Chapter 7: Same Old Lies 1/2

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. I will also add that any sections or phrases in this chapter that bear resemblance to works by either author or from movies based on works of said authors is recreated in the same spirit of free usage and is not for profit.

A/N: …Well… I'm not going to pretend that I've been tirelessly writing this small chapter to the highest standards. As you may have guessed from my publishing this rather than a chapter of SSNN, I have been struck by an awful writer's block.

Still, I hope this small offering will keep you interested a little longer until I can recover from this block (again) and come up with something more substantial.

Also, my thanks to the Soul Siblings (once again) for helping to motivate and encourage me to get even this much done.

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(Last Time)

After all of the festivities and pompous aggrandisement, the serving of dinner was anticlimactic. The Hogwarts student had a scant thirty minutes to finish all of their dinners before they were expected to vacate their seats for the visiting schools' students. The reporters watched this with little interest and instead interviewed the Hogwarts staff and the Ministry officials they had access to. Pre-empting another attempt like that which the infamous Ms. Skeeter perpetrated at the start of the year, Dumbledore had demanded that the children be off limits to the press that evening and that only the Champions, after they were selected, would be open for interviews. That last part had been at the Minister's insistence, not intending to keep the Champions away from the limelight.

Dumbledore had also neglected to inform Gaara over the inevitable increased attention he would have to endure when he was selected. That part he was less guilt-ridden over.

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The exodus from the Great Hall was not quite the grand spectacle that the entrance had been, and instead of hope-filled whispers and excitement, the students were filled with trepidation. This downturn was most certainly temporary for the majority of them and had been caused by Professor Dumbledore's parting words for the evening.

It was no secret that the staff at Hogwarts disapproved of the Triwizard Tournament that had been forced upon them, but the Headmaster's final warning had been somewhat more honest than any of them had been expecting. He had warned each and every one of the eligible teenagers to think hard before entering their names into the Goblet. If they were to enter, they had to be prepared to risk their lives. They would not be the first to die in a Tournament.

Gaara was glad to be leaving the Hall finally. The crowd, which personally he felt he had dealt with admirably, was getting to be too much for him. There were hundreds of people all around him and whenever he found himself in such situations, he had to endure the social anxiety coupled with the real danger of the demon inside of him breaking out and killing everyone.

So really he had to deal with two kinds of anxiety…

Still, as upsetting as the Hall had been, the claustrophobic feeling of walking amidst the entirety of Hogwarts' student body, coupled with the contingents from Durmstrang and Beuxbatons, was almost overwhelming. Gaara was one more jostle away from hopping onto a wall and leaving the fast way.

He lamented the fact that none of these people still wished him ill as Shukaku's automatic defence was as useful as Gaara's wand in the wave of benign humans.

Draco, seeing the discomfort on his friend's face, tried as best he could to divert some of the crushing procession away from them.

Gaara had noticed that the blond was quiet over dinner, outwardly mortified by his preceding performance, but by the way he kept glancing down and straightening his outfit, Gaara knew Draco was secretly proud of his role.

Within the deluge of chattering teens, many of whom were already overcoming the chill Dumbledore had left them with and were glancing back at the Goblet as they shuffled out into the main foyer, the foreign students were mingled together with their hosts in clusters. The initial awkwardness was fast fading as the friendly Britons were beginning to talk to their guests about all manner of topics.

Draco had taken a keen interest in this mingling as his father had given him a firm directive to make himself available to the Durmstrang students. His father, sensing the turning tide against him in British politics, was looking to spread their family influence to the international purist community. Draco guessed that his father was going to make some sort of power grab in the future and wanted support where he could get it, but Draco had never been the accomplished diplomat that his mother was and doubted his ability to charm the ostensibly charmless Durmstrang students.

Not to mention that he did not want to.

Draco was still mulling over his father's career when a pair of the largest teenagers he had ever seen barged between Gaara and he. The two behemoths, Durmstrang seventh-years that made Crabbe and Goyle look positively scrawny, smirked after having rudely accosted the two Slytherins. They towered over Draco, having turned around after pushing past them, but the taller of the two was nearly twice Gaara's height. It was almost comical, the difference in size between them.

"We've heard that you are a formidable fighter." The slightly shorter of the two started, addressing Gaara.

No introduction, no preamble. Draco tried to look down his nose at the taller boys but decided it would necessitate an uncomfortable neck angle to accomplish. Still, scorn was richly deserved by the mannerless pair. He settled on a haughty sneer.

Gaara glared at them but didn't answer.

His glare might have been from the shoving, from the contemptuous conversation starter, or from is pre-existing bad mood, Draco couldn't be sure.

"We heard that you were small but when the people here said that you were the Gaara that was talked about in the news, we couldn't believe it." They continued.

Draco also couldn't believe someone was being so rude upon first meeting, let alone to Gaara, of all people. Even the Gryffindors had more tact (barring the Weasleys, of course.)

"Yes, tell us, the stories reported were… exaggerated, yes?" The other chimed in, his accent even harsher than the first.

"There was no need for exaggeration. Gaara did everything in the papers and more." Draco spoke up.

"Everyone speaks for him. Does the little warrior not have a voice of his own?" The first said derisively.

Draco almost smiled at how close to the truth that statement had come, but this confrontation did not leave him with enough good humour to muster the facial expression.

"He does not even speak in his defence." The second finished.

"A demonstration might be more effective." Gaara said at last, irritable beyond his usual defiant silence. Plus, with the size and attitude of these two boys, there was a small chance they might be able to put up a fight.

The battle-hungry look on Gaara's face was leaking past his ceramic façade and even people other than Draco were able to sense the impending danger. Although, coming from a boy so much smaller than them with an arguably delicate appearance, the Durmstrang pair failed to comprehend the peril in which they had placed themselves.

The enormous boys looked straight down at the tiny redhead, expression as fierce as any man they had encountered, and both together laughed at the absurdity.

"We did not mean to offend, little fighter." The taller said with a broad smile, hands raised between them in surrender.

"I had thought you British were more… composed." The other added.

"Yes, composed." The taller boy confirmed.

"I am not from this country." Gaara ground out.

"Ah, yes, we thought you looked different. Are all of the people in your homeland as small as you are?"

Gaara's continued bristling was interrupted when, in a manner reminiscent of how the Durmstrang pair had barged between Draco and he, a newcomer barged between them. He was somewhat shorter than them but still towered over Draco and Gaara. More than making up for his lesser height, this new boy was built as sturdily as anyone in the Durmstrang contingent.

Gaara was as nonplussed by this newest interloper as he had been by the original pair, but for some reason Draco's guard seemed to drop upon first sighting the boy. Gaara did not recognise him so he guessed that this must be some long-lost relative of Draco's, or an old pureblood acquaintance.

"Are you causing trouble again, Ambras, or you, Mikhail?" The newcomer asked, managing to stare down the two larger boys with none of the obvious and futile effort Draco had to manifest. "I am very sorry for these two. As you can see, they have no manners." He smiled at Gaara and Draco confidently.

Gaara was eagerly awaiting Draco's snarky agreement but when none came, he looked and found the blond still awestruck. Not a relative, then. And probably not a pureblood fanatic.

"You're Viktor Krum." Draco said.

"Yes." Viktor said, smirking at the familiar routine.

Gaara tried to recall where he had heard that name before. Some sort of celebrity? But why would he have heard a celebrity's name? Draco, for all of his gossiping, was not much of a pop-culture fanatic (that he would admit, anyhow). The only famous things he talked about were politics and Quidditch. Both unlikely, but since politics were clearly not the answer…

"You're a Quidditch player?" Gaara asked, to be sure.

Krum seemed to find this amusing, "Yes."

Draco turned on Gaara as if he had just sworn in polite company. He seemed to be on the verge of lecturing Gaara about some uninteresting Quidditch trivia but thankfully this Krum person spoke up again.

"You do not follow sports but I have heard of you. You helped defend your school."

Gaara turned back to him, wondering if everyone had heard about that. If he'd known how widespread this would become, he might have thought twice about killing all of the dementors.

Krum waited for a response but, as he was to learn, Gaara was seldom pressured into speaking when he did not want to. A remnant of the time he had spent unable to respond to the drawn-out awkward silences which often occurred around him for some reason. Still, his siblings, should he ever meet them again, would surely consider this silence an improvement upon the things he used to say. Now he kept the insults and threats mostly to himself.

"…Again, I apologise on behalf of my school." Krum said at last, unsure of what language or cultural barrier had stilted the conversation thus far.

Gaara nodded and waited for him to leave with his overgrown associates. Hopefully, after they fell back in with the slow-moving crowd, Draco might awaken from his celebrity stupor and could be relied upon for semi-intelligent conversation.

Sadly, that hope was forlorn as Draco started regaling Gaara with every factoid of Viktor Krum's Quidditch career as soon as they reached the stairs to the Dungeons. He had only waited that long because a great many students from each of the schools had congregated outside of the Great Hall when there was enough space to do so, and Draco didn't want anyone from Durmstrang hearing him act like a fan-boy about one of their schoolmates.

As if they hadn't heard dozens of Hogwarts students doing the exact same thing that evening.

Even after they reached their room, Draco was still rattling off Quidditch minutia, which made Gaara wonder how much further Draco might be in his studies if he had directed this fervour towards his academic pursuits instead of a hobby. Perhaps that was one of the greatest reasons that children in Gaara's world could fight in wars and perform earth-shattering feats, while children here seemed so behind: they had hobbies.

Gaara didn't have any hobbies, besides cultivating his cacti and reading from time to time. Kankuro had his puppets, but they were part of his ninja career. Temari didn't have any hobbies, really, though Gaara admitted he knew less about her coming and goings than he did about Kankuro's.

And, thinking of one of the only other shinobi he actually knew, he didn't have any hobbies, either, except perhaps for his ramen obsession, but that hardly counted.

"Quidditch is a distraction." Gaara ventured, catching Draco in the middle of changing out of his opening ceremony costume. It was the first break in the flow of the 'conversation'.

"A distraction from what?" Draco returned, his pyjama shirt halfway over his head.

"From your school career." Gaara said.

"I think you'll find school is a distraction from Quidditch." Draco snottily replied, finishing his dressing for the night, wondering when exactly Gaara had started speaking like Draco's mother.

Gaara chewed on that facetious counterargument for a moment before dismissing it.

"You did well tonight." Gaara threw out the compliment, causing Draco to blush and look over suddenly, as if to gauge whether Gaara was joking or not. Sarcasm was entirely beyond the redhead's skill set, he remembered, seeing no sign of a smirk on Gaara's face.

"Well, they certainly won't be getting me to do anything like this again." Draco said. "I'll be glad to forget the whole thing happened."

Gaara heard him say these words and then watched him delicately fold up the costume and store it safely in the bottom of his drawers, after a quick cleaning charm.

Once he had carefully stored his one-time outfit, he fell back onto his bed and picked up the novel he had left on his bedside table. Even now, Draco assiduously avoided muggle literature, despite the unfavourable quality difference. Gaara suspected it was more that Draco didn't recognise many of the references made in muggle fiction, rather than a more insidious prejudice.

Of course Gaara made no such distinctions. A brief foray into muggle non-fiction over the summer had confirmed what he had been told, that muggles possessed no means to travel between dimensions, and any such technology was centuries away.

Over the top of his trashy, best-seller novel, Draco instigated a conversation when his mind refused to stick to the pages in front of him.

"What are your thoughts regarding the other schools?" He asked.

Gaara contemplated the question. He had a number of thoughts, but he assumed Draco was really asking about his opinion on the visitors as a whole.

"They are very different from the students of Hogwarts. The Durmstrang students are militaristic but still undisciplined. The Beauxbatons students are… cultured." Gaara was reluctant to disparage the French students for their delicate epicenity when Draco, who shared a number of these soft characteristics, was present.

"Of course, father wanted me to go to Durmstrang." Draco said.

"I remember."

"Yes, well, seeing them all now, I'm glad mother intervened." As if Draco had ever wanted to join the harsh winter school.

"Not even for its proximity to Viktor Krum?" Gaara asked.

"There isn't anyone who can match him at the school level so there wouldn't be much to see. And I can say from experience that friendship with a celebrity isn't all it's cracked up to be." Draco smiled.

"I'm not a celebrity." Gaara stated.

"No, no, of course not. I was talking about Potter. Who would want to be friends with him." Draco smirked.

Gaara tried to work out from Draco expression if he had actually meant Harry all along but gave up when he found no clues.

"Besides, other than Krum, there didn't seem to be anyone else of real interest there. Like a school full of Crabbes and Goyles." Draco sneered.

"What about Beauxbatons?" Gaara ventured.

"What about it?"

"How do you think you would have done there?"

"I'm sure I would have done well anywhere." Draco quipped. "At least they have proper table manners, which is more than I can say for Durmstrang, or half of Hogwarts, for that matter..."

Gaara stayed quiet since his own table manners were still several notches below Draco's preferred standards. Eating with chopsticks for most of his life, and living alone or with teenagers for his developmental years had had one or two detrimental effects on his etiquette.

"And you simply can't compare the girls at Beauxbatons with Durmstrang or ours. They have the looks and the class, unlike the girls here. Even in Slytherin, it can be slim pickings." Draco smiled.

Gaara again refrained from commenting, never sure of how to respond to such conversations. Kankuro had given up discussing girls with his younger brother since the redhead had never shown the slightest comprehension on the subject. Plus, even Gaara could see that his big brother was not popular with girls in their village.

Something about the combination of poor dress sense, creepy puppet fascination and an infamous, psychotic little brother had severely limited Kankuro's romantic appeal, according to Temari.

Kankuro had rebutted with the argument that Temari had to go all the way to Konoha to find a boy.

Like then, Gaara was lost by the conversation and Draco could see it on his face.

Realising the utter folly of trying to talk about girls with Gaara, Draco changed the subject back to the familiar topic of contempt for the idiocy of those contemplating entering the Tournament and for the scaredy-cats who had been shaken by the Goblet of Fire and Dumbledore's warning.

Awkwardness mostly forgotten, they conversed easily until Draco could no longer string a coherent sentence together. Often this happened, that he would forget Gaara's insomnia and rely on the boy who doesn't sleep to remind him when they should turn off the lights and go to bed.

Nevertheless, his tiredness could no longer guarantee him an undisturbed nights sleep. Not after the full moon.

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The dining rota served to annoy just about everyone the next morning. It was never a welcome thing, to be told to wait for your breakfast, or to rush it along so that the next group could take your seat. Fortunately, the resentment never went any further than a few dirty looks.

It helped that every few minutes, someone would stand to shuffle over to the Goblet, under the watchful eyes of every student and professor in the Hall, and submit their names. It always drew applause.

Gaara had noticed, though, that not one of the entries had yet come from a Slytherin. Gaara knew that a couple of them had intentions to enter and wondered what they were waiting for. Perhaps for the Hall to clear so that their probable rejection would not be as public. Maybe they were all talk and were not going to enter after all.

Sounded about right.

The Goblet had been under guard all night by professors Sinistra and Vector since Sinistra 'was going to be up anyway' and Vector had volunteered to keep her company. Strangely, Vector didn't look nearly as tired as Sinistra despite it being she who was supposed to be nocturnal. Neither of them seemed particularly pleased to be there and both elected to skip breakfast when Hagrid and Sprout arrived to relieve them for the morning shift. They both simply marched out of the Great Hall and went to their quarters.

Since the Goblet was to be guarded every second of the twenty-four hours, many of the Hogwarts professors had been drafted to do the job. Apparently the job was too important to ignore but not important enough to involve Aurors. Still, Minerva, Severus, and Alastor had all managed to avoid the dubious honour. The former pair were busy and acrimonious, and the latter professor had claimed he was too old and needed his rest these days.

At least there were no classes that day to be interrupted by the professors' supplementary duty. It also meant that after breakfast officially ended, only half of the student body actually left the Hall to entertain themselves on this extra day off, the rest staying put to find entertainment with the slow procession of entries.

None of the professors were eager to sit and watch so they all departed as soon as the meal was over, leaving only the guards to supervise all of the teenagers. It was at this opportune moment that a pair of obviously underage Gryffindor boys tried to sneak around behind the head table and the guards, and come up behind the Goblet to put their names in.

Gaara watched this happen curiously, safe in the knowledge that even if he wasn't the one selected to represent Hogwarts, by no measure could either of the two boys be considered Hogwarts' champion. Even the professor guarding the Goblet were fully aware of what was happening behind their backs.