The next two days were spent going back to Hogwarts. The guard had given some sort of excuse and vanished in a puff of smoke shortly after Kakashi got them to pack. On the way home, their teacher had shown them the better sides of the Forbidden Forest. That is, the unicorns, other amazing facts about the forest and Fluffy.
Yes, Fluffy. Apparently, the three headed dog had been set loose in the Forbidden Forest to roam and live free and antagonize the centaurs. Professor Hatake had a gleeful look on his face as he mentioned the centaur bit as he hurriedly stepped over a tree root on their way back to Hogwarts.
"It's nearby," Professor Hatake said with a wide grin. "Just around the corner then…"
Ron craned his neck around the corner and nearly died of fright. Hermione squealed and Kakashi had to put his hand over her mouth to avoid it from being startled. Harry simply smiled in reminiscence.
Fluffy was clearly happy to see them, pouncing over their squirming bodies as the three heads each chose one target to slobber to death. Kakashi snickered. Fluffy was fat, sleek and clearly causing much centaur trauma, if the way the dog smelled slightly of horse was any indication.
After some time, they managed to escape the overly affectionate pooch only to find that they were on a cliff overlooking the lake. Professor Hatake delightedly shoved them off the cliff. As they plummeted screaming into the freezing waters, cursing his name, his eyes closed in a happy curve. He grinned widely and set off to beat them to the Lake shore. Apparently, when they hit the water, the disturbed giant squid picked all three of them up, waved them around in intense agitation and threw them to the Lake shore, where a humongous bale of hay broke their fall. Rolling out of the hay, they caught sight of the grinning Professor, and annoyed beyond belief, proceeded to throw handfuls of hay and snow at his retreating form as he backed away from the three aggressive teenagers all the way through the courtyard while attempting to block the snowballs with his arms only to fall into the fountain, on his ass. At which point, they dumped armfuls of snow on him, and stalked off muttering about 'bloody gits'.
They never stopped to wonder where the hay had come from. Kakashi only shrugged it off, grinning at the success of his nasty little prank.
"Katon: Gokakyu no Jutsu!" Harry yelled, finally having managed to achieve a medium large ball of fire that burnt the air around him. Kakashi nodded in satisfaction. "I see you finally learned it."
Harry pouted and rubbed tenderly at the edges of his mouth where, when his concentration lapsed, the fireball he had conjured backfired and singed him. Ron had mastered the seals now, and he was able to make a small fireball. Hermione had advanced over to the point that her fireball was medium sized, according to the teacher.
"Well then, time to teach you a new technique. This technique may help you avoid a critical attack by a Death Eater. It is called Kawarimi no Jutsu, or Body Switch. This technique will allow you to switch places with an object, thus the attack, even if it is the Avada Kedavra will hit the object and not you, causing a distraction long enough for you to hit them with a counter-spell." Kakashi pointed out.
Ron's eyes lit up. "Is it like apparition?" He asked.
"If Apparition means that you end up in any place, then no." Kakashi replied. "Apparition is a teleportation skill, Kawarimi no Jutsu merely exchanges you with the object. Thus you are safety out of harm's way, and they are blasting your decoy. They will probably assume that you have transfigured yourself with the object, therefore given that Animagi exist, I would suggest using a specific type of living creature to body switch with and they will assume, naturally, that they are killing your Animagus form and that you are dead, which in turn will buy you more time."
Harry had a sudden vision of Lord Voldemort holding up a dead rabbit by the ears and screaming as he shook the rabbit like a flag. "HARRY POTTER IS NOT A BUNNY RABBIT!"
Harry snickered loudly at the image, causing the other three to look at him strangely. When he finally explained it, Hermione and Ron both burst into loud laughter, while Kakashi smiled. "Yes, it works that way. Now the seals are: Ox, Ram, Tiger, Ram, Hare, and Monkey. If you do it fast enough, your opponent will not notice the substitution until it is too late. For now, if you three do it right, I'll let you go early to get some food, and then a break later by watching the fireworks."
The three immediately set to learning the seal with a will, mostly fueled by the thought of Lord Voldemort holding cute cuddly creatures and screaming at his followers to quit fooling around.
By the end of the session, they had managed to do decent Kawarimi no Jutsus, if not as fast as Kakashi had wanted them to do. Ah well, that will change with practice. Soon they would learn to Kawarimi like a ninja! It brought tears of pride to his eyes, and then he stopped and smacked himself up the head for thinking like Maito Gai. The green beast was rubbing off on him. This had to be remedied, and fast, before he developed a taste for spandex!
Come January 2nd, the Hogwarts Express arrived at Hogsmeade station. The whole trip was normal, until the rest of Hogwarts arrived in the Great Hall for dinner. At first, everything was normal until the whole of Hogwarts was almost through with the main course. Ron was already eating a bowl of Yorkshire pudding, and Hermione was reading her Arithmancy book. Harry himself was sipping from a goblet of pumpkin juice when the guard, appearing quite ruffled, hurried to the Staff table. Harry perked up at this, as not everything can actually ruffle the guard and he was very, very curious. More to the point, where was Professor Hatake? Shouldn't he be at the staff table next to Professor Lupin? The four guards were at their posts as usual when they suddenly perked up and glanced at the place in front of the door, from what the students could see of their body language, these guards were very disturbed, but why?
Worried murmurs began to spread among the student body but then…
All thoughts were cut off as huge billows of green smoke filled the hall. The first years and second years stared in shock along with the rest of the hall at the billows of colored smoke that was coming from the area in front of the door.
"KAKASHI!"
"GAI!"
In horror, the trio (and the rest of Hogwarts) stared at the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher and the newcomer in green spandex as they posed in a Power-Ranger pose, with some sort of magic making the light shine off their teeth and sparkle around them disturbingly.
Silence, and then the audible sound of Ron's pumpkin juice spurting out of his nose.
"DUAL," The Defense against the Dark Arts teacher said, seemingly deadly serious.
"DYNAMIC," Maito Gai seemed equally serious; his teeth sparkling in the light as he gave them a thumbs-up before the two jumped up, and performed a complex flip and freezing in midair with in a kicking pose. Time seemed to slow down as the two aimed for the central parts of the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables. Gai went for Slytherin and Kakashi aimed for Gryffindor.
"ENTRY!" Their feet, unfortunately, collided with the huge bowl of Yorkshire pudding at the end of the tables, sending both ninjas skidding, screaming all the way as if they were in uncontrollable Go-carts, great amounts of flying desserts splattering the entire staff with food as well as several students.
There was a moment of silence before the first years screamed out a war cry and began throwing food at each other. The second years joined in, throwing food at any human being within range.
After being splattered by pudding and unmentionables, the higher years gave up and joined in the riot that resulted in a screaming messy Great Hall and every single student and teacher being covered in multicolored globs of goo. Somehow, in the food fight, the guards had emerged untouched. The two ninjas who had started it all finally managed to come to a skidding stop at the foot of the Staff table in front of them all. Dumbledore was clearly smiling, blue eyes twinkling as he balanced a whole bowl of pudding that had somehow landed on his pointed wizard's hat. McGonagall looked as if she was sucking a sour lemon from behind a mask of chocolate syrup from a nearby cake that covered Professor Flitwick's face like a brown mask of goo.
Professor Snape would've looked menacing, if not for the fact that he had been hit head on with a giant banana split and was currently all colors of the rainbow, with bananas sticking out from odd places on his robes.