AN: Look! It's a long chapter! While, a kind of long chapter. Long for me anyway.

Once more, thank you for all the great reviews. I've been trying to take as many of them into account as I can. They've been a great help, not only in keeping me on track but in watching out for problems.

Fyi, this is my first Naruto fic, and I've come to the realization that I love writing Creepy!Kakashi. o.o It's just way too much fun. Oh! And several people have asked about pairings…I don't plan on doing any. At least, nothing blatant. I might hint at things and there may be some flirting, but other than implying canon Tonks and Remus I have no plans for anything else.

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It was still early morning and Harry already had a headache. He was beginning to believe that his cousin specialized in giving them to other people. It was hard to imagine someone else who was naturally so grating. Sasuke didn't seem to even know how not to be. Every time the other boy started to do or say something vaguely nice, he seemed unable to resist following it up with something sarcastic and insulting. He didn't know how the cheerful Naruto or the friendly Sakura-chan put up with him. They weren't family. They didn't have to. But maybe there was something about Sasuke that was worth putting up with the rest of him.

Maybe he would have to ask them. He and Sasuke were on their way to meet with them, thank god. If Harry had been stuck in a house all day with just Sasuke then there definitely would have been a lot of yelling.

The village looked much the same that morning as it had the day before, if maybe a little quieter. They only passed a few subdued groups of younger teens and the occasional shop keeper. Harry enjoyed the walk. It was peaceful and still cool out. And Sasuke was even walked more alongside him instead of stalking ahead. Several streets later, they were walking along a cool blue river that just embodied rest and refreshment. Harry even managed to shift himself so that he could walk on the side closest to it. It was so clear he could see the smooth rocks below and the flash of spotted red and gold fish.

"Good morning!"

Harry looked up to see both Naruto and Sakura waving to them with bright smiles. They were standing on a small wooden bridge with bright red railings. Sasuke led him up onto the bridge until the four of them were standing in a rough circle.

"You're late!" Naruto announced loudly while grinning from ear to ear.

"Dobe," Sasuke hissed in a much more sharp tone than he'd used with Harry.

Naruto just blinked back at him. "Damn, teme, what crawled up your ass and died?"

Sakura-chan shoved Naruto hard enough to send him stumbling into the railing. She smiled prettily at Harry, however. "How are you?"

Harry just shrugged, embarrassed, and hoped he wasn't blushing.

"Are you hanging out with us today?" Naruto asked.

Harry shrugged again and managed to return a friendly smile. Sasuke cut him off before he could reply however. "Kakashi-sensei seems to think he should," he muttered darkly.

"He does?" Sakura-chan asked.

"Alright!" Naruto cheered over her.

Sasuke just glared some more.

Harry sighed and looked away. There was a stiff cool breeze sweeping up from the river. It toyed with Harry's bangs as he inhaled deeply the smell of water life, morning dew and green leaves. "So where is Kakashi-sensei?" Harry questioned. Maybe he could keep things from getting tense again.

He didn't expect all three of them to laugh. Or rather, Naruto laughed, Sakura-chan giggled and Sasuke snorted.

"What?" Harry asked. He didn't mind being the joke occasionally, but he at least wanted to know why.

"It's way too early for Kakashi-sensei to be here!" Naruto replied between gaffs.

Harry frowned. "Then why are we here so early?"

The three of his escorts glanced at each other. Sasuke then shrugged. "Kakashi-sensei is an idiot," he announced before moving to lean against the bridge rail and seemingly settling himself in for a long wait.

Well, that was helpful. Harry turned to Sakura-chan. "Huh?"

Sakura-chan smiled but there was something about the tenseness of her face that made Harry feel a little nervous. "Kakashi-sensei had his own particular conception of training. He'll be along eventually. Hopefully. He better." She muttered the last part so darkly that it made Harry glad he wasn't Kakashi-sensei. There was clearly some history there. It reminded Harry of some of his own eccentric professors.

So he smiled politely and asked "About how long do you think it'll be till he gets here?"

Naruto shrugged and nimbly leaped up to sit on the railing. "Could be half an hour. Could be three."

Harry's eyes widened. "Oh," he commented weakly. "What – what do we do until then?"

"We wait," Sakura-chan replied simply. She moved to daintily sit herself. She opted for something closer to the ground than Naruto. Harry moved to mimic her, settling himself down on the smooth weathered wooden planks.

Naruto smiled down at both of them before hoping down and turning to face them. He winked at Sakura jauntily before turning to grin at Harry. "I know! You wanna see a cool trick, Harry-kun?"

Sasuke stirred suddenly, his relaxed posture transforming instantly into a sharply focused glare. "Dobe, no."

Harry pointedly ignored him and grinned back at Naruto. "What kind of trick?" he asked happily. He'd been party to a number of tricks and pranks due to his informal education at Hogwarts. The Weasley twins would be thrilled if he learned something new he could share with them. Besides, his cousin needed to learn to lighten up.

"I don't know if that's such a good idea," Sakura-chan piped in, clearly trying to mediate. It was a half-hearted effort at best. She glanced nervously over at Sasuke. That deference alone made Harry feel stubborn enough to try and push the point.

"I wasn't thinking anything big, Sakura-chan!" Naruto objected. He sounded like he was trying to sound innocent – and like the attempt was more challenging than it should be. "Just something little. You know, to help him understand and everything. Come on! Harry's probably never even seen anything. We ought to teach him a jutsu!"

"He's not a shinobi,' Sasuke growled back.

"Yeah, I know – "

"He probably can't even draw on chakra," Sakura-chan added warily.

"Sure he can!" Naruto confidently objected. "Can't you Harry?"

Harry blinked as his attention was jerked back and forth between the three of them. "Sure, I can," he replied automatically, before tilting his head to the side and asking "What's chakra?"

Sasuke snorted again and Harry would almost swear he even smiled a little. Or smirked. Which was close enough, even if it was a bit sarcastic.

Sakura-chan and Naruto both flinched as if he'd said something embarrassing, but then Naruto laughed. "Chakra's easy!" he boasted. "Just watch this!"

And he slammed his hands together, some fingers pointing one way, others twisted in another direction. There was the sudden tickle of almost magic in the air, coming out from Naruto. It felt like it was pushing against Harry's skin, whereas real magic had always seemed to be pulling him inward. The same, but different.

And then Naruto was moving his hands, rapidly twisting fingers into new and different combination, and the not-quite-magic twisted as well and changed and formed something new with a very audible – smoky – pop!

And then there were two Narutos.

Harry blinked and tilted his head to the side. He'd heard of illusions, but never one so real looking. He scooted forward enough to reach out and brush his hand hesitantly across one of the legs of the new Naruto.

"Oi! That tickles!" it shouted before scrambling backwards.

Harry blinked again and then slowly grinned. "That is bloody amazing," he announced.

Both Narutos smirked. "Isn't it?"

"How'd you do that?" Harry asked. He wanted to try poking the duplicate again, but he didn't know if that would be rude.

"I'm awesome, that's how," Naruto replied, in stereo, without missing a beat.

"Naruto!" Sakura-chan snapped wearily before leaning over and flicking one of the clone's ears. It yelped before suddenly disappearing in a dense cloud of smoke.

It was quite flashy and Harry was almost tempted to clap. It really was a cool trick. He was certain the Weasley twins could cause all kinds of mischief with something like that. The possibilities were actually kind of frightening. Two Weasley twins were bad enough. If they could start making duplicates of themselves…Which of course meant he had to learn how to do it. "I'm serious," he said. "How'd you do that?"

Sakura-chan finally took pity on him. "It's ninjutsu," she explained. "He uses molded chakra to create a physical, if somewhat unstable, replica of himself."

"Hey!" Naruto protested. "There's nothing unstable about my clones!"

"Except their maker," Sasuke murmured so quietly that Harry almost didn't hear it.

Was that a joke? It sounded like a joke. Harry glanced over at him covertly, but Sasuke was looking away, his eyes slowly panning across the distant tree line. Harry sighed and turned back to Sakura-chan. "But what is chakra?" It sounded an awful lot like magic, but Harry wasn't going to risk breaking the Statue of Secrecy by saying so. Besides, while it felt like magic, it also didn't feel exactly like magic.

Sakura-chan smiled brightly and sat up straighter. She folded her hands daintily in her lap and proceeded to explain to him all of the theories behind chakra like a seasoned professor. He managed to follow the basics of it. Chakra came from the body and gathered in certain centers of the body. Shinobi then used this energy and shaped it to their purposes. It was a little too spiritual for Harry, however, and he wished he had Hermonie there to explain it to him. He was sure she would have understood completely what Sakura-chan was saying. Hermonie could probably even have compared it elegantly to something in magical theory. Harry had never stopped to ask where magic came from. He was just thankful that it was there.

"You wanna try, Harry?" Naruto asked.

"It's a lot more complicated than it looks," Sakura-chan warned. "Remember how much trouble you had, Naruto?"

"It doesn't hurt to try," Naruto retorted doggedly. "What do you say, Harry?"

Harry shrugged, smiled and carefully kept his hands out of his pocket and away from his wand. "Sure."

"Great!" Naruto exclaimed. "Now, put your hands like this…" he said as he positioned Harry's fingers exactly as he wanted them, folded together and overlapping just so.

"No, no," Sakura-chan interrupted. She sighed and reached over to fix Naruto's work.

Harry chuckled as the two of them bickered back and forth over the proper technique and who made a better teacher. "So now what do I do?" he finally asked, since they seemed to have forgotten about him.

"Well, you have to focus chakra into your hands, shaped by the seals you're making," Sakura-chan explained. "Does that make sense?"

Not really, but that had never stopped Harry before. He hummed non-committedly. His fingers ached a little from holding them in an unnatural position for so long. They itched to wrap around the warm comfort of a wand as he tried to focus. It couldn't be too hard. He'd felt what that chakra stuff was supposed to be like. But it was still something different, something foreign. Harry narrowed his eyes and focused all of his attention on the feel of his own hands. If he concentrated, he could almost feel something like a static shock running across his skin, in his muscles, through his bone and into his hands…

"Yo!" Kakashi-sensei announced as he appeared with a flash and a bang and a cloud of smoke.

"Argh!" Harry's body spasmed as he instinctively tried to recoil away. Sitting with his legs crossed on the ground and with his hands twisted together made jumping back awkward to say the least. He toppled over onto his side, just barely managing to catch himself before he bashed his head on the wooden boarding. Harry considered his reflexes fairly good. Quidditch and DA Club had sufficiently demonstrated that to him. But bloody hell – Kakashi-sensei had to stop doing that!

"Watch it!" Sasuke snapped angrily even though Kakashi-sensei was no where near him.

"You're late!" Sakura-chan and Naruto yelled before rudely pointing at their teacher.

Harry shoved himself back into a much more dignified position. He was pretty sure he'd managed to pull something in his hands in the ruckus. What a stupid way to hurt himself. Harry carefully stretched out his hands in his lap and hoped no one noticed.

Everyone else seemed busy staring at Kakashi-sensei.

"You're – you're early," Naruto stuttered. "I mean, you're late, but you're not Kakashi-sensei late."

Kakashi-sensei smiled and bonked Naruto on the head. "I got held up delivering food to poor malnourished orphans but unfortunately it didn't take as long as I would have liked," he explained cheerfully.

Harry flushed an angry red. He was not malnourished! Though the donuts had been rather good…

"Lair!" Naruto and Sakura-chan retorted, loudly and in perfect sync. Apparently they didn't have a lot of faith in their teacher.

"Hmm," Kakashi-sensei pondered out loud. "And here I thought you all would like to get in a little extra training. But if I'm wrong, then I can come back later…"

"No, no, no," Naruto said quickly. "We want to train! We were even showing Harry how to do some simple jutsu."

"Oh, really?" Kakashi-sensei asked. "I do hope you weren't attempting to train a foreigner in ninjutsu without the permission of you superior."

"Harry's not a foreigner!" Naruto argued.

"And there's a reason only specific chunins and up are considered qualified to teach," Kakashi-sensei continued. "My students wouldn't be that reckless, would they?"

There was a long, heavy pause and Kakashi-sensei repeated himself. "Would they?"

"No, sir," all three of them muttered.

Kakashi-sensei stared at each one of them long and hard – even Harry. Then he smiled blithely. "Good. Let's go."

Sasuke interrupted before any of them could move. "I don't think that it would be appropriate for Harry to accompany us."

Naruto started to argue immediately, but oddly enough, Sakura-chan seemed pleased by something Sasuke had said. Kakashi-sensei merely canted his head to one side and stared.

Sasuke scowled. "It could be dangerous."

"I think I can manage to keep your cousin out from underfoot," Kakashi-sensei replied. "Besides, we wouldn't want to leave poor Harry-kun all alone, now would we?"

Sasuke's frown darkened even further, but he said nothing.

To be honest, Harry would much rather come along than be left behind. Sure, he could have tried exploring the city on his own, but he still wasn't completely confident in this translation-jutsu thing. While it worked remarkably well most of the time, it still occasionally messed up. Sasuke's friends were very forgiving of his confusion, but he wasn't exactly eager to test that patience in the city alone.

For all of Kakashi-sensei's supposed faults, he seemed very conscientious of Harry's well-being. He wasn't used to someone fixing his problems for him. Did the older man do it because he saw Harry as too weak or too incompetent to take care of himself? He didn't see Kakashi-sensei doting on any of the others – but then again, he was beginning to suspect that Kakashi-sensei was rarely blunt with his true objectives and quick to taunt instead.

Kakashi-sensei led them away from the city and to a clear, grassy field. The teacher stopped by a tree on the edge of the field and turned to his students. "Battle Royal or Tag-Team?"

All of the playful shoving and chatter disappeared and three sets of eager eyes focused in on their teacher. "Battle Royal," they all said together before exchanging a meaningful look between the three of them. It reminded Harry of the looks Ron and his brothers would exchange right before a Quidditch scrimmage. A whole lot of excitement, flavored with a dash of blood lust. Harry couldn't help it. He snickered. He almost wished he could join in.

Kakashi-sensei waved them away lazily. "Get to it, then. Harry-kun and I will just relax over here under this tree."

Sasuke moved to follow his teammates but then hesitated long enough to send a glare back at his teacher. "Don't read that crap in front of my cousin," he demanded.

Kakashi-sensei's one visible eye rolled. "Harry-kun's almost as old as you are. I'm sure he's old enough to understand the basic concepts."

"It's still filth, Kakashi-sensei," Sakura-chan interjected. "You ought to know better."

Naruto grinned slowly and added, "And I'll tell ba-chan."

Kakashi-sensei's eye narrowed and his stance shifted subtly. "The three of you had better start training or I might decide to assign some more structured exercises."

The three of them paled ever so slightly before hurrying over to the other side of the field. Harry watched after them, impressed by how quickly, and seemingly effortlessly, they crossed the distance. Kakashi-sensei sighed and muttered "brats" as he moved under the tree.

Harry followed him obediently, but couldn't help but ask, "Read what? What are they talking about?"

Kakashi-sensei took his time settling himself comfortably underneath the tree and silently pulled out a bright orange book. It looked like the same one Harry had seen the older man reading yesterday.

"I don't get it," Harry finally admitted.

Kakashi-sensei blinked, once, then smiled slowly. "Would you like to read a little? You're a little young for it, but boys will be boys. I'm sure you've managed to get your hands on something similar at some point. After all, a boy resourceful enough to spend a little time in the girls' bathroom – I'm sure you've managed to read a book as excellent as this."

Harry blanched and edge away. He had a feeling he knew exactly what kind of book it was. "I think I'll pass," he replied weakly.

Kakashi-sensei feigned surprise and Harry was a little perturbed to realize he could tell it was a feint. "My, my,' Kakashi replied. "Are you one of those boys who doesn't like that kind of thing?" Kakashi-sensei archly asked.

Harry scowled back at him. He'd been living in a boys' dormitory for five years and had been in and out of enough locker rooms to know exactly what kind of question that was. The answer didn't matter nearly as much as the challenge. "I'm not answering that," Harry announced with the weight of all his hard earned maturity.

As if to mock his calm, Kakashi-sensei laughed suddenly and unexpectedly. "Kids are so entertaining."

Harry glared at him. He opened his mouth to reply sharply that he was not a kid, but managed to think better of it before he proved the other man's point.

Then the ground vibrated underneath Harry's feet and there was a sharp crack! Harry turned in surprise. He could just barely see Sakura-chan's pink form raising herself up out of a freshly created crater. "What?" Harry started to ask, but then a blur of black and blue rushed at her. It seemed to materialize all of a sudden with a sharp ring of metal sliding against metal before the form streaked away again. Sasuke disappeared just as Naruto suddenly rushed at Sakura-chan. All ten of the Narutos. They bellowed bravely as they charged, and disappeared in blooming puffs of smoke as they came close enough for Sakura-chan to reach them. Sasuke dashed along the left side and took out a couple more.

"I imagine it's rather impressive from the perspective of a civilian," Kakashi-sensei commented without looking up from his book. "Though I must admit, they're at the level now where my presence is rather unnecessary."

"You don't think that's impressive?" Harry asked without looking away from the melee. He didn't think he could tear his eyes away. They made it look so easy and graceful.

"That? No. Not impressive," Kakashi-sensei confirmed. "Impressive is rarely that blatant."