Chapter 5: Time Flies

Chapter 5: Time Flies

Things continued as they had, although somewhat subdued. The deaths of a half-dozen pureblood scions had a rippling effect in the house of the cunning. Power vacuums opened and there were viciously fought internecine battles for the positions left vacant. Hari watched them with the detached air of observation Uncle Sasori had taught him; he made note of the most likely candidates and occasionally sabotaged their efforts as he had learned so that they continued to struggle instead of stabilizing.

Sometimes, someone would try to gain an edge with an attack on the target of the Boy Who Lived, but those stopped when those who'd bragged that they'd see the brat a doing over vanished completely from the castle. There were no investigations anymore, as there were no bodies. Despite that, Professor Snape made it subtly clear that he knew Hari was involved ("You did it, Potter!"), but without evidence, he didn't even bother to drag him to Dumbledore.

All told, by the end of October, almost an even dozen Slytherins had shuffled off the mortal coil, nearly half that without leaving behind enough to say they were dead. Two wealthy families were left in quandaries as they found their heirs missing and could not move to declare new heirs without certainty of the current heir's death. One of those deaths had been carefully selected by Hari to ensure that no one in the house could manage to reclaim control of the snakes. The disappearance of a Prefect had caused some concern, but without reason to blame him beyond the fact that his head of house knew it, he was left alone. Perhaps of greater concern to the great and the good—which was to say the rich and the arrogant, was the vanishing of a pair of young women of marriageable age.

To the mindset of the pureblood community, women were not exactly property in the archaic sense any more than men were. But as daughters of their bloodline, it was expected that they would marry to the family's advantage. As such, they were valuable. A good marriage cemented an alliance or linked two houses. The loss, therefore, of two women of good breeding was a terrible blow to their families. Hari had selected them less for that and more for their pending connection to those whose power he saw no reason to allow to grow. Uncle Sasori had been good about teaching him.

In less than two months, the entire leadership of Slytherin had been rendered impotent. No candidate stood a chance of rallying enough support to take control and things descended into chaos in which no one could really afford to worry about Harry Potter. No matter how much of a coup it would be to beat him, there were too many other problems of a more immediate nature for the older Slytherins to deal with that.

Dumbledore could be seen twinkling merrily at every meal, apparently unaware of the howlers screaming at him. The rest of the staff had taken to wearing earmuffs at mealtimes to deaden the sound a bit. The papers were strangely silent on the matter, apparently taking the view that the students had run off in some sort of excessively complex love-shape that Hari had yet to find in any two-dimensional drawing. He wasn't alone.

On a completely unrelated note: the Acromantula were eating well.

X

X

Classes continued as they had for Hari. He continued to excel despite Professor Snape's best efforts. To date, Malfoy had been hospitalized fifteen times for various injuries without any punishment being issued to his assailant. Potions class was especially dangerous and two incidents had warranted twenty-four hours in the care of the mediwitch.

Other Professors gradually began to notice that Hari was failing to even carry a wand, let alone use it for classes. The fact that he seemed to have little difficulty with classwork only frustrated their attempts to understand what was going on. Even more frustrated was one Hermione Granger, who had taken to regularly informing Hari that what he had done was impossible, which was always ignored or answered with a repetition of the impossible task in question.

On the other end of the spectrum, Daphne Greengrass found that she was growing worryingly accustomed to Harry Potter's presence in her life—even if he insisted his name was "Hari" for some reason. She had discovered that he was able to help with classwork a little, although he kept trying to get her to stop using her wand. She had the horrible feeling she would end up doing so someday by accident and he would be insufferably smug for weeks.

On the upside, the chaos that enveloped Slytherin had meant that the first years were in flux. It had been expected by everyone that Malfoy would take up the mantle of command (as much as an eleven-year-old could manage). Without the upper years to enforce that, he was having to rely on his father, which impressed no one. Since he spent much of his time apparently injuring himself, he failed to gather the respect needed to capitalize even on his family's power. With the Malfoy heir failing to live up to the potential of useless lout, the Parkinson family was no longer pursuing a marriage alliance. That, in turn, meant that the originally presumed power structure amongst the girls in the year was thrown. It had been assumed that Pansy would take up leadership by virtue of a connection with Malfoy. With that gone, she was no longer the rising star, nor did she have to worry about being one.

Daphne had an advantage of sorts. She had been close friends with Tracy Davis before Hogwarts. During their first months, Tracy had distanced herself wisely. As a halfblood daughter of a death eater and a muggle woman, she could hardly afford the risk of being associated with Daphne and thus Harry Potter. Once it became clear that those above them were too busy to bother with such things, she was more than happy to resume her friendship with the young woman who, in turn, was glad to have someone to share the oddness with in the hopes that it could be diluted. She was dismayed to find that it merely seemed to increase sufficient to supply both of them.

Because of the involvement of Davis, Daphne was the only person in the year with two friends whom she could count on. Though she was still unsure about Hari. The complexities of Slytherin meant that power was attractive to both those with daggers and those seeking shelter therefrom. Pansy, bereft of her position (grateful to not have to worry about being at the top) now sought protection, turning to the only member of their year with an existing alliance. The fact that this brought her into the orbit of Hari did not make her life any less complicated. With three of the four girls in their year aligned together, it was a natural result that Milicent would follow suit.

The boys were then faced with the problem that their nominal leader was absent or failing and half the house wouldn't answer to him anyway. Crabbe and Goyle had no choice but to stand by Malfoy because of their own familial responsibilities. Nott was stuck in the unenviable position of either submitting to the matriarchy that was forming as a de facto rulership in his year, or try and rally allies—which consisted of Blaise Zabini. The problem was that Blaise was a wildcard whose mother wasn't English and was rich enough (because of a series of truly unfortunate accidents that happened to her succession of rich, older husbands) that he didn't need to worry about the, as he called it, "petty, parochial fights of the Englander." He also had no problem with female authority, given that his mother was a formidable woman able to convince a succession of men to marry her despite the tragedies that followed her around.

The politics of the first year Slytherins thusly looked something like:

Hari—outlier

Daphne Greengrass—matriarch presumptive

Tracy Davis, Pansy Parkinson, Millicent Busltrode—ladies in waiting

Blaise Zabini—wildcard/knight

Theodore Nott—poor bastard out in the cold

Draco Malfoy—loser's loser

Vincent Crabbe Jr. Gregory Goyle Jr.—loser's loser's losers

Worryingly, Hari totally missed much of these developments. He focused heavily on the crippling of the upper years and had done enough careful damage to destroy any chance of them having much power for at least a year. While he did so, he hadn't really been paying attention to his own peers. As a result, by the time he could have noticed, he had spent several weeks in the company of four girls and sometimes Blaise and had registered it as the new normal.

His new friends, meanwhile, found that they had somehow ended up befriending someone who was currently competing with Albus-Many-Names-Dumbledore for weirdness. Like Daphne (and Hermione) they were constantly aware that their . . . friend . . . was regularly violating rules of magic and was explaining how they could do so as well. Since Daphne put up with him, so did they, and much like a fungus, he grew on them with a mix of youthful good humor and mature chicanery that reminded them of a Gryffindor . . . except that he didn't get in trouble.

X

X

"So," said Daphne over breakfast. "Halloween is tonight."

Hari cocked his head. He was having a bowl of dried fruit that had been rehydrated as part of cooking the rice that was also in the bowl. "I think I read something about that. Night of spirits where the dead walk or something, right?"

"Uh . . . yes," Pansy seemed a bit reluctant to broach the topic. "But it's also 'Harry Potter Day'."

Hari looked up. "Wait, wait. What?"

Pansy looked around to discover that her companions had apparently decided to allow her the joy of explaining the concept to their mercurial friend. "People celebrate it as the day you defeated the Dark Lord."

"Oh. I'm still a bit lost. I mean, it's badass that I killed someone at eighteen months, but I'm not sure how I did it or anything. I don't remember it—that's for sure. Didn't some of our housemates hate me for it or something?"

There was a certain amount of sheepish nodding. "Pretty much. But these days, everyone's busy." Tracy Davis looked at the other end of the table. As usual there was a gulf between the first years and the rest of the house, occupied only by the four boys who were unaligned with anyone. "And you've rather grown on us."

"We're all for power for purebloods and getting rid of mudbloods," added Pansy. "But considering what our house has been reduced to . . ." she was ignoring the glare Tracy was sending her way. "Well . . . let's just say that there might be some questions about the way our parents do things."

"You mean," said Millicent, "that we're not sure that it's such a good idea to be so cutthroat about everything that we end up gutting ourselves and becoming total nonentities within the Hogwarts community? Or allowing existing family politics to nearly stick us with Draco Malfoy as a leader of the house? Or the fact that even without Hari's drain on our points via Professor Snape, the man known for his utter bias for our house, that the older students are so busy jockeying for power that they've completely left everything else by the wayside and haven't noticed?"

"When you put it that way," muttered Pansy, "it sounds really stupid."

Hari waved a hand. "Can we get back on topic for a moment? There's really a day about me?"

"Yeah. Which just goes to show they've never met you," hissed Pansy. "They'd be more terrified than worshipful."

"I, for one, am glad. I suspect my mother prefers my father retired, thank you," commented Tracy.

"So, is there anything special about Halloween?"

The others looked at each other. "You could say that," replied Blaise mildly.

"Is that why the House Elves have been carting in pumpkins for the last week?"

"Probably."

"And the reason that Professor Flitwick has been distracted during class and conjuring floaty lights with little sentient creatures in them?"

"Again, probably."

"And why that giant moronic lump has been out killing deer in the forest every night?"

"Maybe?"

"And why Professor Stutterfaces has been bringing two Trolls into the castle?"

"It's possi—wait, what?" Blaise held up a hand. "Could you run that by us again?"

"Well, I know his name is Quirril or something, but I call him Professor Stutterfaces because—"

"Yes, yes, we know. You've been calling him that since the first class. I don't think he was impressed." Blaise, like Daphne, had a mastery of dry tones that was second to none. "I meant the Troll part."

"Well, I don't know they're Trolls. I mean, I've only read about them. But they look like Trolls. He brought one of them to the corridor of not-really-dangerous and took it past the giant dog there. The other one is parked in his classroom, so I can only assume we're going to be covering Trolls this week . . ."

"Trolls."

"Probably."

"As in plural?"

"Yes. I think I went over that with you."

Pansy sighed. "It's just more evidence of what our parents have been saying for years: Dumbledore's gone round the twist."

Daphne nodded. She was still surprised that she had ended up in the position of power, considering how the year had started but she was happy to take what she could get. "Or, more likely, is up to something." She looked at the surprised faces. "The man isn't stupid. Even our parents know that. They always worry what he's planning."

"Actually, can we back up a moment," interjected Millicent. "What was that about a giant dog?"

"Yeah, that's the first thing in the corridor-of-not-really-at-all-dangerous," replied Hari as he finished his bowl of food. "It's got three heads like Uncle Pain's."

"Dumbledore has a Cerberus in the school?" grumbled Pansy. "I stick by my statement regarding him and twists."

"Anyway," said Hari. "I'll see you guys in class." He rose and walked out the doors.

"Every time he talks, I feel my life getting a little odder," muttered Pansy.

"Welcome to my world," said Daphne.

X

X

"Well class," said Professor Stutterfaces. "Today we will be learning about . . . Trolls!" he waved his wand and an illusion shimmered and faded, revealing a Troll in a cage. He glared at the nearly half his class that failed to react except to cover their noses in disgust. He'd been expecting a jump-scare or something from a bunch of eleven-year-olds. At least the other half of the class was appropriately shocked.

"Who can tell me the first thing to do when encountering a Troll? Mister Potter?"

"Kill it."

"No, Mister Potter."

"What? Why not? It's just a big, magically resistant creature."

"Yes. That's why, Mister Potter."

"But Professor, a length of metal moving at speed would kill it right?"

"I suppose so, yes."

"So kill it."

"But you don't have a . . ." he trailed off as the quill on Hari's desk turned into an iron spike two feet long. "But most of the class doesn't have projectiles at hand."

Hari subsided into offended mumbling as Stutterfaces walked the rest of the class through the steps for dealing with a Troll (run, hide, pray). He overruled several suggestions from Hari about various options for accelerated objects and appropriate targets. "And stop claiming lightning bolts are a valid option."

"Fine." Hari rose. "Clearly you're not much of a Defense teacher if your solution is to tell us to run away from anything." He walked out.

X

X

"He gave you detention," Daphne informed Hari when she sat down beside him for Transfiguration.

"Between him and Professor Snape, I have a busy schedule of not going to them."

"So no points in the hourglass at the end of the day again?" muttered Pansy.

"It's Hari," replied Tracy, as though it explained everything. It rather did.

"Will you be trying to pretend to pay attention in class this time?" asked Millicent.

"Are we still doing beetles to buttons?"

"Yes."

"Then no." Hari placed a button on his desk. It turned into a beetle and back. "I'm good. Any of you need help? No? Good." He rose and walked out of the room just as Professor McGonagall entered. "Good afternoon, Professor. I'm going to do something else. I left the button on the desk for you to examine."

She sighed. It was horrifying to learn that in addition to combining the sheer talent of his parents, he had somehow outstripped his father for complete disregard for authority.

"He did do it, Professor," said Daphne.

"Yes, yes," she muttered as she walked to the front of the class. "I can see Miss Granger's vibrating fury."

X

X

"I'm amazed," said Pansy when they met up with Hari for lunch.

"Oh?"

"She has to be the strictest Professor in the school and she doesn't even bother taking points off you anymore."

"None of them do," said Blaise. "Only Professor Snape does. I swear it's just a reflex for him."

"It's probably that I don't really care. It's a cup." He snickered. "Seriously. We don't even get it. Just our head of house gets to keep it in his office. Now if we were getting paid . . . my Uncle Kakuzu was very sure to teach me that someone else getting paid for a job was bad business. I'll catch you at Charms. Probably."

X

X

Hari was seated at his usual desk, eyes closed and feet up when they came in. He was also being orbited by several quills and a pair of books. And a most displeased Mrs. Norris. "We're doing levitation today," he explained when they sat near him.

"So I gathered," replied Blaise. "But you seem to be moving them horizontally as well."

"Well yes. Up and down was boring."

"That isn't supposed to be how one measures magic."

Hari shrugged. "Then it shouldn't be dull."

"Well done, Mister Potter!" Professor Flitwick was applauding even before he entered the room. He just took it for granted that Hari was going to have done the task before class began. "Note how Mister Potter has adapted to move multiple objects in different vectors. Though I ask that you please not try on living things without practice, class; incorrect casting of the spell might levitate only part of the subject—such as the heart."

Hermione Granger was livid. Hari ignored this on the grounds that as far as he could tell, Hermione Granger was always livid. Something about magic seemed to bother her.

"I'll bite," said Millicent. "How do you move multiple objects at once?"

"Want to?" Hari shrugged. "I mean, you have to be able to concentrate on them, but that's about it. If you poke that feather with your wand any harder, Blaise, you're going to move it with a piece of wood instead of magic."

Blaise shook his head. The group that found itself spending time with Hari had gotten used to the fact that he just knew things that he couldn't possibly know. Such as seeing without open eyes.

"Really. You should stop using the wand. It'll be easier to do multiple targets when you don't think you need to point at them."

"But that's how the book says to do it!" snapped Hermione from across the room.

"And therefore the book is wrong. Or just lying to impressionable girls. Maybe it was written by a pervert?" Hermione's hiss of breath was almost enough to make him smile. "But you must have a dirty mind to have come to that conclusion, Miss Granger. In a young girl like yourself, it's a shocking thing. Do your parents know of your deviance?"

The other Slytherins were snorting back laughter. Even Tracy, who had nothing invested in pureblood politics, found it funny when Granger flipped out.

"Anyway," continued Hari. "Regardless of your personal flaws, the fact remains that you have to choose between a book and your lying eyes. Between you, me, and the whole class, I know you'll choose your precious books over reality."

X

X

"Just go jump off the Astronomy Tower," the redheaded buffoon advised Hermione after class. "Seriously. No one likes you here. Go die."

"What a nice guy," Daphne muttered as Hermione ran by, sobbing.

X

X

Hari was about to take a bite of barbequed chicken (sans deep frying) when Professor Stutterfaces released the Troll. "How odd."

"What's odd?" asked Tracy.

"Professor Stutterfaces just released the Troll from class."

"Makes sense if he's done with it."

"On the second floor?"

"What?"

"Yeah. He's got it charging and mad now and has broken off. He's strolling to the Great Hall, if I had to guess. He's going to need a new classroom, though, since it's doing a real number in there."

"If we asked you how you know . . ." prompted Blaise.

"I'd lie. He's making good time. That 'secret' passage between the second floor and the entrance hall is useful."

"What passageway?"

"And now he's mussing himself up and . . ."

The doors swung open. Professor Sutterfaces stumbled into the room, disheveled and collapsed. "Troll! Troll in the dungeon!" He took a breath. "Thought you ought to know." Then his face hit the floor.

(A/N John)

So I decided that, what with one thing and another, I was going to respond to a review. Sort of. Mostly I feel that I'm going to sound like a broken record. I fiddled with the timeline. The Uchiha Massacre happened shortly after the Kyūbi attack, such that Sasuke is about one-ish at the time. Itachi is also older so that he can be his canonical thirteen at the time, instead of five. Again: I am aware of the changes I made. I made them. These are not typos. Thank you.

(A/N 2 John)

Right, now that I got that out of the way, let me get to what I actually wanted to get to: on request from several people . . . well, I tell a lie. It's not so much that you lot have been asking for it so much as that Spoon then asked me to—she informs me it was so you would stop asking. I decided to write up the scene where the Akatsuki get the letter from Hari.

(A/N 3)

I do hope that whomever it was in my readership who was worried about his or her stitches read my warning in the last chapter. Thank you.

Chapter: Omake 1

Around the time of the Slytherin Reorganization

Itachi accepted the letter from the crow and nodded to it. He silently regarded the roll of parchment, considering if his son would have decided to trap it. The room was silent. Normally, Itachi and a silent room would not be worth mentioning, but given the rest of the Akatsuki were also in the room, sitting at a table and discussing plans . . .

Pein cleared his throat. "Itachi, if you would care to share with the class?"

Itachi looked up. "Hari sent me a letter."

"In the middle of a full meeting," noted Konan.

"Apparently."

"Well?" prompted Pein.

"I was contemplating whether my son would have included any surprises."

"Let me help with that." Kakuzu scooped the parchment from Itachi's hand and gave it to Hidan. "Open it."

"What?" Hidan snapped. "You think Hari stuck something nasty in there and so you want me to get hit by it?"

"Yes."

"You're a bastard, you know," Hidan said as he undid the wax and string closing the roll. "Huh." He looked down at the unfurling bundle. "I guess he—" and was engulfed in a fireball.

Kakuzu was busy snickering as Itachi grabbed the letter before it could burn with the crazed cultist and Kisame slammed the man into the wall with a water jutsu.

"Sorry," he said, laughing. "I guess I over did it."

Pein sighed and turned to Konan. "And this is why we don't have full meetings in person."

"What does Hari say?" asked the blue-haired woman.

Itachi skimmed the writing. It was definitely his son's and had all the proper signs to show it wasn't under duress and even the one that they'd post-hypnotically implanted to make sure of mental control. So he was paranoid. He was also alive and liked his son to stay that way too. His face, normally expressionless, somehow shut down anyway.

"Hn."

"That's not an answer."

Itachi turned to Kakuzu. "I shall get the easiest part out of the way first. 'Ha ha'."

Kakuzu blinked. "What?"

"My son asked me to tell you that."

Kisame poked Itachi's shoulder. "Gonna need a little more there."

"He said that it was because he has several metric tonnes of pure gold."

Kakuzu's eye twitched. "If you weren't going to seal me into that jar of yours, I would seriously consider killing your son, Itachi." He dodged the fireball that flew across the table. "Warning acknowledged."

"Indeed." Itachi looked over at where a soaked, charred Hidan was working his way back to the table by dragging himself. It appeared that the burns had done damage to his nerves and so it might be a while before he was back on his feet. "My son also wished me to convey that he got his first kill when he was an infant." He glanced down at the page again. "He estimates that it was an A or S-ranked ninja involved in a country-wide guerrilla campaign."

"What the fuck!" snarled the struggling immortal. "That is so not fair! I call bullshit!"

"Leader-sama," continued Itachi. "When you next see Tobi, please inform him that my son has decided that his method of being polite is highly amusing."

"Heaven help us all," muttered Kisame.

"Also, Leader-sama, he mentions that his Defense instructor has something that he thinks might be a soul attached to the back of his head. He enquires if that was what you encountered when he was young."

Pein blinked a few times. "Yes. That's not supposed to be possible." He paused. "Leave it to your son to find a second example of it, then." He paused a second time. "You should probably tell him to look into that. It could be bad."

Itachi sighed and closed his eyes a moment. "My son says he keeps meaning to and gets distracted."

"Dear gods," muttered Kakuzu. "It really is another Tobi."

"We're going to go insane, yeah?" Deidara muttered.

"Indeed." Sasori looked at his annoying partner. "Though I am unsure that some of us are able to still go insane."

"What are you implying, yeah?" hissed the blond.

"Kisame," Itachi went on, "apparently the woman who kept looking at you really did wish to eat you. She transforms herself into a cat."

"No wonder Samehada kept telling me to hit her . . ."

"And my son says he made a friend."

"Yeah?" Kisame raised an eyebrow.

"Actually, he says that she spends time with him because people think they are friends and since they hate him, they won't spend time with her."

"Close enough."

Itachi sighed again. "Not really."

"Hey, it's more than I had!"

"Because," said Kakuzu, "you're a fish-freak and a violent maniac?"

"Probably."

(A/N John)

So there you have it. I have no idea offhand what Hari stuck in that letter, since I just decided to have Hidan get hit. Spoon felt sorry for him, so I had Kisame put him out. For some reason, this didn't help.