Doing what?"
Seamus grinned. "Well-"
Naruto turned round and looked a little surprised to see the little crowd he'd gathered. Then he smiled cheerfully. "Oh! Hey guys! Erm, would you mind acting natural for a minute?" He said, "I really think I've got them this time!"
"Got who?" Harry asked for the second time as Naruto turned away from them again. He then made a strange signal with his hands and said something in his own language. The familiar sound of a 'puff' sounded and Harry automatically braced himself for something he probably shouldn't be seeing as a self-respecting Griffindor…
…only to see a George appear from the smoke. A fully dressed George, Harry was somewhat relieved to see. But now he was confused.
"What the-"
Naruto, now transformed to George, turned round to face them with another bright grin, giving the freckled face of George Weasley a rather sinister look. Harry couldn't quite comprehend what he was seeing…was this George or was this Naruto? He didn't even need to use any poly juice potion!
"Okay guys, go act natural!" he said, and then ran to the bottom of the stairs leading up to the boy's dormitory. Everyone snapped from their stupor at his request and set about doing random things, wanting to see where this was heading. Harry paused for a moment, then sat himself down in a chair beside Kiba, trying to look natural.
"Hey, Fred! I found your wand!" Naruto hollered in George's voice. There was the sound of footsteps descending the stairs and Fred appeared, a little out of breath.
"Great job, George! I bet he made a mistake this time…" He picked up the wand lying on the table and grinned. "He's good, but he better think again if he thinks he's gonna get the better of us, right George? Now all we have to do is find out where that Naruto character would be hid-"
"Hey Fred, I think I found your wand!" Another George called, holding a wand in his hand and appearing at the bottom of the stairway, also a little out of breath. Fred turned round to see two George's looking at him with similar expressions on their faces.
There was a moment to take in the scene of three red heads looking between each other.
POOF!
The first George disappeared.
Fred shouted and fell over, and the second George frowned, confused. "What the-"
POOF!
"WAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!"
The wand Fred had been holding suddenly burst into smoke, which cleared to reveal a hysterical Naruto, clutching his sides with tears of laughter in his eyes.
"YES! FINALLY! I WIN! I AM THE GREATEST! You-should-have-seen-the-look on your face!" he gasped in between loud laughter.
It took a moment for what had happened to sink in, then George grinned and Fred began to laugh as well, shaking his head. "I can't believe I fell for that…I was too careless."
"The-look-on-your-face!" Naruto continued to laugh, holding his sides. Despite the fact that no one could fully comprehend what had occurred, the Griffindors also began to laugh, mostly at what the look on Fred's face had been than anything else.
"What the hell just happened, exactly?" Harry asked nervously to Kiba, who was grinning at the joke too.
"That guy may be an idiot, but when it comes to pranks he knows his stuff. I don't know what those three have been up to," he nodded towards the Weasleys and Naruto, "but basically what happened there was that Naruto made a clone of himself that turned into George, while he himself henged into a wand. That way he could dispel the Weasley clone whenever he wanted to and become himself again when he thought the moment was right." Harry gave Kiba a stunned look that made Kiba laugh. "Like I said, Naruto knows his stuff in terms of pranks."
"That was so awesome!" Dean grinned. "You looked just like George!"
"I can't believe you just turned yourself into a wand! A wand?!"
"You have to show me how to do that! It was so cool…"
Fred crossed his arms, smiling. "We could say that was cheating though. We didn't know you could transform like that!"
"You win this round, little man…" Said George; helping Naruto to his feet once he'd done laughing. "But the great prank war has only just begun!"
Hermione could sense there was something wrong with Harry the moment they sat down together with Hinata in the Great Hall, waiting for all the other shinobi to arrive. She knew he probably had a lot on his mind, and it being 9 o'clock on a Sunday morning wouldn't be helping whatever mood he was in.
"Did you sleep well, Hinata?" Hermione asked, trying to stoke up a conversation out of the two mutes sitting opposite her and beside her. Hinata smiled and nodded.
"Hei, it was very comfortable. I wonder where the others have got to…" She said quietly, and glanced up the table. Hermione saw her blush and look down at her food again, so she looked up the table also to see Naruto sitting further along amongst other Griffindor's. Hermione then wondered how she'd missed his bright orange clothes and yellow hair in the first place…
"I guess he's become quite popular with the Griffindors." She stated, as Neville, Ron and three other Griffindor's laughed nervously at something the Weasley twins were saying about a grinning Naruto. "I mean, considering he's only been here for two days…"
Harry looked up then, and saw the ninja eating his breakfast as though it would be his last. Naruto didn't seem to notice the crowd he had around him, and Harry wondered if he was so used to this much attention that he could ignore it so easily. He frowned.
"It's probably just because he can do things no one else can without a wand." Harry said in answer to Hermione's statement, prodding his bacon and eggs with a fork. "I mean, who wouldn't want to be friends with a guy who could transform into a naked chick without a second thought? If it wasn't for that, he's nothing special-" He stopped, realising what he had been saying.
Hermione looked surprised, but her expression quickly melded into worry, as it always did. "Erm, Harry? Are you feeling alright? You don't seem quite yourself this morning…"
"I'm fine!" He snapped, and regretted it straight away. What on earth was wrong with him?! He'd been feeling this way all morning, ever since after the joke Naruto had played on the Weasley twins, in fact…
"Hey guys! Can we go train now? I've finished eating." Naruto said suddenly, plonking himself down beside Hinata happily, making the pale dark haired girl blush furiously. Naruto looked around for a minute. "Hey, where's everybody else?"
"We don't know Naruto, so we're going to wait for them before we go outside to learn some spells," Hermione paused, "Why do you keep calling it training?"
"But we've been waiting for ages!" Naruto continued, ignoring Hermione's query. "They're worse than Kakeshi-sensei!"
"Erm, Naruto-kun? Isn't your kitsune going to join us?" Hinata asked hesitantly. Naruto scratched the back of his head and shrugged.
"I dunno, Hinata…all it does is sleep. It might get in the way of the training, y'know…but if you want to pet it I guess I could go fetch it. I felt kinda bad leaving it alone like that anyways…be right back!"
And Hinata suddenly regretted asking about the fox, for now he was running off to fetch it on her account alone! "N-Naruto-kun! Please don't…for me…" Her voice faded as he disappeared from the hall.
"Huh, I guess you guys have a hard time trying to explain things to that guy don't you?" Ron said out of nowhere, sitting himself beside Harry. "He doesn't seem to listen to reason at all, he goes with his gut. He's a good guy though…hey Harry, you okay? You look kinda pale."
"I'm going for a walk…" Harry said, standing up, only to be interrupted by a shout.
"Yo. Sorry to keep you waiting. Me and Akamaru have been exploring the school." Kiba said, walking up to them.
Hermione looked surprised. "On your own? Didn't you get lost at all, Kiba?"
"Well, I wasn't alone…" He said, shrugging, and Harry saw Kiba nod behind him towards Cho Chang, who was standing there with her friend Marietta as the pink-haired Sakura said something to her. Harry saw Cho blush and smile and shake her head, then glance in Kiba's direction before hurrying over to the Ravenclaw table.
For some reason, the sight of her didn't improve Harry's mood.
After a few minutes Shino arrived, followed by a yawning Shikimaru who claimed to have been up long before anyone else but had decided to sit outside for a while. After another couple of minutes Naruto arrived with a cage in his hand, having been lead the way to the Great Hall by a certain poltergeist who had disappeared with a rather lascivious grin stretched over his face as soon as Naruto had turned around to say 'thanks'.
The lake was like the surface of a crystal, glistening and glinting in the white light coming from the cold February sun. The air was cold too, so there weren't many students out by the lake where the shinobi plus three had decided to settle. "Good thing too, really…"Hermione pointed out. "This way we won't have to worry about hitting anyone with stray spells…"
"But it's freezing out here!" Sakura moaned, being the only one wearing nothing but her usual tight black shorts, pale bandages and short pink dress. The problem was solved when Ron gave her his coat, since he was used to English weather and the cold, much to the disapproving looks he got from Hermione at the gesture.
Once Ron and Harry had found an uncomfortable seat on a stone bench with a statue of a house elf sitting in the middle of it (between where Ron and Harry were sitting) and with Naruto's golden she-fox in a cage placed in it's lap, Hermione rolled up her sleeves and turned to face the shinobi, all of which were standing and waiting.
"Right! Firstly, has everyone got his or her wands? Great. Naruto, you hold it the other way round…that's it. Okay then! We'll start with the useful basics! It's moderately difficult for beginners, but I think you can handle it…" Hermione beamed, having often considered the prospect of becoming a teacher at Hogwarts among other jobs.
She lifted her wand and pointed it towards Ron's foot. "Accio shoe!" She said sharply, which was followed by Ron's shoe zooming through the air and into Hermione's hand.
"Oi! That's my shoe!" Ron said indignantly, having been tugged off his seat by the pull of the spell.
"That's the summoning technique," Hermione continued, ignoring Ron's protest, "which is basically a sharp cutting motion of the wand with the word 'accio' followed by whatever you want to summon."
"Accio, huh?" Kiba said, examining his wand. He looked over the edge of the lake. Might as well give it a go. "Accio pebble!"
…Nothing happened. Kiba frowned. "Is there some sort of trick to this?" He said, as Naruto rolled up his sleeves to have a go.
"The trick is to say the word confidently and clearly, as though you want it to happen, and getting the motion of the wand is important too." She smiled. "Ron can tell you all about that rule, concerning a particular incident with a troll in our first year-"
"ACCIO STATUE!" Naruto said, rather loudly. The statue failed to move at all, much to Narutos frustration.
"Naruto, that statue is way to heavy to summon first go!" Ron suggested, laughing at the disappointed look Naruto was wearing at his first failed attempt. "Why not try something simple, like a twig?"
The shinobi then broke out in a series of 'Accio', while Ron and Harry mused at their failed attempts, which, to their surprise and disappointment, were very few in some cases. The first to complete the spell after only two tries, much the amazement of the spell-caster and the audience, was none other than a blushing Hinata, who now stood rather awkwardly with a smooth wet pebble the size of a fist in her hand.
"That's brilliant, Hinata! You're the first to complete the spell! You have amazing skill with your wand!" Hermione beamed, somewhat proud of her achievement.
"A-arigato." Hinata smiled nervously, though the moment was interrupted by a familiar loud voice in the background shouting 'Accio pebble!', followed by a curse in Japanese.
Sakura pointed her wand towards the lake for her third try, "accio pebble!". The spell worked for her too, this time, to her utmost delight. Hermione congratulated her, then proceeded to over look the other shinobi's progress.
Shino and Shikimaru got their spells right at virtually the same time, both of them giving no real reaction to their success. Shikimaru bounced the pebble in his hand once, then yawned and threw it back into the lake.
Kiba threw a reasonable sized stick across the field, intending to summon it with the spell, but Akamaru automatically ran to fetch it. Kiba grinned and pointed his wand towards his furry partner instead. "Accio Akamaru!" he barked.
The little dog yelped and felt himself being pulled to his owner, and as Kiba caught him he barked indignantly at Kiba laughing at his success, holding the pup up in his arms. "Ha! We did it, Akamaru!" He grinned.
"Well done, everyone!" Hermione said, clapping a little at Kiba's success. "You must all be great wizards…I mean, shin-o-bee, to have completed the spell so quickly! But, erm, I guess we just have to wait for Naruto-"
"Accio STICK!" Naruto yelled, to which nothing followed. He slumped onto the floor for a moment, then jumped back up again as though he'd been shot. "I WON'T give up!" He said dismissively, and pointed his wand at the lake again.
"ACCIO-"
"Naruto, you're not trying to hold on to your chakra when the wand pulls it out of you are you?" Sakura said suddenly, realising what might be happening.
Naruto blinked. "Wha-? Holding onto my chakra?"
"Because if you are, you're being an idiot. The wand brings out your chakra, which is what this world calls 'magic', and uses it to control the spell."
"Oh! Is that so?" Naruto said, as realisation dawned on his face. "Souka. Thanks, Sakura-chan! I'm gonna do it for sure this time!"
Naruto rolled up his sleeves and pointed his wand at the lake. Everyone paused what he or she were doing to see if it worked for him this time, since he was the last to complete the spell.
He raised his wand…
"Accio pebble!"
WHizzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZ...
CRACK!
"WWAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Naruto swivelled to look behind him, having had his summon whiz past him faster than something he could have caught with bare flesh. The shinobi looked too.
"Ron! Harry! Are you guys okay?!" Hermione said anxiously, running over to help them both off the grassy floor. They stood up to face where they'd just been sitting, and what had very nearly hit them with the power of a speeding bullet behind it.
"…T-that…is a pebble?" Ron said hoarsely, as they all faced a headless stone house-elf. The cold stone wall of the castle behind it had a massive chunk of the wall missing, replaced by a smooth, damp 'pebble' about double the size of Akamaru. It was still smoking from the force that the pebble had hit it.
Kiba whistled, then laughed. "Bloody hell, Naruto!"
"That's the most powerful summon I've ever seen! That could've killed us!" Ron laughed also, going over to find the poor house-elfs head.
"I can't believe it, it's actually smoking from the heat of the impact!" Hermione said, also walking over to where the missile still sat lodged into the castle wall. "It's a god job Hogwarts is so stable!"
"How did he DO that?!" Harry said, as Hermione took the house-elf head from Ron and fixed it with a spell.
"Tck. How troublesome. You have no control over the force of your chakra with that wand, do you?" Skikmaru said, causing Naruto to automatically switch to the defensive.
"It just yanks the chakra right out of you!" He yelled, "One minute its there, the next its gone! It's not my fault it's out of control! Stupid wand…" His argument faded into mutterings to himself.
At first Hermione was at a loss to do. They could all do the spell alright, even if Naruto was a little, erm…over enthusiastic. So, she decided to move onto another spell.
"Okay, guys!" She said, as though Ron and Harry hadn't just experienced a near death-by-pebble trauma and that, in fact, everything was perfectly normal. "Erm, okay, this spell is one of the first spells we learnt here at Hogwarts, and it proved to be quite useful!" Hermione pointed her wand at the lake again and summoned a pebble, then pointed her wand at it in her palm. "Wingardiam laviosa!" (sp?)
And so the cold February morning was spent with Hermione training the shinobi to be shinobi-wizards with basic skills. Everyone continued to get better with the control of his or her wands, although Naruto still had a knack for letting the odd spell become too powerful to control first time round. Harry and Ron alternated between snoozing, just sitting there and disappearing to do odd jobs before returning to see how things were getting on.
"Mich mon are mu mryin' mu meach mow, men?" Ron asked Hermione at one point, having just stuffed a whole banana into his mouth. Hermione winced and smacked him on the back… hard.
"Eat or speak, Ron! Don't do both! It's disgusting." She said dismissively, ignoring the hacking coughs replacing the sound of eating on Ron's part. "Right now they're taking a break, and soon they'll be attempting to learn the stunning spell," she said, in answer to Ron's question ('Which one are you trying to teach them now, then?'). "Problem is, they need someone to practise on…" then she folded her arms and waited for a response from Ron.
"Why are you so intend on killing me all of a sudden?!" He gasped, having finally chocked down the food he'd been eating. "Use Harry as target practise for once! I'd had enough of that stupid stunning spell during the practise for the Tri-wizard Tournament! It's dangerous stuff- come to think of it…" He glanced round to see all the shinobi taking a break, and was suddenly aware of something he should have wondered a while ago. "Hermione," He said slowly, "Why are you teaching them something like that for? Isn't that a little difficult for beginners? I mean, they've only just got used to their wands!"
"And yet they've mastered every spell I've put infront of them so far." Hermione snapped, and sat down on the grass with her legs crossed. Ron checked the ground for anything gross, then sat down next to her. They were now sitting a little away from the ninja's, and Harry, seeing that they were sitting together, walked over to join them. Hermione continued. "They learn fast, Ron, and have amazing control over the spells they do. Even Naruto has amazing skill with a wand, though the first time he masters certain spells have been a little, erm…explosive."
She glanced over to the sunny blonde now attacking Kiba with his newfound skills with a wand, only to be immobilised by his victim instead. Sakura sighed and continued to levitate a twig into doing un-twig like things, while Hinata watched her in fascination. Shino stood by the bench, expressionless as usual, and Shikimaru lay by the lake in his usual laid-back, looking-up-at-the-clouds position. Hermione smiled admiringly when she spotted him, "they'd have no trouble what-so-ever in catching up with everyone else in most subjects…" She finished.
Ron glared at whom Hermione was gazing at, and crossed his arms impatiently. "Huh. So your gonna be their private tutor from now on?" After getting no reply, another thought suddenly occurred to him, making him grin. "Y'know, Umbridge won't be too pleased with all this, will she?"
This caused Hermione to snap out of her daydream as the realisation hit her, too. "You're right! I forgot all about her!"
"What an over-sight!" Harry said, also smiling at the thought of rebelling. "Umbridge will throw a fit if she even knew there were new students at Hogwarts from who-knows-where. Let alone the fact that you've been teaching them their Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons the way you are, without her permission…right under her nose."
"Hmm. Well, that Umbridge women is absolutely horrid, so I can't say I feel remotely guilty about any of this. But that reminds me…our next trip to Hogsmeade is in two weeks, isn't it? For Valentines day?"
"I think so…" Harry said, blushing slightly as he remembered his promise with Cho, "but what's Umbridge got to do with Hogsmeade?"
Before Hermione could reply a flash of orange and yellow suddenly materialized infront of them, crouched down before them with a 'please-feed-me' puppy dog look plastered over his sun-kissed face. "Hermione-sensei!!! We learnt all the easy spells! You're going to show us some really cool ones now…right?"
"S-sensei?" Hermione blushed.
"It means 'teacher' in our language." Kiba said, also walking over to join them with Akamaru in his arms. He didn't sit down though. "What was the word for that stunning spell you were going to show us next, by the way? I just spotted someone I'd like to try it out on first."
Hermione looked surprised. "Oh! Well the word is 'stupefy' , but, erm…who is it you want to try it out on, Kiba?"
"Draco." Harry said.
Everyone turned to look where Harry had also spotted the blonde wizard just coming out of the castle, surrounded by the same group of Slytherins as before and, to the shinobi's amusement, wearing a bright green and white woolly hat which probably bore the Slytherin crest is silver. As he turned towards the lake, sneering at some crude joke one of his 'friends' had made, he seemed only then to notice the group of shinobi plus three, now standing, looking at him from the direction he was about to go.
They couldn't see it from where they stood, but Harry could imagine that his face went pale as he scowled and stumbled back, half-running back the way he'd come with the other Slytherins hurrying after him. He actually laughed at the sight.
"Awww, what a shame! I was actually looking forward to another wizards-fight with that guy…" Kiba said, grinning. "We need someone to practise our new skills on, after all…"
"Well, I'd rather you tried it out on Ron to start off with." Hermione said, also a little disappointed that Malfoy chose to run off than fight with any of them again.
"Why me? Why not Harry?!" Ron whined, trying to dispel the inevitable.
Hermione sighed. "Because if anything should go wrong, I might need Harry to help me. He's already mastered the spell from last year, after all."
She turned towards the shinobi and gathered them round. Once they were all sitting up and paying attention to her again, she started to give out the instructions for the spell and to how it should work (she stunned an un-prepared Ron as an example, then revived him with her wand to Ron's rants, "You could have warned me!!! You didn't even give me time to run off and grab some pillows!" To which Hermione replied bluntly, "The grass is soft enough and you should have been ready for the spell when it hit you. Stop whining and be a man!")
The spell was definitely the hardest to learn so far, and took the longest since they only had one person to practise on.
"D-do you think he'll be alright? I mean…stunning him over and over again, it can't be healthy…" Hinata asked hesitantly, before she attempted the spell. After Hermione had assured her he'd be fine, she'd only then pointed her wand to the cringing red-head. "Gomen, Ron-kun!" She'd cried, before hitting him with a rather feeble attempt at the spell, which only sent him a little dizzy rather than out-cold.
"Y'know, once they've mastered this, I reckon they'd be ready to attend DA meetings with us. Don't you agree, Harry?" Hermione said after a while, admiring the shinobi as they finally began to get the hang of the spell. (Shikimaru had mastered the stunning one first, this time followed by Kiba and Shino, which only left the girls plus Naruto…)
"Yeah. They would." Harry replied, distracted. It was Naruto's turn with the stunning spell against Ron, but Harry saw that there was something wrong. It turned out Hinata had been right to worry over Ron, after all. He was starting to sway.
Unfortunately, (or more accurately, for the purpose of this story, fortunately, Naruto didn't seem to notice Ron's discomfort. "Yosh! This time I'm gonna get it right for sure!" he said loudly, taking aim. "You ready, Ron?"
"Er…Naruto?" Harry said, feeling he should save his friend before the dangerous blonde ninja cast the spell. "I don't think he's-"
"Stupefy!" Naruto yelled.
And he couldn't have let the spell go at the worst (or best) time. The red light finally erupted from his wand, speeding towards Ron…
…and straight past Ron, too, as he fell in a daze back onto the floor...
…so that the red light shot straight at the cage containing an innocent baby fox, sleeping soundly.
"Kitsune!" Hinata cried, running over to the cage, with Sakura and Hermione close behind her (the girls all love the fox and would hate to see it hurt, after all…), which, to everyone's surprise, was still glowing red.
By the time Hinata lifted it up to make sure the fox was all right, the light had faded and disappeared.
And so had the fox.
Sorry it's so rubbish! I'll try harder next time! But I really gotta go somewhere now and I wanted to post this off before I forgot! Hope it wasn't too disappointing, guys! And THANK-YOUUUU in advance for waiting so long! You guys ROCK:) x
Next Chapter: 'Beware! Presenting The Mysterious Fox-Kit!'
