Author's Note: To those about to read this, I warn that this is a side fic of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" and if you haven't read that you'll be dreadfully confused, and also this is obviously NOT CANON.
Hogwarts, 1997
Lee's first thought, if this counted as a thought at all, was that her head hurt and that this was somewhat surprising. Surprising, mostly, because Lee didn't remember having hit her head at any point, been stabbed through the ribs by plant zombies in the dead of night, sure, but got her head bashed in with a rock, now that wasn't ringing any bells.
She'd also, at some point, lost her shoes, which was a tad inconvenient and also rather surprising. She was pretty sure she'd been wearing shoes before all of this.
Her ribs, unsurprisingly, had that tender stabbing pain that came with having recently been… well, stabbed. Looking down she was, again, rather unsurprised to find that she was still bleeding, a lot, a worrying amount in fact.
Her second thought was that she was no longer in a dark forest at the edge of the land of fire, or standing up to her thighs in a river, but instead seemed to be in a dark stone cavern, a place that looked like it had been forgotten for centuries, the face of a man carved into one of the walls, his stone eyes accusing in the light that Lily cast as she staggered to her bare feet.
The walls began to drip and spin away from her, the floor tilting sideways at a dangerous degree, Lee immediately sat back down onto the stone floor.
Well, it seemed best to summarize the events that had happened thus far.
First, Lee had just been shanked by plant zombies for the second time in her life. Also, glancing down at her ribs, this time it looked particularly nasty and somehow, she doubted any Konoha friendly medic nin was immediately on hand.
Second, as there didn't seem to be any Konoha friendly medic nin immediately available and Lee was pretty sure she was in the process of bleeding out, she had best start solving her own medical problems as soon as possible. Lee promptly took off her dark jacket, leaving a white stained undershirt, and began to tear her own clothing into strips of bandages.
She really had liked that jacket but with the walls spinning and blood leaving at an alarming rate she wasn't going to chance it with absurdly overpowered ninjutsu at the moment. Jiraiya-sensei would be thrilled.
Third, she'd somehow wound up in this place after, yes, she'd tried to teleport away from her attacker, only she must have misjudged and ended up god only knew where. Except that she had the distinct feeling that it was a fair bit aways from Minato, Dead Last, Jiraiya-sensei, the nidaime, or anything familiar.
Fourth, she was in no condition to teleport, had been in no condition to teleport, teleporting had probably made her wound that much worse. Which meant that, for at least a day or so, she was stuck in… Wherever the hell she was.
"Well then," Lee said, breathing out as she lay back and surveyed the rather uninteresting ceiling of her mysterious cave, "What to do…"
She could hang out here for a day or so, of course, Jiraiya-sensei would probably kill her if he didn't hear from her soon, and if there was a chance that she was in the Land of Fire or close by or something then she'd better start hauling ass back to team seven plus the nidaime.
Also, that seemed boring, and the still-water was positively covered in algae, and the place had that creepy feeling that it had overseen the death of thousands and would oversee the death of thousands of more.
Then Lee turned her head, "Holy shit."
Behind her, and god only knew how she hadn't noticed this, was a giant dead snake. Giant, actually, was the wrong word, giant snake was Manda sized, this giant snake could eat Manda and all of his snake summons friends for breakfast and then cry out and demand even more sacrifices to appease his thirst for the blood of virgins. In other words, it was the god of giant terrifying snakes.
"Snakes," Lee said to herself with all the passion and dread that Jones Indiana had once said it, "Why does it always have to be snakes?"
Snakey McSnake also had no eyes and looked like he had been dead for years, slaughtered in some glorious battle in ages past, that apparently had involved a blade being stuck into the roof of its mouth until it violently bled out.
"I feel like this might be a metaphor for something," Lee said to herself, because it seemed like it should be a worrying sign that she was empathizing with a giant snake carcass. Still, she was vaguely wondering if it had met its end via treacherous plant zombies too.
Just when you think you can trust a plant it goes and stabs you to death in your mouth.
With the ominous sign of giant dead snakes and creepy stone faces Lee thought she'd take her chances with not being in the cave. With that she began walking out towards what looked vaguely like an exit, or entrance, which was conveniently in the opposite direction of the giant snake. Unfortunately, it was in the direction of the snake's shed skin, and not much else.
Looking up, there appeared to be something like a long carved vertical tunnel that had a dead end, sort of like the entrance to a sewer but covered by a giant manhole cover. Well, you know, if she was in the sewers from hell.
Still, getting up there seemed like it'd take a significant amount of moving and or chakra usage, usage that Lee really wasn't in the mood for right now. Especially if it did turn out to be a dead end, which would just about make her day.
"I'd better find another way out," Lee announced to herself even as she turned back around, clutching at her side, avoiding stepping on too pointy of rocks, sighing, and wishing at the very least Minato was with her for this because he'd probably keep a clear head in this sort of situation.
And even if he couldn't the company would have been more than appreciated. One simply didn't go on adventures featuring dead snakes alone.
"It'll also just lose gravitas, summarizing it," Lee said to herself as she returned to the chamber from whence she'd dramatically and spontaneously appeared, "Hey Minato, so I teleported into some sort of death sacrificial chamber and or sewers with this giant snake, god snake… It also had no eyes. I also had no shoes and a killer headache, it was the least fun imaginable… You probably had to be there."
Yes, that summary clearly lacked something, like more overt Indiana Jones references, Lee thought as she stepped onto the still water, trying her best to avoid the clumps of algae as she made her way towards what looked like a branching tunnel, but more importantly, a tunnel devoid of giant snakes or the skin of said giant snakes.
If there was just a little more of a plot to this strange situation she'd found herself in, well then, perhaps even Dead Last would listen in awe as she regaled him with her latest adventure. It was just too bad this seemed, well aside from Snakey McGodSnake, to be more or less a routine day in the life of Eru Lee (sans Minato).
"They've holed themselves in, sir, we can't get through to them, any of them," it was one of the faceless students, a Ravenclaw with the right pedigree and a sense of self preservation, one who Severus had never bothered to remotely take interest in once they'd passed through their third year and elected not to take his course.
That would have bothered him, a year ago, but then the times had changed and Severus found he didn't particularly want to remember this student. He didn't want to remember him, or his own students for that matter, those populating his house, he didn't want to remember them for this, for this weak moment in their lives that all too readily reflected the stupidity, foolishness, and evil that had overtaken the young Severus Snape when he had been in their position so many years ago.
Severus, headmaster of Hogwarts, murderer of Albus Dumbledore and eternal catspaw in the tragedy that was his own existence, sighed and placed his head into this hands as he wondered how it had come to this.
Hogwarts, invaded, students turning on students, turning them over to professors who tortured them while Severus watched, unable to do anything for fear of bringing a far worse overseer or else damaging Albus' careful plan that guided Severus even after the man had died. A plan that, as always, relied upon Severus' ability to deflect his own morality, to turn more than just a blind eye to the worst of acts.
Yes, he had been so useful to both Albus and the dark lord, and every day he loathed himself for it.
The boy was looking at him, no doubt waiting for the foregone order, starve them out. The room would not and could not provide and thus all they had to do was wait them out. And if they chose to rot in there, if they would rather die martyrs then face the hands of their executioners, then so be it.
Even while Severus prayed that somehow, someway, in some manner that wouldn't be obvious to the dark lord or even to Severus, the room would provide. He had so much blood on his hands already, he didn't need the blood of children, the children he'd taught for six or seven years, on them as well.
Still, he kept his face neutral, his eyes cold and cruel as he stared down upon this poor, cowardly excuse for a human being, this faceless Ravenclaw, "Then, it appears we'll have to starve them out."
It turned out to be a long tunnel. A hideously long tunnel, one that had a steep incline, rushing water, and seemed to have no sign of ending anytime soon.
"Ugh, come on, this thing has to end somewhere, doesn't it?" Lee asked, but predictably, the tunnel didn't answer. No, it just kept being dark, cold, and strangely spacious for being a giant pipe.
All that was left to do was for Lee to keep climbing, slowly but surely, wishing that she was somewhere, anywhere else, instead. Well, that wasn't true. Sure, she was in a pipe, but at least there weren't plant zombies in the pipe, or any kind of enemy nin for that matter.
There was a worrying feeling of chakra outside of her pipe, but nothing too serious, nothing even close to Jiraiya-sensei or the nidaime's level. Although, that said, she wasn't in too great condition herself and if she came up on someone with even mediocre chakra levels but who was decently trained she might be in trouble.
Lee stopped, looked beneath her, she seemed to be over a huddle of what felt like very dismal chakra signatures. Well, maybe she was being rude, they weren't Minato, but most of them were miles ahead of Dead Last (though that was a low bar). Either way, they were huddling, rather like penguins, and even at this distance there was a feeling of tension, fear, anxiety, and no indication that they were able and willing to fight any surprise ninja who happened to descend upon them.
As if answering this question, the tunnel suddenly shifted, a hole opened beneath her feet, and only madly scrambling for purchase on the ceiling even as the hole closed up behind her, leaving her drenched and shivering as her chakra infused feet and hands clung the ceiling as she overlooked what had to be some sort of youth hostel.
Well, she assumed, there were youths, clearly civilians (although with the odd fashion statement of wearing ties and thin black bathrobes), and surrounded by haphazardly arranged hammocks and furniture that looked like it had been thrown together at the last possible minute. It was the kind of youthful display that would have had Uncle Vernon frothing at the mouth.
Only… Lee held in a curse, they looked very English, more, they were speaking English.
Oh, of all the places to end up of course she somehow teleported into an English sewer filled with giant snakes.
"What are we going to do Neville?" a blonde girl, robed and dressed in some Catholic school girl's uniform like all the others, asked a pasty faced looking brown-haired boy (who was oddly reminiscent of Dead Last in both appearance and demeanor), "The room… It hasn't made any food. We can't stay in here forever, if we can't get any food we can't even stay here a few weeks."
"Merlin, I know," the boy, Neville, murmured, wiping at his face and wearing the aura of a man who had great responsibility thrust upon his unprepared shoulders, "I just… maybe the room will provide, I don't know, something. It doesn't have to be food, just a way to food, you know?"
"But Neville, it hasn't…" the girl said but Neville shook his head slowly, his eyes wide.
"If we go back out there, you know what will happen. Either they torture us here, make an example of us, or worse, what if they send us away?"
Being sent away, apparently, was a silent threat that was worth than mere death.
"We can't go back out, Hannah," Neville said firmly, and then offered a weak, too weak, smile, "We'll figure something out, I'm sure of it."
Well, whether these civilian school children would figure something out or not was debatable, either way, Lee figured she had a pretty decent grasp of the situation.
One, no one in this room was a ninja if only because none of the stupid assholes had bothered to look up.
Two, they appeared to be more or less trapped in this room because of bandits, terrorists, actual ninja, and or fates worse than death should they even attempt to venture outside.
Three, there appeared to be no food, staying inside meant starving to death or else committing suicide, and the fate worse than death was apparently worse enough that this was a viable option.
Now, Lee could drop down, snuggle into a hammock, genjutsu them all away, and spend the next day or so dozing but that was again rather boring and also meant she'd have no food which seemed counterintuitive to the whole idea of healing herself then teleporting. Besides, who was she deny the towns people in need.
In fact, this was Lee's chance to become the man with no name, riding, or, well, climbing into town one day during twilight, kicking major ass, and then riding back out again as the towns people cheered her departure and promised to always remember the day she saved their sorry asses from extermination.
Lee could use a statue of herself in some village square.
With that in mind, Lee tapped back on the ceiling, trying to indicate that it was time for her to leave and hoping another giant gaping hole appeared. For a moment there was nothing, Lee tapped again, a little more forcefully, and then, across the ceiling there was another hole. Crawling backwards like a crab, Lee made her way across the ceiling and then back into the pipe, a grin appearing on her face.
Even stabbed, faintly nauseous, bare footed, and still bleeding Lee could wipe the floor with a couple of civilians.
Anything less would just be damn embarrassing.
It started slowly, almost unnoticeably, although that wasn't perhaps the term for it, because in truth it started at a fast pace and grew almost faster. Rather, if there had been signs to this, then he had been too slow to notice them. Too slow to even acknowledge that this was a possibility. His first sign that something was wrong was when one of his students, one of those who had sworn their allegiance to the dark lord and thus to Severus as headmaster, did not show up at the time they should have.
Stepping out of his office, then, there had been an unnerving, almost haunting, quiet as he stalked through the corridors. His pace, almost unconsciously, had grown faster as he made his way up to the seventh floor with a desperation he himself could not rationalize.
And there, where a half hour before there had been nothing, only a locked door barring entry to the hiding students, was the site of a massacre the likes of which he hadn't seen since he'd so eagerly sold his soul to the dark lord all those years ago. He almost was transported back, back in time to where he stood in a hallway, over the mutilated bodies of men, women, and children alike, mudbloods the lot of them as he cast the dark mark overhead in eerie, lethal, green.
Only this time, this time as he gagged down his own vomit and forced himself to look, there were only the bodies of children, school children with slit throats each, gouged out as if by a short blade rather than cruel but clean wand work, staring sightlessly like dead fish at market towards the walls, blood coating the walls and floor, the word, "Touchable", written in blood over the doorway to the room of requirement, and a great gaping hole in the ceiling where cold water flooded out and into the hallway.
He had seen many bodies, too many bodies, he had seen the body of Lily Evans and that had shattered him beyond all recognition. All the same, all the same he couldn't stop staring, his wand hand shaking, he needed to clean the hallway, prepare the bodies and their parents, wasn't it strange how he had never done that before?
He had always left the bodies, had made art of it, he'd never…
No, first, first someone, one of them, had done this. Only, no, none of his students, former students, were capable of something like this. There were so few people capable of this, even those who might have once claimed otherwise, Draco who had bragged about acts like this without any comprehension of what it truly meant to cleanse Britain of the muggleborn population.
Purposefully, with regretful hesitation only for a moment, he strode back down, the floors, searching for one of his sadist comrades posing as a professor. Distasteful and unhinged though they might be, surely pitting them against this unknown menace would yield this attacker's dead body. At the very least, at the very least they would hunt this bastard down.
Clearly, Lee was right in abandoning her home country all those years ago, anyone who put overaged genin as guards over their hostages, with the backup of more overaged genin, clearly had no idea what the hell they were doing.
Lee, frankly, was dying over the thought of being marginally associated with this. Especially since she was forced to face the distasteful fact that they weren't quite civilians, just, well… mostly civilians.
They clearly knew some jutsus, used their fuinjutsu decorated sticks to launch them at Lee (though their aim was hell), but they really were only a hop skip and a jump from being civilians themselves. Though years older than Lee, they were beneath even Dead Last's pitiful level.
To the point where she'd… Well, not accidentally, but certainly she'd been expecting them to block, dodge, or retreat before she'd gotten a chance to jab kunai through their throats. Any sensible ninja would have immediately known they were out of their league, certainly Dead Last knew when to run when the running was good, but these guys had just stood there…
Well, until they hadn't.
As a result, the slaughter had been, well, relatively quick before Lily had ascended back into her friendly pipe in search of stronger chakra signatures. Funny, she wasn't feeling nearly as enthusiastic about saving these poor quasi-civilian English starving schoolchildren as she'd thought she'd be.
She paused, stopped, closed her eyes and reached out, yes, here were two more determined signatures, all but brimming with killing intent. Actually, rather nasty killing intent at that, not the variety of 'I am incredibly enraged and horrified at the death of my comrades' kind but instead the 'I actively enjoy chopping my enemies to tiny pieces' kind. In other words, slightly more Orochimaru than even Orochimaru was.
"…I hope they don't have giant snake summons," Lee said to herself, which, she admitted, was clearly a possibility with the corpse of Snakey McUberGodSnake in the basement.
Well, if they did, more reason to get rid of them before they could use it against her.
With that in mind she punched another gaping hole into her pipe, dropped down on top of her enemies. Who, despite their killing intent and getting a few almost good shots in, were also disposed of relatively easily.
Lee stood there, in shock, as their bodies hit the floor. She looked down at her own injury, then back at the bodies, "I'm not sure how I feel about all of this."
More, she wasn't sure how Minato would feel about all of this. She could just picture him standing beside her in this hallway, looking at her and… And he'd say something to the effect that these were clearly people of a nasty sort, and perhaps needed to be dealt with, but the fact that it had fallen to her, and had lead to their cold dead bodies... Perhaps there was something to be said for that.
With a grimace and without another word, Lee left the bodies where they fell and ascended once more into the pipes.
He didn't find the Carrows, rather, he found their bodies. There was no message for them, only their bodies, floating face down in the shallow water as the pipes once again poured water down into the hallways of the castle to mix with their blood.
The world was a better place without them, he was fully aware of it, had thought it more than once himself. If there were a people who deserved to be eradicated from the face of the earth it was these two and many of the other Death Eaters who had drunk in the dark lord's message just a little too deeply.
However, now, they seemed so small and pale compared to the terrors they had so recently been. Likely, the dark lord upon hearing of their deaths, would simply replace them. Replace them, and the students, and Severus himself if it came to that. None of them were indespensible these days, none of them, as the assassin's writing had so clearly mocked, were untouchable.
He made his way upwards once again, towards the headmaster's office, intent on sending floo to the dark lord, Merlin that it had come to that of all things. However, before he even reached the right floor a hole was punched through the ceiling, stonework crumbling, as a small red headed girl fell through.
He darted backwards just in time to avoid her small throwing knife, bringing out his wand and stunning her by instinct, which she avoided by equally honed instinct as she threw yet another knife towards him.
And even as, wordlessly, they danced he recognized her, or rather, somehow impossibly, he recognized who she couldn't possibly be. Her hair was curlier, dampened by the cold water moving through the pipe system, but her face, her eyes, he was staring at the adolescent vengeful ghost of Lily Evans.
She offered him no quarter, forcing him backwards with a wave of raw magical energy, knocking his wand out of his hand and his breath out of lungs.
Still, he reached out towards her, his fingers shaking and wandless, "Lily, Lily, please…"
Her knife cut into him, sharper and more brutal than even the sight of her body had been.
"Lily, Lily, Lily," he kept repeating, like a chant, even as the sight of her faded from view, "Your son, I helped…"
And all he heard, as she slowly sank to the earth, blood gurgling up from his lungs and through his lips, were her almost indifferent words, her eulogy to him, "Yippie kiyay, mother fucker."
There was no statue made to Eru Lee or the man with no name as she departed the nameless English boarding school for the almost civilians but not quite. There was no crowd at all, there was only the endless, numbing, silence as she turned from all the bodies, and strode off into the metaphorical sunset.
There was only the devastating silence, the red and golden light of the sunset, the blood, and the sweet song that was Minato's golden chakra.
Author's Note: And so, our hero Eru Lee saved Hogwarts, by killing everyone including the alternate universe greasier less German version of Hans Gruber, leaving Neville and all our English friends to walk on the sight of a massacre and feel nauseously grateful to their absent rescuer who they naturally assumed to be Harry Potter. Harry and company, however, never receive the sword of Gryffindor and thus are slowly but surely possessed by the locket crux.
Meanwhile, Minato, Jiraiya, Dead Last, and the nidaime mostly are dumbfounded by the fact that somehow, during all of that, Eru Lee lost her shoes.
Written for the 300th review of "My Immortal Lily and the Art of Bringing Me to Life" by GorgonSayanera who asked for a roughly 6000 word fic featuring Lee being a badass along with team seven and the nidaime. Well... I hit one out of those three. Any longer and the cat and mouse game between Snape and Lee would have gotten almost too ridiculous to bear.
Thanks for reading, reviews are appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto
