Your reviews made me update like, a week earlier. Seriously.
Oh and... HAVE YOU READ BLEACH 177-178? FAN-FUCKING-TASTIC!
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Harry couldn't speak, couldn't breath, couldn't register what was happening.
He watched soundlessly as the dark haired ninja, Sasuke, jumped in between him and the boggart. He watched as the creature turned from a boy no older than Bill into a demented Sasuke, into a monster fox, and finally, into Naruto.
Then he vanished before becoming the moon.
The three shinobi were on the floor not too soon after collapsed in heaps. They didn't utter a sound, but their agony was obvious.
"Lupin!"
"Merlin, Harry, what happened here?" asked the werewolf while rushing into the room with Sirius, "Molly! Molly, are you alright?"
Once Harry made sure that Lupin and Sirius had Mrs. Weasley under control, he quickly moved to assist the three incapacitated ninjas. He reached Sasuke first, but when Harry touched the boy, he painfully shoved him away, angrily muttering something in Japanese.
In a sudden appearance of curly white smoke and a soft 'pop,' the other ninja, Kakashi, manifested beside Harry's shocked form.
"I don't think you should try that." said the man through his thin, meshed mask.
"What, you're not going to help them... your own kind?"
Harry watched as the older man's one visible eye softened.
"None of them would allow it."
And with those last words, the silver haired shinobi tucked the red Sacred Ninja Manual away, straightened up, and walked over to his students with an air of authority that Harry had found him to lack in the short amount of time he knew the man.
And Harry just watched, desperate for something to expect.
x
"Get up, all of you."
Even through all the pain and rage, the anger and humiliation, Sasuke could still hear Kakashi's voice.
And Sasuke stood, defiant of his shaking knees.
"These are the effects of Circle Transportation." Kakashi said, and added, " When traveling through space and time you would, of course, see images of the moments of space and time that you overlap with."
"What… does this have to do with anything?" Sasuke gasped.
"Did you see images during the Transportation, Sasuke?"
Sasuke paused to think. Yes, he thought, he had.
"And what did you see?"
"My brother, a castle," he murmured thoughtfully, he stole a quick glance at Naruto, still huddled over, before adding, "…and the Kyuubi."
"You will feel the effects each and every time you had a brief connection with this dimension during the transportation."
"…Each time? All of them as bad as this one?"
"No, they will get steadily less powerful. The first one is always the worst."
Sasuke straightened up a little more as he felt the pain begin to ebb away. But the better he felt outside, the worst he felt inside.
His brother. What genjutsu caused him to encounter his brother's image, his only remaining relative, the cause of his instability, and the last person he wanted to see?
"Kakashi…why… why did my…?"
"That creature was a genjutsu monster… and takes the shape of a person's greatest fear."
Sasuke felt the anger and humiliation burst inside his gut like blow torched dynamite.
He was… afraid of his older brother? No, that wasn't it. He wasn't afraid of anything… he wasn't afraid of his older brother. He wanted to kill his older brother. Sasuke hated him, he loathed him. He hated his face, his voice, his coat, his girly hair, his purple fingernails … and he hated the possibility that he would never be able to defeat him.
Sasuke's eyes narrowed in realization.
He wasn't afraid of his brother, he was afraid of failure.
Sasuke watched blankly as Naruto helped Sakura off the ground, remembering the raw rage he felt when he fought the blonde on the roof of the hospital only a few days ago. He remembered his feral lust for power… and the hatred… and the shame.
The only fear that he held towards anything was weakness.
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"That creature was a genjutsu monster… and takes the shape of a person's greatest fear."
From his position on the ground, Naruto felt himself almost laugh mirthlessly.
Fear? Yeah, right.
There had to be something else to it, because Naruto knew felt no fear in the eyes of the Kyuubi.
From the beginning, Naruto knew what that monster did. But he knew Sasuke wasn't afraid of his brother, he knew that Sakura wasn't afraid of Sasuke… and he was damn sure he wasn't afraid of that Bastard Fox.
And the genjutsu monster had not only faced him with the Nine-Tails, but with himself.
Just the thought of him breaking his control, bearing the Kyuubi for everyone to see and being abandoned and alone again tore Naruto apart with a pain that surpassed that of ten thousand Transportation Circles. It wasn't just his fear, it was his weakness.
Naruto forced himself off the ground, feeling heavy and drained, helping up Sakura as he did. She gave him a thankful nod and a smile. He smiled back.
But behind the careless grin, there was only the sinking, black sensation of his helplessness.
x
It took a whole day after the Boggart Incident for Ron to realize something.
"Hey, Harry, school starts tomorrow, right?"
"Yeah… it does!"
"Aren't those three, like, posing as students?"
"I suppose so."
Ron made a wide motion over a scowling, a bright orange clad, and a pink haired ninja before yelling, "THEN DON'T YOU THINK THEY SHOULD BLEND IN A BIT?"
Harry's eyes grew wide, he had never thought about it until now, but the ninja trio knew less than nothing about the Wizarding World, didn't have wands, looked one thirds homicidal, but expected to fit into Hogwarts?
"They'll never survive a day!" he cried in helpless panic.
"Oi! If there's one thing that we CAN do, it's survive!" shot back an indignant Naruto, "If I can complete the Chuunin Exam with all my limbs, than I can GO TO SCHOOL." The pink haired girl, who's name escaped Harry at times, agreed.
"Kakashi-sensei said Tsunade-no-bachan had all our books and clothes out of the way, so now all we need to do is get a stick! Sakura! There's a tree outside, so-"
"Wait wait wait!" cried Ron, his voice hysterical, "These are not just common sticks that you can pick up off the ground! You have to get yours fitted at a special store!"
Naruto blinked at him, bewildered, before saying, "Fitted sticks… that you buy at a special store… If this is a world of specialized sticks, then the school must be outrageous!"
Ron gave up.
"You know what?" said Harry, "We'll show you." He got up off the couch, and lead the group of shinobi out of the living room they had been residing in. "Come on Ron, get your mother." Ron enthusiastically obliged by yelling, "MUM!" repeatedly until she appeared, ruffled and irritated.
"Mum! Mum! …MUM!"
"WHAT?"
"Harry wants you."
Mrs. Weasley produced the greatest whole-body twitch ever witnessed.
"Mrs. Weasley, could you take us to Diagon Alley?"
Mrs. Weasley smoothed out her apron and huffed before asking why.
"Because the ninjas don't have wands."
Mrs. Weasley had everyone in the car and off to the Leaky Cauldron before you could say "Whip lash."
"Alright! We're here everyone!"
"Where exactly is here?" asked Naruto, the question smothered in unimpressed monotone.
"The Leaky Cauldron."
"So, they sell leeks and sticks. Joy."
"Now now, Naruto!" said Kakashi, "There must be something more to this smelly, dirty, dark and nasty pub!"
"STOP! Just stop! If anything can impress you, it's Diagon Alley , so you just wait!" Ron snapped, Naruto rolled his eyes and walked boldly into the pub, followed by his entourage.
Harry was the last one to enter after Kakashi, smiling to the bartender as the group made their way to the back of the pub, right into the dead end of an alley.
"A dead-end alley," murmured Naruto to the pink haired girl, "this place is more impressive than I thought." The statement earned another great, full-body twitch, but this time, from Ron.
"Alright then, look alive!" called Mrs. Weasley, taking her wand out, "We're about to enter!"
Harry watched an uninterested Naruto as Mrs. Weasley tapped her wand on the bricks of the wall, and at first, there was silence. Then the unexpected sound of hundreds of bricks scraping as they overlapped each other, reforming a door.
"Uwaaah!"
The door to Diagon Alley.
"Ron, now that we're here, we can look for your Prefect present!"
And Harry thought that he was feeling better about that...
A terrible mixed feeling of jealously and inferiority boiled its way out of the darkest pits of Harry's subconscious and bobbing to the surface of his mind, but he forced it back down. He had decided earlier during the party that it wasn't Ron's fault that he had been chosen to be a Prefect.
It was everyone else's fault.
He cursed under his breath as he watched Ron run back and forth from one broom-store to another, enthusiastically comparing Cleansweeps and Comets, hoping at the same time that his jealousy wasn't just confused hatred.
Harry closed his eyes and turned his face away in shame, wishing that the troubled thoughts would vanish from his mind. Forgetting that he was walking in the middle of a crowded walkway, he bumped into someone, who he had quickly and politely apologized to, but the response he received was that of one he didn't expect.
"Mendokuse..."
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I had so much writer's block during this chapter, it hurt.