Remember the Name
A Naruto x Harry Potter Crossover
By
EvilFuzzy9
"Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it... Of all things of thought, poetry is the closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art..."
– Hannah Arendt
A/N: This chapter was a real chore to write, for some reason. I just couldn't focus on it much. Luckily, the next one has proven much easier, and it will be an extra long one, in celebration of the fact that the first few chapters of Chamber of Secrets on Pottermore are now up.
Also, the Pensieve Poem (you'll know it when you see it) is my own invention, though you're free to borrow as long as you give credit where credit is due. :P
When it comes to magic, there are certain laws that every witch and wizard must adhere to, or else risk serious consequences – and I do not mean Ministry regulations and guidelines. These laws are what define the limits of magic, what can and cannot be done with it.
Magic, at its most basic level, is the process by which the Mind directly affects the Matter of the world around it. In its purest expression, magic is the power to change the world to reflect one's own desires, the power to make an illusion reality and reality an illusion. But this incredible power is not without limitations. All things have a cost, and no person can change the world around them with being altered themselves in some way, shape, or fashion. And the greater the change, the greater the cost. Now, most witches and wizards would never notice this within their lifetimes, as most magic had only a very little cost.
Most magic, but not all. For most spells, the toll was immaterial, but for some it was simply all too steep. Prices too high for any mortal to pay.
That was where the Fundamental Laws of Magic came into play, defining the boundaries of what men and woman could and could not accomplish without breaking themselves, and their magic, in the process. And the First Law was the most important.
"Tamper with the deepest mysteries – the source or life, the essence of self – only if prepared for consequences of the most extreme and dangerous kind."
Dumbledore pondered this and many other things as he led the trio of Cloud ninja to his Pensieve, which was swirling with the silvery-white substance of countless memories.
"So..." Omoi began awkwardly, looking around the small, sparsely furnished room. "...You wanted to tell us something, right? What is it?"
Dumbledore sighed. "Indeed, I do have something to tell you..." he said absently, sounding like his mind was presently occupied elsewhere. "And it is... hard... a very difficult thing to say... showing it to you may prove easier, of course... luckily, I still have the memory..." he muttered under his breath, hustling about and sifting through dusty old grimoires, swishing his wand here and there, levitating books and papers into and out of shelves and drawers.
Samui nodded softly, she and her team standing (more or less) at attention, patiently waiting for their employer to finish his train of thought and get to the point. Karui was scowling as she fidgeted with her headband, frustratedly worrying at a strand of her vivid, blood red hair. Omoi was chewing on his lip, eyes darting this way and that as he ran increasingly outlandish scenarios through his head as he silently fretted over the possible reasons for this meeting.
Dumbledore eventually turned his attention back to Team Samui, a weary look in his eyes. Silently, he gestured towards some sort of ornate stone basin, within which was a strangely swirling, silvery-white substance.
The trio stepped forward, their expressions showing varying levels of curiosity.
"What is that?" Samui inquired disinterestedly, gesturing at the ornate vessel and the fluid that filled it.
"I dunno..." said Omoi, shooting a questioning look at Dumbledore, who simply smiled at them indulgently, seemingly amused by their curiosity. "But those symbols on the rim look like they must mean something."
"I think it's a seal of some sort..." Karui muttered, analyzing the runes that lined the rim. "The overall meaning isn't clear, but... I'm seeing something that looks like 'memory', another character that looks like 'view' or maybe 'vision', and something about portals or windows into the past..."
She scowled, scratching her head and mussing up her hair in frustration.
"Gah! This is just a bunch of gibberish!" the redhead snapped impatiently. "I don't get how this seal is supposed to work at all!"
"I'm surprised you can even read it," Omoi responded. "I know a little about seal languages, but this doesn't look like anything I've ever seen before..."
Karui gave her teammate a look like she thought he was a complete idiot.
"Of course I can't read it," she shot back, "but it's not too hard to pick up on most of the meaning. You just have to feel it out," she explained, speaking slowly as if she were talking to a particularly dense academy student. "The characters themselves aren't that important in sealing languages, you see. It's all about the meaning behind them, and the intent of the person writing them. As long as you understand the meaning, it doesn't matter what language the seal is written in. Do you get it?"
Omoi stared at her, eyes half-lidded as he deadpanned, "Oy, oy... You couldn't explain swimming to a fish, you know... Not even if you used diagrams."
Karui smacked her male teammate on the back of the head.
"Bah. You're just too stupid!" she sniped back. "This is simple stuff. Even a little baby genin could understand it!"
Omoi bristled at this. "And what are you implying?" he demanded.
Karui snorted. "I'm not implying anything, jackass. I'm saying that you're an idiot!"
Samui sighed as she watched the mounting animosity between her two teammates. And to think that only a few minutes earlier they'd actually been bonding... What a headache.
Elsewhere, in a certain office at the Ministry of Magic beneath London, a certain bureaucrat was irritably sipping at a heavily sweetened cup of tea. The handle of the fluorescent pink teacup groaned as the death grip of the portly, pink clad quill-pusher put a nearly critical amount of undue stress on its structure. Her face, reminiscent in shape to that of a toad, was currently a violent shade of red as mean eyes glared death at a picture of a skinny, awkwardly smiling boy with messy black hair, striking green eyes, and a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.
The woman, Dolores J. Umbridge, Undersecretary to the Minister of Magic, was in a very foul mood indeed as she glared at the picture of one Harry Potter, hissing under her breath with her eyes nearly bulging out of her head. Her blinding pink cardigan was ruffled and bedraggled, and she looked like she wanted nothing more than to reach into the picture and throttle the boy with her bare hands. Or cast an Unforgivable or two on him. Whichever came first, really.
It was most infuriating, how that insufferable boy had stirred up such a panic in the public with his wild, outrageous claims of You-Know-Who's resurrection. If that wasn't bad enough, there was the fact that Dumbledore was even standing behind this boy and continuing to insist that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had returned. It had been a complete fiasco, and the Minister had needed to lean very heavily on the Prophet at first to cover this all up and convince the general public that everything was perfectly fine.
Everything was not fine, however. Potter and Dumbledore still had numerous influential supporters, even despite the boy's outrageous accusations towards several very prominent and respectable wizards. Even though most people still trusted the Ministry and understood that they weren't in any danger, the number of dissidents and malcontents was nonetheless significant enough to represent a serious potential threat to the Ministry.
That boy, Potter, had ruffled a good deal of feathers among the upper echelons of the Wizarding World with his vicious lies, and many of Umbridge's colleagues had expressed their desires for the boy to be somehow discredited. He had done so much damage to the Ministry's reputation and credibility that he could not be ignored. The matter could not be left as it was, they would say, if Potter wasn't silenced, wasn't made an example of, he would continue spreading those wild stories, and who knew what damage he would end up doing? And yet nobody did anything.
Oh, sure, they had done a fine job of discrediting Dumbledore so that only the most hardcore malefactors dared side with him, but the Boy-Who-Lived was another story. People, even if they did not believe the boy, still remembered the picture Miss Skeeter's articles had painted of a broken, traumatized, vulnerable orphan, and more than that, the fact that Potter was the Boy-Who-Lived, the one credited with destroying the Dark Lord and surviving the Killing Curse, the spell with which his parents were slain, with only a thin, lightning bolt scar to show it had ever touched him. Those who did not see the boy as a victim saw him as a hero. In ways, his words could potentially hold even greater sway over the minds of the public than Dumbledore's.
And with the disappearance of the boy from the Wizarding World, as happened every summer when he returned to living with those cretinous muggle relatives of his... Umbridge shivered. If that boy returned to the Wizarding World still insisting that You-Know-Who was back... even with the subtle smear campaign the Prophet was running, even though everything was still as peaceful as ever, people might very well be more inclined to believe him. They might think the boy had spent his summer harrying the Dark Lord's forces, or meditating in the mountains, or studying secret arts in a distant land, or something else equally ridiculous yet thematically compelling.
As long as the boy wasn't present to make claims of the Dark Lord's return, even with the Ministry and the Daily Prophet doing everything in their power to discredit him, his credibility was still at least partly intact. There was still a considerable mystique surrounding Harry Potter, and people might be more inclined to listen to him.
And this simply could not be allowed. No, not at all. Something needed to be done, and if anyone was sufficiently devious and cunning to do it, it was Dolores Jane Umbridge.
Yes, if everyone else continued refusing to do anything, then she would simply have to take initiative and do it herself. And she had a good idea of how to start...
Taking a quill and some parchment out of her desk, the Undersecretary to the Minister began to write.
'To whomever it may concern...'
"Sooo... this thing lets you go into a memory?"
"Indeed it does, Miss Karui," said Dumbledore, "Any memory that is stored within this Pensieve can be freely entered and viewed, though of course you cannot influence anything within the memory itself."
Samui nodded in understanding. "So Karui was reading that seal correctly after all..."
"'Place within my basin any memory you choose, reach beyond my surface if the past you must peruse. I am the vessel and the window for all you recollect, so use me now to store your thoughts, and later to inspect,'" Dumbledore said in English, reading the sealing runes glowing on the rim of the Pensieve. "It's not an exact translation, I admit, but the meaning is preserved all the same."
His eyes twinkled with humor as he added, "And besides that, I'd daresay it's rather catchier this way, don't you think?"
Omoi chuckled despite himself, and Karui groaned.
"Oh, god, not another one..." the redhead lamented under her breath.
"Hmm, yes," Dumbledore said with a nod, "Your master does have an appreciation for poetry and music much like my own, doesn't he? I must say, he is quite clever with lyrics and rhymes."
Samui smirked at the pained expression on Karui's face, and the bewildered one on Omoi's.
'Strange minds think alike, I guess.'
TTFN and R&R!
translation notes:
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