AN: I'm back! I'm afraid I only have the same excuses - life hates me and writer's block is eeeevil. Thankfully, Black-Haired Girl thwaked me on the back of the head and told me to suck it up. And hence this chapter!

Thank you for all the great reviews and encouragement. ^^ It was really helpful whenever I got stuck.

Also, I apologize for the issue with Neiji/Neji's name in the last chapter. I've seen a bunch of different spellings for his name in particular and didn't think to check it when I was writing.

Harry bounced the kunai in his hand gently, trying to resettle it in a natural position. If he thought about it too hard, he tended to try to strangle the weapon, his hand fisted tightly up by the top of the handle. He was trying to hold it loosely the way he'd been shown, but it was hard to remember to relax without tensing up again. So he bounced the blade around in his closed hand, trying to get it to lay flat the way it was supposed to, as he eyed up his target.

The poor tree was seriously starting to look haggard. He almost felt back for it. He'd probably taken more chunks out of it from the ring of his kunai slamming into it than he had actually sunk the tip in. The result was that the tree looked a little like it had gone several rounds with a pelt gun.

Nothing for it. Harry carefully lined up his left foot, bent his knee and pulled his right arm back up about level with the top of his head. In one movement he brought his arm over and down, shifted his weight from his right to his left leg and opened up his hand. The blade went sliding smoothly out of his hand, nothing sharp ever coming close to his skin, and made a tight arch for the tree four yards away.

The tip hit sunk in, this time not only as an angle but also off kilter, so that he could actually see the flat of the blade from this direction.

"Damn," he muttered. He was pleased to see another one actually stick – his twelfth so far – but he had a feeling that slight sideways bend was not good. It must have wobbled a lot more coming out of his hand than it had before.

"Can you even see the target?"

Harry turned to find Sasuke standing on the edge of the house porch, watching him. It wasn't too far away to talk comfortably, but with the lights on behind Sasuke, Harry couldn't make out much more of him than his silhouette. He frowned back. "I told you my eye sight isn't that bad," he snapped back, not sure he liked the implication about his abilities. Sasuke had seemed very encouraging that morning when he'd been helping Harry first learn. He'd been frustrate later that afternoon when Harry's attempts to teach Sasuke and Naruto magic hadn't worked. He'd tried to warn them that at the very least they were going to need a wand of their own, but both of them had insisted on trying. The first part of the afternoon had been kind of fun. He got to show off some of his better spells to an audience that was entirely entranced. It had been enough to distract Harry from the way Sasuke's eyes could turn red at will. A fact that still creeped him out, no matter how many times the others tried to tell him it was natural for their family. Red eyes just weren't natural, and Harry was starting to have some sympathy for the way people had reacted to him in second year when he started talking to snakes. There were just some things that remained creepy no matter what.

While Sasuke had eventually accepted it gracefully and switched instead to watching Harry even more carefully, Naruto wasn't so easily deterred. He'd insisted on trying time and time again until Harry had begun to worry the other boy was going to hurt himself. If it was possible to implode from trying too hard, Naruto must have been close to it. He'd done everything from trying to mystically trying to call up mother earth (his idea, not Harry's) to trying to force his chakra through the same mold. Neither had worked and both had left Naruto gasping from the effort.

The last Harry had seen of him he had sprawled out on the floor of what Sasuke called the training room. The room might not have been the Room of Requirement, but it did give them ample space to move around and try things without worrying about breaking anything or hurting themselves. Like the rest of the house, it had a slightly eerie feel to it. Even Sasuke had looked very uncomfortable when they had first entered it. Why Sasuke insisted on living in a place he obviously did not like very much confused Harry. It had sort of reminded him of Sirius, which had left him feeling miserable and out of sorts himself. That was until Naruto managed to trip on one of the floor mats and had Sasuke in a right fit trying to straighten things out again. The ensuing bickering had borderlined on down right abusive but had managed to stay just shy of that in the realm of amusing. It was certainly distracting.

They'd split up after that, giving Harry his first bit of free time all day. Naruto had remained exactly were he'd thrown himself down at, claiming it was nap time. Sasuke had said something about needing to read some paper's Tsunade had sent over and disappeared. So Harry had done the only thing he could think of. He scooped up his new kunai off the desk and took himself back outside to try this throwing thing again. He thought he'd been making some progress, but apparently not.

"Why wouldn't I be able to see it?" he asked petulantly.

"Because it's dark," Sasuke drawled back.

Harry stared at for a moment, then looked off into the distance. Yeah, it had been getting dark for a while now, but he hadn't realized just how dark until Sasuke had called his attention to it. He actually couldn't see much further than the tree he'd been using as a target, but he didn't need to share that fact. "It's not that dark," he argued.

"You can barely see me."

"I can still see the tree and that's all that matters, right?"

Sasuke sighed and shook his head. "Don't blame me if you have a headache later. Naruto went out to get dinner," he said before disappearing back into the house once more.

Harry rolled his eyes and went to fetch his kunai once more. If he had a little trouble finding the third one it was only because it was hidden by some leaves and had nothing to do with the light. He made it a point to throw the set at least two more times before thinking about heading inside. As peaceful and quiet as it was out here, and as much as he really enjoyed having an evening to himself without his Aunt calling at him for chores or his Uncle hovering in the background waiting for him to make a mistake, he was kind of hungry. And a little bored. Maybe he could talk Naruto into telling him more stories about Sasuke, since he couldn't get anything directly out of the source.

It was as he was gathering up his kunai for the last time that night that Harry felt something almost slither down his back. It felt like ice water dripping down the back of his shirt, and his hands tightened. It felt familiar. His hands had just started to shake when the quiet night was disturbed by the sharp crack of multiple people Apparating into the same place at the same time.

Harry spun around to face the house. The lights from within blazed in the early evening night. He couldn't see any sign of who was in the house, but there, on the porch, moving towards the door, were two dark cloaked figures and a flash of a white porcelain mask.

"Harry?" Sasuke's voice called from within.

"No!" Harry screamed. He didn't think. He simply threw the first thing that came to hand, then quickly threw the next three. None of them actually hit anything as far as he could tell, but they sent the robed figures dashing to duck out of the way. The only problem was, now Harry had nothing left to throw.

"Harry!" Sasuke yelled back. Something crashed from within and Harry knew there wasn't time to think about it.

He pulled out his wand and sent a curse flying at the one nearest to the door. It lit up the night in a flare of dark red before slamming his target into the wall. The other figure turned just as three more came running from around the front of the house. "Hey!" Harry yelled. "Over here!" And then he ducked and ran. The first curse slammed into his poor abused tree and put it out of its misery. Bits of bark went flying and thudded against his back as he ducked around a clump of bushes and half ran, half slid down a steep embankment. He knew his rather shaky plan was working when another flash of red sped just over his head and he heard several voices shouting out in English.

Okay. Totally not bad guy ninja, or those ANBU guys, or any other weird acquaintances of Sasuke's. These were wizards. These were Death Eaters. And somehow they'd followed him here and if he didn't do something clever quickly he might very well loose the one bit of family that actually seemed to want him.

Harry stumbled down out onto another road and suddenly found himself in the open once more. There were voices shouting up the hill above him, but he was more concerned with the body that suddenly appeared next to him. Even before the swirl of black robes could finish forming, Harry had his wand out and twisted around to face him. He yelled out the first curse that came to mind, and was gratified to see the figure knocked clear off his feet by a simple Expelliarmus. He followed it up swiftly with a Petrificus Totalus.Something slammed into him from behind, however, catching him on the shoulder and knocking him down to his knees. It felt like his cousin had tried to pull his arm off, but the limb still worked so it couldn't be too bad. Harry curled his body around, trying to keep low and small as he redirected his wand back behind him and shouted "Confringo!" hoping the larger blast would be big enough to slow down whoever was following him and silently thanking Hermonie for reading so many books and always sharing the best spells she learned with him and Ron.

He pushed himself up to his feet, his tennis shoes sliding on the gravel and damp soil beneath him. He glanced only once over his shoulder. His blast had taken out at least one tree, it looked like, and had left a small fire to devour what was left. There was the lump of a body nearby, while another was struggling back up to his feet not too far away. Further up the hill, he could just barely make out the flash of light as three more came rushing down the hill. That made six total with him. Was that all of them? Had any of them stayed behind? There was no reason to, right? They were after Harry, so they wouldn't waste their time attacking his cousin, would they? Sasuke might be a great fighter, and he may have seen Harry do a few parlor tricks, but he'd never even seen a wizard's duel before!

Please, Harry thought. Please be let this be all of them.

And then he turned and dashed back into the cover of the woods. They either would or would not follow him. The best he could do at the moment was to lead them as far away from Sasuke as possible.