AN: Wow, people really liked/hated the cliff hanger of the last chapter. O.O The reviews were awesome. I squealed about them. Hopefully this chapter lives up to expectations.

As always, thank you so much for all the great support, recommendations and encouragement!


Harry had seen many frightening and disturbing things during his short life time. From dead men rising from the grave to vicious werewolves to dementors. But nothing compared to Kakashi-sensei giggling. Harry scooted his butt to the left a little more and tried to put as much distance between him and the insane man as possible. Grown men shouldn't giggle. They definitely shouldn't giggle while reading a dirty book. It offended all sense of proper British behavior that Harry possessed. And it made him blush like mad. He did not want to know what was in that book. But all the giggling made it hard for him not to wonder…

Harry shook his head and turned back to watching the fight Sasuke and his friends called training. If Kakashi-sensei was content to ignore him, then he ought to be able to ignore the older man. After all, what better distraction could there be than what was happening across the field? It was hard to see from such a distance, but he could make out parts of it.

Sakura-chan was absurdly, frighteningly strong. He'd never heard of someone being able to punch through stone, but he suspected there had to be a charm or potion somewhere that would let a person do such a thing. And Naruto's clones! He'd thought the one alone on the bridge had been impressive. Apparently Naruto could make dozens and dozens of them. Sasuke was the hardest for him to follow. His cousin was constantly disappearing and reappearing, a knife always in hand and perilously close to one of his teammates. It had to be some kind of Apparation, but Harry had never seen someone use it so fluidly or so frequently. They were definitely using magic.

Harry couldn't help it. He scooted even closer to the action, eyes wide as he struggled to take in everything. The more he watched, the easier it became. He could almost keep track of Sasuke now. It was a little like trying to follow the snitch in the rain. Difficult, likely to give you a headache and leave you a little cross eyed, but certain not as impossible as everyone else made it out to be. It just took a lot of concentration.

When Sakura once more tossed one of Naruto's clones far away from her, Harry's hands twitched. She was so much smaller than Naruto. It didn't seem plausible that she should be able to throw him around like that. But she made it look as natural as breathing and Harry wanted to know how.

He ought to be taking notes. Imagine what he could do with the DA club. That particular arm twist move would be great for disarming a wizard.

The pace of the battle changed suddenly. Most noticeably, Naruto's clones disappeared and he stopped making new ones. The focus seemed to shift to Sasuke, but they also moved further away. There was a gentle slop to the field, but from this distance it was just enough that Harry suddenly couldn't see much of anything.

"Drat," he muttered before quickly pushing himself up to his feet. He glanced back at Kakashi-sensei, but the teacher was still absorbed in his orange book. He thought about calling out to the man, but frankly, after their passed few conversations and the increasing level of weird the man seemed to extrude, Harry wasn't sure he wanted to start another conversation. He was 80% sure the man said what he did just to mess with Harry. But he wasn't positive. And he didn't feel like pressing his luck. He wouldn't have to go far to see better, just a little higher up on the hill. He'd still be in sight if the teacher ever looked up from his book.

Harry moved a few yards away until he could see again. Naruto and Sasuke seemed to be struggling with each other while Sakura was backing away from something in the grass. Harry smiled and flopped himself back down on the ground. He folded his legs together, propped his chin on one hand and went back to trying to follow their moves. The wind was chopper here without the protection of the trees. It pulled at Harry's clothes and sent his hair whipping at his eyes. He brushed it aside with a growl of annoyance, but didn't look away.

That one particular block looked like it out to hurt like mad, but Naruto used it time and time again to stop Sasuke's attacks. Harry also made a small note to avoid getting in any kind of physical altercation with his cousin. While Harry was confident he could at least hold his own against anyone at his school, he was beginning to suspect that Sasuke would clean his clock if they ever got into it. Harry had lots of practice at avoiding Dudley and at outlasting Dudley when he couldn't be avoided, but Dudley's weight and cruelty had nothing on Sasuke's grace and effectiveness.

Harry could just imagine the surprised look on Dudley's face if Harry ever struck him with one of those chopping blows Sasuke used.

There was a rustle as the grass shifted and a faint hiss as the wind swept over the field. A quiet Harry rarely ever experienced in the crowded suburbs of Little Surrey or the busy halls of Hogwarts. The lack of noise made it easy to concentrate only on what he was seeing. There wasn't really any reason to glance down and to the right.

He saw the snake just in time to hiss out a protest.

The animal had already lunged, but its jaws snapped shut long before it reached its target. It small, scaly body dropped on top of Harry leg, across his arm, and slithered to a halt cradled precariously in his lap. It stared up at him, black empty eyes giving nothing away, but the utter stillness spoke louder than anything else could.

Harry's heart had leaped up into his throat for one brief moment there. He had a healthy respect for snakes and what they could do to a person's central nervous system but he also knew most of them were alright chaps as long as you didn't step on them. Even before that first incident at the zoo, he'd always liked snakes. After discovering his affinity for him, he realized that most snakes liked him too.

Harry shifted automatically to better support and balance the small reptile now curled in his lap. "I'm sorry," he hissed out, "if I disturbed your nest somehow. Is that why you were going to bite me?" It was always good to know why someone tried to hurt you and it never hurt to apologize in advance if you might have done something wrong.

The snake stared back at him silently. Maybe it couldn't talk. Though it certainly understood him. After all, it had stopped immediately once Harry spoke to it.

The wind shifted and suddenly Sasuke was crouched in front of him, eyes wide, knife in hand. Harry's head jerked up. His hands automatically went to shield the small weight in his lap and the snake finally spoke in disjointed words, "Not so tight, human!"

Harry instantly loosened his grip, but he kept his arms low so that the snake was almost out of sight. For all the good it would do. Sasuke's eyes were wide and focused solely on the animal in his lap. And they were red.

Not the red of a sleepless night but the red of something unnatural. Something dark and dangerous. Something like Voldemort. A shudder ran down Harry's spine and he had to fight the urge to clutch his new friend tightly to his chest. As if that would change things.

His cousin had red eyes.

He'd seen them before, of course. When he'd first met Sasuke. No one else seemed alarmed by the fact that something was seriously wrong with Sasuke's eyes. But sitting only a foot away from him, staring into those eyes, it brought up too many memories and too many developed instincts for Harry to completely hide. He sucked in another breath through his nose and tried to resist the urge to scramble backwards. He felt his own eyes widen impossibly as if he would be able to see more if he tried.

"Your eyes," he finally managed to say. "What's wrong with them?"

Sasuke ignored his question. "Don't move, Harry," he said. It did not help ease the thrill of panic Harry felt rushing through his blood. He needed space. He needed to put some distance between them. Give him a chance to breathe and think and try to understand.

"Harry!" Sasuke said in a sharp whisper. "Don't move! I'll get the snake, just – just stay very still."

Part of Harry realized he was cradling the snake to his chest like a child with a stuff toy – not that he'd ever had a stuffed toy like that, but he was able to see the humor in it. Could he be any more of a messed up freak? "What are you going to do with it?" he replied sternly. It was amazing how much easier it was to sound tough when he had someone else to take care of. He was also careful to keep his eyes just shy of meeting Sasuke's. But he couldn't help but repeat his question. "Why are your eyes like that?"

Sasuke said something rough and low that the translator spell wasn't prepared for. Harry didn't need it, however, to have a good idea what the word meant. It wasn't anything positive. "It's a bloodlimit," he whispered quickly. "It's a special skill, nothing more. My eyes are fine. But you need to be very careful not to move." Sasuke very, very slowly shifted the knife in his hand so that it was angled to go around Harry's arm.

Harry finally jerked back, scuttling awkwardly away. He kept one arm up over the snake and felt it shift to slither halfway under his shirt, burrowing for cover. "What are you doing?" he shouted.

With one arm holding him up and another protecting the snake, he didn't have a free hand to go for his wand. Merlin, he hoped he wouldn't need his wand. His magic was his own. He didn't want to share it. Not yet. Something purely instinctive in him didn't want anyone to know just how non-defenseless he really was. Something shallower in him for once didn't want to be the family freak. And something so deep he felt it in his bones and in every frantic breath didn't want to have to draw his wand on the first chance he'd ever had at a real family.

There was a pained noise form behind Sasuke and Harry noticed for the first time the crouched forms of Sakura-chan and Naruto behind Sasuke. Their eyes were wide, scared and it just didn't make any sense. Harry quickly glanced back over his shoulder, trying to figure out why. There was nothing behind him except Kakashi-sensei. Who was standing only a couple of yards away, book missing and both eyes uncovered. He had a red eye as well. For some reason, that one eye alone didn't seem as frightening as staring into Sasuke's. Maybe it was the long thin scar through it that made it seem more sad than anything else.

Sasuke made a grab for the snake. He moved faster than anything Harry had ever seen before. Almost too fast for him to even realize what had happened. But Harry kept one hand firmly covering the animal. "Leave it alone!" he shouted at him. The last thing Harry wanted to do was get into a tugging match with the snake as the rope, but he didn't trust Sasuke with his red eyes not to hurt it.

Sasuke backed off instead of wrestling for it. He made a face like it pained him to have to retreat, but apparently he didn't want the snake bad enough to risk angering it. His eyes darted from the animal up to Harry's then back down. "I can't – It's not – " he grimaced. "I can't control it. It's poisonous. Please. Just let me have the damned snake before it kills you."

Harry scowled at him. "It hasn't done anything wrong. I just startled it, that's all."

"It's a summons, Harry! They're only trained to do one thing and that's to kill."

"It is not!" Harry argued. "It's just another animal. Just because it's a snake doesn't mean it's evil."

"Actuallllly," the snake hissed, speaking up for the first time since Sasuke had appeared. "The sssmall-viper is true in his wordsss."

Harry glanced down, pulling his arm back enough so that he could see its tiny head poking out. "What?" he asked it.

"We are meant to kill," the snake replied. "It isss what we do."

The snake seemed to calm as it moved itself up front his stomach and along his chest. It seemed to want up by his neck, but its body was too short to make it to his collarbone. "I don't believe that," Harry told it firmly. "You didn't bite me," he pointed out.

"True," the snake agreed, "But it isss ssso rare to find a genuine man-sssnake."

Harry flinched. He might like snakes, but he didn't exactly appreciate being called a man-snake. That just had too many bad implications. Being a nose-less creature was just one of them. But apparently the snake had no problem being called a killer. It just didn't feel like killing Harry. Well. That wasn't bad, at least. Not exactly good, but Harry would have to settle for it.

And it was as if the wind had stopped blowing suddenly. It hadn't, it still swept across the field as unfeeling as the sky above, but everything else seemed frozen. Harry looked up slowly to find four pairs of eyes on him. "What?" he asked, finally noting there had been a hiss in his voice once he stopped doing it.

Crap.