"Alas, my students, I forgot to mention that we have a new defense against the dark art's teacher!" Dumbledore boomed, sweeping an arm across the hall to welcome the new teacher.
Instead of a wizard in long robes, a lazy-looking man with a mask and a headband draped over his left eye slouched onto the stage where the staff table was set. He appeared to be completely immersed in a little orange book with Japanese symbols all over the front cover, addressing a picture with a man chasing a woman wearing a green, revealing dress.
"Good morning…" The man said, waving a hand in the students' direction.
"Ah…his name is Kakashi Hatake." Dumbledore said, beaming at Kakashi. The teachers looked completely stunned at the slouching, grey-haired man in front of them.
Harry stared at Kakashi. He never knew he had been talking to a professor the whole time. He looked at Hermione and Ron; they looked as stunned as he was.
Kakashi cleared his throat. The students stared at him.
"Yo, everyone." Kakashi said, visibly grinning at them from behind his mask.
Some students giggled.
"I'm your new teacher to whatever subject I'm teaching. The name's Kakashi. I'm the teacher to three of the new students among you. Who they are, I'm not telling."
"I'll ask all of you in my class tomorrow to introduce yourselves. I'll do the same." Kakashi said, grinning wider at the shocked faces of the students below him.
"Oh…and one more thing. Don't be late."
Harry, Ron and Hermione ran towards the defense against the dark art's classroom. "It's your entire fault, Hermione!" Ron shouted as they hurried along the 6th floor corridor to the staircase.
"How is it my fault?" Hermione screeched, as they flew up the stairs.
"If you hadn't stayed in the library so long, we wouldn't be late!" roared Ron.
"Nobody told you two to wait for me!" Hermione screamed back.
"SHUT UP!" Harry yelled, silencing the two.
They rushed inside the classroom, which immediately went quiet. Harry stared at his classmates, who burst into relieved laughter after a moment.
"They thought we were the teacher." Harry muttered to the bemused Hermione and Ron. Hermione made an impatient noise.
"Hey, where are the new guys?" Ron asked, looking around the room. Harry shrugged half-heartedly. "Dunno."
"AAACCCKK!"
"What happened?" Kiba yelled, running towards Sakura's voice. He found her sitting on the floor staring at a window showing monasteries and monks shouting.
"I say, young lady, you shouldn't run in the halls you know, you could bump into someone! And screaming is not permitted either!" A monk was shaking a finger at Sakura, who looked absolutely stunned. Kiba was about to help Sakura up, before…
"WHAT THE…?" Kiba shrieked, suddenly realizing the monk was part of a picture.
"Good lord, young sir, didn't you hear a word that I just said?" The monk jabbed a finger towards Kiba.
"What's going on here?" A prefect made his way towards the pair.
"The painting's moving!" Sakura screeched at the poor prefect. Kiba didn't say anything, but continued to stare at the moving pictures around him. More shrieks were heard throughout the school; turned out that the rest of the shinobi hadn't noticed the paintings either.
"Of course it's moving, it's supposed to!" The prefect shook his head impatiently. "Its how it goes in the wizarding world. Don't your pictures move?"
Without waiting for Sakura to answer, he hurried away to silence the other screams coming from above and below.
"This…is totally freaky." Kiba finally said, breaking the shock between them.
Sakura nodded. She picked herself up, and hurried along with Kiba to their class with Kakashi.
The class had waited for 10 minutes, and Kakashi had not yet shown up. "When is he going to show up?" Hermione later snarled, waking Ron up who had, apparently, dozed off next to her. Ron sleepily nodded in agreement.
Suddenly, a poof of white smoke appeared in the classroom with a pop. Kakashi stepped out of it, waving his hand.
"Sorry I'm late, everyone. I got lost in the road of life." He said carelessly, pocketing his orange book.
"LIAR! YOU USED THAT ONE BEFORE!"
Harry turned around in surprise to see a livid Sakura and a fuming Naruto standing up from their seats, both of them pointing accusingly at Kakashi.
"Sorry, sorry." Kakashi said, scratching the back of his head sheepishly.
"Ok, going along. I want you all to introduce yourselves. You start it off, boy." Kakashi pointed at Harry with a air as though he had never known him.
"How do I start?" Harry asked politely, pretending not to hear Malfoy snigger in a corner.
"Tell me your name, your dreams, what you like, what you dislike." Kakashi said almost lazily.
"I'm Harry Potter. My dream is to…er…vanquish V- you-know-who. I like treacle tart, and I hate , my aunt, my uncle, their pathetic excuse for a son and Malfoy." Harry said rather aggressively in the end, glaring at Malfoy who smirked widely back at him.
"Next." Kakashi nodded.
"I'm Ron Weasley. My dream is to surpass my brothers, I like feasts during special occasions in Hogwarts, and I dislike Malfoy."
"Good. Next."
"I'm Hermione Granger. My dream is to…, I like…er…, I dislike Malfoy."
"My, my, Malfoy has so many enemies. Next."
(A while later)
"Ok, class. That's all for today." Kakashi said, whipping out his orange book.
"Wait, Professor Hatake, you haven't introduced yourself yet!" A student shouted.
"That's it?" Another yelled.
"You call that a class?" A slytherin girl shrieked.
Kakashi slowly turned to them.
"Well, my name is Kakashi Hatake. What I like….hmm…I don't really want to tell you. The same goes for what I dislike. My dream…I don't feel like telling you that.'
"And yes, thats it and yes, I call that a class. If you don't like it, well, I'm not sure if I care."
And after this, Kakashi turned away.
"So in the end all he did was tell us his name." Hermione grumbled quietly.
"This was the first class that we didn't do anything in!" Ron gabbled excitedly next to her.
Harry grinned.
Sakura, who was sitting near her, smirked inwardly. She remembered when she had said the very same thing.
"And one last word of advice." Kakashi suddenly said, scaring the heck out of everyone execpt the shinobi. "Don't eat breakfast. Because you'll puke it all out later if you do tomorrow." Kakashi said, eyeing everyone of them with his one visible eye before the bell rang.
Harry sat in front of the warm fire with Hermione, Sakura, Kiba, Gaara, Lee, Tenten, Temari and Naruto. Ron was tired, so he went up to bed first.
Hermione was talking with Sakura, Tenten and Temari, telling them about S.P.E.W. Lee was watching Harry work. Kiba was playing with Akamaru, and Gaara was just staring at the fire. Naruto had dozed off in his armchair.
Harry rubbed his eyes; the first day back and they were already loaded down with homework. He didn't understand a thing about the properties of moonstone and its uses in potion-making. Harry looked down at the sad thing of a potions essay. Snape was going to be so nasty about it on Monday…
"Do you need help, Harry?"
Harry looked up to see the face of Sakura. Her long, pink bangs dropped out behind her ears as she tipped her head towards his work.
"No, not really." Harry lied.
"Got a lot of work today, you?" Sakura asked, pulling the moonstones essay towards her.
"Don't even start." Harry moaned. "Barking mad…the whole lot of them…"
"I finished the essay from that creepy teacher that looks like he's hanging around the graveyard too much, and the essay from the boring old ghost who can't even recognize his own students." Sakura said, reading Harry's moonstone essay.
Harry laughed when he heard the descriptions of Snape and Binns. "You're absolutely right about that." He told her.
"And that stupid old fraud with the oversized glasses told me I'm going to die in a week after hearing what I said about the dream I had last night. How can people believe her? The dream crap didn't make the least bit of sense at all…" Sakura continued.
Harry laughed again. "That's exactly what Hermione said two years ago in our third year. Walked out on Trelawney, she did." He said.
"That's smart of her." Sakura agreed.
Harry took the parchment from Sakura and rolled it up. "I give up on this thing. I'll do it tomorrow." Harry said, and shoved it into his bag along with his books. Sakura smiled, and nudged Hermione to go join Harry.
"Ugh…more homework. The teachers really have gone berserk this year." Ron said as Harry trudged up the hall with Sakura and Naruto from the Charms classroom.
"I never had this much work in my life. If I was back in my village, I would be training, not writing." Naruto said, throwing his hands behind his head.
Harry fell silent, thinking about what Naruto had just said as they headed to Transfiguration.
"These are among the most difficult magic in your OWL." Professor McGonagall said, handing them all snails.
In the end, it turned out that McGonagall was right. Harry found the spells to be horribly difficult. By the end of the period neither he, Ron nor Naruto could do it. Hermione, Sakura and the other Gryffindor kunoichi were the only ones who could do it. They were the only ones who weren't given homework. Luckily, Sakura agreed to help Ron, Harry and Naruto with it.
Harry later found himself sitting in Kakashi's classroom with his grumbling classmates. Only after a quarter of an hour did Kakashi appear.
"I'm sorry, guys. Had to do something." He said as his whole class yelled their displeasure at him.
"Now, I want you all to follow me out to the grounds. You can leave if you like; I really don't care at all." Kakashi called as he walked out the door, his confused class hurrying along his wake.
"Honestly!" Hermione growled as she walked out of the classroom with Harry, Ron and the Gryffindor kunoichi and shinobi. "I don't think he cares about teaching at all! Why Dumbledore hired him, I have NO idea…"
Harry saw Sakura and the shinobi exchanged looks behind Hermione. "Y-yeah, I wonder why…" Tenten nervously laughed behind Hermione.
When they all reached the school grounds, Harry saw at least 2 and a half dozen poles all stabbed halfway into the ground, the top half sticking out an inch above his head.
"Class, come line up. I'll give you something to use for your lesson. You don't need your wands, put them away." Kakashi said, eyeing the wands in his students' hands.
The class did not say anything, but glanced at Kakashi nervously before stowing away their wand and lining up before Kakashi.
Harry saw the student who was first in line yelp with surprise when Kakashi whipped out a knife with a handle that had an iron-hole at the top. Nevertheless, the knife looked extremely sharp.
"In reality, wands are nothing but polished and carved sticks for you to use in battle. In other words, a wand is a weapon." Kakashi said, handing the student the knife.
Hermione made an offended noise loudly.
"But there are other weapons for you to use. Does anyone know what this knife is called?" Kakashi asked, raising one in the air.
For once, Hermione failed to answer a question.
Kakashi sighed. "They're called kunais. In me and my students' country, they are a necessary and standard weapon for everyday use, like your wands. Today, each of you will get three kunais, 10 shuriken and 2 smoke bombs. You will be grouped in threes, and will attempt to get a bell from me. The ones who don't will be tied to a log, and have no extra lunch. I highly doubt that any of you can get one, so don't get your hopes up. Ones who are caught trying to get the lunch instead of a bell will be tied to a log immediately."
Harry raised an eyebrow. This was surely the first time they were asked to attack a teacher. He looked sideways at Hermione, and she looked skeptically back. Ron looked shocked.
Once they were all given their weapons and grouped into trios, Kakashi stepped into the middle of the grounds.
"The first group, Harry, Hermione and Ron, come here. The rest, step back." Kakashi called.
Harry, Hermione and Ron nervously walked up to him, each with a kunai in hand.
"See these bells?" Kakashi held up two bells. "The objective is to come at me and get them. This time, textbooks won't help. I've noticed your skills, Miss Granger, but this time, they won't come in any use at all. This is a survival exercise, not a classroom lesson anymore." Kakashi said calmly, hooking the bells at his waist. Hermione looked angrily at him.
"There are three tactics of general attacking and defense. First, you must hide and cover yourself to prevent the enemy from seeing you. Second, close and long distance combat. Wands enable you both, but this exercise is for when you DON'T have a wand. You must be able to dodge attack and defend yourself with your all. This is an essential exercise if you want to survive attacks in the near future. Especially attacks from Voldemort"
"Oh, and I trust you all to plan your attacks. Either charge and attack, or hide and ambush; I'll be waiting."
And with that, Kakashi strolled away as though he didn't have a care in the world. Before he was out of sight, Harry distinctly saw him yank out a small, orange book from his back pouch…