Rating: M (for Mud Puppies Baby)

Warnings: Slash/Yaoi, Het, blood and stuff, mentions of underage (I guess)

Diclaimer: I didn't own them last story, what makes you think I own them now?

Note: So I finally have a "steady" computer. Let us hope, pray, and make supersticious gestures that it lasts. The long awaited (yeah right) sequel to Once a Wizard, Always a Shinobi. Do not direct your hate at me, this plot bunny bit me on the ass after ReflectionsOfReallity shook it up in a box and then threw it at me. I will be posting the first proper chapter immediately after the prologue, so enjoy. 8P

Prologue

Harry woke suddenly and completely. He kept his eyes closed, as he'd been trained, and felt around himself. His chakra was weak, slow to respond, so he tried using his magic. It reached out much easier and wrapped around two people. He vaguely recognized them as "not a threat" and so dismissed them.

Instead, he focused on trying to figure out where he was. The chemical smell that always made his nose sting for hours wasn't there, so he wasn't in a hospital. He could, however, taste the acrid tang of a potion on his tongue. So the Hogwarts Infirmary then.

He tried inhaling, wanting to get a better picture of the room around him. Nothing came to his mind. No rush of grass, cloying ingredients; there was nothing. He hadn't felt so blind since...since when? He'd never used his nose to scent things before had he?

The only things he ever used it to smell were dinner, potions ingredients, and his clothes. At least, on purpose. Shaking the feeling of "wrongness" off, he finally opened his eyes. The light of the infirmary glared angrily into his blurry eyes, as if to reprimand him for pretending to sleep.

"I see you're awake, my boy!" Dumbledore's beaming face came into view as Harry's glasses were slipped onto his nose.

"Professor? What happened?" Harry sat up, rubbing his eyes under his glasses groggily. He glanced around for his canine companion, only to come up short when he realized he'd never had a dog before. His Aunt disliked them.

Dumbledore twinkled at him over his half-moon spectacles and Harry felt an irrational anger over take him. He pushed that back as well and merely looked at the old wizard quizzically. "It seems you have stopped Voldemort once more my boy."

Green eyes widened and Harry's hand shot to his pocket, where the Philosopher's Stone had been. Dumbledore's smile grew a little sadder.

"It was shattered when you fell my boy, but you saved it from Voldemort and delayed his return another year." The old man showed Harry the shards of the stone. They glinted uselessly in the sunlight.

"Then the Flamels..." Harry trailed off, feeling a sort of pity over take him. He didn't feel guilty, no, but he did feel bad that they would soon die.

"Ah, well, to the well organized mind, Death is but the next great adventure. Now, you surely have questions for me?" Dumbledore tucked the pieces away in a bag and slipped that up his sleeve.

Harry thought for a moment, trying to remember as much as he could about what had happened after the potions room. There wasn't much, though he could remember lying to Quirrell about what he saw in the mirror.

A purple spell, a rush of pain, Voldemort screaming at the Professor and then blackness. But hadn't something happened before that? Hadn't he touched Quirrell? The man had blistered beneath his fingers, his body burning up at Harry's touch.

"When I touched Professor Quirrell, he-" Harry quieted as Dumbledore interrupted him.

"That, my boy, was your mother's love for you. She cast a very powerful protection over you that night. Voldemort could not touch you, not without causing himself great harm. Now, if that's all, Madame Pomfrey has given you permission to attend the leaving feast."

Suddenly, his twinkle brightened and he smiled as if he were sharing a big secret with Harry. "I don't have to tell you that what happened was kept completely secret. So naturally, everyone knows about it."

Then he was gone, leaving behind a bewildered, and slightly annoyed, Harry.