A/N: Hi, as I am painfully aware, I haven't updated in way too long and I really don't know what I was thinking when I said the next chapter would be out by christmas (as you can see: it was not). As always I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed and my beta Seadevil for doing an amazing job.

IMPORTANT DETAIL! I'd just like to remind you that the dialouges written from Naruto's and Neji's perspective are in Japanese, if in English they'll be written like this, okay?

Chapter four

Bangs and Booms

Presently, in the corridor furthest to the east in the north wing on the fifth floor of Hogwarts – a corridor well-used by the students – there was panic.

Students lay scattered on the floor clutching their heads or an injured leg. There was mumbling and whispering, all regarding the one person who remained standing in the midst of the chaos – although his concern was not with them. No, he seemed more interested in getting his trembling body under control.

Silence erupted suddenly as his body violently jerked forward and a mist of grey smoke rose from his chest. The smoke swirled slowly away from him and when it was a few feet away it took the form of an unusually see-through ghost with an abnormally pale complexion.

The ghost rushed away before twirling around to stare at the still living person he had emerged from. He looked horrified.

"Brother Christian!" another ghost shrieked and rushed to his side. "Are you alright?"

The murmuring continued once more as Brother Christian and his friend fled the scene, sending terrified glances over their shoulders as they quickly floated away.

All eyes turned to the ninja who had remained standing in the middle of the commotion before he snapped his wrists and vanished in a gust of leaves.

Harry leaned heavily on his elbow, glaring up at the head table with his food all but forgotten in front of him. More specifically, he was glaring at the two foreigners with the strange clothes currently standing by the head table. He was blazing on the inside with a fire fueled by frustration, anger and betrayal.

"It's not them you should be mad at you know."

Harry turned to Hermione. "What?" he said angrily; he really wasn't up for one of her lectures.

"Them, the ninjas," she pressed. "It's not them you should be mad at."

"I can be mad at them if I want to, Hermione." He sighed and he turned his gaze to the food on his plate.

"Dumbledore hired them," she insisted and Harry hoped for the sake of his sanity that she would get to the point. "They're only doing what Dumbledore's told them to do, which is protecting you, ergo: it's not them you should be mad at."

"She's got a point, mate." Ron interjected.

Why does she have to be so bloody smart?

"How can I not be mad at them?" he snapped, "Dumbledore's probably told them everything; about the order, the weapon – hell, everything he won't tell me! I think I've got a right to be cross with whoever I like, Hermione."

"Whomever, Harry," she sighed. "That's still not the point."

Harry scoffed and cast his eyes to Dumbledore.

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled as he watched the headmaster laugh along with professor Sprout and Madame Pomfrey. "I just don't understand why they don't trust me enough to tell me what the bloody hell is going on."

Hermione frowned and bit her lip.

"They do trust you, Harry-"

"Yeah? Then why won't they tell me anything?" He hissed angrily at her.

"They want to protect you."

"I don't need protecting," he exclaimed and lowered his voice. "I need to fight. I need to know what's going on."

He bored his eyes into hers and he could see that she understood.

"Harry, mate, they're not the enemy," Ron said, wide-eyed. "Dumbledore hired them; he's fighting back, making preparations!"

He sounded so happy about it.

"Why can't I prepare, then?" Harry asked and he knew he was starting to sound desperate. "Why can't I train to fight? Why aren't they telling me anything!?"

A few students turned to him as his voice grew louder and louder. He scowled when he noticed, but only leaned in closer to Ron and Hermione, though he could think of nothing else to say, so he sighed.

Hermione looked as though she wanted to give him a big hug and Ron looked thoughtful.

"How d'you reckon they did it?" He asked after a moment of silence.

Harry and Hermione looked at each other, but neither of them seemed to know what he meant.

"Did what?" Hermione asked with raised eyebrows.

"Walk on the walls!" Ron said looking amazed as he turned to glance at the ninjas.

Harry frowned.

"You're at a school for magic and you're asking how they walked on walls?" he asked slowly. "Seriously, Ron?"

Ron turned back to Harry with a questioning look.

"What?" He asked, frowning. "They haven't got any wands!" he looked towards them again.

"You can do magic without a wand." Hermione said and looked at Ron with an exasperated expression.

Ron snapped his gaze back to her and opened his mouth to speak, but left it hanging for a while before he closed it again and frowned.

"Yeah – but, I mean –"

"What? What do you mean, Ron?" Hermione's eyebrows rose in question.

Ron closed his mouth and scowled.

"Nothing."

Hermione only sighed and returned to her food while Harry continued his glaring – only now with less vigor.

They were standing very still, he noticed; not moving more than shifting their heads once every few seconds. The black holes in their masks were skimming over the students who were eating and most likely whispering about them. They looked like snarling animals eyeing their prey in the tall grass, just waiting to pounce on them when they looked away.

Harry shook his head and went back to picking at his food. The dessert would appear soon and he was hoping that there would be some pie, preferably rhubarb, but anything fruity would do.

"Who do you think they are anyway?" Ron mused and Harry and Hermione sent him questioning looks. "Under those masks, I mean."

"I don't know," Hermione shrugged. "I haven't read about any magical societies where they would fit in. What do you think, Ron?"

Ron stared at her for a second before he turned to Harry with a disbelieving look.

"What? You're asking me about something you don't know about?" He sputtered at her.

"You were born in a magical family!" she said and shrugged again. "Of course you'll know things about magic that I don't! Now, do you know something about them?"

Ron opened his mouth, but clamped it shut and frowned. He hummed and pursed his lips.

"Nah, I got nothing," he said.

"Oh, well," Hermione said as though saying 'it was worth a shot'.

The plates of dessert appeared on the table and Harry directed his attention to finding that pie instead of observing the hilariously bemused look on Ron's face.

After a moderate piece of the rich and tasty rhubarb pie, Harry stood up to leave as professor Dumbledore dismissed them.

"Ron, we're supposed to show the first-years where to go!" Hermione exclaimed.

The echoes of his footsteps thundered through the empty corridor as he marched forward, foregoing his usually gracefully quiet movements. Naruto was furious and he didn't care for the looks all the people moving in the paintings were giving him.

It was stupid, really; a simple mistake to make. Missing details were always a problem during missions, as Naruto knew very well; just look at his first mission outside the walls of Konoha. He really shouldn't have been surprised that something like this had happened and in the back of his mind he knew that it shouldn't have awakened the wrath currently burning inside of him. But that knowledge did nothing to calm his anger.

The radio on his throat buzzed.

"The situation has been stabilized; the hostiles have retreated north." Neji informed him.

He stopped momentarily and pressed the button of his com.

"Good. Move back to the west side of the castle. I want a detailed report of their formation after I deal with Dumbledore."

"Roger that."

Unmoving, he tried to quell his rage with deep breaths. It was nothing, a neglected detail at worst if even that. Dumbledore must have thought the creatures less aggressive than they were. That must have been it. Over and over again he repeated the most logical assumption, but the entire incident had stirred the hostility he felt for the wizards. He knew he couldn't burst into Dumbledore's office spouting wild accusations though.

With another deep intake of breath he continued his brisk walk to confront Dumbledore. As Naruto reached the large stone statue guarding the office behind it, he stopped to wait. He had been told it would move to let him in, eventually.

He almost flinched when it suddenly jumped into action and moved out of the way. The obstacle removed, he hurried up the stairs, still trying to control his disrupted mind. When the last step was behind him and he stood with his hand on the door handle, he paused and closed his eyes.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The door swung open as Naruto twisted his hand and walked in with the same calm, calculated and gracefully quiet steps he always used when on a mission.

"Ah, Captain Cat", Dumbledore greeted him. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"

Naruto's eye twitched behind his mask as he clenched his jaw to keep from shouting out the accusations boiling beneath his skin.

"It's regarding the forest", he replied curtly.

"The forbidden forest? Of course. I trust that you and Owl and have been making yourselves acquainted with the area?"

Nothing Dumbledore said had held the slightest hint of malice, but Naruto's rage-filled mind refused to recognize it.

"You seem to have neglected to mention just how hostile the inhabitant species could be."

He knew he was being rude and how disrespectful he sounded; this was no way to treat a client. An ANBU member was not supposed to act like this – especially not a captain. He knew that, but right now, Naruto just didn't give a flying fuck.

Dumbledore frowned at him, the confusion written clear across his face as if he hadn't quite understood what had been said to him.

"The centaurs?"

"The men with the horse-bodies."

They had come out of nowhere, armed with bows and arrows, galloping around them.

"How deep into the forest did you wander?" Dumbledore inquired. It was as though he hadn't gripped the fact that Naruto had just barged into his office with fumes shooting from his ears.

"We'd been running for ten minutes when fifty of them attacked us", Naruto said stiffly. He wanted to spit at him, to slam the desk in front of Dumbledore with such strength it would break under his fist. He wanted to rip off his mask and growl in his face.

"They attacked you? Unprovoked?"

"Yes." Dumbledore sounded genuine in his disbelief, but Naruto had encountered many good actors before. He wouldn't be fooled so easily.

"I hope neither of you were harmed in-"

"They were weak", Naruto snapped harshly and then froze. Just beneath his skin he could feel the chakra flowing with such force that it was making him tremble. He felt so ashamed that he had to look away. It would be unacceptable to lose control over something so petty; they were both unharmed and it had all been over within minutes. This mission could be the beginning of an important alliance between Konoha and these wizards; its success was crucial for the future of the relationship between two civilisations.

Naruto breathed in deeply and forced his shoulders to relax before he returned his gaze to Dumbledore's.

"I assure you, we are both perfectly fine," he said flatly, but respectfully.

Dumbledore's face looked eerily blank for a moment and Naruto began to fear that he had angered him with his rudeness, but then a small smile made its way on the old man's face.

"My apologies. The centaurs are a proud people and they have been more territorial lately. I realize I should have warned you."

"You should have," Naruto agreed stiffly. "I trust that no such information will escape your memory in the future."

As Dumbledore's eyes lowered and he began to speak again, Naruto excused himself with a curt bow, spun around and left.

Anger flowed out of him piece for piece with each passing step of the stairs as he descended and was replaced with a steady flow of regret. When he stepped past the statue and it jumped back in place, he turned back around and for a second he considered going back up to apologise. Naruto now realized he had all but scolded a very well paying customer.

Images of the screaming men returned to his mind unwelcomed and the thundering clamps of their hoofs rang in his ears. It left a bitter taste of mistrust in its wake and Naruto walked away trying to school his scowling expression behind his mask.

"I'd forgotten Wood had left," Hermione said as she sat down beside Ron and watched Angelina strut away across the great hall. "I suppose that will make quite a difference to the team?"

"I s'pose," Harry said as he took a seat next to her, but fell quiet as he spotted the brown-haired ninja crouching high up on the wall on the other side of the room. The man must have had a good outlook of the students from where he was and Harry doubted that many of them had even realized he was there yet.

"He was a good keeper," Hermione said and grabbed a toast from the table.

"Still it won't hurt to have some new blood will it?" Ron turned to her and said, but she only shrugged while spreading butter on her breakfast.

Harry looked back up at the wall where the ninja sat, but startled as he found himself staring into the black eye holes of that snarling mask he wore. It took little time for Harry to realize that the ninja had not moved; just turned his head so that he was looking in his direction. Still, the presence of his gaze connected with his own and made the room seem frighteningly small, so he looked away again.

Even as the boy turned to his friends again, Neji kept his eyes trained on him. He figured that the more he learnt about his behaviour the better he would be able to predict his reaction in dangerous situations.

So far, Neji had been able to conclude that many of the other students avoided the boy or sneered behind his back, the others came up to him smiling or clapping him on the back. Which of the both made the boy most uncomfortable was hard to tell.

Suddenly, a storm of birds flew in through the windows and swooped down towards the students at the tables below. Almost all the birds, Neji realized with a start, were carrying something, be it a letter or a package of some kind. The owls were for the many students or so it seemed, as none of the birds landed at the teachers' table.

Neji's eyes narrowed as he studied the one who had landed near the Potter boy. While these birds were large, muscular carriers suitable for the heavy loads of mail some received, it would not be hard to spot the messengers from afar, no matter how swiftly they flew and Neji doubted he would find the task of capturing one difficult. The carrier-birds of the hidden villages were smaller and more discrete to avoid detection

As focused as he was, it was not strange that he almost missed a sound below him, but as another shrill hem, hem called out insistently, he looked down. Standing there was the pink woman. She wore a broad smile even as her lips were pursed into a thin line and her brow was twitching (in an effort not to scowl at him, Neji presumed). With a single finger she beckoned for him to come down to her.

Neji looked at her motionlessly for a second before he tilted his head to the side and further observed her strained expression. If Neji didn't know any better he would say she was going to scold him for something, although he couldn't imagine what for.

Releasing the chakra from his feet, Neji pushed from the wall with a flip and fell the ten metres to the floor, landing in a crouch with practiced grace.

The woman stumbled back a step as he landed a meagre foot away from her – as she had been standing almost directly beneath his seat on the wall – but regained her footing quickly.

Though Neji had been studying their English language for days, there was much of what the woman was saying that he couldn't understand. There were fragments of "I"s and "You"s and "Dumbledore", but the majority of her speech went beyond Neji's understanding and, eventually, he found himself absently thinking about the fact that she sounded far too angry to still be smiling.

As her incomprehensibly fast speech went on, he grew annoyed with her and eventually raised his hand to silent her.

She seemed startled by his bold action and quieted mid-word.

"Aimu doin jobu. Bisi, oki?"

Assuming that his pronunciation was acceptable and his words understood, Neji walked his way back up the wall to resume his observations.

By now more people had joined the Potter boy and his friends at the table and Neji no longer had a clear view of them. Minutes later most students had started getting up and were moving out of the dining hall.

Naruto had instructed him to patrol the roof of the castle with two or three of Neji's clones by him, so he turned to look out of the window on the wall across the room. The sky was free of clouds and the few trees he could spot swayed only slightly in the wind; it was a fine day to be outside, but Neji opted to wait for all the students to clear out before he went outside and up to the tops of the castle towers.

The corridors of Hogwarts were swamped with students trying to get to their first class of the year, all of them bustling with chatter amongst themselves; about their classes, summers and the teachers.

Yes, almost the entirety of the room was noisy; all but one corner. Naruto was starting to seriously wonder if he should have henged himself into a stone pillar.

As soon as someone came close enough to him, they froze and stared at him. Then they stood there until one of their friends dragged them away or the person walking behind them crashed into them.

It was annoying. It wasn't like Naruto wasn't used to it; the streets of Konoha were a tough place for the host of a demon, but the wide eyed stare and the gaping was starting to get on his nerves

When Naruto realized that one boy – a very small one with a big nose – had stood staring at him for almost half a minute, he flexed the muscles across his arms, causing the boy to quickly scramble away. Naruto knew that he should have put a clone in this position. He knew that he would tomorrow, at least.

Some only glanced at him as they walked past, but they were thorough; studying him intently from head to toe. Some looked at him curiously, others frowned and a few looked utterly impassive. Some people let their eyes roam so freely across him that he self-consciously started wondering if he should have cut his hair by now.

After some time the students abandoned their interest in him and became more intent on making their way towards their classrooms. The classes were probably starting by now.

Gradually, the corridor emptied until the only one who was left was Naruto.

He looked down each end of the corridor and decided that he should move himself to another floor before the class was over.

Across almost every wall he walked past hung a painting and all of their motifs were moving just as they would have in real life. They, too, grew quiet as soon as he walked close to them and then started whispering harshly to each other as soon as he left.

Then it was Naruto's turn to startle into a halt as he rounded a corner; it was the moving stairs again. The last time he had tried to climb those stairs he hadn't known that they moved and... well, let's just say that he hadn't attempted to use them since then, which was ridiculous. Imagine that; ANBU captain, defeated by stairs.

He carefully stepped out onto the first step, but as he climbed higher with each step he was forced to stop. The stairs weren't actually leading anywhere; they just stopped half-way to the nearest floor.

With a shrug Naruto looked around for another stairway nearby that he could jump to. There were two close to him, one leading back to the floor he had just come from and another was moving across the space above him. Leaping from the top stair to the other stairway was easy, even as it raced forward, but as he landed it skidded to an abrupt stop and Naruto was sent slamming into the railing.

Naruto grumbled and abandoned the stairs; the walls seemed so much nicer.

Stupid stairs, he thought angrily as he jumped to the entrance of a corridor two floors above. Unfortunately, this one was more trafficked than the one he had had to endure previously.

By the time that Naruto had made it to the other side of the castle the students welled out from their classrooms. He kept close to the wall, not wanting to get stuck in the middle of the crowd.

Like a kunai had been lodged in Naruto's back, pain erupted along his spine and he stumbled away from the wall.

His head spun with pain and confusion, and then, everything – his hands and arms, his legs and his chest – began to tremble and all the students stopped to stare at him in shock.

Naruto could feel his chakra involuntarily building up within him as he tried to maintain control of his body, but he almost screamed as a burning force spread rapidly from his chest and outwards into his limbs.

All at once it burst out from him and it slammed the people in the crowded corridor into the walls with the strength of a hurricane.

Naruto's body still trembled violently as he stood there, but the pain was gone. Blood pumped through his veins at such speed that he thought that his heart might burst from his chest and as he was jerked forward viciously, he gasped.

A shiver tore through his body as a freezing coldness washed over him and suddenly a dim silver mist spewed forth from his chest.

Gasps erupted around him, but Naruto only tried to keep the bile rising in his throat at bay as the ghostly mist actually took the shape of a ghost.

Someone cried out, alarmed, and Naruto jerked his head up and the world started to spin. Quickly he twitched his fingers together and shunshined away.

He reappeared in their chamber and inhaled sharply, scrambling backwards for something to steady himself with. Panting and trembling, he leaned against one of the wooden chairs they had by the desk at their window.

Pain returned like a knife in his back again, but stabbed into him deeper this time and then twisted around while still in his flesh. This time he screamed as his blood began to boil beneath the surface.

When the wave of energy exploded out from his pores it was weaker, even though the pain had only accelerated through him faster and fire had spread through his head with more wrath than before.

Still, it ripped the chair from his grasp and with such force that it cracked when it collided with the wall. Most of the pain washed away quickly, but the throbbing in his head remained persistent.

Raggedly, Naruto breathed in shallowly through his mouth, not having realized that all the air had been knocked out of his lungs.

The taste of blood in his mouth was more welcomed than the way his head spun when he tried to reach the radio at his throat. Naruto quickly pressed the button to signal Neji for help, but he collapsed to his knees before he could open his mouth.

"Yes, captain?" He heard Neji's voice from the radio, but he could not respond. "Cat? Are you there?"

With a groan Naruto fell to ground completely, unable to catch himself. His head lolled to the side and the blood-taste in his mouth became more and more insistent. Soon his vision speckled with black and in the distance he could barely hear the radio as Neji cried out.

"Captain! Answer me!"

A/N: Thank you for reading to the end and feel free to notify me if you notice any grammar and/or spelling mistakes and ask me questions if anything's unclear.