Chapter 7: Life at Hogwarts
Pairings: Naruto X Hinata, Shikamaru X Temari, Neji X Tenten, Kakashi X Kurenai, Hermione X Ron, Gaara, Sakura, Draco X Pansy, Sasuke X Ino
Harry's first class was Herbology, where Professor Sprout was joined by a beautiful dark haired, yet mysteriously red-eyed woman. Kiba groaned when he saw here.
"Oh god..."
"You know her?" Ron asked excitedly. He seemed to be unable to look away from her, much to Hermione's dislike.
"She...she used to...be our instructor..." Kiba said, looking rather pale.
"Inuzuka Kiba!" Kurenai said. "Sit straight and listen to Professor Sprout!" Kiba and Akamaru whimpered. S-scary...
"Ah...as I was saying, this is Professor Yuuhi, or you may also call her Assistant Yuuhi..."
"Hm, Naruto, Sakura, Shikamaru, Gaara, and Temari are gone," Hermione said thoughtfully. "And now these new teachers appear out of nowhere. What's going on?"
"Yeah, where's Naruto?" Ron asked Kiba.
"He's going to fail some Chuunin exam," Kiba said nervously.
"H-hai. He's g-going…t-to fail."
"That's not very nice, you two," Hermione said, astonished by Naruto's usually closest friend's lack of loyalty.
"Actually, they're being as nice as they can," Ino said. "They decided last night to become freakishly superstitious and say that Naruto will fail so he can pass. It's like how you try to throw a rock at a pole and miss, but when you throw it towards the pole, you'll accidentally hit it."
Hermione frowned. Sounded too much like Divination.
The class went on. The plant of the day was Gillyweed, which they were harvesting for Professor Snape. Kiba was playing as usual, pretending to eat the worm-like tails of the plant, when Kurenai suddenly appeared from out of nowhere, glaring at him five inches away from his face. Startled, Kiba jumped backwards, toppling out of his chair.
"Inuzuka, get that thing out of your mouth!" Kurenai shouted. Kiba scrambled around, looking for the plant that had disappeared when he began to choke. "Now look what you've done! You swallowed it!" She hit him hard on the back to try and get him to cough up the plant or at least get it down the right tube when she herself jumped backwards.
"K-K-Kiba-kun!" Hinata stuttered pointing at him, although she seemed quite unable to finish her sentence. Ino did it for her.
"You've got gills! You're a FISH!"
"..." Shino stared at his angry-looking teammate in silence through his sunglasses with what seemed to be a perplexed expression on his face.
"Don't ask," Kiba muttered darkly, wringing out his soaked parka. Ino seemed to be hyperventilating, laying on the ground laughing silently at Kiba. "Oh stuff it, Ino. Don't you dare say a word."
Thanks to Kurenai's quick thinking, she immediately knew that there wasn't enough time to bring Kiba all the way back to the infirmary without him choking to death on air. So... she tossed him into the lake where he later went face-to-face with the giant squid. Luckily, the gillyweed effects wore off after an hour, and he was able to run back to the safety of dry land, where he vowed eternal hatred to all squids and octopi. And now, the fish stink had worn off, only to be replaced by the odor of wet dog.
"Hey mutt!" a voice said.
"Go 'way, Naruto!"
"Wrong blond," Ino said as Malfoy approached.
"What do you want, albino?" Kiba growled.
"Heard about your swim in Herbology," Malfoy said maliciously. "Have a nice time getting eaten by the squid?"
"Talk to me and I'll bite," Kiba threatened. And this was no bluff.
"Hm, I hope you don't have rabies then," Malfoy said with his 'I'm-not-scared-but-you're-sarcastic-right?' look. "We might have to put you down."
"You wanna find out if I do?" Kiba asked, baring his puppy teeth. "Then come over here and say that again after I bit you."
His teeth weren't as sharp as his elders', but they were pointed enough for other people to be a bit more wary of him. Rumors said he was a werewolf, but it wasn't entirely true. He was more like a werepuppy. Malfoy was about to say something else when a dark blur rushed pass him. Soon after that, Malfoy was trampled by a horde of fangirls—Slytherin, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, and Gryffindor alike.
"You can never actually see Sasuke when he's running away, yet somehow you can always tell when he's coming," Chouji commented as Sasuke threw down a ball and disappeared from his fangirls. Ino suddenly towered over the girls in anger.
"YOU LEAVE MY SASUKE-KUN ALONE!" she snarled with little bits of sparks seeming to come out of her eyes. The girls ran away. Sasuke left from his cover behind Chouji and sighed.
"Dammit, they just won't go away," he muttered. He had been suffering fangirl ambushes throughout the entire morning—at breakfast, during Divination, in the boys' bathroom, and now too. He shuddered at the thought of what would happen to him should any of their ambushes succeed in capturing him. Gaara was, by far, the most frightening Slytherin Sasuke knew, so when he hung around him, he made sure to stay within twenty feet of him, which was as far as Gaara's "anti-intruder" shield went, keeping him safe from the savage beasts called teenage girls. But now, as a Kazekage, Gaara had to fulfill his duties and supervise the Chuunin exams in the Sand. So now, Sasuke had to move to his next option: Shino.
Shino was not as fear-inspiring as the youngest of the Sand siblings, but his outlandish behavior and the mystery of what's-behind-Shino's-coat-number-two (as number one had been burnt to cinder by a Blast-Ended Skrewt), Shino's anti-people shield went as far as almost ten feet. Not much to work with, but it helped to maintain a keep a maximum of seven feet between him and Shino just to be safe.
"S-so...why are they all after you all of a sudden?" Hinata asked.
"Gaara's gone and Kankurou is laughing at my unfortunate expense," Sasuke muttered. "No one is left to scare them of except for Shino and..." And Ino? She might not have an antisocial streak like he and the others, so she had no anti-people shield, but she sure did help get rid of the I-Love-Sasuke fanclub/mob, even if she may have been the president of it.
"Back to the Skrewts, you," Kakashi said, actually bothering to look up from his book. Hm...Kurenai was back... he better hide the book. Later.
Shino and Sasuke, being the only shinobi in Slytherin left, teamed up to battle the disgusting, five foot long skrewt as the other students handled their own giant monstrosities. Actually, quite a few girls were watching him. Shino's people-shield was not as potent as Gaara's. Sasuke frowned. Okay, back to the Skrewt, which was still trying to get past Shino. They surrounded it on both sides and prepared to do battle. Spectators cheered! Sasuke and Shino sweatdropped.
Harry, looking for just any excuse to get away from force feeding his own skrewt, looked over to see just who was at the center of all the girls' attention. Oh, it were those two Slytherins that Naruto constantly insisted had a good heart. Right. Ron looked over too and frowned.
"Honestly, they act as if the skrewts don't escape every day," Ron muttered.
"Ah, Harry!" Hagrid said. Kakashi, who was reading his strange orange book, stood next to him, not really paying attention. "Dumbledore says ye're te meet suma yer teachers outside the Forbidden Fores' tomorrow an' every day after class aroun' eight o' clock."
"For what?" Harry asked.
"He said sum'in abou' a new training," Hagrid said, scratching his head. "Wha' are ye training for? New quidditch moves?" Hermione and Ron looked at Harry.
"Uh...I don't think so," Harry said. And then, he suddenly remembered Dumbledore mentioning his learning techniques like Naruto's. He only hoped it wouldn't involve sticking something up a person's butt like Naruto did with Draco... Otherwise, he was fine.
"Also," Kakashi added, "You'll be meeting all of Hogwarts' newest arrivals. I suppose you've met several today?"
"Ah, yes, if Assistant Professor Yuuhi is one," Harry said.
"Ah, Kurenai," Kakashi said. "She's with Professor Sprout, right?"
"Yeah," Harry said.
"I'll be going then," Kakashi said, wandering away from his class towards the greenhouse.
"You don't suppose he and Professor Yuuhi are going out, do you?" Ron asked.
"Well," Ino said, "It's more like a Shikamaru-Temari relationship. Kakashi's the pushover, you could say."
"Hey, what's going on over there?" Hermione asked, pointing at Shino, Sasuke, and the skrewt.
"A skrewt got loose," Ino said. "What else is new?" The bell rang (Is there a bell in Hogwarts? How do they get dismissed from classes?), signaling the end of Care for Magical Creatures, much to everyone's relief.
All of a sudden, the skrewt's tail thing swung towards Shino's face. He backed away, avoiding direct contact with it. Unfortunately, it had come close enough to knock his sunglasses away. The Golden Trio stared. The spectators gasped. Kiba groaned and Hinata sighed. All Ino could say was "Oh...my..."
Shino and Sasuke found themselves running franticly down the hallways at breakneck speed. "I thought girls didn't like you," Sasuke muttered.
"..." Shino replied angrily. Girls blocked the hallway, the doors shut tight behind them. The dreaded Sasuke Fanclub. Sasuke ran the other way, but Shino was unable to move out of the way in time as girls grabbed his winter cloak and sunglasses. There was a camera too... uh oh.
"Aaaaaaah! Gross!" They're hands pulled away the cloak and sunglasses and Shino's body evaporated into a hive of angrily buzzing insects.
A distraction! Sasuke ran away, but doing so, he caught their attention, and the horde of girls followed after him, dropping Shino's belongings and chasing after their newest prey. Shino came out from behind the closed doors, picked up his jacket and, placing his slightly cracked sunglasses, walked away coolly as if he had not just been facing a life-or-death situation with those fanatical fangirls. Sasuke could take care of himself.
Sasuke's eyes were wide with fear. God damn it! They had absolutely no tracking skills to speak of, yet their persistence spurred them to chase after him for even hours at a time, like a whole pack of wolves chasing down a very pretty looking moose that wasn't really a moose, as you could see.
"Trouble in paradise?" a voice asked as Sasuke hid behind the corner. A pack of screaming girls passed by. Kankurou, leaning against the wall ((Sasuke-style!)), was watching Sasuke's torture in amusement.
"Kankurou, once the coast is clear, I am going to the other side of the hallway to murder you and feed you to Kiba and his dog. In fact, the hallway is clear right now. You are going to die." Sasuke looked both ways before crossing the halls. He didn't want to get run over, after all. Those girls were still at large.
"You know, you really shouldn't," Kankurou insisted, not sure whether to laugh or run away. "And for your information, any guy would just kill for a harem of girls, not because of it."
"They can't really be considered a harem because they aren't girls. They're monsters, hiding behind an inch thick mask of make-up with a poison called perfume and an affinity for dolls. You wouldn't happen to be a one of them, would you?"
Equation- Makeup + Perfume + Dolls: Fanclub Monster
Equation- "Face paint" + Poison + "Puppets" : Kankurou
((Hm...see any odd similarities?))
"I'm NOT wearing makeup, I DON'T wear perfume, and these are NOT DOLLS!" Kankurou shouted, attracting attention of the Sasuke-patrol.
"There he is!" someone cried as a whole pack of them ran at them. Kankurou and Sasuke, stuck between a rock and a hard place, backed away against the stone walls.
"He's over here with...KANKUROU!" They gasped simultaneously.
"Please don't kill us!"
"Shit!" some guy said. "H-hey Kankurou, we didn't do anything yet...!"
"Please don't kill us!"
"W-we j-j-just where g-going t-to t-t-t-talk to S-Sasuke..."
"Please don't kill us!"
Kankurou had a feeling his fun with Sasuke's head had just about ended. "Go ahead and bother Sasuke, it's fine with—"
"Sorry for bothering you, Kankurou sir, we'll be on our way! Seeya!" And they ran away... Kankurou sighed. Great. Alone with the guy who wanted to kill him again.
"Now that they're gone..." Sasuke said slowly. "...I can kill you." See?
"We're not quite alone, you know," Kankurou said. He pointed to the walls with the people in the pictures waving cheerfully down at them. "The walls have ears and ears. Oh look, a girl..." Sasuke jumped, but found that it was only Ino. She grinned at Sasuke, laughter in her eyes.
"Uh, hey Ino," he said nervously. Nervous? It must have been all those close encounters with the other girls.
"Hey, Sasuke," she said. "I hear you've got some girl problems."
"Yeah, but not the usual girl problems..." Sasuke muttered.
"And it's not only girls either," Kankurou added cheerfully.
"Shut up, Kankurou."
"Weeeell," Ino said, "I just happen to have a solution to both of our problems!"
"What's your problem...?" Sasuke asked, eyeing her warily.
Ino grinned. "And here's the solution!" She took out a small cube-like object. "Muggles call this... the Polaroid Device!"
Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "...A what?"
She tossed it to Kankurou, who turned it on. She had shown him how to use it earlier.
"I'll show you what it does," she said. She leaned close and kissed him. Something flashed, and it wasn't some mind trick. Sasuke looked at Kankurou, who held the flashing Polaroid Device.
"...What?" Sasuke seemed stunned. Well, it was definitely better than his first kiss. He shuddered at the thought of Naruto. Creepy. Gross. Naruto. But he didn't need to remember that, and that wasn't the point.A little white plastic sheet came out of the blinking Polaroid Device and Sasuke looked at it. It was blank, but the light was growing darker as a two figures became a bit more clear.
"..." It was a picture. A picture of himself and Ino kissing. And he wasn't pulling away! "Ino..."
Kankurou handed the photo to Ino.
"Yes, Sasuke?"
"Inoo..."
"RUN, INO, RUN!" Kankurou cried, laughing as Sasuke began to chase after her for the picture.
"Give me that!"
"I will! For another kiss!" Ino said as he chased after her. He was so cute when he blushed like that.
"Give it to me!"
"The picture or the kiss?"
Kankurou collapsed with laughter as the two ran down the hall. Until a shadow that was not a shadow appeared. It was... Shino! Him and his bugs... Ugh.
"So that was what Ino was up to..." Shino said.
"Yup," Kankurou said.
"...I thought it was odd when you suddenly went out with that Sorry girl."
"Her name's Sarea."
"She's too pretty for you. I should have suspected that Ino must have had something to do with it..."
"...You've been talking a lot more, lately, haven't you?"
"No."
"...Whatever."
Ino looked at her reflection in the scrying mirror, in love with herself all over again. Chouji didn't care. He was just eating. But he noticed something a bit different than usual. The light incense that Professor Trelawny always lit in her classroom was a lot thicker than usual. Not only that—it stunk too.
Kiba grimaced. "Someone's smoking?"
Smoke? Cigarettes...
"Hey, Asuma-sensei," Chouji said.
'Who's Asuma?' Harry wondered, but his question was answered by the voice that replied from behind him.
"Hey, Chouji," a man said, appearing out of a particularly thick part of the fog in the classroom.
"I didn't know that you were coming!" Ino said.
"Didn't I say I was in the letter?" Asuma wondered. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and put it out on the stand for Harry's crystal ball.
"Well, your name was in the letter, but you weren't the one who wrote it anyway," Ino said.
"True, true..."
Throughout the entire class, Asuma was surprisingly helpful to Trelawney. Whenever she seemed at lost for words, having ran out of strange ways to die, Asuma was there to make a suggestion.
"Harry, you will fall into a sewer pit and die, while your friend Ron will cut his finger and get AIDs. Remember, tragedy is when you cut yourself. Comedy is when you fall into a sewer pit and die. So even if you don't die laughing, we'll laugh for you."
"Gee, thanks," Harry said wryly. He could actually imagine that guy laughing at his funeral. A bit odd, really.
Asuma probably would have said Chouji would have died of a heart attack, but he did seem a bit less fat than before. It was probably the constant running he did between classes and the fights the class had with Hagrid's skrewts.
"Assistant Asuma," Trelawney said. "Please refrain from smoking in this environment. You are destroying the mystical vibrations to the future."
"Hey, only half of this is my smoke. The other half is yours."
"Well I am not smoking incense," Trelawney said curtly. "My Inner Eye tells me that should you not cease from this unhealthy habit, you will fall off of the Divination ladder to your death. And should you survive that, you would die of lungrot with all of that smoke in your lungs."
"Well, something tells me your Inner Eye needs glasses, Miss," Asuma said. "I'm not going to die from a little fall, and I'm probably not going to die of a little smoke either."
The next day, Harry woke up. He still wasn't used to the off sound of silence, now that Naruto had left. What happened to the explosions? The accidental trigger for the smoke bombs? The pranks?
And then, he remembered that since Naruto had gone, others had come. Today, he would be meeting all of the new teachers together. He couldn't wait. What would he learn? What type of powers did these real mercenaries have? (1)
While changing to his school robes, Harry winced, remembering his classes. Well, History of Magic was a free naptime. Transfiguration wasn't all that bad. Defense Against Dark Arts with Moody was always exciting. But then...Potions. Ugh.
Harry took his time on the way to Binn's class. Kiba came running up to Hinata with a book in his hand, which was odd since he would rather eat a book than read it. He showed it to her with a grin and began laughing. Even Hinata smiled. Ino and Chouji came and found it rather amusing.
"What's that?" Ron asked them.
"A book," Kiba said bluntly. "On ninjas. They do KARATE and KUNG FU! They also spend their free time cutting off people's heads, but sometimes they fly. A hobby of theirs." He smiled. He grinned. And then he collapsed on the floor laughing.
"Mr. Inuzuka, please refrain from fainting in the classroom," a voice said. Harry jumped. A lot have people have been making him do that lately. It must have been all these new teachers.
A man with hair like Shikamaru's and a scar running across his nose grinned at Kiba, who shrunk back like a frightened dog.
"Hey, Iruka-sensei," he whimpered.
"Kiba, have you done something again?" Iruka asked.
"Not yet..."
"Good. Let's keep it that way," Iruka said with a smile.
"Is he like Assistant Yuuhi?" Harry asked him.
"Um...no. He taught us all when we were just academy students," Kiba said.
"Kiba and Naruto could never get away with their tricks when he was around," Chouji said. "No matter what, he always chased after them until they collapsed. Then he would drag them back to the Third Hokage, and sometimes he'd collapse himself."
"A stubborn guy," Ino said. "But he's a good one."
"A good guy? A GOOD guy? He swatted Akamaru when we were little!"
"Well Akamaru peed on his desk. I think Iruka-sensei had a perfectly reasonable excuse to swat him. Besides, it was only a newspaper. How much could it hurt?"
"Now, I understand that we are reviewing the goblin rebellion?" Iruka asked the class as Professor Binns droned on at the blackboard, not really seeming to know that Iruka was even there.
Hermione, being the only person who kept track of what Professor Binns taught, raised her hand.
"Yes, miss..."
"Granger?"
"Yes, Miss Granger?"
"We did not completely finish the whole rebellion. We were only in the first ten years, while the rest of the century, we had not gotten to yet."
The class groaned. A whole century more of goblins?
"Ah, well, that knocks my schedule back a bit. Well then..." He skimmed through the textbook. "Okay, so... Goblins... Alright." He closed the textbook, much to everyone's surprise. "It all started when two kid—two human kids—robbed Gringotts. This isn't in the textbook by the way. Anyway, the girl Kitchel and the boy Thatz, well, they got hit by a horse and died, but the point is that these two little kids started this whole mess between the two largest goblin clans. The goblins in Gringotts claimed that the other goblins, who formerly owned the island in which the prison of Azkaban is located, had sent the two children to destroy their reputation and stuff like that. Now, it seems like a small thing to us, two little kids running off with a handful of Galleons, but to them, well, just think: the most secure places on earth, complete with dragons and curses and all, had been broken into by kids who barely knew any magic. Not only that, but there was some extensive damage to the dragons and the treasure vaults..."
Harry didn't bother taking notes, but not because he wasn't paying attention. The way Iruka taught, he understood it. Binns—who was floating off somewhere and talking about something that nobody cared about anyway—never taught them like this. He just wasn't interesting. Iruka even liked teaching.
"Now, your assignment is going to be a group project. I don't care how many people are in a group. But you're going to make a skit. I'll assign each of you a part in the goblin war. Then, you will do a play, acting out parts of certain people. You can be actual wizards and goblins, or you can be general states, fighting over more land. Whatever. Keep it interesting, alright? And, ah, this will be due in a month. The rough draft of the script will be in a week..."
Everybody quickly wrote down this project, eager to begin. Groups were already forming, the largest being Harry's group itself, with his two friends, the shinobi, and a handful of other students. The bell rang. Harry quickly gathered his belongings, which remained untouched throughout the entire lecture, and headed for the next class. Professor McGonagall's transfiguration class. She had no assistant, but performed well enough on their own, teaching them how to create actual living objects from the inanimate. Today, they were to focus on turning a plate into a tortoise.
After Transfiguration, they headed to Defense Against Dark Arts. Harry bumped into someone and looked up to find himself staring at a scarred face.
"Oops, sorry, Professor Moody," Harry said. Wait. That wasn't Mad-Eye Moody! This guy was taller and a bit more scarred. He walked without the rhythmic beating of wood on stone. And his eye was gone.
"Moody, you grew!" Ron said stupidly. "And where's your eye?"
"That's not Professor Moody," Hinata said.
"I'm Assistant Morino Ibiki. You can call me Ibiki. Or Morino. Or Assistant Morino. Or Assistant Ibiki. Whatever," the man said.
"Tired of scaring littler kids?" Kiba asked him.
"Who told you?"
"Anko."
"Oh."
"I don't get it," Hermione said.
"Ibiki got sent here because he kept scaring away the academy students," Kiba snickered. Akamaru barked, clearly remembering the wasted effort he made to help Kiba cheat in the chuunin exams.
"And I don't blame them," Chouji said. He was scared of Ibiki when he was little too. "Ibiki's a scary guy."
"Now," Professor Moody growled, "Today, I will teach you to detect murder attempts. Particularly poison. From what I already know about Severus, he's probably not teaching you all very well. And I heard about his assistant from Ibiki. Chances are, she's making it even worse, if possible. So, with this spell, you could see whether people are hiding something, like what I have with my eye..." His assistant? Harry wondered how it could possibly be any worse... But even Fred and George warned him about it.
Harry spent the rest of the class listening to Moody's Constant Vigilance and Ibiki's Spying lectures. He never thought there'd be a guy exactly like Moody. Just how many of him were there! They were both paranoid. They were both scarred. They even had that same crazed-but-dead-serious look about them! And whenever Ibiki set his sights on them, Harry felt guilty and as if he were being squeezed for information. He looked around at the others.
Kiba was paying too much attention to Akamaru. Hinata was pressing her two index fingers together nervously. The rate at which Chouji was eating his chips had considerably slowed down. Ino was looking out the window. Ron looked scared out of his mind. Shino and Sasuke weren't even paying attention to him, seeming more wary of the threat from behind (girls...). Hermione was fascinated as usual ('The way he makes me feel...he must be so experienced in his spy work! I must learn how to do that!').
Everybody ran out of the classroom as soon as possible once the bell rang, oh so eager to leave. Two of them... Well, they were just lucky they didn't have Muggle Studies...
The last class of the day was Potions with Snape. Normally, Harry was constantly being ridiculed by his inferior potion making skills. But ever since those so-called 'mercenaries'—as Dumbledore called them—arrived, things had gone from bad to worse. But at least not for Harry. Professor Snape had difficulties in every Gryffindor classes. Now, he not only disliked any class with Gryffindors in it. He dreaded it. Naruto and Kiba were especially horrible in that class. Harry remembered their first class with pleasure. Professor Snape was especially close to losing his head in the middle of class.
Flashback
The Potions class was just like any other. Just add a handful of shinobi, which meant a tiny bit more chaos than usual.
"Naruto-kun…that's snake skin, not beetle wings…"
"Nah, it's close enough, Hinata-chan."
"AAAAAAAAH!"
Moments later, the class filed out of the classroom, laughing at Naruto and his sixth major explosion today. Of course, the Slytherins were a bit less amused.
"Honestly, Uzumaki," Malfoy said. "Are you really that stupid? Even Neville's not so useless."
"Shut up—" What was his name again…? "—you albino brat!" Yeah... that sounded right.
"Did you just call me albino?"
"Oh, are you deaf too? And do you grease your hair? Because it's not good for your complexion. You'll get pimples!"
"Ano…Naruto-kun…"
"OW! Owowowow!" The angry Potions professor grasped Naruto by the ear. "Hey, lemme go!"
"Headmaster Dumbledore ought to see this. And sixty points from Gryffindor, ten for each accident."
And then…Naruto left. Fred and George, who had his class told Ron, Harry, and Hermione that Snape had also received a new assistant. Harry headed for the dungeons, trudging slowly in his step. Rumors flew. The Potions Assistant was the most horrible, fear-provoking monster of a woman ever. She was frighteningly...enthusiastic. Harry heard that just being around her put Snape on a frenzy, but he wasn't sure what to make of that. 'Frenzy...' Like a feeding frenzy? Like a shark? This couldn't be good.
But ooooh, it was. He just wouldn't figure that out until the end of the class.
Harry stepped into the classroom, wondering which person from the front tables was Snape's scary assistant, until he found himself staring at the woman standing next to Professor Snape. THIS was the assistant? A cheerful looking girl with black hair pulled up into a ponytail and a cheerful looking grin! She couldn't have even been over twenty-five! She wasn't pretty like Kurenai, but she was cute!
She introduced herself as Assistant Anko, or just Anko, since she claimed that she didn't have a last name. The girl seemed rather busy during the beginning of the class. She began flipping through pages of a book labeled "Potion's Log". Professor Snape scowled and snatched it from her hands. Anko glared at him. She started going through the potion's cabinet, which was full of the ingredients that they would use for class. Professor Snape waved his wand and slammed the door closed. Anko quickly moved her hands before her fingers were crushed and glared at him. She ran into his office and began tossing up the desks and chairs, flipping paper everywhere. Professor Snape would have turned red with anger had he not been so pasty white. Looking rather irritated, he waved his wand. The desks and chairs righted themselves back into their normal positions. The papers returned back in the drawers in the desk and cabinets as they looked themselves. Smaller items like quills disappeared, probably returning to wherever they had flown out off. Harry had one last glimpse of Anko's irritated face as the door to Professor Snape's office shut itself on her, locking her inside. They heard her muffled protests for a while until the potions master finally got fed up by her shouting and cast a silencing spell on the room.
"Oi..." Ron muttered. "I thought only our potions could get that kind of reaction from Snape. Assistant Anko even got his eye twitching. Only Fred and George ever managed to do that!"
They spent the next thirty minutes in silence. Harry could almost hear Anko, still beating on the door. She was probably still shouting. And then, he didn't have to wonder whether she was shouting or not. Because they actually heard her.
"Heeeeey!" she said. "What's wrong with you? I was in there, you know!"
"You were being a distraction to my class," Professor Snape said.
"I...you...your MOM'S a distraction!" (2)
"Excuse me?"
"Oh, you just don't get it..."
Professor Snape frowned and shook his head. He first tried to force her to sit in the corner. It didn't work. So he then decided to ignore Anko as long as he could, hoping that she'd get bored and give up trying to bother him. It didn't work, as he soon found out.
Professor Snape glared at Harry and his potion. "Potter, it's supposed to be green, tinged with blue, not the other way around. Ten points from Gryffindor. Do it again."
Assistant Anko grinned and hit Hermione on the head in what was supposed to be a congratulatory way. "Granger! Good job, you didn't screw it up. Ten points to Gryffindor." Hermione stared at the crack on the desk that had been formed by the impact of her forehead, wincing as she rubbed her head in pain...
Hearing this, Professor Snape scowled at Anko, who smiled sweetly in return. "Yeeeeeees...?" she asked, batting her eyes sweetly at the guy. "Gee, did I ruin something for you?"
The professor glared and turned on Neville who was sitting behind Anko, cowering in fear. Now Harry understood why the other students now dreaded Potions class even more so than before. With Assistant Anko around, the room was filled with suffocating tenseness. While people constantly were losing or gaining points for their house, it seemed that Assistant Anko would nullify it just to spite the Potions Master.
"Longbottom, that is not the right potion," he said. "Fifty points off for endangering the class with your dissatisfactory potion skills."
Anko squinted at the result of Neville's potion. Then she looked in a something like a tiny little pocket dictionary. Then she squinted at Neville's potion again. Poor, unfortunate Neville, who usually spent half the class being picked on by Professor Snape, was now getting twice the attention. One half plus another half makes a whole! A whole class of excessive attention! AS if his life wasn't miserable enough!
"Oh my god!" Anko cried in mock surprise. "Longbottom… you made the wrong potion. You accidentally added the beetle legs before the frog guts, and then mixed two to the left and to the right when it's two to the right then one to the left. Wow... this isn't half bad actually. This is the beginning of a wolfsbane potion...! Fifty-ONE points to Gryffindor for this AMAZING fluke!" She looked at Hinata, who looked just as fearful as Neville, as usual, and grinned.
"I'd say something encouraging, but your freaky-bug partner still creeps me out!" Anko said, looking at Shino with a grin.
"Hey, Hinata," Ron said to the girl once Anko had left to terrorize Kiba. Naruto wasn't the only one missing. The creepy Gaara kid was gone, too. She was partnered with Shino now. "Where'd Naruto go again? And Gaara?" He hadn't noticed their disappearance in Care for Magical Creatures with all those Skrewts running around.
"Ano…he went home," she replied.
"Really? Where's that? Japan?" Hermione asked.
"W-well, ah, y-yes, s-sort of...
"Nevermind, Ron," Hermione said, taking note of the girl's scared face. Hinata always looked scared though.
"Ah, I think they'll be back on the ninth," Hinata said.
"Yeah, and Gaara's gone?"
"And Temari and Shikamaru and Sakura," Hinata said. "Kankurou's staying here though."
"Oh. So what's with all these new people?" he asked. "These professors are crazy."
"Hinata..." a voice said.
Harry and Hinata looked up at Shino. He said something again!
"Sorry, Harry, Hermione, Ron, I have to work now," Hinata said, although she had already finished brewing the potion.
"So I wonder where they went?" Hermione asked as they headed towards Great Hall. "Sakura and Shikamaru weren't in my classes."
"Maybe they turned into one of those psycho teachers in disguise!" Ron said.
"Don't be silly, Ron," Hermione said. "Just how many metamorphmagi are there in the world?" What was a metamorphmagi? "Anyway, just how many new teachers have arrived?"
"Not sure," Harry said. "Hey, what's going on here?"
When they arrived in the entrance hall, they found themselves unable to proceed owing to the large sign that had been put up at the foot of the marble staircase. Ron, the tallest of the three, stood on his toes to see over the heads in front of them and read the sign out loud to the other two:
TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT
"The delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang will be arriving at 6 'o clock on Friday, October 9, 2005. Lessons will end half an hour early—
"Brilliant!" Harry said. "Potions is the last thing we've got on Friday! And with Kurenai, they'll probably start fighting again and then they won't be able to poison us all!"
"Students will return their bags and books to their dormitories and assemble in front of the castle to greet our guests before the welcoming feast. Only students dressed in appropriate attire—Hogwarts or otherwise formal/semi-formal wear—will be allowed to be present for their arrival onto Hogwarts grounds."
"Hogwarts or otherwise formal, semi-formal wear?" Ron read. "What else do we have aside from Hogwarts uniforms?"
"Well, it could be for the Japanese students," Hermione said. "They do hate our dress code."
"Except for that Sasuke guy," Fred said, appeared next to the Golden Trio.
"Well, he'd go for anything doused in black dye," George said.
"Very true. Unless it were a pink tutu."
"If it were a pink tutu, then it wouldn't be black."
"Also very true."
"Oh boy, this is only a week away!" Ernie from Hufflepuff said, having finished reading the post. "I've got to go tell Cedric!"
"Cedric…?" Ron said blankly as Ernie hurried off.
"Diggory," said Harry. "He must be entering the tournament."
The appearance of the sign in the entrance hall had a marked effect upon the inhabitants of the castle. During the following week, there seemed to be only one topic of conversation, no matter where Harry went: the Triwizard Tournament. Rumors were flying from student to student like highly contagious germs: who was going to try for Hogwarts champion, what the tournament would involve, how the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang differed from themselves.
The castle seemed to be undergoing an extra-thorough cleaning. Several grimy portraits had been scrubbed, much to the displeasure of their subjects, who sat huddled in their frames muttering darkly and wincing as they felt their raw pink faces. The suits of armor were suddenly gleaming and moving without squeaking, and Argus Filch, the caretaker, was behaving so ferociously to any student who forgot to wipe his or her shoes that he terrified a pair of first-year girls into hysterics and ran off Hinata back to the Gryffindor room. Akamaru peed on Ms. Norris.
Muggle Studies
"Honestly, I have a bad feeling about today," Neji said. "It would be best for both of us to avoid our classes today."
"Why?" Tenten asked, as she and Neji were heading for their next class.
"I don't know, it's just a bad feeling," he replied.
"Oh come on," Tenten said, grinning up at him. "We're shinobi. Whatever these teachers throw at us, it can't be that bad."
"DO NOT FRET!" Lee shouted from behind them. Tenten jumped, although Neji had already seen Lee coming.
"Stop doing that, Lee..." Neji said. He had a prickly feeling go down his spine.
"BUT YOU ARE WORRIED!" Lee shouted. "JUST BELIEVE IN THE FLAME OF YOUR YOUTH AND YOU AND TENTEN SHALL LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER!"
"Lee, just because we aren't hiding a relationship anymore doesn't mean we want to advertise it," Neji said. "If I wanted everyone to know about me and Tenten, I would grab a loudspeaker and run around the whole school shouting about it."
Tenten frowned and rolled her eyes. What did Neji do wrong now?
"Honestly, Neji, stop being such a prat and come on," Tenten said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
"I'm not a prat," Neji said. "And what's with you talking like these wizards?"
Suddenly, Lee stopped walking.
"What's wrong, Lee?"
His circular eyes began to fill up with tears. Neji and Tenten backed away.
"G-GAI-SENSEI!" he cried out.
WHAT! Could that freak of a man actually still be here? Neji had thought that he had only been eating in the Great Hall for just that one meal, only to return back to Konoha later that day. Or at least, that's what he had been hoping for.
"Is he really here?" Tenten gasped. "Lee only acts this way within a 50 feet radius of him!"
"He is!" Neji said, seeing his teacher in his Byakugan. "R-run! He's coming right at us!"
"Oh no!" Tenten and Neji ran away from the classroom, only to find Gai blocking the way in the halls.
"GAI-SENSEI!" Lee cried.
"LEE!" Oh no... the room became a field.
"GAI-SENSEI!" Rock Lee began running to Gai.
"LEE!" Gai began running to Lee.
"GAI-SENSEI!" They hugged. Neji hit his forehead. Fools! Couldn't they field-en the face outside of the classroom? Now there was grass inside the room.
"Ahem," Professor Evans said, clearing his throat as the field faded away and became a normal classroom. "This is my assistant, Maito Gai. So, today in Muggle Studies, we will observe an actual Muggle...!"
Neji sighed.
"Gai's a muggle?" Tenten asked Neji in his ear.
"Ugh, I guess he is now..." Neji said, watching his own teacher, in humiliation, do the cool guy pose and blind everyone with his teeth. Gods, kill him now before they realized that he and Gai knew each other! Wait, don't strike Neji with lightning! Hit Gai, HIT GAI!
"NEJI, MY STUDENT, COME UP HERE WITH LEE AND ME AND DO THE COOL GUY POSE WITH US!"
Neji groaned. Too late.
(1) Harry still doubts their awesomeness. With all of the older shinobi about, he's more impressed because they seem, well, older. More experience? Something like that.
(2) Yeah, it's one of those lame jokes.
My Thinking Corner
Should I do a FullMetal Alchemist X Harry Potter fiction? Honestly, I never really liked fictions before. And then I liked it. And I didn't like crossovers. Now I like that too. Anyway, I just don't know. Because this fiction takes up enough time already, with classwork too. And then I'm only in the first (barely the second) month of October in Harry Potter, and there's going to be a Year 5, 6, and 7 (mainly because I'm not going to fit Akatsuki in here very much). This is going to take a veeery long time. Also, I am starting a sci-fi-ish Naruto fiction, and What If Naruto fiction and a whole bunch of others (listed in my profile) and stuff. Too many ideas all at once, and I promised myself (and practically my entire family) that I only play on weekends which isn't necessarily true, I suppose... Oh well.
Anyway, if anyone noticed, Kitchel and Thatz are two characters from Dragon Knights, although that has nothing to do with this fic. I just really really like their names.