Harry's second day of magic school started similarly to his first. He was up at dawn, awake before any of his fellow students. However, this time without the need to check his equipment or alter his clothing, he had time for other productive activities. The first would be time consuming, but the ability to be many people at once would cut that down significantly.

An hour and a half. That was how long he had before he really should be sitting down for breakfast to prepare for his day. In that window, he wanted to have a full map of the castle in his head. Venturing out of Ravenclaw tower, he found a secluded spot, spawned four shadow clones and had them get to work. Wandering the castle and exploring it top to bottom. Among his goals: learning his way around, finding secluded spaces he could train and working out an alternate route into his dorm.

Getting into the dorm may have come at the end of the list, but after the humiliation of waiting for someone else to let him in, it was by no means the one he felt least important.

Top to bottom, he and the clones searched the castle, finding multiple potential locations where he might be able to train in privacy. Beyond that, he found signs of multiple hidden passages and routes that might be worth exploring later. He made use of the ever-present vaulted ceilings and a simple transformation jutsu to alter his clothing colours to covertly visit the mysterious and supposedly dangerous third floor corridor. He found little of interest beyond a locked door with no keyhole.

Another thing to look into in the future.

At seven in the morning the front entrance of the castle was unlocked, allowing Harry to also explore the grounds. And in this early hour, he took to what was (not really but probably to him) his most important task. His dorm had a window. Could he get in from the outside?

The answer, surprisingly, was yes. But only as long as it was already open. He made a mental note to discreetly leave it ajar from then on. For the time being, he felt satisfied he himself was no longer needed for the search. So he once again grabbed a book to read at breakfast and once again headed down a little early. Bidding Hermione a good morning when she plopped down onto the bench next to him he continued reading, or rather, trying to read his potions textbook. It seemed prudent given he had forewarning of what his classes would be that day.

"Potter! What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

In the end, such preparation proved meaningless.

"I do not know those words."

"I should have known you would be lazy like your father."

"I would like to see you become conversationally fluent in a new language in only fifteen days. Teacher." The rational part of Harry's mind knew it would be stupid to say it. Unfortunately that part of his mind had been suplexed into submission by the part that just heard the world 'lazy'.

"Silencio," Snape's wand was out and flinging the spell at the student in one single, fluid motion. "Forty points from Ravenclaw for your blatant disrespect and you will regain your ability to speak at the end of this class, Potter."

The class didn't really improve from there. They were instructed to begin brewing based on the instructions on the board. But he could not read them well and had no idea what any of the ingredients were. Thankfully the redheaded Hufflepuff girl next to him was understanding enough to help him through it. At the very least his familiarity with exact movements and tasks was of a benefit, instructions adhered to with perfect precision.

"Was the thing about learning a language true?" the girl asked quietly to which Harry nodded.

Snape wandered through the class towards the end of the lesson, grading each concoction as he passed. "Acceptable work, Miss Bones," he judged as he passed.

As the class ended and the students packed their things and filed out, Harry stowed his own belongings and stood waiting at the front of the class expectantly. It wasn't until every other student was gone that Snape deigned to remove the silencing charm he had cast.

Herbology was less eventful, thankfully. Learning about magical plants, which to Harry's mind should probably have come before the lessons on using said magical plants. Horticulture was something Harry wasn't entirely unfamiliar with so it was a nice return to some peaceful activity. It didn't hurt that the professor for the class was actually a pleasant person.

Following that class was an extended break. There were no afternoon classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays due to to astronomy class taking place at midnight. Students were expected to get some rest in preparation for missing some later on. Harry, having been trained to not need or take so much sleep, found better use for that time. He made his way to one of the many unused places in the castle, a classroom that looked as though it hadn't been in use for a century or more.

Having picked out his spot, he got to work.

He took the tops off of desks and marked them up as targets. The legs of furniture were repurposed and reformed into training dummies... after a fashion. They were a little rough but they would do. He hoped he could make something better with more study of transfiguration.

Refitting the classroom to be his own personal training room took him a little over three hours. That gave him another two and a bit to get some training in and shake the rust off. Passing a hand across his robes to collect a brace of senbon between his fingers, he got to work. He let them fly, one at each target.

… He missed one.

-(-)-

Astronomy was a pointless class. That was Harry's whole view of the subject. Who cared about what was going on with the moon, anyway?

Well, that aside, the next couple of days were fairly mundane. A perfect repetition of the first two days of classes. In charms they followed up on the light spell before moving on to the colour change charm. Transfiguration was once again attempting to turn matches to needles. Harry managed to complete the exercise and was pleased with his accomplishment until the professor told him he wasn't finished and he had forgotten the eye. Deeply confused, she elaborated it needed a loop at one end. Finally understanding she meant a sewing needle and not one like his, he fixed his mistake on the spot. Defense he studied potions, learning what ingredients were, while in history he borrowed Hermione's notes to catch up on defense. It wasn't a convenient schedule butt it worked well enough. Snape continued to treat him like garbage in potions, herbology was once again a relaxing time and astronomy a waste of time.

Finally, it was time for the odd duck in his weekly schedule. Friday. Magical languages followed by flying lessons. And then a whole lot of nothing else. Which suited Harry down to the ground. Gave him plenty of extra time to get into self-study and look ahead and find some interesting things to learn, useful abilities to gain. The classes themselves were dull affairs. Magical languages focused on the languages around which the incantations they had been using were based. Latin and Ancient Greek, apparently. It came off as something of an introduction to magical theory and the whys and hows of why spells are structured the way they are. If Harry had more of a scientific bent or more of an understanding of the languages involved he may have been interested. Unfortunately he was not. Hermione ate it up though.

Following that was flying. On brooms. It was a novel concept? That was about as generous as Harry's mind could be for the entire notion. That these people thought this was any kind of flight worthy of the word stupefied him. Perhaps he was spoilt by his experiences with his summons. Even so, hovering a metre off the ground and travelling five kilometres an hour was just plain boring. Some among his classmates were enjoying themselves, though Hermione was petrified for some reason. Either way, Harry just couldn't see the appeal.

After lunch he decided to head up to the roof of the astronomy tower and have a real flight again. Poking his ring finger with a needle, he slapped it onto the stone floor...

And...

Nothing happened.

"What?" he asked aloud. He hadn't done it wrong, had he? That was impossible. Running through the handseals again, slower, more deliberately, he planted his hand down again. The ink-like markings of the technique at work once again appeared... Nothing. "What...? How...?"

… He was cut off. Well and truly cut off from his home. Always in the back of his mind he had that one fallback. That he could pass messages home through the crows to Itachi that he could deliver on his behalf. And they back to him. But that wasn't true. He sat there on that roof for a while, trying to slot that information into his understood reality in privacy so none would see his visible distress. He sat, he paced, he huddled in on himself until he realised just how pathetic doing that made him feel and forced himself not to.

Right, he decided. He was stuck here, no line of communication back home. And he could only leave at the mercy of an old man who was doing some shenanigans that involved the third floor corridor.

Well, if that was the case, best to deal with it quickly.

-(-)-

Harry spent the entirety of Friday and Saturday in the library. First scratching out the meagre homework they had been given. It being the first week of classes, there wasn't much they could be asked to do yet. Then he spent his time researching unlocking and locking spells. A task made trivially easy by the fact that they were chapter six of the standard book of spells. He practiced them until he felt he had them down well enough to cast them reliably on short notice.

And so, on Saturday night of his first week at Hogwarts, Harry Potter, Hari Nara, assigned himself the mission to investigate the 'forbidden' third floor corridor. In the wee hours of the morning, he unlocked the door with a whispered "Alohomora", greasing the hinges of the door to ensure it made no noise, and slipping inside. As he shut the door he whispered "Colloportus" and heard a slight squelch sound as the door fused itself into the wall.

… That was a big dog.

Looking upon the snoring beast taking up significant space in the room he spied three heads on it and uncomfortably large teeth.

… Right. Big dog. But he was well acquainted with dogs. Bloody Haimaru triplets. But at the very least that experience let him know exactly how to handle this before it became a situation that could cause him trouble. Drawing three senbon, he flung each one with pinpoint precision to keep them in a state of unconsciousness for at the very least a couple of hours. No need to risk waking them – him? – up if he could force the hound to stay asleep. As the needles inserted into each point, the dog's snores slowed as it sank into a heavier slumber.

With the opportunity afforded him, Hari examined the room. Unfortunately it was a big empty room with nothing of interest... Except the trap door directly under the slumbering beast. Hari sighed and with great effort hefted the giant paws aside so he could get at and into the trapdoor. Finding a sheer drop inside, he walked down the walls and swayed out of the way of a surprisingly aggressive plant that tried to grapple him. With confident movements, he weaved around the vines' attacks and swung himself through the exit into the next room.

A room of flying keys, some broomsticks and a locked door. Well, the lock was silver so it stood to reason that the key would be one of the silver ones. Well, there was actually a pretty simple solution to this, even what was probably the proper solution just made him miss Ku, Huginn and Muninn even more.

With a flash of chakra, Hari replaced himself with a brass key that had been close to one of the silver ones. Snatching the silver key out of the air, he tried it on the door. Wrong key. It took him two more tries to find the right one.

Hari found himself asking what the point of all this was. It seemed like security for something but... strange, easily circumvented security. Certainly he had abilities these wizards couldn't account for but even so, it felt like wizards had the abilities to bypass them also.

As he walked the ceiling over what he now understood to be a chess set, bypassing whatever it was for entirely, he was starting to feel bad about how simple this was for him.

However, as he entered the next room, that bravado evaporated. 'Oh,' he thought so loudly he thought the beast might hear it. A lumbering figure seemed to be aimlessly pacing the room. Even allowing for its bulbous, inhuman features, it looked bored.

Hari leapt onto the ceiling. He had no interest in being some lumbering oni's entertainment. Shuffling slowly across the roof, sound thankfully covered by the beast using its club as a backscratcher, Hari made his way to the other side of the room and slipped through the opposite door. Breathing a sigh of relief only when he was sure he made it without being detected.

The room he found himself in was filled with... bottles. Bottles of varying shapes and sizes. And a bit of parchment. And beyond them a roaring fire made of... black flames.

'Probably a coincidence,' Hari decided. The legends of the black flames Madara Uchiha commanded and this black flame, the two were surely entirely unrelated. Is what he told himself to make himself feel better.

Reading the parchment, Hari's heart sank lower and lower. 'Of course it's a bloody riddle.' Somehow this ridiculous farce of a security setup might actually have found a way to beat him.

'Okay. The language is actually pretty straightforward. It doesn't seem to be that kind of riddle like that stupid portrait keeps giving. So... If there's always poison left of wine... And each end has something bad... Big and small ones aren't poison... Then that means... This one?' Hari asked himself as he picked up the tiny blue potion bottle. 'I'm probably right. I hope I'm right. Let's... Get the antivenom out of my storage scroll just in case.'

Pulling out the stopper and downing the fluid, Hari didn't feel like he was dying. He wasn't being moved back somehow. And if it was wine it tasted nor smelled like no wine Hari had ever encountered. Not that he had encountered much. 'Okay. Just... Going to walk through the flames of Amaterasu. No big deal. If I was wrong I just... Burn alive for seven days and nights. No problem at all. Just... Okay. I'll dive through! Yeah! Okay! I can do this!' Puffing out deep breaths, Hari took a running start, dove over the table of potions, rolled and dove through the black flames!

Frantically patting himself as he came out the other side, he was gratified and bemused that he was fine and definitely not on fire. Wizards. If it were ninja that set this up that would absolutely have been a bluff and he would be on fire right now. No, on some level they wanted someone to come through this but he hadn't the slightest idea why. Inside what looked to be the final room, it was empty saved for a small ornate box sitting in the middle of the floor. Staying aware for any last minute surprises, Hari approached and picked up the box, checking for pressure switches or wires or anything of the like. Again finding nothing, he opened the box to find a small red stone inside.

'… Okay?' He had no idea what this was or what it was for. But he supposed it was his now. Either Dumbledore would let him in on the plan and he'd find out what this whole elaborate setup was in aid of or he wouldn't. It didn't really matter much anymore. If there was a big threat on the third floor corridor, he failed to find it. Pulling out his storage scroll, he sealed the stone inside and put the box back where he found it before retreating the way he came.

Back across the ceiling of the oni room, over the chess set, through the key room, dodging the frisky plant and back out the trapdoor. "Alohomora," he whispered again, unlocking the exit before retrieving his needles from the three-headed dog. He then retreated quickly. Without the needles in place there was a chance it might wake up at any moment. Backing up to the door, he opened it, exited, skittered up to the ceiling and once again locked the door.

In total, the whole thing took him about ten minutes.

As he walked the ceiling to the nearest open area so he could make his way back to Ravenclaw tower, he saw two teachers, Snape and Quirrell rushing towards where Hari had come from. Some security measure he had tripped? Were there spells that worked like silent alarm systems? It seemed likely. But even so, he had gotten in and out too quickly for them to matter and there wasn't even much trace that he had been there.

Now he had a very nice looking stone, no idea what it was, why it was there, what the shoddy security was for...

He supposed he should get started on trying to answer some of those questions.

… Maybe next week. For it was Sunday and he wanted a day to rest.

And so, feeling like a ninja again for the first time in three weeks, Hari Nara returned to his bed and slept. He would need to be Harry Potter again when the dawn came. But for right then, Hari Nara was satisfied.

-(-)-

A/N: … You know? When I first sat down to write this? I did not in any way intend Hari to just up and do the stone gauntlet right then and there. But it just made sense to me as the chapter wore on. Feeling insecure about his ninja-ness, realising he was well and truly cut off and panicking a bit, he acted out in a way that would let him prove he was still him.

Yes, it was entirely intentional that the narration started calling him Hari again at that section. I hope that last paragraph made that clear.

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