Masks and Shadows

Disclaimer: We own the rights to neither Naruto nor Harry Potter, but Kilerkki does own a copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince! Boo-yah!

Authors' Notes: Many thanks to all our reviewers and especially to our splendiferous beta-reader, Phoenix of Eternity, who probably thinks by now that we are slightly mad for launching into such a huge project with so little understanding of what we were undertaking. Enormous thanks also go to those reviewers who have taken the time to critique as well as comment. We're sorry to disappoint some of you, but we're not planning on introducing any more old friends from Naruto; what would be the point? And we're not going to suddenly introduce a translation spell when neither the Harry Potter universe nor the Naruto canon has ever shown any indication of such a spell/jutsu existing. Think realistically, people.

Besides, language barriers amuse us. Perhaps we should include some Engrish…

As a final note: this fic is already AU (sorry to disappoint those who thought ninja running around Hogwarts would be, y'know, canon…) and from this point on is even more so. We shall not be taking any of the people, places, events, or incidents in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince into consideration in the writing of this fic; please do not take them into consideration in the reading. And please don't include spoilers in your reviews. Rest assured that if something in Masks and Shadows differs from something in HBP or the latest chapters of Naruto, we meant it that way.

Masks and Shadows

Chapter Four:

In Which Hogwarts Has Questions and Naruto Gets Some Exercise

"Well, of course you couldn't read it," Hermione said absently, turning a page in Archimedes and Arithmancy. "If they're from the East, they wouldn't write their names in English. Did Professor Lupin figure out anything else from the Map?"

Harry shook his head and lowered his voice, even though the Common Room of Gryffindor Tower was nearly deserted at this late hour. Save for Harry, Ron, and Hermione at their favorite table near the fire, the only other denizen of the Common Room was Hermione's large ginger cat, Crookshanks, who was napping in an overstuffed chair by the portrait hole. "Lupin said the Map was designed to show a person's true name," Harry reported. "So it wouldn't translate into English letters. But—" He spread the map out on the table, tapped it with his wand, and muttered, "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good. See, there!"

Ron leaned over Harry's other shoulder to peer at the map, and even Hermione looked up from her book to follow Harry's pointing wand-tip. Two little sets of symbols squeezed together in a suite of small rooms on the third floor. Another set of symbols wandered a first-floor corridor; a fourth seemed to be climbing the stairs to the Astronomy tower.

The fifth and sixth sets of symbols—one poking into a closet on the fourth floor, one descending into the dungeons—were exactly the same as the fourth.

"Blimey," Ron said slowly. "Those first two—isn't that the corridor where we found Fluffy, our first year? And how come—" He bent a little closer, till the tip of his long, freckled nose nearly touched the yellowed parchment. "Those two," he said, pointing at the two names on the third floor. "Their first halves are the same. And those three are exactly the same!"

Hermione bent over the parchment as well, her thick brown hair falling about her shoulders. "Well, in most Eastern countries the family name comes first," she said. "So those could be Professor Hyuuga and his cousin, the medi-witch. But the last three…"

"Lupin didn't know either," Harry said. "But he said the map doesn't make mistakes; if those three names are the same, it's because they are the same. Except we still don't know what they are," he added rather lamely.

Hermione's eyes narrowed. She reached for a spare bit of parchment, dipped her quill in ink, and copied the four names with tiny precise strokes, noting which one was repeated three times. "I'll look them up tomorrow," she said. "After all, Professor Hyuuga shouldn't be the only one using the Foreign Language section!"

"Speaking of which," Ron interjected, "did you ask Lupin about Hyuuga, Harry?"

"Yeah," Harry said. "But he doesn't know much more than we do. He saw Hyuuga—and his cousin and the guards—for the first time at the start of term Feast, and none of them have visited the staff room yet."

"Parvarti said Hyuuga's teaching Divination next week," Ron said, sounding disgusted. "She and Lavender are almost as daft about him as they were about Lockheart. Professor Hyuuga has the silkiest hair…Professor Hyuuga has the smoothest voice…Professor Hyuuga's eyes are like pools of moonlight!" He made a gagging noise. "Professor Hyuuga's a bloody fop, if you ask me."

"I still want to know why he was looking for books in his own subject," Hermione said thoughtfully. "I mean, I could understand if he was looking for some really esoteric book he wouldn't have, but those were both entry-level texts on Eastern Divination. Maybe he just wanted to see how the subject's treated in English books, but…"

Ron gave her a dubious look. "C'mon, Hermione, that's a bit thick. If you ask me, he's just as much a nutter as all the rest of 'em. All those Divination folks are off their rockers."

Harry wasn't really listening to them. "I want to know more about those guards," he said. "How did Deer see through the Invisibility Cloak? And why did he attack with a knife? He didn't even pull out his wand until I asked him if he had one. Another thing, too," he added as an afterthought. "He wasn't wearing those robes they had at the feast—he had on some kind of uniform that looked more Muggle than wizard. Even Aurors wear robes, but this guy had black trousers, silvery body-armor, and some kind of knife-sheathe strapped to his leg. Almost like they're not really wizards at all—or at least aren't expecting to fight the way a wizard fights."

"Well," Hermione said briskly, "we'll all stop in the library after dinner tomorrow night and see what we can find out. In the meantime, don't you two have homework to start?" She pulled Archimedes and Arithmancy towards her again and flipped back to her spot.

Ron eyed her. "Don't you have any homework?"

"Already finished it," Hermione said. "I picked this up in the library for a bit of light reading."

Harry and Ron knew all about what Hermione considered light reading. They stared at the 700-page 18th century tome, glanced at each other, and decided not to comment.

-

Hogwarts students, Hinata decided by the afternoon of the third day, were accidents waiting to happen. And a great many of them already had.

At least they weren't the sort of "accidents" she was used to, which generally involved a great deal of blood and quite a bit of grave-digging. But even when Naruto had pretended to be stuck in his Sexy no Jutsu form for three hours on a boring mission (during which their client had nearly fainted from blood loss and even Neji and Shikamaru had hastily stuffed tissues up their noses), at least he hadn't added antlers to his head, or turned his nose into a cauliflower, or invented hiccups that absolutely refused to stop.

Madam Pomfrey ("Just call me Poppy, dear, you're not a student anymore, and would you mind handing me that bottle of Skele-Gro?") had dealt with most of their visitors with an unruffled calm, although she did seem glad to have an extra pair of hands. When Hinata suggested, during a lull in that morning's influx of variously hexed students, that Hogwarts must lose several students every year if this was the normal state of things, Poppy laughed and shook her head.

"It'll calm down in a few days, dear," she said warmly. "Things are always like this for the first few days—old rivalries heating up after the summer, I suppose. Didn't students get into fights when you were at school?"

"Ah," Hinata said, thinking of Neji and her first chuunin exam and the month she'd spent coughing up blood. "Yes."

But at least Neji had honestly tried to kill her, not Transfigure her head into a bulbous orange pumpkin.

By that point the ward was empty; it was lunchtime, Poppy said, and they probably wouldn't have any more patients until after lunchtime confrontations were over. The two women ate in the hospital wing, in the little office at the back. Hinata was very, very glad for her show-no-emotion training when a casual swing of Poppy's wand produced a platter of chicken sandwiches, a pot of tea, and a plate of biscuits. A few years ago, she might have jumped and even squeaked at alarm. Now, she simply tensed, blinked, and gratefully accepted a cup of tea.

Poppy proved to be talkative, warm, and motherly—and a bit of a fusser, Hinata thought privately. Fortunately she had accepted without question Hinata's story about being trained in Eastern methods of healing and wishing to learn more about the Western style; she chattered cheerfully about new charms she'd read about in the latest issues of Healers' Monthly and Asclepius, and once she even shoved aside her plate and drew her wand to demonstrate the wrist movement for a particular wound-sealing charm. Hinata copied her movements dutifully, but the wand Dumbledore had procured for her seemed dull and lifeless. Perhaps she was so used to molding chakra that by this point it was unnatural to use this "magic" in its raw form?

She stored it away as a question to ask Neji or Shikamaru later that night, and turned her attention back to the chocolate biscuits.

"I do like a nice cup of tea of an afternoon," Poppy said at last, pouring herself a final cup from the seemingly-bottomless teapot and smiling pleasantly at Hinata. "There's something so relaxing about it. Especially after such a morning as we've had."

"Mm, yes," Hinata said, and decided that this opening was as good as any. "Also I have heard that things be nervous here. After the robbery."

"Oh, goodness! Dumbledore's told you about that? Well I expect he must have; he's very good about keeping us up-to-date on the happenings here. Although no one knows who the burglar was or what he was after—and he must have been a terribly good wizard, to break into Hogwarts. Sirius Black managed it three years ago but of course everyone thought he was practically the right-hand man of You-Know-Who…" She trailed off significantly.

Hinata didn't know Who, but she nodded sympathetically and lifted her eyebrows as an invitation for the older woman to continue. It didn't sound as though Poppy knew much, but the slightest bit of information might be the final clue to help Shikamaru fit the puzzle together.

"Could it be the same person?" she asked. "This…Black man?"

Poppy shook her head. "No, Black died this past year—it was all over the Daily Prophet, but of course you didn't see. As it turns out he was never working for You-Know-Who, it was all a frame, but the truth came out rather too late for him. Poor boy," she added reflectively. "I used to see him quite often when he was a student here."

Hinata mentally crossed Sirius Black off her list of Things To Find Out About and struck a different tack. "What do you hear about the robber? I tell you," she added in a somewhat lower tone, as if she were embarrassed, "when I hear about it, I was a little worried. But Neji-niisan, he tell—told me that there is nothing to worry. There are the guards here now."

A little confidence booster couldn't do any harm.

Poppy nodded and leaned forward just a little. "Well, I don't mind telling you, my dear, that I was worried as well. But—your cousin, is it? Such a pretty name—is quite right. Professor Dumbledore knows what he's about. The thief didn't even get away with anything, Madam Pince says, and of course she'd know—I do believe that woman counts every book in the library before she goes to bed at night!" She laughed. Hinata smiled weakly. From what Neji had said, that was a huge library; well, maybe Madam Pince had a spell to help her…

She was almost relieved when the hospital wing door opened at last and a tall, hook-nosed man with lank black hair and flowing dark robes stepped inside. Poppy was a sweet woman, but she kept making jokes about things Hinata didn't understand, and she was hard-pressed to keep up with the flow of the conversation. Besides, it was obvious that the healer knew even less about the burglary than the ANBU did, and Hinata was ready for a new source of information.

But the visitor showed no inclination for conversation. "Forgive me for disturbing you, Poppy," he said in a cold, brusque voice, "but one of the abysmally clumsy students this morning knocked over my entire supply of aconite. I wondered if you might have any."

To Hinata's surprise, Poppy glanced at the calendar pinned to her wall before answering. "Ah," she said in a sad voice. "It's the full moon Monday night, that's right. Poor boy. I keep hoping someday…" She sighed. "Well, it will have to be a cleverer witch than me that comes up with the cure." She set her teacup down and pushed her chair away from the desk. "Just a moment, Severus, I believe there's some in the back…"

In a moment she was gone, bustling through the other door of the office into the store room beyond. Hinata stayed at the desk, feeling a little awkward in the visitor's presence. He seemed to be ignoring her, staring around the office with something of a permanent sneer on his face. He reminded Hinata of someone, although for the moment she could not guess who—but it was there in the locks of black hair framing his face, the cold dark eyes, the arrogant tilt of the head…

Her own mother-of-pearl eyes narrowed suddenly. She'd remembered.

And she kept her gaze fixed on the hook-nosed man and her hands folded into the first seal for the Byakugan beneath the desk until Poppy returned with a jar of the herb. The man accepted his aconite without a word of thanks and stalked out.

"Poppy," Hinata said as soon as the door had closed behind him, "who is that?"

"Mmm?" Poppy said. She was looking at the calendar again, and she tore her eyes away from her perusal of the little sparkling moon-cycles glimmering in silver paint. "Oh. Professor Severus Snape, dear; he teaches Potions."

"Is he…always like that?" Hinata asked hesitantly. She was thinking of henge, and one dangerous man masquerading as another, and if she should mention her vague suspicions to her teammates and, if so, how. But Poppy misunderstood.

"Oh, he's generally a little more polite," she said. "But of course brewing the Wolfsbane Potion for Professor Lupin would put him in a foul mood, it's a nasty potion and Severus has never liked Remus anyway…"

"Wolfsbane?" Hinata asked.

The Healer blinked at her. "Why yes, dear, didn't you know? Professor Lupin is a werewolf."

-

"So what's a werewolf?" Naruto asked after dinner that night. The four ANBU had gathered in the common room of their suite, leaving four of Naruto's kage bunshin to patrol the castle and deal with any trouble. The Kyuubi vessel himself was crouched on the hearthstone, prodding the fire with an iron poker; something in him seemed both calmed and excited by the sight and smell of the leaping flames. Behind him, Shikamaru stretched out on his back on the hearthrug, arms folded beneath his head, dark eyes half-hidden by lazily drooping lids. Neji had laid claim to one of the armchairs and was alternating between muttering English verb conjugations and swearing at his Divination books (and, from what little Naruto could make out, at pesky students, especially those of the female variety who went so far as to spy on their teachers in the library). Neither of them, Naruto thought darkly, seemed to be paying much attention.

At least Hinata was—but then, she was the one who'd brought the news. The kunoichi sat in the other armchair with an English dictionary spread out on her knees and a crease drawing her dark brows together. She turned a page and frowned even more deeply. "This isn't helping much. It only says a werewolf is a mythical beast which changes from human to wolf at the full moon. Surely that's impossible, though. Perhaps Poppy-san was teasing me…"

"I don't think so," Naruto said slowly. His stomach tightened, and the memory of tired, lonely brown eyes and a strange, musky scent clawed at his mind. "There's something different about that man—Lupin. Not just how his chakra feels a little strange. He smells…" He flapped a hand uselessly in the air and then poked savagely at a burning log. The log cracked and fell in two flaming bits, sending a dazzling dance of sparks up the chimney.

Shikamaru spoke unexpectedly. "Hinata, check the books I left on the table. There should be one called Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them. It's a wizard book, not like that civilian dictionary." Dumbledore had explained that non-magic people were called Muggles here in England, but none of the ANBU could help thinking of them as civilians, outsiders to a ninja's life. Although, come to think of it, the wizards here were all civilians as well. Naruto still couldn't believe how easily Shikamaru had caught that creeping boy two nights ago. Didn't anyone teach these children anything?

"The red one?" Naruto could hear Hinata pushing books aside, then returning to her chair and flipping pages again. "Basilisk…Lethifold…Manticore…Unicorn…ah, Werewolf." She read in silence for perhaps five minutes. When she spoke again, her voice was oddly flat.

"Naruto, what did the Kyuubi feel like when you met Lupin-san?"

All three of the young men tensed involuntarily. Naruto felt the sudden weight of stares on his back. He shrugged, scowling at the fire. He'd been hoping she wouldn't ask this—he could count on one hand the number of times they'd brought up the subject of Naruto's uninvited resident during their years together as a team—but he couldn't blame her. Especially since the Kyuubi had, indeed, reacted.

"Restless," he said, rocking back on his heels and tracing a careful spiral on the hearthstone with the charcoaly tip of the poker. "A little wary. He doesn't know what it is, but he recognizes something. They're both predators. Kyuubi…" He paused, listening within himself, as he had learned to do over the past seven years of his cognizant coexistence with the imprisoned kitsune. "Kyuubi thinks there's something inside Lupin as well."

Hinata exhaled a long breath. "That would make sense," she said. "A great deal of sense. Especially if what they call a werewolf is something like what we call a jinchuuriki."

Shikamaru sat up abruptly. "Let me see that book," he said. He was silent for a few minutes, poring over it in turn, then shook his head and handed it over his shoulder to Neji. "That description doesn't seem like a jinchuuriki—at least the method of transmission is completely different. But the bit about a werewolf in its transformed state—"

"What does it say?" Naruto didn't bother turning; compared to the others his English reading skills were practically nonexistent. He wouldn't be able to read the book even if they handed it to him.

Neji read aloud, translating from the English in a slow, halting voice and with frequent recourse to the Japanese-English dictionary he'd picked up in the library after the first day of school. "The werewolf lives all over the world, but people think it…started?…in northern Europe. People only become werewolves when they're bitten by one. There is no cure, but, hmm, new potions… alleviate the worst symptoms, whatever that means." He flipped through the dictionary again. "Make it less bad, I guess. Once a month, when the moon is full, the…otherwise normal and healthy wizard or civilian becomes a savage beast. Unlike…other magical creatures, the werewolf hunts humans…more than any other kind of prey." He stopped and took a deep breath. "That's it."

The four ANBU sat in silence for a long moment. Naruto stared back into the fire, seeing a kitsune's nine lashing tails in the dancing flames, a tanuki's murderous rage in the hungry devouring of the logs. Gaara had been worse at the full moon, too…

He shoved himself to his feet, automatically checking the binding of his shuriken holster and the fit of his arm-guards. His borrowed wand was still tucked under his left arm-guard from the day's patrolling, and his mask hung with the others from a hook by the door. He snagged it but let his cloak lie.

"'m going out," he muttered. "Don't worry about patrol tonight. The kage bunshin and I'll take care of it."

"Naruto," Hinata began, but Neji cut her off.

"Watch out. The full moon's tomorrow night. This close…" He trailed off meaningfully.

"Yeah," Naruto said, and snapped his mask down over his face. "I'll be careful."

-

Hermione had, predictably, fussed at length about sneaking through the halls after curfew; but as Harry pointed out to her, "You and Ron are prefects; you can be out as long as you want. I'll just stay under my Cloak and keep quiet." And as Ron pointed out, "C'mon, Hermione, we've done this going on six years—you can't get cold feet now!"

"Harry got caught last time he went to see Professor Lupin, though," Hermione argued. "Don't you think—"

"No," Ron said. "That's your job, remember?"

But they got moving in the end, with Hermione and Ron walking side-by-side as if they were just ordinary prefects patrolling the halls (even if they had foreign guards to do it now, Ron planned to argue that you could never have too many), and Harry creeping silently behind them under his Invisibility Cloak. It was nearly midnight; the halls on the way to Lupin's office were dark and cold, and although they stopped at every corner to scan their section in the Marauder's Map, no one seemed to be about. They had checked the map thoroughly before they left Gryffindor Tower. Two of the guards were patrolling the first floor, one was in the Owlery, and one was heading down the stairs from the fifth floor. They all, Ron noted with interest, bore the same little set of symbols that had been repeated three times last night. What had happened to the other one?

They paused at another corner, and Hermione hissed under her breath, "Are you sure there's no one around, Harry? I mean, if the guard could sense you last time—"

"There's no one in this section of the map," Harry's weary voice said for the seventh time. "C'mon, Hermione, we are being careful this time and it's only another few—cripes, what's that?"

"What's what?" Ron demanded, whipping out his wand and spinning to peer into the darkness. "Blimey, Harry, don't do that…"

But Harry wasn't listening. A hand appeared out of empty air and grabbed Ron's wrist; in another moment Harry had pulled both of them under the Cloak with him and was jabbing at the map with his wand. "Look! Someone just turned the corner onto this section of the map, and look there…"

There was a row of high mullioned windows around the corner from their current spot, just outside of their line of vision. A tiny dotted line had appeared where once the line marking the windows had been solid, and three little sets of symbols had popped into the corridor. None of them were familiar.

And the person who had just stepped into their section of the map bore the same unreadable label they had seen on all four of the guards tonight.

Harry and Ron exchanged quick glances. Harry's eyes were bright and his mouth was set; Ron could feel his own pulse rising in excitement. Between them, Hermione paled. "Oh, no you don't—"

"We can't just wait here, Hermione!" Ron argued in a low whisper. "I mean, if three people just broke into the castle—"

"You don't know they've broken in!" Hermione disagreed. "And anyway, even if they have, that's what the guard's for—"

Around the corner, a woman screamed. Harry's jaw clenched. A heartbeat later, he'd torn the Invisibility Cloak off and was pelting down the hall, wand at the ready and Ron on his heels. Ron threw another quick glance over his shoulder as he whipped around the corner, and was irrationally pleased to see Hermione, tight-lipped and furious, right behind him.

The next moment he'd smashed straight into Harry's back, and all three of them tumbled crashing to the floor.

Harry was the first one up; his Quidditch reflexes had saved him more than once in his confrontations with Dark Magic, and he'd dragged Ron and Hermione to the wall and to shelter behind an enormous statue of Herbert the Horrendous before Ron had even got his breath back. "Stay still!" he hissed, and immediately disobeyed his own order by peering around the statue. Still wheezing, Ron pushed himself to his knees and leaned over Harry's shoulder.

"Bloody hell," he murmured in reverent awe.

The blond guard stood bare-handed in the center of the corridor perhaps ten meters to the right of the three students, his silvery armor and fair hair glinting in the moonlight that slanted in through the broken windows. To his left, an Elizabethan lady was running shrieking through the other portraits and away from her painting, which was slashed as savagely as the Fat Lady's had been three years ago. Ron spotted a knife and two steely star-like weapons embedded in the torn canvas.

Hermione's agile mind had already calculated their source. She tapped Ron's shoulder and pointed to the windows. "There," she whispered, her breath brushing his ear. Ron's stomach tightened. Unsure if it was nerves or hormones, he tried to ignore it and looked in the direction she had pointed.

Three black-clad shapes were framed against the moonlit glass. Two of them didn't seem much taller than Harry, perhaps a little shorter than Ron, but the third was nearly as big as Hagrid. He, like the guard, was bare-handed; steel glinted between the others' fingers.

One of the short ones said something in an ugly, low voice. It took Ron a moment to realize that the reason he couldn't understand it wasn't because the voice was so low or the tone so harsh; it was because the man was speaking a completely different language, one Ron had never in his life heard. Hermione, though, gave a little gasp of recognition. "That explains—" she whispered.

"Sssh!" Harry said frantically, but it was already too late. Four heads had turned as Hermione gasped, and the man who had spoken took a single step toward the statue.

He never took a second.

The guard moved so fast that even Ron, accustomed to watching the blinding blurs of a Quidditch match, could barely tell what was happening. One hand dove to a small case on his leg and came up filled with steel; the other hand, outstretched, filled with a whirling ball of blue energy. Within the time it took the black-clad man to throw the handful of small knives he clutched, another rain of throwing knives had already left the guard's fingers, and both sets of weapons clattered useless to the ground. The guard was behind them, and with a terrible shout that sounded like "RASENGAN!" he shoved the spinning blue ball into the intruder's chest.

The black-clad man flew thirty meters backwards and hit the wall with a horrible crunch. He lay in a limp pool of shadow and did not move.

Hermione's fingers clenched hard on Ron's shoulder. She made a choking sound low in her throat, but none of the three students dared move. They watched wide-eyed as the guard turned on the other two men, head thrown back and painted mask leering horribly. His shoulders rose slightly as he panted. Ron spotted a swirling dark red tattoo on the left shoulder that rippled with the muscles beneath it as the guard held out his hand again. Once more, whirling blue energy filled his palm, lighting the corridor with its terrible brilliance.

The remaining two intruders shrank back a step, but in a moment the big one's hands were twisting together, and the second short one lunged at the guard with a shout and a spray of knives and throwing stars.

Steel hit the guard almost at the same time as the short man did, spraying blood across the walls. Hermione gasped again in horror, and even Ron and Harry caught their breath. But the short man's gleeful grin suddenly changed to wide-eyed horror, as he crashed to the ground along with a heavy vase that Ron had last seen on a pedestal beside the window.

The guard was there now, holding a single knife backwards in his right hand. He sent it flying with an almost casual flick of his wrist, and the short man on the floor jolted and gasped as the rounded hilt struck him in the back of the head. He twitched once and then lay limp, unconscious.

Only the big man was left, and he turned slowly to face the guard still crouched on the pedestal with the blue ball spinning in his left hand. The big man's hands were twisted together in some strange configuration Ron couldn't quite make out, and he snarled something in a deep, savage voice.

The guard's head tilted to the side. He replied in a quick, light tenor in which amusement seemed to war with annoyance. He added something else and lifted his left hand, his masked face inclining slightly towards the whirling blue ball in his hand. The big intruder sneered, and the guard shrugged. His right hand dove for the holster on his leg again.

But this time, as the rain of steel filled the air, the big man plunged his fists into the stone floor and shouted something else. With a shock that nearly jolted Ron off his knees, a wall of stone half a meter thick erupted out of the floor, shielding its creator from the guard's knives. The intruder laughed.

The guard laughed too. And, still laughing, he vaulted off the pedestal, flipped over the stone wall with one hand, and drove the other hand, bright with blue light, into the big man's back.

Hermione didn't quite bite back her scream, and Ron didn't quite bite back the bile that swelled in his throat as he watched the blue ball in the guard's hand drive its spinning way straight through the big man's back, spewing blood and flesh and shards of bone in all directions. At least he managed to pull away from the other two before his stomach rebelled and he lost his dinner all over the floor. From the sounds he could vaguely hear over his own retching, at least one of his friends was having the same reaction.

Another thought struck at about the same time the violent spasms stopped. He wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and spun around again, groping for his wand, searching in blind terror for the guard. Dumbledore's words at the feast rang through his head: "They would appreciate if you did nothing to put them on their guard, as they are more likely to kill you than deal with you alive…"

The other two seemed to have had the same thought. Harry was already on his feet again, wand outstretched in a shaky hand. Hermione was on her knees behind him, biting her lip and trembling in every muscle as she, too, extended her wand. Ron pushed himself to his feet and ran the two steps to stand with them, facing the guard.

Who merely tilted his head, watching them from behind that expressionless mask. His hands, Ron noticed with a lurch of his stomach, were still clean, although his left hand seemed to be smoking slightly, and there were a few streaks of blood in his blond hair. He nudged a sandaled foot into the ribs of the short man he'd knocked out with the throwing knife, and seemed slightly heartened when the man groaned faintly but did not stir.

"Who," Harry demanded in a shaky voice, "are you?"

The guard lifted his hand, and all three young wizards tensed. But the hand went only to the back of the guard's head, and he scratched his blond hair with something like a proud shrug.

"Guard," he said, in heavily-accented English. "Protect Hoguwaatsu. Name?" He seemed to consider for a moment. Finally he said, "Toad." He tapped his mask.

Ron blinked in surprise, but Hermione whispered, "Of course, the mask's a toad!"

"Ah," Ron said faintly.

"You?" the guard said.

Ron glanced at the other two doubtfully. Harry shrugged. "I'm Harry Potter," he said. "This is Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger."

"Ah, Harii-kun!" the guard said, sounding delighted. "You meet Deer, yes?"

A faint hint of red touched Harry's cheeks. "Yes," he said defiantly.

Toad nodded. "In office of jinchuuriki."

"You mean Professor Lupin?" Hermione said cautiously. "We were actually going to talk to him when—"

She stopped. Harry said quickly, "When we heard the portrait scream and came running. How did they get in? What did they want?"

The guard's head tilted again. But instead of replying, he glanced down at his unconscious prisoner and then looked down the hall to the right, where the painted lady had run. "People come. Teachers. You go. Trouble."

Harry blinked. "You mean—you're trying to keep us out of trouble—?"

Toad waved a dismissive hand. "Go bed. I talk later. Find you easy."

"But—" Hermione said, as Ron tugged at her arm. He couldn't hear the footsteps yet, but he was willing to trust the guard—what other adult in Hogwarts would ever have offered them this chance?

The guard's voice sharpened. "Go bed now." His right hand dipped towards the holster on his leg.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn't need any more encouragement. They turned and fairly fled back up the hall, pausing in their break-neck running only once they were safely back in front of the portrait hole to Gryffindor Tower.

"Well," Hermione said at last in a stiff voice as they clambered through the hole, "I hope you boys are satisfied. We could have gotten killed!"

"He wasn't that bad, though," Harry said in something of a surprised voice. "Not nearly as stern as the one who caught me outside Lupin's office last night." He glanced at Ron. "What'd you think?"

"I think," Ron said fervently, "he was wicked."