2/2

Shikamaru shut his eyes and let the noise take over. At least Neville would be there with him. He'd definitely make the other boy suffer with him. Misery and shared company, and all that nonsense.

…

Shikamaru arrived to find a crowd of students waiting in front of the portrait of Barnabas the Barmy.

"This everyone?" he asked, glancing at all of the faces, new and old. Most of them, as predicted, seem to have either brought no one or had stuck to their houses. Neville, however, had a first year next to him with a blue and silver tie and dirty blonde hair. Her eyes, luminous and enormous, focused on him.

"Everyone who wanted to come," answered Cedric, sidling up to him. Shikamaru nodded and cleared his throat. The low murmurs died down.

"Before we continue: this isn't a club. This is a necessary measure taken because Lockhart's actually worthless. If you're here to spend time with friends or to fill your time, clear out now." A few people looked somewhat intimidated by this statement, but most of them just stared back at him, undeterred. They knew what they were in for.

"Good. Then follow me." He led them to the Come-and-Go Room, and the door appeared as he got closer. A few students made noises of wonderment, but he ignored those as Percy stuck his head out.

"Got them all?" he asked, surveying the crowd. He didn't seem at all disheartened that few older students had come.

"In," Shikamaru said in answer, standing aside to let the students enter. When the last one was through the door, he went in and knew the door disappeared behind him. The last thing they needed was a random student curiously sticking their nose into their session.

"What's this, Nara?" Nott asked, looking at the room.

"This is the Come-and-Go Room. For us, it'll be our meeting place." He moved to the front of the crowd and gestured around them at the high walls and dimly lit corners. "As I said, we'll be working with the Freezing Charm today. Pick a partner."

The students looked at each other and shrugged. Most people stuck to their housemates, though Millicent Bulstrode was greatly surprised when Terry Boot walked up to her and stuck out his hand.

"I've seen you in Charms. Very quick with them, aren't you?" he said. She eyed him suspiciously, and he sighed and smiled wryly. "Look, I've got the knowledge, but I'm shit at practical stuff. But I know all of the limits of the Freezing Charm like the back of my hand."

She scowled at him but took his hand and shook it once. "Don't slow me down, feathers," she warned, and he cheekily saluted her.

Shikamaru turned away and saw that everyone else had gotten into pairs. He was pleased to see a few differently colored ties standing together. Maybe future inter-house unity wasn't too much of a lost cause. "Right. We'll be doing an exercise today. Behind me is a maze of sorts. In the middle is a bowl of papers. Your goals are to get to the bowl of papers and back to the north entrance before the other teams, and obviously to do your best to hinder everyone else."

"That's it?" asked Nott lazily. Shikamaru looked at him until he rolled his eyes and looked away.

"You're only allowed to use the Freezing Charm. Cheat and use anything else, and the floor will open up below you and your teammate, and I'll kick you out myself," Shikamaru continued, waving a hand at the wave of protests. "This isn't to improve your spell-work or reinforce mastery - this is to teach you teamwork and to use your brains and imagination. Wizards tend to think that their wands are enough, and that's damn stupid. When you're fighting Dark creatures, you need more than a few good spells up your sleeve; you need to be able to out-think a high vampire, to counter the instincts of a rabid werewolf, or even to stop a pond full of grindylow by yourself."

He pointed to the wall, where an hourglass hung from the ceiling, large enough to be seen from any point in the maze. "You have two hours to get your paper and make your way back to the start. Find an entrance - there's one per team, all equidistant from the center. We'll begin in five minutes."

The students shuffled off, each whispering furiously to their partners. Percy and Cedric, whom Shikamaru had asked earlier to help him oversee the exercise for today since they were far better at strategy and spell-work than the rest, stood beside him.

"What're we going to do?" Cedric asked curiously. "Seems like the Room will catch cheating, won't it?"

Shikamaru nodded. "The smart ones won't need different spells to try and cheat. The walls are tall, but they're short enough that they could boost each other over, and I never said anything about forming alliances between teams. We'll give them thirty minutes to get comfortable, and then we'll go in to shake them up."

Percy eyed Shikamaru appraisingly. "It seems intense for the first day."

"All the better. It'll set the tone for the rest of the year. Those who can't handle it won't come back, and the rest will know what to expect. In the real world, surprises come all the time, usually at the worst moments. Training their responses to new dangers - ones they can't handle unless they put everything into it - will help." He grinned a little bit. "And it'll knock 'em all down a peg. Half of them think they've already won, and the other half aren't taking this seriously."

Cedric laughed a little. "You're a bit scary, aren't you?" he asked admiringly. He paused. "Ever going to try Quidditch?"

Shikamaru shook his head firmly. "Brooms and I don't agree," he said.

"That's a relief," Cedric admitted. "I'd hate to face you on the field. I think you'd destroy us with strategies we hadn't even thought possible and leave us wondering just when exactly we'd lost control."

"As a chess player," said Percy, adjusting his glasses, "who has seen Nara in action, I'd tell you that you never had control at all."

Shikamaru grinned and set off a shower of bright white sparks that he'd learned how to make earlier that day for just this purpose. The hourglass started draining.

"Twenty minutes," he said. "Choose where you want to start and make sure to give them hell. If more than one team makes it out before fifteen minutes until the end, we didn't do our jobs."

"Do you want us to only use Freezing Charms too?" Cedric asked, watching the maze with interest. Already, telltale streams of light were bursting in the darkened passages.

"No. Don't use anything a third-year wouldn't know, but feel free to collapse their legs or make them spit slugs for a few minutes. I'll be using the Freezing Charm just to make a point." For every headache, past and future, that they would give them, he would run them into the ground until they quit or knew how to defend themselves. Lockhart was useless, and since no one else was stepping up, he'd let the students take control of their own education.

Twenty minutes later, the three proctors entered the maze. Cedric would take care of the South, and Percy was entering from the East. Shikamaru was going in from the North.

Originally, he'd considered having the maze change shape at irregular intervals, but he didn't actually want to demoralize everyone to the point of giving up. He settled for memorizing the maze's formation and using shortcuts to catch up to the students. He'd introduce them to shifting landscapes when they were all a bit more settled.

Many of the students had made it pretty far in. Some of them had been frozen a couple of times, but fewer than he'd estimated would. They were adapting well, and not one of them had tried to cheat. In terms of progress forward, Bulstrode and Boot, and surprisingly Greengrass and Bones were pretty much tied for the lead. Not far behind them were Zabini and Nott.

Shikamaru bypassed all of the ones in the back, jumping from wall to wall over them in complete silence, and went straight for Greengrass and Bones. Though they were shocked when he aimed a Freezing Charm at the ground in front of them, they recovered quickly. Greengrass, clearly the better caster of the two, stood in front, while Bones stood in the background and looked for an opening. A decent strategy that had clearly been working well for them.

"Finally showed up, hm?" said Greengrass, eyes sharp and dissecting. "I was wondering if you were going to."

"Cedric and Percy are probably closing in on a few of the others too," he said casually. "It's no fun if we can't play too."

Her lips twitched, which was the only warning she gave before she brandished her wand and sent a Freezing Charm after him. He dodged and backed away before Bones' following shot hit him. He avoided their volleys - impressively timed for two people who, to his knowledge, had never worked together before - and then he neatly slid forward in the five second gap that followed their attacks and promptly froze both of them.

"You'll be here for a few minutes," he said, stepping back. "You're good, but you leave an opening that's easy to find if your opponent dodges long enough. Otherwise, good job for your first time."

He left them frozen in place and vaulted over a nearby wall when he was out of sight. Time to see how the others were doing.

…

Half an hour later, Boot and Bulstrode reached the cup first. There, they withdrew a piece of paper as instructed - one per team - and unfolded it.

Good job getting here. As your reward, you get one extra spell to use on your way out. Hope you've both mastered the Levitation Charm.

-SN

"Fucking useless," Bulstrode snarled. Shikamaru watched Boot consider the paper and then her. Then, his eyes drifted thoughtfully to their surroundings. Shikamaru didn't bother hiding his grin when Boot aimed his wand at the nearest wall and muttered the incantation. Obligingly, the wall lifted a few inches.

The walls were detached from the ground, but they weighed about fifty kilograms. If the students wanted to move them, they'd need magic. Fortunate for Boot and Bulstrode that they'd gotten one of the only movement spells in the bowl.

"Hey, Bulstrode," said Boot conversationally. Bulstrode looked over and saw the hovering wall. She grinned fiercely. "We probably can't drop these on other students, but we can make their paths a little...inconvenient."

"Might drop one on Nara if we see him," she muttered. Shikamaru had, in the spirit of harmless but annoying pranks, spent fifteen solid minutes tripping and knocking them over, leaving them unable to take more than a few steps before they were put down again. He'd left them panting and swearing on the ground, but if anything, it had only made them more determined to be first to the middle. The fact that he'd done so without any magic only added insult to injury.

"If you can catch him," said Boot dubiously. An hour ago, a comment like that would have made her snarl. Now, she just nodded.

"If not now, then one day," she promised. Boot grinned.

"You're not bad, Bulstrode," he said, lifting the wall higher and gesturing for her to move forward.

"I guess you're not completely useless," she consented, which was practically a ringing endorsement from her. An interesting pair to be sure. Once Zabini and Nott got here - any minute now - Shikamaru would nudge their groups together and see who made it out. Bulstrode and Boot were cunning and slippery; Zabini and Nott were ruthless and fast. Both groups could stand to learn from the other.

Shikamaru stayed long enough to see the next three groups get to the middle and leave. Zabini and Nott got the Jelly-Legs Curse, which both seemed inordinately pleased about. They left in the direction that Bulstrode and Boot had, so Shikamaru was fairly confident that a confrontation was impending there. Neville and Lovegood - the Ravenclaw first-year he'd brought along - claimed the Wand-Lighting Charm, which Lovegood at least seemed happy with. They left, and shortly after, Greengrass and Bones came and grabbed the Tripping Jinx. They followed after Neville and Lovegood.

That would be an interesting matchup. Most people never considered the possible battle implications of Lumos, but given what he'd seen so far of Lovegood's...eccentric personality, and what he knew of Neville, Shikamaru figured they'd think of something. At the very least, they could blind their opponents in the right circumstance.

Shikamaru followed after Nott and Zabini, and five minutes later, he found them tracking down Bulstrode and Boot. Looking at the latter two, though, he saw them completely aware of their tails and setting up a completely new path with the maze walls. The new path would lead Zabini and Nott into a steaming - literally - pair of Slytherin upperclassmen who'd run afoul Percy and his incredibly devious use of basic spells. Likely, Zabini and Nott would be very convenient targets for some venting.

Bulstrode and Boot were still a fair distance from the entrance, and they deserved the win at this point anyway, so Shikamaru left them to find Neville and Lovegood.

"They're following us," Lovegood told Neville.

"How'd you know?" he asked.

"Bones has had Wrackspurts circling her for nearly an hour now," she said solemnly. "They must like her frustration."

Shikamaru had no idea what Wrackspurts were, but Neville nodded like he understood. "Reckon we should run? Or make a trap?"

"Hm." Lovegood turned and looked directly at Shikamaru, who was hidden in the shadows of a nearby wall. "Our audience might enjoy a show."

Neville frowned, but she didn't elaborate. Instead, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and pulled out an assortment of strange objects. "Do you know how to make shadow figures?" she asked out of the blue.

"What?" Neville asked, bewildered. "No. Do you?"

"Of course. They're very handy for luring out-"

"You want to bait Greengrass and Bones?" Neville interrupted. "No way; they wouldn't believe it."

Lovegood ignored him. "When I say, you should start running. I would, but you can't make shapes, and you're better at the Freezing Charm than I am."

"Running from what?" Neville asked, peering at the objects in her hands like they might come alive and attack him.

"I'm thinking a very angry bunch of Fire Crabs," she said. "Then, when they're trying to see the beasts for themselves, you can freeze them."

Neville considered. "Can you sound like a Fire Crab?" he asked doubtfully. She smiled at him and opened her mouth to let loose the most disconcerting range of furious clicks and trills that Shikamaru had ever heard from a human being. He'd never run into a Fire Crab before and couldn't say what they sounded like normally let alone angry, but he had to admit that it was fairly intimidating, accurate or not.

"Right," said Neville, drawing himself up. "I'll just...run, then?"

"Please," agreed Lovegood. "Preferably like you don't want some angry Fire Crabs to singe your bottom."

Neville ran. Greengrass and Bones were understandably suspicious, but Lovegood's timing was impeccable, as were her sound effects, and the former two were wary enough of Shikamaru that they dismissed Neville in favor of the larger threat that was dancing along the ground of the maze-

Their faces were frozen, but Greengrass' eyes promised death as Neville stepped out from behind them and Lovegood showed herself, objects, lit wand, and all. Shikamaru shook his head as the two high-fived and left them to it.

Shadow puppets. As a shadow master himself, he found himself appreciating her ingenuity. Maybe he'd ask her how she made the creatures- and where she learned to make those noises.

An hour later, Shikamaru was back at the north entrance to the maze when Boot and Bulstrode emerged. They were breathing hard, and Boot was blinking rapidly from his own run-in with Neville and Lovegood, but both of them grinned when they saw him.

"You're the first ones," said Shikamaru. "Good job. How was it?"

"You should know; you were there," Bulstrode grunted, eyeing him beadily. Boot elbowed her side, earning him a muted snarl.

"That was amazing," he said frankly. "Frustrating as shit, but I don't think I've ever learned so much in two hours in my life. I started out with theory, and towards the end, Bulstrode and I were trading off blows. Hats off to you, Nara - you've got something here."

Shikamaru extended a hand. "Thanks for coming. Go get some rest and food - I'll have a prize delivered to your bunks for being first. Same day and time next week."

Boot shook his hand. "I think you'll have people asking for more than once a week," he said. "Even the ones who come in last won't be able to say they got nothing out of this. Next week, Nara." He walked out, pausing at the door to look back at Bulstrode. "We make a good team, Bulstrode."

She rolled her eyes at him, and he grinned, walking out. She turned to Shikamaru and ignored his hand. Instead, she jabbed a finger at his chest. "I'm gonna get you back for today, Nara, just you wait," she said, glowering. Shikamaru withdrew his hand and offered a faintly smug expression.

"Stick around, and you might catch me unawares," he said.

"Oh, I'm coming back," she promised. "I'm going to drain you dry of everything you know and then embarrass you in front of everyone."

He leaned back on his heels, letting his eyelids fall a little. "Looking forward to it, Bulstrode. Now get out of here."

Glaring, she left. Hm. Interesting. He'd be able to work with that resentment to goad her into improvement. Boot, too, was smart enough to see how much and in how many ways Shikamaru had pushed everyone today. As for the rest...Shikamaru turned to see a grinning Neville and a slightly unsteady but still smiling Lovegood with one arm across his shoulders.

Ah, the rest would be fine.

"Just missed Bulstrode and Boot," he called. Neville scoffed.

"No surprise. Bulstrode scares me more than Snape sometimes, you know? Did you see what she tried to do to Diggory? I thought he'd been crushed for a few minutes. And Boot's pretty smart - he had them evading Percy for a good ten minutes when you sent him in." Neville came to stop in front of him and carefully pulled Lovegood into a straighter position. "But Luna and I did alright."

"You have so many Wrackspurts following you around," said Luna, staring at the area above his head so intently that he briefly felt the urge to swat his hands at it. He didn't. "I've never seen someone attract and repel them simultaneously before." Her luminous eyes shifted down to meet his. "You must lead a very interesting life."

Then, she refused to say anymore. Neville shrugged helplessly and helped her out of the room after offering Shikamaru a sympathetic expression. Shikamaru watched them go. He swiveled when he heard a familiar voice cursing.

Nott and Zabini came out, both looking incredibly annoyed. For a moment, Shikamaru contemplated leaving them to it and heading off for dinner. The others were almost out, and Cedric and Percy had already left. Instead of just turning on his heel and walking out, though, he forced himself to stay in place. He'd started this, well-aware that it would give him more than a few headaches. He'd stay and just deal with it. Besides, he'd been mediating for Naruto for years. If Kage capable of leveling countries hadn't sent him running for the hills, he sure as hell wouldn't let school children do it.

He did resign himself to missing dinner. At least the house-elves didn't care if he visited them late. He'd go and get a nice meal in reward for handling bruised egos and wounded pride.

…

"Where were you yesterday?" Ron asked at breakfast the next morning. Shikamaru had gotten out late and arrived at the dorm even later. He'd had three hours of sleep, which was to be expected, and now had a raging headache, which was not. He didn't answer. Not verbally.

Instead, he waved his hand in the general direction of Neville, who gamely took up the cue to start talking about studying with a few other students. All technically true. Shikamaru would probably muster the energy to be proud once his head stopped throbbing in time with the clangs of silverware on dishes around him.

Honestly.

Whoever said that children were angels deserved to be quartered.

...

Omake for shits and giggles:

Deathly Hallows

"I challenge Voldemort!" Harry was incredibly glad his voice didn't crack. The seething mass of Death Eaters reared back in shock at his audacity.

"Fool." Vol- Tom bloody Riddle, Harry thought, stepped forward. Eager for blood, his followers formed a loose ring around the two of them, large enough to be out of the splash zone, but tight enough that it felt deeply oppressive. "It seems Gryffindors have nothing but brawn."

"Fuck you," Harry muttered spitefully. He cleared his throat and tried to make himself look dramatic, because, Think of the epics, Harry! You don't want them to have nothing to work with, right? Spice it up a little! He was going to have words with some people. "It's time to end this once and for all!"

"Indeed," said Voldemort, red eyes glowing maliciously. Harry imagined them to be particularly ripe cherries and immediately felt much better. At least his eyes looked like gems, or something.

"You have only yourself and your wand," said Voldemort in amusement. "Do you think you can win?"

"Well, not with that kind of attitude," said Harry frankly. "But I also have a surprise." He pulled out Hermione's bottomless bag and rustled around in it. Voldemort seemed content to let him, confident in his superiority. Merlin, Harry owed his friends a mountain of whatever sweets they wanted. He pulled out a large mirror almost the size of his torso. Voldemort lifted his hairless eyebrow.

"Do you intend to hit me with it?" he sneered. Harry shrugged and just faced the mirror Volemort's way. That would probably be pretty cathartic.

"Very well, any last words?" Voldemort lifted his wand. Harry grinned and screwed his eyes shut.

"This is for my parents, you motherfucking dick."

Then, behind Voldemort, Shikamaru threw off the invisibility cloak and brandished the fully intact basilisk eye in his hands. The eye glared at the mirror. The mirror winked at Voldemort. Voldemort looked at the mirror. Voldemort fell flat on his face, completely petrified.

Shikamaru immediately whirled the eye around at all of the surrounding Death Eaters. Half of them fell to the ground, dead before they could even try to shut their eyes. The other half clamped their eyes shut-

Which allowed the Disillusioned Aurors behind them, who had been waiting for the sound of the last body falling, to leap forward and bind them with an assortment of heavy-duty ropes and cables. Shikamaru carefully tucked the eye away and looked up in time to see Harry smash the mirror right across Voldemort's frozen, shocked face.

"Feel better?" he asked, idly admiring the way the glass shone in a weird sort of halo around the man's head. Harry nodded, wiping the sweat off his forehead.

"You have no idea," he said. There was a pause. Then- "Can you imagine if we'd actually gone for the Horcruxes first? By ourselves?"

"Terrible," Shikamaru agreed. At the moment, they had nearly a dozen teams of Aurors and Order members combing the country methodically for the pieces of Voldemort's soul.

"It's a good thing you stopped us," Harry said.

"I believe his words were, 'That's a fucking horrible idea, Harry, no,'" said a new voice. Both of them turned to see Ron grinning evilly at the still body of Voldemort. His grin turned distinctly nicer when he looked at them. "Bill and Dad just destroyed the Hufflepuff cup. Bill says he'll definitely be in debt to the Goblin nation for the rest of his life, but it's totally worth it."

Shikamaru and Harry nodded. Harry looked at Ron, then at Voldemort, and then he said, "Go on, then. It's cathartic."

Ron needed no more prompting. He pulled out his wand, aimed it at Voldemort, muttered a few spells, and-

"Ew. That's nasty."

"I didn't know skin could turn that color or that texture."

"We're going to need a bag. If I let any kids see this, Hermione'll have my head."

"Tell Hermione sorry. She won't be getting her bag back."

"Mate, if she knew what you just put in there, she'd tell you to keep it. With interest."

Shikamaru sighed. "It's over. Finally. I deserve a nap."

"You! I'm the one who's been coordinating everything."

"I had to get the basilisk eye. The fully intact basilisk eye."

"...yeah, alright then."

"Merlin," said Harry abruptly. "What would we be doing right now if Shikamaru hadn't said something?"

"Camping in a miserable fucking forest," Ron said sagely.

"Running from Death Eaters while trying to decipher Dumbledore's bullshit clues," Shikamaru agreed. Harry shook his head.

"Thank God we didn't do that."

…

Shikamaru woke up with a hiss. Beside him, Harry looked over in concern, his Grade 2 Book of Spells open in his lap.

"What's wrong?"

"I don't know. I had a dream, I think."

"Not a very good one?"

Shikamaru shook his head. "No, it was good, but I can't remember it. Only…"

"Yeah?"

"I feel a lot of unnecessary trouble coming our way."

"Unnecessary?"

"It's probably nothing."

In the future, Shikamaru would look back on this moment and curse the entire universe for not letting him remember the easy way out. But that's a story for the far future.

Charms (Spells)

Freezing Charm (Immobulus): This makes its target unable to move and, interestingly enough, disables electronic devices. No time/weight limit provided.

Levitation Charm (Wingardium Leviosa): Spell to make things fly or levitate. No weight limit provided.

Jelly-Legs Curse (Locomotor Wibbly): Causes victim's legs to collapse as if they were turned into jelly.

Wand-Lighting Charm (Lumos): Illuminates the tip of the castor's wand.

Trip Jinx (Unknown incantation): Makes people trip and fall over.

(1): I hate, hate, hate, with every fiber of my being, how much of Harry's experiences with abuse - physical, verbal, and psychological - are simply dismissed. I read a post that detailed all of the mentioned encounters with physical abuse alone that Harry has - some in passing, some casually, some just outright but somehow downplayed so they don't seem like abuse in the moment - and it is frankly appalling. Now, a child should be disciplined, and I do think that physical discipline has a place in the household. However, there is a very fine line between appropriate punishment (and tough love), and physical abuse. Petunia and Vernon Dursley were abusive. Harry does not realize this. Anyone else, any outsiders, would and should know this. Albus Dumbledore was a great man, but I will never be convinced that the benefits of Harry's stay with the Dursleys outweighed everything he suffered there.

Guest Reviews for Chapter 12 (from bottom to top):

Guest: Haha, yeah...I mean, I was back. And then I disappeared for 3 years. Sorry about that. Glad you liked the chapter!

NatNicole: Thanks for telling me! Yeah, I've come to that conclusion myself. So, we'll just...do something else with that relationship. No spoilers though :).

goat99: Wasn't able to PM you, so here's the response. Thank you very much! Glad you like the story. Hope you made it back for this chapter...3 years later...

Guest: Thanks! I mean, I get where you're coming from, but I have to tell you, it'll never happen. No werewolf Shikamaru here, but if anyone ever writes one, I'd probably read it.

Allison: That is quite alright. I don't mind if you review a hundred times! I will cherish each one! Thanks for your support and written kindness!

Guest: Yeah, seriously. Shikamaru's not particularly homicidal, but he does come from a culture where people deal with mental trauma by repressing it to an unhealthy extent, so. It'll probably all be fine. Probably. Thanks for your review!

Ake: Wow! Thank you so much for your review! Yes, to respond to your fears, I understand where you're coming from. No one wants their favorite character to become a Gary Stu, and I promise I am doing my best to keep that from happening. In fact, that's part of why I went back and re-wrote my story. Shikamaru is not perfect, and I will never ever portray him as such. However, he is a genius who, by all accounts, was just too lazy to reach his full potential in his earlier years. I wanted to write a beginning where he did try to learn what he wanted to. I'm sorry if that came off as Gary-Stu-ish, it wasn't my intention.

I've definitely added some unfortunate side effects due to the presence of his chakra. More on that will come out later. As for his interest in history, you have to understand that he is a ninja in a foreign land, and something that I think many ninjas learn is to gather as much intelligence about the new place so that they can survive. His interest in history is more to understand the people and civilization around him, and you'll notice that he focuses heavily on the wars and the behavior of various countries.

Neville's grandmother...ha. I have some difficulty with her. On one hand, I think that she truly does care for Neville and wants the best for him. On the other, she clearly expects him to fight his own battles. Given how Snape treated Neville for years, and how there was no backlash from Neville's family, I think it's safe to assume that Augusta Longbottom wants for Neville to learn how to handle his own problems like a man even though he's still a child. I imagined that translated over to family, especially since Neville doesn't mention any repercussions for his Great Uncle Algie dropping him out of a window.

Thank you for the review - I genuinely do appreciate honest, constructive criticism. I hope that I've managed to explain some of my choices in characterization better.

Guest: Ha, sorry. 3 years later… Here it is, if you're still interested. Thank you for your review.

Guest: Thank you very much! I have definitely read that story, and I definitely love it! I appreciate the rec! Thanks for your review!

Guest97: I have definitely not given up on it. I just took a long time to update because...reasons. Thank you for the review!

Killua minamoto: Thank you! Hm, I'm not entirely sure what you're saying here, but if you're saying that I shouldn't have made him remember, I understand, but I didn't want it to be clean. Call me a sadist, but I wanted it to hurt, being torn away from his family and planted in a new world. Hope that doesn't turn you off too much; I appreciate the honest feedback. Anyway, here's another chapter. I don't know about finishing - this is going to be very long - but it's another part.

Maxine: Yes he is! Here's the new chapter, three years later! Thanks for the review and the well-wishes. I definitely need them.

Guest: Ah...well. Sorry it's late. But thank you for reviewing.

Guest: Thank you very much! 3 years later, here it is. Remus won't be back for a little bit, but he's coming. Sorry to make you wait, I hope you enjoy it, and thank you for your lovely review.

Guest: Thank you! I completely understand; frankly I find that most Naruto/Harry Potter crossovers involve an inordinate amount of OOCness, Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu existences, or just the murdering of logic. I have definitely read Silent Humanity - it's been a while, but I remember liking it quite a bit. Gaara is a sweet boy who deserved better! Thank you for your review!

14ravens: Here's the update! Sorry it's late! I'm glad you love this story; I appreciate you reviewing!

Anon: Update! Thank you for your review! Sorry this is late.

Guest: 4 years… yeah, sorry. Here's the update! Thank you for reviewing!

Maxine: I definitely took a break, but I didn't stop. Thank you very much for sticking around and checking my story out. Hope you enjoy this next chapter!

RECOMMENDATIONS: (Please send some my way if you have any!)

Sanitize - Sage Thrasher - An absolutely amazing! Warring-States era story. SIOC-herbalist (sort of) centric, and I literally just want to scream about it always. Rated T, and was last updated in February.

Least Loved - Windschild8178 - What is it about this author that allows them to always bring me to tears? Anyway, an absolutely wonderful one-shot about Ron's relationship with his mother. It's complicated. It's messy. It's painful. But they love each other. And... that's it. Come back after you finish and we can cry about it together. Rated K. Tear warnings, bring tissues.

Little Gryffindor - Izzaryo - One-shot; Ron being awesome and standing up for his best friend. Like, I love Ron so much. People bash him and I just...no. Anyway. Rated T.

Silent Guardians - FallenQueen2 - Multichapter time travel story. It has Shikamaru and Naruto being trauma bros who are also trying to fix the world, and really, what more do you need? Completed. Rated T.

A/N: A few things:

1) Shikamaru has no idea that Dumbledore put Harry with the Dursleys and wants him there for the blood protection. He just thinks someone should have spoken to Harry and removed him from the Dursleys legally by now. I'm not sure when or if he'll find out about Harry purposely being kept with the Dursleys in spite of how they treat him, but if he does find out, the following reaction won't be pretty.

2) I intentionally left the numbers and members of the DADA session vague. More will crop up later, but I didn't want to saturate the chapter with new faces, so I mostly stuck with more familiar ones.

3) I have no idea when I'll post another chapter, but my guilty conscience and quarantine led me here, so hopefully it won't take years. Drop off a review and let me know how it was; see you on the flip side~!