A/N: Update – Yay!!

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"It scares me," the Sandaime Hokage of Konoha looked out over the village, his village, from the lookout above the Hokage monuments.

"What does?" Jiraya didn't really expect his sensei to answer. He had gone into one of his 'Hokage moods' as Jiraya had named them. He had gotten them ever since he attained his post and had to make decisions he didn't like. And ever since had he felt that problems he had nothing to do with were his to fix. It was truly annoying.

"He is only five, I know his father was not much older but still. I am throwing into a war in which he has no place." Sarutobi's voice was absent, Jiraya held no doubt that that last statement was not an answer to his question.

"You're talking about the Hatake kid, right?"

"It's wrong," the Hokage stated with a sigh. Perhaps he did listen, after all? Time to pull him out of it…

"Well, its not like Iwa refrains from using kids, and besides, if Kakashi continues to develop as we know he will, our kid will be a hell lot better than most of their adults. And besides, you could always talk to Sakumo about it," his sensei threw him a look. Yep, he was not as deep down as Jiraya had thought. "Come on, Minato wanted me to go and get you for ramen, his treat!" Jiraya gave a broad smile and grabbed the older man before he ran down the steep road in a breakneck speed.

He didn't feel too bad about lying to his sensei and the village's Hokage. Minato had actually said that it was the Hokage's treat when he'd invited pretty much everyone he knew to ramen (and everyone he knew involved quite a lot of people…). But then again, Jiraya did not doubt that his blonde student would attain his dream and become Hokage one day. So it was not a complete lie.

Ron slammed his book on astronomy shut.

"Tearing his own throat out! Who does that?" Everyone knew what he meant. Harry looked up from his essay on Jupiter's moons and Hermione stopped knitting at one of her elf hats and her conversation with Ginny was effectively cut of.

It was Sunday night and they had all successfully avoided the subject of Kakashi for the last five days.

"I mean, he's like some sort of suicidal freak," Ron continued. Hermione looked a bit hurt at that. Not that any of the boys understood why. She walked up to their table and sat down in the vacant seat.

"Look," She began, "I've been snooping around a bit…" Harry and Ron threw looked at her sceptically. Hermione was capable of serious snooping? "Okay, okay," she waved her hand in the air. "I went and asked madam Pomfrey, apparently he had panic attack."

"Why would he get one of those?" Ron asked grumpily. He would've liked to stick to his 'suicidal freak' theory.

Harry didn't say anything. What would he say? That Kakashi actually was an assassin? Professor Dumbledore had forbidden him to speak of it. Though he had told Sirius of it in a letter, in code, of course, but figured that it'd been all right. Sirius was a member of the Order, after all.

"Think about it Ron," Hermione said with a sigh. "He might've graduated early from his school, but he's still too young to legally be an adult, perhaps his parents sent him here without his consent? Besides, it's got to be hard to be that smart, I mean he's years younger than anyone in his class was and I doubt that he's got any friends his own age." Ron gaped at her. Hermione just said that it could be a bad thing to be smart!

A sudden knock on the window gained their attention. Outside, on the windowsill, were a proud, long-eared owl.

"Isn't that Hermes?" Hermione asked.

"It is!" Ron exclaimed, "But why in the world are Percy writing to me?" he said as he opened the window and let the owl in.

Ron confirmed that it was Percy's handwriting on the envelop and opened it when Hermione enthusiastically insisted on it. They all wondered what the letter would say, no one had forgotten Percy's rather… violent break with the Weasley family. Ron unfolded the long letter and began to read. The further he got, he more bitter the look on his face turned. When he finished, he threw the letter over to his two friends who both leaned in to read.

When they had finished, Harry assured Ron that he wouldn't turn violent if Ron 'broke the bonds' between them to protect his status as prefect. Ron snatched the letter back and cursed over Percy as he ripped the letter to pieces and threw them on the fire.

"Come on," he said hurriedly to take Harry's mind of the letter. "We have to finish this before morning," he pulled the essay he was writing for professor Sinistra to him.

"Oh, just give it to me," Hermione said.

"Huh?" was Ron's… elaborate, response. Earlier, Hermione had refused to help the boys with their homework.

"Give it to me and I'll correct it," Hermione sighed.

"You serious? Oh, Hermione, you're saving our lives!"

Harry thanked Hermione as well, though more quietly, and both boys pushed their essays over to the female part of the trio.

Harry was exhausted. And he felt sick. Not because of exhaustion but of the letter crumpling to ashes in the fireplace. He was being picked on constantly in the daily prophet, assassins were sent to Hogwarts and now Percy turned against him as well. He had known the older Weasley for four years, four years! And he still thought Harry too be unbalanced and possibly violent? That was a description that fit better on Kakashi than him. Breaking down for nothing, and being and assassin? Definitely unbalanced and violent.

Harry decided that he now could understand how his godfather felt. Nearly everyone in the Wizarding-world thought Sirius to be a dangerous and ruthless murderer. And a devoted follower of Voldemort.

Harry blinked. He had just seen something in the fire that just couldn't be there. It had to have been a delusion from thinking of Sirius.

Hermione had finished going over Ron's essay on the moons of Jupiter and the youngest Weasley boy was currently vowing her his eternal devotion when they noticed Harry on his knees in front of the fire.

"Uhm… Harry? What are you doing?" Ron's voice broke the sudden silence.

"I just saw Sirius' head in the fire." Harry was pretty sure you did that with floo-powder, he just hadn't remembered to ask his godfather when they last met. He had been totally freaked-out when he'd seen his godfather's head in that very same fireplace the previous year.

"Sirius' head?" Hermione repeated. "Sirius" She gasped and stared at the flames, which Sirius' head now floated in between. His hair was as long as ever, but he did look a thinner than when Harry had seen him last. Perhaps it was just the fire.

"I was starting to think that you'd go to bed before everyone else had gone," Sirius said with a smile. He told them that he'd checked every hour to see if they were alone so that he could talk to them and had to reassure Hermione that no one had seen him – well, discovered him, anyway. The conversation moved on to Umbridge, Sirius told Harry that she was not a Death Eater, and that Harry's scar had been hurting when she had touched him in detention. They found out that Fudge was afraid that Dumbledore would raise an army within Hogwarts to take over the ministry – something they all found ridiculous. Had Dumbledore wanted to be minister in the first place… Fudge would never even have gotten a chance.

Sirius told them that there was still no news of Hagrid.

"And about Mr Hatake," Sirius added after he'd told them that Hagrid would pull through, no matter what. "I've talked to Dumbledore; he says it's nothing to worry about." Harry mouthed the word assassin to Sirius and gave a questioning look. Sirius looked him straight in the eye. "Like I said, Dumbledore says that it's nothing to worry about," Sirius repeated.

"He tried to kill himself, you know," Ron told the head in the fire.

"He did not try to kill himself Ron!" Hermione burst out and smacked Ron over the back of his head. Harry and Sirius shared a look that definitely said that they'd try not to piss off Hermione in the future. Girls were terrifying. "He had a panic attack," Hermione stated coldly.

"He did?" Sirius was genuinely surprised. From what he'd heard of the boy that seemed very out of place. "Perhaps you should try to be nicer to him, he can't have it easy, being this far from friends and family and all," Sirius didn't tell them but he would very much have liked to meet with Hatake Kakashi himself. The kid scared Snape? Snape out of all people! He figured that if he weren't going to meet the assassin in person, the least he could do was to try and make Harry, Ron and Hermione his friends, so that Sirius could force a full report out of them later.

It was odd. Really, really odd. Kakashi wouldn't even have noticed it if he hadn't looked with his sharingan in that exact direction in that exact moment. He had been trying, yet again, to cut of the chakra stream to his eye, as his appointed 'teacher' from the Uchiha clan kept telling him to do. Not that he seemed to be one bit successful.

Kakashi had the previous day (or night…) when sitting in Dumbledore-sama's office discovered that he could actually see magic with the sharingan. He couldn't see it as clearly as chakra, but it was there – a slight blur of his vision wherever there was an ounce of more… 'concentrated' magic. He hadn't noticed it before, but the sharingan's sight was not as sharp within the castle as it usually was. Some of the objects in Dumbledore's office had just been blurs. The bird was the most interesting, a phoenix – Fawkes, it had only been a large red blotch in his vision. And even more interesting, or perhaps disturbing – Kakashi couldn't decide, was that the bird had been flaring with chakra.

He had gotten into an interesting discussion with Dumbledore about chakra combined with magic and the similarities and differences between the two… forces after that. Dumbledore had been the one to point out that, perhaps, magic carried some of the energy of the user with it, and that was why his 'wheely-eye', as the old man had named it, could see it. And a small experiment later, Kakashi had discovered that, with a bit of concentration, he could see faint chakra signatures and faded colours in the magic. It was fascinating. There was no doubt that magic and chakra was two completely separated things but still…

Right now, Kakashi was sitting on the floor next to the fireplace in his room. He could faintly distinguish a steady stream of magic going past his fireplace just above the outlet that connected many fireplaces in this part of the castle to a common chimney. He had to strain his quite extraordinary hearing to pick up anything above the crackling of the fire. He heard a whispering conversation and was surprised how incredibly stupid those wizards were. He could hear them and he now knew that they were discussing some matters that was to be kept secret.

He recognised the voices of Harry, Ron and Hermione, plus an older man's voice. He heard the name 'Sirius' named and the identity of the man was revealed. Sirius black- Dumbledore had spoken briefly about him and Kakashi did know how to read newspapers. The man who was, apparently innocent, but still accused of murder of loads of people and Harry Potter's godfather had come here, in a time like this?

Seriously? 'Codes could be broken,' what kind of excuse was that to not reply in a letter but instead show up in person? Codes could be broken, but careless conversations were easily listened in on.

Kakashi became cold as the group moved on to yet another topic. Him. He heard Ron saying that he'd tried to kill himself. No way. He was never going to walk down the same path as his father had. Never.

The older man - Sirius, told them to be nicer to Kakashi, and he felt an unexpected flash of anger inside of him. What was he? A child that needed to be taken care of? He also felt a bit disappointed in Dumbledore, had the old man gone around and told everyone the information Kakashi had trusted him with? But then again, Sirius was a member of their 'secret' Order, and Kakashi had been sent to kill Dumbledore…

'He can't have it easy', well there was at least one thing that was true. Soon the group in the Gryffindor common room started to talk about Hogsmeade trips and Kakashi tuned out. He picked up one of the heavy books that lay strewn across the room and started to read about the fourth Great Goblin War and some goblin lord named Rugrik the foul.

He pulled the hitai-ate down to cover his sharingan when he saw a whole, human head appearing in the fireplace. He looked up and straight into warm, brown eyes that seemed to have a cold glint in them. Kakashi knew that glint. It was the look most people received after years of struggle, war, and death. Long black hair framed a thin face and the flames around it cast eerie shadows around his features.

This was definitely strange. A head floating, seemingly unsupported in the middle of a fire? It unnerved the young ANBU captain. He was not as disturbed as he would've been though, if he hadn't read about 'floo powder'. It was a way of travelling that Kakashi had decided was nothing for him. From what he had read, the experience of simply travelling this way seemed awful. He didn't even want to think about how it had to feel if one maintained the connection and stayed there.

The head had been there less than a fraction of a second when Kakashi's hand darted out, faster than a human eye could see, and grabbed the man by the hair. To his surprise, he didn't even feel the flames that lapped around his hand and arm. He had read that the fire became like this when connected in a maintained floo-powder link, but he hadn't really believed it. He had seen that the head had begun to fade when he grabbed it but it seemed to become solid as soon as he got his hold. Kakashi did not like being spied on.

"Sirius Black, I presume?" Kakashi said coldly after the man had let out a yelp of surprise. To Kakashi's puzzlement, the man did not seem to be unnerved by being held by the hair by someone he'd never met before while his head seemed to be separated from his body. The fugitive and member of 'the Order' even had the nerve to smile.

"Wow!" he exclaimed. "Snape said you were god but mate, you're really good!" Kakashi's eye twitched. "I just had to see the guy that managed to scare him like that, not even Voldemort unnerves the nuisance like you do!" Kakashi felt kind of good that Sirius hadn't called him 'kid'.

"Is this not a bad place to talk about such things?" Kakashi asked, dropping some of the ice in his voice. "I did hear you talk to those three earlier."

"You did!?" the man's eyes widened in shock. "How the heck did you do that? What spell did you use? I know that you can monitor and seal off fireplaces but listen in on them? And spells used for listening of any kind usually doesn't work in Hogwarts, that so cool you have to teach me how you did it did you buy some of those extendable ears from the Weasley twins and somehow modified them?" Kakashi couldn't believe this guy. He sighed.

"Snape didn't tell you I'm a muggle then? Your voices echoed through the smoke-vents…" Kakashi answered Sirius' babbling questions.

"Through the smoke-vents..?" Sirius mumbled before widening his eyes again. "You're a what!?" he roared, hadn't Kakashi winced on the close proximity of Sirius outburst and his sensitive ears – he would have laughed at the man's expression. They were both quiet for what seemed like an eternity, Kakashi seemingly deep in thought and Sirius staring wide-eyed at the boy.

"You can let go of my hair now." Sirius broke the silence. Kakashi looked up with a tired look.

"Oh, sorry," he replied and let go of the black, tangled mess.

A/N: Sorry for the shortness of this chapter... more action comming soon (hopefully)

Next chapter'll be up next weekend (probably…) ;P

And please, let me know what you think!

Oh, and also, I have been notified that there are some similarities between this fic and some others, and of it becomes too unoriginal please let me know. Any similarities are completely coincidental but I'd very much like to keep this as original as possible...