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Fae's Path to Konoha – Chapter 2
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Ron didn't really have a lot of friends.
There were three other boys in the Gryffindor dorms of his year. Two of them basically became the best of friends within hours, bonding over muggle-stuff that Ron honestly didn't know enough about to even feign interest in. And the third was... Neville.
There wasn't anything wrong with Neville. It was just that-... Growing up with five older brothers, one of the first things that Ron had learnt was to take advantage of whatever weaknesses he could find.
It wasn't really all that bad. Once you knew that Percy could barely bend a rule to save his life, and that the twins were too addicted to their own sense of humor to be able to stop themselves from getting into trouble with their mom?
Ron had weaknesses too, but with the careful balance of mutually assured destruction keeping everything in check, life in the Burrow was nice enough.
The problem with all of that was that... Neville had a lot of weaknesses. And one of those weaknesses seemed to be a complete inability to actually notice other people's weaknesses. In other words, he was a target. A big flashy one, like one of those muggle-signs.
Basically, Neville was nice. A bit forgetful and a bit clumsy, but definitely nice. And spending any time with him whatsoever gave Ron cold shivers.
So Ron couldn't really make friends with his year-mates, and had ended up spending time with the only other outcast of Gryffindor House.
Hermione wasn't nearly as nice as Neville, and gave off a very distinct feeling of Percy-likeness. The truth of that however, was mainly that she was completely bonkers, and would break every single rule put in front of her, if she simply decided that it was the right thing to do. She just didn't consider 'fun' to be as important as the 'right thing to do'.
It was a work in progress.
Still, with Hermione and her book-fanatical ways constantly breathing down his neck, it was no wonder that Ron's grades were so good. Nowhere near Hermione's own of course, but it wasn't like Ron really had any other friends to go to.
All of the older Gryffindors were somehow caught up with the twins, or had no time at all for an 'ickle firsty'. The other Houses were kind of... discouraged from interacting with any Weasleys on behalf of the twins and their pranks, and not wanting to invite the redheads into a chance to prank them all. And... that left Hermione.
It'd been pretty pathetic, seeing as Hermione was in a very similar position, except more with her bossy attitude and obsession with books.
They'd had half-a-dozen rows about it during their first year alone. On one occasion even nearly coming to blows, before Hermione had proven faster on the draw and hexed him into dancing for the better part of an hour.
She was still his best friend.
That didn't mean that she wouldn't scream out of sheer impotent rage if she found out that Ron had learnt about Harry Potter's return from his mysterious absence before she could figure it out on her own. That mystery had been keeping her humming around the library for months.
There were definitely some advantages to having parents who had a – however distant – friendship with Albus Dumbledore.
In this case, it meant that Ron was the first boy their age who got to meet the Boy-Who-Lived.
It was... an experience.
Ignoring the weird accent, ignoring the refusal to introduce himself, ignoring the refusal to talk about where he'd been, ignoring the way his eyes kept darting towards exits, ignoring the-... Even ignoring a lot of things that Ron wasn't entirely comfortable with ignoring, there was something really messed up with the realization that the only thing in Harry Potter's eyes when he glanced at Dumbledore?
Hatred and fear.
Like a cornered animal.
XXX
Hari had the worst timing for getting kidnapped.
For example, the Chunin Exam was a few days away from being announced, and as it would take place within Konoha this time, they needed as many ninja as possible to hang around as a show of force to the other Villages.
Not only that, but with Kakashi's genin having done decently enough on their misranked C-Rank mission – and knowing that Team 7 would end up as a tempting target should they attend the Chunin Exam elsewhere – this was kind of their only chance at becoming chunin in the near future.
A chance that was now impossible, because Sakura was already stressed to the breaking-point by worry for her little brother. Interestingly enough, despite Kakashi casually dropping this into a conversation with his cute little students – it wouldn't do for them to hear about it elsewhere later on and explode without supervision – they didn't seem to care.
Apparently, for all that Sasuke wanted to quickly advance through the ranks and become powerful enough to achieve his goal of killing his brother, he considered family to be far more important than rank, even if it wasn't his family. Naruto cared more about Sakura's distress than he really did about Hari's situation, but he did care, and he wasn't going to complain about something like rank when he had a 'precious person' to help.
He'd either manage to hold onto that idealism, or he'd be crushed underneath the weight of it. Kakashi would probably bet on the former honestly. The boy's parents had been surprisingly heartless in combat, for all of their warmth elsewhere, so he had good odds for finding an ideological equilibrium on the genetic side of things.
Regardless, with all of Team 7 decided, they were of course going to search for Sakura's little brother.
No matter what the Hokage had to say about it.
Kakashi nearly winced when he heard Naruto declare that at the top of his lungs.
Sure, the boy was on good terms with the Hokage, and was afforded some extra leeway on behalf of being a jinchuuriki that nobody wanted to see go berserk, but there was a limit about the kind of insubordination you could run around screaming from the rooftops.
Kakashi might toe the line sometimes with his perpetual tardiness, but that was more for social events than for missions, and he was never... 'loud' about it.
It's easier to ignore someone toeing the line if they're not constantly reminding you that that's what they're doing at the top of their lungs. People don't like being reminded of things like that. They tend to take offense to it. And even if offending the Hokage whilst under his employ wasn't a death-sentence by any means, it wasn't exactly... pleasant.
Thankfully for everyone's sanity, Sasuke quickly kicked the blond in the shin, and then they failed to continue their bickering because Sakura was red-eyed and twitchy. They were trying really hard to not be the ones to trigger her into another crying-fit. His kids were so adorable.
In the end, the Hokage decided not to attempt being an obstacle in this matter. Though he did have T&I dump their entire file on Haruno Hari – including the theories surrounding his arrival outside Konoha – in front of Kakashi, and order him to thoroughly debrief his students on it, in case this was somehow related to that.
It wouldn't do for them to get lured into an ambush because they trusted Sakura's little brother too blindly. It was entirely possible that this wasn't an involuntary abduction after all. Better they all be prepared for the worst.
XXX
Hari didn't like Hogwarts.
He'd literally been kidnapped from out of his bed and dropped back into a country that he'd already escaped once-... into a country he had absolutely no fond memories of, and told that he was now a celebrity with no control over his own life. He was physically constrained to remain within the old castle with shitty heating and the same nasty individuals who'd kidnapped him in the first place. Everyone stared at him like he was some kind of damn exotic exhibit in a zoo. And on top of all of that, he'd somehow ended up in his second year, despite never being there for his first, so he didn't know anything at all about what was going on in the curriculum that all of the professors demanded that he care about.
The only thing remotely good about Hogwarts was Ron and Hermione. And that was probably pushing it. It was more that they were tolerable, with Hermione having been silently seething at Dumbledore from the moment that Hari mentioned never seeing his sister again, and Ron physically grabbing the girl and more-or-less sitting down on top of her before she did something that would get her deep enough into trouble that they wouldn't be able to help themselves, let alone Hari.
All in all, kids who hadn't gone to Konoha's Academy were weird. Very civilian really, despite how they apparently trained a lot in bizarrely domestic kinds of ninjutsu.
The Sorting Hast was freaky too. Kept moaning about where everything was, as if it was trying to find something that it could never find-... Having someone read your mind wasn't so strange for someone who'd grown up around the Yamanaka clan, but it wasn't done for security or anything. They just did it because they thought it was clever to divide their school into groups and then cheerfully reinforce their rivalries for no reason.
He still wasn't entirely sure what the hell Dumbledore had done to bind him to Hogwarts or force him to obey his arbitrary rules of 'no violence'. It reminded him eerily of winter-... The only thing that seemed vaguely reminiscent of it was the Blood Prison in Kusagakure. And the mechanics of that place was a jealously guarded state-secret.
Regardless, he was trapped. And unless the Hokage decided that a single civilian-born Academy-student was worth rescuing from unknown assailants, and they managed to find their way to Hogwarts, in a world where the Elemental Nations didn't show up on any maps? No rescue was coming for him.
It was just him, alone. Trapped underneath the thumb of a man who knew his name-...
And, worst case scenario, his sister would try to follow green eyes through the mirror-...
-... and to the queen who hated everything to do with 'spring'-...
XXX
Albus wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do with Harry Potter.
The Wizarding World was back to praising Albus for his many deeds, so at least that part was over and done with. No, the problem mainly stemmed from the fact that Harry was starving himself.
Or, rather, he should be starving himself. He wasn't eating anything served to him, regardless of taste, and yet he wasn't showing any signs of starving. It was strange.
Still, as long as the boy didn't die and didn't cause any scandals, Albus didn't really need to worry. And he'd been very thorough in the binding-runes to keep the boy from airing anything damning about Albus's methods.
He'd even gone so far as to use the Fidelius Charm to hide away the truth behind how he'd bound him to Hogwarts. The boy was clever, better not risk giving him something to work with.
The whole thing made him feel vaguely guilty, admittedly. But this was Harry's heritage. The ones who should've truly been feeling guilty should've been the ones who'd tried to keep him away from it for all these years.
Magic was in the boy's blood, after all.
XXX
The problem with tracking down a boy who'd disappeared without a trace from his own bedroom, was that there weren't actually any traces to track.
Then again, the lack of traces was in itself a kind of trace, in the sense that it obviously had something to do with either the Summoning Realm or some kind of space-time ninjutsu.
Considering how Konoha had more or less a monopoly on the latter, the former seemed more likely. Of course, had it been the latter, it would've also left them without a place to search, so they were lucky that the signs pointed to the former.
Sakura had calmed down somewhat from her earlier frantic behavior, and her face had instead settled into something cold and harsh. The boys were still more than a bit wary of her, but that might be because – during the delay to contact Jiraiya – she'd taken to using one of those hospital-issued stress-balls designed for being squeezed. And then she'd popped it, and instead moved on to squeezing rocks... into dust.
Kakashi was reluctantly impressed, honestly.
Jiraiya had been very obviously aware of the girl's hands when he'd finally arrived, probably awkwardly reminded of his own teammate's moods. Though the idea that Sakura had a path ahead of her on par with Tsunade of the Senju? Kakashi kind of doubted it, but would admit to a vague sense of pride at the insinuation anyway.
As for the actual tracking?
There weren't any scent-tracks that they'd managed to find – though that hadn't been surprising considering how they'd landed among the Toads, rather than any burning birds – but questioning their hosts had led to a few interesting tidbits that might help.
There weren't really a lot of Summoning Clans that actually had feathers, and not a single one of them would've willingly been playing around with fire. Then there were the many rules and stipulations of reverse-summoning, that all seemed to amount to the summoned individual having written their name on a Summoning Contract.
Basically, there was some chance that one of the Clans was responsible for the abduction, but it was miniscule at best.
They didn't really get any further in their questions until Naruto had brought up how Hari didn't remember anything about how he'd ended up on Konoha's doorstep. And his age at that time.
Kakashi had never before seen a toad go pale, and he desperately hoped he wouldn't ever have to do so again. It was pretty nasty.
"There was... a boy." The toad-sage frowned heavily. "Who won back his name from the Queen of Winter. It was... enough of a mess for a few Clans on the fringes to hear about it."
"A queen?" Naruto perked up. "Is that like a princess or something?"
The toad-sage's frown turned a lot more annoyed than worried. "The Queen of Winter is more a goddess than you humans and your titles!" He looked like he wanted to hit Naruto over the head with his cane for emphasis, but thankfully Naruto was clever enough to stand well outside of his range after the first three times it'd happened. "She's one of the two who rules over the Fae Realms."
So... something even more distant than the Summoning Realm. "What kind of a mess?"
"Oh, the usual really." The toad-sage snorted. "Human was invited in, didn't die, kept on not dying, didn't accept their 'hospitality' and so wasn't imprisoned for the next couple of centuries, and then didn't die when he left them either. They always were sore losers."
The distinct sound of a fist-sized rock cracking apart into dust.
"What do you mean about their 'hospitality'?" Sakura's voice was eerily calm, as she shook away the rock-dust from her hand.
The toad-sage gave her a glance that probably would've been wary if the girl hadn't had pink hair and been barely into her teens, but relaxed backwards into his throne. "The Fae Realms have rules that need to be followed at all times. It's-... Imagine if using chakra required you have a tea-ceremony with your enemy every time. Except that that's been a thing for the last millennium, and tea-ceremonies have changed into something that is... on the surface the same, but under the surface very very different."
"What the hell does that even mean?" Naruto complained.
The toad-sage threw his cane at Naruto's head. He dodged with a squeak.
"It means that they have a thousand different rules that they're obeying at any given time, and that they demand that everyone around them do too. And if someone breaks those rules, then they're dead. The same is generally true if they follow the rules, of course, seeing as how the fae don't age and have their entire lives to hone their ability to trick people into following the rules straight off a cliff."
"And a boy managed to escape?" Kakashi frowned slightly, trying to imagine it.
"Well, yes." The toad-sage huffed. "For all of their rules, fae aren't really very good at capturing children. Maybe they place nice with them, maybe they're too used to dealing with the minds of adults, who can say? The only reason the Queen threw a fit was that the fae who'd stolen him away in the first place had promised to take him somewhere better than where he'd been. They're mostly just supposed to tempt them with great parties and tasty food, not with an actual better life."
"Why not?" In Kakashi's experience, those kinds of promises tended to be the ones most likely to be accepted.
The toad-sage shook his head. "The Fae Realms are filled with tasty food and parties, but you'd have better luck for a 'better life' in the Bloody Mist. And they aren't allowed to lie."
"And you're certain that it's the same boy?" Jiraiya asked, a thoughtful frown on his own face.
The toad-sage nodded. "The fae guard their belongings viciously. And any memory one might have from their time as a guest under their roof? Claiming that as their own when he left would've hardly been unusual. And nothing that belongs to them would ever be allowed to escape from the Fae Realms."
"So they stole his memory, or he left it behind somehow?" Sasuke was the one who spoke up this time.
Kakashi made a thoughtful sound of his own, and then clapped his hands together with a smile. "Well! That's very informative, but it still doesn't tell us where Hari-kun might've gone."
And if they went to the Fae Realms and somehow managed to come out the other end – without losing anyone on the way – they still probably wouldn't remember anything they went in there in order to find out, so that was really a dead end.
"The Fae Realms doesn't steal humans from the Elemental Nations." The toad-sage sighed. "They steal them from a lot of different worlds, but not yours. It's entirely possible that one of those world had some way to bring him back to where he was born."
"Then-... Where is my little brother?" Sakura's voice cut clear through the room, and-... Oh boy, she'd run out of stones and was now slowly crushing a kunai into a ball.
Kakashi really probably should address that behavior somehow. But that was for a different day.
"It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't steal from our world, isn't it?" Jiraiya asked, and upon receiving a small nod from the toad-sage, he continued. "It's not chakra or anything like that, otherwise Hari probably wouldn't have had it either. So... they only steal humans from their own neighborhood?"
And that was the start of several hours worth of arguing about the theoretical mathematics of space-time, along with a few attempts from Naruto to draw out a map in order to be able to listen to at least that half of what they were talking about without getting a headache.
The Fae Realms had a location, same as their own world and that of the Summoning Realm. That meant that they had a location relative to the other worlds around them. That meant that the amount of worlds that Hari could've originally been stolen away from was limited.
And what do you know, within the week, they'd managed to narrow down the suspects to about a dozen different worlds. Worlds as large – or even larger – than the entirety of the Elemental Nations.
Sakura had also stopped destroying quite so much of her environment. Mainly because Kakashi had had the bright idea to train the distraught girl into chakra-exhaustion. Daily.
XXX
Hermione had met a lot of traditional people in her life. Ignoring her own family, she'd read enough books where politics had been a feature to know that tradition-oriented people stuck to their traditions because that was the way they'd always been doing them.
So when Harry – who never ate anything, despite how Ron's brothers had pointed out the kitchen to him, hoping to help – refused to show up at Halloween, Hermione's first thought was simply that the boy wanted to avoid the food for some reason.
However, seeing as it was Harry deciding to refuse attending, Hermione didn't immediately blurt that out. Harry was... twitchy.
Having thought about it a little bit further, she'd realized that it'd be the anniversary of his parents' deaths, and that that was probably a very sensitive kind of time of the year for him. Still, not wanting to assume anything when it came to Harry – and his sometimes outright bizarre habits and views of the world – Hermione had gone as far as to ask him why.
Despite everything, it was becoming increasingly obvious to Hermione that it was easiest to deal with Harry by being bluntly honest and then being ready to back away to a safe distance very quickly in case he ever took offense.
Turns out, he'd never really known the date, even if he hadn't been surprised by it. As if he'd always kind of suspected it, but never cared enough to find out the truth. But without that as the reason, Hermione had felt comfortable pushing a bit more intently for an explanation for why he refused to be in the Great Hall during the celebrations.
His response was... perfectly Harry-like, in that it was strange enough to leave her puzzling over it for hours afterwards.
"Your celebrations are not mine, your feasts are not mine, and your invitations will never be accepted."
Ron had suggested that it might simply be that he'd grown up without Halloween, and didn't feel comfortable even remotely participating in a celebration that he himself didn't celebrate. Which had sounded simple enough of an explanation, but it was just-...
Any kind of official invitation was always refused, he distanced himself at every opportunity, he kept a perfectly polite facade no matter how teachers and students decided to insult or praise him, he only obeyed direct and explicit orders from professors during classes and never did his homework, and he refused to introduce himself to anyone at all. And where exactly had he gone, to find a sister who'd never heard of the Boy-Who-Lived, and how far away had he traveled that it'd taken Albus Dumbledore over a year to even find him with all of the magic at his disposal?
Hermione had always been very fond of puzzles, even though this one didn't seem to have any perfect answer in the shape of books, it sounded familiar enough.
Even Hogwarts's library had a few story-books, fairytales that were obviously nothing more than that. And even if it grated at Hermione to try to find substance in those things – unlike that blonde dazed-looking first year girl that often wandered around the aisles – she'd always enjoyed a good book to pass the time.
Of course, for a muggleborn witch, a few of those symptoms would seem damningly familiar.
"Harry, was there winter or summer where you lived?" Hermione asked, carefully casual, even alone as the three of them were.
He might not be able to respond to where he'd been exactly, or how Dumbledore had 'rescued' him, but he'd dropped hints that he'd been adopted into a family. And that meant that a few 'trivia' should be able to slip through whatever Dumbledore had done to keep his tongue from revealing something Dumbledore didn't want them to hear.
Ron sent her a confused glance, probably wondering how she'd gone from holiday-celebrations to seasons, but Harry's own brief confusion turned suspiciously still.
"Not really." Harry's stillness turned into a frustrated frown, before slipping away again. "Can't remember whether I passed through it or not though."
That was-... That was probably more information of where he'd disappeared to than anyone had managed to get out of him in his entire time at Hogwarts. And Hermione suddenly felt... oddly cold, a creeping chill sending shivers down her spine.
Because Harry referred to summer and winter as a place. And Hermione only knew of two places that went by those names.
The seelie and the unseelie. The Fae Courts of Summer and Winter.
"Oh." Hermione breathed out, voice a little bit choked. "Sorry for bringing it up."
Then she sent a glare at Ron when he opened his mouth to ask what they were talking about. She'd tell him later.
But... before that-... Before she did anything else, Hermione suddenly wanted to see if Hogwarts had some kind of record of 'what the students agreed to upon attending'.
Because if Harry wasn't messing with her – and he never lied, never pretended – then their Good Neighbors were actually out there. And if anything she'd ever read about fae was true? Then it'd be best for all of them to be very aware of whatever contracts they'd agreed to.
Just in case a fae happened to somehow have been involved during the writing of that contract.
Fae could live for a very long time after all, and they were quite notorious with how they dealt with oath-breakers.
XXX
There was this tiny issue with having dozen of worlds the size of – or bigger than – the entirety of the Elemental Nations to search for one boy. Namely, that it was pretty much impossible. A needle in a haystack, in a city filled with haystacks.
Unfortunately, that was their only clue, and since backing out wasn't really an option, onwards they searched. Kakashi could technically call the mission to an end, but his students were very much still in the process of 'becoming loyal ninja of Konoha', and forcing them to actively betray the ideals he'd tried to implant on them to foster loyalty among comrades? To convince them to leave a kidnapped teammate's little brother to whatever whims his captors might have in store?
Kakashi had the authority to write the mission off as a loss and return back to Konoha. That still didn't mean he was stupid enough to try using it.
Surprisingly enough, his cute little genin seemed to absolutely thrive away from the Village. Possibly it was because – with Sakura worrying about her little brother – they could all find some kind of common ground in their shared trauma. Possibly it was because Sakura had never really been the type to try all that hard to attach herself to Sasuke if there weren't any girls around to threaten her position – or her needing to deflect Naruto from being obnoxious. Possibly they just enjoyed time away from the distractions of their non-professional lives.
As long as it didn't ever come down to an actual desire to leave the Village and never return, Kakashi could really care less about their reasons. It was a fun thought to play around with, but – being himself – Kakashi could never even really try to fool himself into understanding the emotions of people around him. It was part of the reason why he'd so happily developed his many aggravating personality-traits. Annoyance was super-easy to spot in people, and annoyed people were pretty easy to predict, once you got used to it.
His cute little students didn't seem to have a lot of annoyance left in them to aim his way, so he was just completely out of luck on that front. Oh well.
He supposed that kids had a tendency to adapt to most anything you threw at them. No matter how much they needed to twist themselves into neurotic messes in order to do so. Him succeeding to annoy them with his mere presence alone should've always been something to be considered as a temporary thing.
From here on out, he'd have to come up with actual plans to annoy his cute little students.
After all, stuck on a long-term mission like this one? You really had to come up with your own form of entertainment.
XXX
Hari didn't remember what had followed the green-eyed man in the mirror.
It was a moment of reaching out for the man's hand through the glass, and then opening his eyes to Konoha, trying to silently shake away the numb – cold, so cold, thought he'd never be warm again – feeling in his fingers, and silently telling himself not to cry. So relieved, so awed to see green and living things, to see kindness in the face of a stranger-...
So he really didn't know what might've happened in between those two moments. But he'd known that the man in the mirror was a fae before he'd ever reached for his hand.
Why he'd been the one spirited away? Why he'd landed himself on Konoha's doorstep of all places? That he didn't know. Neither did he know whether or not they'd let him go with a happy wave or with a vicious snarl-...
-... the queen never let anyone go free when she could tear them to shreds and have her hounds devour them whole-...
-... Or however long he might've remained in the between. It wasn't like time wasn't infamous for not passing as it ought to within the realms of the fae. That Hari didn't think he looked any older than when he'd gone in said some things, and that his age apparently agreed with what Dumbledore had expected it to be also said some things.
They, however, didn't necessarily paint a perfect picture of whatever it might be that they were saying. Assuming otherwise when fae were involved wasn't exactly the wisest of options.
Hermione's willingness to both spot it and then accept it, had been somewhat surprising. He'd heard her argue with Ron enough times to understand that she didn't put a lot of faith in things that hadn't been properly recorded, and fae were... well, a bunch of fairytales.
Then again, so were wizards and witches and magic and everything related to it, in this world. Who was to say what might've been hidden away inside of a story so unbelievable that the magical people couldn't be bothered to try erasing it completely.
Honestly though, Hari would've been more willing to expect that initial leap in logic to ask about winter had it come from Ron. The boy was just... an awful lot better at dealing with people, no matter how willing Hermione was to try and pry open any puzzle she could get her hands on.
Perhaps it was simply that Hermione was more used to hearing about the fairytales where the fae actually featured.
Ignoring the mightily suspicious way that he refused to speak his name, no matter what, Hari hadn't eaten a single bite since he'd been forcefully brought to this world. Logically, it should've killed him.
Several of the professors had made comments about it being impossible to create food with magic. Personally, Hari had his doubts about that, but perhaps his trip through the mirror had left him... 'unaligned' enough with this world to not starve in it as time passed. No matter how many nights he was kept awake by the screaming agony in his empty stomach.
It would've been worse to give them proof that he accepted the hospitality of his kidnappers-...
He could live with a few sleepless nights.
XXX
It wasn't so much a clue, as it was that – after wandering around the first world they'd managed to get to – it turned out that the fae left... tracks.
Less in the sense of Kakashi's dogs tracking them down – and very much not in the sense of following the trail of destruction – and more that chakra was very different in the world they'd arrived in. Different, but not nearly as outright alien as the strange sense of something else having... broken through and spilled over, staining the not-chakra of the world in a way that gave everyone with the vaguest sense of chakra-sensing the creeps.
So, it wasn't a clue, but it was definitely a lead.
They didn't need to go dig through the entire cities' worth of haystacks in the hope of finding one person. They just needed to track down every 'stain' that they could find in those worlds, and then see if there were any clues to Hari in particular in those places.
Kakashi was quite happy with that, because it meant that now he was stuck with a mission that'd likely last them a couple of years, instead of a couple of decades. Progress.
Also an interesting way to convince his cute little genin to work on their chakra-sensing abilities.
If Kakashi had to get the creeps, then he was going to share the experience with everyone he possibly could.
XXX
One of the rules that he couldn't disobey was to hurt others – Hari wasn't entirely sure of to what extent that one stretched. A sort of subclause to that rule was that he shouldn't be holding onto weapons beyond the 'wand' that they'd given him.
Hari was pretty sure that Dumbledore had messed with the wand somehow, and the way that it pulled on his chakra always felt unnatural, so he wasn't all too fond of it. Admittedly, that might simply be how they were designed to work, but Hari sincerely doubted that Dumbledore would've given him unrestricted access to a tool that could be so severely abused.
No, using his wand was something to be avoided at all costs, beyond doing only exactly what the professors demanded of him and only when they demanded it. He was here as a prisoner, and he wasn't going to let anyone forget that. Especially not himself.
But the idea of a weapon was such a fluid concept, and Dumbledore had already introduced a loophole in order to try and tempt him into using the wand.
A solid iron spoon was lethal in the Court-... just as dangerous as senbon if you knew how to use them, and yet nobody here would consider it a 'weapon'. And Hari could hold one without any issue, could even throw one with some force – though he'd never tried it against anyone yet – so clearly it was more related to Dumbledore's perception of weaponry than Hari's.
Which might seem inconsequential since he doubted that he'd be able to kill the man with a spoon when he'd been unable to do so with kunai, but every True interpretation of a rule needed to be examined to understand his options. And Hari hadn't used fuuinjutsu against Dumbledore during that first and only real fight.
Mainly, he hadn't used it because he didn't know how to use it. He might be able to trigger explosive notes, but he was an Academy student, and nobody would be crazy enough to give high-grade explosives to children without some kind of supervision. He'd seen them used, he'd watched as a chunin had created a very basic one as a demonstration in class once, and he'd been briefly taught how to handle them without blowing himself up.
That was it. That was everything he knew about fuuinjutsu.
It was ink on paper, completely innocuous, until it was triggered. And Hari doubted that the 'do not harm'-rule would have time to stop him if he set it up properly. Nothing dangerous, nothing dangerous, a brief spark of chakra in the right spot... and death.
Howling biting winds, tortured screams, and the sickening stench of burning flesh-...
-... a promise of safety broken, and impotent hatred from behind ice-blue eyes-...
-... green eyes behind a bowed head of shattered glass, and the certainty that his mother had loved him-...
Hari couldn't really say that he was looking forward to the possibility of killing the man. But he was a ninja. And he would do what was needed to return home.
Before his sister had to walk through the snow-... Before his sister had to risk her life to find him.
XXX
When they finally found Sakura's little brother, Kakashi was going on a vacation.
No, that would've been silly. No, what he was going to do was retire. Preferably to a small room in a basement somewhere where he never ever had to go out and deal with anything ever again.
Turns out, the places that fae tended to frequent were... varied.
Everything from perfectly normal human neighborhoods, to normal non-human forests, to jungles filled with tiger-sized insect-like creatures that bled acid, to some kind of endless breeding-orgy of something vaguely humanoid, to one place that was definitely too close to the Faerie Realms to be considered 'outside' of them.
And if Kakashi ever saw himself in a mirror ever again, it'd be far too soon.
They'd also had a few run-ins with some individuals who worked as 'scouts' to the fae. Mostly, they seemed harmless, but that was probably because Sakura would've made a fantastic civilian lawyer. Kakashi supposed that he shouldn't be relying on his genin student to get them out of trouble, but he wasn't going anywhere near anything that smelled that much like blood and rot and sex. Puking on people was rarely considered good manners, and the fae were big on that.
So Sakura smiled without showing any teeth, and she never let anything related to who they were or what they were doing slip. And then the fae-person would huff and puff for a bit, before disappearing off to sulk. Or to find easier prey. Considering what most of the fae seemed to get up to in their spare time, Kakashi was sure that he didn't actually want to know.
Other than that, Team 7 was doing good. Sakura had stopped accidentally scaring the local wild-life with Killing Intent, and instead now did it entirely on purpose. Naruto had calmed down a lot after that time with the mirrors, apparently having had some great revelation in the middle of everyone else getting horribly traumatized. And Sasuke had been desperately itching for a challenge that didn't keep reminding him that he was on the same level as the class-clown, so the acid-bleeding insect-creatures had been a great help.
Or maybe it'd simply been the way that they'd all nearly gotten eaten, and that it'd convinced him to re-prioritize his life-choices.
Honestly, Kakashi didn't have a clue whether or not his tiny students were handling things well or not, but none of them had had a nervous breakdown in ages. So either they'd become functional human beings, or they'd somehow managed to be traumatized way past the point of caring about it. According to Kakashi's psyche-profile, Kakashi wasn't exactly the right person to determine which side of the fence they'd landed on.
He was pretty sure that meant that he himself had landed on the wrong side early on in his career. Though how he might've done that when he'd been able to touch Pakkun's cute little paws whenever he'd wanted, Kakashi didn't have a clue.
Life was mysterious like that.
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The problem with the idea of using fuuinjutsu to kill off Dumbledore and make his escape was quite simply that Hari knew nothing about it at all.
And he couldn't exactly risk practicing making explosive notes somewhere where people would notice if he ever managed to get it right. After all, the whole plan hinged on the fact that the papers wouldn't be perceived as dangerous. Blowing a hole in the courtyard with the paper beforehand would've made it all too obvious what he was trying to do.
So he needed to not only master the art of fuuinjutsu from half-baked memories without any outside support, he wasn't allowed to do anything resembling actually testing the seals that he came up with.
The hunger-pains keeping him up at night, and the endless staring of the gossiping Hogwarts populace, certainly didn't make him feel any more at ease about the situation.
One year. That was his deadline. If he couldn't manage to kill Dumbledore in one year and escape back to Konoha somehow, then he was probably screwed anyway. Not only would it mean that he would've ended up missing his graduation to genin, after going missing for an entire year the Hokage was likely to call off any possible search-party.
Hari didn't have a clue whether his sister would defy that. If she would continue searching on her own, or if she'd cooperate enough that she would stay away from the winter and the snow-... In the end, it didn't much matter.
If he hadn't managed to kill off Dumbledore by the end of the school year, Hari was going to have to figure out a way to send a message back to his sister not to come looking for him. And he would need to make it convincing, to erase all hope she might have to find him again.
So far, his only idea on how to succeed at that basically consisted of Hari sending her his freshly ripped-out heart or something. That or another vital organ. It was probably a cruel thing to do to her, but anything was better than her being trapped in the snow-...
By the end of the school year, once summer came again. That was his deadline.
Either kill Dumbledore and escape back to Konoha. Or kill himself to somehow send a message to stop Sakura from continuing to search for him.
Good times.
XXX
Sasuke in truth didn't much care for Sakura's little brother one way or the other.
The boy was inoffensive enough that he simply didn't pay any attention to him until Sakura had become his teammate. And even then, interactions with Hari were almost entirely limited to watching him talking to other people, such as Kakashi-sensei or Naruto.
The overall impression was that of a forgettable civilian-born Academy-student, who'd learnt somewhere that politeness made it easier to be rude to people.
Considering exactly how the fae they'd been running into had acted, it was in hindsight damningly obvious where he might've picked up on that particular personality-trait. But that was an impression he'd only really unraveled since the kidnapping.
When Sakura had first come barreling into the training-field to ask them to help find her little brother, he'd been annoyed by it. Ignoring that he didn't like being reminded of the existing families of other people, they were supposed to be taking missions and become stronger. That was the whole point of being a genin. A mere stepping-stone in their careers, until the chunin exam gave them a chance to leave that behind them.
Having that delayed because Sakura's useless little brother went and got himself kidnapped, hadn't exactly been very high on Sasuke's priorities.
That initial antipathy had faded in the months since then.
Yes, some of that was the nagging sensation of sympathy towards Sakura, whose mixture of worry and impotent rage struck a cord in his own memories. But some of it was also because of them beginning to unravel exactly what the hell kind of path Hari must've taken through the Fae Realms in order to even get to Konoha in the first place.
Two sides of a coin, the fae's two factions were named after the seasons, with 'summer' being the one that only ate people some of the time. As in, for all that they were insane psychopaths by the standards of most humans, they were still considered relatively 'nice' as far as the fae were concerned.
And Hari had gone through 'winter' in order to get to Konoha.
The details of it all were obviously sketchy, and some of it seemed to be pointing towards there having been different factions within 'winter' that had used him to help further their own goals somehow. But Sasuke had been watching Sakura dealing with enough 'nice' fae during the span of their mission, that he was becoming rather desperately attached to the girl's ability to talk herself out of trouble.
The idea of a six-year-old managing to do the same with the 'nasty' side of things?
Sasuke could admit that he was sort of reluctantly impressed by it, even if he couldn't remember ever having seen Hari actually demonstrating that ability. As it was, he was willing to give the boy the benefit of the doubt until they met again and they could ask him some very pointed questions.
Besides, even if it wasn't fighting enemy ninja and officially climbing the ranks, spending month after month out in the field, constantly getting into trouble with completely bizarre things trying to eat their faces?
There were definitely worse ways to spend their time. And at least this way he didn't have to listen to Sakura and Ino trying to out-shout each other over who thought he was most good-looking. Even Naruto had stopped yelling about becoming Hokage every two minutes, so that was also a clear improvement.
On the other hand, their mission being what it was, it also meant that they were camping out in the middle of winter during a goddamn blizzard, so there was that too.
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Naruto's feelings towards Sakura's little brother could mostly be summed up as Hari being Sakura's little brother.
Sakura was amazing, and pretty, and Naruto knew that it was important to make a good impression on a girl's family if you were to stand a chance at making her like you.
So, originally, he'd tried to be nice to the boy who kept smiling that creepy polite smile at Kakashi-sensei. Then he'd gotten used to Hari's special brand of dislike, and the way that it was only really actively aimed Naruto's way when he blurted out something a bit too loudly.
Naruto wasn't Hari's friend. He would've liked to have been, but-... But he would've liked it probably not because of any good reason.
He was better now though!
Watching Sakura worry about her little brother, seeing her use that worry to force herself to outperform both Sasuke and himself in training whenever she could, feeling the weight of that constant undirected anger almost reminding him of that illusion-demon of Zabuza's final moments, and then watching her smile and pretend at happily polite innocence at everyone they met.
Naruto wasn't entirely sure when he'd realized that thinking of Sakura was more about how scary she was than how cute she looked. But that'd probably been the beginning of the end of his crush on her.
A crush he felt mostly embarrassed about now, to be entirely honest. Sure, Sakura was cute and all, but she was also really not interested and hadn't ever shown any hint of interest in even talking to anyone except Sasuke and Ino.
Speaking of, Naruto had a vague memory of carefully making sure that he never interrupted Ino and Sakura sitting with their heads together giggling about Sasuke. Interrupting them when they were actively fawning or swooning, that pissed them off, but when they were alone-... Naruto didn't really understand why, other than that girls were weird and didn't want him butting in on girl-time or something, but they always got extra-angry about that.
So Naruto felt a bit embarrassed about having run around after Sakura, 'seducing' her by shouting at her about random stuff.
Admittedly, he'd never really seen anyone seduce anyone before, so it wasn't like he could've guessed that he'd been doing it wrong. Though now that he had-...
Naruto could sort of understand why Hari didn't like him. Naruto would've been really suspicious of anyone trying to flirt with Ayame-nee, even if she actually seemed to be enjoying herself. The idea of someone jumping at her and shouting about stuff when she clearly didn't want to be bothered by them? Naruto would've probably decked them.
He was kind of happy that he hadn't been very good at the whole seduction-thing when he'd tried to get Sakura to notice him though. That'd been really-...
He was never going to complain about Sakura being the person talking to the fae. They were creepy even when they tried to be nice. Especially then, actually.
Polite smiles were one thing. Naruto could kind of understand why smiling brightly at people was as good an idea as glaring at them. It was what he'd been doing for years, after all. No, the problem was how... slimy they all were. Like-... Like somebody sneaking something nasty into ramen, before offering it for free, all warm and delicious, just a tiny little taste, all for free.
Fae were creepy and unpleasant, and Naruto felt no shame at all about hiding behind Kakashi-sensei whenever they showed their ugly too-pretty faces. Even if Sasuke made mocking noises afterwards. Sasuke just did that because he was an asshole.
The final straw that'd convinced him that he didn't have a crush on Sakura any more came down to the mirrors though. The mirrors and green eyes staring back at him through a broken reflection-... Naruto wasn't entirely sure why that'd been the tipping point.
One moment he'd been himself, the next he'd been himself. Kurama still as grumpy as he'd ever been, and the world as filled with nasty people as it'd always be. And the sun would rise tomorrow, so there wasn't any point in keeping a grudge about it setting today. Life was life, and beating up people who didn't like you wouldn't suddenly make them like you.
Beating up people trying to kill you and your friends, whilst shouting at them that they were being assholes for picking a fight in the first place, was entirely acceptable. Just... punching someone in the nose would just make them want to punch you back, if only to prove to themselves that they could do that much.
Kakashi used to say that 'an eye for an eye makes the world blind', whenever Naruto brought that up. It wasn't a very ninja-ish way of looking at it, and Naruto was pretty sure that the only reason that Kakashi had ever even bothered to memorize the obscure temple-person philosophy-saying had been because he had a terrible sense of humor.
He was halfway-blind after having had an eye donated to him from someone else. He probably thought the saying was hilarious. Weirdo.
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A/n: So Hermione has started to piece together a few of the clues, and Naruto doesn't need to travel through a mirror to learn something about himself in them. (AKA, how did Naruto suddenly learn Kurama's name? He certainly can't remember-...)
The next chapter will be the last.