Pragma

The next time he wakes, his mind catches up faster. It's still the hospital; the strong smell of antiseptic is a good indicator. 

Harry takes stock of his body. Nothing seems amiss, he isn’t even restrained. He feels normal and it takes him a second to figure out the wrongness of that. His previously throbbing side is pleasantly numb. The realisation has his heart beating harder against his chest.

He shifts his senses to the room. There are others with him. He can hear breathing, deep and rhythmic. A weight rests at the end of his bed, tilting the mattress down. Someone asleep?

Harry feigns unconsciousness, despite the uncomfortable itch to be anywhere but here. To just go. He’d do it the first chance he gets, he promises himself. The vivid memory of red eyes play in his mind. Red like his own. The others need me.

Something hits wood with a light thump. A shuffle comes from towards the window. Then a chipper greeting; a man's. Had this one entered through the window as well? 

“How’s our intruder?” The same voice drawls. 

Harry barely restrains himself from furrowing his brows. He isn’t an intruder. 

There's a scoff—a different person to his right. “As if you don't get your updates, you don't need me to tell you.” Heavy derision coats the voice. 

“Blunt as always, Sasuke. Doesn’t your old sensei deserve a heartfelt greeting? I hope you've not been treating your teammates like this too.” Harry didn't need to see the man to know his face would be the perfect picture of mock hurt. 

So they were student and teacher. At least at some point in time.

“Speaking off…what has he been up to?” The voice— Sasuke asks.

“Ah— I'd heard he'd been dozing anywhere he could sit. Don't worry, it's nothing he can't handle.” 

“I wasn't worr—”

“But I would've thought—hmm. Not my place to tell then. Let's just say... when Naruto can't solve a problem by punching someone and then giving a speech, he needs all the sleep he can get for his brain to work.” The man chuckles lightly at his own joke. But Harry can hear the fondness that curls around the words like a warm blanket.

Wood clatters further to his right. The door.

“Kakashi sensei! You made it; I thought you'd be too busy.” This voice he knows—it's the girl’s.

“I left a clone. And now that you're here-” 

Before he could pursue that odd comment, the air around him shifts. Harry jolts up and back, kicking with his legs. The abruptness of the motion strikes his head against the wall. Someone else yelps as Harry peers through watering eyes, massaging the back of his skull.  

There stands…the most bizarrely dressed man, who, hums, backing away and patting a scruffy, bright blonde head at the end of the-

Oh. The sleeping one. 

“Good senses. But you're too stiff; gave yourself away.”

“You’re awake!” The boy, Naruto, shouts, shaking away the man's hand. 

Harry just stares.

~

Naruto was waiting for him at the gates, and the hassle he'd been imagining he would have to go through became obsolete with the saviour of the world accompanying him.

Naruto doesn't chatter idly after his enthusiastic greeting and “I’ll take you. Sakura-chan told me the room number.” He's grateful for it.

The minute he locks eyes with the imagined imposter, the hope he'd been trying to squash takes root like an unbudgeable weed. 

He waits impatiently as Sakura fixes the boy's—he couldn't be anything else—stitches. It's not a deep cut. Just long, extending from the middle of his torso to his side. “I tried healing it with chakra, but..." Sakura frowns and squints down at her hands. There are dark circles under her eyes. “For some reason, it doesn't work on him.” She cuts away the string with a bit of manipulated chakra.

“Yes,” she says to his raised eyebrows and Naruto's muffled sound of inquisition. He'd dragged a chair to the end of the bed and sat on it, supporting his forearms. 

“His body rejected it. I haven't seen anything like it before.” She cleans off the blood with practised fingers, applies ointment. Sasuke holds the boy up to help her re-wrap clean bandages. She recounts the events after the boy had woken—at least what she’d witnessed of it. ANBU Bat, who’d been unfreezed with a burst of Naruto's chakra, had filled in the rest. 

By the time Sakura leaves citing unfinished work, Naruto’s in a light doze at the end of the bed.

When he wakes, the boy makes a pathetic show of feigning sleep. Sasuke thinks even the idiot could’ve done a better job, and he’s of the opinion that Naruto shouldn’t ever be sent on undercover work.

Sasuke waits.

The boy's eyes are green. 

He'd never seen Uchiha with green eyes. They'd always been black. Every last one of them with the Sharingan had black eyes. And this possible imposter did. Sasuke had seen it in that first glimpse. Even clouded with panic and hidden under messy black hair, it had been unmistakable. And the fact that they could be switched. It meant they weren't implanted as Sasuke had imagined. 

His other features—he could fit in with the Uchiha based on features. Black hair, pale skin, lanky frame. Then again, Sai too could fit in like that. Sasuke couldn't rely on appearances. 

It is probably the lack of clear danger that makes the boy keep his eyes normal now. But he still looks wary, peering at them all. If Sasuke had his way, there’d be Kusanagi by the boy’s throat and answers on his lips. 

Unfortunately for him, there are people here who wouldn’t approve. Most prominently, Naruto who is happily introducing them all to a complete stranger.

The boy’s eyes flicker from one person to the next. He doesn’t miss that they linger on him the most. 

“I’m Harry. Uh.. Potter Harry, I guess. How did I get here?”

Sasuke had never heard of such a peculiar name. But despite the way the boy peers at each of them afterwards, searching, Sasuke can’t sense any falsehood.

He flexes his fingers on the bedspread. Right hand. Sasuke has an idea what he was missing. 

“We were hoping you could tell us, actually, how you came by your eyes as well.” Kakashi says. He’s slouched against Naruto’s chair. “Naruto here found you in what was once the Uchiha district.”

The boy swallows. “Uchi— Uchiha as in—” he casts a quick glance at Sasuke. 

“Yes, exactly. We believed him to be the last of his clan— last to own the Sharingan. You realise why we might want a clear explanation?” 

“Sharingan? I don't—”

“Do not lie. Naruto saw when he found you. Sakura saw when you were fighting—” Sasuke takes a step forward, visible eye whorling to red— “I saw when I entered.”

The boy clenches both of his hands together. He lowers his head.

“If you're talking about my eyes, they just appeared one day. I can't control them. Rem— a friend says my dad had them.”

And then he shakes his head, as if to throw off unwanted thoughts. Wrapping an arm around himself, he struggles away from the pillows.

“Eh, what are you doing? You'll open your stitches, and then Sakura’ll have to patch you up again.”

The boy bats Naruto’s hands away.

“I need to go. I need my stuff—” he takes glasses from the bedside table, pops them on his face— “take me where you found me or tell me where I am; I'll find the way myself—”

“You can't go! You're injured!” Naruto blocks his way, arms raised.

“He's right. I've just stitched you up.”

 Lips pressed together the boy turns, flinging open the drawer of the bedside table. He rummages through it, jerkily.

“Exactly! You don't understand. If I'm like this, then the others—I need to go.” Throwing his hands up, he swivels back towards Naruto. “Where—”

Naruto and Sakura barely avoid getting skewered as Sasuke levels Kusanagi against the boy's throat. Damn approval. He ignores both of their indignant shouts.

Blood-red eyes glare up at Sasuke. “Who are you, people?” 

“If you don't even know that much, how do you plan on getting anywhere? This is Konoha.” The boy's eyes only show confusion, confirming his suspicion. “You haven't heard of it. What about Fire Country?”

The boy shakes his head rigidly, nicking himself on Kusanagi’s edge. 

“You're pulling my leg. There's no place called that.” He licks his lips, looking at all of them in turn. Then, with a face as grave as a man ruled for execution, he asks, “Have you heard of London, then, the U.K?”

Silence fills the room. 

The blood drains from the boy's face, leaving him pale as a sheet.