I got the initial idea from letting Clell's Triwzard Tales percolate for a few months (I'm slow like that) after playing around with a phaser and a Korina-bodied Micawber. Look up Evil Genius for details on the game in which Red Ivan originated. I borrowed some details from the TV series Deadliest Warrior's episode on Spetznaz vs Green Beret. The Spetznaz guys were scary - most other guests were KILL MURDER KILL (you WANTED the samurai guys to lose horribly, they were that bloody arrogant) but the Russian dudes were just quiet. Yeah, you'll die. Nothing personal.
JKR, Prisoner of Azkaban: "Well goodbye, Harry," he said, smiling. "It has been a real pleasure teaching you. I feel sure weメll meet again some time. Headmaster, there is no need to see me to the gates, I can manage..."
Some hack writer:
Harry sniffed. It wasn't often that he gave into emotion, but...
"But I'll miss you, Professor Lupin... I mean, I know that Padfoot said he'd write to make the Dursleys back off, but even so..."
Remus looked at Harry, tilting Harry's chin up with his right hand. Harry nearly shied away from the contact, before relaxing.
"I think I could contact some... old acquaintances, certainly not friends. But they won't come cheap, Harry."
"I don't mind," Harry said defiantly.
Remus gave into impulse and hugged Harry. "Don't worry, compared to the Potter estate it would be like Rupert Murdoch spending tuppence on sweets.
Dumbledore stepped forwards then to say farewell.
Harry stood up from where he was weeding the front garden. A huge Russian man had parked a blocky, rectangular car at the curb, and had gotten out.
"You are Harry Potter?" the man asked in a heavy Slavic accent, looking between a photograph and Harry's face.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Er, I mean, yes, I am, sir."
"Good, good," the man said, before sniffing. "I am Red Ivan. I am hired as your... how do you say... bodyguard, yes. I am told to tell you by my sponsors that I am up to no good."
Harry brightened up immediately. "You're my bodyguard, then?"
"Da."
Harry looked the man up and down. He was dressed in a crimson coloured Russian Army getup of some manner, with a rocket launcher on his back, and a bandolier of grenades across his front. A heavy satchel threatened other manner of mayhem as well. But even without those, he would still have been formidable. He seemed to Harry to be a Russian T-34 tank given flesh and bone.
"Could you, I don't know, train me physically as well?"
Ivan rubbed his right hand under his nose. "Maybe. Maybe. I am trained in secret police, not in training infantry. I am... indifferent trainer. I try. But this I promise. No one will harm hair on your head while Red Ivan is bodyguard."
After they had gotten to know each other, Harry found that Ivan got on very well with him (as both someone who did NOT consider himself a citizen of the English capitalist pigdogs, and also not a betraying socialist murderer), and also he with Ivan, as someone that cared whether Harry lived or died.
"Come on! This is sad! I have seen Cossack five year old run further than this!"
Ivan's training method leaved something to be desired, in Harry's opinion, but it gave results. After a summer training under Ivan's gentle tutelage, and after drawing money from Gringotts in British Pounds for food and pigging out at the local feeding barns each night for sustenance, Harry found himself several inches taller, and one or three stone heavier in muscle. Not fat, though. Definitely not fat. Ivan had made him run off every single calorie.
Dudley had made the mistake of challenging Ivan, after declaring Russian fighting to be nothing compared to the art of 'grand British boxing!' Ivan had knocked out his deadlights with one punch, and Dudley had wound up eating through a straw.
Even better, Dumbledore had agreed that Harry's bodyguard could continue to protect (and also, just as importantly to Harry, train him) whilst Harry was at Hogwarts. It was true that the pain was exquisite, but Harry was no stranger to pain and deprivation.
In deference to Moody's request (but mostly at Harry's wish), Ivan stood at the back of the classroom during Defense.
"Ha. This pathetic," Ivan rumbled.
"What are you on about?" Moody rumbled back.
"You think enemy will miss so often? You must run and leap, and dodge enemy attack," Ivan snorted. "Pathetic capitalist thinking. Not stand and deliver, like you are in American pigdog western movie."
One challenge and three days later, all the students agreed that a Russian RPG-7 easily beat any wand, in the hand of a trained user with the musculature of Hercules and the speed of Hermes.
