Hikari grinned at her mother and kissed her cheek. "Ri-chan will be good, Mama."

The older woman laughed and lifted her to her hip, to pat her hair. "Thank you, Ri-chan."

Hikari hugged her mother and rested her head on her shoulder. "Aren't I heavy, Mama?"

Did the woman really intend to carry her all the way to the shopping district? Hikari had been spending much of her time with her mother ever since her training started to appease her. The fight between her parents was still fresh on her mind.

"Ri-chan will never be too heavy for Mama." Yoshino chuckled and kissed the top of her head. Hikari almost sighed but held back.

This couldn't keep going. She hadn't been able to do anything these days. Other than her training with Suzaku-san which added nothing to her already existing knowledge, Hikari had spent all her free time doing nonsense with her mother. She even slept in her parents' bed while her father slept in Who-knows-where.

She had to meet her mentors. She hadn't summoned them for two weeks because she hadn't been able to go to the tree house she built in the forest.

On the outside, Hikari seemed like she was being lulled by her mother's steps and the breeze rushing through her hair but inside, she despaired.

She had to end this somehow.

The only thing she benefitted from was her mother's softly whispered stories about her parents, Hikari's grandparents, who she probably would never be able to meet, because her father had caused some sort of huge scandal that would have resulted in war if they didnt offer their daughter as a political hostage.

Hikari's grandparents were royalty, of a sort. They ruled a city as large as all of Konoha on the outskirts of Kusagakure.

Her mother spoke of the trees her parents had helped grow around the whole city, of the flowers that were embroidered into all of her clothes, of the beautiful handmade crafts that were the main source of income in the city. Tourists, she described, always frequented the city for gifts and the gorgeous scenery.

(Hikari swore to take her sewing lessons seriously from now on.)

Her mother sighed and recalled meeting her father while he was on a mission in Kusa. Hikari didn't understand why her mother would mention her father while she was upset with him, perhaps she felt guilty? Perhaps to give Hikari a normal childhood with the illusion of a loving father?

("Your father used to roam the shops everyday to find something to give me the next morning. Everyday, with no fail, while he stayed in our city, he presented me with some sort of rare gift. I kept all of them." Her mother recalled, her eyes twinkling even when it shone with crippling sadness.

"Once, he gave me a blouse that I had actually embroidered myself and secretly sold to the market the previous day. I didn't tell him, though. He seemed so happy that I liked it." She whispered to her daughter and leaned in, to exaggaretly whisper the secret. Hikari watched the mischievous light in her mother's soft eyes, transfixed.)

She never once uttered anything negative about her husband, Hikari had noticed. Her mother was extremely careful with every word she had chosen and never once had her tone held any hate towards him.

And then it occurred to Hikari.

Her mother didn't hate her father.

No one could possibly hate someone and then narrate all these tales about how great they had been. Hikari knew her father loved her mother with everything he had, – almost obsessively so – but she had never thought that it would be reciprocated just as strongly.

Hikari lifted her head and stared at her mother's light brown eyes, gently passing over the trees and the roads. Yes, those weren't the eyes of someone who hated her existence. Her eyes were light, sad and guarded, yes, but they still crinkled at every child who passed them, still lit up when she saw someone she knew.

Maybe her mother had hated being locked up in this village once upon a time, but she obviously didn't hate it as much she had implied.

Hikari knew how horrible having her freedom taken from her felt. That was probably what it was like for her mother, wasn't it? Her mother loved the city she grew up in with all of her soul, it must have broken her heart to be forced away from her home and into an unfamiliar environment with no one to depend on but her husband.

Hikari felt a pressure behind her eyes. She may not be a perfect mother, but she was everything Hikari had ever wanted.

"Look at that dress, Hikari! Do you like it?" She obediently lifted her eyes to gaze at the red dress in the shop.

"That would be so pretty on you, Mama!" Hikari beamed when her mother laughed.

"Alright then, shall we see it?" Her mother's mouth stretched and not for the first time in this life, Hikari thought that her mother was the most beautiful person in the world.

(She felt guilty that Lily Potter no longer popped in her head as much as she did when Hikari was still Harry. She didn't feel the wide gap of loss in her chest anymore. Even thoughts of James were slowly being taken over by Shikaku.

Hikari couldn't even bring herself to be sad, and that somehow made it worse.)


It was night and her mother was breathing softly beside her, her arms wrapped around Hikari's small body.

Hikari, however was wide awake, eyes latching onto the darkness through the window.

It was time.

Gently, she peeled herself from her mother's grasp and cast a silencing charm on her feet and the window.

Shifting on the wooden floor, she jumped from the window. Immediately, her feet met the prickly grass. Mentally thanking her clan for being extremely old-fashioned with their designs and making all houses on ground level, she wandlessly transfigured a nearby branch into shoes, and started running towards the forest at top speed, spreading the silencing spell to her surroundings.

She caught sight of Prongslet at the entrance of the forest. The stag was calmly waiting for her, dripping more blood than usual.

Hikari paused a few feet away from him. Was that a body at his feet?

Indeed, the stag stabbed the unmoving corpse with his antlers and lifted it on his head like a crown.

Hikari hesitated; she may not be sensitive when it came to blood but that didn't mean that she was used to seeing corpses.

(A distant part in her mind thought that it made sense, she had never seen the deer hunt in the forest before, but they were bloody all the damn time, especially the Alpha and his successor. Not to mention Torture and Interrogation must have had some safe way of getting rid of the bodies. It wouldn't make sense to just leave them somewhere. She used to think they burned them, though.)

"Prongslet?" Hikari took a moment to admire how stable her voice came out.

The deer turned to her, the corpse was slowly leaking blood over its face, and tilted his head. The body leaned over with the movement. She flinched. She was definitely not riding with a body. "Maybe you shouldn't come with me today? I don't have much to do and I will be back in less than an hour."

The stag tilted his head on the other side, then nodded. Not that Hikari noticed, since she kept her eyes on the body being swayed on his antlers. Blood splattered on the trees around them and an animal-shaped mask fell on the ground.

Hikari worked on controlling her breathing and decided to act like she wasn't in an eerily silent forest in the middle of the night with a dead person and human-eating stag with very sharp antlers.

"So, I am heading out first. You can just.. finish your business, I guess." Hikari threw her hand up in a wave.

The stag huffed and got into her way when she tried to pass him to enter the forest. Hikari stepped back to avoid the blood and frowned, "What?"

Pronglset moved his head in a way that she had begun to get used to in the past few weeks. It meant he wanted her to access his memories and that there was something she needed to know.

Hikari nodded, "Okay, ready?"

The stag grunted, as if to mock her question.

Right, all-knowing seers were always ready. Hikari rolled her eyes, "Here we go."

She gazed into wide black pupils and focused.


There was a glowing figure in front of her, smirking. She was rolling her eyes at something he said -

She was sitting on her bed, her fathers unmistakable figure leaning towards her and they were whispering. Snippets reached her ears. " - You will get them for her - " "- She will leave." "She won't –"

Her mother was standing with few bags beside her, she was smiling sadly. Hikari gave her something green. Her mother beamed -

A building was burning, Hikari ran into it, eyes wide and determined. A dog barking -

Naruto grinned at her and pulled her into the apartment -

Her mother smiled at her from the kitchen, looking happier than she had ever seen her -

A red-haired wispy figure bowed to her -

Four men, eyeing each other up -

A pale haired figure pursed her lips -


Hikari wrenched her head away with a gasp. Her head was spinning, needles pricked her temple. The visions went out of order at the end and were too short to interpret.

"That was too much." She hissed from the pain and wrapped her head in her arms. She closed her eyes and tried to gain control of the freagmented memories.

There was something about prophetic dreams that just didn't mesh well with human brains. Hikari sorted through the visions and locked them up. She didn't know how long she stayed crouched on the ground until the pain started receding.

"Pronglset, that was more than the usual. Why give me all of that at once when I can just see them later?" Hikari opened her eyes to look at the stag.

Only the stag wasn't there anymore.

Her shocked eyes flicked around the entrance but the only thing left was the blood, that also somehow got on her clothes while she was hunched over.

Hikari cussed the stag all the way to her tree house.


"Did you summon me just to make me suffer, Ri-chan ? And here I thought the golden child was better than that."

Hikari rolled her eyes, "I already told you what I wanted to tell you. Now, leave. I have to call the others before going back to mom, I don't have much time."

The silence made her look up only to see the handsome face of Tom Riddle smirking at her. She was struck with déjà vu from the earlier vision.

"I am sure you have more to say, or else you would have sent me back yourself." His smile narrowed his eyes, some would say it made him look attractive but it just made Hikari more annoyed.

Bloody Dark Lords and their bloody ego.

"I told you, I am going to postpone our meetings until the whole problem is solved, I will train on my own but I won't summon you until I know that I am not under surveillance." Hikari hissed through gritted teeth.

She was already regretting summoning him. Ghost or not, Tom Riddle was a sociopath through and through, and he didn't waste any time in mocking her and her tiny body. Hikari contemplated not summoning him again, as she did for the past few weeks, but just like all the times before, she pursed her lips and grudgingly admitted that he was the best choice.

Dumbledore was a no-no. She didn't need his twinkling or manipulations right now. Her friends and family were a sensitive topic and she didn't want to open that can of worms – not that she even remembered what happened to them before she died, last thing she remembered, Hermione had her second child and was pregnant with the third –, same as her previous teachers and almost everyone she knew. Tom, though, was a perfect candidate.

Someone she understood completely and would never let him get to her head, someone who understood her views and ideas because once upon a time he was just a child hiding from bombs in London and he had similar opinions before they got horribly distorted. He also possessed a certain logical cruelty to him that was abundant in this world, that was needed. He was also a genius in most magic. Even if it was all lost because of his bad decisions, this Tom Riddle was the shade of the complete soul, therefore he wasn't Voldemort.

Or, so she told herself.

"And pray tell, how exactly is the problem going to be solved by itself?" Tom sat on the desk she had transfigured from fallen branches and crossed his long legs.

Hikari exhaled through her nose, "I don't see how that concerns you, Riddle."

"I prefer Professor Riddle," He smirked and Hikari resisted casting a blasting curse at his face. "I like to think we are closer than that, Hikari. Won't you humor a dead soul?"

Hikari raised her head and prayed to the heavens for patience. "Prongslet already gave me a few hints. I can do it."

Tom raised an eyebrow at her, "He showed you visions to fix your home life?"

She ignored him out of spite, and busied herself with packing the yarn and the finished pieces and sorting them in her bag before she turned to him, sticking her nose in the air in a way that must have reminded him of Malfoy. "As a matter of fact, yes, yes he did."

He gave her a blank look as if to show her how stupid she was.

"Are you really not going to say it?" he was starting to sound agitated.

The corners of her mouth lifted, ' That's right. She was the one in control here.'

"Fine, I guess you should know what's stopping me from calling you." She smirked.

"I call it: Mission Cupid. " She grinned and ignored his unimpressed stare before explaining.


It took another week of her father sleeping in the proverbial dog house till she was finally sleeping in her room again and her father was allowed to sleep in the main bedroom.

Hikari waited another week and two days before she started her mission.


She took a deep breath and wailed, screaming as loud as her childish voice allowed her, "Daddy!"

She heard a loud thud followed by loud steps all over the house. Hikari waited, sniffling and letting her tears track down her face as evidence.

The door was slammed open and her parents barged into the room with Shikamaru close behind, her father in the front in his bathrobe carrying a kunai and swiping the room frantically with his eyes. "What happened?!"

Hikari sniffed and muttered, looking every bit like a dejected scared child, "I had a nightmare."

Collective relieved sighs were released. A warm feeling spread in her chest but she threw it to the back of her mind to process after she finished her act.

As expected, her mother stepped forward to pat her head, "Ri-chan, do you want mama to stay with you?"

Hikari shook her head and a fresh patch of tears soaked her face, "The monsters had daddy. They were going to – hic – eat him. They dragged – hic – him by his legs."

Her mother softened and in a second, Hikari was in her arms with her head being stroked gently, "Daddy is right there, love. Nothing happened, it is okay."

Hikari noticed that Shikamaru and Shikaku were already stepping away to return to their rooms, and started phase 2. Now this part was extremely delicate and could go wrong in so many ways.

"Daddy," Hikari scrunched her face like she was preventing the tears from falling and whispered, playing the act of an embarrassed child who had too many expectations of life. "Can you stay? I am scared."

Shikaku looked at her in shock and glanced beside him to see if she meant someone else before responding. "Me?"

Hikari widened her eyes and nodded, " Please ?"

Now, this wouldn't normally work for her father but it would certainly work for her mother who frowned at him and scolded him (softly, Hikari noted). "She just had a nightmare, the least you could do is stay with her till she falls asleep."

Her father frowned for a bit and stared at her eyes for what felt like eternity but it was dissolved in a moment and Hikari felt like she might have imagined his look of confusion.

"Right, I'll stay. You go back to bed." He said and stepped in her mother's place to lay a hand on her hair and pat it. Hikari made sure to relax and smile at her mother to show her that everything was better now.

Her mother yawned and nodded, shooing Shikamaru who was staring at the unfolding events with half lidded eyes. Both returned to their respective rooms.

As soon as the main bedroom's door was closed, the hand patting her was removed and her father's icy gaze pierced her. "What did you want to tell me?"

Hikari felt the blood freeze in her veins, ' Time for phase 3.'

She schooled her features into a blank look, tears forgotten, and stared at him from underneath her lashes. "Your wedding anniversary is coming up."

Shikaku frowned, "Yes, in two weeks."

Hikari relaxed slightly, and nodded. Good, he hadn't forgotten. "There's a red dress in the market that mom really liked but thought she had no reason to wear it. It's at the store that's directly in front of Uncle Ino's flower shop. She is size 32. She also really liked a ring that had a red stone in it and it matches with the dress, it was in the store near the library."

Hikari leaned over her bed and reached underneath it to grab a few paper sheets that were held together by a colorful butterfly clip and handed it to him, "Here. This has details about the dress, the ring and where to get them. You will get them for her and invite her to a new restaurant, not the Akimichi's BBQ place, you have to find somewhere else. On page 4, you will find potential restaurants that she commented on."

Shikaku held the packet in shock and flipped through them. He reached the last three pages however before his hand stilled and he turned his narrowed gaze at her. "What is this?"

Hikari made sure her breathing was calm before she continued in a strong, no-nonsense voice. McGonagall would have been so proud. "These are the details of the mission that you are going to commission. A B-rank escort mission, to make sure mama is safe while she visits her hometown."

Shikaku was as still as a statue and his eyes were piercing her with an odd intensity. Hikari stared right back and hoped that she conveyed how stubborn she was going to be about this. She didn't want to get into Phase 3-C or Phase 3-D but she would if he made a commotion about this. Hikari didn't listen in on all his conversations for nothing, she had a nice assortment of blackmail.

It was a small eternity later that Shikaku started moving again. "I can't do that."

Hikari raised her eyebrow at him, giving him an expression that she had picked up from spending a large amount of her time with sarcastic ghosts, "You can, and you will. This won't end until you do. You may think that she had forgiven you but these things keep piling over and your fights have gotten worse, we can all see that. If you keep this up, you will divorce in a few years tops."

Her voice was cruel and her eyes even crueler. Something dark was at the edge of her vision but she ignored it.

Shikaku took a deep breath and closed his eyes, leaning his head against his hands, an imitation of a thinking-pose. "She won't come back."

She leaned back into her bed and let out a smile at his defeated tone; she had already won this. "She will. Leave that part to me and just do what I told you to."

Shikaku gave her a look, "The description says escorts for one person not two."

Hikari smirked; she didn't know that she looked every bit like her father's daughter at that moment, "Who said I'll be going with her? I just said I will make sure she'll be back."

She huffed when she noticed his complicated look. "Look, we both know you're not that good at emotional stuff. I am, and let's be real, I understand mama better than you. She loves us, she loves you, and she loves the village. Maybe it wasn't enough at the beginning of your marriage but this has been her life for almost a decade now. She won't stay away for long."

She could practically feel his resolve crumbling. For the first time, Hikari saw her father look vulnerable and shattered like a man who had been shouldering the world and then was told that it wasn't even nearly half of it and he had more to carry yet.

"Expect to have a sleepover in two weeks at the Yamanaka's." He said and that was a confirmation if she ever heard one.

Green eyes tracked his figure as he stood up from her bed and left the room. He seemed lost like any man when it came to love. She was struck at the realization that maybe her father didn't logically calculate the consequences of his marriage with her mother as she liked to think.

Heh, it only took a woman to make him lose his mind.

Maybe Dumbledore was right, love was the strongest magic there was.

Hikari grinned, "You hear that, Shikamaru? We are having a sleepover at Ino's."

The shadow hidden under her bed flinched, Hikari's grin sharpened. She was the one who taught him that trick, did he actually think she wouldn't notice?

She lied back down in satisfaction and closed her eyes, feeling the shadow trickle retreat from her room.

Phase 3: Complete.


This story really isn't going to go the way you think, but I do hope you enjoy