hmmm…actually instead of Raven and Fox turning into Sasuke and Naruto, they could indeed become some random pple…but that would raise some question with those who might have accidentally see them - like who's that two 'muggles' Harry is with…
technically, Fox and Raven are not actually de-mask…er…you'll see when you finish the chap…dunno if the reaction of the others would be that way though, so forgive me if i'm exaggerating XD
er, well, enjoy… :)
disclaimer: don't own Naruto nor HP…
Chapter 14: Of Masks
by zfirze
"Dumbledore," Sasuke greeted as he entered the room.
"Ah, Raven, come in, come in," Dumbledore paused, "I don't think there will be any point in asking you to have a seat right?" His eyes twinkled.
Sasuke bowed a little in response.
"Well, then, welcome to your first meeting with the Order of the Phoenix,"
Sasuke looked around at the people who were seated at the table in front of him, recognising a few. There were Mrs. Weasley, two other red-heads who looked like Weasleys as well, Sirius, Snape (who were seated opposite each other and were throwing dirty looks across the table while sneering) and Tonks.
Taking the slight movement of Sasuke's masked face as cue, Dumbledore started introducing those that Raven doesn't know (not Sasuke, since Sasuke had already met Snape), "That's Severus Snape, Bill Weasley, Charlie Weasley and Mundungus Fletcher," The last three smiled or gave a small wave when they were introduced.
"And the Order, please meet Raven,"
"What about Fox?" Sirius asked, gesturing towards the Fox-clone beside Sasuke.
"Yes, yes. But that's not Fox. Fox is here," At his word, Fox stepped out from the shadows behind Dumbledore.
Everyone jumped when he suddenly emerged. Sasuke immediately allowed his Fox-clone to dispel.
"Wait, then who was that beside Raven?" Charlie asked.
Dumbledore gave a small nod to allow Sasuke to explain, "That was just a clone I've created. It wasn't exactly real,"
The people seated at the table looked confused but before any of them could ask any more question, Dumbledore took charge, "Now Raven, was there anything to report from yesterday's trip to St. Mungo's?"
Sasuke withdrew a piece of parchment from his vest (he wasn't going to use his precious scrolls when parchment was provided), "Here is the full report of yesterday's incident," He lay it on the table, "Three Death Eaters were on the roof of a nearby building. I took them out without giving away much clue as to what had hurt them. They managed to escape,"
"Without giving away much clue?" Snape sneered, "You tore the leg muscle of Crabbe and judging from the size of the hole, they have already concluded that a needle-sort of weapon was used,"
"Also, from the accounts of the three Death Eaters, the Dark Lord has realised that the guards that Dumbledore had hired are not wizards," Snape hissed, "The three were only on a reconnaissance mission and were not even planning to attack Potter, but you attacked them first. I think you pretty much gave yourself away,"
The room was silent. There were several glances thrown in Sasuke's direction, waiting to see how Sasuke could 'redeem' himself.
"Was the Dark Lord's name, by any chance, be Tom Marvolo Riddle?" Sasuke asked.
The room remained silent, only a few had paled at that name, Snape inclusively. The lack of reaction seemed more like the room's occupants did not know the Dark Lord's true name.
"Yes, that was the Dark Lord's name," Dumbledore confirmed.
This was met by gasps and mutterings.
"Why did you ask that?"
"Because I needed to confirm something," Sasuke paused, "In this case, I did not gave away anything - he had already known about the existence of ninjas for over a year,"
"What?" Sirius's response was mirrored by the rest of the room.
"A year ago, he approached my…then-teacher and signed a contract with him,"
"What was the contract?" Dumbledore asked.
"It was for a…spell, the Secondary Summoning,"
Fox looked up and straight at him at that, the slight tilt in his head obvious - you deciphered the scroll?
Sasuke nodded briefly in Fox's direction, "He could Summoned snakes by spilling a little of his blood and performing a simple hand-seal. The contract is in two parts, one with me and the other, I presumed, is with him. Both parts have to be destroyed in order to break the contract,"
"Summoning of snakes…that isn't very good news for us, is it?" Bill asked quietly.
Dumbledore sighed heavily, "No matter. It would not affect our plans much, we would just have to work around it," He paused, "Thank you Raven, for that information and for protecting Harry yesterday,"
Sasuke bowed a little again.
Once they were out of the room and out of earshot of anyone, Naruto bombarded him with questions, "How did you decipher that scroll? Were you hurt yesterday? What did you guys did at St. Mungo's? How was St. Mungo's like?"
Sasuke blinked, taking in the questions, "Well the words that we thought was jibberish made perfect sense now, look," Sasuke pulled the scroll out of his vest.
Naruto's eyes travelled across the paper, taking in the kanji of Sasuke's and Orochimaru's name as well as the names of the Dark Lord and some of his Death Eaters, "It was written in English?"
"Exactly. That's why we could read it now, not before,"
"Damn. Hold on, if this is a Secondary Summoning contract and Orochimaru's dead…that means they're using your blood to do the Summoning?"
Sasuke nodded, "Seemed like the Dark Lord was prepared, in case Orochimaru died. Forced Orochimaru to force me to sign the contract as well, as backup,"
"Yes, well prepared," Naruto nodded absentmindedly as he continued staring at the scroll, "So, my other questions?"
"No, I wasn't hurt. We only visited Mr. Weasley and you'll find out about St. Mungo's in a few days since they will be visiting the place again,"
"Spoilsport, can't you give me a more detailed explanation or something," Naruto huffed a little, "Fine then. Hey, tell me about your fight," Naruto said as he stepped over a wire that was stretched across the room.
Hermione had arrived the same day as Naruto did and along with Ginny and Ron, managed to pull Harry out of his self-induced blaming. Hermione was then filled in about the guards and had proceeded to eye their masks suspiciously. Like the rest, she had found the fact that there were only two guards strange and coincidental to the fact that there were also only two exchange students.
Of course, this brought up questions about Naruto and Sasuke and Hermione had confirmed that the two of them were still in Hogwarts the day after the Harry and the Weasleys left. According to her, there was nothing unusual about them.
Hearing Hermione, Sasuke had inwardly thanked Naruto for not making him seemed out-of-character and Naruto, as though he had heard the thank, directed a huge grin at Sasuke (though the mask was covering this but Sasuke just knew that Naruto was somewhat smirking).
Ron had quickly enquired why they were not invited to Number Twelve and Hermione had gently reminded him that the rest of the Order were not aware that the two of them knew about the Order. Ron wasn't pleased and had shot the two guards rather furtive looks, clearly uncomfortable with them having to pose as Naruto and Sasuke while they were out in public.
Harry then raised the question - the Death Eaters clearly had children in Hogwarts and they would surely report to their parents that the exchange students were still in Hogwarts, so wouldn't the appearance of Naruto and Sasuke outside Hogwarts raise suspicions and cause danger to the actual Naruto and Sasuke?
In response, Hermione had calmly continued buttering her bread and informed Ron and Harry that they had gone back to their village for the Christmas break. So there was nothing to worry about. And the Death Eaters most likely have never seen Naruto and Sasuke before since the chance of their children taking a picture of them is close to zero.
The next few days passed by easily, the residents of Number Twelve were busy putting up Christmas decorations. Fox and Raven were also enlisted (since the twins insisted that they were slacking and that they should help).
However, there seemed to be something strange happening. Every time it was needed for one of the guards to climb a ladder, the ladder would somehow break or collapse. And if they were hanging baubles, there would be this hook beside them that seemed to move with them and was very near to their face. Not to mention the number of hidden wires and traps that lay across the room that seemed to disappear whenever someone else other than the guards walked through. Or the fact that many people seemed to be bumping into them and their elbows would come amazingly close to the guards' faces.
Naruto was very sure that this was the twins' doing with the help of the rest of the Order who stayed after the usual meetings. But for what purpose…he wasn't sure. If it was an attempt to trip them or cause them embarrassment, it was definitely not working.
On the other hand, Sasuke seemed to know exactly the reason why and he only grimaced each time Naruto asked him about it when they were alone. Which was actually quite often since there wasn't really a need for them to keep following Harry around when the only place he could go were his room, the living room, the dining room and so forth. You get the picture.
It wasn't until when a wire had appeared out of nowhere and grazed the side of his mask did Naruto realised what was going on. They wanted to see what was behind the mask.
Naruto had grinned outright and proceeded to share his plan with Sasuke, wanting to get back at them for all the trouble they had to go through (Sasuke wasn't very willing but he had, at least, agreed that he wouldn't stop Naruto. Which, was good enough for Naruto). In short, he was going to scare the residents of Number Twelve until they gave up their attempts. If they wanted to see what was behind the mask, then they were going to get a shock of their lifetime. Smirks.
Naruto made sure that the casts were all in the room before slowly ambling in, closely followed by Sasuke. Fred and George had exchanged glances with the rest of the occupants and discretely, the rest seemed to be moving into their respective positions.
Naruto waited and then it happened.
Something white shot in front of his path (Crookshanks, who seemed to know the plan as well and was collaborating, was let loose by Hermione), followed by something brown and white that was circling near his head (Hedwig and Pig, probably in an attempt to get him to follow their movement and get dizzy) accompanied by a few trap wires to make him trip. Tonks had rushed forward to help him out and in an act of clumsiness, knocked away his mask.
He could almost feel the tension in the air, waiting to see whether their newest plan had succeeded as Tonks knocked (more like whipped) his mask off. Their shining faces glowed with anticipation before they managed to register what they were looking at.
There was silence for a while.
Their reactions were summed up by Ron justifiably, "Where in bloody hell is your face?!"
Tonks stumbled backwards and was caught by Sirius before she fell onto the ground. Ginny and Hermione had let out a small scream and were looking at Naruto in horror. Mundungus had turned white, yelped and ran out of the room. Even Harry, Ron and the twins were looking at him, ashen-faced.
Harry thought Fox looked worse than Voldemort did when Harry saw him returned. At least Voldemort still had some features left.
This was how Naruto's face currently looked like. In the place of his eyeballs, were two black and empty holes that never seemed to close, as though he doesn't blink. His nose was replaced by two holes and his mouth became just a line, no lips. As he opened his mouth to speak, all the others could see was a huge black hole and some sinew stretching from the top of his mouth to the bottom.
Ron could almost imagine flies and other insects flying out from the holes in Naruto's face.
"Put your mask back on!" Hermione screeched after recovering from her shock, interrupting Naruto from whatever he wanted to say.
"But I though you guys wanted to see my face…" Naruto slowly pulled his mask back, allowing the others a clear view of the gaping hole that was his mouth.
"Not like that," Ginny said in a higher-than-normal pitched voice, "Not when that was clearly not your true face,"
"How could you be so sure? For all you know, I could have suffered something terrible in the past and ended up like that,"
"Because we know full well that you could see and the face we saw didn't have any eyeballs," Sirius had spoken up.
"Maybe I don't need eyeballs to see," Naruto had replied simply.
The occupants were still staring at his face and as Naruto and Sasuke made their way to the kitchen, a few of them backed further away from them. Just in case.
"Argh, I'm gonna have a nightmare now," Tonks said after they had left the room, "And I had to be the one that was closest to that face," She scrunched up her face in disgust.
Fred turned to George, "That was bloody cool! How did he do that?"
"Hey Tonks, when you were up close and personal, did you happen to see any flaws on his face? Like maybe some indication that he used a mask or magic to make it seemed that way?" George asked Tonks who promptly shook her head.
"Too bad Moody isn't here," Ron said feverishly, "Otherwise he could tell whether there was a spell or not,"
"Actually, wouldn't Moody be able to see past their masks and see their actual face all the time?" Harry asked aloud.
"About that, we asked Moody already," Fred indicated to himself and George, "Every time he tried, he said that he couldn't see any faces behind the mask. As though there wasn't any, no holes or anything at all, just blank skin,"
Ginny shuddered, "That's as creepy,"
"I guess they were using a skill of their village," Sirius said thoughtfully, "I mean, they can even change their whole body's image, changing their face to be that just to scare us must be easy,"
"I told you it was a bad idea to try to de-mask them. They wouldn't be guards if they could be caught by you guys," Hermione gently chided the twins.
"Hey, don't blame us, you helped in this too. Remember, you let Crookshanks loose," Fred reminded her.
Hermione turned pink a little.
In the kitchen, Sasuke raised an eyebrow at Naruto (which went unseen since their faces were covered by the mask), "Was that necessary? You seemed to have scared them a little,"
"Aw, it'll be alright," Naruto said as he bent down to examine the contents in the refrigerator, "They seemed to have already recovered. Besides, this will get them off our case, wouldn't it?"
"Still…"
Naruto's masks turned to face him, "Oh, dear Raven feels bad about scaring people! I should have known you were so kind-hearted under that stoic mask of yours," Naruto teased him.
"Shut up. I don't feel bad,"
The residual atmosphere created by Naruto's mocking tone caused Sasuke to squirm a little.
Just a little only. Really.