Disclaimer: Naruto is the work of mangaka Masashi Kishimoto, Harry Potter is the work of author J.K. Rowling. The author makes no claim to ownership of the aforementioned works and no profit from this fanfiction.

Uchiha Fukurou

Of Owls, Eyes and Copy Wheels

He closed the scroll and set it down. Within it was a coded log of Fukurou's experiments in magic and chakra. The words were written in Welsh so even if someone understood the symbols, unlikely given that no one here even used the Roman alphabet, the vocabulary and grammatical rules were too complex to figure out just from simple observation. To mix things up a bit he'd also used a sharingan specific jutsu that his cousins had taught him, a nameless technique that inscribed messages visible only to sharingan users... and he wrote it in Pig Latin.

He had deemed that magic was a similar power to chakra, though from his experiments, it proved not to be exactly the same thing. Fukurou found that by manipulating his chakra he could still perform some simple magical spells wandlessly, mostly they were the types of spells that he'd been so familiar with in his past life that he hadn't needed a focus to cast them anymore. Some were useless in battle, like a spell that kept his shoes laced and fly zipped but others, like the one that made his footsteps, and anything within a few centimeters of his body soundless, had potential. However; anything more than the simple everyday spells that he had been able to effortlessly cast as an old and powerful wizard remained out of his reach without a wand.

He had ideas about how he could circumvent that requirement, several actually. His sharingan flashed as he filed another idea away for later, success would depend on learning more about this world. Movement in the night sky drew his attention and he narrowed his eyes and thought of the effect that he wanted. Activating his sharingan and focusing out the cottage window, Fukurou concentrated. Out there from where he could see from his bedroom window was a sliver of night sky.

The tomoe in each eye lazily swirled as they increased the clarity of Fukurou's vision. There, in the night, a hunting bird flew. Its thoughts were primitive, little more than a jumble of instincts from his perspective but he could sense a clear purpose behind the creature's actions. He could see the fine threads of chakra emanating from his eyes and feel the mind of the bird as if it were a warm thing nestled in his hands. He saw what it saw as it flew through the night sky, his wings cut the air, her eyes searched the world for prey, their hearts accelerated as they spotted movement on the ground.

He/she stooped and dove. Their wings silent on the air, her/his eyes locked onto the small moving body, unblinking even as the air rushed over their heads. Suddenly, their wings flared open, the prey/food startled a moment too late as his/her talons dug in. The force of the landing, even with her/his wings taking up most of the strain, was enough to break their prey's back. His/her hooked beak darted in, tearing, then again, swallowing it whole. They looked up at the night sky and flew, finding joy in the simple pleasure of the act, and a full belly. They needed a place to land though, to let their meal settle, a safe place…

Fukurou came to himself sweating, with a grey, confused-looking, female owl roosting on his window ledge…

The owl burbled warningly as his hand reached out but calmed when it met his eyes. Fukurou nearly crooned from the sensation that he'd experienced. He began to run his hand over the creature as he observed it closely with affection. It seemed as though the sharingan that he possessed greatly enhanced his legilimency, serving as both a focus and amplifier. That thought gave him pause and Fukurou began to focus on changing the grey speckled feathers to white. His eyes began to itch slightly and the hue of the bird's wings did seem to grow lighter.

The owl however also became more agitated, so much so that he stopped for fear that he might be hurting it. His eyes too began to ache, Fukurou berated himself internally as he ignored the sensation. As an apology of sorts, he focused on the wandless spell with which he had been most familiar and the soft tapping of claws upon the sill and even the rustle of feathers grew fainter. As he watched the bird fly off with a quiet hoot of relief, Fukurou sat back in contemplation.

His teammates were Yamanaka Hiko, and a quiet girl called Aburame Shigure. Their sensei was a jounin-level kunoichi named Chun Chu. A first glance showed them to be extremely well balanced and not just on paper. Hiko, was of those people who seemed to be always too cheerful. He placed thirty-eight out of thirty-nine in the class roster and seemed optimistic about his chances as a genin even if the one non-academy jutsu that he knew, a clan ninjutsu, was a skill that he utterly sucked at.

As far as Fukurou could tell, Hiko's attitude didn't seem to be a façade to hide his true feelings. The boy honestly seemed to think that things would sort themselves out in time. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but the village was in a bad position strategically according to talk in the Uchiha district. More shinobi were needed to complete missions as a measure to show other countries that Konoha was not vulnerable to hostile action with the death of the Yondaime. The ranks of the police forces were even being tapped for out of village missions. Fukurou doubted if such an attitude would serve Hiko well in the long run.

Shigure was as gloomy as Hiko was cheerful. She was often quiet unless pressed for an opinion, which often proved to be something cynical or depressing. Her class rank was slightly lower than average. He couldn't tell much more than that as the girl rarely spoke, or did anything unless prodded to. She simply sat there, gloomy. He did get the sense that there was more to her than that, if she ever said more than five words.

As for Fukurou himself, his apathetic demeanor proved immune to Hiko's joking manner and Shigure's cynicism. Itachi and he had placed first and second in the academy respectively, they were ranked far and beyond third place. In essence Fukurou and Itachi could have been placed interchangeably on the team, the skills of either would have brought Team Chun Chu to the required level of a genin team.

Their Jounin instructor had informed them of an extra test and required they pass it by retrieving a scroll from her person. In Fukurou's experience, she was assigning them a seemingly impossible task for their genin exam, at least if his older uncles and aunts were a measure to judge this jounin by. His past life gave him a several clues about what was really going on. He'd used a similar method to improve the fieldwork of new aurors assigned to groups. The question was getting the others to follow his lead. He needn't have worried. On suggesting they work together Hiko had cheerfully agreed, believing their plan would work. Shigure had sought them out because she couldn't come up with a plan that she thought had a chance.

Chun Chu sensei had been impressed, sort of. Hiko had fudged the mind transfer jutsu at the last second, hitting Shigure with it instead as the girl hid in a tree while trying to herd their sensei into position with Fukurou's help. She'd nearly taken a nasty spill with Hiko along for the ride when their sensei saved them, only to notice the scroll in Fukurou's hands. He'd snatched it from her at the last second with a desperate summoning charm as she used shunshin to catch his team mate.

His sensei looked at him with an unreadable expression. He didn't have the chakra left after the short but intense battle with her to use his sharingan to get a proper reading. Tonelessly, she told him, "So it looks like Fukurou-kun gets a pass while the two screw ups fail." She ignored the pair of downcast looks sent her way from Hiko and Shigure. "Tell me Fukurou-kun what do you think the point of this test was?"

Desperately hoping this wasn't the endurance against long odds test and struggling to control his breathing he answered her slowly, "Those two screw ups," -Hey!-"Worked with me to get the scroll from you just as I'd have to work with them if I want to survive in the shinobi world." He said with growing confidence, "The point of this test was to see if we can work together to achieve a goal that would be impossible for any one of us alone." He held up the scroll and with a breath, tossed it to her, "If we could make that choice even with incentive to go it alone, then we could make it on the field where going alone would kill us rather than send us back to the academy for another year."

Hiko seemed nonplussed at the talk of getting killed in the field but Chun Chu looked from Fukurou to the scroll before smiling brightly. "I've got a cute little girl at home waiting for me," She said, "I want to make it back home just as much as you do Fukurou-kun." Pocketing the scroll, she took in the rest of her genin, "Let's make sure that happens, O.K.? You pass."

And that was the start of team Chun Chu.

Three weeks of D-ranks later and a clear pattern had emerged. They would be given a D-rank mission in the morning and sometimes would have the time to complete another one by mid day. Hiko would be cheerful even if the assignment was unclogging a toilet at the academy, which was nasty work as sometimes a student would rig a cherry-bomb in the water. Shigure would say something cynical and depressing even if the assignment was gardening, which Fukurou could tell that she enjoyed.

Fukurou himself wouldn't say anything at all that didn't help them complete the mission faster. Unclogging toilets, painting fences and yard-work had been a matter of course for Harry Potter back in the hazily remembered days of his youth. His older more pragmatic self suggested that this make-work was a preferable alternative to fighting for his life from past experience. Learning how to kill with a trowel/kunai had been bad enough.

From just after mid day to evening would be spent training their basic shinobi skills with Chun Chu sensei. Their sensei had a two year old daughter to raise so sometimes they would get time off for the day which they each spent in their own way. Fukurou spent most of his time adapting his layman's knowledge of warding to fuinjutsu. At times either Itachi or his older cousin Shisui would approach him so they could spar together and test out their sharingan. Fukurou had developed two tomoe in each eye and Itachi was well on the way to mastering his with two tomoe in his left eye and one in his right.

Their cousin Shisui would give them pointers on ways to use their techniques effectively. He quite favored using a form of ocular hypnotism to cast multiple small illusions that altered little things like depth perception or where he was situated relative to his opponent. They were easy to undo but hard to detect. With Shisui's non-sharingan related talents, his strength and speed were high for a chunin, it was a fiendishly difficult tactic to counter.

Fukurou learned a lot from those sessions and he made note of Shisui's use of minor jutsu for his own battle tactics. He often used his sharingan to call down birds, usually owls that lived near his home since this part of his training was often done at night and hopefully in secret. He wasn't enthused with the idea of fighting for a living but it was becoming clear he'd need to learn how to do so if he wished to someday make his own way in the world.

There were bounties on every Uchiha that had gained the Sharingan and the clan tried to pull together. He'd dodged questions about his living arrangements by giving a vague location to Uncle Teyaki who, along with the rest of his clan, was convinced that he'd taken up residence in an unused training ground because he enjoyed bird watching too much to stay in the compound. There was a sort of awkward bemusement now when most looked at him, the odd bird Uchiha that lived in the woods. Fukurou didn't mind, fielding strange looks from people who thought him crazy was old hat to Harry Potter.

A month after becoming genin, Team Chun Chu took on their first C-Rank mission.

AN: This pace works because I can write a plot outline for the chapter in a few minutes, flesh it out a little and then a day later flesh it out again. What you're reading is the fourth or fifth iteration. Short chapters though, if you want them fast.

TTFN