The Academy
Harry returned to Konoha only shortly before he was due to start at the academy. He was back in his orange jacket, to let people recognise him faster again. During his time with Jiraiya he had switched to a more suitable outfit for a ninja.
His godfather had mostly kept to their agreement not to teach him to use chakra, but they had made an exception when it became clear that he was going to need to test his Fuinjutsu seals himself. There were a lot of other things they covered though.
"I don't see why you needed to teach me to fight blind," he complained as they went through the gates.
"It helps fighting groups," Jiraiya claimed, trying to avoid sounding like he was making it up as he went. "If you're surrounded or someone uses a particularly intense jutsu and creates a smokescreen you won't be able to see what they're doing. In this case it's best to have other ways to know what you need to do."
"Whatever you say, pervy sage."
Jiraiya twitched. "Is that any way to talk to your godfather?"
"Fine," Harry responded, rolling his eyes, "pervy godfather."
Between spending as much time as he could around the hotsprings for 'research' and the books Harry had found him writing, it hadn't taken long for him to dub his godfather 'pervy sage'.
"Anyway, best for you to head straight over to the academy. I'll find an apartment, check in with Hokage-sama and pick you up after classes end. You should be signed up ready, so you won't need me."
"Sure, sounds good."
It might have been a few years since he had been in the village, but one of the ninja talents Jiraiya had taught him was an all but perfect memory. After all, a ninja wouldn't be too effective if they needed to keep checking the mission parameters in a scroll.
Rather than using the rooftops as he might have before, he used the streets like a civilian.
It was fortunate that he did, as if he hadn't he wouldn't have run into a group of boys who had cornered a small girl with dark blue hair.
Harry didn't even need to think before he charged into the bullies, forcing the middle one away and placing himself between them and the girl.
"What do you think you're doing?" He shouted at them.
[*]
"What do you think you're doing?"
Hinatas eyes widened as someone placed himself between her and her bullies.
People often seemed to think that, as heiress to one of the major shinobi clans of Konohagakure, she lived a life of luxury.
That was not the case.
Granted, there were clan members assigned to look after her, but their responsibility was to make sure she wasn't permanently harmed. After all, the elders believed she was too kind and lacked the confidence she required to inherit her position within the clan. But even if she wasn't suited for the position, her life and desires were already subordinated to the requirements of the role chosen for her.
Combine the apparent disdain for her from within the clan with the distinct appearance of the Byakugan, and it was hardly a rare occurrence for civilian (and occasionally ninja) children to pick on her.
It had led to a reputation for her being unable to protect herself, even against untrained civilians, but it was simply that Hinata didn't want to be responsible for hurting anyone.
Already she had been targeted by hidden cloud ninja, resulting in the deaths of the Kumogakure head ninja and her uncle.
There was no way for her to consider it anyones fault but her own.
And as if her losing her uncle wasn't bad enough, her cousin, who she had previously got on with okay, had lost what little respect he had for the main house, losing her her only friend.
And if her father hadn't fought to protect her, it wouldn't have happened.
As far as she could see, fighting only made things worse.
She tried to speak, to tell the stranger to just leave her, but was unable to get the words past her throat.
She'd been too buried in her thoughts to pay attention to what the others had been saying, but it seemed the time for talking was over.
The boy protecting her had taken an unfamiliar defensive stance, and was in the process of blocking a punch thrown by one of the bullies and manoeuvring him into the path of another blow, taking the first out of the fight and causing the other to freeze in shock from having just attacked one of his friends.
"So much for four on one," the boy smirked. "If you stop now we can still pretend it didn't happen, what do you say?"
"No way," the bully that hadn't actually attacked yet responded, charging into her protector shoulder first.
At least thats what he intended, but the boy stepped to one side, directing him into the wall, removing him from the fight as well.
"Down to one on one and I'm not even winded," he sighed, "and I haven't even needed to throw a punch."
"F-fine, you win," the remaining bully cried out, scrambling to flee.
"Geez, he even abandoned his friends," the boy muttered, before turning to face her. "Hi there, my names Harry. Any idea why they would target a cute girl like you?"
Hinata couldn't help but blush at his words. "A-arigato, Harry-san," she managed, "I am Hyuga Hinata. You aren't hurt, are you?"
"No need for formalities, but nah, I'm fine, Hinata-chan," he responded, with a grin, "not that I'd have much of a problem even if they had hit me. Apparently I have plenty of stamina and heal fast, so my godfather taught me a defensive style, mostly through 'sparring'. Are you alright? They didn't hurt you before I got here did they?"
She shook her head. "Th-they don't tend to get physical."
He frowned. "That isn't good. You should try standing up for yourself."
She cast her eyes down (not that many people could tell where a Hyuga was looking). "I don't want to hurt them."
"You'd rather take the pain upon yourself? That will just encourage people like this, and what if they piss off an unstable ninja? It's better to discourage them, and you don't always need to hurt them too badly to do that."
It was a different argument to those Hinata had previously encountered. Her clan had focused on the potential harm to her, which she was willing to cope with, rather than the potential harm to the bullies, which, even if they deserved it, she was less willing to allow.
"M-maybe. B-but, if you'll excuse me, th-there's somewhere I need to go."
Harry slapped a hand to his face. "I forgot about the academy! I need to get going too, see you round Hinata!"
Before she could respond, or tell him she was heading to the academy too, he raced off, in the direction of the academy.
[*]
Harry dashed into the academy, hoping that stopping to help Hinata hadn't left him too late to enrol.
He wouldn't regret helping anyone, but he didn't want to wait another year before starting to train properly as a ninja.
"Am I too late," he called out as he reached the room he had been told to enrol in.
The room contained a large number of children queuing up for a number of desks with Chunin filling out the paperwork.
"Enrolment lasts all day," one of the ninja pointed out. "Now get in line."
"Eh, oops," Harry responded, embarrassed. He had been too excited about getting to the academy to pay too much attention when Jiraiya had told him the details about enrolment.
He chose a random queue and waited to move forward.
Ah well, he was never going to blend in anyway.
[*]
"So how did your travels with young Harry go?"
Jiraiya was checking in with the Hokage as he had told his godson, but unlike he had suggested before he had found them a place to live. After all, his old teacher must have known that they would be back around this time and might have arranged somewhere.
"It went as you'd expect. Visited places, informed my network that I would be unable to check on them for a while and organised alternatives. Taught him about the countries as we passed through. Didn't manage to teach him any chakra techniques beyond basic Fuinjutsu activation. He seems quite skilled when it comes to Fuinjutsu."
The Hokage raised an eyebrow. "Indeed? And what about his pranks?"
"Thats the thing. When you told me about what happened I expected to have to deal with countless pranks all the time. But he took a while to start pranking at all. They were a lot more subdued than I'd have thought. I guess the Uchiha incident weighed on him a lot more than we expected."
The Hokage sighed. "So you haven't heard."
"Something else happened to the Uchiha?"
"They were planning a coup. Danzo put them under surveillance, exceeding his authority as ever, and they found out. The distrust he had for them drove them to the very result he was watching for. By the time I found out they were already committed to their coup and I had to order them killed. One of the loyal Uchiha had a plan to turn them from their course, but it failed. Now the only remaining members of the clan are Itachi and his brother."
"You had no choice, sensei. With them controlling the military police they would have caused untold damage to the village if allowed to go ahead."
"That isn't all. It seems Danzo had planned to use Itachi to eliminate the others and then flee the village, furthering the distrust of the clan. It was only from keeping watch on Shisui that we prevented Danzo from ambushing him to steal the powers of his Mangekyo Sharingan and forcing us to use his plan."
"I had no idea. Anything else I should know about?"
"Did you hear about the Hyuga incident?"
"Of course, my agents reported the plan. I just didn't have time to get word back here."
"Did you forget that you can use reverse summoning to send a summons back here?"
[*]
"How's the academy going?"
It had been a few months since Harry had started at the ninja academy but he hadn't talked to Jiraiya much about it.
"They aren't teaching us any real jutsus!"
For Harry the frustration had been building and building.
"I mean sure, the Henge and Body Replacement Jutsus can be useful and I'm apparently a natural at the Henge, but that's it!"
"Isn't there the Clone Jutsu as well?" It amused Jiraiya to see someone else complaining about the same things he had a problem with.
"It's just an illusion, what good is it? How often do ninja even use it?"
"That isn't just because you're struggling with it?"
"I knew they were telling you about it. Anyway, if it was something more useful I would put in more effort and have it mastered."
"You haven't mastered Body Replacement yet." Harrys glare only made Jiraiya laugh. "Nah, that wasn't what I was asking about anyway. Lessons are only one part of the academy. Have you made any friends?"
Harry shrugged. "There are a few I get along with. I wouldn't say we're friends as such, we haven't known each other that long."
"Tell you what, make some friends and I'll teach you some jutsus you'll appreciate. After all, now you're in the academy that agreement we made no longer prevents it, does it?"
Harry could think of no argument, not that he opposed the idea any more.
And in the meantime Jiraiya decided to have a discussion about the academy with his old sensei.
[*]
"There are reasons the academy doesn't teach the students more advanced jutsus," the Hokage told Jiraiya.
"But surely the way it prevents the students graduating at their full potential is a problem?"
"How many of the students from civilian families make it to a full ninja rank? And until they become ninja we can't put as much trust in them. If we did teach the students advanced techniques and they failed the tests, what's to prevent them becoming bandits and using the jutsus against our ninja."
"And the clan kids? They get techniques from their clans."
"Who we trust to keep them in line. Granted, there is the potential for problems if something happens to the rest of the clan, but this is still the best solution."
"Then why not teach the clan kids new techniques?"
"And have the council complain about clan favouritism?"
[*]
It took a while, but by the end of his second year at the academy Harry was starting to feel that, between the lessons at the academy and his personal instruction from his godfather, he was ready to become a ninja.
Unfortunately Jiraiya had something to say about him taking the graduation exam early.
"Every year teaches things that are important, skipping a year could cost you your life in the future," he warned Harry.
"What about Itachi? His brother bragged about how he became an ANBU captain at the age he should have graduated."
"There were... other considerations," Jiraiya evaded the question, thinking furiously. "You know what, it's too late to sign up for the exam this year, but I will allow you to take it next year," 'when the subjects you'd learn in your last year will hold you back' being left unsaid.
"Yes! I'll be sure to tell the others tomorrow!"
Between his confidence, cheerful nature and pranks Harry had become friends with a number of his classmates; Kiba (the current holder of the position of the academy years 'dead last' position), Choji (this was mainly through their occasional discussions about food), Shikamaru and Hinata (who he hadn't recognised at first, but apparently ended up inspiring into working hard enough to claim the position of 'kunoichi of the year').
Harry had considered waiting to graduate with them, or trying to get the whole group to graduate early, but had decided against it.
There was someone else Harry was planning to speak with.
He realised that it wouldn't be possible to graduate without learning the final year subjects and, thanks to Jiraiya, had the perfect choice for who to convince to teach him.
[*]
"Hi, you're Tenten right? Kunoichi of your year?"
Tenten looked up from her scroll on weaponry manipulation techniques. She vaguely recognised the kid as a lower year student who had been out of the village until his year started at the academy.
"Can I help you?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I'm going to take the graduation exams next year, and was hoping that you could help me learn what I need from your year."
"Why would I do that? It will just take time from my own studying." After all, even now her main use for free time was to study for her time as a ninja in full.
"Don't they always say that the best way to learn is to teach?"
AN: Sorry about time between updates. First was only having access to computers next to someone who was actually working (which would make writing awkward), then the reorganisation of the house took time and then my writing wasn't up to scratch. Plus people talking on the phone cose enough to disrupt my thought process.
And for those who dislike timeskips, that was the only real way to cover the academy (plus this way there is an explanation for him taking the exam early. And with Hinata, it is simply that copying canon relationships seems boring so at the very least you need to use a different perspective, and characters need to be different for non-canon relationships to be justified (and yes I am changing teams).
There is one decision needed about the story that I haven't made yet. Should I make Sasuke more extroverted and able to function better in a team? There will be a certain impact on the story so it might be better for you readers to help me decide (there will be some time before it matters, but better to start getting opinions now).
Omake
"We covered the Sannin today," Harry told his godfather thoughtfully.
"Oh? And?" Jiraiya was excited. Surely now his godson was starting to see just how awesome he was.
"Were you named after that Jiraiya?"
Jiraiya fell face first to the floor. "Wha- I am that Jiraiya!"
Harrys eyes widened. "No way, you're actually a genuinely skilled ninja?"
AN: consider this canon if you want to
