AN: Here's the next chapter! I've been working a lot on this fic, and it's going to be a long one.

Having said that, several people commented concerns about Harry and his magic not being strong enough. Trust me, I understand your concerns. My plans for this fic, however, don't have Harry demonstrating what he's capable of for several more chapters. He is not weak, despite what Sasuke might think. ^.~ It's just going to take us a little while before he shows as much. So please, bear with me. I'll do my best not to disappoint.

And once more, as always, thank you so much for all of the great advice and reviews! It's embarrassing how excited they make me. ^^;

The wind whistled in her ears in a symphony all its own. Kunai slicing through the empty air just above her head sang sharply. The roar of wind as she moved back, up and around made her ears ring. The buzzing, hissing noise chakra made when it displaced sweet oxygen as it discharged and the rushing whoosh as air rushed back in. Battles were never silent. Even without the words, the grunts or the sharp cracks of shattering earth and bone and steal, battles were never silent. The very air itself reverberated like a captivated audience.

Sakura let the noise wash across her. It was as familiar to her now as the sound of her own name. Familiar. Almost comforting. She disregarded it with practiced ease even as she lost herself into its natural rhythms. She opened her stance slightly and twisted smoothly to the right as another Naruto clone made a grab at her. She would have taught it a lesson with her fist, but she was otherwise occupied slamming her heel through the one behind her.

Fighting Naruto's clones was always a unique experience. They were unpredictable in the way only Naruto could make them. Nearly entirely self-sufficient, his clones were capable of complex maneuvers and prone to using just as unorthodox methods as their maker. For all of their autonomy, Naruto's "practice" clones were more easily dispatched. He didn't pump as much chakra into each of them, and because of that, they fell apart beneath her blows like tearing paper. As disturbing as it was to feel her fist sliding threw her teammate, she supposed it was better than feeling muscle and bone tearing and breaking. Naruto's clones were remarkably independent. If he made them any more stable, she'd actually have to watch his body crumple. Even knowing they were nothing more than molded chakra, the image was very powerful. The kind of that resurfaced hours later.

Someone had suggested once, after watching Team 7 practice, that Naruto wasn't trying hard enough, that if he was going to use clones he ought to make them properly. Surprisingly, it was Sasuke who pointed out the illogic of such an approach. His reply had included some rather scathing remarks about Naruto's acting ability, Naruto's intelligence and Naruto's ninjutsu skills – but even he agreed that a field full of dying Narutos would be a bad thing.

So when she threw yet another Naruto over her head and into two more, there was no lingering feeling of flesh beneath her fingers. Just harmless smoke brushing against her. Hiding Sasuke's approach. It was all the help he would need. He came up on her left, fast and low and completely deadly. She twisted around desperately to meet him. Sasuke was the real threat in this strategy. The Narutos just the distraction. A kunai slipped into her hand smoothly. She held it loose barely even long enough for the stutter of a heartbeat before he was on her. The shock of his weight and the blow reverberated up her arm. It wasn't enough to damage anything, even if it felt like her very muscles would shake loose. The metal clanged together before slowing sliding off in a screech of straining steel.

Sakura kept her feet beneath her and tried to shove him off balance. She didn't expect it to work. She did expect the knee that came flying up toward her. He was close enough now that a jutsu would be reckless but Sasuke didn't come to team training to work on his ninjutsus. He came to practice his taijutsu. It was nearly as punishing.

She wouldn't be able to dodge his knee completely. Not without opening herself up to the kunai still in his hand. And another Naruto was coming up behind her to try and pin her down. So she twisted into the hit, not away, coming up inside Sasuke's guard. She didn't have enough space to land her own hit, but she managed to position herself so that his knee came up more along side her and less dead center on her chest. It still knocked the wind out of her.

She flicked the fingers of her free hand down. His right side was completely open to her like this. All it would take would be one senbon or one carefully controlled chakra slice and she could split his side wide open. And he knew it. The second her fingers started to move, before she could even start to form her next attack, he released her and sprang away. Scoring a hit would have been nice for her ego, but merely gaining her freedom again was acceptable.

She shoved the kunai in her hands backwards into an approaching Naruto and leg swept the next one before springing back herself into a clear patch she'd made. "What is this? Gang up on Sakura day?" she muttered darkly.

All of the Naruto's grinned simultaneously. "Training!" they chirped together like an over eager pack of puppies. Except puppies never had that vaguely violent gleam in their eyes that promised embarrassment at the least if they caught her.

Sasuke shifted into view, a dark smudge in a sea of orange and yellow. Sasuke didn't grin, but his smirk was almost as annoying. He canted one hip to the side, tilted his head and drawled in a manner disturbingly similar to their sensei. "You said you wanted to work on you melee strategies." He was enjoying this just a little too much, the bastard.

A part of her, buried deep down at the moment beneath her training and her focus, was still giddy at the sight of him so relaxed and almost even happy. The rest of her was busy glaring at him. With a flick of her wrist she sent three shuriken flying at him. "I declare war," she drawled back at him. It was part of an old child's game they played at the academy, but Naruto picked up on it right away. Dozens of pairs of eyes shifted sly from her to him and their grins turned even more feral. Sasuke had the good grace to grimace before darting away. Naruto was on him before she could even catch her breath. Sakura was proud of her abilities and her progress, but she didn't harbor any illusions about her boys. She was warm up for both of them. Fighting each other – now that was the real training for them.

But that didn't mean she was going to sit this one out either. If they were going to help Sasuke train, then it was going to take two of them. Just like it took two of them to help her train. With a roll of her shoulders, Sakura re-centered her focus and shot out after them.

Naruto's clones were disappearing one right after another and Naruto wasn't wasting the time to recreate them. He simply charged in himself. He swung his fist in what appeared to be a clumsy manner, one that hid a surprising amount of force and precision. Naruto's own personal fighting style. The two of them crashed into each other. One of them lost his balance, and together they went tumbling to the ground.

Sakura took advantage of the confusion to leap up, over Naruto's back and down towards Sasuke's head. She caught a glimpse of spinning red eyes before the tangle of limbs jerked to the side and she had to pull back her punch or risk taking off Naruto's head. She rolled forward to keep up with them. Sasuke tried to pull away, but Naruto had attached himself firmly by one hand with the kind of determination only he could manage. Naruto was grin was so wide she could see the hint of fang in his mouth. There was something distinctly cat like about him at times like this, playful but dangerous. Like a lion batting about a toy – or in this case, something more like a slippery panther. The thought made her giggle even as she slipped passed Naruto, trying to score a hit.

Sasuke wasn't having that and managed not only to twist himself free but to shove Naruto into Sakura. This was why too many clones could be a bad thing. Even the most graceful of shinobi could trip over an ally just as easily as any trap. The trick was not to get tangled up in one another. Naruto and Sakura had years of practice at avoiding this. He pushed her left, she pulled him right, and in the process they managed to switch positions using each other's momentum. It took them less than a second to straighten themselves out, but that was all the opening Sasuke needed.

Sasuke had apparently tired of the cat and mouse game of tag. He pulled his hands together and Sakura knew immediately what to expect. A summons. Despite all of his practice, Sasuke still occasional had difficulty controlling his snakes. Because of that, it was often the first jutsu he'd call on during their practice sessions. The safety of the village was the best place to work out any possible weaknesses. Often, he simply couldn't summon as many as he'd like. Or the wrong snake would answer. Occasionally they wandered off against his commands. Twice they'd attacked their allies instead of defending them. Sasuke could trust Sakura and Naruto to avoid being bitten if the he lost complete control. He couldn't rely on that in the middle of a mission.

Neither Sakura nor Naruto objected to being his test subjects as it were. They understood how important it was for Sasuke to re-master this skill. They also understood why only Sasuke still struggled to control his contracted animal. Some of the snakes had shown surprising loyalty to Orochimaru. After all, Orochimaru was the one who showed Sasuke how to summon them and it was with his permission that the contract that bound Sasuke to his snakes and his snakes to Sasuke was signed. The snakes remembered this and they remembered Orochimaru's death. They were…displeased with Sasuke's life choices and they made their discontent known.

Sasuke finished the seals and called out for them. Both Sakura and Naruto immediately altered their course. Diving head first into freshly summoned vipers was not smart. Sasuke's snakes were deadly. Even Naruto with his insane endurance had good reason to be cautious. Even the smallest of Sasuke's snakes could easily kill a man. Four of them appeared at Sasuke's summons. Two large enough to present a physical threat and two tiny enough to use the distraction to sneak past their defenses. It was an ideal set up and Sasuke smirked.

She could see Naruto scowl as he put more distance between him and the animals. He hated snakes. We wasn't scared of them, exactly. There were few things Naruto was scared of other than silly things like ghosts and bad omens. It was more that he had a deep, long festering hate for the creatures. And it didn't help that his toads didn't like them either.

One of the big ones decided she looked mighty tasty and darted in her direction. She shot a handful of senbon out at it. The problem with snakes were they were so frustratingly hard to kill. It took either a startling degree of violence or a very precisely applied paralysis to truly stop them. Her needles passed over the summon's head, however. The attack was still enough to discourage it. It fell back to try a different angle.

Naruto growled at the one going after him. He'd moved back several paces but apparently had had enough of giving ground. He lunged forward, ready to kill.

Sasuke met him half way, defending his snake, while at the same time giving it the opportunity to move into position for another attack. Naruto and Sasuke exchanged blows.

Sakura pulled out two more senbon and set to practicing her aim. In order to disable a snake, she would have to catch it at exactly the right spot near the skull. While kunai target practice was child's play, senbon was a whole other bag of tricks. The technique was different. The room for error drastically decreased. Combined with the danger and challenge of a very alive and fairly intelligent target, it made for decent training.

She sent one needle zipping toward the snake circling Sasuke and Naruto. The other she flung downward towards the one dancing with her. She missed the far one but managed a glancing blow on the other. The needle must have struck close to home since the snake lost control of some of its motor functions, but it wasn't enough to fully disable it and as long as those teeth were capable of closing, the snake remained a viable threat. Sakura had more maturity than to gloat over beating a summons, but she allowed herself a grim smile of accomplishment. She hadn't been using senbon long, but she was improving.

Her distraction nearly cost her dearly. She hadn't forgotten, exactly, about the two smaller snakes. She just hadn't focused on them either. She did now. One of them had managed to sneak close enough that it was almost to her sandals before she sense it. That was the advantage of the very small snakes. They were, ironically, the most difficult to control, but they made up for that through maneuvers such as this one. Sakura leapt back immediately. The snake leapt to follow her. Its teeth gleamed in the early morning sunlight before snapping shut – empty.

Enough with playing tag. Sakura spun her kunai into a better hold. She wasn't going to waste her time trying to hit such a small target with senbon. Let it come to her. She had no doubt that her reflexes would prove faster. The snake hesitated and Sakura sneered silently at it. She had more patience than any one else on her team. It wasn't going to goad her.

Her eyes flickered over to Sasuke and Naruto's scuffle while she waited. Just checking on her teammates. A movement so natural it fit into her defenses as surely as the blade in her hands. Her two boys were engaged in a complicated but graceful dance of dodge, feint, strike. Without ninjutsu, the two of them were fairly well matched. The snake snapping at Naruto's heels gave Sasuke the advantage however. And despite how much Naruto detested the snake, he laughed as he blocked and dodged Sasuke's blows before spinning to punch the snake. Trust him to attack it head on like that. Personally, Sakura would rather keep her fingers away from its teeth.

Sasuke's eyes flickered over to her just as naturally. He was smiling. Truly smiling. Then his eyes darted behind her and across the field. It took all of a half a second for him to take everything in. And it took only another half a second for his face to pale completely.

Sakura's heart both plummeted and stuttered fit to burst.

Harry.

She knew it. It could only be him. And somehow, despite everything, something made Sasuke look like the world was ending all over again.

She knew that look. She'd seen it on the faces of her friends often enough, each one of them at some time or another. She'd felt it on her own in ways she wished she could forget.

Without thought, without hesitation, without looking – Sakura turned and flung herself backwards, moving as fast as she ever had across the sunny grassy field to the only thing that matter right now.

This was what she trained for. This was what they all trained for. If only it would be enough.