Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto or Harry Potter – no profit is being made out of this fanfiction. Distribution of this material has not been consented elsewhere; if you see this fanfic posted anywhere other than here on FFN, on my dA account (hikagi), or on my LJ (yatsuka), it's without my permission.
Warnings: Due to the nature of crossovers, I consider this story to be AU/AR/what-ever-you-call-it. I will try to be as accurate as I can be to the original material, while tweaking both worlds so that they exist in the same relative dimension. I might also ignore/tweak some of the information presented in the more recent chapters/books/revelations of either series.
I haven't watched any episodes of Naruto, and I've only seen the first two movies of Harry Potter; I'll be going off the manga/book versions. You have been warned.
Also, IWoTA is an alternate version of IWoT, not just a standard rewrite. The plot is not the same, and the purpose behind its conception is also different.
Characters in the categories are just characters, not pairings. The main focus is not on romantic relationships, straight or otherwise.
There may be some offensive language/actions/descriptions not suited for young(er) audiences; hence, the rating.
In Way of Trouble – Again…
Chapter 01: "And Everything Changes"
By Hikagi
It started off innocently enough. (Afterward, on the other hand, was another matter entirely…)
Sakura thought that the rehabilitation process was going at a good pace and that they were all due for a break. Kakashi-sensei thought that it would be another good exercise in teamwork and rebuilding the bonds that had almost come undone. Hokage-sama thought that it was time for him to stop hiding his face from the rest of the world. And Naruto thought…
Well, Naruto thought it would be fun and cool and we have to celebrate and ohmygosh you-have-totryouttheirnewflavor!
Uchiha Sasuke didn't pretend to know what was going on through his blond teammate's mind half the time. The other half, he wished he didn't know. If anything, it wouldn't make him feel so damn guilty.
Because for some reason, despite hell and high water and all the crap they had gone through (or, perhaps, because of it?), Uzumaki Naruto still considered Uchiha Sasuke to be the closest thing he had to a family – a brother. And Sasuke had almost ruined that.
No. Correction: Sasuke had done his hardest to sever that bond.
Because bonds were risky. Bonds meant you cared about another person, and that person could be turned against you. Bonds meant, despite all efforts and preventative measures otherwise, that you left yourself emotionally vulnerable, with little-to-no protection against non-physical threats. Bonds meant that the slight regret and grief from watching a stranger die became a harsher, more unbearable pain when a friend did.
(Once was already bad enough.)
But even though Sasuke had tried to pull away, he hadn't taken into account Naruto's desperate, mule-headed tenacity when it came to his precious people. Perhaps it was because Sasuke had known love and then lost his entire family, whereas Naruto had never experienced it in the first place.
Somewhere deep down inside – so deep, in fact, that he would never acknowledge it even to himself – he was glad for this. It would have been a colossal disaster to have gone to Orochimaru in search for power. Considering Sasuke had been drunk off the overwhelming feeling of invincibility that came with the second stage of the curse seal, it was a very fortunate thing that no one had been fatally injured. Either that, or Naruto's ridiculous lucky streak pulled through for him. (Sasuke thought that Naruto must have a kami on his side. It would certainly explain quite a few things.)
Sasuke had never been so grateful that he had missed something irreparable. He knew that the chidori was dangerous (courtesy of it being an assassination technique), but he had never before seen its aftermath up close. Out of habit, he had originally aimed for a critical hit – a kill shot – going for his opponent's heart. However, something (reflex, training, residual feelings of camaraderie, what have you) had forced him to change his angle, hitting the solar plexus instead. It had missed Naruto's heart and lungs, but that hadn't meant much when the excess charge from the lightning fried everything within its vicinity. As it were, Naruto had spent an agonizing five minutes choking on his own blood and struggling to breathe. Panicked, Sasuke hadn't left as he had originally planned, and spent what seemed like a lifetime watching and waiting and hoping.
I'm sorry, I didn't mean it!
He had kept looking around to see if anyone else would reach them in time. Konoha shinobi or Orochimaru's lackeys – it didn't matter, so long as someone would hurry the fuck up so he could do something about making sure Naruto didn't bleed out.
Pleasedon'tdiepleasedon'tdiepleasedon'tdie.
(Even in hindsight, he wasn't sure if he had been talking solely to his teammate, or to others long gone. There had been too many parallels and conflicting emotions between past events that he had been briefly confused, thinking that he had been kneeling on worn tatami mats or seeing black hair instead of blond.)
But then Naruto had stopped breathing, and Sasuke had felt his own heart skip a beat.
You can't die on me – I won't let you.
By then, he had torn Naruto's jacket apart ('He's going to kill me for that. That was his favorite. But it doesn't matter.') and had started administering what little he knew about first aid. The jacket had been used to try to stop blood loss, and by the time Kakashi-sensei had arrived, most of the orange material had turned to an unpleasant, dark mess.
Naruto hadn't been breathing in the last three minutes. Sasuke had felt like the world had ended for a second time; but this time, it had been his own fault. There had been no Itachi to take the blame or the brunt of his grief-anger-revenge-sorrow-guilt.
And then Kakashi-sensei had applied some weird technique that involved iryou-ninjutsu and tiny manifestations of lightning jutsu, and suddenly Naruto was wheezing and coughing out blood. If Sasuke hadn't already been kneeling, he would have collapsed from relief. Even so, it took more effort than he had calculated to make the journey back to Konoha, trailing after his sensei, who had decided to carry Naruto instead of risking a chakra-based technique and disrupting what little healing that had been managed.
Halfway back, they had met up with a group of medics, and Sasuke had ignored (more like, refused) their treatments in favor of reaching Konoha faster. Upon their arrival at the gates, they had been escorted toward the hospital where the rest of the retrieval team was being treated for various injuries. Naruto's had been quite serious, but not as life-threatening as some of the others; while the group of medics had been reassigned to the more critical cases, Kakashi had stayed and kept the wound in a sort of stasis until Neji and Chouji had been cleared from the emergency rooms.
Sasuke had been in a sort of daze for hours, sitting in the waiting room. He hadn't realized how long it had been until someone had caught his attention and told him to meet with the Hokage in her office.
What followed had been a tense affair. Sasuke had been dressed down, threatened to be tossed out the window, and exposed to more killing intent than he had thought possible from the blonde woman. His trial had been hasty and private; as a genin (and almost-nuke-nin) of Konoha, the Hokage had more jurisdiction over the proceedings than the civilian court or council of elders. Surprisingly, Sasuke had been let off with a lighter sentence than he had expected, courtesy of one Jiraiya of the Sannin.
Having had some experience with Orochimaru's juinjutsu, Jiraiya had argued that the curse seal had caused a sort of mental instability that interfered with rational thought processes, and that Sasuke should not be punished for things out of his control. Tsunade had been very reluctant to let it go because it had been Naruto who had suffered (and almost not survived) in the end, and she had been feeling over-protective and frustrated. And Sasuke had… not really cared about his punishment. Well, at least, at that time. He had been too busy being numb and confused and conflicted.
After a bit of squabbling (and more than a little bit of posturing), it had been decided that Sasuke would be placed on intensive probation supervision. His chakra had been (temporarily) sealed; his hitae-ate, taken away; his weapons, confiscated; his accounts, frozen.
Jiraiya had then taken him to an underground lair where they had (with Kakashi's help) re-applied a modified version of the fuuja houin so that it was not merely reliant on the recipient's willpower. He had then shipped Sasuke off to the hospital, placed wards around the room, and sealed the premise from visitors.
The next day heralded the start of Sasuke's rehabilitation process.
As his teammates, Tsunade had ordered Sakura and Naruto to oversee the program, partially to keep them accountable, and partially to keep them out of her hair and everyone else's way.
It had worked, for the most part. After recovering from his injuries, Naruto had taken it upon himself to study the basics of rudimentary sealing methods, pestering Jiraiya at every opportunity (which, naturally infringed upon his peeping time), much to the sannin's displeasure. After a few weeks, Jiraiya had grudgingly taken Naruto as a not-quite-yet-official student, and had more-or-less taken up temporary residence in Konoha.
On the other hand, Sakura had tried to come up with multiple detox methods on her own, which had led to her learning more about medical jutsu. After quite a bit of independent research, some experimentation, and nearly blowing up parts of the library in a spectacular manner when trying out said experimentations, the Hokage had ordered her to start pulling shifts in the hospital to learn proper medical procedures. Eventually, she had been placed under Shizune's tutelage, which allowed Tsunade to oversee her progress and surreptitiously keep an eye out for potential it-was-an-accident-I-swear situations.
In the mean time, Sasuke's well-being had been transferred over as Kakashi's responsibility, and the older ninja had implemented a different kind of training regimen. Sasuke had been [encouraged, recommended, cajoled, ordered] forced to see a therapist every other day in order to reduce the effects of his curse seal and work through aspects of his past issues. On top of counseling sessions, Kakashi had also filled his schedule with team practices (for building up trust and fixing up the rough patches in their relationships), meditation exercises (to keep his emotional stability in check), and one-on-one coaching sessions (all dealing with techniques not based on chakra) with a number of different instructors, many of whom owed the Copy-nin favors.
Fortunately – or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective – one of them had happened to be Mitarashi Anko. (The physical scars eventually healed, but one could not quite say the same about the psychological ones, even if they had been somewhat harmless.)
And so, for the next few weeks, Naruto, Sasuke, and Sakura were too busy to do much more than what was required from them. Certainly much too busy to really think about what came after Sasuke's (intensive) probation time was finished.
Which lead to their current situation. Mainly, that Naruto was dragging his teammates to Ichiraku's for a celebratory luncheon in honor of Sasuke's chakra-suppression seals having been taken off. Only, he didn't call it that. Naruto said something more along the lines of "It's not good for you to be cooped up inside all day long. Your skin's turning paler than the moon," and "I think all those counseling sessions are making you crazier – aren't you glad you don't have to go to so many anymore?" and "I'm so glad we all have this day off! Training is killing me," and "If you don't hurry up, I'm going to leave you guys behind!" and "ramenramenramenramen-"
To which Sakura delivered a well-placed fist to his head, just to get him to switch to a slower gear.
"Naruto! Calm down!"
"Ouch! Sakura-chan!"
Sasuke watched as his teammates continued to bicker, amused that while their entire lives had more or less been turned upside down, some things still remained the same. However, he couldn't help but notice how people stopped to stare as they walked by, discreetly (or whatever counted as being "discreet" to civilians) pointing in their direction.
"Hey, isn't that the kid who-"
"Hush! We're not supposed to talk about that."
"Yeah, yeah, I know. But did you hear-"
"The Hokage expressed her wishes for us to remain silent on that subject."
He ignored the whispers and kept walking towards the ramen stand, trailing slightly behind his teammates. Years ago, when the Uchiha massacre had been fresh in the minds of Konoha's citizens, Sasuke had been on the receiving end of speculations and rumors. Eventually over some time, the majority of the overly-curious voices had died away, especially as newer gossip-worthy topics were picked up and then discarded. Quite a number of them had been about Naruto and his infamous pranks.
"Keh. If you ask me, they should have killed him instead of bringing him back. I don't know what the hell that woman was thinking when she ordered that mission, but I don't appreciate traitors in our midst. Even if it involves that kid."
"Really! Keep your thoughts to yourself! We should be glad that they were able to bring him back. What if he had succeeded in running away to him? Konoha would have been in big trouble then."
(However, it seemed like he would be the subject of many people's conversations once more.)
"Which is why they should have all died in the first place."
"Watch your tongue!"
Sasuke shrugged them away without a second thought, pretending that he hadn't heard the mumbling with his sharp ears. It was amazing how loud and unaware civilians were. Glancing at the rest of his team, he noted that they, too, had picked up what the voices were saying. Sakura looked irritated and ready to go over and confront them, while Naruto was smiling with one of his painfully cheerful grins – the kind that meant he wasn't happy at all.
"Guys," Naruto said, stopping in the middle of the road. "I'm… not in the mood for ramen anymore."
Sasuke blinked, somewhat surprised by the statement. Naruto was always in the mood for ramen. Except for now, apparently.
"Why?" he asked.
"Eh." Naruto frowned toward his feet, seemingly interested in the fascinating texture of the road. "I don't think it's a good idea."
Privately, Sasuke agreed. Lunch hour was a busy time in Konoha, and there were a lot of people out on the streets. More than a few seemed to be unhappy with Team Seven's presence in the district. While Sasuke wasn't particularly bothered by the pointing and whispering, he knew that his teammates might be.
Sakura sighed. "How about…" She pressed her lips into a thin line and then shook her head, as if to chase away negative thoughts. And then, in a deliberately cheerful, higher-pitched tone, "Why don't we eat someplace else? I could order food to-go, and we could camp out in one of the training fields."
Naruto contemplated the compromise for a short time. "Um, sure! Sounds good. What about you, Sasuke?"
Sasuke shrugged, not caring either way. "Whatever you guys want."
Naruto looked at the displeased faces in the crowd, then looked back at his teammates, as if weighing options. He seemed to reach a conclusion all by himself and nodded. "Cool! Then we'll have ramen to go!" And then took off in the appropriate direction, Sakura following close behind.
"I thought you weren't in the mood for ramen!"
"But Sakura-chan, I can't live without ramen!"
"I wanted to get something else for once!"
"Nyah, but we're almost at Ichiraku's anyway!"
Almost casually, Kakashi appeared next to Sasuke when the other two were almost out of ear-shot. The civilians around them barely even noticed.
"What is it," Sasuke asked, curious about his teacher's sudden arrival. Usually, Kakashi didn't join them for their meals, save for the few times the genin treated him for less-than-altruistic reasons.
"Hm." Kakashi took the time to watch his other two students reach their destination before answering. "Team meeting tomorrow at 0700 on the bridge. Hokage-sama's got a mission for us. Don't be late."
And then he disappeared in a plume of smoke.
Had he been so inclined, Sasuke would have sighed. Instead, he took a moment to re-observe his surroundings before slowly trudging (not that he would readily admit to being reluctant in any way) in the direction his teammates had gone.
Tomorrow would be the start of the next stage of his probation. That meant that he would finally be cleared for missions that were ranked higher than D (or ranked at all, since most of his "missions" had more-or-less been under-paid – but necessary – tasks that hadn't even managed to make it into the system of back-logged requests and paperwork, courtesy of Konoha: hosting the Chuunin Exams, surviving an invasion, losing its leader and then gaining another – all in the span of a few weeks), as well as be eligible for the ones that were usually assigned to teams.
Tomorrow meant more harsh whispers and hostile looks when people realized that "the dangerous, could-have-been missing-nin" could now use chakra and had more freedom to roam Konoha's districts. It meant that there were fewer guards rotating shifts at all hours of the day. It meant that while things would quite possibly never be the same as it was before, Team 7 might start working together again, and take missions like they had done in the past. It meant a lot of things – a lot of change; some good, some bad, and sometimes even a scary combination of the two. Change was funny like that. (He wasn't sure if he liked it or not.)
But for right now…
He reached the ramen stand just as Naruto picked up their order and paid for the entire thing. With a grin and a bounce to his steps, Naruto led the way to a nearby training ground, excitedly sharing the latest news about mutual acquaintances, friends, superiors, and even some tidbits from the rumor mill. Sakura followed close behind, nodding at appropriate intervals or making inquiries. Sasuke trailed after them, noticing how much his teammates had grown and matured in such a short amount of time.
Right now, Sasuke would pretend that nothing was wrong. He could afford to do that for one afternoon.
'Just for right now.'
Because the future would be here soon enough.
To Be Continued…
Author's Notes:
First: I completely changed the outcome of the Sasuke Retrieval arc because I'm sappy and a closet idealist. And also because a lot of things just didn't make sense in canon. I mean, what happened to all of the character development from the Wave arc?
Next: Welcome to Version 3. Version 1 has been archived on my LJ and is no longer available on FFN. Version 2, however, is still around.
Lastly: If you have any questions about terminology, feel free to ask and I will try to clarify to the best of my ability. If you have any suggestions, comments, constructive criticism, I'd be glad to hear them. Especially if it helps me improve.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this!
Yatsuka Hikagi
March 7, 2012