Chapter 52: Who Let the Dogs Out

. . . Or Hari Teaches Remus the True Meaning of a Right Hook

Hari looked up from the owl-delivered letter. "Do you think we're going to move on from the basic Celtic runes today?" he asked Hermione.

She looked up from her book of Celtic runes. "Considering that I'm reading this for class today?" she replied. When Hari only cocked his head to the side, she closed her eyes. "No."

"Oh good. I'll see you in class."

X

X

Hari hummed as the plane came in for final descent at O'Hare. It wouldn't have been professional to use other methods of transportation; his dad had always told him that the best part of the job was getting to see the world. Uncle Kisame always added that was supposed to include then meeting interesting people and killing them, but his dad never laughed.

He gave the nice flight attendant a polite smile and wave on his way out of the jet. Uncle Sasori had told him to always be polite to the help when they were helpful, in case you needed them to be helpful again. Besides, she had been kind enough to ignore him not stowing his luggage overhead for the flight. Just because he wouldn't have obeyed if she'd asked didn't mean that he wasn't grateful for her being nice.

When he got out of the airport, he unzipped his suitcase and let the dizzy dog out. "See, Sprinkles? That wasn't so bad, was it?" He patted the dog. "At least this time we're not going to have to take a boat, right?" He had noticed that his dog was not good with boats. "Let's go get something to eat."

While he did so, a few clones broke away from him into an alley and proceeded towards the South Side. Thankfully, the client had been more particular about the target, so it only took them a few minutes to identify the particular building they wanted. Then they settled in to wait.

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Hari smiled at the flight attendant who let him onto the plane. It wasn't the same one, but she had no doubt needed to continue on to another flight as part of her job. Nevertheless, it was always good to make a good impression on people who would do things for you—even if you could do it yourself, you never knew when you might want someone else to do it for you (Uncle Sasori again).

He patted the top of his suitcase when he settled into his seat in first class. "Just another flight, nothing to worry about."

X

X

The clones had been watching and now accounted for every subject. Half of them spread out to pay a visit to various street corners and homes of mothers with adult children. The rest began to gather chakra.

X

X

"Good morning, Hari."

"Hey, Tracy." Hari absently swatted Sprinkles away from a link of sausage.

"Did you hear about Chicago?"

"What about it?"

"Some big gang war. One gang lost their heads and blew up the other gang's base of operations, along with everyone who lived in the building. And killed everyone not there at the time."

"No, I hadn't heard." Hari looked up fascinated. "Was anyone hurt?"

". . . I just said the building blew up and a bunch of people were killed."

"So no then?"

Daphne found herself actually smiling as she got to be in the position of comforting her friend about the insanity around them instead of the usual configuration. "Let it go, Tracy."

"Hari?" Tam asked as she watched the puppy she'd conjured turn into stone, then gelatin desert, then back to puppy. "Where are you going?"

"I want to have a word with Girl-Tobi."

"It's two in the morning."

"And?"

X

X

The Fat Lady didn't wake up when her portrait swung open. Sprinkles was wide-eyed that Hari had just used some sort of override word to get by without needing to use the password. The dog was so stunned that Hari had to drag him over the lip of the portrait-hole and into the Common Room.

"Good . . . morning, Professor Potter," greeted a Seventh Year who was pouring over a model of a Quidditch Pitch. "What brings you to Gryffindor?"

"Just want a word with Girl-Tobi."

"Oh. I just saw her go by with a bucket of ice-water and humming something that I'm having trouble getting out of my head."

"I thought so." Hari gave Oliver Wood a polite nod and walked up the stairs towards the boy's dorms. Sprinkles looked around longingly as his butt struck each stair on the way upwards.

Hari pushed open the door to the Third Year dorms just in time to see Girl-Tobi about to dump the bucket on the ginger sometimes-idiot. "Girl-Tobi!" he said sharply, causing her to drop the bucket bottom-first onto Ron's face.

"OW! Fred, George, I'm going to kill you!" Ron snarled as he tried to rise and spilled the water all over himself. "MOTHERFUCKERS! My balls are freezing!"

"Your sister hasn't been keeping up with her practice. You need to speak to her at breakfast."

"Professor Potter?" asked Ron blearily as he wiped water from his eyes. "Why're you here?"

"I wanted to have a—" Hari's words were cut off as Sprinkles spotted something and went mad, leaping at Ron with jaws open, snarling murderously.

"OHMERLINNOIDON'TWANTTO . . ." Ron trailed off mid-terrified shriek when Sprinkles was yanked up short by Hari and landed on his back, flailing wildly. "Die? Oh."

"Ron!" Neville was reaching for his wand as he roused himself. "If there isn't a good reason for waking me up, I'm going to kill you so badly your mother will be in pain."

"I'll help," added Seamus as he grabbed at the hunting knife he kept at his bedside on a recommendation from Professor Potter (who had instructed them to make sure they had extra options for dealing with threats, especially when waking up).

Ron dodged to the side as Dean Thomas decided not to wait for threats and just fired a low-grade piercing hex (more like a mild scratching hex) at him without waking up.

"Bad Sprinkles!" Hari scolded, beginning to batter the dog about the face with a rolled up newspaper. In his other hand, he held both the leash and a spray bottle, which be began to use liberally on the giant dog's nose. "Excellent responses, lads," he added to the boys who were now awake (aside from Dean Thomas, who had rolled over and pulled a pillow over his head).

Girl-Tobi took the opportunity to wander out of the room while the rest of the boys tried to get a handle on the situation.

"I'm proud of Girl-Tobi; impromptu ambushes to ensure proper alertness is an excellent addition to the curriculum."

X

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Albus Dumbledore walked creakily down from the bedroom above the Headmaster's office. He was getting too old for stairs. He sat down in the chair on the far side of his desk and reached across to collect some paperwork. He glanced up, "Good morning, Professor Potter," he said and bent his head to get to work. "Wait . . ." he looked up again. "Why are you in my chair?"

"I had something I have to tell you."

"Up!"

"It's importa—"

"UP!" Dumbledore snapped. He glowered when his comfy chair began to float two feet above the ground. "Thank you. Now get out of my seat." When Hari had hopped down, Dumbledore rose and walked around his desk. He glared at his seat for a moment and then gripped a leg and pulled it back to the floor, sitting down and frowning as the chair bobbed back upwards gently. "You are a wit."

"Thank you, Professor Headmaster."

"You said you had something important." It was distressingly hard to give someone a proper imposing stare from two feet above the ground, and not staying in place but going up and down in a rather relaxing sort of way.

"You know Professor Kitty?"

"If you mean Professor McGonagall, yes. And I will thank you to never call her that to her face. Or her back. Or, in fact, in any way that she might learn of it."

"Okay."

"What about her?"

"You know how she can turn into a cat?"

"Yes."

"Is that common? Turning into animals in general, I mean."

"Not terribly. I have a feeling I'm not going to like the answer to this: why do you ask?"

"Well, were there supposed to be any others in the castle?"

"No." Dumbledore paused. "Wait. What do you mean by 'were'?"

"Well, the man who was pretending to be a rat left an hour ago."

"The who did what?"

"The man—" Hari began and was waved into silence.

"Yes, yes. Thank you. Where was this rat?"

"Gryffindor dorms. Third Year boys."

"Ah. The Weasley rat, then. Or, rather, the Weasley not-rat . . . who has been in my castle for the last twelve years . . . and slept in the beds of my wards . . . this is getting worse by the moment it seems." Dumbledore scrubbed at his face with a hand. "Alright. What's done is done. I'll have a word with the Weasleys later and figure out how to explain this mess. In the meantime, if you see any other not-animals, please let me know immediately." Dumbledore sighed again. "Why are you holding your dog up?"

Hari was lifting the massive dog almost a foot off the floor by its collar. To achieve this, Hari had stood on the chair he'd been occupying. The back of the chair. The dog pawed desperately at the leather choking it, tongue lolling. "Well, you said . . ."

Dumbledore blinked. Then it caught up. "Are you saying that your dog . . ."

"Is a not-animal? Yep."

"How long have you known?"

"Since I found him."

"It's turning a little bluish."

"Yeah."

Dumbledore decided to worry about that later. There was someone in his castle who wasn't supposed to be there. "Why hasn't he turned back?"

"Special collar I got for him."

"I see. Do you know what he looked like normally?"

"Stubby Boardman."

Dumbledore froze. "Please take the collar off him."

Hari looked downcast. "But then he won't be Sprinkles."

"I don't really care. Do it anyway."

"Alright." Hari undid the buckle and the dog slammed butt-first into the floor and whined for a moment before transforming into a scraggly man who seemed to be trying to work out where to hide.

"I'm innocent, I swear Headmaster. Please don't kill me!"

Dumbledore conjured shackles that bound the terrified man to the wall. "I'm listening."

"I didn't betray the Potters! I wasn't the—"

"Secret Keeper. Yes. I know."

"You did?"

Dumbledore's response was to just look blankly at the man.

"Right. Albus Dumbledore. I didn't kill those people either!"

"Oh? I recall you being found standing in the midst of the destruction, laughing like a loon." Dumbledore cocked his head. "I love alliteration."

"It was laugh or cry."

"Well, with the loss of your friends . . ."

"I meant Peter."

"Why would you be upset after killing him?"

"Because I didn't!" Black said pleadingly. "I was going to, sure. But the little fucker did the job for me. Sort of. I thought he'd been trying to kill me with the explosion and so I was laughing that he'd missed me and only gotten himself." Black looked down. "And twelve innocents, come to think of it."

"Well, that's an interesting story."

"But he fooled me, too. He survived. Little bastard was always good at getting out of jams. Cut off a finger and hid in a sewer during the mess."

"And you know this . . ."

"Because I saw him in the paper. Sitting on the Weasley kid's shoulder."

"Sitting on . . . he was a rat animagus?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"Which makes James the stag. That explains a lot." Dumbledore stroked his beard. "I wonder why Remus is at the Gargoyle." A wave of his wand released Sirius and conjured another chair. "Have a seat. We have some work to do now."

"What do you mean, Headmaster?" asked Sirius as he sat down, enjoying being in human form.

"Well, the person who is guilty of your crimes has gone missing. You are a mildly wanted criminal—well, technically you're wanted as Stubby Boardman, since no one was going to admit to a pair of breakouts so close together."

"I'm all for going and hunting the son of a bitch down and killing the everloving shit out of him," Sirius offered. He turned to Hari. "By the way, you are a terrifyingly familiar person. It's rather like if James had Lily's sadistic streak. I'm so proud of you for pranking me for two months because they're not here to do it."

"Who?"

Sirius looked crestfallen.

"I will brief you on your godson later," Dumbledore said. "You'll need it. Trust me on this."

The door slammed open. "Professor Dumbledore! I think Sirius Black is in . . . no . . . cent." Remus trailed off as he spotted the man in question sitting in a comfortable chair, apparently engaged in conversation.

"Hey Remus!" Sirius said as Remus closed the distance between them and punched him in the face. "OW! What was that for!"

"Peeing in my soup."

"I was aiming for Snivellus!"

"Oh. That's okay then." Remus punched Sirius again.

"What was that one for?"

"Going after Peter instead of looking out for Harry."

"I'm right here, you know," said Hari. "I'm glad I ended up with my dad."

"You ended up with—" Sirius began before being punched a third time. "What was that for?"

"Laughing at me for the last month and a half."

Sirius frowned. "It's not near the full moon," he said, looking up from his position on the floor. "So why are you PMSing now? OW!" The last was because Remus had just kicked him in the face.

"You did that wrong," said Hari.

"What?" asked both Sirius and Remus.

"Your technique is lousy. We're going to have to work on that."

Sirius staggered to his feet and took a swing at Remus, pitching forwards when Remus stepped back.

"Better," commented Hari.

As Sirius struggled up, a book smacked into the back of Remus's head. Sirius beamed. "Cool! That works. Thanks for the training, kid." He went to clap Hari on the shoulder and missed when the boy was suddenly elsewhere, slamming face-first into the puffy arm of the chair and rebounding to land on the floor.

X

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==Outtake==

Dumbledore scowled when the boy vanished.

"What's wrong?" asked Snape.

"I hit the brat with something like a dozen compulsion charms, fifteen loyalty hexes, and the Imperius. Twice."

"So he's under your control now?"

"No."

"He resisted all those? You're really good at them, though."

"No . . . he just didn't seem to notice I'd cast them on him."

"Oh."

"No Occlumancy shields either."

Snape was about to speak, paused, and changed what he said. "You didn't get in?"

"Nope. Even tried direct eye contact and now I have a headache."

"Huh."

"It feels like a magical headache, too."

Snape nodded. Magical headaches resisted potions. "I'll get some acetaminophen."

"Thanks." Dumbledore replied.

X

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Hari found that the family in the Limehouse district didn't remember him, but quickly ingratiated himself despite their suspicions with a mastery of Japanese with a Kyoto accent that astounded them. He also rented his office space (after removing the previous owner and changing the deed in the city records). He would have purchased it the normal way—he planned to do that back home once he got around to heading back to London—but he wanted to be sure that he had his address when the employer contacted him.

He had emblazoned a red cloud on the frosted glass in his door (he'd gotten the idea from a movie he'd seen when passing a theatre. Or maybe it was from books. Regardless, he felt that it gave his office a finished sort of look). While he was at it, he'd taken out ads in Soldier of Fortune and sent letters to his previous clients, soliciting work at discounted rates in order to build up a name for himself. He also had Shadow Clones beginning dossiers on various persons of interest and had begun to build his network in London since he had some time.

That the letter saying they had his retainer showed up within a week was a pleasant surprise that stirred his ninja curiosity. As he left a staff of clones in charge of the office, he resolved to find out how they managed to raise that much gold so quickly.


(A/N Spoon 1)
I'M BACK! Okay, so John and I haven't had a chance to actually see each other the past few days, so John told me to just write the title and A/Ns and post this chapter myself. And look! An actual matching title this time!

(A/N Spoon 2)

John will undoubtedly correct me if I'm wrong but this chapter's been planned for a while. Either way, it's a favorite of mine.

(A/N Spoon 3)

And no, Hari didn't TECHNICALLY teach Sprinkles how to magic, but he did drag the dog everywhere, which means Sirius sat in on all his wandless magic lessons and picked up a few things.

(A/N Spoon 4)

As for the outtake this time. No one really thought Manipulative Dumbles would willingly let his ace go without controlling spells on him, right? To be fair he did, but not by choice, and it probably won't be the last time he tries dragging Hari under his thumb. That should be fun. Also, a challenge. Anyone want to guess how Dumbledore got the money so fast?