A.N: I really have no idea why these things keep coming out the way they do, or if anything at all will come out of this, but I am happy to just give it a shot and hope you like it.

Plus, this idea of me changing canon in this way seems quite entertaining.

Jade Celandine, out!

Chapter 1: Occupation and Bother

I was reputed to have been the most terrifying Potions Mistress of my time – which wasn't saying much, considering my predecessor (I did manage to get Snape's 'billowing robes' effect down pat, though, much to my personal pride). For a while, I managed to lose myself in work after the war, pleasing myself with fiddling around in my laboratory and causing more or less non-lethal explosions I could brag about to my sister's husband and her children on weekly dinners. I made it sound exciting on purpose; if even one of the next generation was corrupted to my way of life, occasional grease notwithstanding, my goals in life were fulfilled. For a while, it was as though I was living the perfect 'Happily Ever After' fairy tales liked to claim were true.

Then it was found that my sister had more than a little UnSeelie in her blood, and she and her children were lynched by her own husband and neighbors under the influence of the new/old regime. There was barely enough left to perform the proper rites.

...My grief was made palpable to them in its own time, the strength and experience I had kept to an edge as a reminder of the previous war put to full bear on those who had massacred my kin.

After... was difficult. Very difficult.

The DA saved me from that, I think, by telling me about what had been about outside of my life. I didn't give myself any more time to mope in the face of the project plopped into my lap; I couldn't, not if I wanted to create a ritual that breached worlds with little consequence. My fascination with the subject was its own reward: I slotted myself into the research crew without so much as a by-your-leave and used my Potioneer's knowledge to the benefit of the project. We came up with a way to track the signatures of magicals sent through the portal – it wouldn't do if they got disintegrated along the way, after all – and began with all our volunteers.

The initial tests were a complete success. Everyone was alive and in possession of all the necessary faculties, so far as we could point out, anyway, and so the exodus began. The Spread. Scoffs. I suppose I could come up with something better if I ever felt the inclination, considering the local sense of logic.

...Despite the eagerness I publicly exhibited at the prospect of leaving my world behind, in my heart I had already begun to miss home. Though I ensured that someone (muggle, of course) would always be around to tend to my family's graves I would never be there to do so myself as was my right. My sister's spirit would be starved of visitors. But I steeled myself, and launched into the unknown.

Humming idly to herself, an itinerant apothecary stopped and stretched her back. It was sunrise, but she had already been walking since dawn, as the distance to the next village was still quite a ways off. Checking on the charms set into her hat for hostile auras nearby, the humming continued as she sauntered on in an easy, ground-eating stride.

This new world was absolutely wonderful to Moirainn McTaggart. And not just because it was a lot more violent than the one she used to live in.

The Potions Mistress had landed in a world where war was as factual as breathing, where it seemed as though everyone and everything was out to get you if you somehow didn't live long enough to pop out the next generation. Women in this time were very much the bottom of the social food chain: good only for getting some more male soldiers in the world and not much else. The few who insisted on displaying their warrior's skills were vilified, praised and feared in equal measure.

But as one who made tools of death for a living, Moirainn, now renamed Eiri Hayabusa, thrived under the mantle of war. She set up as a wandering apothecary, trading the mildest potions for food or occasional lodging from city to city and town to town, all the while letting her conscience dictate when she pulled out the big guns.

Like last week. She had come across a pair of children who had looked too delirious and starved to last more than another night. Likely their village had been massacred, and they were the only survivors; refugees were yet another part of this sort of life. Making sure they wouldn't remember her, Eiri had given them liberal sips of Felix Felicis, as well as some Pepper-Up to freshen their energy levels. With luck, they would've been found by some kindhearted civilian or reached a friendly village by now. Such brief instances of Good-Samaritanism kept her roaming as much as the anonymity did; she never stayed in shinobi territories long enough to make a lasting impression.

Although she did linger sometimes to construct a reliable network of informants who kept her up to date on possible job postings, local gossip, and as much corroborated shinobi and samurai activity as possible. Eiri needed to avoid them like the plague; they were too paranoid for her tastes.

It also helped her build a reputation as a friendly sort, if a little naive despite her profession. What could they really expect out of a woman who didn't have enough self-discipline to keep to her own self-imposed rules of engagement?

Unfortunately, given the recent establishment and rapid expansion of 'hidden villages' sponsored by the all-powerful Daimyos of this dimension, she would eventually have no choice but to encounter them or risk suspicion.

At some point, she would also have to invest in disguises, at least until certain people forgot that she looked particularly young or snake-like.

That, incidentally, was rather fascinating to her innate researcher and scientist. Did this only apply to practicing animagi? What traits within a traveller were likeliest to show? Did it depend on their power, bloodlines, or was it all random? How intenselywould the traits show, and did it depend on the species? If it weren't for those pesky morals that every scientist had to start with, she'd have gotten more than a few test subjects all hooked up and ready by now.

But tests needed laboratories, and laboratories needed a fixed location. Unless she was willing to cultivate a stash of bases all over the continent that she could get to whenever she pleased, that was simply going to be a pipe-dream.

Darned, stupid sensibilities.

It was likely that her thoughts would have continued on in this vein until she camped out for the night or reached yet another rural town, were it not for the fact that, unbeknownst to her, a battle in the First Great Shinobi War was on in this specific area. If the consecutive events were meant to have happened at much the same time, no one would be able to say.

Nonetheless, what happened was this: a kunoichi, wounded beyond reasonable belief of survival, leaped out of the trees and had the misfortune of crashing rather perfectly on the helpless apothecary. It sent them both tumbling into the woods on the other side, rolling into tree trunks and smashing Moirainn's wooden box-pack, symbol of traveling merchants everywhere in Japan before the invention of the wagon. The witch's first instinct was to check for an attack, useless though she might be compared to a ninja's lightning-fast reflexes, and then to sift through the wreckage as quickly as possible to aid the woman lying no more than a few feet from her and worryingly still.

She was undoubtedly a beauty, despite her state of disrepair, which probably contributed to some of her success if she had enough pragmatism to use it. But she was too badly hurt to take nothing less than a miracle by shinobi standards to heal, a miracle Eiri refused to provide for fear of notice.

So she took her child, squirming in its bundle but still thankfully quiet, and the apothecary cast a sleeping charm to guarantee her a few more hours of it; she'd need those hours to get herself as far away as possible. A few twitches of the wand replaced the bundle with a transfigured branch, obviously broken in such a manner as to keep people from questioning the babe's death to any pursuers. Then a blitz of summoning and repair charms on the box-pack (because precautions taken years ago had left her working bottles charmed to be Unbreakable) as she shouldered it on and tramped through the forest back onto the road, forcing herself to maintain a smooth but still civilian-level gait and movement noise to dissuade any trackers from being too curious. So far as they will ever know, a civilian stumbled onto the kunoichi's body, possibly looted her if s/he hadn't been so 'terrified', and then attempted to make themselves scarce by moving on their way.

Unfortunately, this probably meant that she would have to seek shelter in one of the Hidden Villages after all. The road was no place for an inexperienced single mother, and depending on her choice, the protection she could expect from the ruling Kage as a matter of course would need to be taken into account.

"You are a very fussy baby," Eiri muttered without venom into the squalling infant in her arms. To be honest, she panicked a bit when she realized he wasn't yet at the age to be weaned, but that was temporarily assuaged by the goat's milk she had with some honey for a sweetener. She'd have to find some fennel and fenugreek on her way to the next village, but until then this had to do.

Gently she shushed him and rubbed a bit more of the goat's milk into his gums. He was dark and pale, with faint purple shadows like bruising around his tender eyes, still a baby blue. Perhaps it was a bloodline or clan-inherited marking, but at least he looked similar enough to her own features for now that she could hold off on contemplating a blood adoption just yet.

At the very least she had nodded to her Fey heritage by giving the dead woman a replacement to care for if she was well enough to have chosen to, however temporary, so according to rights in the Never, she had laid claim on the child as her own. The witch was still unsure of exactly how far the Fey's pathways could reach and if she was close enough to get involved, but she had to at the very least hedge her bets.

Now all she needed were those herbs…

The gates of Konohagakure bustled in the mornings as out-of-town merchant caravans and minor sellers like herself went in to sell or buy with the locals in the marketplace. The shinobi gate guards did not have the time to look too closely at her forms before she was waved on, which was a small mercy. Orochimaru – yes, yes, she named him after a legendary Japanese figure, so sue her! Anyhow, he was getting fussy and wanted his milk. With the long-suffering sigh that might have brought commiserating mothers out the woodwork were it audible, the apothecary stole away to a seemingly private wooded area so she could breastfeed him. Those commiserating mothers were likely to decry her as some sort of fallen woman for the sake of propriety then, she thought to herself snidely as her greedy son guzzled down his fill.

She was getting rather experienced with the routine by now, rubbing his back gently to burp him as she peered at the bulletin for any possible jobs.

Surprisingly enough, ninja in the general technological level of feudal steelwork had modern protocols regarding immigration. A given individual had to apply for a working permit and a residential permit separately, Morgan knew why, then graduate to a citizenship application, which only came after one entered a certain financial bracket and lived a certain amount of months within the village full-time. The long lines and backlog made the wait almost torturous, as the bureaucracy ensured that only someone who really wanted to live in the Hidden Village would actually want to undergo the paperwork and repetitive background checks by the still-infantile Torture and Interrogation Department.

However, to encourage favorable individuals to live within the village walls, streamlining the process through interviews was indeed available for the one who had the wealth to pay. Interviewers, however, only took so many in a day before closing, so any clever immigrant had to pay for an interview slot and then find a way to set up some sort of appointment. The ones who figured it out were the kinds of people who could likely survive life in a shinobi village.

Like an apothecary who had enough 'acquaintances' and 'friends' that she had almost the whole system at her end figured out before she even got to the village.

With her baby full and napping in her Indian-style sling with the extra folds wrapped around her waist, Eiri ambled over to the marketplace, eager to see what her new competition was offering that day.

Vegetables, ranging from typical to crossbred 'specialties', were sold along the entrance with similarly ranged fruits. Food carts were strategically parked in front of rivaling restaurants or clothing stores, offering everything from dango to tempura in several different flavors. Other stalls featured charms, to tie at the waist or to dangle from an heirloom weapon of some sort. She was especially interested in one stand that sold hair pins and other ornaments, and busied herself with haggling over a set of kanzashi with the hilariously entertained old woman running it.

"I'm telling you girl, no more than 125 ryo for this set. What other establishment can tell you that they've sold genuine tortoiseshell this cheap?"

"The establishments that I've run into in the Land of Wind are cheaper, and I don't even know how or where they could get tortoise. 75!"

The lady in question put her hand to her chest in mock anger. "Such insult! 115!"

Eiri sardonically raised her eyebrows, "If you were insulted by that maneuver, then you must have been swindling the locals far too often. 80 ryo, take it or leave it."

The stall owner hem'd and haw'd over it for a few minutes, then relented when it seemed that the baby at her breast was starting to sniffle alarmingly. She nodded respectfully at the young mother, saying softly, "Keep arguing like that around here, and you'll fit in just fine."

The witch smiled back.

Taking her purchases in hand, she cooed to the sleeping boy, "Thank you for helping Mommy get a good deal, Oro-chan. You'll get some additional cheese for dinner tonight, you'll like that, won't you?" The boy was starting to eat semi-solids in addition to still nursing, and had apparently taken a liking to the dairy product. Given that this was a Japanese analog world and society, dairy was going to be scarce and expensive, but at least she would not be lacking in grain and vegetables. If she had to, she could probably improvise some tofu out of dried soybeans or stop after making soy milk if she ever ran out before her boy weaned. While it may not get him the cheese he so loved, Orochimaru was already an adventurous child and would be enthusiastic about trying it.

She and her son were still living in community housing, but once the interviews were over and done with, it should be an easy thing to get someplace nice to live in, and then the Potions Mistress could see about creating a proper home for her new family.

Her sister would have been absolutely thrilled.