It was mid-day and still nobody had talked to anybody and it was driving Naruto mad. Not talking about things was not how he handled conflict. How the hell were you supposed to move past anything if you wouldn't even talk to the person?

They had all been very respectful of Hermione's edict. The whole morning, all of Team 7 carefully kept their distance. No one tried to sit next to Harry or talk to him in the halls. They even politely pretended that they weren't watching his every move. Harry needed some space and they could give him that. Well, as much as reasonably possible while still running a protection job. Harry was usually a pretty nice guy but he had that Uchiha temper and stubbornness sometimes and Naruto knew all about dealing with that and sometimes the best thing to do was give them a little space to mull over something - but it was already past lunch time and Harry hadn't even so much as looked their way!

Naruto was ready to start climbing the walls or something.

And Sasuke wasn't any better! He refused to talk about last night. He seemed to take Kakashi-sensei's criticism that he was too emotionally involved in the job to heart and now wasn't responding to anything. Naruto was pretty sure shutting down entirely wasn't exactly what Kakashi-sensei had meant, but again, there was no middle ground with Uchihas. It was all or nothing. And Sasuke seemed to be completely on the nothing side.

Fine. That was fine. It wasn't the first time Sasuke had royally messed up dealing with people and it wouldn't be the last time Naruto swooped in to fix it for him. So before their last class of the day could start, Naruto made sure he managed to slide up alongside one of Harry's friends just as soon as there was a gap. It was one of the few chances to get one of them alone, but Naruto figured this was the kind of conversation you had one-on-one.

"Hi! Can we talk? We should talk. Sasuke's an idiot," Naruto opened with and he figured it was a safe segway. Few people argued with that statement these days. Sasuke Uchiha might be a certifiable genius and child prodigy, but anyone who spent more than five minutes with him soon figured out he could be as dumb as dumb could be. Such as last night for example.

But this brilliant opening didn't seem to work on Hermione. She stared back at Naruto with the same slightly shocked, mostly outraged, look people used to give Naruto all the time when he tried to talk to them. Good thing Naruto was used to bullying his way through that.

"Like, he's a huge idiot. I should know. I grew up with the guy. He's far more stupid than most people realize. It's the serious nin poker face. You'd be amazed how many people fall for that. In reality, he's really bad with people. But he's tryin', you know? He's trying really hard. And he's really sorry about last night. Honestly. I know he might not look it, what with all the frowny faces and silence and everythin', but that's Uchiha for 'I'm really upset'."

"I don't care if he's really upset," she interrupted him suddenly. She had at least stopped to listen to him but she had her arms crossed over her chest and had a look on her face that if she'd actually been one of Naruto's classmates (back when he had still been in school) he would have been very nervous about retaliation right about then.

"Right. No, of course not. Understandable. I don't care either. Well, no, yes I do, but I get your point, is what I mean. But like, when can he actually talk to Harry again? Because he really ought to talk to Harry again. It's not good for them not to talk to each other like this. Mistakes were made. Really bad ones. I get that now. I mean, we're not always good at understanding how civilians work, but we are really tryin' and nothing's more important than family and Sakura and I will do better at makin' sure Sasuke doesn't do anything stupid. He just sometimes gets carried away, you know? With the worrying. He does a lot of that. One big giant worry wart these days. Ha ha ha."

Except she clearly didn't find it funny. If only she had known what Sasuke had been like back when they were kids. How much things had hurt all the time and the way he had kept it all bottled in right up until it had exploded out everywhere. Naruto would have given just about anything to fix that for him and now here they were! Sure, there were bound to be mistakes. No one was good at something overnight, not even genius prodigies like Sasuke. But that didn't mean you stopped trying.

Except maybe some people did.

"I have class," Hermione informed him stiffly. "And if Harry doesn't want to speak to your friend, then he's not going to. He's certainly not going to anytime alone. Now if you will excuse me, I have things to do. Some of us actually get something out of class after all."

"Right, yeah, sure, thanks," Naruto mumbled even as she sidestepped him and marched off. Naruto rubbed his face wearily and ignored the other students staring at him as they made their way to class. Well, that went swimmingly. He hadn't gotten shut down that badly since the last time he'd tried asking a girl out on a date. He knew this wasn't going to be easy, but it didn't suck this bad normally. Though normally he wasn't also feeling like a pile of shit for having let things get this bad in the first place.

Harry had every right to be mad at them. But he was also in danger and he needed Team 7. Somehow they had to convince him of that again.