To all my readers, 

Hope you have a wonderful Holiday Season!

Polar

AC_D12: Behind the Scenes (Part 4)

Remember this AU? If you don't here are the previous parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

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The large white owl screeched as it flapped it's wings above him.

Kisame had never seen a bird like it before but judging from it's complete lack of fear, it had experience with ninja. It certainly looked unique enough to be a summon animal. But it didn't speak, just glared at him with amber eyes.

Kisame held out his hand like Itachi usually did for birds.

The owl swooped down on his arm, a solid weight that took him by surprise, and held up a leg. With clumsy fingers, Kisame untied the scroll it's leg. He opened the scroll, squinted at the terrible writing and then read the letter multiple times with growing annoyance.

“That Itachi,” Kisame shook his head, walked through the rain and into the empty building they used, the owl still latched onto his arm.

With his eyes closed and body folded into a meditative pose, Itachi didn't acknowledge his presence.

“We've got mail,” Kisame said, much louder than he usually would.

Itachi opened his eyes in annoyance and frowned when he caught sight of the owl.

“You didn't tell me he sent you tickets for the new movie,” Kisame said. “Since you couldn't make it to the premiere because you were busy, he sent tickets which can be used anywhere and any time.”

Itachi closed his eyes.

AC_D11: Prompt Fill: Time Well Spent

This is a fill for DreamofStories prompt: "Could you work Harry into the lost Tower? I’m not sure how. But I’m picturing Harry leaving some subtle magic thing behind to help Minato and then Minato wiping his own memory because Time Travel and the confusion and changes that result. :)"

I have not watched this movie but did I read the wiki-synopsis.

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“Nii-san?”

Harry shook himself out of his jumbled thoughts and turned to his cousin.

“Do you think he...” Naruto hesitated and looked away.

Harry waited for another long moment but when the silence only lengthened, Harry sighed. “He must be. The time line works, doesn't it? And you two look very similar. Way too similar.”

Naruto swallowed as though he didn't want to say anything that could make those words not be true.

“He probably suspects your connection,” Harry said. “But he's probably even more confused about me being your cousin.”

Naruto huffed out a laugh. “If he wants to know, he'll have to ask.”

“He won't. He seems like a sensible and responsible person. They say that knowing the future is kind of a bad idea.”

“But he met us and I told him he looked like the Fourth Hokage,” Naruto said.

Harry shrugged. “Maybe he'll wipe the memory from his mind. If he knows how to.”

“If he is the Fourth Hokage, I'm sure he knows how to do that. Everyone called him a genius. ” Naruto wilted. “I wish I could...” Naruto bit his lip.

“Tell me,” Harry said.

Naruto shrugged and swiped at his eyes. “Would it be so bad to change the past?”

AC_D10: Prompt Fill: Let it Snow

A prompt fill for Notloggedin. A mix of these two prompts "Harry wanting to give Naruto 'a good christmas' so he goes all out with a tree and transfigures all the decorations he's come to expect from hogwarts- shiny and glittering, 'fairy lights' wrapped around the balcony and special Xmas food etc - and completely baffling to everyone who sees it but also everyone kind of loves the image it makes (does it snow in Konoha?) and it catches on."

&

"Harry the farmer, where his crops mysteriously never get fungus or insects or dry out for lack of rain. Oh! Harry the rainmaker!"

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“You've never had snow here in Konoha?”

Naruto shook his head. “But we saw a lot of snow when we went to the Land of Snow. We didn't get to enjoy it all that much because it all disappeared when we activated the spring machine thing.”

“The what?” Harry asked in surprise.

“It's a machine that ended the long winter and brought spring to the Land of Snow.” Naruto scratched his chin and looked a bit sheepish, “It's a long story. But why are you asking about snow.”

“Because it's December and there needs to be snow. Deep snow that allows people to have a day off to build snowmen or sit inside and drink hot chocolate.”

“Hot chocolate?” Naruto asked with deep interest.

“Hot chocolate tastes much better when it's snowing outside and you're sitting inside by the warm fireplace,” Harry said, a mischievous determination overcoming him. “I'm going to make sure Konoha has a snow day!”

AC_D9: Prompt Fill: Nara Gossip

This is prompt fill for an Anonymous question that came in through my Tumblr. “Can you tell us what happens when the Naras find out that Harry helped find shikaku’s little brother ??”

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“Who found him?” Daen asked, as he rubbed his infant daughter's back, making sure she stayed asleep on his shoulder.

Maen sipped on his tea, “You know the green-eyed teen who keeps visiting Shikaku?”

“Suzaku said that boy's a civilian,” Daen pointed out. “And he's related to Naruto.”

Maen hummed and said, “He might be a civilian but he found the body in Suna.”

“Suna? Why would he be in that hellhole? We never searched anywhere near Suna.”

“Even if we searched Suna, we wouldn't have found him.” When Daen motioned for him to keep talking, Maen lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Think about it. That boy fixes things. He must have fixed something to find the body. And what does Suna have that needs to be fixed due to recent events?”

AC_D8: Prompt Fill: Connections in the Dark

A fill for Silent Reader's prompt “a slightly dramatic movie-esque plot (i.e. things make less then canon but sshh go with it) : enemy nin try to use a seal on Naruto to release Kyuubi but hit Harry instead. His magic goes loose and the area suddenly just makes...less sense. After all magic can inflate a woman into a balloon and back, turn a boy into a ferret and a dead body into an old bone so it can be secretly buried! (did anybody find Crouch Sr.'s body?) Basically Harry loses control and Naruto has to help him (since the reverse is possible in AtO) magic shenanigans.”

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“What happened?” Naruto asked, sitting up with a groan. “Where is everyone else? That attack...” He stopped as his voice echoed in the large empty hall. “Where are we?”

Looking a lot better than he felt at the moment, Sakura helped him to his feet, but her face was turned up. 

Instead of a stone ceiling like the walls around them, a stormy sky loomed above them, complete with roiling clouds. Without a glass ceiling, the stormy sky looked close enough to touch if Naruto created enough clones to stack up and touch the top. 

“Where are we?” He repeated, eyes still fixed on the sky.

“More importantly,” Sakura said. “How did we get here?”

Naruto opened his mouth to reply only to pause and frown in confusion. “I don't remember.”

Sakura nodded. “Neither do I.”

Around the large empty hall, four long empty tables and benches stretched from one end of the hall to the other. Above the tables, four distinct and colourful banners fluttered in the air. A green banner held a silver snake, a blue banner held some sort of bird, a yellow one had something Naruto couldn't really see and finally a familiar red banner with a lion.

“I know that lion,” Naruto said. He tugged out his omamori and turned it to the badge he had pinned on it's back. “This.”

“What is that?” Sakura said as she came in for a closer look.

“It was nii-san's, from his school.” Naruto explained in a rush as he moved the red and gold lion badge so that it caught the light just right to gleam prettily. “The house of the brave.”

Sakura furrowed her brows as she stared at the badge. “It's on that banner.”

Naruto nodded. “So this place must be connected to nii-san.” He frowned. “Where is nii-san? Is he in danger?”

“We'll find him,” Sakura reassured him.

“But we don't even know...” Naruto eye's widened as he caught a glimpse of something bright out of one of the large windows. “We have to follow the deer,” Naruto ran to the window and pointed at the distant flash of white. “That's nii-san's protector. If he's out, then nii-san must be there.”

“Wait!” Sakura yelled.

Naruto crashed through the glass at full speed and reached for his chakra to land safely.

His chakra didn't respond.

AC_D7: Prompt Fill: Something With Kakashi

This came in through the ask box. "Something with Kakashi. I'll settle for anything with him interacting with Harry."

I was honestly tempted to just repeat Kakashi's name 500 times. I'm so used to not being able to write anything about Kakashi, that I don't even want to try to write something with him in it. 

But I tried.

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“Why am I coming if this is a team dinner?” Harry asked in confusion.

Naruto looked around with narrowed eyes and then leaned in to whisper. “We're down by one man because Sai is on a mission. So, I need your help during dinner.”

“Help?” Harry asked with concern.

Naruto nodded, the most serious look on his face, a look that Harry rarely ever saw. “You know how Kakashi-sensei wears a mask?”

“It's hard to miss,” Harry said.

“I need you to use your,” Naruto twiddled his fingers with a pointed look at Harry, “skills to help our plan to see what's under his mask.”

“What?” Harry asked in confusion.

“We've been trying to see what he's hiding under that mask for years. But he always manages to hide his secret even during meals. Somehow, something always happens just at the moment he is about to eat and we miss seeing it.”

“You miss seeing his face?” Harry asked, still quite confused.

“He cheats. Other people around us get to see his face but we don't. So he's only hiding his face from us, knowing that we want to know what's under the mask,” Naruto said, with a manic energy. “I'm sure he has large weird lips.”

“How are you sure about that if you haven't seen his face?”

“Why else would he hide his lips?”

“He hides a majority of his face,” Harry pointed out.

Naruto ignored that bout of logic and said, “With your help, we can finally defeat him.”

Before Harry could ask for clarification, they entered the ramen stand. Already seated on one of the stools, Sakura turned to them. “Ready?”

Naruto nodded and too a seat beside her. “We're going to see it today.”

“I heard something about free food?” Kakashi said, appearing out of nowhere. While the three of them recovered from his abrupt entrance, Kakashi took the empty seat beside Harry.

AC_D6: Deleted Scene 10- Sakura

Not number 9- because I'm still having issues with that one (Shikaku tends to be a problematic person to write sometimes).

This happens between chapter 15 and 16.
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A tap on her window pulled Sakura's focus away from her notes. Outside her dark window a large white owl hovered.

Sakura stumbled up from her desk and opened the window to allow the white owl inside her room.

“Did Harii-san send you?” Sakura asked the pristine white owl when it landed on her chair. “He didn't have to bother you about that. The more I think about it, the more I shouldn't have asked him. I was just so annoyed with work at the hospital and how I couldn't get access to the research samples that when I heard you helped them get venom, I just asked him and, Harii-san must think I'm very selfish.”

The owl looked at her with amber eyes, as though confused.

“You delivered venomous snakes to the Suna hospital, so I...” Sakura hesitated, unsure about her selfish request. After all, she wanted venom for her own research rather than making useful anti-venom. “Harii-san said that I should ask if you'd be willing to bring me any venomous snakes in Konoha. We don't have any saw-scaled vipers like Suna, but...”

The owl interrupted her with a loud hoot, and she swooped out of the window without a backward glance.

Feeling like a failure, Sakura swallowed down her disappointment because the owl wasn't obliged to help her, especially because Sakura was being selfish with her request. She was only glad that no one had been around to witness Sakura get rejected by an owl.

Rejection would always be a part of her life.

Sakura snorted at the dramatic thought and moved to close her window. If she had time to give in to dramatic thoughts, then she definitely had time to do some more reading.

As she placed her hand on the window, the owl swooped back in with a triumphant hoot. Sakura gaped. “Is that a saw-scaled viper?”

AC_D5: Alternate Job:Gardener (Part 2)

A continuation of this.

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Harry scribbled in the last of the information and closed the log with a sigh of relief. As he stretched out the kinks in his back, Harry marvelled at the darkening evening sky that shone through the greenhouse roof.

Though he was finished with his own work, Harry waited with bated breath. If the routine of the past few days held firm, the blonde girl, Ino would show up with a smug look of challenge as she gave him a bunch of time-consuming tasks to complete by the end of the day.

Her smug look always taunted him to just say no.

And because Harry didn't want to lose to her, he stayed in the greenhouse until the late hours of the night completing those inane tasks. He only made it back to his apartment to sleep for a few hours and sometimes have a quick mirror conversation, before returning back to work at the greenhouse. He hadn't had any time to search Konoha for any Uzumaki.

But today seemed different.

Maybe she had finally tired of her game and Harry was free to go home early.

With the cautious look around to make sure that she wasn't going to pop out and surprise him with more work, Harry made tentative plans for his free time as he cleaned his tools and work surface. After a final check of the greenhouse, making sure that all the windows and panels were secured, Harry locked the main door with genuine delight.

He had an entire free evening to himself.

Rushing past the other closed greenhouses with a new sense of joy, Harry caught a glimpse of long blonde hair in the corner of his vision. A glance showed a purple outfit, confirming Harry's suspicion. Ino was still around and by the looks of it, she was working in the only lit greenhouse.

Not wanting to lose his free evening, Harry slowed his footsteps and even used a spell to ensure that he wouldn't make a sound as he passed by her greenhouse.

Badly muffled sniffles from her greenhouse made Harry pause. He was tempted to walk away because this didn't concern him, but he could just imagine Hermione's disapproval.

AC_D4: Sound's Strange (Part 7)

Had some internet issues, so I'm going to do some major uploading catch up over the weekend (thank heavens it's the weekend!).

Anyway it's time to revisit my current fav AU of AtO. According to the rough outline I made for this, this AU could end up with at least 15 chapters (if I stick to that outline).

How did this happen? I just wanted to write some dumb dialogue.

Previous Chapters are here:  Part 1,  Part 2, Part 3,  Part 4, Part 5, Part 6
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Under the room's dim and buzzing light, the redhead, Karin, woke with a startled gasp. Glazed red eyes, that were as red as her hair, looked around as though searching for something before they sharpened as she looked right at him.

"Your glasses are..."

"How?" she demanded, a desperate undercurrent in her low voice. "How did they find you? There's no physical way that they'd know who you are. Did you tell them? You look clueless about what's going on here."

Stunned at the onslaught of words, it took Harry a moment to collect his thoughts and admit, "I am confused. What do you mean by who I am?"

"You don't know?" Karin frowned as she took her glasses from him. "You're an Uzumaki! You might not have the red hair or loads of chakra but your chakra has a strong Uzumaki feel to it."

"You can tell that I'm a Uzumaki?" Harry asked, lowering his voice even though there were spells around him for privacy.

"I can," Karin said. "And they probably suspected that I can tell with my sensing abilities. Why else would they isolate us in here?"

"Isolate?" Harry repeated in confusion.

"This room is blocking everything outside. I can't sense anything but the two of us in here. They want me to know exactly who you are and why we're locked in here together."

AC_D3: There's Something About Neji (First Date)

I got an ask for this in the blog's askbox (For the Advent Calendar, I would love to see more of Harry's interactions with Neji.)  

This isn't really a prompt fill because I was already going to put something up for this AU. So anon if you want to send in another prompt, feel free to do so. 

Anyway, this bit occurs after this part

The other parts of this AU are:Part 1, Part 2, Birthday Drabble

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“Take a seat,” Harry said, ushering his guest inside and shutting out the cool evening air. “I'll bring the food out.”

“You didn't have to cook,” Neji replied.

“Of course I did,” Harry said, glancing around to make sure everything was neat and tidy. “Have a seat.”

“We could have gone to a restaurant,” Neji said, even though he sat at the table.

Though thrilled at Neji's easy admission that they could go out together in public, Harry was glad that their first proper dinner was at home and away from prying eyes. When inevitably Harry embarrassed himself tonight, he didn't want any witnesses.

Bypassing the stacks of dirty utensils, Harry grabbed the soba that he'd made with a judicious amount of magical aid.

“How did you manage to get the herring for this?” Neji asked, his eyes fixed on Harry.

Harry shrugged, trying to stay calm under the stare and cursing himself for not downing a Calming Draught before. “I know people.”

“It smells good,” Neji said as he raised his chopsticks.

Though Harry had his own chopsticks in had, he didn't move. He couldn't even breath as Neji took his first taste of the soba.

After swallowing the first mouthful of noodles, Neji glanced at Harry with half-lidded eyes and he licked his lips.

AC_D2: Harry Nara (Part 2)

This is a continuation of this old prompt.

I did make a part 2 for it on this blog, but I omitted some bits because AtO hadn't reached the point where Naruto's secret is revealed.

So even though there's just a few new bits to this, I'm listing this as the actual Part 2 to the 'Harry Nara' AU.

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“Why do I have to know all this?” Harry asked for what felt like the millionth time that day.

“Because...”

“If you say that I am the clan head one more time, I will kick you,” Harry said with an annoyed hiss.

Shikaku blinked at him. “Not saying it out loud doesn't change that fact that you are indeed...”

“Don't,” Harry said and rubbed his forehead. “The paperwork hasn't come through. And hopefully won't. So I'm not really supposed to be knowing the clan's deepest and darkest secrets.”

“It's only a matter of time,” Shikaku said. “Our people in the tower will ensure that the paperwork reaches the correct desks.”

Harry groaned.

Shikaku seemed to feel some sympathy for him and said, “We could leave all the official items for another time.”

“Yes,” Harry perked up. “Instead let's play another game of shogi and fix this giant mistake.”

Shikaku shook his head, just as he had done the previous times that Harry had suggested it. “Once lost, the position cannot be won back.”

Harry sighed in annoyance. “Why are we in the forest?”

“There is a matter of some urgency to deal with,” Shikaku said as they stopped in front of a mound. “It seems that the Akatsuki fiend that Shikamaru trapped in here has been moving up slowly.”

After a long detailed explanation, Harry contemplated the issue for a long moment. “What were you planning to do? When you were the clan head?”

“Keep reburying him,” Shikaku said. “If he cannot be killed now, then imprisonment until we can really deal with him was our only option. Do you have any other ideas?”

Harry tilted his head with a sudden realization. If he messed this up, then surely he would lose his ridiculous position as the clan head. “Dig him up.”

AC_D1: That one BleachXHP Crossover...

... that I've been slowly adding to. From this small bit of writing, it's grown into a possibly complex plot that I hope to upload as an entire story eventually.

But for now, have a teaser coversation scene.

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“It's worth a few mountains,” Muramasa said.

“That's ridiculous,” Harry said.

“What would they waste so much money on a scarf?” Ron asked as the same time.

Muramasa just shrugged with a soft smile. “That's just the ways of nobility.”

“And I'm...” Harry couldn't bring himself to say it out loud.

Muramasa nodded with more pride than usual. “Your spiritual energy, your reiatsu, it has that familiar feel of Koga mixed in it. And there's a hint of the Kuchiki in you as well. You are his descendant.”

“You do have a thing for scarves,” Ron said as though finally understanding something important.

“I do not have a thing for scarves!”

“Only the head of the clan gets to wear the scarf.” Muramasa said.

Harry sighed in relief.

“But as a male member of the Kuchiki clan, you'd have to wear the Kenseikan.”

“The what?” Harry asked warily.

“The traditional hair ornaments.” Muramasa said.

Ron snorted, choked a little and then laughed uproariously. “Oh, that I would like to see. Harry's nest of a hair being tamed by little hair clips.”

“They're not... little hair clips, are they?” Harry asked Muramasa unsurely.

Muramasa shook his head. “They're quite manly.”

Harry sighed in relief.

“To some people.” Muramasa said with a wry smile.

Hermione, who had been pretending to read in silence the entire time, laughed.

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Starting out this year's Advent with something other than an AtO piece of writing?

What can I say?  I have a soft spot for Bleach, it somehow always pulls me back in to write something nonsensical for it.

Polar