Despite what was happening in Harry's personal life, the rest of the world continued on. Harry's work with the Headmaster still dominated much of his free time and it was probably both the most important and the most maddening 'research project' he had ever had. Their primary source of information had mysteriously - and violently - been removed. Under circumstances that were still confusing. The Headmaster had ideas about what Voldemort may have used to create his horrid Horcruxes, but he needed Harry to help identify and find them.
It was frustrating, but at least Harry finally had a concrete task to do. One that might actually make a difference. The only down side was – he couldn't talk about it to anyone. The Headmaster had been very insistent on that point. At no time was Harry to discuss what they worked on with anyone. Not Ron and Hermione. And certainly not Team 7.
"After all, we've already lost one lead," the Headmaster had murmured. And for a moment, Harry had to remind himself that Team 7 couldn't have been involved in Slughorn's death. They had no way of knowing where Harry had gone. They'd been at the school before Harry and the Headmaster had even returned. And surely they wouldn't have killed a man.
Right?
Not exactly a question he could just come out and ask. Certainly not now. He was still avoiding Sasuke and every time they did happen to speak to each other, it always seemed to end in one of them being nasty about it. Harry hadn't seen much of the rest of Team 7 either, not since that last training. It just didn't seem right anymore and he didn't know what to say to any of them. He still saw them in classes – Sasuke shared all of them with him after all. But it was like the translation jutsu had failed. He didn't know how to talk to them anymore and every time they tried to talk to him something terrible seemed to come of it. It was like the summer had been a world with different rules, and now that they were back in the real world, Harry just didn't fit in theirs any more.
The weeks leading up to Christmas dragged on in a painful grind of getting nowhere. This wasn't a spell he could go look up in the library, or a tricky bit of runes that someone like Hermione could help him figure out. Harry had to understand how Voldemort thought. Predict what he would have done decades and decades ago. Back before anyone knew the name Voldemort. Harry had to get inside his head – the very thing he had spent so much of last year trying to avoid.
It was grueling. It was impossible. It was damn lonely.
Ron and Hermione did their best. They very carefully, pointedly, did not ask any questions. Meanwhile, just as pointedly, Team 7 tried to follow Harry everywhere he went regardless of whether or not they had been invited. Naruto whined and groveled and tried to guilt Harry into talking to him. Sakura tried to appeal to his sense of practicality. And when that failed, resorted to flattery. Sasuke just glowered. He was doing better at keeping his mouth shut and not saying something horribly offensive, but the staring was almost more grating.
Harry wasn't stupid. Just because he wasn't talking to Sasuke right now didn't mean that the nin weren't doing their job. Ron and Hermione might be content that they had cut all ties with Team 7, but Harry knew damn well they were still following him everywhere he went. And Nin were very hard to avoid. They didn't understand concepts like personal space or invasions of privacy. They looked at having something sharp thrown at their heads as only a warning not to get caught next time. Which really, when Harry stopped and thought about it, was part of the problem, wasn't it? They knew how to be sorry they'd gotten caught, not how to be sorry they'd done something in the first place.
So avoiding a team of nin when they lived in the same castle wasn't exactly easy. But Hogwarts was always Harry's home. And there weren't many people living that knew it as well as he did.
He also cheated.
It was surprisingly easy to avoid someone when you had an invisibility cloak and a magic map.
Harry couldn't avoid them always, but it was nice to have a little space. While Ron and Hermione might not be happy that Harry was slipping off alone to go help the Headmaster, they were very willing to help give the nin the run around.