Chapter 7: Snape's Eye-Relaxing Potion
Severus' involvement with the Uchiha begins like this.
One afternoon, about three months into hiring the blond brat, Naruto asks if he can invite a friend over to the tea shop.
"Sure," he had answered nonchalantly, waving a distracted hand as he started a brew for one of their regulars.
"Thanks, Kuro-sensei!" the brat had said before rushing off to clear more tables.
Severus had only realised what he had agreed to the next day when his blond employee turns up for work with another brat in tow.
That moment, he believes, was the start of all his troubles.
"Kuro-sensei! Kuro-sensei!" the blond calls out loudly as he enters the shop.
Severus looks up from his tea blend and spots the boy entering the shop with one hand latched onto a dark haired boy.
Naruto then proceeds to drag the other boy, who looks wholly reluctant, up to the tea counter. "This is Sasuke," the blond tells Severus who raises a questioning eyebrow at the two.
Reading the question in the adult's expression, which Naruto was quite familiar with by now, he adds, "He's my friend."
And then he smiles brightly up at his sensei, looking quite proud of himself.
Severus studies the two, one looking like Christmas had come early and the other looking quite embarrassed at being introduced to the tea shop owner in this manner.
Severus smiles amusedly and greets,"Hello".
The other boy finally looks up from studying the wooden floor and bows politely towards the adult. "It's nice to meet you," the dark haired boy responds.
"Welcome to Snape's Tea and Brew. Feel free to order anything you'd like, it's on the house," he tells the boy and pats Naruto's head in praise. He's glad the boy had made a friend.
Naruto cheers loudly at this comment and drags the other brat off to an empty table facing the back windows. It was one of the more popular spots in the tea house as the windows provided a view into the tea shop's back garden where Severus grew ornamental flowers and plants.
Many of his regulars have commended him on his gardening skills.
Severus hears the blond chattering about all the different teas and brews to his newly minted friend and looks about the tea shop, his regulars are unabashedly watching the scene and smiling into their tea cups.
He allows the brat to take some time off his shift. "Just go entertain your guest," he tells the brat when Naruto comes over to put on his apron.
Naruto smiles brightly at him and the two brats spend the afternoon chatting, sometimes loudly in Naruto's case, over a jug of cold orange tea.
Severus doesn't know how it happened, although he can probably guess, but the tea shop gains an extra helper about the place.
The Uchiha brat, he had learned about the brat's family from Kazu, started helping the other brat in his tea shop to wait tables and to serve the brews to the customers.
A few days into this, Severus decides it's time to pay the Uchiha for his hard work and offers to hire the brat as a second employee.
Naruto cheers out in a loud, "Yes!" but the Uchiha just looks surprised at the offer. "I just thought I'd help out," he tells the adult, perplexed.
Severus tells him to go home and to consider the offer; once he's told his parents about it.
The next day, Snape's Tea and Brew officially gains a new employee and his oldest employee is more than happy to show the new one the ropes.
The two become as thick as thieves and move about the tea shop in such effortless coordination that Severus is tempted to use his magic to find out if the two have developed the ability to read each other's minds.
Kazu laughs at him when he voices it aloud.
Kurama just scoffs and proceeds to continue with his crossword.
In hindsight, Severus should have known better. He should have tossed the unsuspecting dark haired brat out on his bottom and placed a 'NO UCHIHAS ALLOWED ' sign, highlighted in big red letters, in front of his tea shop.
He regrets it, he really does.
He should have known better.
The crows start sitting out openly in front of his tea shop.
They perch on telephone wires, fences and roofs facing the tea shop as they observe the comings and goings of the people on the street with intelligent beady eyes.
"Kazu," Severus calls out the first day he notices this. "What's going on? Do they want something from me?" he asks his ever-reliable informant.
Kazu caws amusedly at him before saying, "They're just putting on a show, don't worry about it."
Severus raises an eyebrow at the raven but then shakes his head. 'If they want something, I'm sure they'll let me know,' he thinks before dismissing the presence of the birds.
He goes about his day in an unconcerned manner.
A week into this he starts to feel that something is brewing, and it certainly had nothing to do with his teas.
"Kazu," he calls out again, "they've been here for a week. What do they want?"
Severus was getting paranoid. The crows have been observing the tea shop for a week and he was starting to feel like an ant under a microscope.
Kazu just tilts his head and lightly tells him, "They're pretending to be good summons and are 'checking out' the suspicious tea shop owner."
Kurama laughs at them from the sofa where he's busy filling in today's crossword puzzle.
Severus sighs and pinches his nose.
"And why are they 'checking out' the suspicious tea shop owner?" he questions with a pinched expression.
"Because you're suspicious like hell!" Kurama booms out.
"You've got Konoha's jinchuuriki and an Uchiha potential-heir playing house with you in your tea shop and it's got the Uchihas all antsy about it," the fox adds, cackling.
Kazu eyes him in amusement from his perch.
"So, you're telling me that the crows are Uchiha summons and they've been asked to observe me because I hired the Uchiha brat?" Severus asks.
"Yup," Kazu and Kurama both answer.
Severus sighs out loud again and asks no one in particular, "Can I fire the brat?"
That morning, he looks up from the tea counter at the sound of the bell to see a familiar dark haired man enter the shop.
He almost wants to groan out loud but plasters a polite smile on his face instead.
"Welcome," he calls out.
The man looks about the shop for a moment before he heads towards a table overlooking the back garden. The man takes a seat and peruses the menu before turning to look closely at the other customers in the tea shop.
Many of Severus' shinobi customers turn their gazes away and pretend to look elsewhere.
"What can I get you?" Severus asks as he approaches the man.
Uchiha Fugaku looks up and studies the tea shop owner for a moment before saying, "Oolong tea."
"Of course," Severus answers as he heads back to the tea counter.
'I should have installed a vanishing cabinet in the back room,' Severus grumbles to himself. 'It can have two uses, for when I myself want to vanish or when I feel like throwing in someone else for them to vanish,' he thinks evilly.
The head of the Konoha Police Force sits for two hours in his shop before he leaves.
Severus thinks that there have been too many unwanted customers of late and sighs.
The next day, his second employee comes up to him after school to ask if he's free to have dinner with his family that evening.
"Father says that they would really like to meet you," the brat says looking a little alarmed at having to invite the dark-haired adult to his house. 'I hope they won't scare him off,' Sasuke thinks to himself.
The tea shop owner was one of the adults that he truly liked. 'He never looks at me as an Uchiha or Itachi's less-skilled little brother,' Sasuke realises.
Naruto hadn't been around since yesterday as he had been put into detention for playing a prank on one of the academy teachers. 'I need to weed the academy field for a week so I won't be able to work at the tea house, Kuro-sensei,' Naruto had tearfully told him two days ago.
Severus had sighed and passed him some child-sized gardening gloves for the task.
Now, Severus wants to sigh again. The head of the Uchiha had invited him to his clan compound, probably to interrogate him in the guise of a dinner.
Sasuke looks up at him hesitant, wanting to assure the man that it was merely an informal dinner but couldn't really do so as he thinks that it will probably be an informal interrogation instead.
"What time should I be there?" Snape-san asks after a moment of silence.
"Eight," the brat tells him worriedly, trying to provide a hint of what he might be going through.
"Alright," the adult merely says and pats him on the head, as though to reassure him.
Sasuke nods and heads off to wait at the tables.
Sasuke had gone on ahead after his shift at the tea shop to hurry back to his house.
Severus looks at the dismayed expression on the brat's little face and thinks that the brat was probably worrying about his new boss.
'He probably knows it's going to be an interrogation,' Severus thinks.
He closes up the shop and heads over to his house to get ready for the dinner.
"Do you want me to flatten their compound?" the fox asks, looking like he had a grudge against the Uchiha.
Based on what the kyuubi had told him , he probably does.
"No," Severus sighs and picks up a tea blend to use as a gift.
"They might try to use the sharingan on you," Kazu tells him with a tilt of his head.
"They can try," Severus looks at the raven with a smirk and the bird caws back in amusement.
"You sure you don't need any crushing done? Not even just a little?" the fox doll asks in hope.
"No, you're supposed to be hidden, remember?" Severus tells him.
Kurama harrumphs and keeps silent in his coat pocket.
On his way to the Uchiha compound, the crows take flight overhead, escorting him silently across the village to their destination.
Fugaku had been perturbed when Sasuke had come back one evening to ask if he could start working in Snape's tea shop.
He'd heard about the tea shop of course, who in Konoha who was also a shinobi hadn't?
Konoha's blond jinchuuriki had been seemingly adopted by the owner and now worked there as an employee. Additionally, the Hokage himself was a regular there at the shop.
He'd given his permission after some deliberation but had asked the crow-summons to keep an eye out on the tea shop for the past week.
He hadn't been the only one of course, he had spotted more than just his own crow-summons when he had visited the shop just yesterday.
He suspects that Itachi had been keeping an eye out on the tea shop as well.
"More pickles, Snape-san?" Mikoto asks as she offers the small jar from across the dining table.
"Thank you," the man answers as he helps himself to some.
There was nothing out of the ordinary about the man and his chakra coils were not developed well enough to be a shinobi or to even practice any chakra techniques, Fugaku had checked. His looks were on the average side of the spectrum and he would probably have been much better-looking if he didn't have that hooked-nose.
He had an ordinary civilian background where he grew up in the Land of Tea and seemed enthusiastic about herbs and tea blends when he had been asked about it.
All in all, Fugaku could find no fault with the man. 'And Hatake had already used the Mangekyou Sharingan to suss him out but came up with nothing,' he thinks.
"You said you travelled around the Shinobi continent?" Mikoto asks in a friendly voice as she subtly interrogates the man. Itachi who had been silent the whole time had been straightforwardly studying the man from across the table.
Sasuke had been studiously looking down at his bowl and had not piped up once during the dinner.
"Yes," the man answers before going on to talk about the Land of Hot Springs where he had spent some time at the many onsen resorts there.
Fugaku looks at the black raven that sits on the man's shoulder and thinks that the bird was probably the only unusual thing about the man.
He didn't think that it was a summon but merely a pet, there hadn't been any records of raven-summons in the shinobi continent after all. The raven was probably just that, a raven.
"Thank you for the lovely dinner," Snape politely thanks them after the meal.
"We're glad you enjoyed it," Mikoto says with a smile and Fugaku offers to walk the man out of the compound.
Sasuke had been sent back to his room after dinner as he had school the next day.
The boy had glanced at his employer with a small look of remorse as he trudged into his room in silence. Itachi had gone after the sulking boy.
Severus bows politely to the Uchiha matriarch as he leaves and Fugaku starts leading him away from the cluster of houses in the center of the Uchiha compound. They walk along the path in silence.
Severus is standing under a red torii gate when he looks up and spots dozens of crows-summons perched on top of the gate and around the many other torii gates, staring silently at him.
'This feels familiar,' is what he thinks as he follows the clan head who walks slowly ahead, unconcerned.
He moves to catch up with the Uchiha when suddenly, the crows start cawing out loud; every single one of them.
Fugaku pauses, looking up at the crow-summons in surprise.
In just under a second, the ground under their feet lights up with seals and Severus looks at the other man in shock.
'Have I stepped into a trap?' he questions, magic at ready to attack, but noticing the look of bewilderment on the other's face decides that the Uchiha hadn't been the one to plan it.
The land suddenly shifts and morphs itself until the two men find themselves staring at a large tree planted in the middle of a dozen torii gates which flank it. Dozens of crows sit in its branches and stare silently at them.
"What's going on?" Fugaku questions the crow-summons, wary of what had just happened but the crows keep silent.
The two men then hear exclamations of surprise as more people start appearing around them in puffs of smoke.
"Fugaku, what's going on?" Mikoto asks, suddenly appearing in her apron.
The crows who had teleported them to the location take flight and glide up to perch with their brethren on the large tree.
"Fugaku? What's happening? Where are we?" another older Uchiha questions in his pajamas.
"I'm not sure," he tells the others and glances at who had been teleported here.
'All the elders of the clan,' he thinks before looking at the odd man out who was looking at him in confusion. 'And Snape'.
Severus starts to wonder if he had accidentally ingested a permanent bad luck potion when he was a baby. These things just seem to keep happening to him;
he had merely been walking home after a nice dinner with Sasuke's family and now he's been caught up in another strange incident.
"Uchiha Fugaku and elders of the Uchiha clan," begins one of the crows when the Uchiha turns to look at the large tree.
"Chiko-sama," Fugaku bows politely at the red-eyed crow.
"Do you remember the promise the Uchiha clan made when we first became your summons?" the crow asks.
Fugaku pauses for a moment to gather his thoughts before answering, "Yes, our clan promised to fulfill one of your requests if you should ever ask of it, no matter the request."
The crow nods.
"We in turn promised to become the exclusive summons of the Uchiha clan and we have ensured the survival of your clan till this day," the crow adds.
"We ask you now to fulfill our request," the crow then says as he eyes the Uchiha in front of him.
The crow turns to look at Severus who had been inching away from the rest and had been looking for a way out of the boundary created by the summons.
"You shall from this day forth become the ally of Snape Severus," the crow tells the Uchiha and all the Uchihas turn to look at the dark haired man in surprise.
Severus stares back, surprise written on his face as well.
"You will never do him harm nor betray him and you shall offer him protection should he need it," the crow continues, " but most importantly, you must listen to what he tells you to do."
Fugaku opens his mouth to question the crow but the crow interrupts him before he can.
"This is how your clan will survive," the crow informs them.
Severus stares blankly at the crow and then slaps a hand to his forehead.
'This must be a nightmare,' he moans.
So many questions go through Fugaku's head and he doesn't know which one he wants answered first. He looks at Mikoto who also looks bewildered by the summons' request.
The other elders also seem to have been struck dumb in confusion.
"Do you honour your promise, Uchiha?" the crow asks again.
"Why him?" a question finally emerges from Fugaku's lips.
"Swear to honour your promise and then you will find out," the elder crow tells him.
The Uchihas look at each other in silence before looking as one to the tea shop owner who is probably not who he innocently claims to be.
Severus glares back at them then turns a schating look at the crows.
"No, not again," he tells them. "I'm not saving another one, no," he folds his arms and glowers angrily at the birds.
The raven on his shoulder merely starts cawing in laughter.
"Fugaku, we can't go against this request," an older woman tells him. "Our ancestors made this vow with the lives of all of the clan in pledge," she reminds him.
Fugaku looks at all the elders and the elders all nod back in agreement.
He's sure they have doubts about this request and about the man the crows have requested they ally themselves with but he knows that there is really no alternative choice.
He cannot break the pledge that their ancestors had made hundreds of years ago, not with the lives of all the Uhiha that hang in balance.
He turns to look at the crows on the tree and says, "We, the Uchiha clan, swear to uphold our promise and to honour your request."
A feeling of binding suddenly washes over all the Uchiha in the boundary and they suddenly understand that through this pledge, they cannot go against what they have sworn to do on the pain of death.
The elder crow, Chiko, caws out loud and all the crows suddenly start cawing before they fall silent a moment later.
"We have heard your pledge," the elder says and then flies to land on Fugaku's shoulder. He turns to face Severus and then bows, the other crows bow along as one.
"We are in your hands now, friend-Severus," the elder says to the man.
Severus' expression had by then become so pinched that he looked like he had been sucking on a lemon and Kazu merely caws again in laughter.
"The clan won't survive without your interference," the red-eyed crow informs him, noticing his reluctance.
Severus looks at the bowing crows and the bewildered Uchiha elders and then sighs.
He thinks of a small dark-haired Uchiha brat and something that feels like pity wells up.
'Tsukine said I'd find my answers along the way,' he tells himself begrudgingly.
"Fine, what do you want me to do?" he grinds out after a while.
The crows teleport them away from the boundary and back to their respective houses.
Severus is happy to be back in his own house and sits heavily on his bed before sprawling himself on it.
'Tomorrow,' he thinks, ' I'll deal with it tomorrow'.
Kazu flies to his perch and looks at him knowingly.
The Uchiha elders had agreed to meet with Severus in their highly-secured meeting room in the compound tomorrow night.
'They probably want some answers,' he thinks tiredly.
Kurama crawls out from his coat and laughs, "Well, that was unexpected."
Unexpected indeed.
Severus thinks about running away to the hills before remembering that the summons could probably find him even in the remotest hills.
He sighs and then closes his eyes.
Fugaku lays awake deep into the night.
Never-ending questions swirl about in his mind. Who is Snape Severus? How can he help the clan? What did the crow mean when he said the clan would not survive?
There were already voices raised in demand for a coup d'etat but there had been no agreements yet so what did the crows know that they didn't?
He turns onto his back and the questions keep pouring in.
He knows he won't be able to sleep tonight. He suspects Mikoto lies awake thinking about the same questions.
What has the Uchiha clan gotten itself into?
The next day, the elders gather bright and early in the Uchiha clan meeting room.
Fugaku doesn't spot a single well-rested face in the room, including his own.
"What do we know about Snape Severus?" one elder asks.
"Only what we know from his file," another answers for the third time and an argument breaks out again.
Fugaku's hands have long covered his face in exasperation and he sits silently at the head of the table as the elders question each other loudly and shout out insults in retaliation.
This is the most lively Fugaku has ever seen the usually placid Uchiha clan elders behave.
And it wasn't even noon.
Mikoto hands him a cup of tea in commiseration.
A crow summon teleports him right into the Uchiha meeting room in the main clan building.
He emerges in a puff of smoke and looks about the room in curiosity.
Scrolls cover much of the walls and there was a large rectangular table in the centre of the room. The elders of the clan were sitting in chairs around the table and noticing his arrival, they stand up to offer him a polite bow.
He bows back and Fugaku gestures for him to take a seat on his right at the table.
He takes the seat and a familiar red-eyed crow appears in a puff of smoke to sit on Fugaku's shoulder.
Severus eyes the elder crow and then asks, "So, what do you need me to do?"
The crow caws amusedly from his perch. "Impatient as always friend-Severus," the crow teases him.
Severus scowls at the crow and the crow laughs harder.
He swears Kazu was also snickering at him from his own shoulder.
Fugaku clears his throat and speaks up, "Chiko-sama, the Uchiha would like to know why we would need to be allied with Snape-san."
The elder crow looks at the head of the clan for a moment before turning his gaze to observe the rest of the Uchiha who are studying their new ally.
"To answer both your questions. Friend-Severus, perhaps it's time for a reading?" the crow hints.
Severus just gives the crow an annoyed stare before pulling out a pouch filled with various dry ingredients.
"Fine," he says, eager to get it over and done with so he could go home to a relaxing cup of tea.
"Put your hands into the bag and pull out three ingredients, one at a time," he instructs as he places the bag on the table and nudges it toward the clan head.
Fugaku looks askance for a moment and wonders if the other man was only pulling his leg but in studying the man's impatient expression, he puts his hand into the bag and rummages around only to feel the familiar sensation of dried herbs and plants.
"Wait," Severus tells him before he can take out an ingredient.
"Think about what will happen to the Uchiha clan and what threatens it as you take out the three ingredients," he tells the man.
The Uchiha looks bewildered but does as the other man says before lifting out the three ingredients and placing them side by side.
Severus nods and then places his hands over them, letting his magic seep into the three ingredients on the table.
"The first points to the past and it represents strife and fighting. The second is the present and it represents betrayal," he tells the group of Uchiha.
"The third is death, the clan will die if you continue on this road," he says with finality in his voice.
"Did you see how to solve this?" the elder crow asks him.
"Only bits and pieces," he tells the crow, massaging at his temples.
"Do you mean to tell me that Snape-san can see the future?" Fugaku asks in a disbelieving tone.
"Oh, he can do more than that," caws the red-eyed crow.
"The Uchiha have been planning a coup d'etat and you will be ready to implement it some time next year before it all falls apart," Severus informs them and the elders look at him in surprise.
"There is already someone in the background who has been slowly sabotaging your clan and he will lead one of your own to betray you and kill you all in the end," he continues.
He felt drained; the images that had poured into his head had been like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that were hard to decipher. Divination always takes a lot out of him, even more so than throwing out powerful spells.
'He knows about the planned coup d'etat,' Fugaku looks at the other man in shock. No one, beyond the people in this room, should know about this plan which wasn't even really a plan yet.
Still, Fugaku feels a tad bit sceptical of what the man had said. 'He could be pulling these tall tales out of thin air,' he thinks.
The crow looks about the room, almost sighing. 'They still don't believe he can help,' he notices.
"Perhaps a show of power, Severus," Chiko tells the wizard.
"If they don't believe me that's on them," he sneers at the gathered Uchihas.
"Think of the poor children who will die," the bird urges him, pleadingly.
Severus knows it for the dirty ploy that it is but agrees.
'But I can have fun with this,' he thinks evilly as he eyes all the Uchiha.
With a flick of his dominant hand, he transfigures the lot of them into various species of birds.
The room breaks into pandemonium as the Uchihas suddenly find themselves feathered and few sizes too small.
Fugaku looks down at his clawed feet and buck-buck-bucks in surprise. He looks to his left to see a white dove who coos at him from where Mikoto had been sitting. Shocked, he looks at the assembled birds who were leaping about the room in panic; their feathers flying everywhere in the room.
He looks down at himself and ultimately guesses that he's been turned into a chicken. He also has this sudden need to start crowing.
"Well, I think that's more than enough. You can turn them back now," the elder croaks out.
Severus merely smirks before waving his hand and the Uchihas start appearing once again as humans.
"Well, that was fun," he grins evilly at them.
Fugaku glares at the man but he's still reeling from being turned into a chicken and at most it comes out as a frown.
"What was that?" he demands through gritted teeth. Some of the elders have pulled out kunai and various weapons after getting a grip of their now- human bodies.
Fugaku shakes his head at the elders and they start recalling that they had taken an oath to never harm the man.
"Magic," the wizard tells them with a smirk still firmly in place.
When they've calmed down and are once again able to think straight, they calmly sit on their seats and look at the man sitting on Fugaku's right.
They start taking his divination reading seriously after that.
He tells them that he's a misplaced wizard far from home and that he has the ability to look at the past, present and future through the gift of divination.
They trade information back and forth and he learns more about the history of the Uchiha and why they've been ostracised by the village.
He tells them that to solve the problem of their annihilation, they need to be on guard against a man called Shimura Danzo.
"He's been stealing sharingans and will continue stealing more," he tells them and they gawk at him in disbelief, feeling outraged.
They tell him that they consider their sharingans as sacred and not to be disrespected as many who use the sharingan go blind and die young due to overuse; making them heroes in the eyes of the Uchiha clan.
He tells them as much as he saw in the reading about Danzo but ultimately he advises them to watch him and to gather evidence against him before they act.
Then he asks more about the sharingan and how it affects the human body.
Pretty soon he comes up with a plan to slow down the deterioration of the Uchiha's eyes. 'I'll need to examine one of them to be sure,' he thinks.
He hopes his second employee won't grow up only to live a short life due to his sharingan.
They talk well into the night and it's almost dawn when he arrives home via crow-teleportation.
He collapses into his soft bed and snoozes the remaining hours away.
When he gets up to open the tea shop, Fugaku strolls in bright and early and plonks himself in front of one of the tables near the back windows.
He orders more oolong tea and stays there before leaving for his shift in the Police Bureau.
Another Uchiha elder takes his place when he steps out and stays in the shop till it closes.
Severus tells them to stop it after noticing the pattern for a few days.
They tell him that he's now their ally and should be protected at all times.
Severus says he is pretty sure the oath had mentioned 'when he needs it' not 'all the time' but they ignore him and continue their watch.
Sasuke, being the genius that he is, notices the pattern too as he waits tables but decides not to ask.
After all, the elders had been acting rather weird of late and were prone to jumping about in shock at the sight of stray birds.
A week later, Severus decides it's time to test out his new potion.
*Eye-Relaxing Potion*
-Essense of sunleaf (15ml)
-White-petaled evernight blossoms (powdered, 5g)
-Moon-tree leaves (diced, 20g)
-Green fluorescent night-vines (sliced, 10g)
Fugaku leads him to one of the houses in the compound and he is soon introduced to a middle-aged Uchiha who goes by the name of Kenji.
The man is slowly going blind, he learns, due to the overuse of his sharingan. It hasn't quite reached the point where he could be slowly dying but eventually, it will get to that point.
"How clearly can you see what's in front of you?" he asks the man.
"Not that well," the man says bewildered by the stranger who had been led into his house by Fugaku. But if the head of the clan told you to answer questions, that was what you did.
"Try this," the stranger finally says after a round of questioning.
Kenji is stumped at first before Fugaku urges him to drink the vial of liquid that was offered to him. He does and after a few seconds, starts to feel a cool sensation cover over his eyes. He closes them instinctually before opening them a moment later and all of a sudden, everything falls into focus.
His sight has been restored to him and he can see clearly for the first time in years.
"I can see," he blurts out in joy and sees the head of the clan stare at him in astonishment.
"What was in the vial?" he asks curiously, looking at the stranger clearly for the first time.
"Oh, just some herbs," Severus tells the man and instructs him to take the liquid in the vial once a month only.
"It won't cure you but it will slow down the genetic disease for a few decades," he tells Kenji.
The Uchiha looks up at him with gratitude in his eyes and later learns that the man is a healer that has been recently allied with the clan.
His restored sight gives him the ability to take on more duties in the clan and he finds himself, when he isn't working at the police bureau, guarding the man in his tea shop on orders from the head of the clan.
Kenji, and many of the other Uchiha who had recently been cured of their near-blindness, become frequent visitors at the tea shop.
Fugaku always leaves an extra large tip every time he leaves the shop and Mikoto passes by frequently to pass him some homemade baked goodies.
Kazu always enjoys the jam tarts.
Severus just wishes that they'll leave him alone.
Kurama laughs at his predicament.
A/N Thank you for all your lovely reviews. I really had fun writing this chapter, I snickered evilly to myself so many times writing it. I hope you guys enjoyed it too.