December, 1981...

"I'm going to ask you one last time, and then I'm going to get nasty. Your eyes will be next, I think. Then maybe your balls."

Several months ago, Troy, currently tied up in a chair in the bedroom of his small mansion, had been a Death Eater, primarly one of Voldemort's intelligence operatives. After the public announcement of the Dark Lord's defeat, he and several others who had operated in various crucial positions in Voldemort's hierarchy had simply faded away into the background, and were never caught, or even suspected of being Death Eaters. They were not public figures, such as Lucius Malfoy, or Bellatrix Lestrange. One had slipped gold to the Ministry and was relatively clean, and the other was currently enjoying sunny Azkaban and giving away pieces of her mind, one happy thought at a time.

But back to his current predicament. Ten minutes ago, the wards had alerted Troy to a minute breach, and he had gotten out of bed to check the disturbance. When he had gotten to the first floor, he had been ambushed by an intruder. He had managed to land one spell, a fairly powerful bludgeoning hex, but the man had seemingly shrugged it off like it was nothing. A quick blow to the head, and he woke up bound to a chair in his bedroom, with two of his fingers broken to start with, and someone asking him where Harry Potter was.

That had certainly been surprising. The fact that he had been working with some boys from the old crowd to determine where that fool Dumbledore had stashed the boy wonder was supposed to be a secret. Only five people had been in on this little side project. It was supposed to be simple. Find out where Dumbledore had dumped Potter, go to the location, and level it, killing Potter and anyone else with him. They had finally dismissed Dumbledore placing Potter with a Wizarding family six weeks ago. The evidence didn't point to it. Then someone had come up with the bright idea to check around with the Muggles.

That had been a good idea. Lily Potter had been a muggleborn, and supposedly had muggle relations that were still alive. For a mudblood, she had been a strong one, a wicked Charms Mistress, along with James Potter, who had been brutal when it came to Battle Transfiguration.

But even the best could not stand up to Lord Voldemort, the Heir of Slytherin. They had been cut down. But then the impossible happened. The Dark Lord had turned his wand on the last Potter and fired the Avada Kedavra, it had somehow been turned back, and the Dark Lord had seemingly been destroyed.

This anomaly could not stand. Lord Voldemort, vanquished and his slayer left to grow and prosper? No sir. So the Dark Lord's most faithful had set themselves to this task, to find and kill Potter, to honor their fallen liege.

But then he had been told by his captor that he was the last one alive pursuing this little endeavour. The rest had been eliminated. He was now being tortured, quite severely, for whatever vital information he had.

The man seemingly grew impatient. He slid out a large, brutal looking knife from a sheath and slammed it into Troy's right kneecap, piercing it straight through. The screams were quite loud. Too bad the mansion was fairly isolated. No one heard his pleas for help.

"S-Sweet Merlin! I'll talk! Anything, anything you want! It hurts...!"

The man spoke again, his voice sounded dry and aged, but deep. It spoke of a man who had no mercy for his enemies, and very little for anyone else in general.

"Then sing for me. Where is Harry Potter?"

"The safe, behind that painting on the far wall. All the information is there."

"Very good." The man tweaked the knife a little, causing pain to ripple throughout the former Death Eater's lower extremities. He then walked over to the far wall and pulled off a painting from the wall. The fact that the painting was a priceless antique seemed to mean nothing to him. He destroyed it almost casually. There was a small wall safe. With a grunt of effort and the slight tearing of metal, the door to the safe came off and was tossed into a corner. Some shufflling of papers, and...

"Jackpot." The man browsed through the papers, his black facemask crinking and moving as the face beneath it went through a variety of expressions. "Hmmm. Little Whinging, Surrey, England. Privet Drive, Number 4. Petunia Durseley, nee Evans. Very good. I'll have to pay a visit."

The man then turned to look at Troy. "I must thank you. The last piece of the puzzle, now solved. But I'm afraid it's the end for you, Sir Troy."

"What?! Why? I told you what you wanted to know!"

"Yes, you did. And your reward for that will be a clean death. That is the best I can give you. You would have never been able to walk normally again, not after what I did to your leg. And besides, you are a Death Eater. Letting you live would be too much trouble, and I can't be bothered. Besides, you and your friends were planning to hurt young Harry, and I can't have that. That won't do at all."

"Wait! Please...I have money. Gold...jewels. Here in this house! It's all yours. Just don't kill me."

"No deal. I have enough money." And with that, the man pulled a blade out of a scabbard on his back. It was a katana. The blade was razor sharp, clean. Gleaming in the moonlight. The hilt was worn, speaking of much use and much blood spilled. With a single sharp movement, Troy was decapitated, his head rolling onto the carpet, an expression of terror etched onto his face. His body began slightly jerking, and the body and chair he had been tied to tipped over. The blood from the stump spurted out, staining the carpet.

The man walked out of the main bedroom and quickly made his way to the front door, before heading outside. The property the mansion had sat on was small. The wards were strong, but if you knew how to approach them properly, they weren't really a challenge. The man took off his mask and stowed it, before taking out a cigarette and lighting it, while walking to the ward line.

A deep growl echoed through the man's subconscious. "These things will kill you, kit."

The man turned his face upwards, his face illuminated by the moonlight. He was tall, a little over six feet. His face held very little signs of age, but his eyes, a faded blue, seemed ancient. They spoke of the desire for better times, and a general indifference to the world. The two most noticable features this man posessed was wild, spiky hair, a vibrant blonde that had gone silver-gray decades ago. The second were six marks, three adorning each cheek symetrically. They almost looked like whiskers, and did not seem out of place on the man's weathered face.

The man spoke vocally. No one was around. "Haven't you heard? I'm dying, baka fox. Otherwise we wouldn't be doing this."

"Enough wallowing in your self misery, mortal. You have some time yet. Enough to do what you must. Besides, my powers have given you a life beyond measure. But all things must come to an end. Even you. Now enough dawdling!"

What a slavedriver..." The man mumbled. He turned around and looked back at the house. Several quick movements with his hands and some mumbled words, and the mansion was consumed by fire. It took only seconds for the entire place to go up in a violent, blazing conflaguration. The structure quickly collapsed in on itself.

With this final act, the man turned away, vanishing in a swirl of leaves.

Fucking suburbs...all alike.

No sense of character or real human feeling in any of them.

This, more than anything else, convinced Uzumaki Naruto that he was doing the right thng. Any whelp powerful enough to turn away the Deathcurse needed careful handling, not being stuck in the sticks, a suburban wasteland.

Contary to popular belief, turning back the Deathcurse was not impossible, but the amount of power required was quite astronomical. Having had prior experiences with wizards in a combat setting, Naruto was living proof. If your will to live could defeat your attacker's will to kill you, the Deathcurse had no power over you. It required a rather...extreme force of effort, something Naruto posessed in abundance.

Perhaps it was also the fact that he housed the greatest of the Tailed Demon Beasts within him. That probably helped as well. Human magics rarely worked on demons to great effect. The fact that Kyubbi had been able to nearly level Konoha alone was a testament to that. Outside help had been needed to attain victory, in the form of the Shinigami, the Death God.

Naruto shook his head, clearing the cobwebs. Konoha was a long time ago, dust in the wind. No one currently alive remembered true shinobi. Whether that was a positive or a negative, Naruto truly didn't know.

Here it was. Privet Drive. By Kami. Naruto could not emphasize how much he hated the place.

Number 2...3...4. The place. This was it.

A deep rumble stilled his feet. "There is a...heaviness surrounding the house, kit. It smells of blood. Step carefully."

The fox was cruel. And petty. He hungered greatly for battle and bloodshed. But his instincts were never wrong. Naruto's body had long ago been enhanced to superhuman levels due to the fox's influence. This also allowed Kyubbi direct access to his senses. The fox's recognition of danger and natural paranoia had saved his ass more than once.

More than a dozen times, actually.

A heaviness. What the fox meant by this was that it sensed magical wards. The blood? Blood magic was a part of this. The fox was always quick to recognize things like that.

It really didn't matter. Foward momentum. Naruto's skills rivaled or surpassed those of any wizard or witch alive. Without wands, many of them were like sheep. What a joke.

Looking at his watch, it was a little after 1AM.

A skill Naruto had picked up fairly quickly in his long life was lockpicking. The front door lock was beaten in less than thirty seconds, and the door swung open.

Gaudy furniture, everywhere. The house looked painfully...neat. No real personality. Looking at some of the pictures on the walls, they displayed a fat, pasty man with a bad comb-over and mustache. Clutched close to him was a tall, horse-faced woman. She may have once been pretty, in a way, but that was long since gone. There was a severe pinched look to her face. She looked...ruined.

What a shame.

On a couple of the pictures, the man and woman were holding what appeared to be a very fat toddler, or a freakishly large grub. That much fat on a three year old wasn't natural.

Enough dawdling, as the fox would say. Naruto extended his senses, searching. It was quite a bit like the muggle radar. A brief chakra echo that locked onto a nearby chakra signature. It was great for finding people. Unless you knew how to properly supress your energy emissions, it got you every time.

Here was something. There was quite a strong source, very close. The strange thing was that it wasn't a constant output of energy. It was chaotic. It flared briefly, then came down severely, then spiked, then locked down, then started over again. Where was this coming from?

Very close. Naruto walked towards the stairs. There was a small cupboard built into the stairs. It was secured with a strong lock. What he was looking for was behind here. The lock was torn off and the small door was slowly opened. Lying in a basket in the darkness was a baby, wrapped in a ratty blanket, alone.

Naruto gritted his teeth and his eyes became points, cold chips of ice. Nothing really changed. People never truly became better as time went on. A cupboard. Things like that brought back bad memories.

A village, hidden in leaves. A boy, struggling to make his way. Hatred in every eye, a curse on every lip. Cuts and bruises fading away in seconds, as if by magic. But it wasn't. It has an alien strength, locked inside him...

"DEMON!"

"Monster!"

"Freak!"

He had been so small as a child because ramen had been the only thing the shopkeepers would deign to sell to him. That and that fucking orange nightmare that made him a walking target.

Naruto picked the boy up. So thin. Several ribs were already showiing. The boy was dancing the fine line between hunger and starvation. Holding the boy close, he silently walked outside of the house.

The ward line extended about fifty feet from the property. Naruto could sense the heaviness dissapate. Things were clear again. He looked at the child. Medical jutsus weren't his forte, but he knew more than a few. Tsunade had been the best, and he had picked up more than a few tricks from her. He also had scrolls at home.

Young Harry Potter had been subjected to a severe block on his powers. Naruto was vaguely familiar with them. Chakra blocking jutsus had been used on prisoners of Konoha, in the past. What did the wizards call it again? His...magical core. That was it. There was a lock that was directly anchored to the boy's core, but his power levels were actively resisting, so the block was slightly erratic and spiked intermittently, using more of the boy's energy to lock his core down. It was either ingenious, or terribly cruel. Perhaps both.

This...could be a problem.

The boy would have to become powerful enough to break the blocks himself. The next few years would be...unpleasant for Harry Potter, as Naruto would have to come up with some method of working around the block and making him strong enough to break it.

But that was the future. In the present, a great wrong had to be addressed.

Doing seals one handed took slightly longer, but his other arm was occupied. Forming the last seal, Naruto used a Doton jutsu. It would be for the best if it was thought some kind of freak natural disaster claimed Number 4, Privet Drive. A great sinkhole, more than sixty feet around, opened up, and the Dursley home fell in, collapsing in on itself. There was the unexpected bonus of an explosion erupting, from ruptured gas lines, Naruto presumed. The explosion was sharp and loud, and swept through the house. Fire shot up nearly two hundred feet into the air, and Number 4 and all those in it were ash on the wind.

Three more lives ended tonight. Naruto didn't feel a thing, one way or the other about it. Why should he? He was a warrior, and had claimed the lives or hundreds, thousands of people over the years. After a while, taking lives moved from a deliberate action to reaction, instinct. In the end, it really didn't matter. He was alive, and all of his various enemies were dead.

Time enough for regrets and 'if onlys' and guilt in the grave.

He walked briskly down the street, which was lit up by the fires of the explosion and from various lights being turned on in surrounding houses. People screaming and hollering reached his ears. What noise.

Harry Potter shifted and curled slightly in Naruto's arms. A cry was on his lips, before he was stilled by a sleep jutsu.

"We'll make a fighter out of you yet, boy. Believe it." Naruto chuckled and dissapeared in a swish of leaves and wind.

A/N: Well, here's the first chapter. I have high expectations for this story, but I'd like some reviews before I continue. This is a Naruto/Harry Potter crossover. I thought I'd try my hand at one, seeing as they're so popular. For anyone who's curious, they both exist in the same universe. As the story progesses, I will explain myself and delve further into this.

Please review!