Chapter 8: A New Holiday 1/6

Disclaimer: I do not own either Harry Potter (rightfully owned by J.K Rowling) or Naruto (rightfully owned by Masashi Kishimoto) nor do I make any money out of this fiction.

A/N: It's Christmas time, and what inspires holiday cheer more than our favourite stoic, psychotic, Sand Jinchūriki visiting with the cold, Pureblood fanatical, Malfoy family?

I had hoped to get this out last night, but to be fair it is the least of my delays.

This chapter passed the 300 page mark about halfway through, and I do so love these arbitrary milestones.

I should probably mention that I haven't actually proof read this chapter, since I was so desperate to get it out there. I will pass it onto my trusty Beta reader in the near future and any wrinkles will hopefully be mended by the time a new group of readers comes across this story.

And before you start, you might want to familiarise yourself with a little bit of this fiction otherwise you might find yourself a little lost. Probably the biggest pitfall of such sporadic and unreliable writing.

Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy.

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(Last Time)

Gaara gave more thought to the offer and continued eating his breakfast, ignoring Draco's expectant gaze until McGonagall was asking after the Slytherin winter plans and came to them. Draco of course replied that he was returning home but both he and McGonagall were shocked when Gaara sand rose and spelt out 'I'm going with him.'

Minerva was shocked that the unnerving transfer student/found magical child wanted to stay with the Malfoy family over Christmas, and tried to reason that they would need the Malfoy's permission to allow it. Draco readily supplied a letter to that effect, apparently having been waiting to hand it over all throughout the breakfast. Still unsure, she noted them both down on her form, and continued her rounds until she could chat with Dumbledore about his plans concerning the boy. They could always try to block Gaara by demanding parental consent if they needed to, but if the sightings of Gaara in Hogsmeade were true, it probably wouldn't actually stop him from leaving.

Albus always had plans when it came to potential dangers and Gaara was certainly something along those lines, having attacked a teacher already and gotten into a fight with Harry Potter. Then there was the boggart killing incident and the rumours of trespassing and slaying dementors. Albus was doing something with Gaara, but he hadn't seen fit to tell her about it.

Draco was immensely happy that his friend would be coming for the extended sleepover, even if they did cohabitate the same room on a daily basis, and even if his parents would formalise half the fun out of it. Gaara, of course, didn't show it but he chose to believe that the stoic foreigner was also glad to be staying with him.

Gaara was still hungry. Who had the bacon?

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"Just how many are there?"

"Almost a thousand, all in all. That should suffice for now."

Lucius was gobsmacked, "A thousand!? How have you kept this a secret from the Wizengamot for so long? When did this start?"

Fudge was strangely calm, not turning any shade resembling his traditional puce or stuttering out excuses, in fact he looked almost like a respectable politician as he addressed Lucius. "I had to keep this a secret from everyone, otherwise Black might have captured someone and gotten the information through torture. We couldn't allow these plans to spread to him before everything was in place."

Lucius didn't know what to say to that; such an obvious lie that meant that he wasn't amongst Fudge's trusted confidantes at the moment, but why? And why breed nearly a thousand new dementors in the first place? That was almost equal to the total number posted at Azkaban prison.

"We don't know how, but the dementors posted at Hogwarts are being destroyed and Sirius Black has slipped into the castle and escaped again already."

What went unsaid was that Fudge could have instead sent Aurors to the school, but instead had decided to post dementors. It was almost as if... as if someone else was pulling Fudge's strings right now. It wasn't Albus Dumbledore; that was for sure, since neither he nor the headmaster wanted to see such a disproportionate lockdown of the school. Not when the monsters had already attacked the students (his son) once already. He wracked his brain to figure out who had the sway and the inclination to make such a clandestine power grab, and the only name that he could think of was that one man he tried to avoid, who was something of a mystery to everyone: Henrick Morbidus. Fudge's left hand, and one of the few people other than Voldemort that might consider stationing a thousand ravenous dementors around a school to be a good idea.

"With all due respect, Minister, but surely you can't seriously be considering this! It's lunacy. There's simply no way to control that many dementors, especially in such an environment. You'd need twice the handlers at Azkaban to keep them in line."

"Lucius, it will be fine. I've had two dozen extra wranglers trained and certified and they'll be sent to Hogwarts with the new dementor corp." Fudge was starting to turn that familiar shade of red now, his patience with Lucius questioning his decisions wearing thin.

"Twenty-four, on top of what, ten at Hogwarts already? Cornelius, sir, I must insist that you delay-"

"No, I will not delay!"

Lucius took a small step back and turned his eyes to the dossier that Fudge had presented to him at the start of this sickening meeting. Behind the confusing or ambiguous language, the report claimed that the program had begun just a few days after Morbidus had performed his inspection of the school. This had been going on for over a month, Fudge was listening to that sociopath Morbidus and now this insane plan was afoot; something had Cornelius Fudge spooked like nothing ever had before.

Lucius looked up from the file with his perfect calm restored and snapped the sheaf of paper shut. "I will notify the relevant authorities of this plan, as well as the rest of the board of Hogwarts' governors. I am afraid I have to depart, by your leave, of course."

Fudge slumped into his high-backed leather chair and glanced up, "Yes, yes, by all means."

"I am to collect my son from the train station. He's back for the holidays."

Fudge, who had taken to ignoring Lucius' presence in his office, turned up sharply at what the platinum blond had intended to be small-talk. "Your son is friends with that curious transfer student that has had everyone abuzz. Is he visiting with you over the break too?"

The current head of the Malfoy family hesitated a second, but he couldn't formulate a reasonable lie that he would be able to worm his way out of later if it was discovered that Gaara had indeed stayed with them. "Yes, Draco did ask if his roommate could stay with us for the holidays. Poor thing, no family or friends. The Malfoy family believes in helping those less fortunate souls, if they're the proper sort."

"Yes, quite right," Fudge said, again unfocussed and largely ignoring Lucius again.

Lucius wished the Minister of Magic a good night and backed out of the office, making quick work of sending those damning memos to the separate departments as soon as he reached his own office. If he sent them off now, before he left for the weekend, those other department heads would still have time to read them before they too left for the night. This way, those departments could sort out whatever problems they thought up themselves and not bother him about them when he got back in on Monday. It would likely ruin their weekends but it would make his next week so much easier.

As soon as he'd sent off his last paper airplane memo, he walked into his private fireplace and floo'ed straight to Platform 9¾ to meet his wife and wait for the Hogwarts Express to arrive. Narcissa was already waiting and looked to be in high spirits, if her posture and tightened eyebrows were any indication. Even for him, it was still a challenge to tell what his wife was thinking when they were out and amongst people, she had that natural sort of stoicism that went beyond what was ingrained through years of harsh training in an aristocratic family. Sadly, neither he nor Draco could come close to her level of mastery in veiling their emotions, both males having been raised in considerably kinder households (by comparison).

She greeted him with all of the cold deportment he expected and returned the words in kind before settling beside her and taking comfort in her calming presence. They still had another hour or so before the Hogwarts Express would arrive, the train having run behind schedule since before his father had first ridden it.

Other parents began to arrive and stand about along the platform, making the place look untidy. They chatted and strolled and paced, making a racket for both the ears and eyes. He would be glad to collect the boys and return to the manor and relax, once he had sent the visitor off to bed, of course. It wouldn't do to allow a guest in his home to see him acting casually, that was best left to times of solitude or with one's wife and family.

This riffraff surrounding him simply lacked the fortitude to conduct themselves with the proper dignity demanded of a man of his standing. At least his wife understood.

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Cornelius Fudge let a breath escape his lips after Lucius had left his office, and he flicked his wand to lock his office door post-haste. He needed a few minutes to calm down after he had been forced to evade his closest political ally's questions. If Lucius could only know what he knew about that Gaara child...

That child, whom he had never met, had become his biggest concern in a matter of months, eclipsing even the escaped, convicted mass-murderer on the loose. Sirius Black was a mere trifle at the moment, someone to be on the lookout for and nothing more.

Cornelius, despite what many other might say, was not one to buy into public hysteria or frenzy easily, and he wasn't about to act upon a mysteriously appeared magical child, even one with a particularly unsettling demeanour, nor was he about to send out the forces over a few killed dementors. That action did, however, warrant him sending his trusted worker and recent confidante, Morbidus to investigate, but that didn't turn up much except the probable guilt of the child. He would have sent an auror or perhaps sent Morbidus back to talk to the boy, possibly arrest him, if not for what his routine enquiry had turned up.

When Morbidus had been hunting the boy in the castle, fruitlessly for the most part, countless false leads also gave way to dozens of fictional anecdotes of improbable feats that Gaara was supposed to have performed. Henrick had painstakingly assessed each of them, Cornelius had a list on his desk. But there was one story that a classmates of Gaara's had mentioned, almost in passing. Hogwarts resident soothsayer and Divinations professor was widely believed to be a joke, no true prophecies ever having been confirmed to her and no evidence of any actual ability having explained why Albus had so steadfastly defended her employment there. Until now.

The child had told Morbidus that in Gaara's first Divinations lesson, Sybil Trelawney had given a startlingly off-putting 'prophecy' about Gaara, which very few in their year group, let alone in the school at large, believed. The child couldn't remember the exact wording, but that had set Morbidus in motion to send a request to the Department of Mysteries for the exact prophecy. Of course, he had never expected anything to come of it, just as with his owls to the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures requesting they ask the Vampire colonies if one of their young had wandered off.

The Department of Mysteries had strict guidelines in place for such enquiries and even his position as Minister of Magic only allowed him to listen to prophecy if he was able to give certain pertinent details about it. He couldn't have just guessed the names and seen who had a prophecy regarding them. What he heard that dark night had chilled him to the bone.

'He, who is part of ten, killer of a hundred killers, will destroy the foundation, and overwhelm death itself! The seven bonded will die, for the final moments will reveal the darkness hidden unless evil overcomes evil and good prevails… He will return!'

Admittedly, he hadn't heard a lot of prophecies, but Fudge had not slept that night as he worked over in his head what it could all mean, and why it was directed at this unimportant, dementor-killer. Most of it was too ambiguous to tell, but the part that had Fudge ordering the creation of unconscionable dementor numberswas the mention of destroying 'the centre.'

There was only one centre to Wizarding Britain and it was the Ministry of Magic.

Needless to say, Gaara had him scared, and with Lucius' son being a close friend and roommate to the boy, and Lucius himself inviting Gaara to the Malfoy estate over Christmas, he could not lean on the man in this matter. It was only Cornelius' good fortune that he had Henrick there to aid him in this most dire of hours.

Gaara was a serious danger, perhaps even the next budding Dark Lord now that Voldemort had been defeated, and Fudge would do what was necessary to stop him whilst he still could.

The dementors were simply the first step.

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Gaara had gone to see Sirius shortly before leaving for the train; he wanted to make sure that Sirius would survive the few weeks he would be away at the Malfoy's, which he was told was in the south of the country, apparently several hundred miles away. It hadn't seemed that far between London and Scotland in the train, but Draco said that was part of the magic.

He brought Sirius a large sack stuffed full of preserved foods and told him not to do anything stupid while he was gone, or else he would gladly run the full five-hundred miles to come and kill him. Sirius hugged him and wished him a happy Christmas, as well as thanking him for the food.

The red-head had then taken the time to drop in on Lupin to say goodbye, though it was more to tell him to keep an eye on their wayward mutt of a friend lest he does something else reprehensible. Neither would put it past the less than venerable head of the Black family to try to sneak in again over the break.

They chatted a little, and Lupin asked, out of curiosity, whether Gaara knew what Christmas was.

He did not.

Apparently the foreigner had no understanding of the holiday whatsoever except that it was a winter holiday and it necessitated taking time off of school and work. Lupin honestly would have liked to explain it to the oblivious boy, but time was running short and Gaara was going to be late for his train if he didn't hurry.

Unfortunately for Gaara, this meeting also ended with uncomfortable bodily contact in the form of a hug before he could get away. Apparently this Christmas thing made the people of this world unnaturally sentimental and prone to displays of emotion and affection. He would have to be wary of that in the coming days, though if his guesses were correct, that wouldn't be too much of a danger in the Malfoy home. Lupin also told him to write to him over the break if he got the chance, as Gaara was speedily walking out of the door.

He passed straight through the hubbub of the common room, where the majority of Slytherins were preparing to go home for the holidays, and met Draco in their room where the prissy blond was finishing packing his enlarged trunk. Apparently the spoilt boy had had trouble closing the thing, so packed full of unnecessary items that he wanted to cart back and forth between school and home. Gaara had finished his packing last night and he truthfully didn't have all that much to pack in the first place. He really only had a few sets of schools robes, his own original clothes, his ninja pouch, a fair few books, some school equipment, and his gourd. That wasn't to say that he wanted for anything. A few books and some clean clothes, he was easy to please.

Of course, a little violence now and then didn't go amiss, but he was trying to cut back.

He had said something along the lines of minimalism and not overvaluing material possessions to Draco a while ago and he might as well have said he'd fallen in love with him with the face that Draco made. Worse yet, Draco then tried to instil a healthy sense of materialism in him by describing all the wonderful things one could buy with money and all the things he himself owned. Saddest part was, that was Draco being selfless.

Instead of watching Draco struggle up the many flights of stairs with his engorged trunks, so stuffed that the light-weight charms were to busting point, Gaara had his sand pick up all three of their combined trunks and follow them out of the castle. Draco was appropriately grateful and the Slytherins around them, who all had to lug their chests and trunks up from the dungeons by hand, all shot the pair fittingly jealous looks.

Gaara spared a moment as Draco was boarding the carriage, in order to pet the affectionate thestrals who were, when they weren't nuzzling his tail, quite agreeable creatures. He realised that he hadn't been to see Fluffy before he left, as he entered the carriage, but since he'd be returning early, he would just pop out and see him then. Maybe bring the rambunctious three-headed dog a dead cow or something as a treat.

At the station, there were a few teachers performing the last checks for those who were going, and as luck would have it, it was Severus Snape at the head of their line. It went okay, though, Snape only muttering something along the lines of 'don't come back' under his breath as Gaara passed into the train carriage.

They weren't exactly the first to board, so, consequently, there were no empty compartments left in the entire train. It was just by sheer chance that when Gaara and Draco entered into a compartment with a single second-year sat there, that underclassman suddenly remembered that he urgently had somewhere else to be and left them in peace. Lucky coincidence...

It was a pleasant silence between Draco and Gaara, with one being functionally mute by way of injury and the other being in deep rumination over the impending meeting of his parents and his best friend and role model. Both read their own books, or snacked on sweets, or watched the rural scenery passing by in a blur, or conversed in short, comfortably halting bouts. And after two hours of veritable whining by the platinum-blond, Gaara finally agreed to create another unnecessary sand-clone.

As Draco and the other inhabitants of this world so often were at the sight of one of his ninjutsu, the repeated spectacle of his sandy double forming caused Draco to look incredibly uncomposed. The sight almost made it worth the waste of time, to see his closest friend in this world losing his tenuous grip on proper comportment. There was only room for one stony countenance in their friendship.

Draco, who was quite the conversationalist anyway, seemed to absolutely relish the opportunity to actually talk with Gaara. The red-head had to admit, it was much easier to communicate this way, even if it was a bit trickier controlling his sand. Spelling out letters was a mite simpler than forming faux vocal chords and having them resonate to exactly match his own voice, whilst simultaneously controlling the lips and face and body of the clone itself. Unlike traditional clone techniques, he actually controlled the sand that made the false body, rather than just using a pattern jutsu to have the elements form the body on their own.

Of course, Draco did not and could not appreciate any of this as he was enraptured by talking about the same mundane affairs they had been talking about for the past two hours, schoolwork, Slytherin gossip, the, admittedly funny, rumours that had circulated around Gaara as well as a few other choice students (including Potter). Obviously, like always, Draco did the vast majority of the talking for the two of them, but even the rare monosyllabic responses or, rarer yet, full sentences from the normally painfully silent teen were treasured.

Gaara hadn't realised before, but when he used this technique, ridiculous usage of combat techniques aside, he could practically ignore Draco and continue to read whilst the conversation was continued absent-mindedly, and the usually attention-demanding Malfoy was none the wiser as he nattered inanely to the false face looking at him. Maybe he should make more use of it in the future... Food for thought.

After an hour, he deactivated it and decided to take a stroll to clear his head, unused to talking so much after months of silence. He had a little bit of a headache. Plus he was bored and wanted a break from Draco's nervous chatting.

Strolling down the train, he considered jumping onto the roof of the train for a while to get some fresh air, but the doors wouldn't open and he would struggle to fit through the window with his gourd on, so he settled for walking up and down the lengthy railway train.

He'd felt it before, when he had made the trip up to Scotland in September, that this was a truly remarkable world that he landed in. The magic was similar to his own world's techniques, but the inventions were several orders of magnitude ahead of most of what he had seen in the Elemental Nations. He understood that it was being sped up with magic, but the train here made a journey, that might have otherwise taken him a few days to run, in only a few hours. And then there were the legion 'cars' around London, and the other untold advancements that Wizards were apparently happy to ignore.

Draco seemed positively blasé about the train so it shouldn't come as a surprise that wizards were uninterested in such things as cars and muggle technology when the quintessential conservative wizarding youth didn't care. But then, with the speeds that the average wizard or witch ran at, it appeared none of them were all that bothered with the idea of going fast. Unless it was flying...

Gaara shuddered. They definitely still needed to work on their flying techniques.

Along the train Gaara mostly strolled along the length of the train looking out the outside window to watch the scenery fly by in a blur, but every time he looked into the compartments he would notice that all the occupants were conspicuously staring at him in silence, as if he were a dementor patrolling the carriages and drawing out terror in all he met; so he mostly looked out the other side. England, the train having already passed out of Scotland, was so green but didn't have the dense forestry of Fire country. It was quite pretty, but he still couldn't bear to hold it in comparison to his beloved sandy nation.

His ambling steps came to a halt as he noticed someone was standing in his path, having been walking whilst looking to his side all this way. Turning his head, he was somehow unsurprised to find Luna Lovegood stood before him with that everyday vacant smile on her face. She had popped up more times than he liked to consider coincidental recently.

"Hello Gaara."