"Harry," Hermione opened with, with all the solemnity of someone delivering bad news. It made Harry's skin crawl. They hadn't gotten much further than the next floor up before Hermione had pulled them to a halt. She had both of his hands in hers, as if she felt the need to physically keep him there. It was suffocating, but he didn't know how to pull away without upsetting her more. Wasn't she happy enough that he had left with them when they demanded it? Why did everything have to be an argument?

"Harry," she repeated, until he caved and looked at her face. "Do you remember fourth year DADA?" she asked, without waiting for him to confirm that of course he did. "You remember how not-Moody chose to teach us?"

"This isn't the same!" Harry objected, because he could see where this was going and comparing the nin to secret Death Eaters was going too far. Despite whatever failings the nin may have, they were still honestly trying to do what was best.

"It is and it isn't," Hemronie told him. "I don't think Crouch Junior was actually actively trying to sabotage us when he was teaching. The man was crazed –"

Ron snorted. "Understatement of the year," he muttered.

"-but he was actually teaching us. It wasn't like Lockheart, who knew nothing. Or Umbridge, who actively tried to prevent us from learning anything. Crouch taught the lesson the way he thought he was supposed to. It was part of his cover, remember? He was trying to be normal and he did what he assumed any normal DADA teacher would do."

"It was somewhat helpful," Harry pointed out. Because it ironically kind of had been. Sure, it had been horribly unethical, but it had been because of those lessons that Harry had even known what the Unforgivable were. It was the most instruction he'd ever received on how to avoid them.

"Ends not justifying the means," Hermione pointed out patiently. And Harry kind of wished she was yelling at him more. It was easier to ignore her or assume she was just overreacting when she was yelling and scolding like she had Team 7. A focused Hermione was much harder to ignore. "He never should have taught us that way." She cut Harry off before he could object. "Learning about the Unforgivables was important. But the demonstrations? Putting Neville through that? Not combining discussion of such horrible curses with a detailed conversation about why they're unforgivable? To fourth years? Can you ever imagine having a DA meeting like that with some of our fourth years?"

"Alright," Harry said. "I think we can all agree that was a bit not good. But this is not the same. Sasuke and the others want me to be able to defend myself! And learn how to defend themselves so they can help. It wasn't like they asked me to do anything they weren't willing to do themselves."

"But you're not them, are you?" Ron pointed out. When Harry glanced over at him, he shrugged. "They're not normal, Harry. And I don't mean just because they're a little weird or come from somewhere else. They don't know how to not treat something like it's violent. Everything's a fight to them. They treat every thing and every one like it's going to stab them in the back at any moment. That's not normal and it's gotta have an influence on how they think and what they do." Ron paused, his face scrunched up like he was struggling to find the right words. Hermione had been nodding along the whole time, however, and she squeezed Harry's hands as if encouraging him. "It is sort of like Crouch. He assumed every problem was either going to be an Unforgivable or be solved by one. There wasn't any in-between for him, because that was what he was used to. And maybe we are going to have to face things like that, but that doesn't mean we have to accept them as normal."

"Nothing in my life is normal!"

"We know," Hermione agreed, not at all perturbed by his outburst. "All the more reason to be very careful about this. Same rule of thumb, alright? If it's something they feel the need to hide from the Headmaster, then maybe it's not a good idea."

Harry did have to hesitate at that one. They didn't talk about his chakra training with anyone else. And Kakashi-sensei had been reluctant to do their normal training in front of Hermione and Ron. As if he had suspected they wouldn't like it very much. But he hadn't had any issue with setting Harry against Sasuke, even knowing the two of them had been fighting and that it wouldn't have been fair to Sasuke. It wasn't exactly what a responsible teacher should have been doing.

And it wasn't like he didn't already know that the nin were prone to overreacting, taking things too far, and in general being far more aggressive than they should.

Still. "We hide things from the teachers all of the time," Harry pointed out, feeling petulant and unwilling to just agree that everything he'd been doing up until now was apparently wrong.

"Are you telling me you didn't have some reservations about this?"

Yes. Yes, he had. He had hated it the first few times around. Getting jutsus thrown at him had been scary but he had understood the need for it, he supposed. But he had hated flinging curse after curse at the nin and knowing it wasn't a fair fight. But he'd done it anyway because Kakashi had insisted it was necessary.

"…Maybe," he allowed. Because maybe Hermione was right. Again.

"Well, we have reservations about this too. A whole lot of them," Hermione told him and Ron nodded vigorously along. "So let's maybe err on the side of caution with this one. No more training. At least not for now. Not until we figure out a better way to do this."

No more Chakra. No more seeing Sasuke. But also no more bruises and welts. No more flinching every time one of the nin went down because they couldn't defend themselves. No more getting to bed late with shaky hands and the sinking knowledge that all this effort and it still wasn't working.

"Alright," Harry agreed. Because he really did want to stop. He wanted things to be normal again. Or at least as normal as they ever got for him.