Looking back on it, Harry was vaguely embarrassed. His reaction was, of course, totally justified, but screaming something accusatory while pointing at the man and gibbering about how he was going to 'kill us all!' still looked crazy. It had only gotten worse when the man spoke, apparently unconcerned by Harry's outburst, asking him where he'd gotten the cloak. The problem was, of course, that the man's voice was not the horrible voice from his dream. Oh, sure, it made his skin crawl a little, for reasons he didn't know how to put into words, but it nonetheless wasn't the monstrous voice that had promised death. Then, of course, Dumbledore dragged out of Harry why he'd responded so badly, which was just salt in the wound. Bad enough that he was wrong, but that he'd listened to a nightmare? Fortunately, before he could start beating himself up mentally too much, Dumbledore had gently explained that dreams are often prophetic to some degree or another, but also that the obvious intepretation is not neccessarilly the correct one. Which had, in fact, made Harry feel better. Just a little. After that, he was calm enough to ask why they'd been so amused, at which point the dream-man had explained that the stalker had, in fact, been one of his 'ninja' (Which threw Harry for a moment. Ninja?) watching over Harry to foil spies and assassins from Voldemort. It was very startling to hear someone other than himself or Dumbledore actually say the name, sufficiently so that it took a moment for the rest of the explanation to register. Harry was both relieved and appalled, given that he'd actually been safer than ever before, and yet the invasion of his privacy, without asking permission, was repulsive. It was also irritating, because all his worrying had been for nothing, and nobody had seen fit to inform him of what was actually going on.
Then the man had asked once more about the cloak, Harry had explained it was an heirloom and that he knew nothing more than that, and the man had seemed almost mournful for a moment, murmuring something Harry didn't catch. Or perhaps heard, but didn't understand, he wasn't entirely certain. Whatever the case, Dumbledore had said something encouraging, and, after asking Harry if he wanted to speak on anything else (He hadn't), ushered him out the door. After a moment, he'd popped back out of the office and handed Harry the invisibility cloak with a word to be more careful in the future.
Harry had remained standing there in a daze until one of the guards ("'Ninja'", Harry had reminded himself) had firmly ordered him to return to his dorm.
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When the next week had come, classes had become considerably more difficult, on a level more akin to what Harry had originally anticipated. Ron quite naturally bemoaned the loss of all his free time, while Hermione had been rather more enthusiastic. She still read the third-year books, though, which lead to more incredulous remarks from Ron, seeming to find the next year's work far more interesting than this year's. Harry was, as before, uninvolved, though now it was for an entirely different set of reasons. Before, he'd been more concerned with not being seen as 'taking a side'. During this latest week he was instead far more concerned with the man from his dream, or more accurately, the fact that the man seemed to be following Harry, and doing so quite blatantly. Every class Harry was in the man was always standing to the side, watching everything to some degree or another, but with his focus primarily on Harry. It was very disturbing, though Harry was at least relieved to discover that his classmates unanimously considered the strange man to be... creepy, bluntly put. It made him feel a bit better about his own concerns, suggesting they weren't entirely unfounded. Not only that, but the first year students still hadn't shown up, which was really starting to worry Harry. He liked and trusted Hagrid, certainly, but he'd begun to wonder if perhaps Hagrid had accidentally fed the entire lot to a 'cute' sea monster or something of the sort along the way to the castle...
At some point he realized he didn't actually know the creepy man's name. Somehow, this seemed an appropriate capstone to the whole thing.
Schoolwork was challenging, but not difficult. Snape was a jerk. Draco harrassed Harry some more, though less than the previous week, and with much less enthusiasm, probably in part due to the guards' (Ninja ) lack of response. Harry didn't respond to Draco much, either, increasingly feeling that the blonde was small potatoes, and not worth the effort. Not when there a man stalking him, apparently with the full backing of the staff, of unknown intentions and abilities. Somehow, Harry was left feeling that things were going too well. It made him wonder what was going to go wrong. Hogwarts was certainly the best thing to ever happen to him, but it hadn't changed a singular fact of life for Harry; that things will always go wrong. Horribly. Furthermore, as a general rule, the better things seemed, the worse they were going to get. His first year at Hogwarts had been a wonderful, amazing, incredible experience that had benefited him in so many ways. On the other hand, a man had tried to kill him for reasons almost entirely outside his control, even aside from incidents like the one with the troll. The Dursleys, though they had treated him terribly, had never actually tried to kill him. Nor had anyone else while he'd lived with them.
So in a way Harry was neither shocked nor surprised when he found a stunningly realistic statue of an oddly dressed man standing in front of a wall. The wall having a message written in blood, of course, and the message speaking of the 'heir of Slytherin' and death to the impure and the like. He was worried, yes, but the whole thing seemed terrible mundane. He was quite a bit more concerned when, after he'd retrieved a teacher who'd called for the ninja and some other teachers, he overheard that the statue had once been one of the ninja. Which probably explained his (Her?) strange, body-concealing-yet-not-robes clothing, but it also suggested that the ninja was, in some sense or another, dead. Which was bad, of course, doubly so given that nobody knew how to fix it. Really, though, the most horrible part was the mysterious ninja-leader entering the scene and expressing an intense fascination with what could've turned one of his men to stone, apparently without inflicting any form of wound beforehand. It wasn't horrible because he was interested. It was horrible because he seemed entirely unaffected by what was effectively the death of one of his loyal people.
Then the man had broken off a hand, apparently out of curiosity. While the staff around him had been obviously outraged, Harry didn't see what they did or hear what they said. He was too busy rushing to a bathroom and vomiting his guts out.
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The whole school was tense. Everyone was terribly frightened they would be next, naturally, and several of the students claimed that nothing... human... could've done that. Many others were willing to believe that for any number of reasons. Harry was only willing to believe it because Hermione was one of the ones claiming this, having apparently read up on spells enough to know that it was beyond human ability to do something like that. Or, at least, beyond human ability to do it in as short a time frame as the man's combat-ready stance implied it had happened. Harry had told his friends of what he'd seen, everything he could remember, leaving out only the hand-thing. He wasn't ready to talk about that. It was bad enough remembering it, especially when he had dreams about it. The man would be miraculously restored by some miracle cure... only to be left with only a bloody stump for a hand. It was a terribly disturbing nightmare, and had even lead to another vomiting session one time.
There was talk going around of the school closing down, or at least of students being pulled out by their parents. There was a lot of disagreement over this issue. Some kids wanted out, fearing for their lives now, while others wanted to stay, and were afraid their parents would pull them away out of worry. Both sides were very vocal about their stance. Harry was somewhat surprised when he realized he himself was rather ambivelant. Life at Hogwarts was a great deal better than life with the Dursleys, and every second away from his relatives was to be treasured. Truth be told, Harry felt that if it was merely threat of death looming over him he would be completely adamant about wanting to stay at the school, even if it did close down. However, the ninja leader, though he was not a constant presence after... the incident... he nonetheless was watching Harry a good deal of the time, and whenever he himself was not there, it seemed there was always some strange person in the classroom, always off to the side just as the leader typically was. Frankly, the attention disturbed Harry on a very deep level, justifiably so he felt, given the treatment one of the ninja's men had recieved when his condition had proved to be fascinating. Though Harry feared not death, he was left with the impression that there were indeed worse things out there, that this was not just an expression, but a reality. One that he had a healthy fear of.
It was during this time of fear and stress that Lockhart finally opened the doors to his classroom, and frankly, Harry wasn't impressed. Perhaps it was the blatant ego-mania displayed in the books, pictures, offers to sign things, etc. Alternatively, it may have been how poorly the man had handled the Doxies that he had claimed to be an expert in dealing with. Really, though, what put Harry off the most was how badly the man seemed to be reacting to stress. Given how optimistic Lockhart seemed about the situation with the man turned to stone, Harry suspected that this wasn't why the teacher was so tense and snappish. (Or gaunt, as though not eating well, or nodding off periodically, as though not sleeping enough, or... the list went on and on) Actually, the man seemed to react very badly to the ninja in specific, and Harry felt almost certain that this was a clue to the truth of the matter, though he hadn't the slightest idea what it could mean. Hermione seemed convinced that the guards were bullying the wonderful Professor Lockhart. Ron didn't know, didn't care, and felt that "the bloody git probably deserved it anyway."
Also, the first year students still hadn't been seen. Harry found himself wondering if they'd been kidnapped and horribly experimented upon. Though, that didn't make sense, Hagrid would've mentioned it to someone. Or, more likely, have been bawling like a baby.
Somehow, these thoughts didn't make him feel any better.