Notes: I apologize for updating this now, more than two months after the last update. I had personal problems and I didn't have time to do this until now. I hope you understand.

Epilogue

Suna was a nice city. People was kind and polite, the buildings were tall and beautiful, and delinquency was almost nonexistent, so it was a rather peaceful place to live. Temari had been living there for almost a year, and she was happy. She visited Konoha twice, or more, if she was lucky, a month, and she loved her university. She was finally making her dream come true... What else did she want?

However, there was one thing about Suna that she hated, detested, despised: the weather. Suna was one of the hottest places she'd ever been. During day, the sun burned your skin; Temari was already very tanned, even when she tried to stay as away from the sunshine as possible. But during night, it was so cold you could freeze if you stayed outside for too long. It was understandable, since the city was surrounded by a desert, but still, it sucked.

She missed Konoha's mild weather so, so much. She missed the warm, yet not hot enough to make you sweat, day, and the night, which was as warm as the day, though the air was slightly chilly. She missed to be able to walk around the city, no matter the hour of the day, in nothing but a t-shirt. She was tired of having sweated clothes after a long day and of having to sleep with heating at night.

Today, however, was different. It was a hot Saturday, but not as hot as always; it was just warm. It was a comfortable weather, and all of the other citizens, including Temari, were glad of it.

Said nice weather just made her mood even better. She was feeling euphoric and excited today... but not only because of the day's temperature, but because her friends, their boyfriends and Shikamaru,Temari's own boyfriend, were coming over to visit from Konoha.

Temari looked around her small apartment, her hands on her hips, and smiled triumphantly. She had spent the whole morning making sure it was as clean as it'd never been and putting everything in its place. Now she had finally finished, and it all looked perfect.

Sighing, she glanced at the clock hanging on the wall behind her, saw it was ten fifty in the morning, and gasped. She only had ten minutes to get ready before they arrived! She hurried towards the bathroom and showered in a record time. She had decided what to wear since last night, so it only took her five more minutes to get ready.

At eleven o'clock, she was sitting on her couch, waiting patiently to hear the door-bell. She had butterflies in her stomach. The last time she'd seen her friends was like a month ago, because she'd been busy finishing her first year of university. It wasn't that long ago, but Temari was still excited to see them again. They could've changed a lot in a month, right?

However, if she had to be honest, the cause of her nervousness was other: Shikamaru. She'd last seen him a month ago, too, but she always got really excited to see him again, it did not matter if it was after a year, a month or a day. He just had that effect on her.

The sound of the door-bell made her jump. Temari rose to her feet and slowly walked towards the door. She took a deep breath, put a smile on her face, and opened the door. A pair of arms was thrown around her a second later, followed by two other pairs of arms.

"Temari!" three female voices exclaimed in unison. The blonde wanted to reply, but she couldn't even breathe.

"Girls... let go," she managed. The girls obeyed her instantly.

"Shit, I'm sorry!" TenTen exclaimed. She was wearing her hair down, as she had done lately, a had a pretty blue summer dress on. She looked way girlier than she had a year ago, but she was still the same TenTen. Temari thought her new look just meant she was maturing.

"Guess we got too excited," Sakura said, grinning sheepishly. Her hair was longer than before; her locks now reached her chest. Besides that, she looked the same.

"Well, we just missed you so much!" Hinata, whose long, dark-blue hair was now slightly curlier, said, hugging Temari once again. Temari just laughed and hugged her friend back.

"I missed you guys too," she said. Her other two friends hugged again, and then she glanced behind them and smiled. "Come on in, guys. Don't be shy."

"We're not shy," Neji said as he stepped into the apartment, followed by Naruto and Sasuke. Temari noticed the three of them were taller and looked more like men than like boys, and she suddenly felt nostalgic; it seemed like yesterday when they were just skinny little boys!

"We're just scared of you girls. Your cheesiness may be toxic, you know?" Naruto joked, winking at them.

Temari grinned. "Nice to see you too, Naruto."

"Nice apartment," Neji commented, looking around. "It's very clean."

"Oh, thank you! I spent the whole morning cleaning. I'm glad at least someone notices it."

"But there's a spot on the coffee table," Sasuke said. Temari's smile faded and Sakura elbowed her boyfriend.

"It's okay, I'll clean it up," Temari said nervously, and she ran to the kitchen. A moment later, she came back into the living room with a cloth and cleaned the spot on the coffee table. "Ready," she said, smiling, and then looked back at their friends. "How is it now?"

"Awesome!" some of them replied as the others gave her thumps up.

Relieved to have it all completely perfect, Temari sighed. "Great." She suddenly noticed there were three people missing, and she frowned. "Hey, where are Ino and Sai? And... Shikamaru...?"

"Shikamaru is looking for a place to park the car," Neji replied.

"We all came in one single truck, you know?" TenTen said proudly. "To save gas and the environment."

"All of us, except for Sai and Ino," Sakura corrected. "Ino left to Tokyo yesterday, to visit Sai. They promised they'd come here today, but they said they'd arrive at noon. They must be on their way now."

Temari nodded. "Okay, let's wait for them, then. Take a seat, please."

They all sat on the three couches around the small coffee table Temari had just cleaned: Sakura, Sasuke, Hinata and Naruto on the largest one, TenTen and Neji on the medium-sized one, and Temari on the individual. The owner of the apartment offered their guests something to drink, as a good hostess would. They all opted for tea, except for Sasuke, who asked for a glass of water. And then, they started talking.

Five minutes after the conversation started, there was a knock on the door. Temari stood up and opened it, only to reveal Shikamaru standing in front of her, smirking. Temari didn't even say hello: she just threw her arms around him and buried her face on his neck. He hugged her back without missing a beat.

"I missed you too," he whispered in her ear, and then he kissed her on the lips.

When they were done kissing, Temari closed the door as her boyfriend commented on how troublesome it had been to find a place to park the car. She went to sit on the same couch and Shikamaru sat on the floor in front of her, with a hand around her ankle and his head against her knee, as she continued chatting with her friends.

Temari listened attentively as they filled her in. Sakura told her she was working in a clothing store with Ino on the weekends. Hinata announced she and Naruto were planning on living together as soon as they finished high school. TenTen proudly declared that she finally had a car and had decided to study Education in the university to be a kindergarten's teacher.

An hour had passed when they finished bringing her up to date. The girls were drinking their third cup of tea and the boys seemed pretty bored: Sasuke and Shikamaru were leafing through some magazines, Neji was playing with his cell phone and Naruto was starting to fall asleep, with his head resting on his girlfriend's shoulder.

Suddenly, the door-bell sounded. Naruto was jolted awake, and Hinata laughed at his surprised expression. Temari glanced at clock on the wall and smiled. "I think Ino and Sai are finally here," she said as she stood up and made her way towards the door.

Indeed, the couple had arrived. Temari welcomed warmly and Ino hugged her tightly, happy to see her well. Sai greeted her politely and commented on how nice her apartment was. Temari thanked him and then invited them to sit.

"I guess you'll have to sit on the floor. I'm sorry, guys. I'll buy another couch as soon as I have the money."

"It's alright, Temari!" Ino exclaimed as she and Sai sat on the floor, with their backs to the small TV in the living room. "The floor is pretty comfortable, actually. Ohh, and I love the carpet. The color is awesome. It's like a mix of pink and orange, isn't it?"

"Yeah, I liked it too," Temari said as she sat back on her couch. "That's why I bought it. Anyways... You come from Tokyo, don't you? How is it there?"

Ino started telling her about the city and filling her in with the recent events in her life. When she was done, TenTen changed the subject commenting on someone she'd seen last weekend.

"I totally forgot to tell you, guys," the brunette told Sakura, Ino and Hinata. "I've just been so busy finishing high school and finding the university I want to study in... But anyways, you will never believe who I saw, and how I saw her!"

"So it's a girl, huh?" Ino said. "Okay, okay, let me guess... Is it someone we all know?"

TenTen rolled her eyes. "Obviously."

"Alright, I get it... So it must be someone from school, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Did we like her? Was she our friend?"

"Not really."

"I see... What color was her hair?"

TenTen rolled her eyes again. "Forget it, Ino, I'll tell you. It was Karin."

"Karin?" Sakura asked, as surprised as everyone else in the room was, and TenTen nodded proudly.

"Didn't she leave the city a few months ago?" Hinata asked confusedly.

"I thought so too," TenTen said. "Well, maybe she was just visiting. But that doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I saw her holding hands with someone we all know too." She made a dramatic pause. "And that someone," she continued slowly, a grin on her face, "was no one but Sasori, Sakura's ex boyfriend!"

Almost everyone raised their eyebrows. Clearly, they had expected anyone but him. The only person who didn't look so surprised was Sasuke. "Well, it isn't that weird," he said. "They both are pretty compatible."

"Oh yeah?" Sakura asked. "And what do they have in common?"

The Uchiha smirked. "That I hate them both," he replied, making everyone laugh.

"Wow," Ino said when the laughter died off, "good one, Sasuke." She made a pause and looked around, at each one of her friends. "You know?" she asked. "This seems so weird..."

"What seems weird?" Hinata asked curiously.

Ino smiled dreamily. "I don't know. I just... I never thought we would end up like this, together. Like... some of us liked each other since a very long time ago, but no one ever thought they'd end up together like this, in here... Do you understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah," Sakura said, smiling. "You mean you never really believed we would last this long with our boyfriends. That you never thought we would get the chance to get together like this."

The blonde nodded. "Yeah. I mean, I wanted it to happen, but I never thought this would actually happen, that we would be this happy, not even after we made the love spell, or after we met Kim, or-"

Ino cut herself off. Her smile faded slowly, and her baby blue eyes widened. The other four girls in the room stared at her with the same shocked expression, and no one in the room made a sound for a long moment. Oh no, Temari thought. Ino, what have you done!

Finally, Shikamaru's voice broke the silence. "What love spell?"

"And who's Kim?" Naruto added confusedly.

The girls didn't answer, didn't move.

"Girls?" Neji asked, looking from TenTen to Sakura, and then from Hinata to Ino, and then finally at the owner of the apartment. "What was Ino talking about?"

Suddenly, TenTen started laughing hysterically. "Oh," she said, tears of laughter in her eyes. "Oh, Neji... Ino... Ino meant something... something really funny that happened... a while ago... It's nothing, really! Right, girls?"

"Yeah!" Sakura exclaimed, a wide, nervous smile on her face. "Yeah, it's nothing. You'll see, Ino was talking about... about a... ritual... Yeah, a ritual we made, like, two years ago. It was supposed to bring positive energy to our lives, and in the instructions it said that it would bring us good luck and more crazy stuff like that!"

Hinata giggled nervously. "Oh, yes! Yes, the ritual. I learned it in... in my yoga class, and I made it with the girls. It was, um, fun."

The all started to laugh nervously. The boys stared at them, some confused, some suspicious.

"And who's that Kim you mentionedt?" Sai asked Ino.

"Oh," Ino said, startled. "Oh, uh, Kim. Yeah, right, Kim. Well, you'll see, she was, um, a yoga teacher. Right, a yoga teacher. She taught us another ritual when the first one we made didn't work. Her ritual did seem to work. It was, uh, fun, as Hinata said. Very fun."

Temari crossed her fingers behind her back as she watched the boys and waited for their reaction. Please believe it, she thought. Please, please don't doubt...!

Finally, Sasuke sighed, relaxing. "A ritual? Seriously? You girls believe in that stupid stuff?"

"Did you pay that woman?" Shikamaru asked. "Because if you did, then she stole your money, because that kind of stuff is fake. Luck doesn't exist."

Temari sighed deeply, relieved, as Sakura said, "Well, yeah, we did. We know we made a mistake, but you learn from them, right? Besides, we don't believe in rituals anymore. And if we do," she added, smiling, "we don't need to do them anymore. Right, girls?"

"Yeah, we don't need them," Hinata said. "They were useful, but I think we won't do them anymore. We learned our lesson."

The five girls exchanged an amused, secretive look as the boys shrugged the subject off and started talking about something else. None of them knew that, from the window, a black-haired, blue-eyed fairy watched them, smiling and thinking, I hope you did, humans. I hope you did.

THE END

Notes: I had so much fun writing Love Spell, and I'm very glad some people liked it. Thank you for reading, reviewing and loving this story. I'd give you cookies if I could:)

Love,
~tragedyneverends