It was almost his birthday again, or at least, as far as he could tell. Lee had never been clear exactly how the calendar in Konoha lined up with the calendar in England. Actually, she'd been rather unclear where Konoha was in relation to England period.
All the maps he'd ever seen of the elemental nations had never had a hint of England, Europe, or anything familiar on them. Similarly, every map he'd once seen in England, had never had a sign of the elemental nations. He had the feeling that Lee knew the reason for this, more or less, but she'd always been rather tight lipped, even to Ren.
Either way, as Ren who was once Tom Marvolo Riddle looked out the window of the Senju compound onto the brisk December morning that clung to Konoha, he found himself noting that he would soon be eleven, and that it had almost been three years since he'd seen London.
He didn't really think about that much, how much time it had been and how far he was away from… well, not home, London had never really been home even then, but that place he had once lived and perhaps always expected to live. To be honest there wasn't really time to brood away over it, and not really a need to either. He didn't relate to himself anymore, or rather, he didn't relate to Tom Marvolo Riddle, the English painfully civilian orphan.
That Tom Riddle, after all, would still have been in the orphanage at that point, doing whatever it was Ren had done to occupy his time. Likely getting exorcised by Mrs. Cole for all he knew. And that was a fact he could barely even comprehend.
Ren, by comparison, had not only graduated the academy and become a genin apprentice, but had even just recently passed his chunin exams. Not just an apprentice to anyone either, but to the nidaime himself.
Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise, he saw the nidaime more than most people, and way more than any academy student he'd ever heard of. Either way though, when the man had appeared in Ren's classroom along with all the other jonin senseis and announced that he'd decided to take Ren as an apprentice, somehow, Ren had never really seen it coming.
And while the academy had been miles better than the orphanage, and he'd never regretted living with Lee and even Minato for that matter, and he'd felt more himself than he ever had in England, it was becoming Senju Tobirama-sama's apprentice, his first student since his resurrection, that somehow made everything click into place. That this, this above all other things, learning from a man who had once been hokage, who had practically built the village himself and set the standard for all other hidden villages to follow, was what he had been looking for without even realizing it when Eru Lee had appeared in his bedroom.
The nidaime somehow more than lived up to his reputation, Ren had been ready to be disappointed, as he'd always been, but this time at least he wasn't. He didn't think he ever would be, as the man helped Ren in refining his basic fuinjutsu and start on medical jutsus as well. He seemed to know everything about every discipline, thoroughly knowledgeable even in realms where he steadfastly would claim he wasn't an expert. More, the way he held himself, the respect others gave to him, it was everything Ren himself wanted to be when he became an adult.
(And unlike Ren's sometimes bitter rivalry with Namikaze Minato, there wasn't any underlying tension, the need to be and surpass what Namikaze Minato was at this very moment.)
More, the man respected Ren, had always respected Ren and seen more than just his potential but everything he could offer in the very moment.
In other words, Ren, who had never respected anyone or anything in England, had enormous respect for both the nidaime hokage and even his older brother the shodaime. Although, to be fair, Ren didn't quite get Senju Hashirama and he didn't think he ever really would. He kind of, in a strange way that he couldn't really explain, reminded Ren of Lee except… Even more ineffable and ten times more emotional.
However, the shodaime had once told him that Ren reminded him of his brother, Senju Tobirama, when he was younger. And that… He had been grateful, but also glad that the shodaime had said it to him then, rather than earlier, because when he first arrived the magnitude of that compliment would have been entirely lost on him.
Konoha, after all, had taught Ren that while he himself was not to be passed over, there were also great men worth admiring.
They'd had no real missions outside of the village so far, a few here and there, but all easily within the land of fire and mostly escorting missions that took wealthy merchants into Konoha itself. It probably was to be expected, now that a third shinobi war had broken out, and even though it was in the early stages yet, already things had changed. There weren't too many C-ranked missions around anymore, or at least, not as many people willing to pay the increased prices for them.
More, though Ren wouldn't have wanted it any other way, there was something of a price for having the nidaime hokage as a master. The nidaime, along with the shodaime, and the kyuubi jinchuuriki Uzumaki Kushina, were something of aces in the hole. Tobirama-shishou had explained early on, when the war had started, that in the opening months they would all be more or less village bound. That, until the other villages decided to send out their own jinchuuriki, then there was no point bringing a gun to a knife fight.
And when they were sent out, undoubtedly, they would be sent straight to the front lines.
As a result, whenever Ren was going to be sent on a mission, especially now that he was a chunin, it was likely going to be without Tobirama-shishou.
Instead, most of their time was spent like it was today, within the walls of the village training, practicing other techniques and expanding Ren's jutsus, or else discussing England. They discussed England quite often.
It was more than clear that Ren being English was a big factor in the nidaime taking him as an apprentice, perhaps the largest factor really, though Ren hoped, had he been dead last or an idiot, that Tobirama-shishou wouldn't have bothered. Ren didn't really mind, honestly, sometimes it irked him a bit, but it gave him a reason to have the nidaime for a master, and more, for Lee to interact with him whenever she was back in the village. Even with the war and her apprenticeship with Hatake (although this was more unofficial than anything now that both Lee and Minato were jonin), she now had an explicit non-negotiable reason to spend time with Ren as a peer. Not just a little brother, or a cute little academy student who sometimes helped her with translations, but someone who had passed his chunin exams before she or Minato had and was very likely to be joining their ranks as jonin within a few years himself.
It also gave Ren no small amount of pleasure that Hatake Kakashi, his old academy rival, had not been nearly so lucky in all of this as Ren himself had been. Being the best in the class, rather than second best to Ren, he'd ended up on the latest iteration of the dreaded team seven. There must be something about that combination that worked, somehow, because it had produced not only the sannin but also Lee and Minato's team, but Ren highly doubted the little demon Kakashi's team was a sannin in the making.
Especially since the class idiot along with his kunoichi teammate naturally chafed at the idea of a five-year-old upstart, who'd humiliated them along with everyone else all year, really was their superior.
As soon as Kakashi had passed the chunin exams, at the tender and unbelievable age of six, he'd been foisted off onto another just graduating genin team where the exact same problem occurred, except worse, because now Hatake was an upstart six-year-old chunin who outranked them. He'd probably be pawned off again, and again, maybe even until he was eleven or ten and academy students actually his age started to trickle out of the academy and onto genin teams.
Now, it wasn't that Ren enjoyed Hatake Kakashi's suffering but… Well, that was a lie, he found it hysterical.
"What are you looking so happy about?"
Ren looked up to see Tobirama-shishou walking back into the room with a rather amused look on his face as he stared down at his somewhat flustered apprentice. Ren tried to compose himself, "Oh, nothing really, just that my birthday is coming up soon."
The nidaime didn't look as if he accepted this, but was willing to let it slide, as he mused, "It's at the end of December, yes?"
Ren almost opened his mouth to reply that it was specifically New Year's Eve but caught himself just in time, the new year in Konoha wasn't until a month or so later.
"That's right, I just realized that it's almost been three years. I mean, three years since I immigrated here," Ren trailed off, his mind now wandering back to Wool's Orphange of all things. He wondered if it was still there, probably, all the same, he couldn't help the idle daydream wishing the place had burnt to the ground as soon as he'd left it.
Tobirama-shishou considered this, but was probably thinking of something quite different than Ren. He probably was thinking again over what Ren had told him, and even what Lee had told him, over the small facts about England and Europe and the world Tom Marvolo Riddle had known so intimately.
He'd never thought about it, still didn't really, but Konoha was very new. The village itself had been built by the shodaime and his brother after all, Tobirama-shishou had basically made its government even though Senju Hashirama had willed it into being when no one had believed that it was even possible. That meant it was really only a few decades old, highlighted by the fact that it was the sandaime hokage who was leading, a man who had once been Tobirama-shishou's student.
As for the world, all written records Tobirama-shishou had ever heard of or seen, only seemed to go back a few centuries, five hundred years or so at maximum. There had been people around before then, but as far as it seemed, some great disaster or war had occurred, something vaguely mentioned here and there, that supposedly the sage of the six paths had talked about or been around for, that had prevented clans from forming or having any stable sort of lifestyle until after the sage had wandered the continent teaching the basis of ninjutsu.
And then the clan wars had started, lasting centuries, until Konohagakure itself was built.
That England, by comparison, had roots dating back further than two thousand years, before the Romans themselves had invaded, seemed unbelievable to Tobirama-shishou and even his brother. Lee herself had told them all about this ages ago, in fact, Lee had told them even more than Ren had, because somehow even though Lee had left when she was only four, like the nidaime she seemed to know so much about the world she'd left behind, certainly more than Ren himself did.
More, it was a world in which chakra itself, despite clearly existing in himself and in Lee, was somehow dismissed entirely. A concept that was almost incomprehensible to Tobirama-shishou, no matter how true it was.
He wished… he wished Tobirama-shishou would have more faith in Lee, because she wasn't ever truly wrong, at least, not from what Ren had ever heard.
Still, all the same, even with three years distance between himself and England, even though he didn't seem to loathe it quite as much as Lee herself did, Ren had no desire to go back, no matter how interested Tobirama-shishou himself was.
In the end, he had to agree with Lee, there was simply no reason to return to England.
Of course, Ren didn't know, that only a few weeks later he'd be drafted to join a team of Eru Lee, Namikaze Minato, and Uzumaki Kushina to place experimental and volatile seals at the border to the land of fire, that the universe, through plant zombies and Lee's unwieldly teleportation, would decide for both him and Lee.
Just in time for his eleventh birthday.
Debriefing directly to the hokage was, itself, an odd occurrence, particularly for a chunin. Ren, in fact, had never debriefed directly with the hokage after any of his missions. Given that he'd only ever been on C-rank and D-rank missions, this latest having been his first B-rank mission, this was pretty understandable.
There had never been much to say about any of them. Certainly nothing that the hokage himself had to here, so usually Ren would turn out a small form detailing what had happened, or else Tobirama-shishou would for him, and that was the end of it.
Of course, for Eru Lee and Namikaze Minato, almost every mission they'd had since they were genin had involved a direct and immediate debriefing not only with the hokage but often with the shodaime, the nidaime, and at least one of the sannin.
It didn't matter if it was C-rank or even sometimes a lowly D-rank, there was going to be a debriefing, and it was going to go far past its scheduled slot.
Ren's latest B-rank mission, where he'd been placed onto a team with Namikaze Minato, Eru Lee, and Uzumaki Kushina, apparently, no different, even with a war going on. Of the four of them, facing the hokage, Jiraiya-sama with his face in one hand, the shodaime, and a somewhat exasperated Tobirama-shishou, only Lee and Minato seemed well within their element.
After having read through the letter, or rather, bickering over the various translations of the letter, ending up with one translation for each of them in the room that were even half-way fluent in English, they now stood in rather dumb silence waiting for someone, anyone, to give their opinion.
Finally, it was Lee who spoke first, "Well, I for one, am just going to reiterate the very clear and undeniable fact that there are no shinobi in England."
Lee then looked down at her ribs, at her blood-stained clothing, and asked, "Can I go home now? I'm still bleeding and…"
Tobirama-shishou didn't even give her the chance to finish that sentence.
"And I am going to simply reiterate that this letter, and this experience you had with this," Tobirama-shishou glanced down at the letter, reading the name of the man in the canary suit, or at least, the man Ren assumed had spoken with them, "Dumbledore Albus, clearly points to the fact that there are in fact, shinobi in England!"
"Shinobi is a strong word," Lee hedged, to which Ren, wincing, had to agree.
"The man said it was an academy for witchcraft and wizardry," Ren stated, hating to state it, really, as in any other situation he wouldn't be agreeing with Lee here but he couldn't help it when she was, well, right, "It says that in the letter as well, wizardry isn't… it isn't close to anything we'd think of as a ninja."
"I don't care what they call it. Chakra has been called magic before, the English word simply might not translate," Tobirama-shishou scoffed, "What is clear is that a man, with not insignificant levels of chakra, has approached Ren as a figure of authority for his hidden village with a prepared invitation for an academy with a clear curriculum and text books for several disciplines, which somehow coincided with your arrival in England and Ren's eleventh birthday. So, tell me again, Lee, why this man is not a shinobi."
"That's unfair, nidaime-sama," Lee pointed out, but left it that, apparently knowing when to concede defeat.
"Well, with that out of the way," the hokage said with a sigh, taking out his pipe and filling it with tobacco, "What exactly did you tell our English friend?"
"That we had to think on it and check with our superiors," Minato answered putting the pressure back on the higher-ranking superiors in question.
Jiraiya-sama let out a sigh and asked, almost rhetorically, "I just want to know, why I'm still pulled into your messes, when you brats are finally jonin?"
"There is no escaping the team-seven curse, sensei," Minato quipped back, to which Jiraiya-sama seemed to haplessly agree as he didn't say anything to refute this.
Meanwhile, the shodaime was inspecting the letter, reading through the contents again, and then said, "I think we should accept."
"Accept?!" Ren balked, that having been, well, the last thing he'd expected to hear.
"You do realize they're trying to poach our chunin, don't you, onii-san?" Tobirama-shishou asked but the shodaime brushed this off rather easily.
The shodaime gave a rather sheepish grin before he acknowledged, "Well, to be fair, we poached Ren-kun first, or well, Lee-chan kidnapped him…"
"Kidnapping is also a strong word," Lee interjected but no one seemed to care about the technicalities of Ren's immigration to Konoha.
Hashirama continued without missing a beat, "And given the existence of this letter, they don't seem to have held a grudge. In fact, it sounds like they didn't even realize he was gone, this seems like a pretty standardized invitation. We don't know anything about the English village or their jutsus. It might not even be anything like a hidden village at all, if we accept Ren's invitation in good faith, this can be our chance to build ties."
Only the shodaime seemed to have this much blind faith in the shinobi of England, but then, the shodaime did have a knack for somehow, impossibly, being right about this sort of thing. As if his faith in the world alone was enough to inspire good will among men.
"That's great," Kushina pointed out, "But Ren is only a chunin, that seems like… I don't know, the kind of work you'd want for a jonin, or even a kage."
Ren bristled somewhat, but she had a point, in fact, that was why they'd blown off the man then and there to rush back to Konoha, that, and the fact that if Lee wasn't so Lee she would have been suffering from a near fatal wound.
As it was Ren found himself glancing at her again, wondering and worrying at the fact that she was still standing on her feet rather than back at the apartment or in the hospital in bedrest.
"Under normal circumstances I'd agree with you, kid," Jiraiya-sama said with a sigh, "But with the war breaking out, and with a limited number of shinobi being fluent in English, we don't have too many to spare for this sort of thing. Not to mention that Ren-kun, himself, seems to be expected."
Jiraiya's eyes then turned to Lee, "Although, if they want Ren-kun, why the hell weren't they falling over themselves to get Lee?"
That was, well, an excellent question. Ren liked to pride himself on his abilities, but he wouldn't hesitate to say that Lee was, well, monumentally better than he was. The fact that she was also English should have meant they'd be dying to get her back.
"Well," Lee said with a sheepish look on her face, looking as if she was loathing to bring this up, "Remember how I said I picked up Ren from fifty years before I left England? That might be coming into play here."
No one seemed to want to acknowledge this, by the looks on their faces, not that Ren blamed them, Lee's casual time travel was, well, disturbing to contemplate.
"But why get this letter now?" Minato asked, "When we just happen to be in England, why not three years earlier before we got our hands on him, and, for that matter, why him when they didn't seem to acknowledge him or Lee before this point?"
Unfortunately, these were all uncomfortable points they'd argued about while translating, and that no one had a real answer to. One answer was that the English system simply started, well, extremely late. That their academy accepted students at around the age that Konohagakure's academy students were being placed into genin teams. The other answer was, well, Ren had no idea what, perhaps that Konoha taking Ren had made them feel threatened enough to go through this whole song and dance as soon as he'd made a reappearance.
But the coincidental timing for that just seemed entirely too much, that would have meant they were watching Wool's orphanage and that the man in the yellow suit had been staking it out for Ren's very unlikely arrival in the place.
He'd seemed just as shocked as they'd been.
"Well, if they're going to give us an open door like this, so be it," the hokage stated with a sigh, officially settling the issue, "We've clearly put off this England issue long enough, even with a war, putting it off further would not be prudent. Particularly when we have some firepower to spare."
Lee put her head into her hands, looking as if she dearly wanted to verbally protest the issue but held it in, and for his own part Ren grimaced. Because, if there was an English village at all, a village he'd never heard of in eight years of living in England and blatantly making use of his natural talent in genjutsu and ninjutsu, then it must be an absurd place.
Because what kind of a village let a blood limit like Eru Lee's simply walk out on them?
As it was, both Ren and Lee were in a similar stupor, apparently, as options for who exactly to send were quickly deliberated. Minato, Kushina, the shodaime, Jiraiya-sama, Orochimaru-sama, and Hatake Sakumo were all briefly considered before, rather quickly, being rejected.
In the end they decided on Tobirama-shishou, Lee, Ren, and, to Ren's overwhelmingly numb horror, Hatake Kakashi. And sometimes, Ren didn't wonder if Lee had a point, and that the universe was actively crumbling at its foundations.
Because in what other world would he have the joy of being sent on a mission with both Tobirama-shishou and Lee, but also the displeasure of being sent out with that tiny freak of nature Hatake Kakashi.
When they arrived in London, right outside of Wool's Orphanage, looking just as bleak and unwelcoming as ever, Ren was already in a foul mood. Of course, Lee's overpowered teleportation didn't help matters, even Tobirama-shishou looking somewhat worse for wear after that, but all the same he found himself glaring at the building.
It was snowing, thick grey flakes and sludge already built up along the gutter, only a few days into the new year. Everyone who passed by them looked just as grey and bleak as their surroundings, grey caps on their heads, barely even noticing the group of foreigners all huddling in front of the orphanage.
Before anyone could suggest otherwise, as soon as he caught his breath, Ren stated, "We're not staying at the orphanage."
On seeing Tobirama-shishou and Kakashi's questioning gazes he added, "We can't, anyways, they only accept children."
Tobirama-shishou seemed to note this but then placed his fingers to the pavement, closing his eyes, and said, "It's just as well, there seem to be… veins of chakra, running through the street, to some central source further into the city, not more than a few miles from here. That, likely, is where our English hidden village is located."
Without too much bickering they set off on Tobirama-shishou's trail towards London's west side, a merry band of oriental foreigners, only evading the eyes of everyone around them thanks to Ren and Lee's combined genjutsus. And it struck him, as he walked in platformed sandals, and the dark greens and blues of Konoha with a shinobi's headband tied across his forehead, that like Lee he probably looked anything but English.
Either way, somehow, London seemed more depressing than when Ren remembered it last. Perhaps it had grown worse, or perhaps, Ren had grown immune to it back then, growing up in this gray dismal London, somehow more subdued than even Konoha on the brink of war.
Breathing out mist Ren glanced at Lee, at her clear shared displeasure with him, and found himself again fighting down a flush as he took in the redness of her cheeks or the way her hair seemed so much brighter against the London winter backdrop.
"Do you like how, apparently, England's hidden village is on the west side, Lee?" Ren asked, knowing that she'd probably find as much amusement in this fact as he did. Shinobi weren't necessarily poor, by any means, but that said they were usually somewhat separate from their civilian counterparts.
It just seemed entirely too odd to think that any hidden village would be right next to Buckingham Palace or even Westminster.
Lee offered him a somewhat wry and amused smile, "Well, I'm still of the theory that this place is nothing more than a genjutsu that is trying way too hard. So, in that sense, placing the English hidden village in the heart of Westminster would make perfect sense."
"I don't know if I'm comfortable with that theory," Ren stated truthfully, no matter how many times he was tempted to agree, recently that was.
"The universe doesn't care much for the comfort of us mere mortals, Ren," Lee said with a smile, and even here, her smile was perfect and brilliant. Ren felt himself grinning back, despite the cold slush on the streets and the snow falling from the sky.
Glancing next to him, Ren met Hatake Kakashi's disapproving glare with a smirk. Yes, Ren would rub salt in that wound for as long as he was able.
However, before either Kakashi or Ren could say anything about that Tobirama-shishou abruptly stopped, glancing up to stare at the painted sign of a rather dingy looking pub.
"This is it," Tobirama-shishou declared.
"…The Leaky Cauldron?" Lee asked, reading the sign and then looking at the nidaime with a pair of raised eyebrows but he hardly seemed to notice.
"Many of the veins lead to this point, and the defenses seem… Weaker, here," Tobirama-shishou declared even as he looked at the place with raised eyebrows.
"In a pub?" Ren couldn't help but ask, although even as he said it he couldn't help but notice the faint genjutsu that had been placed around it, not enough to effectively hide it from anyone other than a civilian, but just enough to tease at Ren's senses and catch his interest.
For all that it was a pub.
"It doesn't matter what it looks like," Tobirama-shishou snapped, "If a bar is their entrance then a bar is their entrance."
Stepping inside the place and dusting the snow off their clothing it was… Well, a pub, for one thing but also nothing like anything Ren had ever seen while in England. The people were dressed, for lack of a better term, like druids or else witches or wizards. They wore great flowing robes of all sorts of different colors and fabrics, as well as oversized pointed hats on their heads. Some sang hearty drinking tunes, many of which Tom had never heard from the normal part of London, and all seemed to possess the small wooden wands that the letter had talked about.
"Holy shit," Lee declared, as they stood in the doorway, and Ren couldn't help but agree.
"These are… shinobi?" Kakashi finally asked, but Ren had no response, they were certainly drunk, but more than that… Well, none of them had the same amount of chakra that the man they had previously met did, but they weren't lacking chakra either. And even while drunk some were performing bizarre and overpowered jutsus for tasks like cleaning beer glasses.
But none of them had a shinobi's edge, an edge that was never lost even with alcohol, instead they were… Well, like a bunch of drunk civilians if civilians were capable of any sort of jutsu.
"It's actually a bar," Tobirama-shishou said to himself in amazement, probably having thought that the bar was a front, and surely some sort of border control rested beneath it.
Wordlessly, glancing at each other, they ended up sitting in one of the booths in the corner, watching their English shinobi counterparts even as Tobirama-shishou ordered a round of something called butterbeer, even as he desperately looked like he wanted to order something alcoholic.
"So, it's a pub," Lee said after having taken a swig of her frothing drink, "I guess it's clear, that if their border is a pub, then the English shinobi know how to party."
Tobirama-shishou only sighed, still seeming to be in some sort of shock, "Well, at any rate, I believe the… hole in their defenses…"
"You mean the entrance to the English hidden village," Lee corrected without any hint of shame.
"Is somewhere behind this building or else inside it," Tobirama-shishou finished, unspoken was that as soon as he recovered, they'd have to go and look for it.
As it was, even though Lee and Ren had dropped the genjutsu, they weren't attracting nearly as much attention as a foreign shinobi should. There were a few glances here and there, but most of the patrons seemed to shrug it off, instead consumed with their own conversations, meals, and drinks.
"Right, but then how do we find this Dumbledore Albus again?" Lee asked, crossing her arms, "We didn't exactly get details of where we could meet up again."
Tobirama-shishou, with a hesitance that was rather unlike him, pulled out the letter, blinking, and stated, "It says they expect a response by owl no later than the end of August."
"By owl?" Kakashi asked, slowly, silver eyebrows raised towards his hairline.
Tobirama-shishou set the letter back down and took another long drink. Finally, he said, "Are you sure, Lee, that this man was an official of his government?"
"Well, that, or a genjutsu," Lee stated, "But if you prefer to believe reality isn't falling apart, then yes, he seemed to be the real deal. For whatever that's worth among these people."
Tobirama-shishou had nothing to say to this, apparently, as he took another drink.
Ren wondered if it was a good time to point out that the man had had an uncanny fondness for the color yellow.
For a moment they all sat in thoughtful silence, each thinking over the absurdity of this situation, all of it really. Finally, Lee seemed to have had enough of it, she set down her drink, stood from the table and approached the bartender.
"Excuse me, sir, you wouldn't happen to know how to get into contact with Albus Dumbledore, would you?" Lee asked in English, showing him a copy of the letter as she gave him her attempt at a disarming smile, "My little brother was sent this letter a few days ago, but we've been out of the country and are just generally unfamiliar with this whole process, and don't really know what to do."
"The hell is she doing," Tobirama-shishou muttered to himself as the bartender looked over towards them, eyes landing on Ren as Lee pointed towards him.
The bartender, however, appeared to have some familiarity with this as his eyes lit up with recognition, as if this explained everything odd and foreign about them, and he asked, "Oh, muggleborn then?"
Lee looked at him for a few moments, then said, "Sure."
This seemed to be all the man needed to know as he then went onto jovially explain, "Could have sworn the deputy headmaster met with all the muggleborn students, but maybe yours got turned around if you were out of the country. Right, here, just get your little brother to sign the letter here, then I have an owl and can show you how to send it off to Hogwarts. If you want you and your family can stay here the night, I have a few rooms left open, and I'm sure Dumbledore can swing by and meet you tomorrow since it's a Saturday."
Lee nodded slowly, her grin plastered to her face, "Yes, thank you sir, that would be unbelievably helpful."
The man laughed, "Not a problem, is he excited then, your little brother?"
Lee laughed in return, a forced thing, and said, "Oh, little Tommy has never been more ecstatic."
Ren's heart, he thought, for a moment, stopped beating entirely.
Next to Ren, Kakashi snickered into his drink, ignoring Ren's spike of killing intent, and dodging as Ren attempted to use his chakra to slosh the drink into his far too smug six-year-old face.
Little Tommy, as Lee coined him, had never been nearly so close to killing someone before.
True to the bartender's word, Dumbledore Albus arrived early the next morning, this time in a set of loose overflowing robes that featured varying shades of pink all the way from rose to burgundy, topped with a ridiculous looking hat.
Somehow, even compared to his counterparts, Dumbledore Albus took the English shinobi fashion sense just that much further. However, contrasting this, his expression as it landed on the four of them was quite wary even as he walked over towards them.
"Ah, Tom, good to see you again, I was worried when your friend apparated," Dumbledore said in English, motioning to Lee who offered him a slight wave of acknowledgement. The man tried to smile in return, but it fell short of his eyes.
Ren wasn't quite sure what it was Dumbledore thought he was seeing, when he looked at them, at the headbands and their clothing, but whatever it was he clearly didn't like it. However, for whatever reason, he was also holding his tongue.
"I don't believe I introduced myself last time, my name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am, as you know, the depuity headmaster of Hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardry. And I am glad that you have accepted your invitation," he tacked on last minute, no doubt referring to Ren's signature which had been sent off, by owl, towards some castle in Scotland that apparently really was called Hogwarts.
Hogwarts, as in warts on a hog, someone had thought that was a brilliant name for a castle.
"Tobirama Senju," Tobirama-shishou said, reaching forward to take Dumbledore's hand, a custom Ren had explained a while ago, "Tom Riddle, my apprentice, you've already met, the girl is Lee Eru comrade of mine and the boy Kakashi Hatake, a… classmate of Tom's."
Tom… Was Ren to be Tom Marvolo Riddle, here then? He supposed it made sense, the letter had been addressed to Tom, but all the same, all the same he had intended to leave that name behind for none to remember it.
Dumbledore shook Tobirama-shishou's hand with raised eyebrows, glancing to look at Lee then Kakashi, likely pondering over the word classmate. It wasn't untrue, but there was no good word for a comrade or chunin or shinobi that would translate over into English. At least, none that Ren could think of.
"We're from another country, Konohagakure, which I understand to be very far from this one," Tobirama-shishou explained, "We were honestly quite surprised to get a letter, as we were not aware that England had an academy for… magic."
"Konohagakure?" Dumbledore asked with a frown, "I do not believe I've heard of such a land."
His eyes then landed on Ren and then he seemed to remember himself.
"Ah, yes, you see, Tom is an orphan, a muggleborn orphan," Dumbledore stopped, looked at them, seeing their lack of comprehension, "A muggleborn is someone whose parents do not have magic, or, rather, their parents are muggles."
That… That didn't make any sense. Everyone had at least some amount of chakra, true, civilians didn't have enough to be of any real use, not enough to use in any kind of a jutsu. Perhaps that was what he meant, if your parents were civilians, and muggle was a rough translation for civilian but…
Ren's eyes slid to their fellow patrons, these men, despite their amount of chakra, could hardly be labeled as shinobi.
"Ah, we call such people civilians, I believe," Tobirama-shishou explained, apparently coming to the same conclusion as Ren.
Dumbledore gave a polite, if strained, smile to this. For a moment they sat in a rather awkward silence, neither quite knowing what to say to one another. Finally, Dumbledore said, "There are a few rules, before you attend Hogwarts, which I should explain. First, even though you can get your wand now, I recommend Ollivanders', you may not use spells outside of school until you are seventeen."
That made… very little sense, a world without jutsus was, well, incomprehensible. Besides, why?
"You see, you also cannot use magic in front of muggles," Dumbledore added when he was met with, once again, rather blank expressions.
Lee glanced over at the other patrons, then back to Dumbledore, "They're using magic."
Dumbledore looked over, "Oh, well, they're wizards."
Lee blinked, looked over again, and then back with a bewildered expression, "They're drinking at noon."
"… Being a wizard or witch does not preclude one from poor life choices, Miss Eru," Dumbledore said, but he was missing the point, the point being that even the most alcoholic and suicidal of shinobi would not be this unguarded in a public venue on the edge of his village.
Lee glanced over at them again, glanced back, then asked, "Can you give a short summary, on how, exactly, one goes about identifying one of these… muggles of yours. I think I'm a little confused on the concept."
Dumbledore was looking at Lee as if she had brain damage, "A muggle, Miss Eru, cannot use magic. Surely, in your own country, the statute of secrecy is in place."
Ren had no idea what that was, so he doubted very much that it was in place. The very idea was a strange one, a hidden village needed civilians to survive, they were a village's main source of income. If one never revealed jutsus to civilians, then how would Konoha or any other village support itself?
Lee, for her own part, looked rather blank and gave a rather lame, "Sure."
This, apparently, did nothing to reassure the man.
There was another moment of strained silence. Finally, Dumbledore cleared his throat, and noted, "Well, I see you have found The Leaky Cauldron, at least. Do you need help getting your Hogwarts supplies before the start of term?"
The day before they had taken the bartender's advice regarding money, and through Lee's illegal use of ninjutsu and making thousands of counterfeit pounds for Tobirama-shishou, for him to claim as a small portion of the Senju estate and his own personal finances as brother of the clan head, they had opened a bank account with… goblins, and had begun pilfering all the marketplace for every book that had ever been in print no matter the subject as well as rather high end supplies for various English specialties.
Ren was sure, that by this point, they had every book that was on his list for the introductory academy courses and then some.
At this point, all Ren lacked, was the mysterious wand that all English shinobi appeared to use for everything but taijutsu as well as the black kimono that they insisted upon.
"I think we have most everything we need," Tobirama-shishou answered, "However, before you leave, exactly how long is the Hogwarts term, and how long until a student graduates?"
"Ah, yes, Hogwarts lasts until late May of every year, from age eleven to seventeen, and there is a break for the winter holidays," Dumbledore cheerfully explained, clearly more at ease with this topic.
"Seven years?!" Ren asked, almost choking on his own spit, good god, he couldn't afford seven years of this. None of them could, that was a deep long-term mission, the kind that ANBU took, and not even ANBU, but a deeply infiltrating spy.
"Is there a problem with that?" Dumbledore asked, raised eyebrows, clearly realizing from Ren's expression that there was but Ren didn't answer him.
Instead he forced himself to calm down, clearly he'd just try to graduate early, or else drop out. It wasn't as if he was really English, after all, and he'd always hold closer ties to Konoha. It would be fine, he wouldn't be stuck in England forever, there was no need to panic.
At the very least, they could reconvene during the winter holidays and decide what to do from there. Who knows, by then they might even be called back to Konoha, if they were needed on the front.
"There's no real issue on our end," Tobirama-shishou said with a polite smile before adding, "That said, Lee Eru is also from England, originally, and we were hoping that she and Kakashi Hatake might attend your academy as well as Tom."
Dumbledore's eyes widened as he took in the other two, carefully, he said, "I am afraid that Miss Eru is too old, a student attends Hogwarts after their eleventh birthday but before their twelfth she would be… dreadfully behind in the curriculum. On the other hand, Mr. Hatake appears to be much too young for Hogwarts. That, and, Hogwarts is by invitation only, and I presume that neither she nor Mr. Hatake have a letter."
They… They didn't want Lee? Ren sat there, completely dumbfounded, that someone could look Lee, Eru Lee, in the face and honestly say that they didn't want her. Tobirama-shishou was apparently dumbfounded as well as he said nothing.
For a moment Ren's eyes met Tobirama-shishous, and in them was the clear decision to let this one lie and not push it, if they didn't realize what they lost then so much the better for Konoha.
Eventually, in the somewhat strained silence, Lee produced a letter out of thin air, "I'm afraid, actually, that Kakashi does have a letter, it arrived on his… eleventh birthday."
Dumbledore looked dubiously at Kakashi, "His eleventh birthday?"
Kakashi was hardly short for his age, but he was not nearly tall enough to go masquerading as an eleven-year-old either, and even his unnatural poise and intelligence couldn't disguise his height or childish features.
"I am short and adorable for my age, sir," Kakashi supplied with a blindingly cheerful grin that did nothing to convince Dumbledore.
"Kakashi Hatake is eleven," Lee insisted, leaning forward, eyes burning and the force of her genjutsu almost seeming to warp their surroundings, "He has received a letter, he is the droid you are looking for, and he will be accepted into your academy."
"He is eleven…" Dumbledore repeated dumbly, his eyes glazing over for a moment, and for a moment he almost seemed to resist, but then, blinking, he said, "Well then, if he has a letter, and he is eleven, I can hardly deny him admittance."
"Good, glad that both of my adorable little brothers will have the honor and glory of enrolling in Hogwarts," Lee said, leaning back away from Dumbledore, with a pleased smile on her face, ignoring Ren's pout at once again being referred to as a little brother along with Hatake.
However, now was hardly the time to be upset by that, or at least, not show how upset he was by that in public. Though apparently, judging by Hatake's raised eyebrow in his direction, he wasn't doing a very good job concealing it.
Dumbledore left all too swiftly after that, lamely stating he looked forward to seeing Ren and Hatake in the fall, apparently being rather uncomfortable around the lot of them, one would think he'd never seen a shinobi before. Which left them to step into Ollvianders' and go through the bizarre process of being chosen by a stick of wood.
Ren went first, it taking nearly an hour to find his wand, but when it was placed in his hand, the core having been made from the feather of a phoenix, the man Ollivander whispered to him, "I do believe, Mr. Riddle, that we can expect great things from you."
However, this was ruined only a few minutes later when Hatake was handed his own wand, a great spark of light appearing at the tip, and Ollivander exclaiming, "And we shall expect great things from you as well."
Because of course, he must somehow still be judged on equal footing, with the six-year-old Hatake Kakashi.
(And, he didn't know if it was worse or better, after Tobirama-shishou had selected a wand and then Lee was placed for one, that she received the holly brother wand to Ren's, and then promptly blew up the entire store by accidentally channeling too much chakra into the stick.)
Fall arrived somehow too quickly and too slowly, so that Ren felt as if he had only just blinked and already he and Hatake are standing on the platform, looking like a pair of fools in their English black robes, their foreheads stripped of headbands, all while still wearing the more eastern Konoha garb beneath all of that.
Ren couldn't help but notice how awfully they were standing out, even here on the platform filled with parents tearfully wishing their children farewell as they board the train headed to Scotland.
And, like a pair of dutiful parents, woefully mismatched in age, Tobirama-shishou and Lee stand side by side to see the pair of them off. Tobirama-shishou had his head in another book, an advanced one on Transfiguration, which in itself was a rather familiar occurrence as Tobirama-shishou spent the last half-year studying, experimenting, and studying some more all while shipping back supplies, theories, and research to Konoha.
Ren was sure, that if his body hadn't forced him to, Tobirama-shishou wouldn't have wasted any time sleeping or eating in the last six months.
Lee, for her own part, was grinning at the pair of them, relinquishing her role as temporary tour guide as she'd teleported the four of them all over Great Britain as well as the continent, allowing them to see it while they could, before another great muggle war broke out with Germany.
He was going to miss her terribly.
Now, of course, the real work would begin, all of it somehow relying on Ren and Hatake. It wasn't so much infiltration, or becoming sleeper agents for that matter, but sort of a first look into this world of English shinobi, a chance to form ties amongst their peers and get an idea of how this place worked. Diplomats would come later, probably in the form of someone much older and more experienced, for now all they had to do was show up, play nice, and send frequent reports back to the nidaime and Lee who would in turn send those back to Konoha.
Later, after the semester was over, then the year, they'd decide what to do from there.
Still, this would be the first time in three years he'd lived anywhere other than her and Minato's small apartment, the first real time he'd left Konoha for any extended period of time. And even though he was stuck with Hatake Kakashi, of all the people in the world, a part of him was pathetically glad that at least someone familiar was here with him on this platform.
At least, somehow, he wasn't going into this entirely alone.
"I can't believe they're having you ride a train to this place," Lee commented, "I wish I could go with you, almost, babysitting the nidaime isn't going to be much fun."
The fact that Tobirama-shishou was too absorbed in his book said more than enough about the fact that he probably did need babysitting, even if his babysitter was Lee.
"I wish you could come too, nee-san," Kakashi said.
"Just don't do anything I wouldn't do," Lee said fondly, before pausing, and adding, "Actually, don't do anything Minato wouldn't do, I might not be the best of examples."
"Because you'd burn down the castle?" Ren couldn't help but ask with a small smile, fairly certain that during one of Lee's earlier missions she'd burnt down an inn that she and the rest of team seven had been lodging in.
It just seemed like one of those things that would happen to Lee.
"Well, if it gets raided by plant zombies, then feel free to burn down the castle," Lee said then glancing at the train, "Either way, you two better get on up there and start making dweeby English friends."
Hatake rushed forward and pulled Lee into a hug, Ren stood there awkwardly, envious but also rather embarrassed second hand, he was too old for something like that, but he wanted nothing more than to rush in and hug her too without caring if anyone was watching…
He couldn't remember if he'd ever hugged Lee before.
Tobirama-shishou closed his book with a sense of finality, smiled at them both, and said, "Best of luck, write often, and try not to have too much fun."
With that, and the blowing of the whistle on the train, Hatake and Ren stepped on board, pulling their English trunks with them and then stared down the long hallway of compartments, the smile slipping from both of their faces. Eventually, they came to an empty one, walking in and setting their luggage up onto the racks, watching as the train pulled away from the station, leaving Lee and Tobirama-shishou behind.
Then they sat in the stifling silence, each turned toward the window as London, England, then the hills of Scotland begin to roll past them.
"I have never been good at making friends," Hatake murmured towards his own reflection in the window, a wry smile on his face, "Especially with people my own age."
It's a sentiment, that against his own will, Ren can empathize with. He too, has always had issues making friends his own age, granted he's never really wanted to make friends. However, Lee and Minato have always been closest to him, and they were four years older. And even then, if neither Lee nor Minato had taken any interest in him, he doubted his own pride would have allowed them close to him.
He'd been all too ready to brush Lee off in the beginning and sometimes he still wondered if he wasn't paying for his actions then in how easily Lee dismissed him as her little brother.
"This is going to be difficult," Ren said, instead, eliciting a small hum of agreement from Hatake.
Because he doubted he'd find these Englishmen anything but dull, not from what he'd seen of them in Diagon Alley, in The Leaky Cauldron, or in anywhere else. Ren had never been a fan of civilians, inside the orphanage or outside of it.
And he still highly doubted that these people were shinobi, not in the sense that Konoha meant it. Ren had once been to a civilian academy, while he was in the orphanage, and it had never once been interesting.
He sighed, leaning his forehead against the glass and briefly closing his eyes, picturing Lee as she'd been, dressed in English clothing, smiling at him from the station as she stood next to Tobirama-shishou. Already he was painting that image in nostalgia…
The door opened, a rather plain looking girl with brown hair, freckles, and oversized glasses stepped into the compartment wearing English clothing that Ren was actually familiar with, a pleated skirt and beige overcoat. On seeing the pair of them, she flushed, then opened her mouth to reveal the most obnoxious, ear-splitting, voice Ren had ever heard, "Hello, my name's Myrtle, all the other compartments are full, thanks for letting me sit with you."
She then sat down, dragging in her suitcase while both Ren and Hatake stared at her with wide horrified eyes. As soon as she was situated, she started again, "I'm a first year, a muggleborn, I hope I'm sorted into Ravenclaw, I read about it in 'Hogwarts: A History', what about you two?"
Her voice, it was… It was the single most wretched thing Ren had ever heard, that voice could be weaponized and set loose among enemy-nin, forcing anyone nearby to at least wince at the sound of its dull whine.
"We're both… first years too," Hatake lamely replied, and the girl gave a crow of delight at this, and Hatake, whose hearing apparently was more sensitive than even Ren's, visibly shuddered at the noise.
"That's great! I was hoping to meet other first years!"
Apparently, unintentionally, Hatake had just encouraged the girl. Ren turned his baleful gaze to Hatake who looked back with an expression that asked Ren to not blame him for this because surely this wasn't his fault.
"I'm Re… Tom Riddle, and this is Kakashi Hatake," Ren explained with a grimace, hoping his clear lack of enthusiasm would clue the girl in, but she was apparently denser than Billy Stubbs.
"Oh, you're both so adorable," that, or, apparently both Hatake and Ren were eye candy, both of them shuddering slightly at having to confront this fact, "What house do you think you'll be in?"
"Not Ravenclaw," Hatake quickly responded, remembering the screeching harpy's initial answer.
"Why not?" the girl whined, and it was amazing that that sound alone was cracking the glass of the window.
"Well, what Hatake means to say, I believe, is that we both aren't from England originally and don't really know the… houses that well," Ren said with a small, strained, smile which in turn earned him a glare from Hatake for encouraging the banshee.
"Well, Ravenclaw is for people who want to pursue knowledge, Gryffindor is for the brave, Hufflepuff for the loyal, and Slytherin for the ambitious and cunning," Myrtle moaned out before adding, "I'm going to Ravenclaw because I'm smart."
Neither Hatake nor Ren seemed to have anything to say to that or to Myrtle's declaration of her own superior intellect.
Ravenclaw, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, and Slythering… Good god, what drunk deity had come up with that combination? Actually, what drunk deity had come up with this whole sorting scheme in general, the entire thing was baffling if not incredibly idiotic.
"I'm not sure I understand the concept," Ren finally said, "A student is sent to one of these four houses? But, doesn't a person need each of these qualities to survive in the world. Without honor, bravery, ambition, intellect, or loyalty, then in some sense or another, that person's barely human at all."
Certainly in Konoha, a man who only claimed one of those things, would find his way to an early grave or else a life entirely without meaning.
This apparently, offended the girl quite greatly and she let out an ear-piercing wail, "That's not very nice to say! The sorting hat has been used since almost the founding of Hogwarts!"
She then gave a great harrumph and claimed, "Well, I still am going into Ravenclaw no matter what you two think!"
"Then I believe," Ren said with a small, polite, too polite, smile, "That I shall be joining Hatake in not Ravenclaw."
Finally, she seemed to catch on that both of them had at some point insulted her and she wailed, "Are you two bullying me?!"
He and Hatake looked at each other and looked back to her while she began to sob, tears catching against the thick panes of her glasses, looking as if she was going to sit there bawling the entire ride to Hogwarts.
It was a sad day, when he and Hatake Kakashi, appeared to be on the same wavelength.
Without a word Hatake stood, and physically threw the girl out of the compartment along with her trunk, then locked the door behind him with far more force than perhaps was necessary.
"Hey!" she shouted, rattled the handle to the door, "You two can't lock yourselves in there! That's not fair!"
Hatake slowly, with a blank look on his face, sat back down in his seat in silence, waiting for her to leave.
"Hey! That's mean! You two are being real jerks, you know that?! I don't care if you two are cute, I'll tell a prefect!"
Neither Ren nor Hatake moved or made any noise at all, neither moved by this patently civilian threat of tattling to the sempai.
There was another great wail from outside the door, a few more desperate rattles, and then the wailing slowly, but surely, faded as she dragged her luggage behind her, in search of a new compartment of hapless victims.
Ren let out a sigh of relief, slumping against his seat, and in a dazed voice he proclaimed, "I'm not sure I can make it until December."
And even though he was still silent and blank faced, Ren was more than sure that Hatake agreed.
The sorting, apparently, was done by a chakra infused talking hat, a hat, that in fact, had introduced itself by singing to its captive audience. Ren, at the sight of it, felt almost all brain activity stop. He was about to have a personality quiz performed by a talking hat, that everyone appeared to take with the upmost seriousness, and he was having a very difficult time not simply buying into Lee's genjutsu theory and being done with all of it.
Especially as, Hatake had now been sitting under the hat for at least a minute, and was still going. The longer he sat, the more muttering began to occur around them, people whispering from the audience and looking at Hatake in wariness or at the very least anticipation.
"…Sign of a dark wizard, you know, or at least a powerful one," Ren heard from somewhere amidst the four great tables in their audience.
"… Can't remember the last person who took this long," another voice sounded, from somewhere else in the room, likely at the red and gold table that apparently belonged to the Gryffindors.
"… Heard he's a pureblood from Japan, that he's the next head of his family," one of the children, a blonde whose hair was almost as light as Hatake, said to one of his peers, "Of course, you can never tell with foreigners, my father says they don't keep nearly as close track of their pedigree as we do."
"Merlin, he's so small for an eleven-year-old," a girl close by to Ren whispered to her friend, giggling while she said it, "He's so cute looking, oh, I hope he's in my house."
However, none of them realized that these were all things that, in one way or another, Hatake Kakashi had heard a thousand times before. In Konoha he had always been small, younger than his peers, he had always been adorable to those classmates that hadn't outright sneered at him and his accomplishments, and he had always been appraised for being the son of his father and the next head of the Hatake clan.
However, usually, it was not so blatant in Konoha, there had at least been some respect for a comrade there, and a respect for your abilities and intelligence no matter your age, background, gender, or even personality.
Even Ren, who loathed Hatake perhaps more than he had ever loathed another human being, respected Hatake's abilities and intelligence and wouldn't have whispered and giggled at him well within earshot.
Finally, the hat gave a great shout, "HUFFLEPUFF!"
Hatake stood, met his stunned audience with a rather blank expression. For a moment there was perfect silence, only gaping as he apparently defied expectation. Apparently, of the four houses the boy was supposed to get into, Hufflepuff wasn't it. The children, the blonde, began to snicker, as if Hatake had just proved himself the butt of someone's joke.
"Oh, for god's sake," Ren whispered to himself in Konoha's mother tongue, then, ignoring his own sense of pride, he began loudly clapping as everyone had done for every student before Hatake, soon enough joined in by the Hufflepuff table who all began to clap and cheer as Hatake practically stumbled towards them, getting slapped on the back by a grinning older student as he took his seat.
The blonde and his dark-haired friends, likely the children of English clans, all sneered at Ren and his display of comradery. Oh, Hatake owed him big for this.
After that Ren stopped paying any real attention, allowing the face of these English academy students to blur into one another. There seemed to be a more or less even division, as far as numbers went, so that an even amount went to each of the four houses. Which, if anything, showed the hat for the fraud it was, the fact that the division of brave, ambitious, intellectual, and loyal would be so even as that seemed dubious at best.
However, one pattern he noticed, was most of those children with nicer clothing, or else those that shared family features, and the children he'd marked as likely belonging to clans (and wealthy clans at that) seemed to end up in Slytherin more often than not.
And if Hatake had ended up in Hufflepuff, and they were here to network and form connections in England, then Ren had better follow the money and the lineage.
For in the clans was the heart of any hidden village.
Soon enough Dumbledore Albus announced, "Riddle, Tom"
Ren stood, noting the grave way Dumbledore seemed to look at him, the only one who seemed to give a foreign shinobi the true wariness he deserved. Ren offered the man a thin and rather polite smile as he sat down upon the stool and lowered the hat onto his head.
"Oh," the hat announced in English, despite somehow resounding within his head, "You are a tricky one, aren't you?"
Ren could almost sigh.
"Now, now, don't be impatient, one can't rush art," the hat said, "Let's see, what we have here, bravery and loyalty have certainly been drilled into you, haven't they? Or perhaps, you always had the capacity for valor and loyalty, but simply lacked the opportunity. After all, even now, your precious people, as you call them, are few and far between, aren't they? Still, I think you would do far more for them than most Gryffindors or Hufflepuffs would if push came to shove."
The hat dithered, talking to itself inside of Ren's head, a dearly uncomfortable experience that made him want to rip it off his head as soon as possible, "You're intelligent, true, but I don't think you pursue knowledge for its own sake, that, and I see that a certain young lady has poisoned your thoughts towards the noble house of Ravenclaw."
Ren could just imagine Moaning Myrtle sitting at the Ravenclaw table batting her eyelashes at him, or else wailing at how mean he and Hatake were.
"Oh, but ambition, at your heart you are ambitious above all other things, aren't you, Ren of Konohagakure? Always you have been ambitious, and cunning is the rock with which you sharpen this ambition of yours and force it into reality."
Well, that seemed simple enough then, however, the hat almost seemed to hesitate, "However, your sense of honor, your loyalty and bravery, is now intertwined with your ambition in a way that it wouldn't have been three years before now. You pride yourself on not only your own prowess, but your connection to your comrades, to those that you might even call your family. And your dream isn't necessarily to be hokage, is it? No, you dream of her, of the future you want with her inside of it."
Lee flashed in his mind, sitting on his bed, her blood on his floor, his sheets, and his shirt, looking at him with those green eyes that burned so very brightly. Sometimes, he wondered, if every time he closed his eyes he saw Lee's eyes staring back at him.
"To be frank, Ren, I'm not entirely sure what to do with you," the hat mused, which, well, wasn't that just wonderful.
Ren was sure that the students were now whispering at him as he sat here like a shmuck.
Finally, the hat asked, "Where would you like to go, Ren?"
"Slytherin," Ren responded swiftly and with more than a little impatience, if the talking hat had simply asked that in the beginning they wouldn't have had to go through this nonsense.
"Ah, but you want to enter Slytherin only for your shallow ambitions Ren," the hat exclaimed, "For the wealth, knowledge, and pedigree of those you see sorted there, for what it can do for Konoha, not for your own personal growth. I can promise you, Ren, it will not live up to your expectations."
"Has anything lived up to my expectations?" Ren asked, slipping into Konoha's tongue, which somehow seemed easier than English in this moment.
"Lee Eru has," the hat responded swiftly with a confidence that it did not deserve.
"You could be great, in Slytherin," the hat mused, "Yes, three years ago I would have suggested it to you without hesitation. But you are not the same boy you were then, are you? With your current mindset, with your lack of patience and expectation in your peers, I fear it has little to offer you."
But the hat didn't have any better ideas and they both knew it.
The hat sighed, "Very well then, I hope, that you don't come to regret this, Ren. It'd better be SLYTHERIN!"
Ren stood, and was met, as Hatake had been before him, with shocked and dull eyed looks. As he stood there, eyes sweeping the audience, he caught the sour face of his future Slytherin comrades, apparently quite displeased by his sorting.
A single soul stood, clapping, Ren turned and saw Hatake, offering him a small salute. Well, it seemed Hatake Kakashi had paid him back in kind after all. Slowly, as if their teeth were being pulled, the Slytherins joined him until Ren was sitting down at their table, next to the previously sorted children.
"Don't think you can sit here, mudblood," the blonde from earlier sneered even as the next child was being sorted.
Ren stared, blinked, "I'm sorry?"
"Merlin, you are a mudblood aren't you? Not that it wasn't obvious with a surname like Riddle," another, darker hair boy sneered, "A mudblood in Slytherin, it's a damn travesty is what it is."
There was snickering about the table, at seeing the blank look on Ren's face the blonde explained with a sneering sort of pity, as if Ren was stupid, "Mudblood, it means your parents were dirty muggles.
"Ah," Ren said slowly, letting the words sink in, "I see."
This, apparently, was the wrong thing to say as more snickering ensued. And there was, a strange surreal sense to this scene, that these children were dismissing him entirely, not one of them apparently realizing that out of all of them Ren had far more chakra, and was moving like a warrior trained where they all moved like civilian children.
None seemed to be able to tell, even by glancing at him and the way he held himself and watched his surroundings, that Ren was a chunin of a foreign village and could slaughter all of them in a heartbeat were he so inclined.
That first night, in the over decorated Slytherin bedchamber, shared between four of his absurdly wealthy classmates, Ren penned out his letter to Tobirama-shishou without any true enthusiasm.
And once again, he found himself wishing that Lee could be here too.
Classes started and within the first week both Ren and Hatake were top of their class and adored by their professors in equal measure barring Dumbledore Albus, who seemed impossible to please, despite both Hatake and Ren's apparently remarkable progress in Transfiguration jutsus.
In a way, it was just like old times, Hatake and Ren competing for first place, only somehow Ren no longer chafing quite as much at Hatake's age, perhaps because no one appeared to realize that the midgit eleven-year-old was really six.
Although how this wasn't obvious was beyond Ren, perhaps the idea of a six-year-old being as intelligent as Hatake clearly was simply was too alarming to contemplate. Better that he was an absurdly short adolescent than that he was that brilliant.
Magic itself, English jutsus, were fascinating. In terms of combat and warfare they were woefully behind the jutsus of Konoha, but their fuinjutsu, their strange brand of ninjutsu, kinjutus, medical jutsus, and branches that belonged wholly to themselves like Potions, Transfiguration, and Alchemy seemed infinite in their potential.
England had almost two thousand years of research and development into the creation of their jutsus, in a stable environment relatively without war or loss of knowledge and clan techniques through the ages, and it showed.
The castle itself, the walls inscribed with thousands upon thousands of intricately bound seals to create a barrier and almost grant sentience, were a masterpiece, rivalling and perhaps surpassing the great fabled walls of Uzushio before it had fallen in the second war.
However, Ren had discovered rather quickly that, barring Hatake, his classmates were all idiots. More, they were so painfully civilian, every day they'd take the moving staircase while both Ren and Hatake had quickly learned to bound from one staircase to another or simply scale the walls rather than wait on the unpredictable staircases' schedules.
Taijutsu was declared something 'muggle' and vulgar and far beneath any decent English shinobi and the closet thing they seemed to come to any physical exertion was some demented version of rugby they played on flying broomsticks.
They also, didn't like being shown up by an upstart mudblood.
"Hey, mudblood, who do you think you are?" the blonde, Malfoy, had asked a few classes in, "Sucking up like that to Slughorn? You think it'll make you less dirty, if you try so hard?"
In short order they'd attempted to steal his belongings, they'd try to trip him in hallways with jutsus and make him drop his books, and every single time he found it that much harder not to imitate Eru Lee and simply beat them into their place with extreme prejudice.
Perhaps it was natural then, that he'd wake up early each day to find some respite from this, and that in short order Hatake would be forced into the same. Within the week, they'd gone from training side by side in silence, to sparring, training together, and commiserating over their woeful lack of success thus far.
"My peers, Hatake, are hopelessly ignorant asses," Ren declared, "One of these days I will punch one of them into a shallow grave."
"Maa maa, Ren-kun, such violence is frowned upon in this establishment," Hatake said, "Still, you are the English orphan son of civilians, at least you aren't simply adorable when you aren't a foreign uppity pureblood."
Ren barked out a rather amused laugh, "We planned this poorly, you would have fared better in Slytherin, we have an entire assortment of English clan heirs."
And there did seem to be dissatisfaction, at least, from Ren had seen of Hatake in their shared classes. There was whispering about his foreign features, his strange silver hair that didn't seem Japanese at all, about the fact that he was clan heir and seemed to be such a snob because of it, likely having had everything handed to him on a platter since the day he was born.
It was such a strange concept all around though, to resent one for their birth. Sure, in Konoha, there were connotations to being the son of civilians or else an orphan, but many great ninjas had been orphans, and a few had even been civilian orphans, and there was no stigma surrounding their accomplishments.
At least, not based merely on the circumstances of their childhood.
Still, Ren tolerated it, more, there was some strange pleasure to be taken in being the top of every single class, competing only, as expected, with Hatake Kakashi and leaving these English bastards in the dust. Every time Ren received a score for an assignment, or praise from a professor, he made certain to turn and offer his peers a polite smile.
There was a joint pride in both Ren and Hatake's successes, that two Konoha shinobi, could so easily destroy the English curriculum, no matter their own personal differences or their own internal rivalries, for now, in England, he and Hatake were truly brothers in arms.
And if anyone should challenge Ren in this place, even if he had the gall to be nearly four years younger than Ren, it was Hatake Kakashi.
It was a Tuesday, in the dungeon corridor, that Ren's peers finally seemed to reach their limit. They waited, clustered together, the bigger beefier goons of Malfoy standing behind him as if they were body guards while Malfoy, Black, and a few others sneered at Ren.
"Well, if it isn't the mudblood," Malfoy sneered, "Oh look, he's got even more books with him, isn't it just adorable, how he's always studying? He tries so hard! Careful, mudblood, you ever lose one of those books and you'll be dead in the water."
Ren stopped, stood still, and eyed his peers with a dull gaze. And in their place, instead of these stupid adolescent punks, he had a flashback to himself in the orphanage, and those early days in Konoha. He saw the young Tom Marvolo Riddle sneering at Lee, at Namikaze Minato, and suddenly he could see exactly what they must have seen when they looked at him.
His cheeks flushed, mortification growing, as he was forced to reconcile himself with what he had once been.
"Oh, look at that, he's blushing!" Black crowed out in triumph to his peers, "Did we hit a nerve. Tommy?"
But Ren was hardly thinking about them, instead, he thought to himself, that it was a small wonder Ren could never look past those initial moments and see Ren for what he could be or even what he was right now. Every time she saw him, she must always see Black or Malfoy or anyone of these idiots as she remembered their first meeting and how he'd tried to break her fingers.
Break Eru Lee's fingers, as if she hadn't been capable of slaughtering grown men even at the age of six.
"Oh, look at that, I think he's going to cry!" a voice cried out, but Ren was no longer even looking at them, couldn't force himself to look at them, "Are you going to cry, ickle mudblood?"
How pathetic he must have looked back then, to her, no wonder she had swatted him repeatedly as one might an obnoxious fly buzzing beside her ear.
Namikaze Minato, he couldn't help but think, had never made nearly as terrible an impression on her. And that, that had to make at least some difference…
Abruptly, Ren made to move past the blockade, in no mood to play out whatever scene they had in store for him while he had to think and come to terms with a truth that he desperately didn't want to come to terms with.
None of them moved, even when Ren pushed one of Malfoy's goons into the other with more force than perhaps was necessary, causing him to stumble out of Ren's path.
"Hey, watch it mudblood, where do you think you're going?!"
Ren paid no mind, only to jump out of the way as a bolt of light blew past him. He stopped, stood stock still, and turned, killer intent rising and eyes burning.
"Well," he said slowly, "Congratulations, gentlemen, you have my attention."
One of the poor bastards, Black Orion, made the mistake of laughing. Ren proceeded to, in Lee's words, lose his shit, and beat the ever-living daylights out of the boy and send him straight to the hospital wing.
Somehow, it wasn't nearly as satisfying as Ren had hoped it would be.
Black, in the hospital wing then outside of it, didn't say a word, apparently the stigma of being beaten up by a clanless orphan far more terrible than the joy of watching whatever retribution was given by the authorities to Ren.
And now the opposition against Ren, while somewhat more silent, seemed that much weightier. Ren, for his own part, was just damn tired of it and all these people.
Eventually, Slughorn, Ren's head of house, pulled him aside to jovially state, "You know, Tom, my dear boy, I've heard rumors of bullying and you can talk to me if you have any issues."
Ren simply sat in his chair, staring blank faced at the man, unsure of how to take this except that no true figure of authority in Ren's life had ever been half as patronizing.
"You have a bright future ahead of you," the man continued, as if Ren needed this pep talk, "Don't let your peers get in the way of that, they'll recognize you in time, after all, that's the nature of us Slytherins, eh?"
"I suppose," Ren acquiesced when it seemed the man was waiting for him to say something.
"Yes, well, I am glad that you seem to be friends with young Mr. Hatake, at the very least," Slughorn said before adding, with a rather assessing look, "Old friends? Albus says you spent some time in Japan with him before coming back to England."
"Kakashi and I go way back, yes," Ren said with a smile, not quite willing to outright call them friends. Comrades, yes, but friends, oh, oh god no.
"You know, you could try to make new friends, particularly friends within your own house. Mr. Hatake is indeed a brilliant boy, but he too seems rather isolated from his classmates, it'd do both of you well to branch out."
That might have just been Ren's breaking point, not the Slytherins, not the stigma, not the horrific realization that he had been little more than a stupid civilian bully when he was eight years old, but Slughorn's pity at seeing him and Hatake as isolated loners and best friends.
The next morning, blank faced, before they could begin to spar or run or do anything, Ren declared, "Hatake, something must be done."
"Something?" Hatake questioned but Ren paid him no mind.
"Slow compaigns, leading towards the madness of the intended victim, are more your area of expertise than mine, Hatake," Ren stepped forward, grabbing the boy by his shoulders and staring into his gray eyes, "I don't just want them bleeding, Hatake, I want them infuriated beyond all human reason, and I want them hopelessly impotent and to feel the wait of that impotence. I want each and every one of them to realize that they are stupid whining civilians without even the decency to know their place, and I want them to loathe that fact."
Hatake, slowly, nodded, "Well, I too, have grown a little tired of this place."
He offered Ren a blinding grin then, reached forward and grabbed Ren by his forearms, "Let's show these civilian bitches how it's done, Ren."
Ren and Hatake set up a series of non-lethal, but extensively humiliating traps throughout the castle after curfew, both easily evading the patrols of prefects, professors, and the caretaker. Within the week students were dangling upside down by invisible ropes, some trapped in goo and plastered to walls like particularly tasteless pieces of art, some caught in genjutsus featuring bare breasted women that left some of the older male students in obviously incapacitated states.
They were never caught, and at first they weren't even blamed, but slowly but surely the school's attention wandered over to the pair of them.
Ren, personally, was loving every minute of it. Suddenly, it seemed so much clearer why Hatake was the little devil he was, if this was the kind of satisfaction he got from it on a daily basis.
Within only a few days, they'd forgone their early morning sparring session, to instead brainstorm with the theme of, "What would Eru Lee do?"
Because clearly, if there was more to be gained from the delicious humiliation of his peers, then Lee would be responsible for it.
"The art of being nee-san," Hatake explained, with a wide hand-gesture an authoritative tone and the look of a visionary on his face, "Is not simply to think outside of the box but to fail to recognize a box exists at all. In other words, you have to be so surreal, that reality itself warps to you."
"And how, exactly, does one accomplish that?" Ren asked.
"Well, it's not simple, there is no easy way to imitate nee-san, however, one can stand in her glorious shadow from time to time," Hatake paused, then extrapolated, "There's a few basic guidelines, if one can reference English films, books, or television shows from the twentieth century, then do."
"For example, if I say, 'Look, you stupid bastard, you've got no arms left!" Hatake started before motioning to Ren, "Then you obligatorily should respond, 'It's just a flesh wound"
Monty Python's Holy Grail, Ren wasn't sure he'd followed all of that when he'd translated for Lee, or what it'd had to do with the holy grail or King Arthur. He felt it was one of those things that had probably been better on film.
Still he nodded even as Hatake continued, "Second, the goal is always to get from point A to point B in the most efficient manner possible, especially if it's in the most overpowered manner possible."
"For example, say the earth is invaded by aliens," Hatake started.
"Invaded by aliens?" Ren balked.
"Sure, why not," Hatake said with a shrug, "The earth is invaded by aliens, our job then, is to emulate Lee in getting rid of the aliens as quickly as possible by disintegrating their ship entirely or else having it be eaten by some demonic horde. Then, while everyone is staring up in horror, we go out for pizza."
"That doesn't seem a likely scenario," Ren commented but Hatake dismissed this.
"That's the third, everything is a likely scenario, one should always pick the most obvious and simple solution, but if the obvious and simple solution is that god is screwing with everyone then god is screwing with everyone."
There were a few more rules, that Hatake, had apparently taken great pains to formulate then memorize, enough so that they spent the entire morning bickering and discussing them. Still, there was something for them, because Hatake Kakashi could apparently imitate Lee with an alarming degree of accuracy.
One day he showed up in a black shinobi's mask over his face, claiming to be Batman, and that he had to now protect his civilian identity. For about a week he left the mask on at all times, casting genjutsus for eating so that it appeared as if the mask remained on, and then just as suddenly the mask was abandoned with only a thousand yard stare and the explanation of, "I was not the knight they deserved but the knight they needed", given to their peers.
Every day he and Ren would move the furniture in any given classroom a few inches to the left, until by the end of the week, suddenly, all of their peers had finally noticed.
And, perhaps best of all, after weeks of research and countering the anti-summoning jutsus and seals placed on many enchanted objects, he and Ren routinely sabotaged the great Gryffindor vs. Slytherin quidditch game by summoning and catching the snitch just as the game began, leaving the poor hapless seekers to spend hours trying to find it.
They'd played the game all night, looking for that damn snitch. At sunrise the referee had taken pity on them and released a new snitch onto the field. Of course, not helping was that Ren had summoned this one to himself and also shoved it into his pocket, ignoring its desperate fluttering against his fingertips.
Some girl from Gryffindor, a Scot by the name of McGonagall Minerva, after the game had tried to flay them for daring to tarnish the time-honored game of quidditch. It didn't work, of course, but still points to her and Gryffindor for the sheer rage behind the effort.
And all this was still done while maintaining their position at the top of their classes and doing extensive research into the fields that the English academy wouldn't cover until their third year, like fuinjutsu, and divination. Though, Hatake and Ren were both remarkably poor at that last subject, apparently neither having the 'inner eye' that the text books would mention.
(Although Hatake had taken to prophesizing the doom of his fellow students at every opportunity, often to hilarious effect.)
Still, both agreed, a clear late November morning, that for all their effort they still couldn't quite match Lee's glory.
"Perhaps there is simply no matching nee-san," Hatake mused, "She is, after all, unmatchable in all the world."
Ren laughed slightly, shaking his head even as he agreed, "God, I wish she was here with us."
"Oh, I'm sure she and the nidaime are having a grand old time," Hatake said, before sighing, "Still, I wish she was here too. I get to see so little of her, these days."
However, it wasn't the desperate missing that Ren had been expecting, for all that he wanted to see Lee and couldn't wait for the holidays he was… content, somehow. For some reason he wasn't quite as lonely as he would have thought he'd been.
His eyes turned to Hatake, taking in his pleased grin as he thought over the misadventures of the past few weeks, and he felt himself pale. He had the sudden, horrible, realization that he and Hatake Kakashi were friends, legitimate friends, in a way that Ren had never truly been friends with anyone.
Minato and Lee were the closest thing that Ren had to family, and he'd hardly categorize them as friends. Even then, often he wanted less from Minato and more from Lee, to cast Minato into an easier role of an older brother and Lee into something far more close and personal than that. Tobirama-shishou was a mentor above anything else, and if he was anything at all, then perhaps a man that Ren could come to view as the father he'd never had.
But no one had ever been Ren's friend.
And as he silently contemplated this fact, he couldn't help but shudder at the thought of it.
Perhaps it was inevitable, after all, it was in Hatake Kakashi's nature to push people entirely too far.
Just at the end of the term, amidst the golden and garish decorations for the holiday season, Ren's pureblood Slytherin friends combined forces with their older peers to but Hatake Kakashi and Tom Marvolo Riddle into their places.
In the Dungeons once again, just before curfew ended, and the halls suspiciously absent of prefects Ren and Hatake found themselves surrounded by what looked like nearly all of Slytherin, their wands out and ready to confront the pair of them.
"Well, well, aren't you two out a little past your bedtime?" one of them asked.
Ren paused, prepared to move into a stance for combat, but Kakashi held up hand, silently telling him to wait, and asked, "Who goes there?"
And, vague a question as this was, somehow, for some absurd reason, Ren recognized just what Kakashi was getting at and felt his lips split into a grin, turning from his peers he announced, "It is I, Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, from the castle of Camelot. King of the Britons, defeater of the Saxons, Sovereign of all England!"
"Pull the other one!" Kakashi exclaimed, eyes wide, clearly disbelieving of Ren's claim.
"I am, and this is my trusty servant, Patsy," Ren said motioning behind him to the empty space that served as Patsy, "We have ridden the length and breadth of the land in search of knights who will join me in my court at Camelot. I must speak with your lord and master."
"What? Ridden, on a horse?" Kakashi asked with incredulity, looking behind him towards the invisible Patsy.
"Yes!"
"You're using coconuts!" Kakashi exclaimed, much to Ren portraying Arthur's confusion over the issue.
"What?"
"You've got two empty halves of coconut and you're bangin' 'em together," Kakashi noted, only for Ren to look back at the invisible Patsy, who undoubtedly simply shrugged towards his lord and master Arthur.
Needless to say, at this point, their audience was deathly silent and very confused.
"So?" Ren asked before dismissing this, "We have ridden since the snows of winter covered this land, through the kingdom of Merica, through…"
"Where'd you get the coconuts?" Kakashi interjected.
"We found them."
"Found them? In Merica? The coconut's tropical!" Kakashi exclaimed in, possibly, even more disbelieve than before.
The audience shifted, began to mutter to one another in hushed English, looking now entirely uncertain as both Ren and Kakashi embraced their self-selected roles.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, this is a temperate zone," Kakashi said as if this explained everything having to do with the invisible coconuts.
"The swallow may fly south with the sun or the house martin or the plover may seek warmer climates in winter, yet these are not strangers to our land?"
"Are you suggest coconuts migrate?" Kakashi asked, rather rhetorically, only for Ren to shift as he considered his own answer.
"Not at all. They could be carried."
Kakashi balked, "What? A swallow carrying a coconut?"
"It could grip it by the husk!"
"It's not a question of where he grips it! It's a simple question of weight ratios! A five-ounce bird could not carry a one pound coconut."
"Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?"
Kakashi ignored Ren's demand and continued, "Listen, in order to maintain air-speed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?"
"Please!"
"Am I right?" Kakashi pressed, his eyes bright, even as the audience began to get impatient.
"I'm not interested!" Ren exclaimed, pulling at his hair and perhaps getting a little too in character.
"But way, it could be carried by an African swallow, maybe, but not a European swallow, but then African swallows aren't migratory…"
This appeared to be the breaking point for their audience, much as it was Arthur's breaking point in The Holy Grail, and the mob moved forward with wands pointed out, forcing Ren and Kakashi to madly dash ahead and retreat into the girl's dungeon bathroom.
"Well, I think that went rather well," Kakashi noted, "And good show having Monty Python memorized, I wasn't sure you would."
"I didn't know I had it memorized either," Ren confessed, certainly he'd never tested it out before today.
"So, how many bones should we break. Minimal, I think, England seems to frown on that," Kakashi noted.
"Oh, yes, they did not like what happened to Black," Ren said with a nod even as his eyes glanced around the girl's bathroom, and eventually landed on an oddly shaped faucet that looked rather like a snake, and barely realizing it he found himself hissing out, "You'd think I'd have cut him open."
"Was that supposed to mean something, I just heard hissing…" Kakashi started, but before he could finish the wall next to the sink began to open up and reveal a dark stairwell leading beneath the castle.
Ren and Kakashi looked at one another, then looked back down into the dark, where, apparently, the kekki genkai Lee claimed was near useless, had just opened a hole in the wall.
"Strike beating up our English peers," Hatake Kakashi said slowly, "What do you say we impersonate Jones Indiana instead?"
Ren and Kakashi stepped off the train to meet Tobirama-shishou and Eru Lee, standing there waiting for them in winter apparel as if they'd never left the platform. At the sight or the pair of them stepping off the train, grinning, and looking far more at ease in each other's presence than they had even a few months before, Lee and Tobirama-shishou exchanged glances.
"So, is Hogwarts still standing?" Lee asked.
"Oh, yes, of course," Kakashi quickly reassured her, "Very much still standing and not on fire."
Ren grinned, "However, that said, we've made something of a… discovery."
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Lee exclaimed, but neither Ren nor Kakashi paid any mind. Instead Ren took her hand, "Lee, if you'd do us the honors of apparting outside of Hogwarts, please."
Lee exchanged another wary glance towards Tobirama-shishou, who sighed, and gave a small nod, then the four of them were just outside the gates of Hogwarts, Ren and Kakashi motioning for the others to follow, running overtop the snow, while they navigated their way towards the cave just outside the forbidden forest that served as the back entrance to the great chamber.
Ren, waving a hand, ushered them inside, grinning all the way until they finally came across the main portion of the chamber, and the sleeping basilisk.
"Holy shit," Lee exclaimed.
"It's called a basilisk, and I've decided my future clan is going to breed these nin-snakes like the Inuzaka's do their nin-dogs," a task, apparently, which had been labelled a forbidden technique by England but was also more or less easily done, involving a rooster, a toad, and a bit of English jutsus. And he could just picture it now, his and Lee's future auburn-haired children, and their army of terrifyingly oversized snakes who could kill simply by looking at a person, whose poison was incurable by all but a miracle.
"And," Kakashi added, "Since I was there at the time of the discovery, I shall be a lieutenant of this dread snake army."
Author's Note: For the 1700th review of "Minato Namikaze and the Destroyer of Worlds" by Elelith who asked for an additional chapter to this, "How I Met Your Other Mother", or "A Thousand Years of Light Between Us" and since I was happy where the last ended (even though it could, if I have to, have another chapter or two I suppose), the second would be forcing Kakashi into a chapter where he probably doesn't belong, we end up with more of little Ren's tale. Or, in this case, the start of a bromance over the hatred of their stupid English friends. Aren't they adorable?
Thanks to readers and reviewers, reviews are much appreciated.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto
