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Harry takes his seat at the Gryffindor table, groans, and prepares to stuff himself with food. He's only just left the infirmary and has rightly concluded that the first day of his third year at Hogwarts has gone to absolute shit.
"Psst, Harry."
He was honestly having a good time, but his hands still shake a little, and he's still distracted by the echoes of the woman's screams in his ears like a broken record.
"Harry. Hey, Harry."
In the past year alone, Harry slew a gigantic snake with a magic sword and exorcised the ghost of a book without breaking a sweat. Yet, he still can't stop thinking about the dementors. Maybe, he wonders, it's because of puberty.
"Harry! Hello?"
The-Boy-Who-Just-Wants-To-Fucking-Eat puts his head in his hands, exhales twice, and turns to the right with a hangry death glare.
"Ron, I'm sure you have something riveting to say but I really just want to eat my-."
"Nevermind that, Harry. Check out the head table." Ron interrupts smoothly, and if it were not for the earnest look in the ginger's eyes, Harry probably would have made him eat his fist.
With a mournful glance to his plate, Harry turns to look and – and there's an empty seat at the head table, which never happens lest a teacher wants to face the wrath of Professor McGonagall. The last time one of them did, Professor Sprout's Mandrakes wouldn't stop screeching for a week, even after they buried them.
"Hang on. That can't be right," Hermione squints as she counts. "All our professors are there, even for the electives."
"How come you know every professor?" Ron says while Harry nods with his mouth crammed around a sandwich.
"If you must know-," Hermione sniffs at the same time Dumbledore rises from his seat, and the Great Hall quiets.
"And on another note, I am pleased to announce a new subject added onto our curriculum along with a new member of our staff," Dumbledore speaks without missing a beat. Unperturbed by the fact every eye in the Hall has shifted to the empty seat he is ignoring. "Please welcome, the Professor of Mysteries at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry-."
The grand doors of the Hall burst open, and a thunderous boom reverberates throughout the room as multiple streaks of white-hot lightning race across the ceiling (Someone chokes on their sandwich). When the flashes die down, a man with silver hair stands at the entrance, and Dumbledore smiles.
"Kakashi Hatake."
After Ron and Hermione dislodge the last bits of bread from his throat, Harry turns to get a good look at Professor Hatake. Admittedly, not a lot is visible in the first place. What with the pitch-black robes, head bandana and a mask? Namely, just some (gravity-defying!) silver hair and an exposed lone eye. Professor Hatake barely seems to notice all the attention directed to him, not even expressing an inkling of embarrassment at his dramatic entrance. Everything with his demeanour radiates... extreme boredom.
In one moment, the professor is slouching without a care in the world. In the next, he is collapsed in the previously empty seat. Dumbledore continues his speech as if nothing strange even happened. Something in Harry thinks his trainwreck of a day has turned out a little more interesting.
Kakashi has spent two minutes around the rest of the Hogwarts body, and he already wishes he could go somewhere far, far away. When he arrived at the introductory dinner, he was not expecting an audience of... not much, if he was honest. Really anything but the hundreds of loud, snotty teenagers - all of them staring at him as if they were fresh genin he had just expelled.
At this thought, Kakashi pouts. A condition of his teaching position is that he has no expulsion power. Meaning he has no sure-fire way to weed out the less appreciative students. Apparently, Hogwarts is meant to be a "respectable institution" with "esteemed academic integrity". Kakashi just laments the injustice of having to deal with bratty civilian children and extra paperwork.
"Evening. Hatake, was it?" Someone on his left says. Kakashi does not miss how every other professor unsubtly glances at him. The speaker, an older witch with a sharpness in her eyes that Kakashi has only seen in people like Tsunade, coolly stares at him. He even unconsciously sits a little straighter in his seat under that gaze. "Might I inquire the reason to your tardiness?"
"Oh, I was walking to the Hall after I had a nap, until a black cat crossed my path. So, I had to go the long way," Kakashi says, completely ignoring how every other staff member is blatantly eyeing him. "They're omens of bad luck you see, and I didn't want to risk being late on my first day."
Kakashi punctuates his statement with an eye-smile, and now everyone is staring incredulously at him. A severe-looking man with a hooked nose scoffs and glares at him.
"Late?" He drawls and – hang on. If Kakashi scrutinises him a little, the man sort of looks like a more constipated Sasuke, and that's a tricky thing to achieve. "I would hardly call being half an hour late, early."
Wow, he even speaks like his old student.
"Hm?" Kakashi murmurs thoughtfully. "I only just got here a few hours ago."
"A few hours ago?" The man's eyebrow arched, and he looks more assessing than curious. "But you weren't on the Hogwarts Express when it arrived."
"Ahh," Kakashi intones and rubs the back of his head. "That's because I walked here."
"You what."
"Now, now Severus," The first witch cuts in as she stops scrutinising Kakashi to address the man. "Hatake is a new professor here."
"McGonagall, I think that is hardly an excuse when-"
"I believe it is, Snape, the castle is quite large and easy to get lost in. And it wouldn't hurt to be polite," McGonagall stares Snape down, and the others observe the standoff. Snape cracks first, huffing and glaring down at his plate (a tomato dish, Kakashi notes thoughtfully). "I apologise on behalf of our fellow professor, Hatake but-."
McGonagall goes bug-eyed when she turns to Kakashi, and the other professors that notice this, do as well. Fair, considering that in the second that everyone had been distracted, Kakashi had wolfed down his entire dinner. Not even needing a genjutsu to conceal his face without anyone noticing him taking off the mask. It does make him a little uncomfortable, and Kakashi wonders if he should hide behind his beloved Icha Icha.
"What in the blimmin' feck jus' happened," The half-giant man voices everyone’s thoughts aloud.
Dumbledore takes his seat then, slotting neatly into the collective. He nods good-naturedly at Kakashi and acts as if his entire staff had not just lost their collective shit at the new addition.
Being the rebellious teenager he is, Harry thought that people his age did not need adult supervision when left to their own devices. (It's not like the past two years are his fault or anything).
Contrarily, Seamus Finnigan decks Ron in the face, screaming at the top of his lungs how "the Chudley Cannons can't aim for shit, you daft bastard". Behind them, the rest of the Mysteries class is in total disarray.
Harry realises that he is definitely very wrong.
“It’s only been ten minutes,” Harry whispers to himself. “And it’s already a madhouse.”
"Of course, it would turn into one, Harry." Hermione, the only one not paying any mind to the clamour, says without losing focus as she turns the page of her textbook. "It's what I keep telling you."
Before Harry can retort, a black, diamond-shaped object hurtles past his head and almost shaves off half of his hair. The gasp he draws halts the absolute chaos of the class, and they all follow his gaze to the back of the room. A dagger by its looks, the object is embedded up to hilt precisely in the centre of Malfoy's drawing of Harry fainting, pinning it to the wall.
"Maa, good morning…." An accented voice intones from the front, and every head turns to gape at the previously missing Professor Hatake. Who is standing upside- upside down from the ceiling? How is his cloak not even falling? The professor holds a bright orange book in his hand and seems totally unbothered, as if his classroom is not the scene of a warzone. His sole eye forms an upside-down U shape. "Sorry I'm late. I'm afraid I got lost on the road of life."
Professor Hatake flips (actually flips!) gracefully into his desk seat at the front and just… stares at them. The professor taps his chin thoughtfully for a moment, his eye not betraying a single emotion.
“Based on my first impression, I’d have to say….” Professor Hatake begins, and the class leans forward in their places in anticipation. “…That I don’t like you at all.”
And then the classroom explodes.
Professor Hatake excuses only Hermione from the punishment of cleaning up the classroom without magic, apparently, for being a “good little genin” (whatever that means). As Harry scrubs more of the soot, he watches the professor summon Goyle’s wand that he had been sneaking to use without even looking up from his book. This year, Harry surmises, will definitely be something. What kind of something, he is not sure he wants to know.