It took several days for Kreacher to come back with Mundungus.  It was during lunch that he arrived, pulling the latter with some invisible power.  “Master!  Kreacher has that nasty Mundungus.”  Evidently the house elf was very proud of himself for bringing the man back.
     “I didn’t do nothing!” Mundungus insisted to the teens.
     “He’s under influence,” Neji said in disgust.  It was a bit obvious.  The man had bloodshot eyes and was wobbling a little.  Harry forced him into a chair and Naruto forced a kunai against his throat.
     “Just in case he decides to bolt,” Naruto told them.
     “Now, we can either be nice and you’ll tell us what we want, or we can be mean and go to measures we’d rather not take.  Which do you want?” Harry asked Mundungus, sitting in a chair and taking a drink of his pumpkin juice.
     “What do you want to know?” Mundungus asked right away, looking up at Naruto’s angered face in a frightened way.
     “You took a locket from this house,” Harry stated.
     “Yes, but Sirius never wanted it, he never wanted any of this stuff,” the older man complained to them.  The kunai at his throat pushed against it, and he fell silent before saying more.
     “What happened to it?”
     “I sold it.”
     “What?!” they screeched.  Dung’s eyes widened in the fear that they’d attack him now.
     “What did this person look like?” Hermione demanded.
     “It was a short, squat lady with a wide mouth and a really bad sense of style,” Dung answered immediately.
     Harry, Ron, and Hermione exchanged glances.  That sounded sort of familiar…
     “She sort of looked like a toad,” Mundungus told them.
     “Professor Umbridge!” Hermione screeched loudly.
     “Thank you Mundungus, you’re free to leave.  Kreacher, make sure that he doesn’t take anything on his way out,” Harry ordered.  Kreacher gladly yanked the man out and disappeared.
     Hermione turned to them.  “I don’t know Harry, I don’t like the thought of going into the Ministry.”
     “And we can’t just accio it… too bad,” Ron sighed.
     “What’s wrong with the Ministry?” Sakura asked.
     “The Order thinks that Voldemort has taken over the Ministry.  There’ll be Death Eaters everywhere, undercover,” Harry explained.
     “Don’t worry about it.  We’re shinobi, remember?  We can cast a genjutsu to protect our identities.” Kiba had a point.
     “The problem is, we don’t want to look like someone who shouldn’t be there,” Hermione told them quietly.
     “Can we discuss this after lunch?” Temari demanded.  “You won’t eat anything if you get too excited.”  She knew the shinobi all too well, and if the trio was anything like them, well, she knew them all too well just the same.
     They quieted and hurried through lunch.  Once everyone was done, they started up again.  “So, who’s a good scout out of all of you?” Harry asked the ninja.  Kiba’s hand shot up.
     “Akamaru and I are usually scouts when Shino’s not there, and I know Neji’d be good too.”
     “All right, any other suggestions?” Harry’s eyes swept around the shinobi.
     “A lot of us aren’t meant for scouting missions,” Temari pointed out.
     “Well, Kiba and Neji can’t be the only ones,” Hermione insisted.
     “Naruto!” Sakura said suddenly.  “He can go.  He has his shadow clones scout all the time.  That’s how he-“ she broke off suddenly and clutched her chest.  Her heart had made that feeling again.  The feeling of breaking.  She gulped a bit and continued, “how he found Sasuke and Itachi.”
     Everyone had noticed Sakura clutch her chest, but had decided not to tell her.  She’d probably never shown that small piece of pain to anyone before.  Sakura was pretty strong to never let on how her heart was breaking.  “Okay, so basically Harry and his guards can go,” Ron said, summing it all up.
     “Should we go now?” Harry asked.
     “No!” Hermione insisted with surprising force.  They stared at her.  She turned red, but pressed on.  “You have no supplies or anything like that.  We were kind of caught off guard.”
     “Then we’ll go tomorrow morning,” Harry said confidently.  Temari noticed Sakura’s face falling.
     “Don’t do anything reckless,” she reminded them.  “We’d appreciate it if none of you died.”
     Naruto grinned and shook his head.  “It’s a scouting mission.  We’re not going to die!”  Once more he grinned.  “This is so exciting, I guess it was worth it to get this mission.”
     “Naruto, you know that we wouldn’t have been given this mission if we weren’t their age,” Sakura painfully reminded him.
     “Why?” Hermione asked.
     “Some of us are only Chuunin.  Neji, Temari, myself, and the adults that came with us are the only ones that are Jounin,” Sakura explained.  “This is a high-ranked mission, the Chuunins shouldn’t be on it.”
     “I don’t understand.  Why are they then?” Harry asked.
     “Because we are your age.  Some of us are on the verge of becoming Jounin, but that doesn’t matter.  We must still be given the missions appropriate for our rank,” Lee explained to him.
     “I’d be Jounin by now you know,” Naruto pointed out.
     Sakura’s mouth trembled.  “No, Naruto, you wouldn’t.  The Council was reluctant enough to let you be Chuunin, Jounin’d be so much worse.”
     Naruto’s face dropped.  It was true that the Council didn’t like him, and that they were reluctant to let him leave the village at all.  Tsunade must not have told them about his being on the current mission.
     Harry decided to change the topic.  “We need to figure out what we’ll do there.  Where are we going to find Umbridge?  How will we retrieve the Horcrux?  What kind of security does the Ministry have?  These are things we’ll need to find out.”
     “We’ll split up.  Naruto with his shadow clones, Harry-san and myself, and Kiba and Akamaru,” said Neji.  “Harry-san and I will figure out the security, Naruto will figure out what this Umbridge does, and Kiba will figure out how to retrieve the Horcrux once he finds it.”
     “Good, we know what we’re doing now,” Naruto said, excited.
     “Naruto, could I speak to you for a minute?” Sakura asked.
     “Sure!” he answered, and followed her out of the kitchen.
     “Naruto, please, be careful.  I don’t want to lose you too.”
     “If you’re talking about that idiot Sasuke-” he began, but she cut him off.
     “Naruto, don’t you dare talk about him that way!  I love him!  Even if he did leave me… these things I’ve been experiencing, I know they’ve happened.  And he told me he cared about me!”  Her fierce belief in Sasuke’s words astonished Naruto.
     “Okay… I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.  But I’ll be careful, I promise.”
     “Watch out for the Akatsuki.”
     “I know.  You stay careful here too.”
     “I know.  I’m scared.”
     “We all are.”
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