"You promise to give this a try, right 'mione?" Harry asked again as they made their way carefully down the empty halls to the suite of rooms being used by Team 7. Sneaking out for training had become a regular part of Harry's week, so it didn't take a lot of concentration to keep one eye on the map. It had been almost three weeks since he'd gone down for practice – probably the longest he'd gone without seeing Sasuke – but the route was still the same. Normally he didn't have company though. Hermione and Ron had held firm to their insistence that Harry not go alone, even after he reassured them that he wasn't going to forgive Sasuke any time soon.

"Why do you keep asking me that?" she replied suspiciously. Everything had Hermione suspicious these days. Or maybe it always had but now both Harry and Ron kind of also were.

"I'm just checking. I really do think I'm making progress. I've at least gotten really good at defense."

"You can't be doing any worse than they are," Ron chimed in helpfully. "Not so much as a Leviosa charm out of that lot and it's been months."

"I don't think magic is something you learn overnight," Harry countered, even if he did appreciate Ron's attempt at solidarity. It really wasn't fair, after all. Harry sure hadn't learned chakra overnight. It had been a slow painful process so far, and he'd only manage just a little. Not that his cousin seemed pleased with his progress, but at least it was something.

Hermione huffed loudly but going by the way she glared at the empty hallway in front of them, it wasn't them she was annoyed with. "Oh, trust me. I've gotten to hear an earful about how important this training is. I'm not actually trying to sabotage things, you know."

Harry bumped his shoulder into hers. "I didn't mean it that way," he promised. "I just want to get through tonight as painlessly as possible."

She shoved back just as good naturedly. "You sure you're up for this? You're the one this is the hardest on, I mean."

Harry gave her a smile. "It's fine. We've certainly had worse lessons."

"Yeah," Ron chimed in cheerfully. "At least Northstein hasn't tried to kill Harry yet this year. All and all, I think we're doing swell."

"Really Ron, swell?"

"And god, don't jinx me," Harry laughed and then laughed even more at the confused look on Ron's face. Wizards meant something much different when they talked about jinxes but sometimes Harry forgot. "I don't need any more bad luck," he clarified, so Ron wouldn't feel like they were laughing at him or leaving him out on something.

"I think we can all agree on that one," Kakashi-sensei chimed in.

"Bloody hell!" Ron yelled, staggering backwards but pulling his wand at the same time. Hermione managed to limit herself to only a full body twitch as Kakashi-sensei suddenly appeared in the hallway next to them. He was walking as calmly as if he'd been a part of their group this whole time.

He scrunched his face up in his version of a smile and drawled "some points for effort, I suppose," in his usually back-handed compliment kind of way. It figured that he'd like the fact that Ron almost hexed him but would still not actually be impressed.

Harry groaned. "How long have you been there?" he asked. He thought he had been getting better at knowing when one of the nin was following him, but apparently not.

"Not long," Kakashi-sensei replied cheerfully – which could mean anything. "Just making sure you made it to lessons. All of you," he added, sounding a bit annoyed by the additions of Ron and Hermione but at least he wasn't arguing about it. Team 7 hadn't wanted any more people involved than strictly necessary, but Harry had made a deal with Hermione and that meant no more training alone. "Just being a responsible teacher and everything," the man continued as if nothing was amiss. "Say, just how many people have tried to kill you?" he added in a bland, conversational tone of voice. Harry couldn't tell if he was impressed, annoyed, or merely curious.

"Let's focus on the task at hand, hm?" Hermione interjected. Harry gave her a quick smile, grateful that she understood how much he did not want to get into all of that now.

"Oh, very well," Kakashi-sensei agreed, which was almost worse than him arguing the point. He either already knew the answer or was confident in his ability to figure it out on his own. Harry sighed again as they filed their way into Team 7's improvised classroom. The last thing Harry needed was Sasuke finding more reasons to be overbearing.

The sitting room of Team 7's quarters was much the same way it had been for all of Harry's previous trips down here. It may have felt like ages, but it had only been a few weeks. But Harry supposed that was what happened when you went from visiting almost every other day to not talking to people. The furniture was still either pushed to the side or stacked up along the back. They'd left the rugs in place, but there was more than one scorch mark on them. And miracles of all miracles, the worktable in the back was actually completely clean off. Harry was fairly certain he had never seen that. There were always books and papers stacked up on it as the team tried their best to make sense of the wizarding world. And if someone wasn't working on that, then they were sharpening a set of kunai or making more tags or had left a stack of dirty dishes from a late night the night before. Now all of that was whisked away somewhere and not by the House Elves since they weren't allowed in. Which meant someone on the team had actually cleaned.

He dropped his stuff in his usual corner and didn't look at the others. The rest of Team 7 had been waiting for them patiently, almost lined up along one wall as if they expected an inspection. None of them said anything though. Not even a hello. They seemed determined to be no more than observers while Kakashi-sensei did all of the talking. It was very odd – particularly for Naruto – but Harry didn't care. He was here to train, not to talk to anyone about anything.

Hermione and Ron had paused in the doorway, likely taking it all in. The room hadn't been changed that much, but compared to the coziness of the Gryffindor dorms or the clutter of most of the classrooms they used, it probably looked very spartan. The nin weren't big fans of keeping around anything that wasn't useful. Harry had never been one much for collecting clutter either, so he'd always kind of liked it. But he supposed to someone else it must look very cold.

Finally Hermione snapped her focus back onto the task at hand and marched into the room. And while Harry had always known Hermione was very brave, watching her get up in Sasuke's face without even a hint of hesitation just solidified it. "Since you can't manage to conduct yourself in a civilized manner, Ron and I will act as adult supervision. Harry may benefit from these exercises, but if I get even a hint of the kind of behavior we witnessed last night, not only is this over but I will follow through as promised. We'll just sit over there then," she announced before walking stiffly over to the hearth as if determined not to make herself comfortable in their space.

"What she said, asshole," Ron added before going to join her. He was a bit more reluctant to pull out his homework once there, but Hermione pushed one of her self-made study guides towards him silently. Harry had used them himself a time or two before and he knew how much of a boon that was. Normally it took a bit of wheedling and promises of better scholarly behavior to get her to share. Apparently, Ron was very much in her good graces at the moment if she was handing it over without him even asking and Ron was bright enough not to argue.

"Do we have a problem?" Kakashi-sensei inquired politely, now standing just close enough to loom.

"No," Harry and Sasuke both replied sharply.

"Absolutely," Hermione chimed in without looking up. But thankfully she didn't go into it any more than that.

"Oh dear!" Kakashi sighed. "Sasuke – don't fuck up the mission any more than you already have. Harry, I do hope you understand the importance of being frank with your nin guard and not putting lives at risk by negligently withholding information."

Harry kept his face carefully still and didn't blink. No, he definitely didn't have anything to share. And he sure as hell wasn't going to change his mind just because Kakashi-sensei tried to manipulate him into doing it. If he had been thinking before about trying to obtusely give some kind of explanation or clue about what he and the Headmaster had been trying to do these last few weeks, he sure as hell wasn't going to now.

Kakashi-sensei sighed dramatically. "Become a teacher, they said," he muttered before clapping his hands. "Let's get to work!" he announced.

Harry didn't look at Sasuke. He didn't know how to. He was still mad. Fuming, really. But he also felt like shit for dragging his cousin into this and he knew that their stupid fight wouldn't have happened in the first place if it hadn't been for the fact that Harry had to keep secrets from him. Training was hard to do when you couldn't even look at the other person, much less talk to them. And sure, Harry ought to be able to just get over it and focus on what was important. But he was also worried that if he opened his mouth, the two of them were going to end up yelling again. Or worse.

"Come on, Harry," Sakura said quietly. "We haven't done stretches together in a while, let's warm up with that." Technically, Sasuke was the best at flexibility, but Sakura had him beat at understanding how the body worked. She had explained it once, that Sasuke was all reaction and no science. It hadn't really made sense to Harry but Sasuke had grumbled in that muffled sort of way he only did when he wanted to argue about something but couldn't. It was the kind of ribbing he was used to seeing between the members of Team 7 - full of insults but somehow always meant in the best way possible.

Why couldn't he and Sasuke have more arguments like that and less of the yelling violent kind?

Sakura joined him for the basic warm up before switching to helping him with the more difficult positions. Sasuke stayed exactly where he had been standing when they had entered the room and watched silently the entire time. Because that wasn't creepy or making it difficult to focus or anything. He still didn't say anything to Harry. In fact, he'd done a damn good job of ignoring Harry for weeks now. And it wasn't that Harry wanted to talk to Sasuke but it didn't seem fair that he should be the one to get the silent treatment either.

Naruto wasn't capable of being silent or still, however. And he hated stretching. So it wasn't too surprising to see him eventually making his way closer and closer to where Hermione and Ron were camped out, slowly becoming encircled by bits of parchment and books as Hermione got to work in earnest.

"What's that?" Naruto asked in his quietest, most respectful voice. It was a bit squeaky, like a small child asking for sweets, and it was surprising enough that it nearly made Harry lose his balance.

"A book," Hermione replied plainly, not looking up and sure as hell not cutting him any slack. Which seemed a bit harsh to Harry. Naruto hadn't actually done anything wrong that night, but it seemed Hermione was just as pissed with him as she was Harry's cousin.

But Naruto wasn't one to be deterred. "…is it a good book?"

Harry tried not to laugh. Hermione was of the firm belief that there was no such thing as a useless book, even if some were pretty awful (she had read all of Lockhart's works after all), but she also wasn't the type to blithely answer such a question.

She looked pained for a moment, as if she couldn't decide whether to brush the question off or launch into a detailed analysis of the author's ability to convey information in an intelligent manner. "It's about reverse transference runes."

"Oh. Um, is that good?"

"It's useful," she replied curtly. But it didn't take long for her to sigh and add, "Harry mentioned your translation jutsu. Reverse transference runes are the most likely equivalent we have. It's worth investigating."

"Can you do a translation jutsu?" Naruto asked excitedly. "I mean, magic. Can you do that with magic?"

Hermione's hesitation was much briefer this time before she slid a piece of parchment closer and gestured at something written on it. "There are spells for translating specific pieces of text, but they're spaciously limited and usable only to the caster. There are also spells for translating the spoken word, but they work on your perception, tied to the part of your brain that translates your native tongue into something that makes sense. Under such a spell, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between someone speaking in English or another language. Creating something that allows you to not only read but also speak, that translates but doesn't superimpose the language, that's far more complicated and most likely is a combination of rune magic and charms, but it would take significant concentration to make something like that works, and frankly, I don't think it's possible. And that's not even touching the fact that you'd have to find a way to cast that on another person and maintain it…"

Poor Naruto had glazed over at some point but was dutifully nodding along with everything Hermione was saying and seemed to legitimately be trying to understand some of it. Harry wasn't surprised. Sometimes even some of the teachers looked like they were a bit overwhelmed when Hermione started to present an original idea. But he certainly made a good effort of it.

"But you could break it down into pieces?" Kakashi-sensei asked. He had settled against a far wall, book still in hand but his eyes focused on the papers she had spread out like he planned on 'borrowing' them.

But Hermione shook her head. "An approximation only. It's almost as bad as trying to make magic and science match up. Both are capable of similar solutions to a problem, but still vastly different and never actually the same thing."

"Disappointing," Kakashi-sensei declared before going back to his book. Hermione flushed but said nothing and Harry wasn't sure what he could say to make it better. He was still certain that if anyone could figure this out, it would be Hermione, but it was disappointing to once more hit a dead end.

"Maybe we could try some exercises?" Harry asked in an attempt to change the subject before someone said something really rude. Doing something active would make him feel a lot better, and maybe if it was impressive enough he could show to Ron and Hermione just how important it was that he kept doing training with Team 7 and how much they really were helping him prepare for any future fights.

"Certainly!" Kakashi agreed with all of the mock cheer the man was capable of. Harry wasn't quite sure what Kakashi-sensei thought of this whole mess, but he certainly seemed annoyed with someone. And maybe it wasn't Harry since Kakashi declared "Sasuke! You look like you could use some exercise. You're up first."

Which was fine, normally. The nin were all eager to take turns practicing against magic. Harry had trained with all of them countless times. They'd set each other on fire, or shocked one another, or done any number of other things as part of trying to work out the difference between Chakra and magic. But that had never been while they were angry with each other.

"Problem, Harry-kun?"

Harry took a deep breath. He didn't want to have to be the one to flinch on this but Hermione was right. Dueling wasn't something two people who were mad at each other should do. If an argument like this had been going on between anyone else he knew – like two people in DA club – then Harry would have put his foot down on any kind of sparring. It was not a good idea to mix personal feelings with training. There was a reason the last dueling club fell apart, after all. Letting the same kind of behavior go on between himself and Sasuke wasn't the responsible thing to do and Harry was trying so hard to be the responsible one these days.

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said, trying to sound calm and firm and not as embarrassed as he felt.

Kakashi raised his one eyebrow. He didn't ask why Harry thought it was a bad idea. "Really? I would have thought you would have appreciated the opportunity."

Harry flushed even more, now both humiliated and suddenly angry at the implication. He didn't have to look at Hermione to know she was following this whole debacle closely. "No, sir."

"Harry, what is he talking about?" Hermione asked but they both ignored her.

Kakashi-sensei sighed. "It really would be the best way to clear the air," he grumbled before pushing himself off the wall. "But if your delicate sensibilities aren't up for it, I suppose you'll have to settle for working with me."

Normally Kakashi was the worst taskmaster when they practiced. He was completely uninclined to take it easy on Harry, and frequently reminded him that he had to try harder if he expected to get anywhere. But right now, practicing with him seemed far superior.

"Right," Harry agreed, moving towards the center of the room. The singed carpet under foot was mostly for his benefit. The best he had managed so far was dodging or deflecting chakra attacks and that process more often than not led to him landing on his butt. When he and Kakashi practiced curses, the older man did a much better job of not falling over. Of course, that sometimes meant that he intentionally let the curse hit him instead, but he swore up and down it was helpful. That the only way to learn to fight something was to experience it. But they hadn't made a lot of head way on that front, and still the nin's best defense or offense was their speed. It wasn't always enough, particularly since Harry knew that was their method, but it was better than nothing, he supposed.

"Do you want to go first or should I?" Harry asked. He couldn't remember where they had left off last time. Usually they alternated so neither one of them got too banged up in the process.

"Ah, let's stick to magic," Kakashi-sensei suggested in that way he had that wasn't really much of a suggestion but more a statement of fact.

Harry frowned. "But shouldn't we show Ron and Hermione how Chakra works?"

"Maybe another time," Kakashi-sensei answered cheerfully.

"But they're here now and - "

"Not the right time and place, Harry-kun! Let's keep it simple, yes?"

And really, Harry didn't know what was going on anymore. Sasuke wouldn't talk to him, Naruto was being polite, Kakashi-sensei was checked out, and Harry was sure somehow that this was his fault. Or at least his responsibility to fix. How exactly he was supposed to do that, Harry had no idea. There was nothing for it but to finally glance over at Sasuke. The other boy had been silent ever since they arrived. Literally standing in the corner as if he expected the shadows to swallow him whole. It was frustrating having him hover and glower like that, particularly since Harry had kind of hoped that training might help make things normal between them again. But maybe Sasuke was the one who didn't want Harry to learn Chakra anymore. Going by the rather ugly look on his face, he wasn't happy with his teacher for some reason.

Harry wanted to groan. Ninjas. Why did everything always have to be so complicated? It was getting hard to keep straight who was allowed to be angry at who.

Harry gave up trying to make sense of it and instead moved into position. He'd have rather practice using Chakra since it would have let him show Ron and Hermione that the ninjas really were impressive. And that by extension they were helping him become stronger. But perhaps there was some logic in not having any of them flinging sharp knives at him or trying to set him on fire. Kakashi-sensei was the best at somehow defusing stinging hexes and they'd been working on that for weeks now. One out of three times, Kakashi-sensei managed to block the spell. He described it as redirecting, but Harry sure didn't see the magic going anywhere else. It just kind of fell apart. But it was working, which was great. Except for those times that it didn't. A smarting stinging hex wasn't the end of the world but they all knew it was only a placeholder for something nastier. And if they couldn't find a way for the nin to reliably defend themselves, they were still in a lot of trouble. None of them had managed even the most basic spell yet, so their only option was defense.

Sakura pulled Sasuke back to a safe distance from where they dueled while Naruto moved to hover by Ron and Hermione. For a nin, it was clearly a protective stance. Harry couldn't help but flash him a grateful smile. Ron and Hermione weren't exactly the friendliest people right now, and they were making sure everyone else in the room knew it, but Naruto was just as stubborn. He might not have looked comfortable crouched on the far end of the hearth, but he stayed on guard duty, determined to keep within reach. Just in case.

Harry took a deep breath. These were the reasons he liked his cousin and his crazy friends. They were loyal and reliable and looked out for each other. They may also all be bat shit crazy sometimes and have awful tempers, but Harry wasn't too far off from that point himself.

Kakashi-sensei was already waiting impatiently for him by the time Harry took up his position, so Harry didn't waste any more time before firing off the first curse. He'd learned early on in these practices to take them seriously. To aim like he meant it and not to hesitate. Because if one of the nin thought he was going easy on them, they wouldn't hesitate to zing him back just to make a point.

Kakashi-sensei didn't try to dodge – that would defeat the point of this kind of exercising. They all knew Kakashi-sensei had plenty of experience at avoiding an attack – especially one that he knew was coming. What he needed to work on was how to stop the attack he couldn't avoid. The first one hit home with a sharp crack that sounded more like a slap and hurt just as much. The only reaction from Kakashi-sensei was a scowl of frustration, unhappy that he'd already missed the first one. The second one Kakashi-sensei managed to nudge just enough off target that it zinged across the stone behind him, making his already fluffy hair quiver. Better. They continued for half a dozen more tries, most of them with limited to no success. Kakashi's theatrics tapered off as they both set into to work. It was a grueling unpleasant task, but they were finally starting to see a little progress.

Harry honestly hadn't been counting how many hexes had hit home and how many had not. The nin probably all kept a running tally (obstinately, for research purposes but more likely to rib each other over). So he wasn't sure exactly how many times he'd managed to hit the Professor before Hermione yelled at him.

"Harry!"

"What?" he yelped back, turning immediately to see what had gotten her so worked up. They'd barely even started and surely none of the others could have done anything wrong in the space of time they'd been working.

But Hermione had completely discarded her work, leaving it piled at her feet while she stared at him with something that was part glare and part shocked outrage.

"What'd I do?" Harry asked. Because he knew that look and it never meant anything good for him.

"I think that's enough, don't you?"

He frowned. "Enough what?"

"It's clearly not working!" she exclaimed. "What exactly do you hope to accomplish at this point?"

"Oh. Well, no, it's not going great, but we really are making progress. He's getting some of them now. When we started, he couldn't block a single one. That was really frustrating. It's much better now."

"Better? You're just hexing him over and over again."

"But he's blocking some of them. Sometimes."

"And what about the rest of the times?"

Harry frowned back at her. "What about them? Hermione, this is how you learn something new."

"No, it's not!" she practically yelled.

"Yes, it is!" he said back almost just as loud but nowhere near as worked up sounding. "It's how I always learned something!"

"By having someone hex you?"

"Yes! I mean, no. I mean, normally not hexing but it's the most effective, right?" he pointed out, glancing over at Kakashi for help. The rest of them had gone suspiciously (and maybe wisely) silent, but they'd talked about this. "Kakashi-sensei says the best way to learn something new is through incentive and muscle memory. That consequences are what get you to push through."

The man in question just shrugged when Hermione turned to stare at him. He didn't say anything.

"They're really good at what they do," Harry continued to explain, because maybe Hermione just needed more context. She was always a little leery of new things. "This is how they learn stuff and it's the fastest way to do it. To figure out this chakra-magic thing."

His attempt to win her over with well-reasoned logic and practicality blew up in his face spectacularly. Hermione went from looking ready to tear her hair out to looking very much like she wanted to punch someone again. "And is that how you practice learning chakra?" she asked in a very level tone of voice that guaranteed any answer was not going to be the correct one.

Desperate, Harry took to mimicking Kakashi and shrugged helplessly. "I'm getting better?" he finally offered. Because that was the important thing, right? "I can almost block certain elements like Fire and Wind if I'm really focused and don't think about it too much. Really, the quicker, more instinctive it is for me to respond, the better I do. Kakashi-sensei, why don't we show them that?" Harry suggested. Because he wasn't convinced he wasn't just digging himself deeper and maybe a demonstration would make it better.

Kakashi-sensei was watching Hermione closely. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Harry-kun," he replied mildly, without looking away.

"But I'm finally starting to get it right every now and then!" Harry argued.

"And how many times did you get it wrong before that?" Hermione demanded sharply.

Harry tried to wave that off. "That's not important!"

"How many times?" Hermione repeated.

Harry scowled back at her. "Who cares how many times?"

"I do! I want to know how many times they've hexed you!"

"Okay, I think that's enough training for one day," Kakashi-sensei announced cheerfully. "All good little children back to their rooms."

Harry sputtered. "Hermione!" he yelped. "That's not what this is! You're overeating. It's just training. It has nothing to do with Sasuke hitting me."

Kakashi-sensei groaned and muttered a long string of curse words that even the translation jutsu couldn't keep up with.

Harry looked back and forth between them. "Look, can we just talk about this later?" Harry asked, because this was starting to get very uncomfortable and far too similar to the other night.

"Who's idea was this?" Hermione demanded.

"Mine!" Harry shouted back.

This time it was Ron who groaned. While Hermione and Harry had been fighting, he had been slowly but steadily shoving all of their school things back into their bags. No matter what happened, it was clear that this training session was over with and none of it had gone the way Harry had planned. They were all on their feet now, staring at him like this was a disaster and he was in the middle of it.

"Harry," Ron announced, finally joining in the conversation. "You're still a really shit liar. Can we get the hell out of this place now?" He was standing at Hermione's elbow, calm in the wake of her shaking rage except for the way he had his bag strap clutched tightly in one hand.

Hermione snatched her bag from Ron and yanked it onto her own shoulder. "Leaving," she agreed. "Now. And not coming back."

"Hermione!" Harry exclaimed. Because she didn't have the right to make that kind of decision. And she shouldn't freak out the nin like that. Harry had already agreed to stay away from Sasuke for a while, to let things cool off between them. But he'd explained to her how important this was for Harry's training and the war effort. She couldn't just decide he wasn't allowed to do it anymore.

Hermione was already halfway to the door, however. Ron hung back enough to nudge Harry along. The redhead just shook his head when Harry looked to him for some support here. Ron and Hermione were clearly once more in agreement about this, or maybe it was more accurate to say were still in agreement on it. Which was usually the sign that Harry had truly messed something up, but while he could see her point about it being different to get into a fight with someone you cared about, this wasn't anything like that!

"We do training all the time!" he complained. And it felt like he was endlessly repeating himself. It was all very reasonable and he didn't know how many more different ways he could say the same thing, but clearly he had to do a better job of explaining it because they just weren't getting it.

"I have never seen you repeatedly hex another student before," Hermione snapped back, "and frankly I'm ashamed that you would let yourself be bullied into doing so now."

"No one's bullying me into anything!" Harry argued.

Hermione spun sharply to face him, a scowl on her face. "Oh, so you thought this was a fine idea the first time one of these brutes suggested it?"

And no, of course Harry hadn't. It was a bit more intense than the methods Harry was used to. But then again, he'd never had someone so focused on keeping him alive no matter what. "They're just trying to help," Harry told her.

Ron patted him on the back, nudging him forward at the same time. "You don't need that kind of help, Harry."

"You cannot stop his training just because your delicate sensibilities are offended," Sasuke announced. "What we're doing here is more important than your petty temper tantrums."

Hermione rounded on him without hesitation and Harry couldn't help but think that if she had been a nin, there probably would have been something thrown at him. Which, now that he thought about it, was kind of a violent reaction and maybe expecting that out of people was a sign that Harry was spending too much time with the nin.

"You're one to talk about being too immature to manage your own temper. Frankly, you lot are clearly a much larger threat to Harry's safety than anything out there. We'll take our chances, thanks. Just like we have up until now. Because out of the people in this room, only three of us have actually fought Death Eaters and come out the better for it."

Sasuke scowled right back at her, an even match for being stubborn at least. "I've killed far more people than you have. Why don't you go back to your lessons and let the people who actually know something about surviving life or death situations handle this?"

Hermione snorted. "Sounds like you'd be much better suited to the other side of this conflict. And yes, we will go back to our lessons. All of us. Because Harry's still a student too, in case you missed that bit. And someone has to look out for his wellbeing since it's clear all you care about is whether or not you get to fight someone and nothing about how he actually lives in the meantime. You stick to what you apparently know best – killing people. I'll stick to being Harry's friend. Because what he needs now most of all is a friend. Not something like you."

Sasuke snarled at her and took a step forward. Harry's stomach dropped and he pushed forward to get a hand on Hermione's elbow, unwilling to let this go any further. Apparently he wasn't the only that that was enough for. Naruto grabbed the back of Sasuke's collar and Sasuke twisted around and took a swipe at Naruto for it. Naruto turned with him, pulling the both of them back a couple of steps in an odd kind of twirling dance that skirted the edges of someone getting a bloody nose. Sasuke cursed at him, even as Naruto let him go finally.

"Enough," Kakashi-sensei announced. "We're done here. Harry, we'll discuss this later."

"You'll discuss it with the Headmaster," Hermione shot back. "I'm not standing back again and doing nothing while a teacher hurts Harry. I had no choice last year, but I sure as hell do this time."

"Not the same," Harry groaned. Because honestly, he did not want to go through the disaster that was Umbridge right now. He may have neglected to fully explain that debacle to the others. And it wasn't exactly like it was a secret here at school. If they started asking questions, they were bound to find out all of the more sordid details sooner or later.

But Kakashi at least was distracted enough that he didn't seem to catch the slip. "We have work to do," he explained slowly, respectfully, as if he thought that was somehow going to change Hermione's mind. Harry could have told him that wasn't going to work.

"Then I suggest you explain to the Headmaster or Professor McGonagall why your work involved hurting a student! Professor Northstein was right about you," she told him viciously. "Not because you're from a different place, that idea's stupid. But you aren't qualified to teach children and no one should trust you with them. If you want to continue lessons, then it's going to be just like DA Club. We'll need another adult wizard present. If you can defend your stupid training regime to them, then we can talk."

Kakashi-sensei started to say something back, but seemed to think better of it. He was far too serious for Harry's taste, however. This was possibly the longest Harry had ever seen the man not reading porn or making some kind of snarky response. Instead he was watching all of them carefully as if he thought there was a deadly trap in front of them but he hadn't figured out a way to work around it yet.

"I understand you have some concerns," Kakashi tried.

"You have no idea," Hermione interrupted.

"And I'm sure we can come to some kind of compromise."

"Not likely. This was the compromise, and clearly that was a terrible idea. Stay away from us and stay away from Harry."