AN: As promised, an update! Okay, it's a little later than planned, but I'm trying to be productive. My life officially slows down as of the 1st of Oct., so writing will once more be possible.

As always, thank you so much for all the great support and advice. It keeps me focused even when I'm struggling through a chapter.

Hey! Look! Action scene! XD

Harry flinched as another bone shattering curse zipped by his head. He could almost swear he felt the heat of it passing him by before it crashed into the wall behind him. Bits of plaster and wood splinters exploded out and he had to screw his eyes shut and turn his head away. As it was, he could feel the sharp pieces tear through the skin around his neck and ear. He hunched his shoulders forward, trying to duck down, even as he braced himself against the wall. With a flick of his wrist he brought the tip of his wand up and hissed out a quick spell. It knocked the Death Eater closest to him off his feet but it wouldn't be enough to keep the man down for long.

Pushing off of the building behind him, Harry darted to the right. He was already jerking his body to the left when another Death Eater sent a different spell flying towards him. It missed, just barely, but Harry didn't have time to congratulate himself on good instincts. He was already darting out from behind one building, searching wildly for his next place to hide.

This game of cat and mouse had been going on for what seemed like hours. There was just too many of them. Harry couldn't get a moment long enough to cast a proper spell before one or more of them were flinging hexes and curses his way. He knew there was at least six of them and each one of them seemed absolutely determined not to let him out of their sights. Even worse, every time he did manage to take one of them down, another was there with the counter-curse or charm that had their comrade right back up on his feet again and flinging nasty hexes straight at Harry.

It was only a matter of time before one of them caught him. It was amazing that they hadn't already. Harry had no illusions about his chances here. After all, what was one half trained wizard teenager against six or more hardened criminals, with probably two decades of experience on him? They probably knew more dark curses than he did simple charms. The only reason he wasn't dead yet was because of luck. That, and they really did have terrible aim.

Another stray shot took out the tree behind Harry, engulfing it in green fire. It was a good five feet away from the bush Harry had ducked behind, but the sudden heat and the biting electric edge to it was enough to send him scrambling out from his limited cover and back out into the street.

"Reducto!" someone shouted out from a distance.

Harry didn't even have to think about it. His wand was already moving up to flick out the best defensive spell he knew. It held up as a splash of red crashed into it, tendrils of light spreading out as the curse tried to find it's way around the invisible barrier. Harry jerked his arm down and to the right, flinging the excess power off away from him. The one benefit to being out in the open like this was it also made it easier for him to spot his opponents. "Epoximise!" he shouted out before swiftly following it up with a barked "Langlock." For a moment there was blessed silence as the two simple hexes not only glued his opponent in place but silenced him.

And then there was movement out of the corner of his eye and Harry was ducking down. "Impedimenta!" he shouted out at the same time another voice roared, "Expulso!"

Harry hadn't been fast enough, but the disruption of his spell was enough to send the Death Eater's curse flying over his shoulder. It sailed up into the sky, straining, floundering for a new target. Red lightening flashed overhead as the spell finally lost its shape and split apart. A crimson glow filled the street, and for a moment Harry could see clearly in the dark. He paused for the first time since his mad dash had begun. Thankfully they were still inside the part of town that seemed totally deserted of life. Empty houses stood silently on every side, their dark windows empty, their doors sealed shut. There were no cars, no carts, not even a bicycle parked out front to suggest that life once might have continued normally here. There was no one to get hurt, no one to die. Just Harry. And a bunch of frustrated, dangerous dark wizards.

For this one brief moment he could see them clearly, dark shadows in the night, swaths of black highlighted only by the stark white of their masks. They were regrouping. He could see them moving to slip around until their number was spread out on either side of him. There were simply too many of them. He was grossly out numbered. It was terrifying. If he stopped to think about it any longer than that one brief instant, he probably would have just given up and accepted the inevitable.

But despite everything – this also felt very, very familiar. How many times had it been now that he stood like this? Alone, in the dark, with a ring of Death Eaters slowly appearing around him? He tried not to think too much about the first time. It was easier than it probably should have been, since the night Cedric died was really little more than one, long, painful blur to him. Too much had happen, too quickly, for him to truly remember it in any great detail. Shock, he supposed, and real, physical pain, and the mind-numbing helplessness of being sounded by Death Eaters and utterly defenseless.

At least he'd had a fighting chance at the Ministry. At least no one had tied him up there, or taken his wand away from. And he hadn't had to face the monster himself head on. But that night had its own terrors, some that he tried not to think about too much either. But one of the worst had been knowing that he'd led his friends into that mess. He never should have let the others come with him. He should have found a way to stop them. And the best he'd been able to do at the time was led the Death Eaters away until it was just him, alone once more, surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than for him to be dead.

And here he was again. He ought to be just as terrified. But he had his wand pulsing warmly in one hand and nothing and no one close enough to him to get hurt in the cross-fire. He should be panicking. But it was just as easy to be furious.

How dare they. How dare they follow him here. It was bad enough they put all of his other friends and classmates at risk. Bad enough he had to cower in that stifling house on Privet Drive and have to worry constantly about endangering the lives of people he didn't even like. How dare they follow him here, to the one place Harry might have a chance of not being the boy-who-lived and might actually get to have a family. Granted, this place probably wasn't much safer than Hogwarts was. There was that horrible man with the red eyes trying to kill him, Sasuke and his murdered family and his secrets, and all of the other creepy, dangerous people that seemed to fill this nice, quiet, little village. There was no reason for Harry to feel safe here, and he was starting to understand why his cousin was such a paranoid jerk sometimes. But that was all the more reason why Harry was not going to let this happen. He was not going to add to that.

And he sure as hell wasn't going to let them hurt Sasuke. They'd taken too much from him already.

Harry stepped back carefully, trying to keep as many of them in his sight as possible and kept his feet spread out for balance. No more running this time. They were far enough away now from everyone else. He might not know as many nasty curses as they did, but he'd spent the last year teaching every clever trick he could come up with to a group of his classmates. If there was one thing Harry knew, it was how to think on his feet. He'd had lots of experience, after all. And a little desperation went a long way.

If nothing else, he had one distinct tactical advantage – he didn't have to aim. Completely alone, outnumbered and surrounded, he didn't have to worry about what he hit, just as long as he hit as many of them as possible. Raising his wand, Harry took one last deep breath and let loose.

"Reducto!" he yelled as he thrust his wand out towards the group of men in front of him. He yanked his wand back up as soon as the spell left it, and slashed it back down once more, repeating the same spell again and again. It was hard to control, and the force of it kept making him want to jerk back away from the destructive power. He couldn't be sure if he actually hit anyone. But it accomplished his main goal as the tail end of it clipped the dirt road and ricocheted up in a cloud of dust that filled up half the street. He quickly dropped into a crouch, hoping anything they shot back would go over his head. He was already pulling his arm back and extending it to the right. "Impedimenta!" he shouted out for what seemed like the hundredth time that night. The Death Eater trying to box him in from that side flew backwards with a crash into the building behind him. Harry didn't hesitate to snake his arm back around to the left and gasped out a "Stupefy!" without even looking. If there was nothing there, the simple little spell wouldn't hurt the abandoned buildings on this street. If there was yet another Death Eater to match the one on his right, then he'd bought himself a little more time.

Something sharp and cold whizzed by his left ear and his body jerked to the right as he tried to avoid it. He scrambled on his knees, trying to get turned around but afraid to stand up. This time something sharp and cold ripped through his left sleeve and a gush of searingly hot blood ran down his arm only to instantly freeze. His whole arm felt numb in an instant and his heart leapt. What if it spread? What if his whole body went cold and numb like that? Would his heart stop? His right arm was still working at the moment, however, and he jabbed his wand in the right direction. "Calamus!" he yelped back.

Harry tried to scramble backwards. His arm felt like a dead weight at his side and his stupid sneakers kept slipping out from underneath him. He got to his feet and shouted out another stunning spell into the dark, hoping for a little luck. The smoke and dust from his earlier spells were starting to fill the whole street now, making it hard to breath and nearly impossible to see. But Harry had played plenty of Quidditch through thick fog and even at night. He knew you didn't always have to be able to see a person to know they were there. Even still, he didn't notice the man behind him until the last moment. A shuffling of feet, the whisper of a wand flick and the faint tingle of magic build-up was the only warning he had, and it wasn't going to be enough to get himself turned around in time to face his opponent, much less fire off a counter curse. Even the best of luck had to run out eventually, he supposed. He hadn't expected any better.

He also wasn't expecting the third body, which slammed into the Death Eater and brought the two of them crashing into Harry. The impact jammed his right shoulder something awful and the pain seemed to rip across his body as if the entire arm had been pulled clean off. Then the three of them hit the ground – with Harry on the bottom. His lungs empty in a whoosh that left him stunned, but he managed to keep from bouncing his head off the ground. That didn't stop the elbow of somebody on top from slamming into his temple. The shock of that sent him gasping air back into his poor stunned lungs.

Having two people fall on him hurt a lot more than he would have thought. Everything hurt, and he hoped to god that he hadn't broken anything. Even more frightening, however, was the way his left arm didn't hurt at all. In fact, he couldn't really feel much of anything from it. He had the wild urge to grab at it, to check that it was in fact still there and still attached to him. But his good arm was kind of preoccupied being pinned down by someone's chest.

"You alright there, Harry?" someone asked from above him. There was a shifting of bodies on top of him before a mop of bright blond hair peeked out over the top and Naruto's face peered down at him with a curious tilt and a playful smile.

"Get. Off!" Harry grounded out between gritted teeth. The body between them was as still as death, but it still weighed a ton and every time Naruto so much as shifted an inch, it sent that weight crushing down on Harry in new and even more painful ways.

"Oh, right," Naruto exclaimed before lithely jumping back. The force of him moving wrung another grunt out of Harry, but it wasn't long after that before the body on top of him was yanked back as well, and suddenly Harry could breathe again! Sweet, sweet oxygen with no elbows pressing down on his throat or knees jabbing him in the gut. Harry sucked in a couple blessed lung fulls as Naruto blithely dropped the body to one side. Harry didn't see any blood, so he wasn't sure if the Death Eater was alive or dead. If the man did wake up from all of this, he was certainly going to have some interesting bruises.

Harry didn't have long to consider which alternative he would prefer. Naruto was already bending down and grabbing him by his arms and yanking him up to his feet. The good news was that Harry could feel the heat of Naruto's hand on his left arm like a hot coal against his skin. The bad news was he could feel that and it bloody hurt! Harry hissed sharply, as Naruto yelped and yanked his hand back.

"What the hell?"

Harry jerked his arm away, irrationally trying to hide it behind him just in case Naruto got another brilliant idea like touching it again. Shite, but that had hurt! He would have tucked the arm up if he could have made it move. As it was he had to settle for hunching over to protect it. "Nevermind that," he said quickly, once the pain had passed enough to let him talk. "There may be more of them. You have to go!"

Naruto grinned. "Can't be too many of them, I saw a couple you'd taken down. Very cool. Think you could show me the one with the-"

"Naruto!" Harry interrupted. "You shouldn't be here! It isn't safe!"

But Naruto just shrugged. "Don't worry. But man, is Sasuke going to be pissed! He's goin' to-"

"Naruto! Behind you!"

The other boy didn't hesitate after that. He tackled Harry around the middle and sent the two of them crashing back down to the ground (this time on top of the other body) as a curse went flying over them. Harry was still contemplating how he always seemed to be the one on the bottom of these little dog piles, and just starting to remember that he should be scrambling to get back up, when Naruto hopped back up his feet and pivoted sharply to face their assailant head on. Naruto slapped his hands together to start making the seals they'd shown him earlier when a voice shouted out from the distance. The words were all too familiar and the last thing Harry ever wanted to hear.

"No!" he shouted, as he did the only thing he could think of. His hand snapped out faster than he'd ever thought he could before, and he yanked good and hard on Naruto's ankle. He felt the other boy's leg start to give even as a bright flash of green light raced at them. There wasn't time to think of which of the two would be faster, gravity or light. Harry braced himself to feel another body come crashing down on top of his again only to find his hold on Naruto's leg ripped out of his hand as the other boy went flying backwards.

Harry would have shouted again, but there really was no point, was there? It was everything he'd dreaded since he first realized the death Eaters had followed him there. Clenching his teeth, Harry scrambled back over the body beneath him and up to his feet. His wand was still clutched tightly in one hand and it didn't shake as he whipped it sharply through the right movements. "Impedimenta!" he screamed back. "Incarcerous! Langlock! Furnuculua!" He snapped out spell after spell until he was sure the other wizard couldn't so much as twitch. Harry paused then, sucking in one deep breath after another, not thinking – very deliberately not thinking – about anything beyond the next spell. About what should be the next spell. And wondering if this time he had enough hatred to make it work.

And then Naruto groaned from behind him and everything rushed out of Harry in one great whoosh! It left him breathless as he turned slowly around, half afraid that he was imagining things.

But that really was Naruto reaching one shaking hand up to rub at his face.

With a whoop Harry dashed over to Naruto's side. Or tried to, at least. It came out more as a stagger. He dropped down to his knees by the other boy and quickly gave his shoulder a hard shake using his good hand. Even that hurt, though. He must have burnt his hand at some point. He didn't care about that right then, however. He was more interested in the grimace Naruto gave, the way his skin look so tender it was almost orange, the way he was very much not dead.

Just to be sure, Harry gave him another good shake, and smiled like an idiot when Naruto whined and tried to pull away. "Oh, thank god," Harry breathed out. "I didn't think I'd pulled you clear."

Naruto's face scrunched up even more. "Ya mean that thing didn't hit me? 'Cause it sure hurt."

Harry laughed. "No, I think you just tripped backwards. Must have hit your head pretty good on the way down. Trust me, if you'd been hit by that, you wouldn't be alive."

"I dunno," Naruto muttered as he finally rolled himself over onto his side and slowly pushed himself up to his knees. "I gotta pretty thick hide.

"Not this thick," Harry replied with a grin. "That was the Killing Curse. It only does one thing."

Naruto stopped rubbing at his face and his bright blue eyes peered out at Harry with none of their usual good cheer and playfulness. "You guys gotta jutsu just for killing people? One that'll kill 'em just like that?"

Harry felt himself flush, suddenly ashamed that the bright shining world that was magic was also the same twisted place that could make something like that. Ashamed that he'd even thought about using it, even on someone as terrible as Bellatrix or any of the other Death Eaters. He nodded slowly.

Naruto stared at him for a moment before slumping over with a gusty sigh. "That's pretty fucked up," he announced. He shook his head once, then slowly pushed himself to his feet. "Where's Sasuke?"

Harry flinched. Oh, man, his cousin was going to be livid. He may have forgotten to mention a few things to Sasuke, and he had a feeling he wasn't going to get away with that after this. Though, that might be the least of his problems. After everything that had happened, all the damage he'd caused, Sasuke might not want him living with him anymore. Who would? Harry slumped down even more, feeling sore and achy and more than a little sick to his stomach. "I kind of left him at the house."

Naruto froze in the middle of stretching out his back. "You left him?" he repeated in a voice that was almost hollow.

Harry shrugged his good shoulder. "It was the best plan I could come up with. Don't worry, I think all of them followed me. I hope."

Naruto was back to staring at Harry and it was really beginning to get annoying. Thankful Naruto finally shook his head. "He's going to kill ya for this, you know?"

Harry grimace. "Yeah," he replied, hoping the other boy didn't mean literally. He was fairly sure Naruto didn't.

When Harry didn't move to get up, Naruto helpfully hooked a hand under his arm and yanked him up to his feet. "Come on," he said, "gotta face him eventually. Kinda surprised he isn't here already, going all ape shit on these freaks. Not like him to pass up a good opportunity to rage a little."

Harry stumbled along beside him as they made their way down the street, stopping by each body to make sure all of the Death Eaters were either securely unconscious or more permanently disabled. When they passed the third giant hole blown out of the road, Harry finally admitted that he may have broken a few things in his haste to escape. He was fully prepared to come back and fix each and every one of them himself as soon as he was capable, but Naruto just laughed. "Harry, this is a ninja village. Everyone breaks things. This isn't anything you, me and Sasuke can't patch up tomorrow."

And apparently, that was all there was to be said about the matter.