Disclaimer: Don't own it, never will. ::breaks down sobbing:: And by 'it', I mean: Yu Yu Hakusho, Harry Potter, and Advil.

Read first, kill me later. Oh, wait… you thought I was already dead…?

Chapter 7: Holy Mother of Merlin

In the very last seat of the Potions dungeon-classroom, Hiei sat slumped in his chair casually, looking much like a delinquent, and a bored one at that. No one in the room paid any attention at the 'delinquent transfer', however, because Snape's potion was complicated enough without their attentions being divided. And even if they had turned back to glance at him, or to ask him if he had a little more ground dragon toenail, Hiei would have given that person a particularly vicious glare that would have surely scared the student out of his or her wits. After all, he was surely thinking of murder! Or—or abandoning Urameshi's team for the much more favorable Death Eaters!

Little did anyone know, Hiei's thoughts were not on betrayal or criminal activities, but rather on the night to follow. Why? Well, for starters, there was this tiny thing called guard duty and he had to spend it with—of all people!—Yana.

Personally, Hiei wasn't thrilled—though he supposed he should be thankful that they hadn't paired him with Kuwabara.

"If I have to explain bloodstained floors in the morning…" Kurama had said, a rather ambiguous threat trailing at the end as they switched the name cards around once more. Hn. And, as he was constantly reminded, the murder of a human was punishable by something less than enjoyable, at the very least.

Whatever. As though he would waste his time murdering such a pathetic human.

In any case, they had decided the order of the hall patrol with Kurama's dormitory as their little meeting place. This week's guard patrol had been mainly scheduled around detention—Yusuke's—as well as the relationships between certain people. Example: Kuwabara and Hiei on the same night equaled a no-no. Kuwabara and Yusuke equaled an "Are you trying to doom this school?" whereas Kuwabara and Thia equaled acceptable.

Of course, no one quite knew how well a Kurama and Thia night might go.

Idiots. They were both idiots, in Hiei's opinion. Why would they willingly choose to over-complicate their relationship—whatever that was?

"Mr. Hiei, where is your potion?"

Hiei glared at Snape.

He hadn't made one. Maybe if he had been bored, he would have, but today's class was rather entertaining. Longbottom had already melted his cauldron twice (along with the soles of several people's shoes), Yusuke's exploded several times, and Weasley's cauldron had regurgitated a malevolent-looking gray something (No—one—asked. At all.) a while back.

So, no, today, Hiei was not bored (or at least as bored as he could have been). And therefore, he did not feel obligated to make a potion. Furthermore, everyone else knew they weren't students. Why the hell did this fool expect him to act like one?

"Hn."

Snape gritted his teeth, but moved on to the next group.

"URAMESHI! What—is—that!?"


Later that day, Harry tramped through hallways and down stairs until he was finally at the Defense classroom, where Snape was waiting for him. The Potions Master did not look like he was in a good mood.

Harry could see why. On the greasy-haired teacher's right stood Malfoy. On the left, lounging against the wall, was Urameshi. Both students (or student and—whatever the heck Yusuke was supposed to be called) were looking kind of (okay, extremely) restless.

Three proud boys, two of whom would willingly rip out the third's liver, and the one teacher who would simply love to kill all three of them—even his Oh-So-Precious Malfoy—just to have some DAMN PEACE!! Add to that the fact that he would rather iron out a few of the many things that were making his life completely SUCK rather than spending quality time with them. Which was why…

"Potter, move it." Beneath his breath: "Damn it, Lee! Never on time—never!"

"Oh, hey Severus!"

The Potions Master spun around and struggled not to roll his eyes at her ridiculous costume—a bright orange bucket hat paired with an equally orange set of oh-so-stylish robes.

"Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy, and Mr. Urameshi, Professor Lee will be taking over your detention. I have, ah, other matters to attend to." Snape glared exasperatedly at Lee. "And Lee: do—not—mess—this—up!"

"Okay!" The short Defense teacher flashed a 'V' sign at Snape, who walked off with a flounce of his robes.

"Whew, now that that's over with! I had him for Potions when I was here, too! Doesn't want to admit it, but I was a fairly good Potions student, though, as he once put it, I tend to be 'chronically late'. Hmm. I do faintly remember him having to wake me up in the middle of class a few times…"

Yusuke almost took advantage of the teacher's absent state of mind in order to scram.

"Oh, right, into the classroom, boys!"

Opportunity lost.

"'Kay, so for detention, Severus (it's so cool—I get to call him by his first name!) wanted me to do something with organizing his potions in alphabetical order. But! I know only the coolest spell that can do that in no time at all. Which is good, because he has something like, 314 potions down in his private stores. I had to do that for detention once—pure hell, let me tell you. And there was this one bottle that had eyeballs—I think they were a newt's—floating at the surface. Cool, but really, really, really weird at the same time. And—

"Oh, right, detention. So instead of potion duty, I have a project in store for the seventh years, needs a bit of assembly, and I'm a bit too lazy to do it by myself. (Plus, I completely lost the assembly kit and spell.) Come now, it's in pieces in the classroom."

Professor Lee opened the door and stood aside for them to see.

"What the hell?"

Strange shards of silvery glass lay on the floor and gold and green pieces were scattered here and there. It didn't exactly look like a project—no, it seemed more like a rather large and lavish chandelier had been cut down from the ceiling and shattered on the floor.

"Yes indeed, Urameshi. As I mentioned before, it's supposed to be the seventh years' first hands-on learning experience for the term. I got it a few days ago, but I've been feeling a bit under the weather as of late, so I didn't even start it."

Under the weather?! echoed throughout the minds of the three boys present. If that was 'under the weather'… what was normal for Professor Lee?!

"Wait, Professor Lee, there are hundreds and hundreds of pieces here… what exactly are we supposed to do?!" Malfoy half-yelled.

"Oh, you know, like a puzzle! You have played with puzzles before, right Mr. Malfoy? Good, then you know what to do!"

"But—but—"

"There are too many pieces!" Harry interjected.

"Hmm. I do suppose I could have called for the fifty-thousand piece one with bigger shards instead of the three-million piece one with smaller shards… Oh, well! I'm sure you boys will do a fabulous job! I have to go grade homeworks right now, so I'll be over there. Tell me if you need anything!"

And with that, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher marched to her desk, put on a pair of soundproofing earmuffs (orange, to match her robes and hat), and took out a rather large stack of papers.

"…I hate puzzles," Yusuke muttered, and the two boys next to him nodded, for once in agreement.

"Do you think she'll notice if we leave?"

"Not particularly," Harry replied, grinning. A sign of Yusuke's influence, perhaps? Most definitely…most definitely.

Malfoy looked rather stunned.

"You're suggesting we skip detention?"

Yusuke smirked. "Have fun doing puzzles, Daddy's boy."

Malfoy looked back at the shards of whatever they were before turning to the door and half-running to it before Potter or Urameshi could get there first. On first contact with the doorknob, however, there was a crackling sound, and Malfoy pulled back as though he'd been sparked.

"What's the matter? Can't even open the door right?" Yusuke marched up to it and yanked at it, ignoring the crackling sound until—

Whump!

"Ow! Dammit!"

—a purple-ish light emanated from the door, catching the Spirit Detective off guard and balance and sending him sprawling onto his behind.

At her desk, Sorra Lee smiled a small, amused smile at the students.

"Did I forget to mention that I spelled the door? After all, detention is detention! No escaping punishment, you know!"

The boys stared at the teacher, rather frightened of her maniacal laughter.

Also quite frightening was the fact that this might actually be normal for Professor Sorra Lee.


Hours and hours into the detention (well, okay, 30 minutes), Yusuke flopped onto his back, uncaring of the shards of whatever the heck they were digging into his back and simply bored out of his mind.

"Boring. Boring. BORING!" Oh, man, he wanted to beat something up so bad… Kuwabara, maybe? Okay, so he was probably asleep 'cause he had the late shift for guard duty, but whatever. Or maybe Malfoy. Or maybe someone else. But GODS was this boring work. Puzzles equaled patience. Yusuke equaled edginess. Therefore, Yusuke and puzzles didn't mix. At all, dammit, at all!

Malfoy poked the seemingly unresponsive Gryffindor with a particularly sharp piece of glass.

Yusuke jumped into life, sitting up immediately, and pulling his arm back into a hitting position and letting his momentum do the rest. He hit Malfoy square in the jaw, the sheer impact knocking the pureblood clean out.

"Holy mother of Merlin!" Sorra Lee rushed to the Slytherin's side.

Harry tried to control the urge to cry out in triumph.

And Yusuke tried to look innocent, though his attempt was rather lousy.

"Urameshi, stand in the corner, facing the wall."

"What?! This ain't no kindergarten, lady!"

"Act like a child, be treated like a child, Urameshi. Malfoy is going to have to go to Madame Pomfrey's because by the looks of it, you've fractured his jaw, at the very least. And Malfoy, you should be awake by now. Otherwise, I'm going to have to get out the dragon dung."

The blonde's eyes shot open.

"Potter… get Malfoy down to the hospital wing—safely, may I add?—while I watch the three-year-old."

"HEY!"

"You're right. Two-and-a-half." Sorra pinched the bridge of her nose before consulting her watch. "All right. Malfoy, you've served forty-five minutes of his detention. Come back two days from now for the remaining portion. Potter and Urameshi: yours will resume the instant Mr. Potter returns. Now. On your mark. Get set. GO!"

Harry sighed and waited for Malfoy to hoist himself up from the floor—whimpering with every action as he clutched his jaw.

Detention…sucked. A lot.


Revenge! Revenge would be Draco's! No one—no one—got away with fracturing his jaw and sending him to the hospital wing in the care of Potter, who would have probably pushed Malfoy down a moving staircase if Lee hadn't forbidden it.

Yes, revenge would be oh so sweet.

He just had to think of how it would be done.

The platinum haired one yelped as Madame Pomfrey pried his mouth open to slip a few drops of bone repair potion down his throat.

Ouch.

"This should take about an hour to take full effect, so stay put where I can see you, Mr. Malfoy. No moving from that bed, do you hear me?" Malfoy nodded sulkily.

"I swear, children these days," Madame Pomfrey muttered to no one in particular.


Yana sauntered down the hall.

Boring. Boring. BORING.

Sigh.

Okay, so Hiei was supposed to be his guard partner, right? That meant they were supposed to stick together, right? And that meant that Hiei was supposed to find him after he'd GOTTEN LOST, RIGHT?!

Ah, well, nothing to panic over. Nope. It just wasn't worth going nuts with worry over. Nope. He just had to hope and pray to whatever gods there were in heaven that this wasn't that hallway. The one that Dumbledore had warned them of Lord-knows-when (at that feast, probably) and that Kurama and Kaitou had enforced the rule about.

Damn those moving staircase things… And why didn't they have maps all posted all over the school, hmm? Nothing too detailed, just something like one of those things with the arrows that said 'YOU ARE HERE' in neon letters and had the floor and stuff next to it. Yeah. Maybe he should suggest that to old Dumbles.

Where was Hiei again?

Mild thumping noises that sort of qualified as footsteps rang through the hallway—though they probably only seemed so loud because of the total and utter silence.

Intruder? Hmm… Mitsunari Yanagisawa, Hero of Hogwarts. That has a nice tone to it.

It was not to be, for 'twas only Neville, clad in his pajamas and walking around on the cold stone floors, no slippers, socks, or shoes, though he seemed oblivious to everything.

Yana stared.

Eh… what was this?

"Sleepwalking."

Yana almost jumped out of his skin. Hiei stood beside him, hands in pockets, with his eyes focused solely on Neville.

"Don't wake him—that is, unless you want to kill him. If that's the case, then be my guest."

"A…o…kay…"

"Watch him," Hiei commanded.

"But where are you going?"

The fire demon was dangerously close to either rolling his eyes or slugging the psychic. Or both. "Guard duty. I, unlike you, am doing my job." And with that, Hiei sped off.

"BUT WHERE AM I?!" Yana shouted at the place where Hiei once stood.

A huge clatter and clanking rang throughout the hall, and Yana spun around to see Neville's arms poking out of a pile of armor that had somehow managed to crash down upon him.

The psychic ran over to his house-mate.

Oh, man, what if he's dead, like Hiei said…! Cool, that rhymed.

"Ooh," Neville moaned, clutching his head.

"Heya."

Neville glanced up at Yana, doing a double-take before struggling to get up.

"You're a part of Urameshi's group, aren't you? What—what am I doing here?"

"Yup. And you were sleepwalking."

Neville gnawed on his lip.

"Oh… Oh, no…"

"What?"

"We aren't supposed to be here," Neville whispered, squeezing his eyes shut.

"Oh. So. This is that hallway?"

Neville nodded.

"Shit. Stupid moving staircases. Oh well. C'mon, man." Yana held out a hand to Neville, hauling the other boy up.

"What if someone sees us? What if we get expelled?" Neville managed to get out above his obvious terror.

"Yeah, yeah. Stop worrying. No one's going to catch us," Yana assured him as they reached the end of the corridor.

Peeves cackled.

"Little kiddies in the forbidden hallway? EXPULSION!"

Cackle, cackle.

Nonchalantly: "Shit, man."


"So you had to run from Peeves," Thia repeated as the two pairs were about to switch the guard.

Kuwabara laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"Yup. I brought Longbottom back, too. He looked scared."

"Wha—Oh, forget it. Hey, where's Hiei?"

Yana thought on this long and hard before answering Thia.

"I don't know."

"Are you blind, fool?"

Yana almost jumped out of his skin. Again.

Kuwabara laughed, and laughed, and laughed.

"Hn."


"Sooo… How was everything last night?" Yusuke asked as the group of them sat in a corner of the Defense classroom.

"Okay," answered Kuwabara; the second watch had been rather dull, just walking around and occasionally meeting up with Thia. No sleepwalkers or anything. Damn it, too.

"You heard about the Longbottom thing," Yana said airily before glancing at Professor Lee (sky blue robes, white sash around her waist, hair in a French braid without any unnatural colors, and blue and clear bracelets around her wrists).

"Yeah, yeah."

Pause. "Man, that lady's weird. Lee, I mean."

"You're telling me. I had detention with her yesterday," Yusuke answered, crossing his arms sulkily.

"What time did you get out at? Before or after the first watch began?"

"After," Yusuke muttered, glaring daggers at the teacher at the front of the room. "She made me stand in the corner for twenty minutes before I got on with the stupid impossible thing. Hate her…"

"KIDO! Answer the question, please?"

"Um… Yes?" the blonde replied, not even fully knowing what in the world he was answering.

"Correct! There are other ways, outside of the Imperius Curse, to control the will of others. One is persuasive speaking and the other… well, the other one will be covered sometime this year. I think. As soon as my Detention Crew can figure out how to fix the—oh, getting ahead of myself. Darn. Okay! Moving on.

"SHERWOOD! Look alive! Answer the next question!"


Thia leaned against a wall for support as she yawned behind a hand.

"Tired, I see," Kurama commented to her as they walked to the Great Hall.

No answer.

Her eyes were shut, and she looked like she was sleeping on her feet.

Sighing, Kurama shook her shoulder a few times to get her moving along again.

"I dreamed of dancing rabbits and a supermarket full of sodas that were all miraculously caffeinated," she murmured to him. "And Advil, too."

"It takes longer than fifteen seconds to begin the dream process," Kurama informed her, tugging on her elbow to steer her out of the way of a murderous-looking Draco Malfoy and Co.

"I meant in Defense class."


Author's Rants on the Chapter: Anybody else know the myth about the mother of Merlin? It's a bit strange, isn't it?

Betcha y'all forgot Harry had detention. It was in chapter five. Yup.

Yes, yes… There's more Snape than usual in this chapter. Deal with it. Snape is my god. Well, no he's not, because I worship… well, I don't worship Snape. But Snape is like… cool…

Never wake a sleepwalker. I forget where I saw that, but probably in class or something. Or in Heidi. I don't remember.

No, I've never had a fractured jaw before. But a shot of novacaine hurts like HELL after the actual dentistry work has been done. I assume it's like that, except… amplified a few times. A few hundred times.

Author's Rants in General: OK. I'm worried about out of character-ness. If you find any, tell me. If the problem is slight, I'll just let it be and keep that in mind for the next chapter. If the problem is HUGE, then I'll probably rewrite the chapter/section and repost it. So tell me, okay?

Gah! I know, I'm late! Like, REALLY late. I'm beyond sorry that I kept everyone waiting. I swear I didn't mean to go so long without updating, but I was stuck for a while—like, really stuck. I tried to make it a little longer (it's 7 pages in 10 pt. Comic Sans MS font, not including responses) but I don't know if some things are unnecessary, etc., etc. Oh, but man, now that I'm finally posting it, I seem to have attracted 'leaving the nest' syndrome. I don't want to let this baby go…! ::sob, sob:: Bobby: God, she's got way too many emotions. Choose one and stick with it, idiot. You, Bobby dearest, are the spawn of Satan. And damn proud.

Um, anyway… Would it be too much to ask you to review? Thanks so much for reading!


Responses:

pr101, Sesshoumaru's Lady, Okhira, Katzztar, Icy Tears, slave2anime, KuramaIsFine, MirrorofDarknessFlame, samuraiduck27, Time and Fate, PrincessKrystal01, HarmonyHanyou, Olua, DolphingrilKurama, Kuranga108, KaraKurama, Mihi-kun: Thank you guys all so much! Again, I'm sorry for the huge delay!

Spatial Monkey: Um, not sure how many chapters. But I will finish! I swear, I will! Even if it takes me three hundred years! Which, dear lord, I hope it doesn't. Thanks for reviewing!

dizappearingirl: Um, ha! Am I still the most often updater among the stories you read? Ah, rhetorical question. I'm working on the relationship stuff. 'S a little hard, but I'm working on it! Thanks for everything!

Dark Dragon34: You didn't die… did you? So sorry! Thanks for your review!

scarletmiaka: Yeah, I'm trying to work in more Ginny and the twins… I think I may have something planned…

Shadow Fox777: Hmm… I have to figure out how I'm going to fit those two in. But it's going to be hard with Demon Yusuke because I kinda… haven't seen much of him… Only the last DVD of the Chapter Black Saga. I'll see what I can do. Anyway, thanks for reviewing!

Rose: Ouchie… Finals are at the end of January for me… I'm scared. Like, REALLY scared. I hope I didn't disappoint you with the detention scene. Oh! It SNOWED! FINALLY! Not on Christmas, though, which was a total bummer. Oh, but wait until it snows and I have to go to school. I know I will loathe it then. But at the moment, snow is good. Sort of. I guess. Aaaanyway, thanks so much for reviewing!

Kuramakicksass: Ehe… Didja laugh when he got his jaw fractured in this chapter? ::in Trelawney voice:: Your questions will be answered in due time, my child… Aaanyway, thanks so much for your review!!

Long Live Asato Kido: Alas, 'tis not Sniper. Wish I'd thought of that, though. Thanks so much for reviewing!

Yamashira de'Ryu: Thanks so much for the idea for detention! Alas, good reader of mine, the detention was already planned by the time your review reached me. YAY! Anti-flamer mallet! Just what I always wanted! Bobby: No, seriously, she had it on her Christmas list until you came along and gave it to her. MORE PLUSHIES!! You are SANTA! Or—or—god! And I solemnly swear to read one of your stories. In fact, right after I post this up! Thanks for everything!!

Bluespark: I thought it was in the books somewhere. I just seem to have forgotten that little bit… Oh, super long reviews are awesome! I love them! Yes, I do the title thing on purpose, though this time I tried to have a little bit more meaning in the title this time, but I dunno if I succeeded. Yeah, I was totally all for making Hiei Head Boy before I realized that… yeah… It probably wouldn't work well… Thanks so much for reading and reviewing!