Disclaimer: We own both Naruto and Harry Potter. Yondaime is definitely Naruto's dad, Kakashi never angsts at all, and minor characters are going to take over the world. Ninja have already taken over England, and Ron has discovered that he is actually the long-lost younger brother of Sabaku no Gaara.
…Aren't you glad we're kidding?
Authors' Notes: We're sorry this chapter has been such a long time in coming; fangirls that we are, we know what it's like to wait. However, we assert that the wait has been in a good cause. We've been distracted by the creation of the Naruto RPG "Shades of War," an original-characters RPG set at the time of the Second Great Ninja War. Kilerkki is an administrator and link no miko is a moderator, and we're having an awesome time putting it all together. Please stop by Kilerkki's livejournal (link through her user profile) for more information—and yes, this is a blatant plug.
Anyway, very many great thanks to all our lovely reviewers. Your comments and criticism are always welcome, and they put Kilerkki especially on a review-high that can last for days. Special praises for our superlative beta, Phoenix of Eternity, who has spared time from her hair-tearing worrying over the RPG to rip our messy ideas into shreds and help us reconstruct them into a worthwhile story. Check out her own stories, they're all very good.
This chapter is dedicated to the lovely Spaz, who said that all she wanted for Christmas (from me at least) was Chapter Six, and to all the wonderful people who have reviewed and encouraged and begged us for more. We hope we don't disappoint.
Masks and Shadows
Chapter Six:
In Which Dumbledore Has a Temper and Jiraiya Has a Drink
"Dango," Professor McGonagall said in a voice so harsh with rage that it nearly cracked. Naruto threw a quick sideways glance at the elderly witch from under his mask as the ugly statue at the entrance to Dumbledore's office sprang aside. The woman was almost trembling with fury, and had been from the moment she'd knocked on the shinobi's common room door just after dawn and ordered all four of them to accompany her to Dumbledore's office.
They'd missed breakfast, and Naruto's stomach was rather urgently reminding him that he hadn't had much of a dinner last night, either.
"So troublesome," Shikamaru muttered under his breath as the four ANBU began to climb up the spiraling staircase after McGonagall's poker-stiff back. He was still carrying the ancient book Dumbledore had lent him, one gloved finger marking his place among the yellowed pages. "If he had to see us, why couldn't it have been at a decent hour?"
"Most of the school's already up for breakfast, Shikamaru-kun," Hinata pointed out gently.
"I wasn't." Shikamaru sighed. "And I spent most of the night translating this stupid book."
"You finished it?" Neji asked abruptly, speaking for the first time that morning. His Hawk-faced mask turned to glower over his shoulder at the shinobi climbing the stairs behind him. "Was there any more information?"
"A little," Shikamaru said, and fell silent again. Naruto wasn't quite sure if he was being evasive or just lazy. Knowing Shikamaru, it was probably both.
They climbed the last spiral in silence, until McGonagall threw open the heavy door and stalked into the office. The shinobi slipped in behind her, footsteps masked by the rustle of her robes. Naruto noticed that the portraits on the walls were no longer dozing in their frames; every single ancient wizard and witch was sitting bolt upright, staring at the masked shinobi with glares that would have given Iruka's worst temper a run for its money. Naruto barely repressed the urge to tilt his mask back and stick his tongue out at them. He flipped them off discreetly instead.
Hinata twitched. So did Neji, but at least he didn't kick Naruto. He just kept staring straight ahead, at the white-bearded old man standing by one of the tall windows, gazing out at the green-grey fringe of the forest beyond the castle. Dumbledore turned slowly after a moment. His face was as cold and stern as the statue of the Shodai Hokage at the Valley of the End; Naruto could see nothing anymore of the kindly old man who had welcomed them to Hogwarts. "Thank you, Minerva," he said quietly in English, and something else Naruto couldn't quite understand, although the tone of dismissal was clear; Naruto'd heard it dozens of times in his year and a half in the ANBU.
The woman nodded stiffly and brushed past Hinata to the door. Her lips were still tight with rage, nostrils white and flared, chin set with impotent anger. Naruto didn't think she'd been this furious even when she'd tried to stop Neji and him from interrogating the missing-nin he'd captured. Had something else happened in the day since then?
"Minerva and Severus have given me the full story of what has occurred in my absence," Dumbledore said in Japanese, even more coldly than before. Naruto's attention flashed back to the old man. He felt Neji stiffen at his side, and when Dumbledore paused, he stole a quick glance at the older ANBU. Neji was standing as straight and still as ever. But underneath his mask the cords were standing out strong on the sides of his neck as his jaw clenched, and the scarlet tattoo on his upper arm bunched as the muscles tightened beneath it.
"We did our duty," Neji said stiffly. "There was no other way to obtain the information we needed. McGonagall-san's method was useless."
"So you tortured him," Dumbledore said. The stillness in his voice was more terrible than shouting.
"Would you rather we had killed him without questioning?" Neji demanded. "We left him alive, at least—"
"He killed himself last night." Dumbledore's voice cut across Neji's like a kunai through silk. "He bit off his tongue and drowned in his own blood."
Shikamaru swore. "We should have kept a guard on him from the start. Would have," he added a little more sharply, "if we'd been allowed. What did you expect when you hired us, Dumbledore-sensei? We're not your tame shinobi. We're ANBU—and you should know what that means."
"Special Tactics and Assassination Squad," Neji supplied anyway. "We're Konoha's killers, Dumbledore-sensei. While we're here, we'll be your guards. But that doesn't change what we are."
"Of course," Shikamaru added quietly, "if you wish to terminate our contract, we will understand." He straightened to stand nearly as stiff as Neji, and turned his chin just the slightest degree towards the door. "Our absence will, however, leave your school vulnerable to the kind of attack Naruto prevented two nights ago. And make no mistake, Dumbledore-sensei. Those men came prepared to kill. If Naruto had not been there…" He trailed off significantly.
Naruto filled the gap. "You'd have three really dead kids instead of three really dead missing-nin."
Dumbledore's blue eyes flashed. "Three students? I don't suppose their names would happen to be Harry Potter, Ronald Weasley, and Hermione Granger, would they?"
Naruto swore, rather more violently than Shikamaru had. He hadn't meant to get the kids in trouble—but he was beginning to realize that trying to keep secrets from Dumbledore was even less effective than keeping them from Shikamaru. At least the Nara was usually too lazy to bother trying to find them out.
"Yeah," he admitted reluctantly. "They said they were gonna go speak with the jinchuuriki—Lupin-sensei. They sorta stumbled across us when I was still trying to talk with the missing-nin." Of course the talking had been all on the missing-nin's side at that point; Naruto himself had been busy trying to figure out where the students had come from and how on earth he was going to keep the other shinobi from noticing them. The girl's gasp had made that plan pointless, of course. At least none of them had lost their heads in the middle of the fight, even though they'd lost their dinners after seeing the results of his Rasengan.
Not that he blamed them, of course. The first time he'd used a Rasengan to kill, he hadn't been able to eat for hours. Compared to the destruction wreaked by a fully-charged Rasengan, the results of Kakashi-sensei's Chidori were almost clean.
"They got themselves spotted," he finished with a shrug. "So I had to take care of the problem."
The old man gazed at him steadily for a long moment more; Naruto fought the urge to fidget under the intense blue stare. At last Dumbledore sighed, his erect shoulders sagging a little, and stepped forward to seat himself at his desk in a whisper of heavy robes. "There will be no more torture," he said brusquely. "If attacked, you may kill to protect the students' lives, or your own. But any prisoners taken will be brought at once to my attention, no matter when or where. You are under my orders here, and we are not Death Eaters."
"Death Eaters?" Naruto inquired, half a second before Neji did kick his ankle.
"The enemy," he muttered. "Remember the briefing, and don't be a fool." He bowed slightly to Dumbledore—the first display of submission Naruto had yet seen in him. "Understood, Dumbledore-sensei." A pause. "However…it may be extremely advantageous to inspect the body…"
"No," Dumbledore snapped, and Shikamaru groaned.
-
Somewhere along the fourth glass of firewhiskey, Jiraiya decided that he rather liked Scotland. Granted, the weather was lousy (the sky had been spitting a cold grey rain all day, and it didn't look like letting up any time soon) and the food was strange and the (deliciously buxom) proprietress seemed never to have heard of sake, but…
Well, the proprietress of The Three Broomsticks was deliciously buxom. And this firewhiskey wasn't sake, but he was fairly sure that a case or two as a birthday present would go a long way towards landing him in Tsunade's good books.
Maybe he'd even get some research done while he was here!
He tapped his empty glass and smiled winsomely at the woman who'd introduced herself as Madame Rosmerta. That was before she'd realized that he was foreign and supposedly didn't speak more than a few words of English; they'd conducted their conversation so far mostly through signs punctuated by very charming giggles. Things had gone rather well, Jiraiya congratulated himself.
And when the other patrons of the pub thought the strangely dressed white-haired man in the corner couldn't understand a lick of their language, they were markedly looser with their tongues.
"…attack on the school," a fat man in the corner was saying to an elderly woman and a short plump little fellow with fly-away ginger hair. "I hear Dumbledore's hired some sort of foreign guards to protect the castle; they don't even speak English—"
"Mate o' mine saw them," the plump little man offered. "In The Hog's Head last week. They left 'round midnight with that giant bloke Dumbledore's got. Eerie, my mate said. All wearing cloaks on a fine night like that, and all wearin' masks."
"You don't suppose—" the elderly woman said breathlessly, "not…"
The fat man snorted. "As if Dumbledore'd hire Death Eaters to protect against Death Eaters! No, these are foreign folk, I tell you, although how long they'll last with You-Know-Who up and around again…"
The woman shivered dramatically, and the fat man patted her hand consolingly. "All the same…" He lowered his voice and leaned forward, and Jiraiya found himself unconsciously leaning forward as well.
All to no purpose, however. Rosmerta-san chose that moment to bustle over to refill Jiraiya's glass. "How do you like it, Mr. Jiraiya?" she asked a little too loudly. She'd been trying to teach him English; twenty minutes ago it had been amusing, but now Jiraiya silently cursed the interruption. The brats had started their mission, but it sounded as if there were more to this than Dumbledore had let on.
"Verlee goodu," he said, his best approximation at Naruto speaking English with his mouth full. Somehow it seemed almost insulting this time, instead of entertaining. He was fluent in English and a handful of other languages, anyway; the Great Toad Sennin shouldn't have to masquerade as a foolish old man!
…Perhaps the fifth glass of this firewhiskey stuff hadn't been such a good idea.
A bell chimed as the door opened, blowing in a cloak-wrapped woman along with a shower of cold rain. Rosmerta was off again, cheerfully welcoming the woman to the pub, and in the new silence Jiraiya let himself sink down a little in his chair, grazing his thumb against his teeth before his hands slid under the table. His right hand brushed a smear of blood against his left.
Boar, Dog, Bird, Monkey, Sheep…
"Ninpou," he muttered under his breath. "Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"
It was time to find out what the brats were up to, anyway.
-
By dinnertime on Friday, Hermione was near-mad with the impatience born of suppressed information. Snape had taken twenty-five points from Gryffindor when she'd tried whispering to Harry and Ron in Potions, their only class together, and the two boys had had to skip lunch in favor of the first Quidditch practice of the year. It was only when Ron was lumping steak-and-kidney pie onto his plate while Harry slathered butter on his rolls that Hermione had a chance to bring up the subject that had been worrying them for days.
"Have you two been able to find anything else out?" she asked in a low voice, with a quick glance down the table. Seamus Finnigan was regaling Parvati and Lavender with the story of how exactly Colin Creevy had managed to nearly drown himself in the lake, while further down the table Ginny was laughing at something Dean Thomas had said. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the three sixth years, which was exactly what Hermione wanted.
She hadn't forgotten what Professor Hyuuga had said about spying.
She just…wasn't really following his advice.
Ron swallowed a large bite of steak-and-kidney pie and rummaged in his bag. "Harry and I went to ask Professor Lupin while you were in Arithmancy. He said—mmph, sure you don't want any pie, 'Mione?"
Hermione shook her head, suppressing a shudder of distaste at the dish Ron was holding out in his free hand. Harry helpfully picked up the thread of the tale while Ron finished chewing the large mouthful he'd taken while still talking. "Lupin said he agrees with what we figured out last night—the two symbols Toad started writing are the first part of the name that appears four times on the Map. Uzu."
"So that's got to make it Uzumuki Naruko," Hermione said, accepting the autographed scrap of parchment Ron held out. Beneath the scratched-out symbols and the large, blocky Toad, they'd scribbled their various attempts at interpreting the name. Professor Lupin had circled one of their later attempts and written in neat script: This would appear to be the closest.
"I think Lupin suspects something," Harry muttered. "He gave me a really weird look when I asked and told me to be careful around the guards. Said he wasn't one to speak of trusting other people, but all the same we should be on our guard."
"Sounds like old Mad-Eye," Ron grinned. "Constant vigilance! Seriously, I think we should just try talking to them again; I mean, the Toad guy and the girl last night were all right, and—"
"That's another thing," Hermione cut in quietly. "Take a look up at the guards at the professors' table. Notice anything interesting?"
Ron and Harry's eyes slid past her to fix on the four masked guards bracketing the high table. Spiky black ponytail and short red hair on one side, spiky blond mop and black afro-like hair on the other side. "That's Toad," Ron said with a shrug, "but I dunno what you mean. What's wrong?"
"Where's the guard who was with him last night?" Hermione asked.
Harry sucked in his breath. "It was a dark-haired woman, but the only woman there has red hair and it's definitely not the same style—"
"But Miss Hyuuga does have dark hair," Hermione pointed out, "and I've never seen anyone else with that haircut." Even Nymphadora Tonks, who changed her hair color and style at the blink of an eye, had never tried that particular style, with bluish-black locks framing the face and the back cut short and angular.
"You don't mean—" Harry said slowly, but they never found out what it was that Hermione didn't mean. An enormous puff of smoke chose that moment to explode into existence on the floor in between the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables, just short of the high table dais. Hermione wasn't sure if there was an accompanying explosion as well; whatever noise it may have made was drowned out as at least fifty teenage girls unleashed the full power of their lungs.
"Is that a toad?" someone demanded in a strangled voice.
Ron was standing on his bench, trying to get a good glimpse over the heads of the panicking Hufflepuffs. "This isn't one of Fred and George's left-behind pranks, is it?" he asked uncertainly. "Oh, hell, it's heading for the high table—"
The teachers were rising from their seats as well; Snape looked murderous while Dumbledore looked amused. Hermione couldn't see what there was to be amused about a bright green-and-purple toad the size of Hagrid's boarhound Fang hopping cheerfully up toward the dais, but apparently some other people could. At Madame Pomfrey's side Miss Hyuuga was snickering quietly into her hand, although her long-haired cousin was bristling.
Three of the guards seemed frozen in place. The fourth, the blond Toad, was staring as well—although his stiffened shoulders somehow looked less shocked than the others'. More, perhaps, insulted?
He yelled something in a strong voice that cut straight through the slightly-less-terrified screaming (a few of the Ravenclaws had even retaken their seats, looking rather abashed, although some of the Hufflepuffs still looked ready to run) and stalked down from the dais toward the toad, which sat back on its enormous hind legs and looked…smug. Smugness did not appear to be the desired response; the guard snapped again, pointing a black-gloved finger imperiously at the door. The toad ducked its head a little, and its long pink tongue flickered out almost far enough to touch the guard's extended hand. He slapped it down and barked something else.
His spiky-haired comrade at the high table seemed to take that as his cue to intervene. He slipped smoothly down from the table and touched the blond gently on the shoulder, muttering something into his ear. Toad stiffened again, then sighed, shrugged, and aimed a kick at his brightly colored namesake. It hopped out of the way far more quickly than anything of its size should have been able to move, nearly squashing a couple of fourth-year Ravenclaws in the process. They ducked and screamed; the spiky-ponytailed guard lifted his head to the ceiling and shrugged, his hands slipping into the pockets of his robe. He said something in a bored voice. The blond guard answered sharply. And then all three of them were heading out of the Great Hall so quickly that Hermione could only blink and stare as the toad hopped ahead to open the huge doors with hands the size of a first year's. The strange threesome slipped out, leaving the Great Hall in chaos behind them.
"C'mon," Harry's voice whispered in Hermione's ear. "If we don't hurry, we'll lose them."
She looked over at him, startled. "Harry, you don't mean to—after what happened the other night—"
He shrugged, but his green eyes were determined. Ron's blue eyes, on the other hand, were dancing. "A toad? C'mon, Hermione, that's bloody brilliant! You know if we don't find out now what's happening you'll never forgive yourself—"
"We're too far into this to back out now," Hermione muttered, stuffing Ron's crumpled parchment into the front of her robes. "All right. Let's go."
Harry nodded approvingly. Ron grinned. And Hermione couldn't quite help but smile back.
There was enough commotion, with several Hufflepuffs fainting and Ravenclaws still shouting and Slytherin and Gryffindor now adding their bewildered voices to the mix, that they managed to slip out of the Great Hall without attracting anyone else's notice. But they were still too late. And even if they hadn't been, Hermione realized, it wouldn't have done any good. The two guards were standing in the center of the entrance hall on either side of the giant toad, and Hermione caught only the tail end of the blond man's exasperated remark and a laconic reply from the pony-tailed guard before the dark-haired guard lifted two gloved fingers to his lips and vanished in a puff of smoke. The toad gave an exasperated croak and disappeared as well.
Ron made a very similar croaking sound in the back of his throat. "How come they can Apparate inside Hogwarts?"
"Don't be silly, Ron," Hermione snapped. "That's not Apparition. For one thing, Apparition doesn't involve smoke, and for another—"
"Excuse me," Harry said firmly, and Hermione and Ron both started before they realized he wasn't talking to them. He was already moving away, walking towards the Toad-masked guard with long, firm strides. Hermione noticed, though, that his right hand was hidden in his pocket, undoubtedly wrapped around his wand. She traded a hopeless glance with Ron, and the two of them sprinted after their friend.
Toad tilted his masked head to regard them with an air Hermione might almost have called amusement. "Konnichiwa, Harii," he said cheerfully, and then, more carefully, "Hello?"
Harry blinked, thrown a little off-stride by the man's apparent friendliness. Hermione and Ron stepped quickly to his side. "We have some questions," Hermione said firmly. "We answered yours last night, and we'd like to get some answers of our own now."
The man lifted a gloved hand to scratch the back of his shaggy blond head, laughing a little ruefully. "Say too fastly," he said. "I not understand. You mean—?"
Hermione took a deep breath, but to her surprise, Ron spoke first. "We mean, we know who you are, Uzumuki Naruko."
The response they got wasn't what any of them had expected. The blond man stiffened as if someone had just hit him with a Full-Body Bind and barked furiously, "Uzumaki Naruto!" And then he stiffened even more and threw a sharp glance around the entrance hall, and moving faster than Hermione would have thought anything human could move, he grabbed each of the three by the collars of their robes and bundled them into the antechamber where they'd waited six years ago before being sorted into their House.
A few candles flickered wearily to life as they entered, but the shadows were still deep enough that they turned the guard's red and white mask into something demonic. Hermione found her hand slipping into her own pocket, clutching tightly around her wand. She glanced at Harry and Ron. Harry was biting his lip and shoving his glasses back up his nose with his left hand; he looked determined and reckless and just a little bit angry. Ron had his wand out already—but he was looking at Hermione, not at the guard.
Hermione looked quickly away.
"How you know?" the guard was asking, and his voice was low and dangerous. He'd released them as soon as they entered the room, and now he was moving back to lock the door and to jam what looked like a peculiar but very sharp knife between the frame and the door itself. "Who tell you name?"
"No one told us," Harry said. "We figured it out. You really are Uzi—Uzumuki Naruto, then? And those three other people with your name—who are they?"
"And what was the toad doing here?" Ron burst out.
"How did it get here and then leave?" Hermione added. "Do you have some special way of Apparating? That's not supposed to be possible inside Hogwarts grounds!"
"What's going on?" Harry finished.
Silence. The guard stared at them, mask glinting slightly in the flickering candlelight as he turned his head to regard one, then the other. Finally he sighed and flicked the clasp of the cloak at his neck. He shrugged out of the dark cloak he'd been wearing, revealing the strange clothing they'd seen two nights before: sleeveless black turtleneck, tight black trousers, gleaming bone-colored chest armor and arm-guards. The strange, swirling tattoo on his bicep seemed to ripple menacingly as he hung the cloak on the hilt of the knife protruding from the door. He turned again to regard them, tilting his head in the familiar gesture of thought. And then, to Hermione's surprise, he pointed straight at Harry.
"You. Ask first. Slow."
Harry swallowed, but Hermione saw the hand wrapped around his hidden wand relax just a little. "Alright," he said after a moment. "Is your name Uzumuki Naruto?"
The blond man twitched. "Uzumaki Naruto," he said again, sharply. "Yes." He paused, then added grudgingly, "You call Naruto."
"What about the toad?" Ron asked. "Who's—I mean, what was that?"
"Gamagerou," the guard—Naruto, Hermione reminded herself—said proudly. "He, anou, he come when I call. When Ero-sennin call," he amended, muttering something Hermione didn't catch under his breath. From his tone, she was fairly sure she didn't want to know what it meant.
"Who is Ero-sennin?" Ron asked anyway.
Naruto was silent for a moment, scratching the back of his head as if he were trying to frame an answer in words he could find and they could understand. "Teacher," he said at last. "Very strong. Stronger, but!" He puffed up proudly, tapping his chest. "Fight monster in lake, beat good." He cocked his head again, and Hermione was sure she wasn't imagining the sly grin behind the mask.
"You're not really worried about the monster in the lake," she said slowly. "You've come—I mean, you are here for something else, aren't you? What?"
The gloved hand dropped from the bright blond hair; the man folded his arms and stared thoughtfully at Hermione. "Smart," he said finally. "Smart like Shikamaru? We see—kuso!" He clapped a hand to the wide painted mouth of his mask, muttering something furiously.
Hermione let her smile grow a little wider. "So one of the other guards is named Shikamaru?" she said. They'd managed to figure out a few syllables on the fourth name, but putting them together into anything resembling a coherent name had been tough. With Naruto's slip, however, they had all four names complete. Hyuuga Neji. Hyuuga Hinata. Nara Shikamaru…and Uzumaki Naruto. Now, to figure out what they were—
But the man was staring at her now, and even though she couldn't really see his eyes behind the dark eyeslits of the mask, somehow something about that dark gaze made the hair stand up on the back of her neck and goosebumps run up her arms. "You not tell," Naruto said softly. "Or I make you quiet. Always. You never tell."
"We won't," Harry said swiftly, stepping in front of Hermione with his wand raised. Ron grabbed her arm from beside and pulled her against him, blue eyes fiercely threatening the blond guard to make any move. Harry continued in a quieter voice. "We don't want to get you in trouble. But we want to know what's happening. You helped us; maybe we can help you."
Hermione held her breath. The silence seemed to fall around them more thickly than treacle; she was sure she could feel Ron's heart beating through his side. Harry and Naruto gazed at each other for a long moment, the air so tense that it seemed any moment static electricity would crackle through the room. And then Naruto laughed shortly, his voice breaking through the tension as if it were a string he could roll up and stick in his pocket.
"Trust us, Harii?"
Harry paused. Then he said slowly, "Yes, I do. You saved us, but then you came and talked to us afterwards. You didn't have to do that. You don't have to be talking to us now. I think you want to know what's happening as badly as we do, and maybe if we work together, we can both find out."
Naruto nodded, short and sharp. "Right," he said, and lifted a hand to his mask.
And dropped it again, and spun, hand darting to the boxy black holster on his thigh to come up filled with glinting metal as a resounding knock vibrated the door. The three students exchanged lightning-quick glances. What if—?
"If you do not open this door by the time I have finished drawing my wand," a cold voice said quietly from the other side of the door, "the door will no longer be standing."
"Snape," Harry hissed. Hermione threw an anxious glance at him, then at the guard, whose masked face had turned back to the door in confusion. He wouldn't know how to deal with Snape, and if somehow things got mixed up, they'd seen what Naruto could do, and Hermione didn't want that to happen even to Snape…
"Alohomora!" she whispered, at the same time as Harry muttered: "Accio knife!"
The knife zoomed hilt-first into Harry's outstretched hand and vanished into his robes just as the door sprang open and Snape stepped in. His gaze flickered over the three students first. "Potter, Granger, and Weasley," he said softly. "I might have known." The cold black eyes flicked to Naruto, who was still slightly crouched with the metal weapons glinting between his knuckles. "Dumbledore would like an explanation," Snape said icily. "For your sake, I hope you can give him one."
The red and white mask stared intently at the Potions professor, and then tilted slightly, jauntily. Slowly and deliberately, the guard replaced his weapons (they looked like small metal stars with hollow centers) in his holster, scooped up his cloak with a sandaled foot from where it had fallen on the floor when Harry summoned the knife it had been hanging on, and headed for the door. Snape edged aside just enough to let him pass.
But Naruto paused in the doorway, turned back, and tapped Snape's shoulder. The Potions Master turned. "Yes?" he asked pointedly.
The mask leered cheerfully at him, and just as cheerfully, Naruto flipped him off. Then he lifted two fingers to his mask's painted lips, waved the other hand in a mocking salute, and disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Snape snarled wordlessly and stalked out of the room in a flurry of black robes.
Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged one long, silent look.
This promised to be a very interesting year indeed.