Sorry for the long wait, but I had to work a little on this chapter until I liked it enough to post it. Thanks for all the reviews you left for the previous ones. Hope you like this one too.

Happy reading.

Traitor

Mizuki thought he was really smart making it look as if he was Naruto. He would simply pretend to be the demon and then let the transformation go when he was far enough away. The brat would take the blame for stealing the scroll and he would be halfway to Oto before they noticed the scam. And many would still believe that it had been Naruto and not him who took it. It was too bad, for him that was, that Harry had been suspicious of the looks Mizuki gave Naruto when they had all been met by Sirius outside of the academy who had come to congratulate them and invite them to eat on his treat. With Sirius being very intimidating and it being well-known among the civilian shop owners that the Uzumaki clan was quite wealthy, none of the waiters at the restaurant they chose dared making any disparaging comments about Naruto eating there. Harry had tasked Hedwig with watching Mizuki and informing him if he did anything bad.

So silent in the night the normally snowy white owl was hidden in the shadows, her plumage darkened to grey with a trick Hedwig had figured out herself when she learned to channel chakra. She could darken or lighten the colour of her plumage at will now, depending on what the situation required. She knew exactly that when Mizuki transformed into Naruto that she needed to inform Harry. She knew she could track him down easily. She was a highly intelligent, magically trained post owl from a long line of powerful owls. Finding a person she wanted to find was child's play for her. Silently she took off from her observation point, flying towards where she could feel her master.

Harry frowned when Hedwig conveyed the information that Mizuki was up to no good. He had had suspicions, but he had the bad feeling that if he didn't interfere somebody close to him would take the fall for whatever Mizuki planned, probably Naruto. So Harry decided to go and stop Mizuki.

"Nev, Mizuki plans something bad. I'm going after him," Harry said.

"What would he be up to?" Naruto asked.

"I have no idea, but he gave you strange, angry and calculating looks when we met Siri earlier in the day. I had Hedwig watch him and I fear if I don't act he will do something that will be blamed on you," Harry answered honestly.

"I don't know why most of the villagers hate me. I never did anything to deserve that. Okay, I did play pranks, but they were at most annoying and they already looked at me with those cold eyes before that," Naruto said sadly.

"We will find out the reason one day, Naruto. And in two days the heritage potion will also be ready. So you can look forward to finally learning who your parents were," Neville tried cheering his fellow blond up.

"Yeah, thanks, Nev," Naruto said happier again.

"Do you need backup?" Neville asked.

"It would be better. I'm sure I can take him easily, but I have no idea if he works alone or has support as well," Harry answered.

"Okay, then I'll come with you," Neville stated.

"I want to come as well," Naruto said.

"You know that you aren't a match for a chunin yet, Naruto. This will be dangerous," Harry warned.

"You two are my only friends my age, Haru. And you're family. I don't want to let you go into danger alone. And I can help. I can make masses of shadow clones if needed. They can be distractions and manpower," Naruto begged.

"Alright, it'll also give you an alibi if he really tries to blame what he's about to do on you. But we should warn the Hokage of what's going on. Mizuki is already in action, so we need to hurry," Harry decided.

"I can take care of informing the Hokage. You go after Mizuki," Sirius said.

"Thanks, Siri. We'll see you later," Neville replied and the three boys ran out of the house, following Hedwig who led the way.

Mizuki was satisfied with how the theft of the scroll had gone. He had managed to get to the scroll in his disguise and take it before leaving the tower. The alarm had only been triggered once he had been a good distance away. Now he only needed to get out of the village and then he could drop his disguise. He would need to get out of Fire Country fast, but the Valley of the End wasn't that far away. He could rest a little when he had reached Rice Pads Country and learn as many of the powerful jutsus that the scroll contained. His original plan had been to kill the brat after tricking him into stealing the scroll. The investigation would have taken a few days in which he could have copied as much as possible, after all, they would find the scroll sooner than later if they searched everywhere, and the ANBU would do that once the investigation in the demon was done, while also securing a mission outside of the village.

Then he could have left with his notes from the scroll towards Oto where Orochimaru had promised him a place as a jonin if he got him the secret jutsus from the scroll. Konoha had held him back for too long and it was time he thought about his own career.

He never noticed when he got company, which cost him dearly when he was hit by a surprise attack from some bird that scratched at his face.

"What?" He exclaimed surprised, turning around to be attacked again and again by the fast bird.

He tried hitting the bird with some fire jutsus, but it was too agile in the air. Then he felt his body paralyse.

"Nice going there, Haru," He heard a young voice.

"Thanks Nev. Now let's see what this traitor can tell us," Another voice said that sounded too familiar to him.

True to his fears the faces of Haru, Nev and Naruto Uzumaki showed him just who had captured him. Perhaps he could turn this around still. They were only freshly graduated academy students after all. He tried getting over the paralysation, but it didn't work.

"Don't try. You're caught in a special Uzumaki fuinjutsu trap," Haru stated, "The only muscle you can move is your mouth as we want you to spill your secrets."

"I won't tell you anything," Mizuki snapped and felt his transformation jutsu lose hold.

"Oh, but you will. Not voluntarily, but we have the means to make you talk," Nev said and walked up to him and forced his mouth open and put some liquid onto his tongue. He felt his mind daze over.

"Why did you steal the forbidden scroll?" he heard Haru ask.

"Because Orochimaru promised me a place as a jonin in his new village Oto if I managed to bring the secrets in it to him," Mizuki felt himself answer.

"Why did you impersonate Naruto?"

"To put the blame on the demon brat. Nobody would believe in his innocence if he was seen doing the deed."

"Why do you hate Naruto so much?"

"He's the nine-tailed fox that attacked Konoha twelve years ago. The Yondaime Hokage sealed the demon into him to stop it from destroying the village," Mizuki answered.

Naruto was shocked and trembled.

"Stupid morons, can't even tell the difference between a prison and the prisoner," Haru cursed, "We will talk about the thing that really happened later, Naruto. How did you make contact with Orochimaru?"

"He had spies inside of Konoha. I got contacted by Misumi Tsurugi if I was interested in gaining more power. I accepted the offer as Konoha has only held me back. I should have been jonin by now."

"Do you know other spies inside the village?"

"Not for sure, Misumi was my contact."

"Who do you think are spies?" Haru changed the question.

"Kabuto Yakushi and Yoroi Akado, his teammates."

"Why did nobody tell me about the fox?" Naruto spoke up, wanting answers for a change.

"The Hokage made a law that everybody was forbidden to speak about the fox, presumably to protect you. Nobody likes you, demon, they only have to follow the Hokage's law."

"He can only tell the truth as he sees it, Naruto," Haru said, "We'll ask the Hokage what really happened. Mizuki is clearly bitter and can't see what's directly in front of him. Any true demon would have attacked the village after the second insult against him. Were you the Kyubi, Konoha wouldn't stand anymore."

"I think we should take him to T & I and let the pros take care of getting the rest of the information they need," Nev suggested, "Let's simply tie him up and put chakra suppressing seals on him so he can't escape."

They followed that idea and soon Mizuki was handed over to Ibiki Morino, the head of the T & I department. After a few questions to the group they were allowed to leave as long as they reported to the Hokage immediately. As they wanted to get some questions answered anyway it was not trouble at all.

The Sandaime Hokage looked at Naruto with a grave expression. He hadn't wanted him to find out about his burden like this. But he hadn't expected that the two new Uzumaki boys had something like the truth serum that Haru had handed him for getting truthful answers from somebody. It was a potion they called veritaserum. It would be very useful for the T & I department, but now he needed to answer some questions that he had deflected till now.

"Why did you never tell me?" Naruto wanted to know, clearly being hurt about this being kept from him, "I asked so often why the whole village hated me when I didn't do anything to deserve it. Why?"

"I hoped that if I made the fact that the Kyubi is sealed inside of you a secret, you would at least have had a chance that the children wouldn't hate you and you could have had some friends. Sadly the parents never wanted to understand or couldn't understand that you aren't the fox, but its container. They kept their children away from you and told made-up stories about you being a bad influence to explain it. I couldn't tell you when you were younger, because it would have only painted a huge target on you. A person holding a demon like the Kyubi is called a jinchuriki. They are sadly often made into weapons of the village they live in. I never wanted for you to have that fate. So I forbid everybody on pain of death to talk about you holding the Kyubi. You aren't a monster, you are the only thing standing between the fox destroying Konoha. The Yondaime wanted you to be seen as the hero you are for keeping Konoha safe, thanks to bearing this burden, but grief and fear made the people unreasonable," The Hokage explained.

"And you never thought to explain them the basics of fuinjutsu enough so that they would realise how ridiculous it is to think that Naruto was the fox? It's the basic concept of a storage scroll after all, even if the true process is much more complicated and involves all kinds of filters in the seal to avoid the biju's chakra poisoning the container," Harry asked.

"Fuinjutsu experts are really rare and in the direct aftermath of the Kyubi attack we didn't have the time and resources to educate people. We needed to prevent that Konoha looked weak on the outside and with many of our ninjas dying while trying to stop the fox, all of them were needed to take the missions that we still had to take. We could allow for a decrease of taken missions for a month under the cover of fortifying the village, but after that we had to come back in full force. We had lost our Hokage, which is always a bad sign, but I managed to turn it around into showing that our Hokage had been able to kill a biju, even if it cost him his life. It's a feat that very, very few can claim for themselves. You have to realise that we had just come out of the third great Shinobi World War as the victors, mainly thanks to Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage. We had lost many ninjas in that war and now more thanks to the fox. The one thing capable of keeping the other nations from attacking was pretending that while we had a small bump to overcome with cleaning up after the attack and rescheduling the rosters, we were back as if nothing really happened," The Sandaime pointed out.

"I took the position I had handed over to my successor back, as I was the only one that knew how to deal with the politicians, the threats from other villages and the balancing of our inner security and mission income. I had hoped that once the immediate aftermath of the attack was over, I could retire again, but till now I didn't find a suitable candidate that I could let grow into the position. My best candidates either had no interest in the position, were too young at the time or got killed on missions."

Harry and Nev nodded, understanding that while the Sandaime had tried as much as he could, with the situation being as it had been, there simply were too few resources to help Naruto. Well, now they were here and they wouldn't let things continue the way they had been.

"But why did the Yondaime choose me?" Naruto asked.

"I would guess because you are an Uzumaki, Naruto," Nev spoke up, surprising Naruto.

"What do you mean, Nev?" Naruto asked.

"The Uzumaki clan has special chakra that's a lot denser than that of other Ninjas and it also has a healing component. The Kyubi is the strongest of all the biju from what I know and its chakra is much stronger than any other biju's. To contain such a chakra safely you need a host with equally potent chakra. Or as potent as you can get it. The Uzumaki clan also has an affinity for fuinjutsu in the blood. Haru for example can understand the most complex kinds of seals by simply looking at them for a while. I could never make head or tails of some of them, but for him it's natural. His seals are also much more powerful than any that I could create, even if I understand the seal perfectly. So when the Yondaime Hokage was faced with the choice who to entrust the Kyubi with, I think he would have automatically chosen the one person with the strongest chakra available. And there is no clan with stronger chakra than the Uzumakis from what I learned," Nev explained.

The Hokage nodded, glad that Neville had explained one reason perfectly. He knew that the second one was that Minato would never have asked anybody else to give up their child when he had one of his own. But it was too early to reveal Naruto's heritage. First he needed to mature more to not shout out who his father had been which would call Minato's enemies onto the plan. And Naruto wasn't ready to face jonins that tried to kill him.

Sirius looked at the potion he had watched over for the last three hours. It was the heritage potion for Naruto. The poor boy really deserved to find out who his parents were. Keeping him safe from his parents' enemies was all well and good, but in the long run it only harmed him. Everybody deserved to know where he came from and there were many ways how an important secret could be kept. Especially if you had magic available. You could simply put a charm on Naruto that would prevent him telling anybody accidentally who his parents had been. And with the training that Harry and Neville had set up for him, he would be strong enough to defend himself against normal strong opponents soon enough.

Sirius knew that Naruto had lots of talent. But nobody had thought of truly bringing it out and cultivating it. Naruto was in a similar position as Remus had been when they had started at Hogwarts. As a werewolf he had been isolated for something that hadn't been his fault. He had feared to never truly reach his potential and had always suffered from the stigma that the magical society put him under. If only the old bastard hadn't put so many spells on him to ensure his loyalty, Remus could be here with them, family. People who didn't hate him for what he was.

But even if Sirius couldn't help Remus any more than what he had done already, with setting him up with enough gold to live comfortably and the potion pills for the wolfsbane potion to lessen his burden, he could help Naruto. He had hoped that he could finally fulfil his promise to James and Lily and take the position of a father for Harry now that he was finally out of Azkaban, but, thanks to the time distortion training, Harry was more like a young man in his late teens than the nearly twelve year old boy that he appeared to be. Sure, Harry liked talking to him and finding out more about his parents, but he didn't need an adult to protect him anymore. He needed somebody to bounce ideas off with and spend time around to relax. More like a friend. Naruto meanwhile clearly needed an adult that could take the position of a parent for him.

And Sirius was really fond of the little prankster. So why not become a father figure for Naruto? Harry had already planned to let one of the adults sit in the council meetings representing the Uzumaki clan and Sirius was the one that probably was suited best for dealing with arrogant politicians that only thought about getting more advantages for themselves. He had grown up with the Blacks after all, who were some of the vilest dark families in Britain. If he could survive them and get away with what he wanted, he could take on a few civilians easily. And he would be taken more serious than Harry at his age.

He had a last look on the potion and then nodded. The potion was finished. Now they only needed Naruto to mix his blood with some of the potion and have a dicta quill suck up the mixture for a day. Then it would reveal Naruto's heritage up to five hundred years back. Quite impressive if he had to say so.

Naruto was restless the whole day. He had added the needed blood to the potion that would finally tell him who his parents had been yesterday evening. Sirius had told him that he could see the results after dinner. It was one of the few days where he didn't eat much. He guessed he would eat more later on, but today he simply wanted to see the results. Then they finished and Naruto practically ran towards the room where the quill was waiting. There was no potion-blood-mix left anymore. That was good. Sirius had said that once the quill had sucked up all the potion it was ready to be used. He heard steps behind him and when he turned around he saw Sirius smiling at him.

"Well, it looks as if it is ready. Let's see who your family is, Naruto," Sirius stated and placed a big sheet of paper on the big desk. He then took the quill and placed it at the top of the paper. The quill stood upright without help now and immediately started writing out names, dates and status. First was Naruto, the next name was Kushina Uzumaki, his mother. Naruto's eyes nearly fell out of his head with as big as they became when his father's name was written. Minato Namikaze. He was the son of the Yondaime Hokage, the legendary Yellow Flash. That totally explained the worries of the old man Hokage about his parents' enemies coming after him.

The names continued. Harry looked at them to see how closely he and Naruto were related. It turned out they shared their great-great-grandparents. Harry's great-grandmother Emiko had been the sister of Akio Uzumaki, Naruto's great-grandfather. The next surprise was on the side of Naruto's father, Naruto recognised the name Tobirama Senju, Minato's grandfather.

"No way, I'm related to three of the four Hokages?" Naruto exclaimed shocked.

"Which ones?" Neville asked curiously.

"My father was the Yondaime, my great-grandfather was the Nidaime which makes the Shodai my great-great uncle," Naruto said baffled.

"Wow, that's huge," Sirius said, knowing how important heritage was in this culture. It was similar to pureblood society in that way, even if here people didn't mind if you married outside of pureblood circles.

"Well, at least it confirms the thing about your parents having too many dangerous opponents for your identity to get out before you're ready," Harry stated, "I just think that the handling of your training to get your to that point has been rubbish."

"I have to agree with you there, Haru," Neville said, "Naruto should have got personal training to prepare him for when he went out on missions. I don't know how the Hokages looked like, but I know that the Yondaime had blond hair and blue eyes like Naruto. So somebody could have made the connection."

"True. Well, we can't change it now. I would advise you to pretend that you don't know yet, Naruto. Thanks to us settling down in Konoha you have the protection of the Uzumaki clan now and with us being distant cousins, I can ensure that nobody can simply trample over your rights in the village anymore. And Siri will make any stupid council member that tries rue the day," Harry said grinning evilly.

"Oh, do I get carte blanche to handle the clan affairs?" Sirius asked eagerly.

"Of course you do. After all, I'm just twelve years old come End of July. So I need a responsible adult that can twist the words of the greedy part of the council around in their mouths," Harry confirmed, "And if they are too annoying, feel free to turn them into frogs."

"Oh, I'm going to have so much fun," Sirius cackled evilly.

None of the Uzumakis minded that. It was high time that somebody looked out for Naruto.