PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE READING ON. I have rewritten the previous chapter and have changed some things around. Please go back and read the other chapters over, you might get a little confused later on. I really am sorry for taking so long, I lost interest in this fic and then got back into it. But here it is, the new chapter!
An Intertwined Spiral
Chapter 5
"Ow!"
Naruto withdrew his hand and sighed as a thin line of blood rose up across his knuckles. For the past ten minutes he had been searching everywhere for his Potions textbook, ending up rummaging through the mess in his trunk.
He pushed aside some robes, hoping to see what cut him. He forgot about the cut when he spotted the corner of book. "Found you!" he pulled it out.
'Huh? What's this?' He thought as he realized that something was tucked inside the textbook. He picked up a small black book. The cover was tattered and the date printed in faded gold lettering stated it was fifty years old. He sat down on his bed setting the textbook down.
Opening it he made out the name T.M. Riddle in smudged ink. 'A diary? I wonder how this got in here.' He flipped through it, disappointment washing through him when the pages were completely blank.
"Naruto! What are you doing, we're going to be late!" Audrey poked his head in the door. "You want to McGonagall to give us detentions?"
"Ah, coming!" the blonde grabbed his textbook and shoved it in his bag along with the diary and ran out of the room.
xXxXx
Naruto climbed the stairs to the clock tower feeling utterly exhausted. He had just come from Care of Magical Creatures. Hagrid was teaching them about caring for Blast Ended Skrewts.
"Quite your complaining kit." Kyuubi drawled.
Naruto mentally scowled at him. 'Leave me alone. Those are horrible creatures! Who would want them as pets anyways? They burnt my robe!' It was true, Naruto's robe was now supporting a large hole along the hem.
Naruto caught sight of Sasuke waiting for him. The dark haired Malfoy hadn't noticed Naruto arrive yet. He was leaning against the wall, watching the sun slowly set through the open window. A slight breeze ruffled his hair making the blue tint more pronounced.
Naruto stared at him, that unfamiliar feeling settling in his stomach again. He realized that he was blushing. He willed the blood from his cheeks. It was just Sasuke, why was he acting like this?
Hoping that the blush was gone he marched up to Sasuke. The brunette glanced at him before continuing to look outside. Silence stretched between them until Naruto got tired of waiting.
"What did you want to talk about?" He prompted, hopping up on the window sill. Sasuke propped up his elbows, chin resting on his hands.
"What do you want to do?" At Naruto's strange look he elaborated. "I mean all of this. Do we just forget about it or what?"
Naruto shrugged. "I dunno, but… I feel as if we shouldn't forget everything. I mean, it was our lives!" Sasuke nodded and they fell silent again. Both felt comfortable being in each other's presences.
"Hey brats. I'm coming out."
With that warning red chakra started swirling in front of them. Naruto took one look at the form the demon took and burst out laughing. He caught himself as he nearly fell out of the window. Sasuke just raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
Sitting before them was a miniature fox, about the same size as a small dog. Kyuubi narrowed his red eyes at Naruto, who was wiping away tears.
"Are you finished?" He growled. Naruto nodded, still chuckling slightly. Kyuubi grunted irritably. "Now, even though you two are wizard in this life I would like to have some aspects of your shinobi life back."
At Naruto's confused look he sighed. "I have a feeling that something is going to happen, and when I get a feeling like that, it's usually right. So that means you two are going to start training again." Kyuubi smirked at them.
Sasuke furrowed his eyebrows. "Could we be the same level as before? We started when we were just little kids. Are we going to be able to catch up?"
Kyuubi nodded approvingly at him before looking at Naruto imploringly. "Why can't you ask intelligent questions like that kit?" He ignored the resounding 'Hey!' from Naruto and answered Sasuke.
"You can catch up since you are still young and you remember all the information. But you're going to have to get your bodies up to speed and will have to train even harder."
"But we don't have that much time! We still have classes to go to!" Naruto cut in. "It's not like last time when we could train all day."
Kyuubi shrugged. "You'll have to find the time. Before classes, after classes, weekends or even in the dead of night, I don't care!"
Sasuke sighed and got up. "I say we do it. Knowing our luck, we'll bound to need it sometime." Naruto nodded.
Kyuubi jumped up beside Naruto. "There's no time like the present!" He turned to look at the other two. "Get changed and start running around the field." He looked way too happy with this idea for Naruto to be comfortable.
x.X.x.X.x
By the time evening rolled around, they had just managed to drag themselves to their respective common rooms.
Naruto groaned as his muscles screamed at him when he collapsed on the couch. The golden trio were sitting around the fire when Naruto had grace them with his presence.
"What happened to you?" Harry asked, faintly amused.
"Training. Kyuubi is a slave driver." They had been told about Kyuubi and their past last night. Naruto had been extremely happy when his friends accepted the story with out questioning it too much. Harry had shrugged and said that they had seen stranger things before.
"Why are you training? You have magic now, so why would you need to fight like muggles?" Ron asked confused.
Naruto smirked at him. "What would you do if your wand was taken from you in the middle of a duel? Fall to the ground and let the guy kill you?" Ron flushed.
The blonde snickered, "We didn't have magic back then. Instead we had chakra. With that we could create a jutsu, which is like a spell. I was able to create a small whirlwind in my hand that could rip through anything and Sasuke could breathe out huge fire balls."
Hermione looked troubled as she looked at him. "You used those to kill people, right?" She asked quietly, looking around at the other people in the room. Luckily no one was paying any attention to them, too absorbed in their own conversations.
Naruto gave her a hard stare. "Those were different times and different places. We had to kill to protect what we had. To protect our home. Konoha had a lot of enemies that would have happily killed every single man, woman and child in the village.
"Yes but you were kids! You shouldn't had to go through all that, it isn't right." She stated firmly, crossing her arms.
Naruto sighed. "I know, it wasn't fair. But we choose that life, we knew the dangers when we signed up. And I don't regret it in the slightest." He closed his eyes. "Of course it wasn't easy, I nearly died a ton of times."
He gave a small smile.
"I remember when I actually was faced with the reality of death. We were on our first mission and I met Haku. He was just a few years older than me, and he was completely devoted to a guy named Zabuza. Zabuza was a missing-nin which meant that he was an outlaw. When I fought against them, Haku taught me something very important." He opened an eye to look at them.
"Protect what's precious to you with all you've got because it can be taken from you in an instant."
They looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"
Naruto looked sadly at them. "During that fight, we fought with everything we had. But it wasn't enough, we very nearly died. I thought that Sasuke did die and ended up fighting Haku by myself. And he asked me to kill him since he was no use to Zabuza anymore. He was just a broken tool."
"Tool? He was human!" Hermione gasped looking horrified.
Naruto nodded, "That was exactly how I felt. But Haku sacrificed everything for Zabuza, his precious person, because the guy saved him when he was a kid. In the end, they both died but they fought beside us to save the village. That creep that took over the village had been employing Zabuza and Haku to kill us but had planned to kill them with they were done."
Naruto sat up and clasped his hands together in his lap. "Haku is one of the few people that I truly respect. He taught me the true reason to fight, to die."
"That's why I will never regret my decision to become a shinobi."
He got up wincing a bit.
"I think I'm going to head to bed. See you in the morning!" He cheerfully waved at them and made his way to his bed. He hoped that they understood that he had to kill people.
"I think they do now." Kyuubi spoke within his mind. "Get some sleep kit."
'Yeah. Kyuubi?'
"What?
'Thanks. For everything.'
Kyuubi snorted. "I'm not going soft brat. If you died, you would have dragged be along with you and I didn't want that."
Naruto hid a smile in his pillow, 'Still, thanks.'
x.X.x.X.x
The next few days went by quickly as Naruto adjusted to his schedule fairly well. Kyuubi woke him and Sasuke up at the crack of dawn and they went down the field to train until breakfast. They ate and then went to their lessons until dinner time. After dinner they trained for an hour or so before doing homework. Then they go to bed to do it all over again.
Training was going pretty good in Naruto's opinion. They were more or else in good condition before so they weren't struggling that much as they built up their muscles.
Kyuubi oversaw them as he made them run around the lake multiple times, the number varying from ten to forty depending on his mood. If they started slowing down, he'd run up to them and start nipping at their heels to get them moving again.
When Naruto complained, the fox gave him a hard stare before stating that if he didn't want bloody heels, he'd better pick up the pace.
Even if everything was going well, it was still bloody exhausting. Naruto sat at the table gobbling down his breakfast as an alarming pace, only half listening to the conversations around him.
Harry and Ron were complaining about Lockhart and Colin Creevy, the latter had seemed to be practically stalking Harry in the corridors. Lockhart apparently had gotten it in his head that Harry really does what the fame and was determined to give him pointers loudly where ever he encountered him.
Ron on the other hand had snapped his wand when they flew the car to school, and had tried to fix it with Spell-O tape. Unfortunately, it didn't work.
When Hermione told him that he should ask for a new wand and Ron had irritably muttered about getting another Howler.
"It's your own fault that your wand snapped!" He imitated his mother moodily, his mood worsening steadily through out the day. Hermione wisely kept her mouth shut about that particular subject.
Finally, it was the weekend. But not like that meant anything to Kyuubi, other than more time to train. Once again the fox woke Naruto up before the sun rose.
An angry, wet blonde glared at the fox sitting innocently on his bedside table, where a cup of ice water lay on it's side and it's contents all over the said angry, wet blonde.
"Couldn't you have found a nicer way to get me up?" He grumbled as he rummaged around his clothes. His roommates had long since learned to get an older student to place a silencing charms around their beds so Naruto wouldn't accidentally wake them up anymore.
"No. This way is much faster and is more fun for me." Kyuubi grinned as he disappeared to go and get Sasuke up. Naruto didn't know why the demon didn't just use the mind link to wake them. He'd certainly be a lot happier.
The three of themhad gotten the gist of the mind link pretty quick, though either Sasuke or Naruto would sometimes forget to keep a thought private and would broadcast it to the other two.
Those definitely had been embarrassing moments.
Naruto stretched as he walked down the steps to the front entrance of the school, catching sight of Sasuke as he emerged from the dungeons corridor.
"Hey. Did the fur ball give you a wake up call too?" Naruto asked as they walked down to the lake.
Sasuke snorted. "No. I was already up." Naruto glared at him.
They began their daily training session when Naruto noticed some people walking down to the Quidditch pitch.
"Hey, it's Harry!" Naruto waved to him. Harry didn't really look too happy to be up at this hour where as Colin Creevy looked like he was having the time of his life.
Harry gave a small wave back to Naruto before trudging into the change rooms.
Sasuke laughed, "Must suck for the Gryffindor team. I heard that the Captain is insane or something." Naruto shrugged.
"More like extremely obsessed with winning the cup." He replied before they continued running around the lake. Kyuubi had apparently decided that he wanted to go back to sleep and wasn't driving them into the ground for once.
They had completed a few laps when they heard a commotion from the pitch.
Naruto and Sasuke looked at each other and shrugged.
"Wanna go check it out? It might be a fight." Naruto said grinning. Sasuke grinned back and took off, yelling "I'll race you!"
Naruto snarled at him and ran after him, calling him a cheater.
They entered the pitch and saw both the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams arguing. The Gryffindors were telling the other team to get off the field as they had it booked.
Marcus Flint, the Slytherin captain shook his head. "We got a specially signed note from Professor Snape saying that we could use the pitch." He held out a piece of paper proudly.
The Gryffindor captain grabbed it out of his hand angrily. He read it and looked up in surprise.
"You've got a new seeker?"
Sasuke swore beside Naruto. The blonde looked at him in confusion.
The dark haired boy shook his head. "My brother bought his way on the team." He said annoyed. "The idiot thinks that he can use our family name to get his way all the time."
Naruto glanced at the sea of green and spotted the small figure of Draco Malfoy. The older boy was looking extremely smug while Flint bragged about how Mr. Malfoy had bought the entire team new brooms.
"Can he even play?" Naruto asked, glaring at Draco. Sasuke shrugged. "I guess. I don't really pay attention to him when he goes out flying. I don't like it all that much so there's no point."
"Hey, what's going on?"
Ron and Hermione had come onto the pitch trying to figure out that was happening. Naruto and Sasuke followed them as they walked up to the players.
Draco smirked at them. "I'm the new seeker, Weasley." He said, flashing his new broom. He avoided looking at Sasuke.
Ron gaped at the brooms in front of him.
"Good, aren't they?" Draco said smoothly. "But maybe the Gryffindor team will be able to raise some gold and get new brooms too. You could raffle off those Cleansweep Fives, I expect a museum would bid for those."
Among the laughter, Hermione called out. "At least no one on the Gryffindor team bought their way in. They got in on pure talent!"
Draco glared at her. "No one asked you, mudblood." He spat.
At once, everyone knew that he had gone too far. Sasuke had to hold Naruto back from jumping on his brother. Naruto struggled against him until he heard Ron yell out, "You'll pay for that Malfoy!"
There was a bang and a jet of green light flew out of the wrong end of Ron's wand, hitting him in the stomach.
"Ron!" Naruto knelt down by his side. "Are you alright?" Hermione and Harry held Ron upright. Colin Creevy was hovering near them.
Ron opened his mouth to speak but no words came out. Instead, he gave a loud belch and several slugs dribbled out of his mouth. Naruto made a grossed out face as the Slytherin team burst out laughing.
"We should get him to Hargrid's, it's the closest." Sasuke said as he grabbed one of Ron's arms and pulled him up, ignoring his brother who was sitting on the ground with tears of mirth running down his face.
Colin raised his camera. "Is he alright? You can cure him, right Harry? Can you hold him still for a moment?" He asked excitedly as more slugs
Harry got his other arm and they half carried the red head toward the small hut, Ron still belching slugs along the way. Naruto and Hermione followed them after Naruto told Colin to stop taking pictures of Ron.
When Hagrid's hut came into view, the door opened but it wasn't the half giant that walked out. Gilderoy Lockhart came striding out.
Harry hissed at them to hide in the bushes. They followed him, Hermione somewhat reluctantly.
"It's a simple matter if you know what you're doing!" Lockhart was saying loudly to Hagrid. "If you need help, you know where I am! I'll let you have a copy of my book – I'm surprised you don't have one. I'll sign one tonight and send it down. Well, goodbye!" He strode toward the castle, his pale mauve robes swishing as he went.
The group of friends waited until the teacher was out of sight and dragged Ron up to the front door.
After they knocked, Hagrid appeared looking very irritated, though he's face cleared up at the sight of them.
"I've bin wonderin' when you lot was ter come see me." He ushered them in, while giving Ron a bucket for the slugs.
Hagrid then noticed Sasuke and was giving him a confused look. Sasuke sighed, "I'm not like my brother, don't group me in with my family just because I'm related to them." He stated firmly as he sat beside Naruto on the moth eaten sofa.
The large man smiled, "Good fer ya, lad." He didn't look disturbed in the least when Ron let out another loud belch. There were a few thumps from the bucket when the slugs fell in.
"Wha' happened to Ron?"
Harry hastily explained what happened at the pitch. Hagrid shook his head. "Better out then in." He said cheerfully as he bustled around making them tea.
"I don't think that there's anything we can do," Hermione said anxiously. "It was a difficult curse in the first place, and with a broken wand…"
They were silent for a moment as Ron bent over the basin again.
"So Hagrid, what did Lockhart want with you?" Naruto asked to break the silence.
"Givin' me advice on getting' kelpies out of a well." Growled out Hagrid, slamming down the kettle with a little more force than necessary. "Like I don' know. An' bangin' on about some Banshee he banished. If one word of it was tree, I'll eat my kettle."
Harry and Hermione looked surprised that Hagrid was criticizing a Hogwarts teacher. When Hermione spoke up, her voice was a little higher than normal. Naruto snickered mentally, Hermione had a huge crush on Lockhart.
"I think you're a bit unfair, Professor Dumbledore obviously thought he was the best man for the job-"
"He was the on'y man for the job," Hagrid said moodily. "An' I mean the on'y one. Getting' very difficult ter find anyone fer the Dark Arts job. People aren't too keen ter take it on, see. They're startin' to think that it's jinxed. No one's lasted fer long now. So, tell me." Hagrid jerked his head at Ron. "Who was he trying to curse?"
Everyone scowled. "It was my brother, Draco." Sasuke said, crossing his arms. "He called her a mudblood."
Hagrid gasped. "He didn't!"
Hermione nodded. "He did. I don't know what it means, but I could tell that it's really rude…"
"It's about one of the most insulting he could think of." Ron gasped, coming up for air. His cheeks bulged out again and he disappeared back into the bucket.
Sasuke took over for him. "Mudblood is a really foul term for someone who is muggleborn – you know, non-magic parents. There are some wizards, like my lovely family for instance, who think that they're better than everyone else because we're what you would call 'Pure-blood." He snorted. "It's really stupid really. My parents are really hung up about it, but I don't really see any point in it."
The conversation lightened after that when Hagrid had asked about the rumor that Harry was giving away signed photos. Harry was not pleased to say in the least, even though he knew that Hagrid had been joking.
The visit ended with Hagrid showing them what he had been growing in his garden. A dozen of the largest pumpkins Naruto had ever seen were growing there. Each one was the size of a boulder.
Naruto got the hint that Hagrid had been using a little magic to help them along. Hermione confirmed it when she asked if he used the Engorgement charm.
They headed back to the castle a little while after to get some lunch. Ron was only hiccupping by now, bringing up a couple small slugs. When they entered castle, they were stopped by Professor McGonagall.
"Mr. Potter, Mr. Weasley, there you two are." She walked toward them, looking at Harry and Ron. "You will both do your detentions this evening."
"What will we be doing Professor?" Ron asked nervously.
"You will be polishing the silver in the trophy room with Mr. Filch." Said Professor McGonagall. "And no magic, Weasley – elbow grease."
Sasuke and Naruto exchanged winces. Filch was loathed by every student at the school.
"And you, Potter, will be helping Professor Lockhart answer his fan mail." Said Professor McGonagall.
"Oh no, can't I go and do the trophy room too?" Asked Harry desperately.
"Certainly not." Professor McGonagall raised her eyebrows. "Professor Lockhart requested for you particularly. Eight o'clock sharp, both of you." With that, she swept away.
Both Ron and Harry groaned and walked in the Great Hall with dragging feet.
"The whole trophy room!" Ron was complaining as they found seats. "I'll be stuck there all night!" None of them really noticed when Sasuke didn't go to the Slytherin table to eat.
Harry shook his head, "I'd rather do that then answer Lockhart's fan mail. It'll be a nightmare." he said hollowly.
Hermione gave them her 'well-you-did-break-the-rules' expression. Naruto and Sasuke watched at their friends. They couldn't really tell the two off since Naruto would have done the same thing and would have dragged Sasuke along with him.
Yes, Naruto definitely liked being a wizard.