Chapter 49

Sasuke let that sink in for three seconds, and then Naruto got it. With a wide grin he commented: "So... I can make true instant ramen then? No more waiting three minutes?" Naruto managed to keep it in for another three seconds before he burst.

"TEACH ME!"

"You're always thinking with your stomach, aren't you? Don't answer, it was rhetorical," added Sasuke when Naruto opened his mouth. "Though I don't know the spell from the top of my head, I'm sure we can find it in the library, somewhere."

"To the library!"

"Not now, idiot." Sasuke grabbed Naruto by the back of his nightshirt, to stop his teammate from marching off and finding this elusive spell right now. "Tomorrow morning," he ordered, and Naruto dove back into bed, a wide grin still on his face.

"Fine. But early. Damn, I miss Ichiraku ramen..."

He murmured in his pillow, and turned his back to Sasuke. Sasuke shook his head at his teammate's obsession with ramen and settled down for the night as well. He hoped tomorrow Naruto wouldn't whine too much that doing magic was too hard.

"I want one."

Sasuke didn't even bother looking confusedly at Naruto. He just kept walking. In due time, his idiot teammate would explain himself. He slowly counted to three in his head and on the third number Naruto opened his mouth.

"One of those small elves with those huge ears," said Naruto, and indicated something about a foot high. Sasuke didn't want to get dragged into this conversation, but he couldn't help correcting Naruto's lack of knowledge of this world.

"An house-elf," said Sasuke, saying the word in English. He didn't bother translating it for Naruto.

"Houself? Alright, then I want one of those houselfs."

"Why," said Sasuke blandly, "do you want one?"

Even behind the mask Sasuke saw Naruto's 'duh' face. "Because they do like, everything for you! Imagine all the extra time you'd free up if someone else did your housework for you."

Sasuke briefly daydreamed of one of those tiny creatures scurrying in his house, cleaning his clothes, cooking, doing the dishes... always chattering away, disturbing the sanctity of his home...

"I prefer to at least act like I'm an adult, with adult responsibilities. I know that that must be very hard for you."

Naruto briefly clenched his fists, but his desire to talk was greater than his desire to fight. For now. "All the time better spent training," said Naruto, playing his trump card. But Sasuke preferred doing his own chores and not have one of those noisy house-elves in and around his house.

"Shut up," said Sasuke instead. "Or at least lower your ridiculously loud volume. We're in a library."

Naruto scoffed. "Yeah, we just walked in and-"

"Shush!" screamed Madam Pince, and glared at them with her lidded eyes. She and Naruto got along like the floor and the ceiling of a room: best to be kept apart. She had tried to kick them out a few times, but Sasuke had let some killing intent seep out and the old lady withered and build herself a fort out of her precious books, leaving a tiny hole to glare through at them and the students.

"You don't even know where to get an house-elf," said Sasuke at a much lower volume, heading for a shelf full of spell books. He needed some more tips on how to control an Wind-spell, because his supposed powerful hurricane was a small breeze. Since he had a lot of control over fire, he thought it best to focus his wandwork on elements he hadn't mastered yet, to cover more bases. But that wasn't easy.

"Sure I know where to get one. From the kitchens. I walk up to an houself, and ask if it wants to live with me."

"That sounds like you're proposing to one. Before you know it, you'll have tiny ugly house-human-elf hybrids."

Sasuke imagined the screwed up face Naruto pulled right now. And, sure enough: "First of all: ew. Second: what the hell kind of pervert do you think I am? Third: ew."

"You just admitted you're a pervert," said Sasuke as he pulled a book on wind spells from the shelf. This looked interesting. Naruto sputtered before coming up with a reply. But before he graced the world with his brilliance once more, a female voice interrupted their bickering.

"Excuse me, were you talking about house-elves?"

Both shinobi turned around and Sasuke recognized the girl as one of the special charge's friends. A bag full of books weighed her down, and it looked like she just walked into the library too.

"Yes, we were," answered Naruto truthfully. Sasuke knew he should have translated the word, so the girl hadn't heard and understood part of their discussion. One word of it anyhow.

"He wants one," said Sasuke, jerking his thumb towards his teammate.

"Yeah, yeah, you know how I get one?" asked Naruto hopefully, but they both realized that was a mistake when rage grew on the girl's usually pretty face.

"You do realize that you're talking about enslaving an intelligent BEING?"

If she had x-ray vision, she'd be looking at two surprised faces. Sasuke's expression remained only a second before he once again schooled his controlled blank mask back into place, but it was enough.

"Err, no?" tried Naruto, but the girl had barely started ranting.

"The whole wizarding community treats them like they're the lowest of the low, just because they're brainwashed into thinking they like working themselves to death. And for what? For lazy wizards who don't even have the decency to provide them with pay, health insurance, or even some shred of dignity. They're slaves, pure and simple. And now you want to get one?"

"I think one may like-"

"Like? They have nothing to say about their own fates! They're left to the fickle needs of the wizards. And if they get old, they get discarded and die in the gutter."

"Shush!" yelled Madam Pince at them again, but none of them paid her any heed.

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