AN: Hi again! I wanted to get another chapter up real quick before I leave for Tennessee to visit the family. ^^ It's a little short, but the next couple of chapters are a lot longer and should be up in a couple of weeks.

Thanks for all the great support! It's been inspiring me to write like crazy. XD I know everyone's been looking forward to certain secrets being revealed. Don't worry, we're getting there soon. ^.~

Naruto wasn't prone to worrying about what might happen. His day to day life gave him enough to focus on. Surviving the present and the immediate future were his main concern. So when Team 7 parted the night before, Naruto did not head back to his small apartment worried about Harry-kun, finances and all the bad things that could happen. He went home with a grin on his face and arrived early the next morning still grinning.

Sasuke-teme had a family now. It might not be the one he'd lost, and it would certainly never fully fill that hole and it wouldn't give Sasuke-teme his vengeance, but it was still freaking cool.

Things could not get any better than this.

…Alright, Itachi wasn't dead yet, and not having to worry about Akatsuki would be pretty nice, but Naruto was smart enough to enjoy what he could get. And somehow, Sasuke having a cousin – no longer being completely without that idea of family that he obviously could so clearly remember – it was almost as good as Naruto having a new cousin of his very own.

And thank god Harry-kun was not another Sasuke! Harry had a sense of humor! He smiled! He wasn't a stuck up bastard! He hadn't really been happy to be there, but Naruto wasn't worried about that. He was confident that between the three of them, Team 7 could convince him that Konoha was the coolest place ever. Way better than that boring place he was from.

It was with that mission in mind that Naruto launched himself over the roof tops of Konoha, speeding toward Team 7's traditional meeting place. Today was going to be a good day. He could feel it in his bones.

Sakura was already waiting at the bridge. She was reading something, as usual. He stopped beside her and tilted his head nearly upside down to read the markings on the outside. It said something about plant stems. Sakura-chan read the weirdest things sometimes. Maybe she was planting a garden. When she reached a stopping place, she finally looked up and smiled sweetly. Naruto beamed back.

All of Team 7 had been placed on reserve leave for the next few weeks. While normally Naruto would have preferred keeping busy with missions and protested such restraints, it was hard to resent the forced vacation on such a sunny day. This was when Konoha was truly at its best. The sun was out and warm on his skin. The humidity was down and there was even a wind brushing against them. Perfect sparring weather.

And for perhaps the first time in his life, Sasuke was nearly late for team training. His cousin trailed along beside him. Coming over the hill, in the early morning light, standing together – they made for quite the odd pair.

Sasuke's expression was grim, as usual, but not troublesome. With his jaw relaxed, but his forehead wrinkled, the expression was Sasuke-teme's thoughtful face. Lightyears away from his angry or even annoyed faces. It was the kind he got when he was trying to work out a particularly complex trap and not the kind he got when he was envisaging man-slaughter. Dressed in the dark blue and black of his modified uniform, Sasuke-teme was the picture of a grim shinobi. The only color to him was the small Uchiha patch he'd attached on one shoulder. It matched the much larger fan on the back of his shirt, hidden by his vest. The only thing missing was the katana he took with him on missions. Sasuke-teme was a conceited, bitchy, pain in the ass, but even Naruto could secretly admit he made being a ninja look damn good.

Not that he'd ever say as much out loud. And definitely no where anyone could hear him. And not even in the same country as Sakura-chan or Ino, just to be safe.

But if Sasuke was the picture of a silently deadly ninja, then Harry-kun, by contrast, reminded Naruto of his own academy days.

It was the shirt. It was hard to take someone seriously when they were wearing a shirt five sizes too big. With holes in it. The thing flapped about the other young man's frame like a flag caught in the wind. It was faded red, and showed up next to Sasuke-teme like a bright swatch of color in the dark of the forest.

Harry-kun's hair was the same dark color as Sasuke's, and it seemed to ignore the laws of gravity the same way Sasuke-teme's did. Except, where Sasuke's rarely moved at all, Harry-kun's flew about wildly. It went left, it went right, it flew straight up before flopping back down to cover Harry's eyes. Naruto's grin stretch even further but he resisted the urge to chuckle. It was like Harry's hair had a life of its own.

"It's amazing how young he looks," Sakura-chan commented quietly.

Naruto glanced down at her. "Huh?"

Sakura's eyes were trained on the two figures slowly approaching them along the bank of the river. "Harry-kun," she clarified.

Naruto looked back up. Now that the pair was a little closer, he could see the way Harry's eyes darted about trying to take everything in; and the much more subtle way Sasuke's attention was focused on the presence to his right. Naruto suspected, however, that Sakura-chan was seeing something that he wasn't. She was good at that. "I thought he was our age," Naruto replied.

Sakura-chan shook her head softly before carefully rolling up her scroll and tucking it safely away. "It's not the same," she explained. She glanced up at him, eyes calculating in the way she'd only developed after years of working as a medic-nin under Tsunade-ba-chan. "He's a civilian, Naruto. You need to remember that. He isn't going to be like the other guys from the academy."

Naruto frowned. He didn't know if he liked the sound of that. "He seems like an okay guy to me."

Sakura-chan shook her head again. "That's not what I meant. Just – be a little careful around him, alright? We're all going to have to think of him more like a client, and less like one of us."

Naruto scowled even further. "Well, that's no fun." He folded his arms over his chest and shifted his glare away from Sakura-chan. She was only saying what she thought was best. But it just sounded wrong to him. Clients….were annoying, most of the time. Harry-kun was like a slightly smaller, much more ruffled version of Sasuke-teme. He wasn't a client. But he guessed Sakura-chan was right, he wasn't exactly a shinobi either.

"I'll be careful," he promised. But he wasn't going to give up on Harry either. So what if he didn't know anything about being a ninja now. That didn't mean he couldn't learn. Naruto had learned all kinds of things long after he'd left the academy. And who better to teach Harry than Team 7? It'd be awesome. And maybe Sasuke would relax a little once he realized his cousin wasn't disappearing any time soon.