A/N: It's really late, I know. I promised I'd get this one out earlier but a lot of things came up, and the writer's block hit me hard. I've been hanging out a lot more on some Live Journal communities and writing a whole load of one-shots and a few short multi-chap ones. I have a short multi-chap story that I'm going to publish soon. Sorry, no thank yous this chapter; they're getting out of hand. Sorry. You guys all get cookies and plushies though.

Disclaimer: Don't own it, so don't sue me. I only own Maerin and the plot, that's it.

Chapter 7: First Impressions

Harry was discovering quickly just how difficult it was to wake Naruto up. Eventually, he and Ron had given up and ran off to find someone to help; they found Gaara.

"Naruto's still asleep," Harry explained. "We've tried everything, but he won't wake up!"

Gaara rolled his eyes and lead the way into their dormitory. He looked around and picked up the almost full water pitcher. Promptly, he dumped it all over the still sleeping shinobi.

"GAH! That's cold!" Naruto leapt up, saying a few choice words in his native tongue before turning on the red-haired kazekage. "What the hell was that for?!"

Gaara merely crossed his arms and gave him an evil smirk, "You wouldn't wake up."

"But you didn't have to pour a whole pitcher of cold water over me!" The blonde shinobi got up in Gaara's face and proceeded to berate him. "And why you?! Why couldn't Sasuke or Sakura or Hinata?!"

"Sakura and Hinata are in different houses, and Sasuke had already gone down for breakfast."

"GRAAH!! I HATE YOU!!" Naruto ranted. Ron and Harry watched the entire exchange with confused expressions on their faces. Their eyes flicked from speaker to speaker. Eventually, Naruto calmed down; although he was still muttering darkly under his breath.

Gaara disappeared soon after, going down for breakfast, and left the two wizards with the irate shinobi. After a quick shower and a quick change into his robes, Naruto was ready.

The trio trotted down to the Great Hall where they were surprised to find that Hermione had saved them seats.

"I wonder what we have first..." she wondered."I mean, they still have to make our schedules up, which will be happening after we eat, but I would like to know what we have first."

Naruto commented off-handedly, "Kakashi-sensei's actually here..."

Hermione looked to him, "He showed up ten minutes after breakfast started. You three on the hand were twenty!" She glared at them.

Casting Naruto a dirty look, Ron ground out, "Naruto slept in and we couldn't wake him up, so we had to go find someone."

"Yeah, they asked Gaara and he dumped the entire water pitcher over me!"

Hermione had to laugh at that.

"It's not funny! That water was like ice!"

Once breakfast concluded, the sixth years remained behind as their heads of houses set them up with their timetables.

"We have Potions first period..." Ron complained. "At least Snape isn't teaching it this year, we might not fail."

"What's so bad about him?" Sakura asked. She was also in the Potions class, as well as Hinata, Neji, Shikamaru, and Temari.

"The guy has a grudge against all of the houses except Slytherin, which he's head of," Ron explained. "He's especially got it in for Gryffindor."

"Sounds like a real great person," Temari shot back sarcastically.

"The most wonderful person in the world," Harry responded just as sarcastically.

The group piled into the dungeon, they had to split up into table of four. Sakura, Hinata, Temari, and Shikamaru got a table to themselves, although Shikamaru seemed a little torn at abandoning Neji like that. But Temari had practically dragged him to their table and he was sandwiched in between her and Sakura; so he really wasn't given much of a choice in the matter of seating arrangements.

Neji shrugged and took a seat beside Hermione who seemed unsure what to think of the rather handsome shinobi. She mentally shook her head to clear her mind of those thoughts. She kept telling herself to concentrate on the lesson.

Both Ron and Harry were given old, ratty text books as they hadn't bought the required ones since they didn't think they'd be allowed to take the subject. She was thrilled that the shinobi had at least bought the textbooks.

Harry and Ron took their seats; Harry offered to switch places with Hermione as she seemed a little uncomfortable seating beside Neji; an offer which she accepted. It wasn't that she didn't like him, she just felt… a little out of place beside him.

On the other hand, Harry couldn't help but feel safe around the foreign students. Not to say that he didn't feel safe around Ron and Hermione; but he still always had this feeling of uneasiness. For the first time since his fourth year, Harry felt completely safe.

He felt he could trust these people.

Even still, something told him to be wary around them; but he dismissed that. Harry was tired; tired of having to suspect people, tired of having to constantly look over his shoulder, tired of having to constantly keep his guard up. He knew the latter was foolish thinking, but for once in his life, he wished he didn't have to sleep with his wand under his pillow, ready for an attack.

"… we will be making the Drought of Living Death. A tricky little potion, but if you follow all your instructions, you should have no problems."

Harry found that someone had scribbled all over the pages in his textbook. They'd scratched out part of the recipes and procedure, and replaced it with their own. At some places, he couldn't make out what the instructions were. Finally, he got fed up with it, and decided to at least try the suggestions.

He was surprised that his potion immediately turned the correct color that Slughorn had told them it should. Hermione glared over at him from her place over on the other side of Ron, who also seemed totally surprised that his was already at that stage when his was a pale grey.

Neji, on the other hand, didn't seem surprised at all. In fact, his potion was also as far along as Harry's. Both of theirs started issuing the pale lavender smoke at about the same time as Shikamaru's, Sakura's a few seconds later, followed closely by Hermione.

"Well, I've never had so many students at once finish their potions so quickly and perfectly too!" Slughorn commented. "I'm not so sure how the new students managed to get so good, but it's obvious that Harry here has inherited his mother's knack for potion making!" He slapped Harry good-naturedly on the back.

Once class had ended, the group trotted back upstairs where they met up with Sasuke and Naruto, who had had a free period. Naruto was grumbling something about being bored. They headed down another hallway to reach their Charms class.

Flitwick started the class with a quick briefing, and then set them to work with reviewing their charm work.

Halfway into class, one of the new teachers, Maerin, slipped into the classroom. She hurriedly spoke to Flitwick, who smiled back and handed her several books. She bowed and left.

"I wonder why Professor Uchiha was in here…" Hermione wondered aloud. "Wouldn't she know her subject pretty thoroughly?"

Sasuke responded, "It's her business, isn't it?"

"Well I guess, but…"

"Why are we talking about Maerin-sensei?" Naruto asked, inserting himself into the conversation from his seat beside Ron.

"She was just in here," Hermione pointed out.

"Alright…" Naruto didn't seem too curious about it; he went back to his charms, as did the other shinobi. Hermione, in her never-ending quest for knowledge, tucked the incident and conversation into a far corner of her memory to examine at a later time.

Charms ended and the large group dumped their books in the dormitories before heading down for lunch. They were a little surprised when Ginny came up, looking exhausted and with a large bruise forming on her arm.

"Oi, Ginny what happened?" Ron asked his sister.

She gave a wane, tired smile, "Practical defense. My team got into a little fight; I tired to break it up and… well…"

"Team?"

"Yeah, Professor Hatake split us into three person teams for our class. He allowed us to form our own groups, but he split a few up; it's why I'm in a group with Liza Ethelbrook," Ginny explained. Ethelbrook was a Slytherin.

"They're making us work with Slytherins?!" Ron asked, completely shocked.

Ginny frowned, "He broke our group up because it was too large and Liza was on her own."

"I won't work with Slytherins!" Ron exclaimed, Harry nodded his agreement.

"Be careful about what you say Ronald," a new voice came. "Kakashi might hear you."

The group spun around to face the newcomer. It was Maerin Uchiha.

"I'm sorry we never had a proper introduction," she began, she held out her hand. "My name is Uchiha Maerin; I'm one of your new practical defense teachers."

Haha! Finished! This is chapter seven done and completed. I'd like to thank you all for your patience with me, I'm really sorry that this took so long to write and publish; my life's been real busy lately. Exams are coming up so I didn't have a lot of time to write, and I had a major case of writer's block (still do, actually).

This chapter didn't exactly come out the way I wanted it, but I needed some way to push through my writer's block, and this is the result. This probably is the first interaction Maerin has really had with the Hogwarts trio, and you guys don't know how it's going to turn out yet, but I'll get chapter eight out as soon as possible! Alright? No promises on when, I can't keep them. Got too much to do. Alright? But I have an evil plot bunny for this story, which I hope will make all you yaoi fans reading this happy!

Oh! If any of you like or are interested in Gundam SEED Destiny, I should have one of my many new projects up soon. So please, check it out if you're interested and drop me a review on it!

Thankees!