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Chapter Text

Chapter 1 : Snape's Nutrition Potion for Growing Children

He wakes up to the sound of a very distinct knocking coming from the window by his bed. He recognizes it for what it is; the very annoyed pecking of a raven who has returned to their humble abode with the latest news from around town.

With a groan, Severus turns over to his left and reaches out to wave his hand at the window. It slides opens magically to allow for the raven to enter the room and then shuts back down once the bird has landed on his wooden bed frame.

“It’s too early for this,” he grumbles into his pillow. He wonders if all ravens were early risers or if he was so unfortunate to have met one that was.

“It’s already seven, you said to wake you up at seven,” caws the raven teasingly.

Severus wonders why he bothers to get up early when there were no children to teach and no lesson plans to put together anymore. ‘Habit,’ he thinks and proceeds to sit up.

“You look like you went through a few rounds with a tangle bush again,” said the bird in laughter; or at least what Severus presumed was laughter for a raven.

Brushing through his dark locks, Severus tried to put them to rights but decided to just give up. Although he would never mention it to anyone, on the pain of death, his hair did resemble the famous messy Potter hair. His only saving grace was the abundant use of wizarding hair gel that kept his locks in place. His old students would call it greasy but Severus was just happy that the gel kept his hair away from his face during volatile potion classes with dunderheads all throughout the teaching year.

As a potions brewer, you wouldn’t want any stray hairs to accidentally fall into the potions you were brewing. After all, there were less painful ways to die.

These days however, he kept it tied back with a simple black band. After inventing a very nifty non-contaminant barrier spell, which he had created during his free time, he no longer worried about stray hairs falling unwittingly into his brewing potions. Really, it goes to show what free time away from loud and aggravating children can do for genius spell invention.

“You’re still in dreamland aren’t you?” asked the raven who hopped unto his lap from the bedpost.

Severus glanced at the raven and sighed.

“Right, so what’s today’s latest happening? Has Suzuno-san decided to move her rose bushes closer to the fence again? Is Tanaka-san complaining about the shinobi who broke his window? Is Konoha going to be attacked by a giant turtle?” asked Snape as he stroked the raven’s head.

The bird gave him an amused stare and leaned into the gentle petting.

“Yes, to the first two and as for the giant turtle, I think it has better things to do,” chortled the bird.

“So, any important news?” Severus asked as he raised an eyebrow.

“The Uchiha police have apprehended a human trafficker in the red light district. Seems he was trying to make off with one of the street kids,” croaked the raven.

“Huh, good for them,” Severus answered nonchalantly and then indicated that he wanted to stand. The black raven flew off to his usual perch on the bed post.

“Kazu, would you like some breakfast this morning?” he asked as he made his way to the attached bathroom to get ready for the day.

“Some jam would be nice,” answered the raven tilting his head to follow Severus’ movements about the room.

 __________________________

Later that morning, as they were breaking fast with some toast and jam, or just jam as in the case of the raven perched on top of the dining table with his beak dipping into a full jar of strawberry jam, Severus heard a knocking from the front door.

“It’s too early for customers,” he grumbled as he stood up from the dining table.

“I don’t sense any malicious chakra, it should be safe,” commented Kazu who stopped eating to look towards the entrance of the house. 

“Of course it’s safe, the wards would have alerted me if someone was approaching with the intention to harm.”

 He waved a hand to put a stop to any magical activities going on in the house. What would the neighbours think if they saw the dishes washing themselves in the kitchen sink or the knitting needles floating in the air while they knitted a blanket?

He pulled open the wooden front door and looked out to see who could be knocking this early in the morning. It wasn’t even time to open the tea house as of yet.

“Yes?” he asked, catching sight of a blond mop of hair standing under his nose as he stood at the entrance.

“Kuro-san, I’m here! You said to be here bright and early at eight! So, here I am!” said a young boy dressed in an orange monstrosity enthusiastically. He looked to be bouncing from foot to foot on the door mat by his front door.

Severus prayed to Mother Magic for patience and sighed.

“Why do you keep calling me Kuro? I told you my name was Severus,” he asked as he pinched the tip of his nose in annoyance.

“Cause you like to wear black and you have black hair! So you’re Kuro-san!” answered the boy with a grin. “Also, I can’t pronounce your real name,” he added sheepishly whilst scratching his whiskered cheek.

Severus sighed again and cursed himself internally. Why oh why did he have to be a good Samaritan and offer this boy a job?

‘Because he reminds you of a certain boy you couldn’t help,’ replies a voice in his head that sounded a lot like his own. A picture of a young boy with a lightning bolt on his forehead appears briefly in his mind.

“I said eight, it’s not even seven thirty,” he grumbles at the boy.

The blond boy just offers him a wide cheeky grin.

“Fine then, have you had breakfast?” Severus asks.

“Yup! I had a slice of bread,” answers the boy.

Severus steps back to observe the young child. The boy is thin and it’s obvious even under that baggy orange jacket he calls clothes. He’s also short for his age and his sandals look to be tearing at the edges. There was also a smudge of dirt on his right cheek. This was not a picture of a well-off or even relatively well-raised child. It reminded Severus again of another boy, one who he himself had been during his pre-Hogwarts years living under his abusive father.

“Come in then, you’ll need more than a slice of bread to survive through the morning, especially for a growing young child such as yourself,” he says to the boy as he holds the door open for the young boy to enter.

“What?” asks Naruto, his eyes going wide.

Pinching his nose again in annoyance, Severus tells him, “Come in and join us for breakfast.”

“You want me to join you for breakfast?” asks the bewildered boy.

“Yes.”

“You want me to come into your house and join you for breakfast?” asks Naruto again, looking at Severus with a perplexed expression.

Severus looks at the boy, his expression so open and vulnerable that Severus starts to feel something soften in the region of the body he would usually call his heart.

“Yes,” he answers, gentler this time.

“Are you sure? No one’s ever asked me to join them for breakfast before,” the child starts to look unsure of himself now.

Severus internally curses himself for getting himself in this situation. ‘You just had to go be a good person huh? Now look, you have a young emotionally scarred child on your doorstep who’s making an expression like the child actor for that Oliver Twist play you once watched in the muggle world.’

He placed his hand on the child’s thin shoulders and nudged him gently into the house. Naruto slowly took a step into the house with a somewhat lost look on his face before looking up at Severus to observe his expression. What he saw in Severus’ face must have been enough of an explanation as he then proceeded to smile happily at the tall adult. 

“I can really have breakfast with you?” he asked again to confirm.

“It’s just breakfast,” sighed Severus as he led the way into the kitchen. ‘Poor affection-starved brat,’ he thinks.

“Kazu, we have a guest,” he calls out to the black bird as they arrive at the dining table.

Kazu caws in welcome and studies the blond boy seriously before going back to stuffing his beak into the jar of sweet red jam.

“You have a pet bird?” asks Naruto as he looks at the black bird perched on the table.

“It’s more like he has a pet human,” huffs Severus.

Kazu stops eating to caw in agreement and Severus snorts in amusement.

He then takes out an extra plate from one of the built-in cupboards and places scones and croissants on it before handing them to Naruto.

“Eat,” Severus instructs and Naruto hurries to do so as he tentatively climbs up one of the dining chairs and sits on it. Severus passes the jam to him and then goes back to his own breakfast of toast and steaming green tea. He had developed a taste for green tea sometime during the past few years traveling about the continent.

“Slow down, Kazu isn’t going to take your breakfast from you,” he comments teasingly when Naruto begins choking on a croissant.

Kazu merely shoots him an unimpressed look.

Severus then pours some green tea for Naruto to ease his choking.

___________________________________

Severus can literally see stars in the boy’s eyes as he takes in the interior of the tea shop next to the house. It made sense after all for Severus to open a tea shop right next to his place of residence if he didn’t want to spend time journeying back and forth from his shop to his home six days a week.

“It’s awesome, Kuro-san!” Naruto tells him in obvious wonder at the shiny new establishment.

Severus grants him a small smile. “You’ll be working here part time as my errand boy and waiter six days a week. You may drop by after school and begin work after completing your homework for the day. I’ll teach you the ropes of working in a tea shop as we go along, are we agreed?” Severus looks to the young boy as he holds out his hand to shake on it.

“Yes!” Naruto looks at the hand offered to him and hurriedly takes it.

“Good,” Severus nods and then tells him, “I will also provide any meals you need while you are on the clock.”

Naruto just stares at him with a disbelieving stare and then nods enthusiastically.

Severus studies the boy again and thinks back to when he first offered the boy a job. He sighs inwardly as he recalls the time he found the boy digging through the trashcan to look for his school stationeries which were thrown into the trash by his bullies. Something in his gut gave in that day as he stared at that pathetic scene and he had somehow impulsively asked the young child if he would like to work in his tea shop for a bit of spending money.

‘I probably sounded a lot like the human trafficker the Uchiha police have in their jail cell at the moment. I’m surprised the boy even took me up on it,’ he thought while shaking his head.

“Alright, since we open the tea shop at nine every morning, we’ll need to get this place ready for the day,” he tells the boy as he hands him a small child-sized apron and a wet cloth.

Kazu, who sits serenely on his shoulder, gives him a very amused look. Well, as amused as a bird can look.

With Naruto cleaning the tables in the tea shop, a job that would usually be redundant as the tea shop had anti-dust and cleaning wards set up around it, Severus took the opportunity to head to the storeroom where he kept his ingredient stock.

“You could have reminded me that the boy was coming over today,” he grumbled at Kazu.

Kazu just cawed at him in laughter and flew off his shoulder to fly out to the tea counter in the shop. Severus knew he would keep an eye on the child.

Looking through the ingredients and the different types of teas, Severus took stock of what he needed to replenish. ‘Perhaps more of that genmai tea from the Land of Rice,’ he took note.

The sight of the basket of lemons caught his eye and he decided to give Naruto his first lesson on one of the drinks sold in the tea house.

“Naruto, how would you like to learn to make Iced Lemon Green Tea?” he asked as he carried a couple of lemons to the tea counter out front.

Naruto stared at him, his mouth open in surprise before flinging his wet cloth unto a table and rushing to cling unto one of Severus’ legs. Severus was surprised before looking down at the child who was clinging unto him and staring up at him with big blue teary eyes. 

“You’re the best Kuro-san!” Naruto cries out happily as snot starts to drip down his nose. “You give me a job, food and teach me things,” he tells the adult.

‘Poor affection-starved brat,’ he thinks again as he hands the boy a handkerchief.

Kazu laughs at him from his wooden perch by the counter.

_____________________________________

“Kuro-san! Kuro-san! I passed the test!” a blond whirlwind rushed into the shop as he shouted at the top of his lungs.

Severus sighed. He had been doing that a lot lately.

“Naruto, think of the customers,” he said to the boy as he latched onto one of his legs.

The boy looked around the tea shop and scratched his head in chagrin from where he was clinging to Severus. It had been two weeks since Naruto first started working in the tea shop and by now most of Severus’ regulars were used to the loud but bright presence of the shop’s part-time employee.

“Oh, good job boy! You’ve been studying hard eh?” called out one of their many regulars, Tanaka-san, who owned a bakery right across the street.

“Yup! I have! Kuro-san’s been teaching me to read and write,” answered the boy happily. “Thanks Kuro-san!” added Naruto as he tightened his hold on Severus’s right leg.

Severus sighed again. He had escaped one job of handling loud children to another with another loud child, how was this his life?

“Go clean up, brat. You can start work after you’re done,” he tells Naruto who throws him a loud ‘ok!’ before rushing to the bathroom.

“You’re doing a good job with him,” comments Tanaka-san who pays him for his glass of cold black tea before rushing back to his own bakery.

Kazu crows at him from his perch.

‘That bird is getting cheekier by the day,’ Severus thinks as he glares at the raven in annoyance.

The other customers hunker back down to sipping at their own teas after watching the brief interlude and some even snicker at him from their tables.

Severus wonders if he should start poisoning their teas. It would be so very easy to do so; a little bit of nightshade here and a little drop of venom there.

“I’m ready Kuro-san!” calls out Naruto as he steps out of the bathroom wearing his apron. He looks about the shop for things to do and when he sees an empty table, he goes over with a wet cloth and a tray to clear it.

‘He’s shaping up to be a diligent worker,’ Severus notes to himself and eyes the blond boy moving up and down the shop floor.

The boy however, was still short for his age and relatively on the thinner side of the spectrum. Even after two weeks of feeding the boy with more nutritious foods, the boy still had the look of a malnourished street urchin.

‘Must be the energy burn from the Kyuubi,’ Severus thinks. It also didn’t help that the boy hasn’t been getting much nutrition from a very young age and with the addition of the Kyuubi whose chakra needed a lot of nutrition to supplement, especially with it trapped inside a human body, Naruto’s malnutrition problem would probably be difficult to overcome.

‘He’ll probably be forever short, since the damage has already been done,’ Severus thought disparagingly. He thought of another young boy who would grow up shorter than his peers and who had carried a large burden over his shoulders due to a simple prophecy.

‘Well, we’ll have to do something about it wouldn’t we?’ he thinks as his mind goes over the many potion ingredients that he currently has in his stock.

____________________________

When they close the tea shop for the day and he has fed Naruto his fill of a nutritious dinner, he waves the blond boy off and Naruto skips back to his rented apartment across town.

“You’re planning something,” Kazu states as he stares intently at Severus.

Severus merely lifts his eyebrow and stares back at the bird.

“You’re definitely planning something,” the raven repeats after they have been staring at each other for the past minute.

“Oh? How do you know?” he asks the bird and smirks.

“Because you have the look on your face that means you’re planning something diabolical,” answers the raven with a wary look.

“Nothing diabolical, more…ah…magical,” he tells Kazu with a small grin.

“I knew it,” the black bird says in exasperation. “And here I thought you said you wanted to lie low and not be attracting any attention,” reminds the raven.

“Needs must, I simply cannot stand the sight of something that can be fixed but has not been. I’ve lived most of my life ignoring such matters,” he drawls and stares at the ground in thought.

“Perhaps I simply want to give into my whims for once,” he continues in a softer voice.

Kazu sighs and shakes his head in a very human-like gesture. “So, what’s the plan?’” he asks.

“We’re going to need more essence of sunleaf and red fire-bark,” he tells the raven.

_____________________________________

“That should do it,” he says as he draws the last connecting circle of the runic-equation.

 He only needs to add a drop of his blood to activate the portal and they would be on their way to the Dawn Forests of the deer summons. His charmed gunny sack, which he carried on his left shoulder, was filled with a few bottles of rejuvenating potion.

“You ready?” he asks Kazu who sits on his right shouder.

“As I’ll ever be,” drawls the raven. He hadn’t been too happy to hear of their trip to see the deer.

Severus gives his head a tiny pat and then drips a drop of blood on to the floor to activate the runes. In less than a minute, they find themselves in a sunlit forest in which the trees towered over them like mountains. There were no sounds of birds or insects as you might hear in a usual forest and there were no other animals in the forest, well, save the deer.

Severus looked around to see if he could spot any of the deer summons but there were none in sight.

“Bah, lazy fellas,” comments the raven with a scoff.

“We’re the ones intruding,” Severus says to calm the bird.

“If this was the Lone-Moon Forest, we’d be welcomed the moment we appeared,” harrumphs the avian.

“Well, we can’t all have wings can we?” he replies with a smirk.

“Hmph,” the raven turns his head away.

The sound of hoofs stamping on the forest floor stops their banter and Severus turns to see a lone deer with golden horns walk gracefully towards them.

He bows at the deer and the tall deer comes to a stop and bows back at him.

“Greetings, friend-Severus. Have you come to talk to the elders?” questions the deer politely.

“Greetings, Kinji. It’s been a while but no, I’ve come to do a trade,” he says to the golden-horned deer.

“Oh, did you need more red-fire bark?” he asks the human.

“Yes, and also some sun leaf,” he tells the deer who has come forward to nose at his hair. He knows it’s a form of greeting and affection so he stands still for the deer to inspect him. It’s ticklish but he tries not to squirm.

“Of course, friend-Severus. I will bring you to the healer,” Kinji replies and bends down for Severus to climb on top of him.

“I’ll just follow you in the air,” says Kazu as he flies off Severus’ shoulder. Severus knows the raven can’t stand the idea of riding atop a deer summon so he throws him an amused glance.

He smoothly climbs on top of the deer and once he braces himself, Kinji climbs to his feet and takes off at a fast pace deeper into the forest. The trees past by like blurs and they see clear streams of winding rivers along the way until at last, they reach the foot of a tree that is as large and as tall as the Konoha mountain.

Kinji graciously bends down again for him to dismount. 

“Ah, Severus, you’re back!” cries out a small high-pitched voice. A small fawn races to Severus who has just stepped away from the tall deer. The fawn proceeds to sniff Severus’ black cloak as he hasn’t reached the height of an adult human to sniff at his hair.

“Hello, Fuji,” he greets the fawn and pats the small furry head.

“Hello, Akino,” he greets again when he sees Fuji’s mother who is also the deer summons’ chief-healer.

“Greetings, friend-Severus. Have you come to trade?” she asks as she goes forward to sniff at his hair. Although she wasn’t a very large deer, by deer summons measurement, she was still two heads taller than him and so had to bend down to sniff at his hair. Once again, he tried not to squirm.

“I’m running out of red-fire bark and sunleaf,” he tells the healer-deer once she deems him physically healthy through her sniffing. He then places his charmed gunny sack on the ground and takes out five bottles of rejuvenation potion. Kazu also takes the opportunity to land on his shoulder.

“Of course. Fuji, you know what to get,” she tells her young fawn who has been stamping in circles excitedly around the human.

“Okay!” he yells out in agreement and rushes into the opening of the large tree.

“So, tell me about what has been going on,” Akino says as she and Kinji come to settle down next to Severus to hear about the human world.

__________________________________

Much later, Kinji brings them back to the spot where they first appeared.

The runes are still visible on the forest floor and all Severus has to do is drop another drop of blood to activate the portal back home. His gunny sack is now full with large bags of red-fire bark and sunleaves.

“Farewell, friend-Severus. I look forward to seeing you again,” Kinji says with a bow and Severus bows back politely.

He then activates the runes after making sure that Kazu is perched firmly on his shoulder. They soon appear back in their house and the runic-equation under his feet slowly starts to disappear like it was never there.

“It’s good to be home,” Kazu comments pointedly.

Severus snorts and makes his way to the potions lab and storage.

Once inside he goes through the motions of processing the red-fire bark and the sunleaves. In his mind, he is already putting together the recipe for the potion he will be attempting to make. He places the red-fire bark under a sun-warming spell for five hours and squeezes the sunleaves and bottles up the sunleaf liquid essence that he manages to squeeze out. He is left with a full bottle of sunleaf essence and carries the rest of the crushed leaves out to be used for fertiliser for the heat-absorbent magical plants he is raising in his greenhouse.

The next day, with all the ingredients he hopes to use spread out before him in the potions lab, he pushes his magic into each of them and pictures the potion he intends to brew. The red-fire bark, sunleaf essence, red-pore mushrooms and the dried blue moth-eating trumpet stand out and his magic responds positively to them. He writes out a simple recipe and hopes that it will achieve its required use.

*Nutrition Potion for Growing Children*

- Essence of sunleaf (2 drops)

- Sliced red-pore mushrooms (10 grams)

- Red-fire bark (15 grams)

- Dried blue moth –eating trumpet (stalk only, 5 grams)

After testing it using the potion attributes test, he finds that it does work and smiles in satisfaction. It had been difficult to find replacements for the potion ingredients he used to rely on back in the wizarding world at first, but he has since improvised.

_____________________________________________

The next day, when he prepares dinner for Naruto and himself, he adds a few drops of the nutrition potion into Naruto’s portion. It will not taste any different as the dried blue moth-eating trumpet has the attribute of being able to hide the taste of all the ingredients in the potion.

Oh, how easy it would be to poison anyone he so chooses to. A little drop there and they would be dying of unknown causes. He smirks evilly to himself.

“Thanks, Kuro-san!” Naruto says to him when he serves him the curry-katsu dish.

The boy eats his portion with gusto as usual and thanks him for dinner before making his way back home.

Severus looks on, feeling verily pleased with himself.

‘Here is one boy who will not be malnourished if I can help it,” he thinks and goes back to the lab to brew more of the same potion for the coming days.

______________________________________

A month later, Naruto runs into the tea shop after school looking healthier than he has been in years. He carries out his usual routine of clinging to one of Severus’ legs before rushing off to get ready for work.

The usual customers watch this scene everyday knowingly with an amused smile and Kazu laughs at him whenever he looks at the raven to convey his exasperation with the situation.

Naruto soon finds his way to the floor of the tea shop and begins taking orders, all outfitted with his small apron that looks to be needing a replacement soon for he is slowly outgrowing it. 

The bell on the front door of the tea shop rings to signal the arrival of a new customer and Naruto turns to greet them with the usual spiel.

“Welcome to Snape’s Tea and Brew!"

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Snape’s Migraine- Relief Brew

One morning, three weeks into hiring the boy, a very special customer sets foot into the tea shop.

Severus is busy cleaning the teacups in the sink by the tea counter when Kazu lets out a caw to alert him. And moments later, he hears the tinkling of the bell at the entrance of the tea shop and looks up to see a familiar old man standing there.

The old man leisurely looks about the interior of the shop before walking over to the tea counter in small measured steps.

“Welcome to Snape’s Tea and Brew,” he greets the old man, eyeing the very non-descript clothes and the many wrinkles on his wizened face. The man takes his time as he makes his way from the entrance, as if he was just any other ordinary senior citizen who has decided to stop by the tea shop in his free time.

Severus snorts to himself.

“Can I get you anything?” he asks politely as he tries not to sneer.

The old man eyes the teapots and cups on the counter before looking over to the raven lounging on his custom wooden perch by the window. The bird glances at him for a moment before ignoring him for the seeds in his feeder.

He then glances up to study the tall dark-haired shop owner behind the counter.

“What would you recommend?” he rasps in a grandfatherly manner. His eyes crinkle into a small smile and he stands a little stooped as he portrays the standing posture of an old man bent with age.

Severus reminds himself not to scoff out loud.

‘Dumbledore used to pull these stunts on naïve attention-starved children,’ the thought briefly flashes through his mind. What follows is a picture of an old wizard falling off the castle walls that Severus tries to push back into the deep recesses of his brain. It’s been years but the scene still haunts him and guilt bubbles up into his gut when he is reminded of Albus.

Looking at the old man studying him in a seemingly unobtrusive manner, Severus is reminded of the uncanny similarities between the two.

“Today’s special is genmai tea imported from the Land of Rice and it’s a favourite among many of my regulars. Would that be acceptable?” he offers.

“Oh? That sounds great,” the old man replies before walking slowly over to one of the tables and taking a seat. He takes in the other customers around who are either enjoying their tea or those who have fallen silent and are pretending to ignore his presence in the tea shop.

 Severus sighs to himself.

________________________

Sarutobi Hiruzen sighs softly as he tries to ease the budding migraine by massaging his temples in small circular movements.

It doesn’t help.

‘I should be in retirement by now,’ he complains to no one in particular.

He hears the sound of scuffling outside his office followed by a yell of alarm. Smoke pours out from under his office door and he tries to remain zen.

It isn’t really working.

“You idiot!” he hears someone screaming before one of his ANBU guard falls from the ceiling to look carefully out the room. What he sees doesn’t seem too much like a cause for alarm so he shuts the door and bows at the Hokage before disappearing back up the ceiling in a small jump.

Minutes later, one of his chuunin secretaries enters his office to apologise for the incident. It seems that one of the newly-graduated genin had accidentally let off a smoke bomb in the corridors of the Hokage building while his team was there to get a F-Rank mission from the mission’s desk.

Hiruzen waves the secretary off and starts massaging his temples again once she leaves his office.

Retirement now sounded like a pipe dream at this rate.

“Panther, report,” he calls out to one of the ANBU.

Panther drops from the ceiling and appears before him.

“Have you compiled the file on Snape Severus?” he asks as he glances up at the white ANBU mask.

Panther nods and hands him a file.

Hiruzen flips open the file and studies the picture on the front page.

The man is dark haired, pale and he sports a somewhat hooked-looking nose. All in all, there is nothing eye-catching about him save for the fact that he has a preference for the colour black.

‘It’s probably why Naruto calls him ‘Kuro-san’,’ he thinks. His birth name, Snape Severus, in itself was strange but who was Sarutobi to question the man’s parents and their naming skills?

The file states that he was originally from the Land of Tea, a small hilly country whose biggest exports are tea, as the name suggests.

‘He has been travelling around the different continents for the past five years or so and settled in Konoha roughly six months ago,’ he summarizes from the file. The file also tells him that the man is an expert in teas and herbal brews.

“What are your personal thoughts on this?” he asks the ANBU.

“All of his travel and personal identification documents are genuine, I have discovered no forgeries. And he has shown no signs of suspicious activities or malicious intent so far but it could still be too soon to let our guards down.”

 “He also shows no signs of having advanced chakra coils and as such, he cannot be a shinobi in hiding,” continues Panther.

“Falcon has confirmed it with the Byakugan,” he adds.

Hiruzen nods at the information.

“And Naruto? How does he react to him?” he questions. Although the boy is like a grandson to him, his position as the Hokage keeps him from reaching out more often to the boy. The feeling of guilt is an ever constant reminder of the sins he carries as the leader of Konoha who is confined to the burdens of his position.

 ‘I’m sorry, Minato’ he thinks for the thousandth time since the fourth’s untimely death. ‘But we all have sacrifices to make,’ are the words that have kept him walking on this path he has chosen to take.

‘Naruto worships the ground he walks on,’ is the thought that pops up in Panther’s head but he tactfully says instead, “Naruto looks to be fond of the man and spends most of his time, apart from school hours, in the tea shop or the man’s house next door.”

“Does Snape make him work even on Sundays?” the Hokage questions with a raised eyebrow.

 “No, Hokage-sama. From what we have observed, he helps Naruto with his school work and teaches him about plants and gardening on Sundays when the tea shop is closed,” answers Panther.

Hiruzen absorbs this information and flips through the file absent-mindedly. He reads that Snape’s Tea and Brew opens at nine in the morning and he glances at the clock on the wall.

‘Naruto should still be in school,’ he thinks and makes up his mind.

“I think I’m in the mood for a cup a tea,” he tells the ANBU.

___________________

Severus studies the old man from behind the tea counter. The man looks to be the picture of a harmless customer simply enjoying his morning with a cup of tea in his hands.

‘He’s probably observing my every move,’ Severus thinks and keeps his expression passive.

His visit isn’t a surprise though, Severus had been waiting for such a visit ever since the first week of Naruto’s employment in the tea shop. With Naruto constantly babbling about his Hokage-jiji, Severus had thought that Sarutobi would have visited him much earlier.

But from Severus’ knowledge of his approval of the gag order on the Kyuubi and its vessel, namely one blond whiskered boy, Severus isn’t entirely sure if the Hokage visits Naruto to keep tabs on the creature or if he genuinely feels responsible for the boy.

‘Fate has a strange way of repeating itself,’ he thinks and it brings up a memory of a small orphan boy with green eyes and an old wizard with stars in his robes.

When Sarutobi finishes his tea, he pays for it and walks out after informing Severus that he’ll be back again for more.

Severus wishes he’d never come back.

______________________________

Sarutobi becomes a regular at the tea shop.

He pays the shop a visit almost every morning when the shop opens at nine before heading off to the Hokage tower. And when he craves for a hot cup of tea in the office, he orders some of his subordinates to get take-out from the tea shop.

He doesn’t understand why the tea at the tea shop he gets tastes much better than any of the tea he’s brewed on his own. Although he has tried to replicate the taste using the very same tea leaves, he’d even carefully watched Snape as he brews the tea in the shop, the teas he makes don’t taste quite the same.

Sighing, he looks at the many reports on his desk that he has to sign off.

He sorts through the recent ones but one in particular catches his eye. It’s the report of a latest A-Rank mission to the Land of Mist.

‘Another Uchiha casualty,’ he reads. ‘There have too many of that as of late,’ and a feeling of suspicion begins to grow.

The Uchiha have been side-lined and regarded with suspicion ever since the invasion of the Kyuubi. He doesn’t know where or even when that animosity began to arise but the consequences of it have begun to show.

‘This bears more careful investigation,’ he tells himself.

__________________________________

Severus turns to the entrance to see Sarutobi walking into the shop with a very pinched look on his face.

‘Must be stressful being the Hokage,’ he thinks when Sarutobi sits heavily down onto one of the chairs by the wall and starts massaging at his temples.

When he had first arrived in Konoha, Kazu had briefed him on the recent happenings and the key players in the village.

‘Sarutobi Hiruzen, the third hokage of Konoha, had been hailed as the ‘God of Shinobi’ and is currently in his sixties,’ he recalls what the raven had said.

Severus thought it was impressive that he made it to this age as most shinobi usually die rather young. He looks at the tired face of the old man and guesses at what’s physically ailing him.

‘Well, I think it’s about time I introduced a new house specialty brew,’ he decides as he approaches Sarutobi.

The hokage sees him walking over to take his order and says tiredly, “The usual, please.”

“I was thinking that you might like to try something different today,” he offers instead.

The hokage looks up at him and asks, “Oh? What do you suggest?”

“I can’t help but notice that you seem rather unwell today. Arthritis perhaps?” he asks gently. It’s also a subtle jab at the old man pretending to be a stooped and frail senior citizen. Severus cackles inwardly.

Hiruzen looks at the polite-looking shop owner and wonders if he’s subtly being called old. “Just a bit of migraine,” he tells the dark-haired man, waving his hand to indicate that it was nothing quite so serious.

Severus senses the truth in the statement with his magic. He then wonders if he still has enough dried blue grass in his storage to introduce it as part of the menu.

‘I should have a small container somewhere in the storage,’ he thinks.

“A migraine? Well, I have just the brew for that,” he tells Sarutobi.

Hiruzen eyes him speculatively for a moment before agreeing. He didn’t think Snape would poison him in front of so many people or so openly. The ANBU in civilian clothes pretending to be customers around him though were on alert as they sipped their teas and watched the conversation between the two men.

Severus felt that same alertness in the air but ignored it. He returns to the tea counter to start the brew and recalls the recipe he collected from when he was traveling near the border of the Land of Tea.

*Migraine- Relief Brew*

- Blue grass (10 g)

- Roasted green tea (15 g)

- High-hill tea tree roots (5 g)

When he’s satisfied with the results, he brings it over to the old man.

“Migraine-relief brew, I’ll be adding it soon to the menu,” Severus mentions as he sets it down in front of the Hokage.

Hiruzen looks at the faint blue concoction in front of him and wonders if it’s too late to back out.

Severus merely gestures politely at him to try it.

The Hokage sends a doubtful look Severus’ way at first but he braces himself and downs the first sip in the name of Konoha courage.

A mint-like flavour bursts on his tongue and he feels the coolness of it traveling down his throat. He soon takes a few more sips and after drinking half a cup, his migraine starts to ease.

He looks up at the shop owner in surprise.

_______________________

Hiruzen now frequents the tea shop whenever he has a migraine and the migraine-relief brew never fails to work wonders. Although he brews his own brew with the same ingredients, after having brought the take-away brew to one of his subordinates for ingredient identification, it doesn’t taste quite the same nor is it as effective.

However, he hasn’t quite given up. He is still trying to get the brewing method down to a pat from studying the brewing process every time he visits the tea shop.

He also suspects that the owner has a tea-brewer bloodline technique that he is hiding.

____________________________

Severus is having a breakfast of eggs and toast when he hears knocking on his front door.

Kazu looks up from his pineapple jam and towards the door before going back to his own breakfast of sweet yellow jam.

The familiar chakra signature he senses outside alerts him to his visitor. With a put upon sigh, Severus gets up from his comfy chair and goes to greet the man.

“You’re early,” he comments with a frown as he pulls open the door.

“Severus! You’re looking like your usual grumpy self,” greets the dark-skinned man with a loud booming laugh.

“Washi, you’re looking like your usual aggravating self,” he returns with a sneer.

“Aww, don’t be like that. I know you’re secretly happy to see me,” Washi laughs.

Severus studies the tall muscle-bound idiot and looks behind the man to see a cart full of supplies.

“Just bring in the ingredients.” He waves a hand at the cart to indicate to it and leaves the door open for the other man. He trudges back to the kitchen to finish his meal in peace.

He hears the sound of Washi moving the ingredients into the storeroom while he finishes the last of his scrambled eggs.

Washi soon joins him in the kitchen and helps himself to some toast.

“Oh Kazu, long time no see,” he greets the bird.

The raven merely graces him with a glance before turning his back on him.

Washi turns to Severus and asks, “He still doesn’t like me huh?”

“You tried to pull out his feathers,” Severus comments with a pointed look.

Washi laughs. “Is he still mad about that?”

Kazu turns back to glare at the heavily muscled man and throws out a threatening caw.

Washi smiles in chagrin.

When Severus leaves the kitchen after cleaning up to check on the new ingredients, Kazu flies to his shoulder and Washi follows the two into the storeroom where he left the supplies.

“All the blue grass to last for a year,” Washi points out to the large brown sacks sitting in a corner.

“Thank you,” Severus replies as he goes over the stock. For a journey of a couple of weeks, the air-dried grass seems to have survived in a relatively good condition. Washi must have been diligent in keeping them away from the sun.

“Don’t mention it, it gives me an excuse to come visit,” the other man waves it off with a smile.

“Konoha been treating you well so far?” Washi asks.

“Fairly, business has been doing rather well,” Severus comments, distracted by the other bag of silver-veined leaves next to the blue grass.

Washi watches Severus putter about the storeroom for a moment before he asks, “So, when are we starting our own secret organisation?”

Severus drops the white-back mushroom he has picked up to turn around and stare incredulously at the other man. Kazu sports the same look as he turns his beady eyes to him to stare as well.

“What secret organisation?” asks Severus after a brief period of silence.

“Oh, you know, like the secret Akastuki one,” Washi says. “Which is really not as much of a secret as they like to think,” he adds with a laugh.

Severus pinches his nose and prays to Mother Magic.

“What in the name of Merlin has given you an idea like that?” he asks bewildered.

“Er? Because they’re thinking of destroying the world? And I would like to live?” Washi answers while emphasising his points with hand gestures.

Severus sighs. “And what do you expect us to do about it? Did you want us to throw poisonous mushrooms at them and hope for the best?” he asks with sarcasm.

Washi looks pointedly at the ring on his dominant hand.

“I’m retired from heroics,” Severus replies with a sneer.

The other man stares back at him in disbelief. “Really?” he asks with another pointed look.

They stare at each other for a minute or two before Severus breaks the silence by saying, “The shinobi villages will do something about it.”

Washi decides to leave things as they are and shrugs. After all, it’s not like Severus is lacking in powerful contacts from around the continent.

He’d bring up the idea again at a later date.

________________________________

Washi leaves the next day saying that he has to transport some supplies to another customer south of the Land of Fire. They don’t bring up the topic of secret organisations or world ending scenarios.

Severus stuffs blood replenishing potions, poison cure-alls, and wound-closing potions into the muscled-idiot’s traveling bag and sees him off.

When Naruto arrives at the tea shop after school, Severus has to do the usual routine of prying the blond leech off his leg before shoving him off to the bathroom. The other customers, used to the Naruto’s routine, continue sipping their teas in silence.

____________________________

 ‘Drat!’ Hiruzen thinks as he hears a knock on his office door.

“Hokage-sama! It is I, Ebisu! I am here to bring you the tea I have especially brewed for you,” a voice calls from outside.

“Come in,” he says, thinking of another excuse to use this time.

The young chuunin secretary opens the door and waltzes in with a tray in his hand. He lifts the teapot from the tray, pours out the concoction into a porcelain teacup and offers it to the Hokage.

“I’m sure I have succeeded this time Hokage-sama!” says the bespectacled young man with a bright smile.

Sarutobi looks at the cup and then back at the smiling chuunin.

“What did you add into the brew this time?” questions the Hokage as he notices that the tea looks especially green today.

“Honourable Hokage-sama, I, Ebisu, have come up with a brilliant idea! For Hokage-sama to keep up with his good health, I have decided to add edible slimy green-moss to this tea!” extolls the young man.

Sarutobi sighs and wonders how heavy his sins were to deserve this. ‘I’ve had enough,’ he thinks. Ever since word had gotten out that the Hokage now gets take-outs from a tea shop, Ebisu had taken it as a personal challenge to his own tea-making skills.

He takes a moment to look sternly at the young secretary and says, “You’re not allowed to make tea for me anymore.”

____________________________

Ebisu is now another frequent customer at Snape’s Tea and Brew. He has a propensity to sit the closest to the tea counter so as to watch Severus’ every move.

It annoys the owner of the tea shop.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: Snape’s Restful-Sleep Potion

Severus notices the pattern quite early on.

Albeit being a regular who frequents almost every other day, Sarutobi’s visits never seem to coincide with Naruto’s shifts at the tea shop.

‘He’s still observing me without letting Naruto know about it,’ he thinks, shaking his head.

It was to be expected, he supposes. This was a shinobi village and a foreigner who is in close contact with Konoha’s Jinchuuriki is bound to be deemed suspect.

He feels the approaching chakra from a distance and he braces himself for impact.

“Kuro-sensei!” he hears a second after the blond whirlwind enters the shop and makes straight for him. Small arms circle about his waist and he looks down to see a whiskered face grinning up at him.

‘Well, at least he’s put on some height,’ Severus thinks and awkwardly pats the blond locks.

“I hit all the targets with my shuriken today at practice!” informs the boy as he tightens his hug. Severus notes that brat seems to have put on some muscle and thinks that it might be time to lessen the dosage of the nutrition potion he’s been feeding the child.

“Very good, now go get ready,” he instructs before shooing the boy off.

“Hai, Kuro-sensei!” Naruto salutes before marching towards the back room.

“And stop calling me ‘sensei’,” he reminds the blond.

“Sensei teaches me stuff so sensei is sensei!” the child shouts back cheekily.

One of his customers, which he knows to be one of Naruto’s many ANBU guards, snickers out loud before looking away to sip at his lemon tea when Severus turns to glare at him.

Kazu crows at him from his perch.

Severus had thought he’d escape teaching brats when he’d been unceremoniously dumped into this dimension.

‘It was too good to be true,’ he laments to himself.

_____________________________________

Severus observes the child as he skips about the kitchen. They’ve just finished with their dinner of chashuu ramen, Naruto had insisted, and the boy was running to and from the kitchen sink to clean up after.

He’d missed it before during the busy opening hours of running the tea shop, but it has become glaringly obvious to him now.

There was something off with the brat.

He was a tad less enthusiastic in his speech and his movements were rather lethargic, for a bouncing ball of energy that literally never stopped moving about anyway.

“Naruto, come over here for a bit,” he calls out, disrupting the boy’s long spiel of how annoying a certain Uchiha classmate was to him that day. 

Naruto pauses mid-sentence and then looks up from washing the dishes. He dries his hands on the dish cloth and climbs down from the small stool left under for a child’s easy access to the sink.

He bounces over with a smile and asks, “Are you gonna teach me something new today?” 

Severus studies the eager little face and notices the subtle black lines under the child’s eyes.

‘He looks tired,’ he diagnoses as he continues staring silently at the whiskered boy.

Naruto watches the man’s dark unmoving eyes staring intently at him and starts to fidget after a short while. ‘Did I do something wrong?’ he tries to recall nervously.

“You haven’t been sleeping well,” comes the comment after a while.

“Eh?” Naruto asks, surprised. Sometimes he wonders if his sensei could read minds.

“How’d you know?” he questions the dark-haired man after a while.

Severus merely gives him a look which Naruto usually interprets as the ‘I know everything, silly brat’ expression.

“Why?” Severus interrogates the boy , still staring intently at the blond.

Naruto shuffles his feet and looks down at the kitchen floor, unable to continue looking at the adult.

He didn’t want to trouble his sensei any more than he already has. The man had opened his house to him and taught him many interesting things. Naruto now knows more about plants, gardening, tea, and herbal brews than he had before.

And he didn’t stop there, Kuro-sensei even took the time to help him with his schoolwork when his academy teachers were more than happy to kick him out of their classes for being lazy and stupid.

He knows he isn’t lazy or stupid.

He just didn’t have the materials to study because the book stores wouldn’t sell him any of their books. He had also tried going to the library but the librarian had thrown him out for ‘dirtying their books’.

Sensei had been the only one to lend him some of his books, which looked to be really expensive as they had pretty hand-painted illustrations on them, and had taken the time to explain what they meant when Naruto couldn’t quite understand some of the words.

He’d survive living on his own for this long anyway, what were these little nightmares to him? He’d just ignore them.

“Naruto,” sensei calls out patiently in a firm voice, “why haven’t you been sleeping?”

The boy fidgets under the stare he knows he is receiving.

“It’s nothing, I just didn’t feel like sleeping,” Naruto answers in a tiny voice.

Severus sighs, he’d recognise this reluctance to admit weakness in an abused child anywhere. He’d seen it before.

 He’d been there before.

‘Some would say that you haven’t outgrown it,’ is what pops up in his head and Severus admits that some wounds can be difficult to heal even after many decades. He’s trying, but it’s hard sometimes to admit to your weaknesses and to ask for help.

‘Perhaps the child is young enough to break out of this.’

“Why don’t you feel like sleeping?” he probes.

Naruto squirms under his gaze before admitting, “I just don’t like getting nightmares.” His little head is still bowed to study the wooden kitchen floor.

‘Nothing a little dreamless sleep potion can’t handle,’ Severus thinks but knows that it cannot remain the ultimate solution to the problem.

“What do you have nightmares about?” he further questions.

Naruto keeps silent before recalling his nightmares which have haunted him from time to time ever since he could remember.

He can’t quite recall the exact details of the dream but his mind thinks of dank and gloomy corridors and a malevolent red aura that seeps out from the grimy walls. It brings a chill up his spine.

He slowly voices out the nightmare that he has been having for most of his life to the adult. When he is done, he sighs in relief as somehow telling someone else about his dreams seem to make it sound almost trivial. Under the warm kitchen light in Kuro-sensei’s house, the nightmares don’t seem so scary anymore.

Severus ponders on the information and wonders if the boy had seen one too many horror movies. He’d thought at first that the child would have been having nightmares about his bullies or of being reprimanded by his teachers in the academy. The picture Naruto paints about his dreams of a red aura however begins to ring alarm bells in his head.

But first, he has to make sure that the nightmares weren’t simply a product of the child’s vivid imagination.

“Naruto, I’m running out of lavender tea in the kitchen,” he tells the boy.

The boy looks up in surprise at the sudden change in topic.

“Could you go to the storeroom and fill up the glass jar with it?” he points to an empty jar that sits on the counter with the other tea blends.

“Erm, okay!” Naruto nods before rushing off to do his bidding.

Kazu looks intently at him from his perch and caws.

Severus gives him a look before waving his right hand. The upper cupboard to his right swings open and a small bottle containing a purple potion floats down into his awaiting hand. The cupboard soon swings close and the cupboard door vanishes in under a second.

Moments later, Naruto stumbles back into the kitchen with a full glass jar of lavender in his hands.

“I got it, Kuro-sensei!” he happily says.

Severus nods in approval and then gestures for the boy to bring the jar over.

He opens the jar, takes a sniff at the contents and deems the tea to be in good condition.

“Sit,” he instructs the child.

Naruto clambers up to the chair to his right and sits on it, eagerly looking at the older man. Severus knows he’s awaiting another tea-lesson.

“Lavender tea, as I have told you before, is made from the buds of the lavender flower. People also use it in many perfumes and soaps for its aromatic scent but in tea, people drink it for its ability to induce calm and to improve sleep,” he tells the boy.

Naruto nods at the information enthusiastically.

“Now watch,” he says to the child as he starts the brewing process.

When he deems the tea to be ready, he pours out two cups of the tea. He takes out the bottle of dreamless sleep potion from his robes and drops a couple of drops into one of the porcelain cups.

“What’s that sensei?” Naruto asks in curiosity.

“A simple herbal remedy,” he tells the boy without further elaboration.

Naruto simply nods, used to the many different concoctions that Kuro-sensei has a tendency to pull out form his robes from time to time. He supposes that the brewing process for those were not for someone of his level of brewing yet as sensei hasn’t taught him anything more than the recipes for the teas they serve at the tea shop.

‘I’ll work hard to be as good as sensei one day,’ he thinks to himself.

Severus pushes the tea with the added dreamless sleep potion towards Naruto.

“Drink, I promise that you won’t have any nightmares tonight.”

 He had only added a few drops so that the boy wouldn’t fall asleep immediately on his kitchen table. The potion should take effect only when Naruto naturally falls to sleep tonight in his rented apartment.

Naruto sips at the cup, eager to try the new tea and wholly trusting of his sensei.

‘It would be so easy to poison the poor brat,’ he thinks as he looks at the innocent face.

“It’s really good!” the boy exclaims. He says that every time he tries any of Severus’ brews.

Severus simply nods at him.  

When the boy has finished his tea, he starts to move to the kitchen sink but Severus stops him. “I’ll clean up today,” he says and reminds Naruto to turn in early today as tomorrow will be another school day.

After seeing the boy off and hearing the usual loud farewell of ,”Bye Bye Kuro-sensei”, that could probably be heard from several streets away, Severus heads back to the kitchen.

Kazu looks at him knowingly and abandons his perch to sit on the man’s shoulder.

“You suspect something,” the bird points out.

Severus nods and waves a hand at the cupboard again.

Another bottle floats out and plops itself into his hand. This time, the potion is white instead of purple.

He opens the cork and white ethereal smoke begins to pour out from the bottle. Ignoring it, he fills Naruto’s used cup with water before pouring a single drop of the divination potion into it.

Almost immediately, the liquid in the cup turns pure white and smoke starts to seep out of it. Severus looks into the cup and asks his question.

“What is the cause of Uzumaki Naruto’s nightmares?”

Back in wizarding London, Severus had openly scorned at the subject of divination and labelled it as nothing more than a hoax. After all, not many had the gift of seeing and those who did would instinctively know the best method to use to suit their own practice of divination. Trelawney’s ‘lessons’ back in Hogwarts made him scoff as pushing for a fixed curriculum of looking into crystal balls and reading tea leaves wouldn’t correspond with everyone.

The truly gifted created their own tools after all.

He himself had not realised his own gift of seeing until he had, ironically, left the wizarding world and emerged in the shinobi continent. He had cursed Moldymort and the dark mark when he did discover this ability for if it wasn’t for the cursed mark that had strangled his magical core, he would have been a much more powerful, and probably saner, wizard than he had been.

For that was its use wasn’t it? To choke the magic out of the ones who weren’t truly loyal to the cause.

 If only he had known before and hadn’t been so young and foolish.

Severus snapped out of his musings when the white smoke finally clears and an image appears in the tea cup.

A large red mass of red malevolent chakra in the shape of a nine-tailed fox stares back at him.

‘Well, I guess my suspicions were proven correct,’ he thinks.

‘Now, what to do about it,’ he ponders before an idea pops into his brain and he turns to look at the raven on his shoulder.

Kazu feels a sense of dread arise.

_____________________________

On Saturday, as they are having dinner once again in the kitchen, tempura this time, Severus studies the blond child happily munching on a shrimp. He looks to be more well rested than he had been the previous day.

“How would you like to stay over today?” he asks the boy.

Naruto pauses munching and the shrimp drops from his mouth to his rice bowl.

“Stay over?” he asks, confused.

“It’s Sunday tomorrow and I thought we’d get an early start,” he tells the boy. “I’m out of Konoha tree bark and I thought I’d show you how to harvest the tree bark without damaging the tree,” he continues.

Naruto’s face turns from confused to excited almost immediately.

“I get to stay over and go out to collect ingredients with you?” the boy asks with sparkles in his wide blue eyes. 

Severus nods and adds, “I’d need you to do it for me sooner or later in any case. It’s best I teach you now.”

Naruto pumps his fist and eagerly agrees.

After dinner, Severus shows Naruto to the spare bedroom upstairs where his guests usually park themselves for the night when they visit.

Washi’s spare hunting knife is still there in the cupboard from when had had last visited and forgotten to take it with him.  

“Thanks Kuro-sensei!” Naruto brightly says as Severus shows him where the spare futon is. The boy already knows where the bathroom is from how often he’s visited the house.

Severus is just glad he has magic to hide the secrets rooms he uses for magical purposes from overly curious eyes.

Before they go to bed though, Severus hands Naruto a light-blue concoction.

 It’s his latest invention, a restful-sleep potion.

*Restful-Sleep Potion*

- Silver-veined leaves powder (5 g)

- Stalk of a purple-spotted giant mushroom (sliced, 10 g)

- Blue fortune lilies (7 petals)

- White moon-tree bark (grated, 10 g)

“For a good rest,” he says and informs the boy that it’s a new recipe. Naruto just downs it happily, knowing that his sensei never lies about the effectiveness of his brews.

Severus bids him a good night and they both turn in for the day.

_____________________________

Kazu gives him a very acerbic glare as he bends down to finish adding in the last runes in chalk.

“I don’t like this at all,” the raven caws his discontent.

“It’s for a good cause. And I thought you liked the boy,” he replies.

“Tolerating his presence is not the same as risking our sanity for him,” the bird croaks out.

Severus throws the raven an amused glance and teases, “I thought ravens were supposed to be good at this kind of thing, or were you guys just bragging?”

Kazu gives a bird-like sigh and bites out a very reluctant, “Fine.”

He turns his head to pluck out a loose feather and flies over to land on Severus’ shoulder. He then drops the feather into the man’s open palm.

“You ready?” Severus asks as he moves to sit in the middle of the runic circle.

“Can I say no?” questions the bird sardonically.

Severus shakes his head in amusement and takes out a single blond hair, one he had oh so casually plucked from the boy’s head during dinner.

He puts both the feather and the hair into the silver bowl in front of him and lights them both on fire with a simple flick of his hand.

The runes start to light up and the feather and hair swiftly burn to ashes when the flame turns a dark blue.

Severus feels the familiar stretching sensation and he closes his eyes. When he next opens it, he finds himself in the dream-world of the blond boy sleeping in the next room.

Kazu caws in disgust and Severus has to agree.

Like what Naruto had described, the walls around him are grimy with unidentifiable filth. The place is dank and gloomy, something almost straight out of a horror movie. Any minute now Severus expects to see a bloody ghost pop out from one of the walls.

“Do you think the Kyuubi is planning to scare his vessel to death in hopes of escape?” he asks Kazu.

“It might just work,” Kazu comments as they both feel the heavy malicious aura start to thicken in the air.

“Let’s go,” he says as they head further towards the end of the corridor where the aura seems to be coming from.

Severus’ footsteps echo loudly as he takes one step after another. It bothers him because there are no other sounds save that.

‘It’s just a dream,’ he tells himself and continues at a leisurely pace.

All of a sudden, he hears a loud booming sinister laugh.

“Come closer stranger,” calls a deep voice, it reverberates through the corridors.

He pauses for a while on instinct before looking at Kazu who nods back at him to continue the journey.

He halts at the end of the corridor where large metal bars stop him from going any further.

Large red eyes appear from the darkness beyond the bars and he gets his first glimpse of the creature in this dream world.

The creature laughs again and Severus has to control his racing heart. The malevolent chakra pouring out in waves are really not easy to withstand even in a dream.

“Stranger, why have you come?” questions the beast as he shows off all his very pointy teeth to the man standing in front of his cage.

Kazu caws up at the creature to call out to his own existence.

“A raven-summons, how interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of your kind,” the creature says, eyeing the bird.

“We’ve stayed away from the human continent,” replies the raven.

“Oh? And why have you chosen to appear now? And with a strange human even,” questions the Kyuubi.

Severus clears his throat at this point to interrupt.

“To answer your earlier question, I came to offer you a deal,” says the dark-haired man.

The creature hears this and laughs out loud. “A deal? Me?” the Kyuubi continues with his booming laughter.

“In case you haven’t noticed stranger, I’m a little tied up right now,” the creature adds sarcastically.

“It’s to do with your Jinchuuriki,” Severus tells the beast after a moment’s pause.

The walls shake at an alarming rate as the beast struggles with his chains in anger. “You mean my prison?” he asks enraged and malevolent chakra pours out in large waves, buffeting Severus who stands his ground.

Kazu gives him a look that says, ‘Well, you tried.’

Severus sighs and waits for the beast to calm before he tries again.

“The dream-scape is a mirror of the intentions and feelings of the one who dreams,” he starts.

The creature looks at him in disbelief for a moment before choosing to hear what the strange human has to say. There’s something utterly alien about the power the man carries, strange but powerful.

“This filthy place,” Severus indicates, “and the chains you are bound with are manifestations of the intentions and emotions, consciously or subconsciously, of both your Jinchuuriki and yourself. If you wish to spend your days in better conditions, you might want to start trying to be nicer to the boy.”

Severus waits for another outburst but the Kyuubi simply sneers at him.

“What do I care of how this place looks, human? A prison is a prison regardless,” the creature tells him.

The human nods and says, “But what if I could promise you your freedom in a way?”

“How?” the tailed beast regards him with suspicion.

“You’re a creature made from pure energy and as such it’ll be relatively easy to separate your main body, which is really just a mass of chakra, from your mind,” he tells the beast.

After a moment of contemplation, the creature asks, “Are you saying that you want to leave my body inside this prison but move my mind outside it?”

Severus nods to confirm.

“How?” the creature questions again.

“Simple, although you won’t be able to move very far from your jinchuuriki, say within the radius of the village, you’ll be able to move freely in a different vessel; one in which only you will be occupying,” Severus says.

“But I wouldn’t have most of my chakra,” the Kyuubi points out.

The human nods.

“What vessel would I be placed in?” the creature asks to clarify.

“You don’t have to worry about that for now,” Severus waves his hand in dismissal. “But I swear on my magic that I have no intention to bring harm to you in any form,” he promises.

The air shimmers with magic for moment, signifying the truth of the human’s oath. The kyuubi himself feels the truth of those words and starts to deliberate on his answer.

 “What is it you want from me then?” the creature asks.

“Your vessel, whose name is Naruto if you didn’t know, is a child of six. Although he has been a relatively independent child, being the vessel of a tailed beast is a huge burden on his growing body,” Severus says.

“As such, it would be prudent for his continued good health if you didn’t start leaking chakra out into his body when he doesn’t quite yet know what it is or even what to do with it,” he continues.

“Are you telling me that all you want from granting me a separate body is for me to control my chakra for the good health of the brat?” asks the Kyuubi incredulously.

Severus coughs lightly into his closed fist.

“There might also be a secret organisation bent on using you and the rest of the tailed beasts as a battery to destroy the world. I hoped that with you in a separate body, we might be able to come up with a solution for this world-ending scenario together,” he adds on.

“They dare??!” the beast rages.

Severus waits a moment for the beast to calm down from his barrage of insults to human-kind and their mothers before asking, “So, are we agreed?”

The beast quiets down, observes him from head to toe before asking him more questions about the proposed deal and the secret world-ending organisation. Severus tells him about all he knows from what his contacts have told him and they carry on back and forth till the beast runs out of questions.

“Fine,” the creature bites out.

Severus nods.

“So we’re agreed, Kyuubi?” he asks again to confirm.

“Kurama,” the creature says.

“I’m sorry?” Severus asks bewildered.

“My name’s Kurama,” the kyuubi answers.

 “If I have to spend a large amount of time in your company, you might as well call me by my name,” the creature adds, his snout turned away.

“You still haven’t told me what my new vessel will be,” grumbles the creature.

Severus grins.

_______________________

The next morning, they go out to one of the many forests within Konoha.

Naruto carries the basket and hops happily at his side questioning about different plants along the way.

He’d been dead to the world yesterday even after Severus had exited his dream-scape. Kurama had also kept his promise of stopping his chakra from leaking out.

Severus had used his own magic on the boy to check.

‘Well, that solves the problem of nightmares,’ he thinks.

It’s just the two of them today as Kazu has returned to his kin in the Lone-Moon Forest to request for some Silver-Moon Water from the sacred pond.

In the meantime, he’d have to reach out to his contacts to spread the word. With the ninetails’ cooperation, they should be able to discreetly warn the other eight tailed beasts and their jinchuuriki to watch out for any secret organisations bent on hunting them down. It’d be good if the other villages caught wind of the potential world –ending scenario and dealt with the Akastuki to save them the trouble.

Washi’s comment about a secret organisation of their own flashes through his mind but he dismisses it easily. It would be just easier to get the news out to the key players and leave them to worry about their own backsides.

He'd fought in enough wars for a lifetime.

‘Next week,’ he thinks, ‘the potion should be ready in a week.’

Kurama will have to wait till then.

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: Snape’s Multi-Purpose Purifying Potion

When Severus first opens his eyes in this new world, the first things he sees is the full moon.

 It’s night but the sky is lit up by the bright light of the pale moon and the stars look like stationary fireflies in a cloudless sky.

He wonders if death brings out the poet in him and snorts out loud.

The slight movement however triggers the sharp aches that seize his body instantly and he wonders why he’s still in pain. ‘Do spirits feel pain?’ his foggy mind questions.

He takes a moment to try to think clearly but it’s like he’s been hit with a Confundo curse and he just can’t seem to pull his thoughts together.

‘Why does it feel like I’ve been run over by the Knight Bus?’ he questions and instinctively tries to move his arm to search for his wand. He’d just been fighting in a war and all his inbuilt survival instincts shout out loudly to him that a wizard without a wand is a dead wizard, especially in these dangerous times.

 His right hand gropes about the ground but it doesn’t find anything remotely wand-like and Severus feels too much like something Fluffy the Three Headed Dog chewed and spat out to properly sit up and search.

‘Severe magical exhaustion,’ his mind diagnoses from where he lies spread out on the ground. He’d experience it before and recognises the sensations but not to this extent. He tries to pull his magic together but it feels like his core has run dry and bits of magic end up seeping back uselessly into the surroundings.

‘Maybe even a damaged magical core,’ his mind supplies again.

‘Perhaps I’m already dead and this is just the brain’s last few seconds alive before it shuts down,’ he thinks and closes his eyes to welcome the ‘next great adventure’, as Albus once put it.

Quite some time later, he opens his eyes again to look up at the bright moon and wonders why he still isn’t quite dead yet. ‘Release me from this suffering already,’ he grumbles as his aches start to worsen. His mind is slowly clearing and he misses the numbness it brought as sensations around him start becoming more apparent, along with the pain.

He’s in a forest, he realises, as he smells the distinct scent of green growing plants and hears the sound of wind rustling through leaves.

‘Am I in the Forbidden Forest?’ he questions and he tries groping about for his wand again. Any specimen of wizard-eating magical creature could come upon him and decide that he probably looked tasty enough to feast on as the day’s dinner after all.

He finds nothing and gives up with a sigh. ‘Perhaps if I just lie here someone will eventually stumble upon me and be kind enough to apparate me to St Mungo’s.’ He just hopes that whoever who finds him won’t be of the Death-Eater sort as they should have already gotten word of his betrayal by now.

He soon hears the cawing of some kind of bird species somewhere close by. ‘I hope they don’t think I’m carrion before my time,’ he absently thinks.

He moves his gaze away from the pale moon overhead to search for the source of the sound and immediately spots a crow, or it could be a raven, sitting on a branch only a slight distance away. It seems to be staring watchfully at him and if Severus’ fog-addled mind isn’t mistaken, it’s studying him with intent.

He wonders if the bird is really a wizard or witch in animagus form.

The bird breaks their silent staring match by hopping off the branch and flying closer.

It lands inches away from where Severus had painstakingly turned his head on the ground to look at the bird.

The bird caws out at him and then speaks, “The healer is on his way.”

Severus is dumbstruck for a second and questions his own wizarding knowledge, ‘I thought an animagus couldn’t speak in animal form?’

His surprise must have been evident as the bird tilts it head to study him again and comments, “You’re a strange human.”

‘You’re a strange bird,’ his mind immediately supplies back but he doesn’t have the energy to voice it out loud.

He hears the distinct sound of the flapping of more birds and looks up to see a couple of black birds, similar to the one perched next to him, flying closer. One hurriedly lands ahead of the rest and Severus is surprised once again to notice that it carries a small sling bag made of white cloth over its black feathered back.

The raven, he can tell that they’re all ravens now by the look of their tail feathers, eyes him speculatively for a moment before turning to his previous feathered watcher.

“How is he?”

“From what I can tell he’s in pain, healer,” says his watcher and hops back to let the other raven get closer.

The other raven, ‘The healer,’ Severus’ mind points out, studies him intently again before rummaging towards the small sling bag he carries.

The other ravens who have landed, Severus notices, are all eyeing the procedure and giving him speculative looks. They’re all of different sizes and quite larger than the ones he has ever seen before.

 He hears the sound of crinkling leaves and he looks back to eye the ‘healer’ raven who is fiddling with a bundle of dried leaves that look like some sort of packaging; which is soon deftly opened by a dextrous claw to reveal a white powdered substance.

Severus thinks that by now he might be actively hallucinating. ‘Ravens that can talk and act like humans?’ he questions his sanity.

“This will help,” ‘the healer’ raven says before sprinkling some of the white powder under his nose. He tires not the breathe it in, his instincts telling him not to trust unknown substances, but it’s too late and he’s already taken a whiff of it.

Almost instantly his head gets lighter and his eyes start to close. The last thing he notices is his watcher hopping closer and assuring, “You’ll be fine.”

And then only darkness.

___________________________

He doesn’t know how long he’s slept for but by the time he awakens, his body feels the sluggishness of a person who has been immobile for a long period of time.

He’s intimately acquainted with the feeling as he’s spent enough time recovering from curses and the blasted cursed-mark in Poppy’s hospital wing by now to identify it for what it is.

He distantly recalls the memory of being dosed unconscious by a couple of ravens and wonders if maybe Poopy had overdosed him with painkillers and other recovery potions to cause acute hallucinations.

But when he glances about to look for the medi-witch, he realises that he’s probably not in the Hogwarts hospital ward, or even at St Mungo’s, unless someone had suddenly decided to redecorate; in which case he would plainly commend them for their choice of a very realistic nature-oriented theme.

The walls are made of tree bark, as far as he can tell, and glowing vines cover the walls to provide a soft warm light. It was bright enough to light up the room but also dim enough to allow for his eyes to adjust to the brightness.

He glances down and sees that he’s wearing a white robe-like piece of clothing that seems rather Asian in design; he thinks it might be called a Japanese yukata.

‘Am I in Japan?’ he wonders.

He further glances about the room and soon spots a very familiar bird perched on the bedframe at the bottom of his bed.

It’s staring at him intently and he suddenly experiences the feeling of deja vu.

“Do you need me to call the healer?” it asks him.

Severus stares back at it in shock and calms down to take stock of his situation.

He’s in a strange place where talking ravens exist. He doesn’t have his wand and will probably get himself doused with the white powder again if the bird calls for the ‘healer’.

“It’s alright, I’m feeling much better,” he tells the bird politely. Inwardly he’s wondering if he can make a run for it. He can’t apparate quite just yet but he has two legs and if he has to use them, he will. 

The bird nods and they fall quiet.

They stare at each other and Severus wonders if this is going to be a pattern with them.

He breaks the staring by closing his eyes and pretending to rest but what he’s really trying to do is to diagnose his body’s condition and to figure out the events that had led him to this strange place.

He tries to probe at his magic and sighs in relief to discover that there’s a shallow pool of magic already building up in his magical core. He had been severely drained, he remembers, but from what he simply can’t recall.

His body feels lethargic but his aches have mostly faded. His neck however, feels a little sore and his hand automatically moves to touch it.

Almost immediately he is barraged with the memory of the sharp pain of being savagely bitten in the neck by the merciless fangs of a large venomous snake.

‘Nagini,’ he recalls as fear wells up in his throat. His breaths start coming out in short painful rasps and he blatantly realises that he’s about to have a panic attack.

‘That’s how I died,’ his mind reminds him, ‘I died, I should be dead.’

The raven across him starts to notice the panic attack for what it is and quickly flies out the open doorway. A moment later, it flies back in with the healer closely following.

Severus holds unto his neck protectively and his breathes remain short and difficult. His hands shake intermittently and he can feel tears pouring down his cheeks.

He’d died, he wasn’t supposed to be alive. It had been a fatal wound and he couldn’t have survived.

“Human, look at me,” a voice croaks at him from outside the cruel memories playing inside his head.

He’d died, he should be dead.

But it feels like he’s still there, sitting helplessly on the ground as Nagini painfully bites into his neck again and again.

“Human, look up,” he hears the voice again and it sounds somewhat familiar but the memory overpowers him again and he dismisses it.

“I don’t think he can hear us,” another voice croaks, “I’ll just get more of..” the voice says but is interrupted.

 “Oh, forget it!” and Severus feels a surge of strange energy before he is engulfed in it.

The memory fades away and he once again falls back into darkness.

He later learns that the raven had cast a sleep-jutsu on him and gets his revenge soon enough.

The bird does look so very fetching in pink feathers.

_________________________________

They tell him that he’s in a different dimension.

It resembles the Japan of his world to a degree, when he describes the similarities of the culture he has heard about in his old world, but there are many key differences.

For one, they call the human continent, and there is bafflingly only one habitable continent, the Shinobi continent.

And instead of magic, which he reveals to them by turning his watcher’s feathers pink in a show of demonstration, the energy that occupies all living things and is commonly used in this world is called chakra.

However, instead of being in said Shinobi continent, he learns that he is in a pocket dimension of the world; the Lone-Moon Forest of the raven-summons.

They tell him that the pocket dimensions, there are many, are connected to the main human world but humans cannot travel to the pocket dimension without their permission.

If they so happen to do so and come with ill-intent, they would find themselves on the receiving end of very angry animal-summons who would be more than eager to remove certain genetics from the human gene pool.

His watcher, who he finds out is called Kazu, had been tasked to watch over him for the duration of his recovery and stay in the Lone-Moon Forest.

They spend many moments just staring silently at the other from across his bed during the long days he spends in the healing room.

The healing process in itself was long and tiring as he had needed to recover not only physically but mentally and magically. There were nights when he would wake up screaming and fighting off a phantom assailant only to calm down moments later to remind himself that it was only a dream.

The sensation of sharp fangs at his throat usually follows him out to the waking world on many of those nights.

His raven watcher observes him silently during those times but pretends to look away to let him gather himself, and his dignity, before pushing a cup of water his way.

They come to a sort of truce the first time the avian does this.

____________________________________

A month after his stay in the healing room, the healer, who had introduced himself as Kino, informs him that he is physically well and ready to leave. His magic at this point has been slowly recovering and he could probably apparate three times before falling flat on his face, but it’s a start.

Mentally though, he knows he has a ways to go.

He had tried to pry as much information about this world from the healer and his watcher during his recovery but there were some questions which they had casually brushed off or blatantly refused to answer, as in the case of his watcher, and he is chomping at the urge to find out.

“The elder will answer you,” Kazu croaks out whenever he asks.

The raven then tells him that they will take him to see her when he is physically fit enough to leave the healing room.

And so, a month into his stay in Lone-Moon Forest, he finally leaves the healing room and is taken to the largest tree in the forest.

______________________________

Severus doesn’t think he’s ever seen so many ravens gathered together and perched in a single tree.

But then the tree in itself is strange, it’s as tall as a small mountain and its branches span out like a fan. The strangest thing about it though is that the tree is a pure white and it gives off a kind of ethereal glow that Severus thinks looks almost magical in nature.

The moon shines brightly above, providing enough light for Severus to make his way across tree roots and stray branches on the forest floor.

The journey here in itself had been an interesting one. He’d sat on the back of a large raven, large enough that it had resembled one of the dragons back in the wizarding world. Kazu had flown alongside them and when the raven had landed in the clearing near the Sacred Moon Tree, it had transformed in a pop of smoke into an average-sized raven.

“Thank you, child,” Kazu had said to the raven and Severus had wondered if all ravens could enlarge themselves when they so choose to and how big they could really grow. 

The young raven, who had introduced herself as Suzu, had bowed and flown off to sit on one of the branches after Severus had given his own short bow in thanks.

Now standing before the large tree, Severus feels a feeling on unease creep up his spine.

It should have been a loud affair with so many ravens gathered together on the same tree but there was merely silence in the clearing. More worrying however, was the fact that all of the ravens, a few hundred of them by Severus’ estimate, were all staring silently in his direction.

It felt like he was on trial and he recalls another time when he had stood before the Wizengamot and pleaded for his life.

Kazu probably notices his trepidation and throws him an unusually kind, “Don’t worry,” before flying off to perch on a branch close by.

Severus waits in silence as he looks at the many ravens who are openly observing him. He doesn’t know what they are waiting for and a small voice in his mind suggests, ‘Perhaps they are waiting for you to crack.’

He truly hopes not, but he is prepared to apparate away the moment things go south. He can’t perform more power-intensive spells without his wand or with his core so drained but he can at least run.

A few minutes later however, he hears a loud sigh and a voice calls outs, “Someone, please go wake Tsukine-sama.”

It follows by another exasperated voice calling out, “Tsukine-sama, the human has come to see you! Please wake up!”

He sees one of the ravens in the middle of the tree shake awake a sleeping albino raven to her right. “Tuskine-sama!” the raven calls again directly into the other raven’s ear.

“Huh? What? Is it dinner time?” the pure white raven awakens and looks about drowsily.

“The human is here to see you,” the raven tells her gently.

“Oh! The human, yes, the human,” the albino raven says before looking down at Severus from her perch.

“Ehem!” she clears her throat.

“Welcome Severus Snape, to Lone-Moon Forest. My brethren and I wholly welcome you to our home,” she says with a bow and Severus instinctively bows back politely.

“I hear you have questions for me?” she asks.

Severus nods and asks, “Do you know why I’m in this world?”

He had tried to crack his brain for an answer throughout the past month and all his conclusions point to how he should have been dead and buried back in the wizarding world. He knows he had died, it’s a fact that he cannot quite explain but inherently knows. And from what he had recalled, his body had been quite intact, save for the magical drain, when he had first emerged into this dimension.

Additionally, the healer-raven had let slip that the ravens had prepared a human-sized healing room months before his arrival and that they were unsurprised with his sudden appearance into their pocket dimension.

He’d tried probing for more information but the two ravens around him had merely told him to wait for the answers.

He eyes the white raven and impatiently and waits for her to answer.

“Magic sent you here,” the raven simply answers. 

Severus pinches his nose in irritation and bites out, “I know that there was magic involved but why am I here?” he’d concluded early on that the cause of his drained magic must have had something do with him being transported to this dimension.

“Because magic sent you here,” the raven repeats and Severus holds back the need to start cussing.

“But . why?” he repeats with deliberation, patience waning. He wonders if he should be more respectful of the elder but he was never quite known for being a polite and respectful man.

“Because you are needed and because you need it,” the raven says with a small nod.

Severus is taken aback by the answer and presses for more details but the raven repeats the same line.

“What am I needed for and what do I need?!” he finally raises his voice in ire.

The raven cocks her head before answering, “You will have to find out those answers for yourself, for that is part of your journey,” she tells him and Severus wonders if the raven is purposely being difficult or if she just doesn’t know the answer is merely giving him lines that sounds like something Albus would say to young trusting children. 

He keeps trying by asking the same question again but the answers remains the same and in the end, he is left with more questions than answers.

He soon gives up and tries asking, “How did you know to expect me? I can tell that you knew I was going to be here.”

Tsukine tells him, “Ravens are masters of the dream-world and the inner-mind. As the priestess of the clan, part of my duty is to look at the dreams of others; those of the past, present and the future. I saw your arrival in a dream.”

He gets no more answers and it frustrates him.

Soon he rages out, “Why won’t you tell me anything?!!”

He glares at the assembled birds on the white tree and feels only burning frustration. He was thrown alone in this strange world, left almost defenceless and he had already died once. Why was he even here? There is nothing for him here, no one he knows and nothing around is familiar.

 He has never felt so alone in his life, not even when Lily had broken their friendship. He’s a stranger lost in a different dimension with no answers on why he’s there or how to even get home.

The white raven gentles her gaze and tells him, “Because you’re not ready for the answers.”

“Then when will I be ready?” he questions back, his fingers clenched tightly. He looks at the raven, reading that there will be no forthcoming answers and something gives way in him.

“Then what do I do now?” he shouts out at the assembled ravens, anger burning brightly in his chest.

But suddenly, he’s surprised by the feeling of an added weight on his shoulder.

 The white raven had flown over from the tree to land on him.

“Are you angry? Frustrated? Upset?” the bird asks, tilting her head at him.

“Of course I’m angry!” he shouts at her, spittle flying.

“You’ve been angry your whole life. With your father, your schoolmates, your best friend, the mentor you had to kill and the cruel man you had sworn to serve,” she tells him.

He freezes in surprise.

“But most of all Severus, you’ve been angry at yourself,” she says, looking into his eyes and Severus finds he cannot look away.

He doesn’t know what to do, standing before this all-seeing raven who seems to know his life story. Chills run down his spine.

 “You’ve built walls around yourself made of anger but the walls merely hide all the hurt you’ve experienced. You’ve never trusted anyone and you’ve only ever relied on yourself, even when there have been those who had reached out to you,” she continues and a picture of a red-haired girl with green eyes flashes through his mind.

They stare in each other in silence and Severus suddenly feels vulnerable in front of the other’s red gaze.

After a moment she asks, “Severus Snape, do you need our help?”

He feels his anger slowly slide away to be replaced with confusion but he answers with a, “Yes?”

The raven nods.

“You might not be ready to hear some of the answers to your questions but we will always give you help should you need it. Severus Snape, welcome to the clan of ravens,” she tells him and bows.

He lowers his head to her return, feeling quite lost at what had just happened. She notices his confusion and caws out in laughter.

“Come, let me tell you of the history of our clan,” she says to him and flies towards the tree. She lands on a stone rock leaning against the tree and indicates for him to sit by her.

He walks towards her, feeling awfully perplexed.

He sits by the stone and a moment later, he feels another raven land on his shoulder and turns to see Kazu staring back at him.

“I told you not to worry,” Kazu caws at him.

He spends the rest of the day listening to the elder talk about the origins of the ravens and the history of the world that they are in.

Looking back, he realises that this is the very moment that laid the foundation of trust between him and the ravens, although he didn’t quite see it for what it was at the time.

_______________________________________

The ravens bring him into their fold like he is one of their own.

They visit him daily, in the small tree house they had made for him, with offerings of sweet juicy fruits from the forest.

They teach him to recognise the plants around him and often they take him up on their backs, in their enlarged forms, and fly him around the pocket dimension. He enjoys these flights as he observes the world from up on high and is always eager to go on more.

The gentler ones always fly at a steady pace but the more excitable ones tend to perform daring aerial manoeuvres that leave his stomach dropping in alarm. Regardless he knows that they won’t drop him and he enjoys all the flights.

Kazu shows him about the forest and brings him to the most delightful places; sprawling plains, hidden waterfalls, picturesque meadows and all sorts of places he thinks Severus might enjoy. Almost every day is an adventure and there isn’t a moment where he doesn’t enjoy their sarcastic banter; no other raven quite matches their level of pure snark.

Kino shows him how to produce the medicine the ravens use and he often follows behind the healer into the forest to gather the ingredients. The healer-raven tells him that he envies his opposable thumbs when it comes to collecting and producing the various herbal remedies.

At night, when the sun sets and the Lone-Moon Forest truly comes alive, he heads towards the sacred white tree and sits under it to listen to Tsukine sing about the stories and legends of the world that they are in. He wants to make a joke about the croaking of ravens but he can’t seem to do so as the priestess has too lovely a voice for him to mock.

He wishes he could though, he really does.

He tells her that out loud in one of his dreams when she comes to visit him.

 She has a tendency to appear now and again in his dream world but she is mostly polite enough to make her presence known before entering into his dream.

 He doesn’t stop trying to get straight answers from her but she keeps mum.

The rest of the time they spend looking at Severus’ past in the wizarding world as he walks through familiar streets and castle corridors with the white raven on his shoulder.

He still feels a sense of homesickness but knows he cannot do anything about it. Tsukine tells him that she doesn’t have the ability to send him home but the answer to his problem might one day be found.

Slowly but surely, he wakes up less and less from nightmares of serpents and sharp fangs.

Five months into his stay with the ravens is when he finds out the darker side to their world.

He’s in a small clearing practicing his magic.

Tsukine had freely given him a white feather, a bag of ash from the sacred tree and a silver ring and told him to go forth and ‘be magical’.

He’d taken all of it and pondered on what she might mean, when it dawns on him that he might need a wand.

He looks at the ring though, and question why she had given him that instead of a tree branch.

Kazu had looked at him and asked, “Does it have to be a pointy stick?”

And that brings him to where he is now, instead of a wand, he had found a way to embed the white feather and the tree ash into the silver ring. It now however shines white instead of silver.

He practices his magic with it as often as he is able to without draining his core. He’s only able to store a quarter of what he once could but he’s slowly getting there.

It’s awkward at first to practice magic using a ring but he has since gotten used to the new wrist movements for different spells.

He throws out an ‘Incendio’ at the small pile of twigs at his feet and a merry fire forms.

“Might be good to roast some mushrooms,” Kazu calls out from a nearby tree.

Severus throws him a look and thinks about pink ravens. He could do it wandless even, it wouldn’t take much magic.

Kazu eyes him eyeing his feathers and starts to say something before he is interrupted by a shout.

“Hurry, bring her to the healer!”

They both turn towards the source of the voice and see a few ravens fly overhead, heading towards the healing rooms. A smaller raven is carried on one of their backs.

“What’s happening?” Severus asks.

Kazu looks at him and shakes his head sadly. “It’s the wasting disease,” he tells the man.

“Wasting disease?” he asks and the raven tells him that the source of all the water in this dimension has been slightly contaminated. It usually doesn’t affect the healthy ravens but the weaker children sometimes catch the wasting disease.

 It’s called the wasting disease because the victims who catch it often waste away, they grow thinner and thinner, and then die.

“And you’re all not doing anything about it?” he questions.

“We’ve tried everything,” the raven says, frustrated. “And unless you have a solution for banishing all of the world-eaters from this world there’s nothing anyone can do,” the ravens states.

‘World-eaters,’ Severus thinks about with a small chill running up his spine. He’d heard about them from Tsukine and wants nothing whatsoever to do with them. He hopes to peacefully die of old age never having had to deal with any of them.

“Where’s the source of the contamination?” he asks.

“The Moon Spring, it’s our sacred pool and the source of all water in this dimension,” answers the bird.

“Can I see it?” he questions and Kazu gives him a surprised look.

_____________________________________

“It doesn’t look contaminated,” he says as he sees the clear pool. They’re on the highest mountain in this pocket-dimension and although it should be snowing, it’s warm instead and plants grow abundantly all around.

“It used to glow as bright as the moon,” the raven tells him.

“I see,” he says and tries to picture a glowing pool of water.

An idea strikes him but he isn’t sure if it will work. He looks towards the bird and says, “Let me try something.”

He scoops a bit of water into a bottle he transfigures from a fallen leaf and turns back to the bird.

“Let’s go back,” he says and Kazu gives him a strange look before enlarging, Severus had been surprised by his size at first when he first sees his enlarged form, and taking off with the human on his back.

Weeks later, after many experiments and journeys back and forth the different parts of the pocket-dimension, Severus emerges from his wooden house and with triumph and exclaims, “Eureka!”

*Multi-Purpose Purifying Potion*

- Moon-tree bark (grated, 20g)

- White-spotted moon leaves (crushed, 15 g)

-Glowing yellow river fungus essence (10 ml)

- Clear Moon-River crystals (powdered, 5 g)

_______________________________________________

It takes many barrels of the potion, along with many helping beaks and claws, to completely purify the sacred pool.

‘It really does glow like the moon,’ Severus thinks to himself, admiring his handiwork.

The ravens around him are happily cawing out in celebration and the little raven that had been sent to the healing room many weeks ago laughs joyfully from where she perches on his shoulder.

“Thank you, Severus-nii!” the child, Suki, calls out exuberantly. He had healed her a week ago by pouring a vial of the purifying potion on her which quickly cured her of the disease.

“Guess you’re a hero,” Kazu tells him from his other shoulder with a laugh.

‘A hero,’ he thinks, he’d never been anyone’s hero.

But it certainly felt good.

Tsukine looks at him with a knowing look in her red eyes and caws out a laugh.

The festive mood lasts for a week and Severus avoids berry sake for the foreseeable future. He’s had quite enough of it throughout the last week to last a lifetime. 

The ravens tell him that they’ve spread the word to the other pocket dimensions and orders for the purifying potion are pouring in, it seems that Lone-Moon Forest wasn’t the only place suffering from contamination from the world-eaters.

They pay him heavily in gold and precious gemstones for his trouble and Severus wonders how he’d spend all of it in his lifetime.

‘Perhaps I’ll buy a country,’ he thinks, ‘and get everyone to call me King Severus.’ He had been under the influence of too much berry sake at the time so he really couldn’t be blamed for his nonsensical thoughts.

Kazu however had reminded him that he had said it out loud the next morning and cheekily referred to him as, “Your Majesty”, all throughout that day.

He’d turned Kazu’s feathers a glorious royal purple the next day in retaliation.

_______________________________________

Six months later Severus decides that it’s time to leave the Lone-Moon Forest in search of a way home.

Tsukine tells him that he should be able to find the answers to his questions in the Shinobi continent and remains mum about what she’s seen in her dreams.

‘The future is always uncertain and there are many paths’ she tells him when he questions her why.

He’s learned a lot from her in the year he’s been with the ravens and understands more of what she says now. Some answers have to be sought on one’s own.

He thinks that the one raven he’ll miss the most is Kazu, his partner in snark, but is prepared to say goodbye when Kazu lands on his shoulder and says, “If I leave you alone you might just end up researching about potions till you forget to feed yourself,” and joins him on his travels to the Shinobi continent.

They wave the others goodbye and in a puff of smoke, Tsukine sends them off with a jutsu.

Severus opens his eyes and sees grasslands and hills in front of him.

Kazu takes off from his shoulder to the open sky to scout out the lay of the land and Severus thinks of an old wizard with half-moon glasses.

 ‘I guess it’s time for the next great adventure.’

___________________________________

Years later, Severus wakes up one morning to the familiar knocking on his window. He waves a hand and a raven flies into the room.

“I’m back, the clan sends their greetings,” says Kazu as he settles unto the bedframe by his head.

Severus looks up at the raven and the raven looks down at the human.

“Welcome back,” he says with a smile.

“Today’s special is ice berry tea at the tea house,” he tells the bird.

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: Snape’s Blood-Replenishing Brew

Kurama ponders about the topic of life choices.

Yes, more specifically, he ponders about the topic of his life choices and making deals with dark-haired humans.

‘I should have asked more questions,’ he whines to himself.

“I’m a giant majestic nine-tail fox,” he tells the human.

The human nods.

“The most powerful tailed beast in all the land,” he continues.

The human nods again.

“Humans tremble when they hear my name!” he emphasises.

The human raises an eyebrow but continues nodding in agreement.

“So why is it that I’m now stuck in this pathetic form!?” he shouts up at the towering-human sitting in front of him.

The blasted raven cackles out loud from where he perches by the human’s shoulder.

Kurama throws a glare the bird-brain’s way but the bird merely caws harder in laughter.

“You agreed that we should be subtle and discreet to avoid the notice of the Konoha shinobi,” he reminds the creature.

“I agreed to subtle and discreet, not to me being put into this tiny plush toy! It’s a disgrace to my majestic self I tell you, a disgrace!” the small, palm-sized, fox plush toy in front of him rages as it jumps about in anger.

The bird cackles so hard it falls off the human’s shoulder and lands on the floor rolling in laughter.

“I knew I stuck around you for a reason,” the raven tells the human in between bouts of cackling.

The fox glares again at the raven and runs over to pounce angrily on the exposed feathered belly. In his original body he could have squished the stupid bird into a pancake with one giant toe.  

“It tickles, ahaha, tickles!” the bird laughs and mocks the mini fox doll that is jumping up and down his feathered chest in ire.

Severus amusedly watches the scene.

He’d sewn together the red plush fox doll from scratch using cloth made from the spider-summons’ silk thread which he had requested for a week ago. The spiders had especially imbued their chakra into the threads and created a piece of cloth that would be almost indestructible; unless someone was trying really really, S Rank-shinobi level, hard. He’d also imbued his own magic into the material and it would stop most from discovering any traces of the Kyuubi’s chakra in the doll.

‘Subtle and discreet,’ he thinks with a grin. He’d been tempted to dye it a polka-dotted pattern but had soon curbed his evil inner urges and dyed it purely red in deference to Kurama’s own natural colouring.

“It makes it easier for you to hide or blend in the village,” he reminds the fox. “You could just play dead and look like any other lost doll if you were ever discovered on the streets,” he adds.

“You could have thought of a better idea!” the nine-tail fox, or the now currently one-tail fox doll, shouts out at him. Kazu had returned to his perch and is snickering softly.

Severus puts on an innocent expression and tells him, “I thought this was a brilliant idea actually.”

The fox looks up angrily at him but soon just plants his face to the floor and ponders on the topic of life choices once again. ‘You should never agree to shady deals when you’re desperate,’ he thinks.

Severus shakes his head and gets up from his sitting position. He waves his right hand and the runic circle around them starts to fade.

He magics away the rest of the tools and ingredients they had used for the mind-transference spell and floats a small silver ring embedded with a white crystal, perfectly sized for the plush doll, Kurama’s way.

“Keep the ring on you,” he tells the fox.

“It’ll allow us to communicate over long distances in case we need to,” he further elaborates.

Kurama nods from where his face is planted on the wooden floor and Severus leaves him to his profound musings to head to bed.

He checks in on the young boy sleeping soundly next to his bedroom and turns in for the day.

He hears Kazu snickering quietly from his perch before he falls into dreamland.

He sleeps that night with a smile on his face.

_________________________________________

The next morning, Severus is already seated at the dining table with a breakfast of jam and scones spread out before him when he hears Naruto trot into the kitchen with a yawn.

“Morning, Kuro-sensei,” the blond greets him drowsily as he rubs at his eyes.

“Good morning, did you sleep well last night?” he asks the boy as he sips on his green tea. ‘He should have slept like the dead again after ingesting another dose of restful-sleep potion,’ Severus thinks to himself.

“Ahuh,” the boy agrees and climbs up onto ‘his’ dining chair to Severus’s right.

“I had a weird dream though,” the boy tells him.

“Oh?” Severus asks, curious, “What was it about?”

Naruto rubs a palm across his face and tries to recall the dream but it mostly escapes his grasp.

“I think there was red fox in a cage and Kuro-sensei and Kazu were talking to it,” Naruto says.

Severus isn’t quite surprised. It was a shared dream between the boy and the nine tails which he had entered once again after all.

“That sounds interesting,” he remarks casually.

“It was weird,” Naruto says with a frown but soon forgets all about his dream and digs into his breakfast with gusto.

Severus pours the blond a glass of milk and Kazu ignores them both for his blueberry jam.

Kurama sits sulkily in Severus’ coat pocket and remains silent.

________________________________

He had promised the boy an excursion so on that bright Sunday morning, after cleaning up from breakfast, they head out towards the forest near the Hokage mountain to look for mushrooms.

He had run out of red-headed mushrooms and it had been a good excuse to get the boy to stay over the night before.

He wonders if this might become a trend from now on.

“Kuro-sensei!” he hears the boy call out and looks straight ahead to see the boy waving at him. “Hurry up! Come on!” the boy excitedly shouts before running further ahead.

Severus sighs and thinks about children and their endless energy.

He walks leisurely after the blond, happy to move at his own pace but Naruto gets impatient and runs back to tug at his hand and Severus has no choice but to be unwillingly pulled along by the child.

Kazu caws amusedly at him and takes off from his shoulder to fly on ahead.

Pretty soon they arrive at the entrance to the forest and Severus warns the boy not to run off and to remain in his sight at all times.

He didn’t want to have to rescue the boy from a stray bear or fish him out from the river if he fell in.

“Okay!” Naruto agrees and rushes off to look under a nearby tree for the mushrooms.

“Remember what I told you, only pick the ones with the red-heads and brown stems. Leave the others alone and stay away from the all-red mushrooms,” he reminds the boy.

“Okay!” the boy hollers back again.

Severus looks on, slightly worried about finding the child poisoned somewhere deep in the forest.

He looks at Kazu and the raven nods before flying off after the child.

Severus sighs and follows after the two.

Kurama stays silent and unmoving in his coat pocket.

_____________________________________

Hours later, the boy runs over with a small basket full of red-headed mushrooms. He grins up at him to show off and Severus pats his head.

Kazu yawns from a nearby branch and Severus decides it’s time for lunch.

“Can we get ramen, Kuro-sensei?” the child asks excitedly.

Severus sighs but nods. They had ramen just yesterday but the child looks too excited to be let down.

“Woohoo!” the brat shouts out happily.

Kazu looks amusedly at Severus.

‘So he has a soft spot for his employee, so what?’ he rolls his eyes at the bird.

The new chakra he senses behind them starts trailing along after them as they head out of the forest. Severus had noticed the new addition to Naruto’s watchers today the moment they had left the house.

He recognises Panther and Falcon, but not the new presence.

‘Perhaps it’s a new guard,’ he thinks.

Panther and Falco, he had noticed, had been solely assigned to guard the brat and Bear and Racoon were usually the ones who popped up whenever the Hokage showed up at his tea house.

“You do know that there are three shinobi hidden behind you right?” questions the fox telepathically from his coat pocket. It’s the first time the fox has used the magical communication ring and Severus almost jumps in shock at the voice in his head but keeps his expression even.

He thinks that the fox might have done it in revenge.

“Yes, I’m aware,” he answers back in his head, his own ring is tied to the magic in the fox’s.

The kyuubi keeps silent after that.

They head out for lunch in Ichiraku’s and the noodle-shop owner, Teuchi, greets them in welcome. Naruto orders ten bowls of ramen and Severus tell himself that he’s glad that he’s rich.

Severus orders a bowl each for himself and Kazu and they dig into their lunches. Teuchi just smiles at them, used to the sight of the black bird eating ramen.

At the edge of his senses though, Severus keeps track of the chakra of the new guard.

His gift of seeing tells him that there’s a connection between the boy and the owner of the chakra but nothing else.

He decides to observe for now and wait for the other to act.

His magic senses that the new watcher most certainly will.

_________________________________

A couple of days later, he’s walking home with a basket full of Konoha florescent night-moss when Kurama’s voice pops up in his head again.

“I think he’s about to make his move,” the fox tells him.

Severus continues his walk leisurely at the same pace.

Kazu flies overhead, a speck of black against the bright crescent moon.

“You sure you don’t need my help?” the fox asks again.

“I’m sure,” he says, “just keep still no matter what happens. I doubt he plans to do any real harm.”

As he is walking by the large river that runs through the village, he sees a figure languidly walking up to him with his hands in his pockets.

The young man’s gravity-defying silver hair is the first thing he notices about him. Also, three-quarters of his face is covered by a mask and a Konoha head-band.   

‘Konoha’s Copy Ninja, Hatake Kakashi,’ his mind supplies.

“Yo, you’re out about late,” the other says casually to him.

“Some ingredients can only be collected at night,” he tells the copy-nin, with a nod at his basket.

Hatake nods in understanding, seemingly unconcerned about the fact that he had just walked up to a stranger and started a conversation out of the blue.

Severus makes to walk away, bowing his head politely in farewell. He takes four steps when he hears the man say, “I heard you own a tea shop.”

He stops in his track and turns his head to look at the shinobi.

The man is looking at him in a laid-back manner. If Severus was an ordinary civilian, with no magic or chakra, he would assume that the man was just making polite talk.

 “Yes, Snape’s Tea and Brew” he tells him.

“I heard Naruto is working there,” the shinobi adds.

Severus just nods, observing the man.

In a blink of an eye however, the copy-nin closes the small distance between them and before he knows it, Severus is staring into a red eye with three black tomoes spinning wildly about. He hears Kazu’s caw of alarm and soon feels Kakashi activate a sleep jutsu that knocks the raven unconscious.

He finds himself being pulled into a world of red and black.

He’s still in the forest and the river runs red next to where they are standing.

The silver-haired shinobi grabs him by the throat and holds him up threateningly in the air.

“Now, tell me who you really are and why you’ve approached Konoha’s jinchuuriki,” the man demands dangerously.

_______________________________

Kakashi staggers back through Konoha’s red gates feeling like a dried up sponge. He’s lost a lot of blood from the wound to his leg and his head feels dizzy but he had pushed himself to make the trek back home.

He soon uses the body-flicker jutsu to make his way to the Hokage building.

The Hokage notices his arrival and motions at him to present himself.

Sarutobi studies the haggard-looking Copy Ninja and asks, “Have you gone to the hospital?”

“No, Hokage-sama,” Kakashi informs him up front.

Sarutobi sighs and tells him to make his report before shooing him off to get treatment.

Kakashi bows, ready to leave when Sarutobi says to him, “You might want to check on Naruto, there’s been a change since you’ve been gone.”

‘A change?’ he questions internally. He’d only been gone for two months and he wonders what could have occurred during that time.

The Hokage doesn’t seem too concerned so he bows again and shunshins off to check on the boy.

He’s had worse injuries and the hospital could wait till later.

He searches the village for the whiskered boy, checking his usual haunts but doesn’t see him. After some time, he finally catches wind of the boy’s familiar chakra in the eastern part of the village where the residents are much more affluent.

He wonders what the boy is doing at that part of town and why.

He soon spots the boy waiting tables in a cosy-looking tea shop.

He’s surprised at first as he knows that most of the civilians in the village are usually wary of the jinchuuriki.

He watches the boy putter about the shop for a while and when Naruto heads home, he lands on the roof of one of the buildings nearby to question Panther.  

When he learns of what has transpired in the two months that he’s been gone, he’s not happy about it at all.

He then decides to tail the suspicious tea-shop owner and to make his move when the boy isn’t around.

He’s more than ready to flush out the enemy.

_________________________________

The nurse tells Severus that one of the Uchiha police had found him collapsed near the bank of the river a couple of hours before sunrise.

She asks if he feels any residual discomfort and if he needs anything.

He tells her ‘no’ and sits up on the hospital bed.

One of the Uchiha police, a young man by the name of Uchiha Reiji, comes through the door into his hospital room to take his statement after the nurse leaves.

The shinobi tells him that he’d been the one to find him on the ground by the river last night while he was on patrol.

 He then questions Severus if he recalls about what had happened.

Severus tells him that he had been collecting ingredients for his tea brews and was on the way home. He had taken the path that was near a river and then nothing, his memories end there. 

“I don’t remember anything. Do you know what happened to me?” he asks looking quite troubled.

“We found your raven asleep next to you,” the enforcement officer tells him. “We suspect that it could have been the work of a shinobi but there’s been no clues so far,” he adds.

Reiji doesn’t want to tell the poor man that they have a suspect in mind and that his name is Hatake Kakashi. 

Severus asks him why he could have been targeted but the Uchiha tells him that whoever had attacked him had probably gotten the wrong target and after realising it, had left before carrying out whatever plan they previously had in mind.

He tells Severus not to worry as they will be diligently working on this case and will definitely get back to him when they find something.

Reiji knows that they won’t but the poor civilian doesn’t know that, so he offers him empty words of comfort.

Before he goes, he leaves his contact details with Severus and tells him to look for him at the Police Bureau if he remembers anything else.

After he leaves, Severus turns to look at Kazu who had been pretending to be asleep on a basket by his bed which the nurses had so kindly provided for the ‘poor hurt birdie’.

Severus throws out his magic and senses that there is no one watching before waving a hand to cast a silencing spell around the room.

“Full marks for your acting,” Severus tells the bird in amusement.

Kazu hops up from his basket and flies over to land on Severus’ lap. The wizard pats his head gently in praise.

“You did a pretty good job too,” the raven praises him in return with an amused caw.

Kurama takes the opportunity to climb out of Severus’ coat which the nurses had carefully folded and left by the bedside table.

He studies the two on the hospital bed before snickering.

“I like the part where you acted like you were terribly upset. I think the Uchiha boy looked like he wanted to offer you a hug at one point,” the fox laughs.

Severus smirks at that.

‘I’ve still got it,’ he thinks smugly to himself.

“So what happened in the dream-world after I was ‘knocked out’?” questions the raven.

Severus grins.

“Oh, Hatake threatened me and I pretended to look mightily afraid,” he starts.

“After that, I go on to ‘reveal’ every terrible deed Snape Severus of the Land of Tea has ever done. I tell him about the time I stole someone’s candy when I was seven and about how I pushed my brother into the lake for taking my favourite pencil when I was ten. Etc etc etc,” Severus tells the two with a wave of his hand.

“He then threatens me some more and I repeat the same thing over and over again before it satisfies him and he pushes us both out of the dream-world.”

“And after that I pretend to remain unconscious till I was found by the Uchiha and then I ‘wake up’ in the hospital,” he concludes.

He bows dramatically at the two and Kazu laughs.

Kurama smirks at him and gives him a thumbs up.

“I gotta say human, it’s been quite amusing so far sticking around you,” the fox comments toothily.

“Do you think the Hatake boy has given up?” questions the nine tails.

Severus smirks and says, “He’s welcome to try again but next time I won’t be so nice.”

Inviting someone into your own dream-world is like opening the door of your own soul. The sharingan wielders have forgotten it and like to think themselves superior for being able to trap the consciousness of another into their own.

But it’s like inviting someone else into your own home, you might know where everything is but a serial killer can still surprise you with a knife to the gut hidden up their sleeves.

Severus has more than knives, he’s got a whole arsenal of weapons. Tsukine’s teachings were not for nothing, after all.

He lies back, cancels the silencing spell and puts on a tired and confused expression on his face.

He has a character to play.

Inwardly, he cackles in glee.

_______________________________

Kakashi is sorely disappointed that the man is exactly who his files says he is.

He had used the Mangekyou Sharingan on the man certain that the self-proclaimed tea brewer was a spy.

Instead, he is regaled with petty tales of wrong-doings that the man had committed ever since he was three. And the worse thing the man had ever done was mistakenly knock out a stranger who had only stopped to ask for directions.

He had then brainwashed the man and erased his memories of what had occurred before leaving the civilian for the patrolling Uchihas to find.

Kakashi sighs, hands combing through his silver hair in frustration.

He recalls the scene of a blond little boy clinging tightly to the waist of a dark-haired tea shop owner in pure affection and thinks, ‘That should have been Minato-sensei, not some stranger with a hooked nose.’

A niggling voice in the back of his head pops up to say, ‘Maybe you should have volunteered to raise the boy’ but he dismisses it.

Everyone that gets close to him only ever dies an early death, after all.

He couldn’t be responsible for the child.

Naruto would just suffer if he was with him.

Kakashi looks at the memorial stone in front of him and then bows his head in defeat.

_____________________________________

Naruto fusses over him when they get back to the house.

When he had heard about what had happened to his Kuro-sensei, the boy had rushed straight to the hospital to look for the man.

Severus had only a few hours of quiet in his hospital bed before a blond whirlwind barges into the room and proceeds to pounce over him with snot running down his nose.

“Sensei, don’t die!” Naruto had cried out with streams of tears running down his eyes.

Severus had had to pry the child off of him before assuring the brat that he wasn’t dying.

He had then summarized what had happened and told the boy that he was to be discharged in a few hours.

Naruto had cried out again and jumped onto his bed to cling to the man saying, “I’m so glad you’re not dying sensei.”

Hours later as Severus sits sipping tea in the kitchen, he watches Naruto puttering about making ramen for dinner.

Naruto had insisted that his Kuro-sensei must not do any chores and just relax.

And so, Severus is sipping green tea and relaxing. Kazu is eyeing them with amusement from his perch.

Kurama keeps silent in his pocket but is really quite entertained.

______________________________________

Severus looks up from drying a teacup and feels a familiar chakra approach.

Annoyance bubbles up.

He’d thought the man would have decided to leave him alone by now.

The bell rings and Severus sees the familiar silver haired shinobi enter the shop.

Hatake doesn’t even look his way and just nonchalantly walks to one of the tables and plops himself on a chair.

Severus grinds his teeth for a moment before plastering on a neutral expression.

“Welcome, what can I get you?” he asks the man as he goes up to the table.

The copy-nin merely glances up lazily from where he’s studying the menu before saying, “Cold black tea.”

Severus nods and makes his way back to the tea counter.

_______________________________

Sharingan no Kakashi soon becomes a regular at the tea house.

He even has the nerve to only appear when both the brat and the old man-Hokage are not around.

Severus has to remind himself not to reach for the bottle of venom under in his robes every time the copy-ninja walks through the door of his tea shop.

Kurama laughs at him when he voices out loud about poisoning the annoying shinobi.

Kazu caws out his agreement with the plan, still unhappy about being hit with a sleep jutsu.

Kurama reminds him that it didn’t actually affect him but Kazu responds that it’s the thought that counts.

“The usual?” he asks politely, inwardly thinking about types of poisons he has in his storage; foxglove, poison ivy, stinging nettle, giant hogweed and so many more delightful combinations.

Kakashi slouches in his chair and looks up at him but asks this time, “I’ve heard that you provide special brews?”

Severus nods.

“I’ve just come back from a mission and although I killed all the enemy ninja, I was injured in the skirmish,” he tells the tea shop owner like he’s explaining killing like he’s talking about the weather.

“I lost quite a lot of blood. Do you have something to make me feel better?” he asks in a fake-pleading tone, one lazy eyes studying the dark-haired man.

Severus merely smiles politely back at him and says, “I’ll see what I can put together,” and walks back to the tea counter.

‘Poison oak, water hemlock, rhubarb, wisteria, oleander….’ Is his litany of toxic plants as he gathers together the ingredients for a Blood-Replenishing Brew.

*Blood Replenishing Brew*

- Oolong tea (10 g)

- Red dates (10 g)

- Red-headed Mushrooms (5 g)

It’s not quite as effective as a real blood replenishing potion, which works instantly, but it does its job; albeit over a period of time.

He wouldn’t think of offering any of his real potions on the menu.

The ingredients for those would be hard to explain should they ever question him on their origins.

‘I got it from the dimensions of various animal-summons,’ is not something he is prepared to admit to the Konoha shinobi.

He puts together the brew and takes it to the laid back- looking copy-ninja.

He hopes that he chokes on it.

He doesn’t but he does come back for more when he’s had injuries on missions.

The tea shop owner still gleefully plans his demise by poison every time the copy-ninja visits the shop.

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Naruto’s Relaxing Brew For Beginners

Naruto scowls up at the man, his arms crossed.

“Kid, I’ve told you, when we find anything we’ll let Snape-san know,” a tired-looking Uchiha Reji tells the blond boy.

“That’s what you said yesterday, and the day before and the day before,” Naruto replies back, scowling some more.

The Uchiha sighs. He looks around the Police Bureau for some help but his other clansmen are doing their best to pretend that they’re not listening to the amusing conversation and have their heads down. Everyone tries not to catch his eye.

Reiji sees the kid start tapping his foot impatiently on the floor.

“Kid,” he tells him again, “there really hasn’t been any developments. We’ll let you both know as soon as we find something but there’s really no need to keep coming here every day.”

Naruto harrumphs, arms still crossed.

“You’ll really let us know right?” the blond asks.

“Yes, I promise,” the man tells him, rubbing at his temples.

Naruto tries to imitate one of Kuro-sensei’s glowering looks, which the tea shop owner often uses to stare down at people he doesn’t like, and then nods.

He leaves out the door with his head held high.

‘There’s an evil ninja going around knocking people out and the police don’t seem to be doing anything,’ Naruto thinks to himself.

He’ll have to try something different.

________________________________________

On his way to school the next day, Naruto has a plan firmly in mind and is determined to carry it out after school. He’d asked Kuro-sensei for a day off from work, making up an excuse about kunai target practice.

Kuro-sensei had looked doubtful but had soon agreed, reminding him to stay away from any civilian areas.

“The last time you tried to practise in my back garden with the kunai you nearly decapitated one of Suzuno-san’s prized peacocks,” sensei had pointed out.

‘Which wouldn’t be a big lost,’ Naruto had thought.

Those peacocks were the devil incarnate and tended to glare unblinkingly at him from the neighbouring garden every time he looks over. Naruto doesn’t know what their neighbour, Suzuno-san sees in them.

He’s skipping along the road, humming softly to himself when he soon spots a familiar red fox doll on the path.

It sits inconspicuously against a tree, looking like someone had accidentally dropped it and left it lying there.

Naruto looks about, hoping to see a familiar black-clothed figure around but doesn’t see his sensei.

‘Maybe he walked by this morning and accidentally dropped it,’ the boy thinks and bends over to pick the doll up.

He dusts off the slight bits of sand on it and pockets it into his own pants pocket.

He’d seen the small palm-sized fox doll around his sensei’s house these couple of days; especially at breakfast when the doll sits by sensei’s tea cup out in the open every morning.

If Naruto didn’t know better, he’d have thought that it was possessed.

He’d be innocently going about the house, studying in the living room, relaxing by the back veranda or even taking an afternoon nap in the futon in the spare bedroom, when he’d turn his head to spot the doll sitting innocently on the floor right next to him.

He’d been creeped out at first but after a few days, had decided that Sensei tended to leave the doll about the house and had simply left it close to him as a small prank.

‘Or it could have been Kazu,’ he thinks. The raven was much too intelligent for his own good and had almost seemed human-like at times.

Sensei had called it his ‘good luck charm’ when Naruto had questioned him about the doll. And although it might look weird for a grown man to carry a small doll around in his pocket with him, Naruto has seen weirder shinobi in the village and had dismissed sensei’s odd quirks.

He shakes his head and crosses his arms.

Naruto thinks that his usually meticulous sensei was finally showing his more absent-minded side. ‘He keeps leaving the doll everywhere, and now he’s dropped it on the road,’ the whiskered blond tuts in his head before speeding off to school.

The fox doll sits silently in the boy’s pocket.

_____________________________

Iruka-sensei raps his knuckles on his desk by the blackboard and reminds the class, “You have a small test next week, so remember to study for it.”

The newly promoted chuunin and academy teacher then signals the end of the school day and leaves the classroom with all their handed-in homework in tow.

The children start to pack up and Naruto’s eyes zoom in to eye the back of the head of a dark and spiky haired boy sitting in the middle of the classroom. The boy gets up and starts packing his books away, not noticing that he’s been marked as a target.

When the boy makes to leave, Naruto gets up, school bag already packed away, and follows the dark-haired boy out the classroom door.

‘His brother’s away on a mission,’ Naruto recalls. ‘So, he’ll be walking home alone today.’

The blond boy follows sneakily behind the Uchiha, planning his ambush once they’re further away from the academy.

Some time later, as Naruto slowly trails behind the other boy, Uchiha Sasuke turns around to call out, “Why are you following me?”

Naruto laughs, one hand behind his head in chagrin, and replies, “So, you found out huh?”

“That’s Sasuke for you,” the blond boy continues.

The Uchiha merely rolls his eyes.

“Ne ne Sasuke, are you free today?” the blond comes up to him and looks at him with a pleading gaze.

“Why?” the Uchiha asks suspiciously, knowing how much of a prankster the other boy can be.

“Cause I need your help for something!” Naruto tells him with a wide grin.

“What do you need my help for?” the boy questions again.

“He he, you’ll see,” the boy says, grabbing on to one of the Uchiha’s hands and dragging him along.

__________________________________

“What are we even looking for?” the dark-haired boy asks with a sigh.

“Anything that stands out!” the blond tells him, bending down to look at the river bank.

“We’ve been looking around for hours and so far all we’ve found are rocks, stray twigs and dead leaves,” the Uchiha tells him deadpan.

“Well, this is the scene of the crime and according to sensei’s detective books, a good detective always needs to properly search the scene of the crime for important clues,” the other boy replies, moving to look at the running river.

Sasuke sighs again, wondering why he’d agreed to this endeavour.

“Why did you ask me to help?” he questions, wondering why Naruto had dragged him into the picture when they weren’t exactly close friends in the academy.

“Cause your family are all police officers so you must have inherited the crime-solving talent!” the blond reasons.

Sasuke feels like whacking his forehead with his palm in exasperation.

“Naruto, if the adults who are trained police officers couldn’t find anything, what makes you think we can?” he questions again.

Naruto pauses, staring morosely at his reflection in the river.

“Sasuke, I’ve grown up around people who have never liked me and have only ever made empty promises,” he tells the other boy.

“I know when someone promises something but is really not going to do anything,” the boy continues, sounding quite unlike his usual boisterous self.

Sasuke feels a sense of surprise at the boy’s statement. He’d known that many of the adults have expressed dislike for the boy but he didn’t think it was anything serious, merely the adults’ annoyance at the boy’s endless pranks.

“What do you mean? Has someone been mistreating you?” the Uchiha questions, somewhere in his mind he recalls that the blond is an orphan. ‘Perhaps someone at the orphanage has been unfair to him,’ Sasuke thinks.

Naruto turns to look at the other boy and squashes the sense of envy that wells up as he studies the Uchiha who has only ever grown up in a loving household. He shakes his head to pull himself out of his thoughts.

A picture of a tall adult in black robes flashes through his mind and he feels a sense of longing to run over to the tea house to see his sensei. ‘No, we must keep looking,’ his inner- determined voice pops up.

“Let’s look by the trees over there,” he says to the other boy instead of answering his question. “Maybe the evil ninja was hiding there waiting to ambush his victims!” he bounces up from his crouching position and says excitedly.

The whiskered boy soon runs towards the trees and Sasuke is perplexed at the abrupt change in topic.

“Come on Sasuke!” the blond shouts loudly at him, waving.

Uchiha Sasuke sighs and slowly walks towards the other boy.

‘Maybe I’ll ask Father about the case when I get home,’ he thinks.

_________________________________

The two boys search about the path next to the river for a few more hours before calling it quits.

The sun was already setting and their stomachs were growling in hunger.

“I don’t think there are any clues here,” Sasuke tells the other boy.

Naruto nods at him unhappily.

Sasuke looks at his downtrodden expression and speaks up.

“I’ll ask Otou-san about it, maybe he knows something.”

Naruto turns to look at the Uchiha and then breaks out into a bright grin.

“Really? Thank you Sasuke!” he says happily.

Sasuke looks at the bright shiny blue eyes aimed his way and turns around to say with a cough, “But I can’t promise you anything. Otou-san might not know about the case.”

“It’s ok! Maybe he does know something!” Naruto responds optimistically and they part ways to head back their respective homes.

When Sasuke gets home and asks Father about it, the older man looks quietly at him before saying, “We can’t proceed any further in this case,” and leaves it at that.

Sasuke is at first bewildered by the statement before recalling that things have been tense politically around the compound in recent times.

He feels disappointed at the answer but decides to leave things as they are, knowing that there were some things that he could not interfere with.

When Naruto approaches him excitedly at school the next day however, he feels a sense of guilt well up but simply answers, “Otou-san says he doesn’t know anything about the case.”

Naruto looks disappointed for a moment before thanking him for asking.

During lunch, Sasuke sees him scowling at the ground and sitting alone across the playground with a small bento box on his lap.

The Uchiha goes up to the blond and plops down next to him on the bench.

They have lunch together from that day on.

_________________________________________

Kakashi watches the two boys search the path by the river for hours and a sense of guilt bubbles up in his gut.

He knows that the case will go nowhere because the Uchiha are wary, politically, of charging him with anything.

Their clan hasn’t been quite well liked among the villagers for some time and Kakashi knows that something large is brewing in the background.

He thinks about handing himself in but dismisses the idea.

He’d only been watching out for the boy and was within his rights as an ANBU of Konoha to suss out suspected spies.

Nevertheless, Sarutobi had thrown a piercing glance his way when Panther had reported what had happened to the tea shop owner.

As such, he expects to be given the most boring and undesired missions for the next couple of months in punishment.

Nothing quite escapes the Hokage after all.

Perhaps he’ll leave an anonymous gift to apologise. Tea shop owners should like tea right?

_______________________________________

The next day, Naruto sits in the classroom and listens to the other students gush about what they’ll be giving to their parents today for Parents Day.

Ino boasts about how she’ll be giving her father a bouquet which she’ll be putting together. Kiba chimes in and says that he’ll volunteer to walk his mom’s companion-dogs. Chouji mentions that he’ll be trying out a new baking recipe and hopes that it’ll turn out well as a present. Sakura says that she made bookmarks for her parents.

Naruto frowns at the floor.

He’d never had a parent before so he’s never had to think about Parents Day. But today however, he feels a sense of panic well up.

He wants to give Kuro-sensei a present to thank him for all the things that he’s done for him but doesn’t quite know what to get the man! 

He hears Shino pipe up about extracting a new specimen of honey from a hive of bees as a gift to his father when something suddenly dawns on him.

‘Honey! Drink! Tea!’ the words pop up in his mind.

Sensei had been teaching him to brew teas for quite a while now but he hasn’t personally brewed anything for Kuro-sensei.

‘Yosh!’ he thinks with vigour, ‘I’m gonna show sensei how much I’ve learned and surprise him with some tea!’

When Iruka leaves the classroom for the day, Naruto grabs a hold of Sasuke and drags him with him to look for Shino.

“Shino!” Naruto calls out before the other boy can leave.

Sasuke just sighs and lets himself be dragged about.

Shino pauses at the sound of his name and turns to look at the blond.

Naruto grins toothily at him and asks about purchasing some honey from his clan.

Shino tells him that they have more than enough to spare and leads them to the Aburame compound.

Sasuke sulkily trails along but is soon impressed at the sight of all the insects and their hives.

The boys spend some time being showed around the insect-farm and is handed a small jar of honey each by Shino’s dad who pats their heads fondly before seeing them off.

They wave goodbye to Shino and Shino’s dad and Naruto promises to return the favour by brewing tea for them once he’s polished his tea-brewing skills.

They take their spoils home.

_______________________________________

Naruto arrives at sensei’s house, looking sneakily about.

‘Sensei should be in the tea house,’ he thinks as he sneaks into the house with a bottle of honey in his hand.

He’s going to surprise sensei with the tea when sensei breaks for tea-time.

Some time later, sensei walks into the house searching for his young employee who happens to be late for work. He senses Naruto’s chakra in the house and wonders what is keeping the blond.

 He steps into the kitchen and sees a steaming hot brew of tea on the table.

Naruto shouts at him, “Surprise!” and then nervously shuffles on his feet.

“I tried making it myself,” Naruto tells him, rubbing the back of his head.

Severus eyes the blond and soon picks up the cup.

He tries it and his taste buds immediately identify the ingredients.

He looks at the blond boy and then says, “Good job”.

Naruto breaks out into a blinding smile.

*Relaxing Brew For Beginners*

- Green tea (2 spoonfuls)

- Jasmine (a few buds)

- Honey (1 spoonful)

________________________________________

Naruto sleeps with a smile on his face that night in his rented apartment.

A fox doll watches him quietly from where it sits by his bedside table.

The boy had forgotten to return the doll to his sensei and reminded himself before he had shut his eyes to give it back the next day.

The fox watches the boy throughout the night.

__________________________________

The next day, the boy knocks on Severus’s door bright and early to return the doll before rushing off to the academy.

He’s happily shouldering his new backpack which Severus had presented to him as an ‘employee bonus’ the night before.

Kazu had looked on knowingly at the two.

 Severus carries the doll into the house and heads back to the kitchen to finish his tea.

The fox jumps lightly onto the table and comments reluctantly, “The brat’s not so bad.”

Severus just smirks and continues sipping at his teacup.

A box of aged roasted tea sits on the table in front him.

It had been left anonymously on his doorstep the night before.

Severus knows who it’s from but thinks snidely that it takes more than tea to forgive that headache-inducing man.

‘He gets a free pass from my poisons, for now,’ he generously concedes. 

Chapter Text

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.

Chapter Text

Chapter 8: Snape’s Shrinking Potion

A few days after the incident at the Uchiha clan compound, Severus is ready to start magically banishing people to the furthest corners of the Shinobi continent.

He bemoans the fact that the Uchiha have been constantly dogging at his heels ever since he agreed to help them.

They call it protection.

Severus calls it a bother.

‘Should have said no and pulled a disappearing act,’ he thinks for the umpteenth time as Fugaku walks into his shop and gives him a nod. The Uchiha soon seats himself at his usual table by the back windows.

Sarutobi walks in minutes later and goes up to sit directly across from the Uchiha.

Fugaku doesn’t look one bit surprised at his action and maintains a neutral expression on his face.

The Sandaime then aims a speculative glance at the owner of the tea shop before turning back to look at the head of the Uchiha Police in front of him.

“How about a game of go?” the older man asks, plopping a small travel size go board onto the shared table.

“Sure,” the dark-haired man answers and they begin the game.

Severus watches as an informal interrogation happens in his tea shop as the Hokage starts prodding at the head of the Uchiha clan in between bouts of placing down his go-stones on the board.

“I hear that young Sasuke has been working in the shop?” Severus hears the Sandaime question.

“Hn,” comes the affirmative from the Fugaku as he puts down a stone.

Sarutobi retaliates by putting down a stone of his own.

“I see that your clan members seem to like visiting the tea shop of late?” comes another question.

“Hn,” is the reply again.

The Hokage proceeds to ask more questions but Fugaku remains quite tight-lipped and only answers back in monosyllables.

It goes on back and forth in that way for the whole morning and Severus soon tunes them out.

‘I’ll get started on the vanishing cabinet this weekend,’ is what he thinks as he starts drying the teacups.

The next morning, the Hokage is back for more tea and for a game of go with the taciturn Uchiha clan head.

Severus expects more interrogation and one word-grunts throughout the whole morning in the tea shop.

‘The cabinet will look great right next to shelves in the back room,’ he thinks, palms already itching to get started.

_____________________________________________

His plans of creating a vanishing cabinet are put on hold when he gets ambushed by Sasuke’s older brother one evening as he’s walking back from purchasing his groceries in town.

He suspects the boy had brainwashed his usual Uchiha guard and decided to attack him while his cousin slept through his ‘protection shift’.

It’s the start of another headache for him.

He wonders when people will start leaving him alone so that he’ll have time to build a simple vanishing cabinet.

Not any time soon by the looks of it.

__________________________________________________

Itachi notices that something has changed.

His parents, who had originally been suspicious of Sasuke’s new employer, had suddenly decided to stick close to the man.

He often sees his father frequent the tea shop in the mornings and his mother starts baking sweet and savoury treats to share with the tea shop owner almost every afternoon.

If Itachi didn't know better, he would have thought that they were trying to curry favour with him.

But as proud Uchiha clan members, he doubts they would resort to something as demeaning as currying favour with someone, anyone for that matter.

‘Us Uchihas must never bend our heads to anyone,’ Father had repeatedly told him as he was growing up.

“Sasuke, remember to mind your manners when you speak to Snape-san,” Father reminds Sasuke as his brother leaves the house that very morning for school.

“Ok?” Sasuke answers back a tad bit confused but ultimately nods in agreement before rushing off to the academy.

Itachi wonders what has changed.

___________________________________________________

So, he decides to tail the man.

He has asked his parents but they simply brush off his questions. ‘We’ll tell you when we can,’ they say to him.

He’s tried asking the clan elders, who have similarly been frequenting the tea shop, but they tell him to ask his parents.

He’s even tried asking the other Uchiha Police, even the ones who have seemingly been healed from their near-blindness due to a ‘new medicine’, but they tell him to ask the clan elders.

All in all, the clan has been acting out of the ordinary of late and Itachi is determined to find out why.

He wishes that Shisui was there to bounce ideas off but his older cousin was out on a long-term mission and wouldn’t be back for a couple of weeks yet.

As such, he decides to take it on himself to get some answers.

He follows the man’s usual day-to-day routines and he even sends his crows to watch the man when he’s asleep.

They usually come back the next morning with nothing to report.

It frustrates him.

This goes on for two weeks before finally, he loses his patience and decides to personally act.

‘Kakashi-taichou already tried with the mangekyou sharingan but perhaps he missed something,’ he thinks as he activates his new mangekyou eyes in front of the mirror.

He had been on a mission a few weeks ago to retrieve the body of one of his cousins who had been killed in the Land of Wind. The sight of the familiar face staring back at him with vacant eyes had shocked him into awakening the mangekyou sharingan. He sometimes thinks that the Uchiha clan’s sharingan was more like a curse than a gift.

But gift or curse, it was an ability that could be used to protect his loved ones.

He plans to use these eyes to do just so.

_______________________________________________

He ambushes the man one evening as he is walking back home from town.

The man looks up in surprise at the shinobi who suddenly appears in front of him but Itachi merely activates his mangekyou sharingan without saying a word.

Itachi then pulls him into a world of red and black.

___________________________________________________

Severus has had it with the lot of them.

This is the second time in a couple of weeks that he’s been pulled into a dream world forcefully by the mangekyou sharingan.

This time, he decides, he won’t be playing nice.

In a blink of an eye, Severus manifests himself in the dream-fortress which he had built in his mind.

‘Let the kid wonder about in his own dream-world for a while,’ he thinks as his dream-self plops into a comfy armchair in a large airy room full of books.

The walls are covered from top to bottom with shelves and cabinets of every book he has ever read in his lifetime. This is his inner mind’s library of information, well, the book section of it anyway.

A familiar cawing makes him turn his head to look up at an old acquaintance who is perched on a step-ladder to his right.

“Tsukine, what are you doing here?” he asks, bewildered to see to the white raven.

The raven eyes him in amusement before saying, “I Saw that this would happen so I came to enjoy the show.”

“Oh?” he asks with a raised eyebrow but ultimately not overly surprised at her presence. She still had a tendency to waltz in and out of his dreams from time to time after all.

The raven laughs and then using a dectrous claw, pulls out a blue hardbound book from a shelf before carrying it over to drop it on Severus’ lap. She then lands on the man’s shoulder and caws out in laughter again.

“You always did like to play your mischievous tricks on your victims,” she tells him.

Severus looks down on the book on his lap, recognising the title at once.

It had been one of his favourite stories growing up in the dreary household of his past.

‘Well, I did tell myself I was going to teach the next idiot a lesson,’ he thinks.

The book on his lap is more than enough of an inspiration to build his own dream-world and to have some fun at the expense of the Uchiha boy.

“Why not?” he shrugs to himself as he picks up the book.

The title reads, ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

______________________________________________________________

Itachi is at first confused, he had thought that he had successfully pulled the other man into the red and black dream-world of the mangekyou sharingan but he finds himself alone.

He walks about for a while along the path, looking at the red sky and the black trees as he walks by but he finds no traces of the tea shop owner.

‘Did something go wrong?’ he asks himself, suddenly unsure about his new sharingan eyes.

He hears a raven croak and he looks up surprised to see a white raven flying above him.

‘I don’t remember adding that to the dream,’ he thinks in surprise before his sight begins to blur and his dream-self falls into unconsciousness.

________________________________________________________

The next time he opens his eyes, the world is no longer red and black.

He’s lying on fresh green grass and the sun is shining brightly above in a clear blue sky. There are fluffy white clouds in the distance but it doesn’t look like it will rain anytime soon.

“Did I wake up from the mangekyou?” he asks himself, slightly disoriented.

He sits up and looks about, finding himself in an unfamiliar forest where the trees do not look like the trees that populate the Konoha forests. In fact, he doesn’t quite recognise any of the tree species around.

‘Where am I?’ his mind quickly thinks, the fuzziness of sleep slowly fading. He tries flaring out his chakra subtly to look for any sign of foregin chakra but finds himself unable to do so.

‘It’s like I have no chakra,’ he thinks in panic as he searches his body for any signs of seals but finds none. He also finds no traces of any of his weapons and his familiar clothes have disappeared only to be replaced with a light blue button up shirt and a pair of white shorts. The design of the clothes itself was odd; nothing at all like what he’s seen in the village or what the other ninja would wear.

‘What’s happening?’ he questions, looking about again alert.

He walks around the strange forest looking for clues of where he is when he hears the distinct ‘oink oink’ of pigs and looks up to see a small herd of them flying above his head.

‘There are flying pigs,’ his mind supplies and he can feel his brain coming to halt.

‘I must be dreaming,’ he thinks as his brain restarts again after a moment.

He tries to activate his mangekyou sharingan but fails.

He keeps trying but in the end, decides to give up and keeps looking about. ‘Maybe I’m sleeping in my bed and having a weird dream,’ he tries to rationalise the situation.

A moment later, he hears fast footsteps approaching and tenses up.

His little brother, or who he thinks is his little brother, bursts out from a stray bush in a rush saying, “I’m late, I’m late!”

Itachi freezes in shock, staring at the white rabbit ears that have grown out from his brother's head. “Sasuke, what?” he begins but is interrupted when the boy takes out a golden pocket watch and glances at it with a panicked expression on his whiskered face.

“Oh, no! I’m late, look at the time!” the rabbit-boy jumps up in agitation before rushing off deeper into the forest.

“Wait!” Itachi calls out, running to catch up with the younger boy. He was the only familiar face he had seen so far in these strange dream-woods.

But no matter how fast he runs, he could not catch up.

They play a game of catch-the-rabbit through the woods before Sasuke finally stops.

The boy pulls out a small glass vial, tips his head back and swallows the contents before Itachi can stop him. Itachi is then astonished by the sight of his little brother shrinking at a rapid rate until he shrinks to the height of a single pinky finger.

The rabbit-boy then runs off towards a small door at the foot of a tree nearby and enters through it before slamming it shut.

Itachi just stands there staring in bewilderment at the small door.

‘I don’t remember ever having such a weird dream,’ he thinks, as he pinches his skin and winces in pain.

‘Is this even a dream? Am I still stuck in the mangekyou?’ thoughts start running amok again in his mind.

He hears the croak of a raven and looks up to see a familiar white raven flying in circles above his head.

It soon drops a bundle at his foot and flies off into the distance.

Itachi eyes the cloth bundle warily, wondering what he will find in there and if the dream will get any weirder.

He bends down and pulls it open to reveal a single vial of liquid, similar to the one he saw Sasuke drink from, and beside it lies a folded up note.

He unfolds the note and reads it.

Uchiha Itachi,

Welcome to my dream world. I hope you have been enjoying yourself so far; I certainly have from watching you wander around in it.

It wasn’t very nice of you to pull me into the dream-world of the mangekyou sharingan without so much as my say so. As such, I have taken it upon myself to teach you a small lesson in pulling strangers willy-nilly into your mind.

You’ve opened up your own mind for an attack especially with so little shielding in place.

So this is the first lesson, I have shown you what can happen if the mind you invite into your own is so much stronger than your own. I could have pushed you into an endless nightmare and tortured you for a thousand years but no, I’ve decided to be magnanimous. I’m sure you found the green forest and clear skies rather tranquil, no?

But if you want to get out of this dream-world, you’ll have to play a game with me. You start the game by drinking the potion in the vial and shrinking just enough to enter the door. Once you do, you’ll have to look for someone and find out their identity.

That person is the Queen of Hearts.

Once you do, I’ll consider it that you’ve won the game and will promptly return you to the real world.

Your friendly teacher who is giving you a free lesson,

Snape

Itachi stares at the note and reads it a few times before clenching his fists.

‘I knew there was something not quite right with Snape,’ he thinks.

‘But this must mean that he has a bloodline technique of some sort that is much stronger than the mangekyou sharingan,’ his mind supplies and suspicion bubbles up in his gut.

‘What does he want with the Uchiha clan?’ he ponders and his mind comes up with several worrying scenarios.

But no matter how much time he spends thinking of a solution to his current predicament, he comes up with nothing and realises that he has no choice but to dance to Snape’s tune.

He stares at the vial filled with blue liquid in his hand and then opens the cork to sniff at it but can’t identify any of the ingredients.

‘Just do it,’ his mind thinks and he braces himself before swallowing the liquid.

‘Tastes kind of floral,’ he thinks before he finds himself quickly shrinking in size.

Once he’s small enough to enter through the door, he walks up to it and puts his hand on the doorknob and twists it open but can’t see anything save darkness through the doorway.

He takes a deep breath and then steps through.

And suddenly there’s nothing under his feet .

He starts falling.

‘Down the rabbit-hole,’ Severus thinks with a smirk as he watches the scene from his comfy library. The large mirror hanging on a wall nearby is screening what’s happening in the dream-world.

Tsukine caws out in laughter.

____________________________________________________

Itachi falls for some time before he lands softly on a couple of springy giant mushrooms and bounces for a bit on them before he is dropped onto the ground.

He gets up, dusts himself off and looks about only to find himself in a large forest.

When he says large, he means large.

The trees tower like mountains and the weeds around him are as tall as trees. He spots a huge ant on a tree-sized flower and warily edges away.

‘Snape said I have to find the Queen of Hearts,’ he thinks as he makes his way through this strange place.

He soon finds a dirt path and decides to follow it.

‘This might take a while,’ he tells himself wishing that he at least had his chakra to leap from pebble to pebble. But without it, all he can do is simply walk slowly on the path.

After an hour of walking, he soon brushes aside some tall weeds to see the sign of smoke coming from up ahead.

He makes his way towards the source of the smoke and sees a strange caterpillar sitting atop a large clump of colourful mushrooms.

He stops steps away from the mushrooms and looks up to see a very familiar face on the body of the large caterpillar who looks to be smoking a pipe.

“Hokage-sama,” he calls out.

The caterpillar looks down at him and blows smoke into his face.

“Yes?” the Sandaime asks.

Itachi thinks that Snape must have used people he’s familiar with as characters in his dream and thinks about who the Queen of Hearts must be.

“Hokage-sama, I was wondering if you know who the Queen of Hearts is?” Itachi asks.

“The Queen of Hearts?” Sarutobi asks, inhaling from his pipe. “Well, the Queen of Hearts is the Queen of Hearts,” he tells the boy.

“Are you the Queen of Hearts?” Itachi tries, guessing he might not be right but trying anyway.

“Me?” the caterpillar laughs. He blows out smoke and says, “I’m the Hokage-Caterpillar.”

“My boy, you must be confused,” the sandaime tells him, shaking his head.

“Then, do you know where I can find the Queen of Hearts?” he questions the caterpillar-character.

“Why, in the Castle of Hearts, of course,” the hokage says and inhales from his pipe.

“How do I get there?” he asks, relieved that he’s found out the location to look for the Queen.

“Just walk that way,” Sarutobi tells him, blowing out smoke. He lifts his pipe and points at the direction of a branching path. “Take the right path,” he says.

“Thank you,” Itachi bows and continues on his journey.

The caterpillar waves him farewell.

_________________________________________________

He continues on his path until he comes to a small wooden house that looks like a birdhouse. It lies edged between the roots of a tree and a large rock.

He goes up to it and knocks on it but nobody answers.

Slowly, he pulls open the door and finds a table with two vials sitting innocently on it.

Written on the label on one bottle is ‘Shrink’ and on the other is ‘Grow’. There is a note on the table in Snape’s handwriting that says, “Drink me”.

Itachi pockets the bottle that says ‘Shrink’ and opens up the other bottle. He sniffs at it and decides he’s had enough with remaining tiny so he chugs it down.

All of a sudden, he realises his mistake as he makes straight for the doorway before his body starts to rapidly grow. He doesn’t quite make it in time and the birdhouse breaks apart as he is restored to his usual size.

‘Too bad,’ he thinks, eyeing the broken wooden pieces on the ground. He hopes the house didn't belong to that white raven that had given him the first shrinking potion.

‘Itachi, it’s only a dream. The house isn't real,’ his mind tells him and he blushes slightly in embarrassment.

Putting the incident behind him, he makes his way forward after seeing a large clearing up ahead with the advantage of his newly restored height.

He spots a large field of wheat and in the field are scarecrows that were placed there at strategic locations. He walks closer and stares up at a nearby scarecrow only to almost jump back when it says to him with a familiar face, “Yo!”

“What are you doing here?” he asks his ANBU captain.

“Me? I’m here to read my book and to scare away some pesky birds,” Hatake Kakashi tells him as he whips out a familiar orange book and starts giggling at it.

“Do you know where the Queen of Hearts is? Is she in the Castle of Hearts?” he questions the scarecrow straight away.

“The Queen of Hearts, huh? I don’t remember the Queen being a ‘she’, but a ‘he’,” Kakashi tells him.

“The Queen is a man?” Itachi asks, surprised.

“Why not? It’s just a title,” his captain shrugs.

“Then, where is he?” he questions again.

“That way,” the scarecrow points before another scarecrow pipes up from somewhere to his left, “No, that way,” and points in the opposite direction.

The other scarecrow looks exactly like his captain, Itachi notices, and he wonders if the farmer who built the scarecrows all liked using Kakashi’s face for all of them.

Another Kakashi-scarecrow from further down the field calls out, ‘No, no, it’s the other way.”

The rest of the many scarecrows dotted around the field, around maybe ten of them, soon start pointing to different directions and Itachi starts to feel a headache coming on.

“Maa, I sometimes get lost on the road of life so it’s no use asking me for directions,” the Kakashi in front of him tells him.

Itachi sighs and thanks him before choosing a random direction. The various Kakashis go back to giggling at their orange books.

He keeps walking past the large wheat field till he starts hearing voices up ahead.

He spots a large rectangular table set up with various teacups and teapots when he walks closer to the source of the voices.

Around the table, different species of birds are seated on raised chairs as they chat about their day and drink tea. He recognises the voices as the voices of the Uchiha elders and moves to join them.He spots a proud-looking black cockerel at the head of the table and an elegant white dove who pours tea into the cockrel’s cup.

When he reaches the table, he hears the white dove call out to him in his mother’s voice, “Oh, Itachi! Come, join us for some tea.”

He pauses and then studies the two birds at the head of the table. The cockerel must be his father, he decides.

The birds make room for him and he sits down at the table.

He is about to open his mouth to ask about the Queen of Hearts when he hears another familiar voice say, “Oh, it looks like I’m just in time for tea as well.”

He turns to see Snape waltz into the clearing dressed in a tall tophat and a black formal-looking but strange suit. A white raven perches on his shoulder and caws out a greeting.

Itachi abruptly gets up from his chair and raises his hands into fists, ready to attack.

Snape just looks at him sardonically and says, “You do know that won’t be effective in my dream-world, right?”

Itachi eyes the man, wary of what he wants from him now but soon relaxes his stance. This was the man’s world, he could do whatever he wants to in it regardless.

“Sit, let’s have a chat,” the man gestures and takes a seat across him.

Itachi reluctantly does so and soon stares balefully at the man.

“What is the purpose of your game? If you wanted to prove your point, you’ve already proven it,” Itachi questions him.

Snape smirks at him before saying, “ Ahh, but then where would be the fun in that?”

He then goes on to casually pour out tea into his teacup, one for him and one for the raven on his shoulder.

Itachi watches him do this in silence.

The man then tells him after a moment, “I have a further point to make so you’ll just have to finish our game and find the Queen of Hearts.”

He then sips his tea and the raven flies down from his shoulder to sip at its own.

Itachi sits there studying the man and asks, “How are you involved with the Uchiha clan?”

The tophat wearing man turns to look at him before saying, “It’s a very long story. One I will tell you after the game.” He then takes out a pocket watch from his coat and glances at it.

“Ah, I think it’s way past tea time. I’ll be off,” he tells the boy and stands to leave.

Itachi stands up at the same time to ask more questions but the man merely tips his hat to him and with a ‘poof’ disappears from the table. The white raven caws once at Itachi before also disappearing along with the man.

Now, Itachi was left alone with his bird-relatives at the table and wondering what he had really gotten himself into. He asks if any of them knows where the Queen is but they only tell him to have more tea.

He sighs and leaves the table after bidding everyone there a farewell.

He has a Queen to find.

_______________________________________________________

He’s walking along the path lined with trees when a voice calls out to him, “Hey Itachi!”

He looks up and spots Shisui’s head floating in the tree branches. He also notices a pair of cat ears on top of his head.

“Where are you going?” cat-Shisui asks him.

“Shisui, why do you only have your head?” he asks the older boy.

“Oh this? Parts of my body sometimes disappear,” the other tells him nonchalantly.

“Do you know where the Queen of Hearts is?” he questions his cat-cousin.

“Down in the Castle of Hearts, that way,” the older boy tells him, pointing down the road. The rest of his body soon appears and Itachi spots a black tail slowly swaying back and forth.

“Thanks,” he tells Shisui before making to leave.

“Anytime,” Shisui says and Itachi turns back to see only two black holes where Shisui’s eyes had been.

It sends an inexplicable shiver down Itachis’s spine without him knowing why.

He soon leaves cat-Shisui behind and he makes his way further up the road. He spots a large castle in the distance and thinks, ‘Finally!’

He walks towards the direction of the castle and once he arrives at the lawns that spread around the large castle, he sees movement.

“Oh no! I’m late!” he hears a familiar voice say and soon rabbit-Sasuke runs across the lawn and almost bumps into him.

The rabbit is about to run past him when he grabs onto the lapels of the young boy.

“What are you late for?” he asks, holding onto the boy’s shirt.

“For the execution! The queen has ordered for all her guards to be executed,” the rabbit tells him, struggling to be let go.

Itachi stares at the rabbit, bewildered.

“All her guards? Why?” he questions.

“I don’t know, but I can’t be late,” Sasuke tells him.

“Then, where’s the Queen?” he asks instead.

“In the castle, of course,” the rabbit informs him, struggling some more.

Itachi looks ahead at the majestic castle in front of him, pondering about the identity of the Queen.

“Do you know who the Queen is?” he questions the boy.

“The Queen is the Queen,” Sasuke tells him, looking at him with questioning eyes as though to ask about why he didn't know such basic general knowledge.

Itachi sighs and lets the boy go.

Rabbit-Sasuke immediately takes off towards the castle shouting, “I’m late!”

Itachi follows behind but at a much more sedate pace. He tries to think about who the Queen might be but then dismisses his thoughts, thinking that he’ll just have to find the Queen and find out who he is.

He enters through the same large doors that rabbit-Sasuke entered from and makes his way into a large audience room.

Sasuke is nowhere to be seen and only a single person is in that audience chamber seated on the high throne. He stops in his tracks, immediately recognising who the Queen is.

It’s him.

A figure with his face sits on the Throne of Hearts with a blood-red crown resting on his head.

“I’m the Queen of Hearts,” he says aloud and all of a sudden the figure stares at him with swirling tomoes in his eyes.

He is suddenly sucked into a world of red and black.

Itachi sucks in his breath as he looks at his surroundings.

He’s in the familiar Uchiha compound and bodies of various Uchiha relatives are strewn dead around him.

He backs up from having walked into a puddle of red blood and almost steps on one of the bodies of an elder Uchiha. He stops short, looking around again in horror, his mind racing with explanations about what he’s seeing.

‘Mother, father,’ he thinks racing towards his house just in time to see a figure wearing his own face push a sword into his own father’s body. His mother lies unmoving on the ground nearby.

“Stop!” he yells out and he rushes towards the figure.

But before he can reach the figure, he finds himself back in the throne room.

Disoriented, he looks up towards the throne but the figure wearing his face has disappeared.

“So you’ve found the Queen,” a voice says and he turns to see Snape standing by the windows of the room.

“What was that? What did I see?” he demands of the man, shaken.

“Your future,” Snape tells him. The white raven on his shoulder caws in agreement.

Itachi stares questioningly at the man.

“Or more precisely, it was the future that could have been,” Snape says, walking towards him.

But before Itachi can question him further, Snape stops a few steps in front of him and lays a hand on his shoulder. Almost immediately, scenes of what had happened weeks ago at the Uchiha clan compound and the deal with the crows starts pouring into his mind.

He watches his father and the rest of the clan elders swear that they will ally with Snape, the crows pleading for the man to help the clan, the man’s agreement, the subsequent meeting, the divination reading, the man’s show of magic, his explanations of his past and his healing of the near-blind Uchiha with his potion.

Pretty soon he is caught up to what has happened in the clan and he staggers under the weight of all that information for a moment.

Snape gives him a moment to sort his thoughts and when he finally organises everything into his mind, he asks, “How do I change that future I saw?”

“You already have by asking that,” the man tells him with a pleased look.

“When you leave this dream and get back to the real world, I have a task for you,” he tells the Uchiha.

“Another one?” the boy asks.

“Gather as much information as you need and think about why you could have resorted to massacring your entire clan. Then, come back to me with the answers once you’ve thought it through,” the man instructs him.

‘The boy needs to do a lot of soul searching if he hopes to ever build sufficient shielding for his mind,’ Severus thinks.

“Why?” the Uchiha asks.

“Well, that certainly does seem to be the question, doesn't it?” Severus simply replies before Itachi is pushed out of the dream-world.

He opens his eyes only to see that he’s back in the village where he had ambushed the tea shop owner.

Snape is nowhere to be found and he looks at his watch to see that only ten minutes have passed since he had started his confrontation with the man.

‘It felt much longer,’ he thinks, shaking his head.

He starts to walk back to the compound but stops when he notices something unusual in his pocket.

He rummages around and pulls out a glass vial and a pocket-sized book.

He reads the title of the book, ‘Alice in Wonderland’.

And on the label of the vial it reads, ‘Eye-Relaxing Potion not a Shrinking Potion, take when eyes feel strained’.

He smiles, feeling like his whole world has shifted.

Now he knows why his clan has changed.

_________________________________________________________________

A month later, Itachi knocks on Snape’s door with his answers.

And from then on, Severus gains a new student he has to tutor in mind arts.

Tsukine laughs at him at night when he dreams.

____________________________________________

*Shrinking Potion*

• Blue bell blossoms (10 petals)
• Purple moon-fungus (10 g)
• Small white-toadstool mushrooms (sliced, 5g)
• Essence of opal grass (7 ml)

Chapter Text

Chapter 9 : Snape’s Rejuvenation Potion

Kurama opens his eyes and looks down at the fading runes below his feet. 

He sighs out loud and turns to look at the wizard sitting patiently outside of the runic circle. The man lifts a questioning eyebrow at him.

“Well?” the human asks.

Kurama shakes his head and responds, “He’s really gone mad.”

“I couldn’t reach him at all. That stupid tanuki just kept ranting about killing all humans and going on a rampage, I doubt he even heard a word I said,” the fox adds.

Severus sits back and ponders on this information. 

A while later he asks, “What if we removed him from his jinchuuriki?”

“It might kill his human container,” the fox says with a shrug.

“Even with my help?” Severus questions.

“His seal is vastly different from the seal containing me in Naruto. It feels immensely unstable and any slight deviations could trigger complications,” the kyuubi informs him.

“You would need to study the seal in detail and even with that, there would be no guarantees that the young child would survive the separation process,” the fox continues.

“We could just kidnap the boy and then study the seal in detail,” Kazu croaks out from his perch on Severus’ shoulder. 

“We’d have the whole of Suna going on a manhunt for their jinchuuriki,” the wizard says with a sigh.

“It’s better than letting the Akatsuki get their hands on the Ichibi,” the raven responds.

Severus rubs at his temples and questions the kyuubi, “Do you have enough power to contact the nibi yet?”

“No, I’ll need more time,” the fox tells him with a shake of his head.

Kurama used to brag that he was the strongest of the tailed beasts not because he had more chakra or attack power but because he had the strongest mental capabilities among the nine. This allowed him to contact any of the nine from vast distances in his own mindspace at any given time and in his prime, he could draw all eight of them into a meeting between all of the tailed beasts. But as sealed up as he was, he had only been able to contact the Ichibi; the one with the lowest mental proficiency. 

There was a reason the nine of them were numbered and that the Sage had appointed him as the leader of the nine after all. 

‘Not that I’ve been acting as a leader to them,’ guilt pricks at Kurama as these words pop into his mind.

He’d been devastated at the death of the Sage and in his grief he’d turn to running away, from even his own family. Not once had he stopped to look back at the other eight which he had left to fend for themselves.

Even now, the loss of the Sage who was like a father to him left a gaping wound. ‘But I should have kept in touch with the others,’ he admits to himself with regret. 

With the looming threat of the Akatsuki, Kurama finally admits that he feels a sense of remorse for not reaching out to his siblings and how that might have caused them to be as powerless as they were now.

“I’ll need more time to gather my power to contact Matatabi,” he informs the wizard. The longer his mind stays outside of the boy, the more powerful his mental capabilities become. But he doesn’t know how long it’ll take until he’ll be able to contact all eight and if it will be in time to warn all of them about the threat of the Akatsuki.

“You could just release me from my seal now,” the fox grumbles.

Severus just scoffs at the fox and reminds him, “Konoha is watching Naruto closely and the moment they detect that you’ve left the boy, there will definitely be a massive search for you. It’s too much of a risk so early in the game.”

“My contacts should already be moving to put protective measures around the other eight,” Severus tells the fox. He had planned on just passing on information about the Akatsuki to the village leaders and to let them handle it from there but Washi had warned him that some of the village leaders are likely to be allies of the secret organisation.

“And they might be suspicious of the information they get from some unknown source and will likely try to find out more about us,” Washi had said over a communication mirror.

Kazu had cawed out, “We’re a secret organisation too!” and proceeded to croak in laughter.

Severus had glared at them both and said through gritted teeth, “We are not a secret organisation.”

“But we are a secret,” Washi had smugly pointed out before quickly shutting down his communication mirror to avoid Severus’ poisonous glare.

Kazu had continued laughing at him.

“A friend of mine is already headed towards Suna to gather information on the boy and the seal,” he tells Kurama. “We’ll find out all we can and see what we can do about the seal before making any decisions,” Severus adds.

The kyuubi nods at him. 

____________________________________________

Nara Shikaku walks into the tea shop one morning and after briefly glancing at the tea shop owner, heads directly towards where Uchiha Fugaku is sitting.

“Nice establishment,” Shikaku comments and pulls out a chair to sit at the same table as the Uchiha head.

Fugaku raises an eyebrow at the tactician and then continues sipping at his tea. 

Shikaku had been hearing about the strange behaviour of the Uchiha clan which had started a few weeks ago but had left things as they were to observe what would happen. The out of norm actions of the Uchiha clan tailing and frequently circling around the tea shop owner, whom he had been hearing about through various gossip circles, piqued not only his own curiosity but had garnered the attention of many of the upper brass in the village.

The Hokage himself had been trying to find out more about this strange turn of events from the Uchiha clan head but to no avail, Fugaku merely kept mum about the clan’s intentions and reasons behind them closely tailing the foreign tea shop owner.

The Hokage had then requested, after many rounds of frustrating Go matches with the taciturn Uchiha, for Shikaku to poke his head into it and to find out more.

“So, I hear you play Go?” Shikaku asks the head of police and then takes out his own travel-sized Go board.

Fugaku just stares silently at the Nara across him and finally answers with a brief, “Hn.”

They then begin their game.

Severus eyes the newcomer from his tea counter and thinks to himself, “I don’t give a hoot about what happens but this weekend, I am going to build a large vanishing cabinet come hell or high water. And no one is going to stop me.”

________________________________________________________

The appearance of the Uchiha around his sensei doesn’t escape his notice for long as Naruto sees them frequenting the tea shop and tailing him, sometimes even openly, around town.

It confuses him and when he asks Kuro-sensei, his sensei just sighs and tells him that he supplies medicinal brews to the clan.

“But why are they following you all the time?” he questions, wondering why the Uchiha would follow a simple tea brewer.

“Who knows what goes on in their heads?” he tells Naruto before adding in an exasperated voice, “I wished they’d stop.”

Naruto even asks Sasuke about it but Sasuke merely tells him that he’s unsure.

“They won’t tell me anything,” the dark-haired Uchiha had told him with a shrug.

“Even aniki is following Snape-san around,” his best friend tells him, highly perplexed.

‘I hope they don’t mean to do anything bad to sensei,’ Naruto thinks worriedly and when he voices his concerns to his teacher, the man tells him not to worry.

“They’ll probably give up after some time. I’m sure they have better things to do than following me around all the time,” he pats the blond locks gently and shoos the boy off to his own apartment after dinner.

Naruto obediently goes back to his rented apartment but tells himself he’d keep watching the Uchiha and that he’d ask Hokage-jiji for help if they ever wanted to hurt his sensei.

_______________________________________________

Uchiha Itachi had been tailing him silently from the shadows ever since he’d told the boy weeks ago to do some soul searching.

The boy has kept himself out of his sight but he can always sense the familiar chakra signature somewhere close by. Severus ignores his presence and goes about his daily routines, patiently waiting for when the boy will finally decide to show himself.

A month in, he opens his home door one evening to find the Uchiha standing outside with a determined look in his eyes. 

‘He probably waited for Naruto to leave before knocking on the door,’ Severus thinks.

“Come in,” he tells the boy and gestures for the boy to head to the kitchen.

They sit across each other at the dining table and Severus starts a brew of chamomile tea. He offers a cup to the boy and the Uchiha sips at it before steeling himself for the conversation ahead.

Severus waits in silence for him to start.

“You said that in another future, I would have killed my clan and my family,” he begins.

Hearing that, Severus merely nods.

“I asked myself if I could have done something like that and surprisingly even to myself, the answer which came up was a resounding yes,” Itachi continues.

He falls into silence for a moment and looks down glumly at the table.

Severus sips at his tea and waits for him to continue.

“I’ve been asking myself these past weeks about the person I am or have become to do something so heinous such as murdering my clansmen in cold blood,” the boy says.

“And have you come up with an answer?” Severus asks.

The boy shakes his head.

“The answer is that I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who Uchiha Itachi is and perhaps I never have,” he continues and looks up at the wizard.

Severus nods at that and says, “I see you’ve made progress.”

“Who can truly say that they wholly know themselves?” the wizard adds.

He questions the boy, “Then have you at least thought about who you want to be?”

The Uchiha nods and answers, “I want to be a person who will not resort to killing people to reach my goals.”

Severus smiles at the young man, “Very well.”

“If I offered to be your teacher in the mind arts, would you accept?” he asks the Uchiha.

Itachi looks surprised at this.

“I tried to use Mangekyou Sharingan to interrogate you,” the boy points out.

“Which only worked to prove how terrible you are at mind arts,” the wizard scoffs at him.

Itachi frowns at this and questions again, “Why offer to teach me? You gain nothing from this and you’re already doing your best to help the clan.”

Severus thinks of another dark haired boy who he had once been forced to teach the mind arts to. He had been a terrible teacher at the time, filled with bitter hatred for the bully of his school days. The boy had needed help then but he had not done anything to help even though he had been the boy’s teacher. He wonders if that is why he is offering now.

“Because someone once gave me help when I needed it the most,” he tells the boy as he thinks of the ravens who had helped him when he first arrived in the shinobi continent and who have now become his family. 

“And I have already agreed to be your ally, what’s one more student in the long run? You’ll need to use your skills in the mind arts for the days to come to defend those you hold dear,” Severus reminds him.

Itachi hears those words and thinks to himself that he has never had anyone truly be his teacher besides the clan members and academy teachers who had been mere passing instructors. He had found all of their teachings easy enough to replicate and had graduated early as a shinobi without really having a mentor to confide in or to look up to.

He looks at the wizard seated across him and thinks that based on what he had experienced in the dream world before, he certainly will not be graduating early from this apprenticeship. 

He suspects he’ll be put to even more harrowing experiences before he even gets to a level acceptable enough for the other man. It certainly will not be a walk in the park like the other shinobi skills which he has picked up. 

Surprisingly, he feels a sense of anticipation instead of dread. 

“Are you sure?” he asks again, staring into the eyes of the wizard.

“My question to you is, are you sure? I won’t be going easy on you and you’ll have to agree to be my apprentice until I deem you ready,” Severus smirks.

Itachi stares silently at the other man and after a while, nods.

Severus holds out his hand and Itachi reaches out to shake on it.

“Say, “I agree to be the apprentice of Snape Severus” and a pact will be made,” he tells the boy.

Itachi does so and in a flash, he feels a tingle of strange energy tying them both together. When Snape releases his hand, he spots something that looks like a white glowing tattoo on the inside of his wrist. It bears the shape of a crow with its wings spread open in flight.

“That is the mark of our apprenticeship, I will know when you are in danger and you may call for my assistance by evoking the mark,” he informs the boy. He lifts up his sleeves to show the boy a similar glowing crow that had appeared on his forearm.

“How do I evoke the mark?” he asks, studying the fading mark that is slowly disappearing from view although Itachi can feel the energy still on his wrist. 

Severus then takes the opportunity to begin a lesson and Itachi finally learns to do so. 

‘Bright one, this one,’ Severus thinks with a satisfied smile after the lesson ends and he shoos the boy off.

He hopes the boy will go straight home and get some sleep but soon sighs to himself when he feels the familiar chakra settle in a tree near his backyard. 

Perhaps he’ll insist as his teacher that the boy will no longer be allowed lurk about.

He tells the boy that the next day when the Uchiha shows up for more lessons. 

But the boy just nods at him and then continues to lurk about in the shadows every night regardless.

Kazu laughs at him when he complains about it.

___________________________________________________________

He’s been teaching Itachi about meditation for a few evenings now when he decides that since Sunday was about to arrive, he would take the opportunity to introduce his two ‘students’ to each other.

“This is Itachi, he’ll be learning about tea and brews from me as well,” he tells Naruto as they are having dinner together in the kitchen on a Saturday night.

“You’re Sasuke’s brother!” Naruto shouts out loudly in greeting and smiles sunnily at the Uchiha.

Itachi nods back and shakes his hand when Naruto bends over the table to offer it enthusiastically.

“He’ll be staying over tonight as well and we’ll all head to gather ingredients for the brews tomorrow morning,” Severus says as he passes a plate of Chicken Karage to the blond.

“Ok!” Naruto agrees happily. He had become used to staying over his sensei’s home on the weekends and heading out to pick ingredients in the morning.

Severus had briefed Itachi about the blond boy and had asked the Uchiha to play along about learning tea and brews. 

Itachi had merely said that he would be more than willing to also learn about the different brews if his teacher was willing to teach him.

Kazu had commented, “You’ll do,” and had flown over to land on the Uchiha’s shoulder in approval.

Itachi had simply bowed respectfully at the raven.

They finish dinner and Severus tells Naruto to show Itachi to a guest room upstairs. The boy is more than happy to do so and grabs onto the Uchiha’s hand and enthusiastically drags him upstairs to the room beside his own .

Kazu lands on his shoulder and says, “They’re good kids.”

Kurama stays silent in his pocket, still unwilling to appear before the Uchiha.

_____________________________________________________

Severus wakes up the next morning to a raven hopping on his stomach.

“Ugh, Kazu stop,” he groans out sleepily.

“Wake up, it’s almost time to go pick ingredients,” the raven croaks at him and jumps on him one more time in emphasis.

He can hear Kurama snickering from his bedside table.

Severus wonders why he bothers to set the time to pick ingredients so early on a Sunday morning. He could have slept in as the tea shop was closed on Sundays.

“The deer sent a message saying that we can go pick up the Dawn Wood for the vanishing cabinet anytime we want. They’ve kept a fresh bundle aside,” Kazu tells him.

Severus sits up from the bed and replies, “We can do that tonight after we send the two brats home.”

He heads to the bathroom and gets ready for the day.

_____________________________________________

They’re in the forest picking purple Konoha berries when he hears Naruto shout excitedly, “Kuro sensei! There’s a deer over there!”

Itachi stands up from where he’s picking some berries and glances over to where the blond is pointing.

Severus too looks over and spots a majestic stag with large horns staring at them from a few meters away. 

Naruto barrels over to his side and asks, “Do you think it wants some berries?”

Severus raises an eyebrow at the blond and then goes back to studying the deer. The deer sees the man staring and stares back before slowly making its way closer.

“It’s coming towards us,” Naruto comments excitedly.

“Wild deer don’t usually approach humans in the forest,” Itachi comments, tilting his head.

The stag walks closer and Severus can tell that even their ANBU watchers are perplexed at the strange behaviour of the creature.

The deer soon stops steps away and then bows its head at them before looking up and staring at Severus with intelligent eyes.

‘It must be a deer-summon,’ Severus thinks and bows back on instinct. 

Kazu caws out a greeting from Severus’ shoulder.

Naruto watches his sensei doing so and bows in imitation at the deer. Itachi sees them both doing so and follows along.

The deer then walks closer and starts sniffing at Severus' hair in the usual deer-summon greeting and the man bears it with dignity by not squirming.

‘I haven't met this deer-summon,’ he thinks.

The deer soon judges that all seems to be well with the man and pulls back. It turns its back and starts walking away before turning to look behind at the trio.

“I think it wants us to follow it!” Naruto says with stars in his eyes, probably thinking it’ll be the start of an adventure.

Itachi merely glances at his shishou questioningly.

Severus sighs and then says, “Let’s go.”

Naruto pumps his fist in glee.

And so, they follow the deer deeper through the woods. The ANBU guards tag alongside them from a distance.

After some time, they soon spot a wooden fence among the trees and there were signs around that read “Nara Property, Keep Out.”

“Sensei, we can’t trespass on Nara land,” Itachi says as they eye the deer that had decided to ignore all the signs and had simply leapt over the fence in its way.

Severus is about to reply when they hear footsteps approach followed by a voice that grumbles, “Stop pulling already, I’m following aren't I?”

And pretty soon they see a doe pulling on the clothes of Nara Shikaku as she pulls him forcefully towards the fence where the three of them are standing.

“Alright already!” the Nara complains but the doe doesn't let up.

Severus watches this spectacle amusedly, enjoying the flustered expression the Nara is making as he tugs at his clothes.

“Nara-san,” Itachi greets politely when the man spots the three of them.

Shikaku looks surprised to see them for a moment before asking, “What are you all doing here?”

“We’re following the nice deer!” Naruto answers pointing at the stag who had been looking at them as though to ask what’s keeping them from jumping over the fence.

The doe finally lets go of Shikaku’s clothes and he turns to look at the stag that the boy was pointing at.

“Akaji-sama,” Shikaku bows politely at the stag.

The stag pointedly turns its head towards the trio standing outside the fence and then stares unblinkingly at the Nara.

Shikaku gulps, knowing that he couldn’t afford to anger this deer and gets the clue. 

“Please, do come on to our property,” he invites them in.

“Really? Ok!” Naruto says before quickly jumping over the fence. “Come on, sensei!” the blond calls out at the man.

Severus sighs and starts to climb over the fence. Kazu clings tightly on to the man’s shoulder so as to not get thrown off as the man climbs over.

When they’ve all made it on to Nara property, the stag gestures at them to keep following and makes its way deeper into the Nara forest.

Naruto runs off to follow behind the stag and Severus keeps up, wondering what the deer-summon was up to.

Itachi follows after them, briefly noting that the ANBU guards have stopped following as they did not have permission to enter Nara property. 

He follows behind his teacher.

Shikaku walks behind them and the doe behind him keeps pushing him to walk faster. He grumbles under his breath but his mind has started to run through the different scenarios of why the deer-summon had asked Snape and the rest to follow it.

They soon arrive at a large tree and grazing under the tree were a herd of deer that looked up from their grazing to study the newcomers on their land. The stag stomps its foot and the herd of deer immediately start walking away from the tree, leaving only the small group of people, a raven and one stag standing under.

The doe had playfully licked at Shikaku’s face before leaving with the rest.

“Akaji-sama, why have you brought us here?” Shikaku asks.

“To meet the rest of the elders,” replies the stag.

“Sensei! The deer is talking!” Naruto exclaims, eyes wide in surprise and Severus pats his head.

Before Shikaku can further question the stag, the tree starts glowing and a bright flash of light erupts from the tree. Shikaku feels the land before his feet disappear and after a brief moment of weightlessness, is deposited back on the ground. Only years of training as a shinobi helps him keep his balance and he lands upright.

Naruto is not so lucky as he hears the boy shout out, “Ow!” and he turns to see the boy landing on his bottom.

The Uchiha and the tea shop owner seem to have also landed on their feet. The man seems to be looking amusedly down at the blond on the ground, rubbing at his bottom. 

‘For a civilian he’s awfully calm about this situation,’ Shikaku thinks and studies the man before looking around to take in where they’ve landed.

He doesn’t think that the deer-summon would have meant them any harm so he doesn’t panic and merely looks curiously around.

The Uchiha boy is not so calm as he takes on a wary stance and stands in front of the tea shop owner and the young blond with his sharingan activated.

The raven on the man’s shoulder caws out at the Uchiha.

“Relax young one, we have merely brought you into our home to talk,” the stag tells the young Uchiha.

Severus places a hand on Itachi’s shoulder and the young man finally relaxes his stance.

“They’re friends,” he tells the Uchiha, patting his shoulder.

He looks about their surroundings, finally noticing that other deer have made their way into the clearing where they stand. 

“Shichiji-sama,” he greets a large deer that slowly walks up towards them. Its horns are rainbow-coloured, the only one Severus has seen to have such horns in the Dawn Forests of the deer-summons. 

“Friend-Severus, we apologise for calling you here so abruptly,” the large stag tells him and approaches to sniff at his hair.

‘I’ll need a long shower after this,’ Severus thinks as a wet nose rummages around, sniffing at his dark locks. 

“Sensei, you know this really pretty deer?” Naruto asks, clinging to Severus' clothes and eyeing the rainbow-horned deer bending down to sniff at his sensei’s hair.

Shichiji lets out a snort and laughs. “Hello young one, we hope we have not scared you.”

Naruto shakes his head and smiles sunnily up at the deer, “I’m not scared!” and then adds, “You have really pretty horns.”

The stag laughs again and noses at the boy’s hair affectionately. Kazu caws out a laugh as well.

Itachi watches all of this and wonders why they’ve been summoned to the deer-summons’ home.

Shikaku takes in the scene and observes silently but he is soon called out by the rainbow-horned deer, “Shikaku, we apologise for bringing you here without prior notice.”

“Shichiji-sama,” Shikaku bows and greets the deer-elder.

“You’re probably wondering why you’re here with friend-Severus,” the large stag says.

“Do you know Snape-san, Shichiji-sama?” he questions and looks at the corner of his eyes at the large gathering of deer around them.

The stag nods and then answers, “Yes, friend-Severus is our friend and saviour of our home from the pollutants that have been plaguing our land for centuries.”

Shikaku looks rather surprised at this information and wonders if this is why the Uchiha have been circling around the man of late.

“Pollutants, Shichiji-sama?” he asks instead.

“Friend-Severus was the one to make the purifying potion that helped purify the pollutants in the earth and the rejuvenation potion that brought back nutrients to the soil. Without his potions, the land would have been further corrupted till it would have become uninhabitable,” the deer tells him.

Shikaku has so many questions to ask based on just that piece of information but he knows he must be patient. The deer only ever give information when they choose to do so, after all. 

“We brought you here as the head of the Nara to ask you to ally yourself with friend-Severus,” the stag continues.

Shikaku hears the raven on the tea shop owner’s shoulder cawing in unbird-like laughter and the man himself cursing under his breath.

“No, no, not again. The last time I agreed to something like this I had the whole Uchiha clan following me everywhere,” Severus vehemently rejects the idea.

Itachi smirks a bit at hearing that.

Shichiji merely looks affectionately at the protesting man and turns back to look at Shikaku.

“The Nara have been asking for our advice for centuries, ever since we first agreed to be your exclusive summons. Hear our advice once again. Ally yourselves with friend-Severus, assist him when he’s in need and ask for assistance when you are in need,” the stag tells him.

Shikaku ponders about this piece of advice, knowing that the deer have never led the clan wrong. He looks at the tea shop owner who glowers at him. 

“Say no,” the man tells him, arms folded across his chest.

“Sensei, is that why the Uchiha have been following you?” the blond boy asks, looking at his sensei and putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

“Did you save the Uchiha clan or something?” the boy asks him with sparkles in his eyes.

“What? No, of course not. I haven’t done any saving,” Severus tells the boy.

“You have,” Itachi pipes up and Severus sends the glower his way.

“I just gave them some advice and fed them herbal brews,” he flippantly mentions.

Itachi merely smiles at that statement and Naruto looks between the two of them and then exclaims brightly, “You did save them! I knew it!”

Severus sighs and rubs at the bridge of his nose. Kazu caws out in laughter again.

Shikaku observes their interactions and then makes up his mind.

“Snape-san, would you be willing to enter into an alliance with the Nara?” he asks the man.

The man aims his glare back at the Nara and tells him, “No, I’m too busy. I’ve got enough people on my list which I have to help. I don’t need more and I certainly don’t need any help,” he retorts at the head of the Nara.

Shikaku nods at that and turns to the rainbow-horned elder. 

“The Nara will certainly heed your advice and convince Snape-san to ally himself with us,” he tells the deer with a bow.

He’d considered it all in his mind and based on the man’s reactions, he can tell that the man was without any greed for the influence that the Nara could offer him if he agreed to be their ally. The way the man objected to the alliance seemed as though he was regarding the alliance between them not as a profitable endeavour but more like tedious work which he would have to put effort in. 

‘None of our allies have ever been so vehement in rejecting our help,’ he thinks amusedly. The man truly believed that he didn't need them and that it was he who would be doing the ‘saving’ if he agreed to the alliance. 

‘Which means he has confidence in his own abilities,’ the thought runs through Shikaku’s mind.  

‘And he’s even powerful enough to save the Dawn Forests of the deer-summons singlehandedly from the ‘pollutants’ that the Nara have not even been told about,” is another thought that follows.

‘The deer summons have always been wise, their advice is never wrong,’ he ponders on this and looks at the tea shop owner who looks back at him in disbelief.

Shikaku merely smiles back pleasantly at him and reminds himself that he will have to gather the clan elders to inform them of this new development. 

‘I’ll also need to pester Fugaku on information about how this man had saved the Uchiha clan,” he thinks but has a rough idea in mind based on what the tea shop owner had previously mentioned.

“Instead of having you travel back and forth between the shinobi mainland and the Dawn Forests, the Nara will be our intermediary and the ingredients that you ask for will be sent through them,” Shichiji tells the wizard.

Severus sighs and grumbles, “I don’t want more alliances.”

“Of course, friend-Severus,” the stag agrees with him placatingly but without actually taking back his ‘advice’. 

“We will send the Dawn Wood logs to the Nara,” the stag tells him and Shikaku can definitely hear the amusement in the stag’s voice.

“Dawn Wood?” Shikaku asks.

“For my vanishing cabinet which I am going to throw you into when I’m done building it,” Severus tells him with a glare.

“Oh, sounds interesting,” the Nara merely comments back.

Naruto laughs at that and asks, “Sensei, can I help build this vanquishing cabinet?”

“Vanishing, not vanquishing,” he corrects the blond. “But vanquishing sounds good too,” he adds.

“Alright then Snape-san, I’ll send the logs over when I’ve gotten them from the deer,” Shikaku tells him with a smile.

“We’re not allies, I’m just getting materials from you,” he retorts at the Nara.

“Of course,” he says, reminiscent of the tone the rainbow-horned deer had used. 

Severus sighs at this and Itachi smiles thinking it would be good to have more allies around his shishou just in case their enemies went after him.

“Ne ne, sensei, does that mean that sensei has chakra and is not a civilian? Is sensei a shinobi?” Naruto asks in curiosity thinking that his sensei must not be an ordinary person to have saved the home of the deer.

Severus eyes the Nara who is eyeing him, waiting for his answer.

“Fine. Do you both swear not to reveal my secrets?” he asks Naruto and Shikaku.

“Yes!” Naruto says immediately. 

“I swear,” Shikaku says after pondering for a moment and thinking it through.

In just under a minute, they both feel the sensation of a strange energy settle over them. They instinctively know that they will be unable to reveal to anyone what the tea shop owner doesn’t want them revealing. 

Severus nods at this and then with a smirk comes up with an idea. He turns to look at the Nara and Shikaku feels himself getting nervous.

“Perhaps a demonstration,” he says and Itachi takes a very obvious step back and away from his shishou so as to not be in his line of sight. 

Shikaku sees the man wave his hand before he suddenly finds himself standing on four legs instead of two. 

“Sensei! Nara-san is a deer!” Naruto loudly proclaims whilst staring with wide eyes at the deer-Nara.

Shikaku looks down at his black hooves and stomps them to test them out. He feels heavy antlers on his head and experiences a kind of itch to start grinding them against a tree.

‘Huh, so that’s why Snape seems so confident,’ he thinks and with another wave of the man‘s hand, Shikaku once again finds himself back on two legs.

“Sensei! What was that?” Naruto asks him excitedly. 

“That was magic and I am a wizard. So, no, I am not a shinobi,” he tells the blond.

“Magic,” Naruto says and looks at his sensei with stars in his baby blue eyes.

“You were a handsome stag, Shikaku,” Shichiji tells him amusedly.

“So, do you know what I can do to bribe Snape-san to get him into an alliance?” he asks the deer seriously.

Snape glares at him at this and Shikaku knows he’s probably thinking of turning him back into a deer or some other animal.

The raven on the man’s shoulder croaks out in laughter, looking like he’s enjoying the whole episode. 

__________________________________________

When the deer summons finally transports them home via a jutsu, Snape throws one last glare at the Nara before stomping out of the Nara forest followed by his two students.

Shikaku looks at the man leaving with amusement before thinking that that had been one of the most interesting experiences he’s had in a while.

‘Magic, huh?’ he thinks and his brain comes up with many different possibilities and scenarios about why the deer have decided to give such advice at this point in time. 

Something was going on. The deer provided clues, and the many keywords popped up in his mind. ‘Alliance’, ‘help’, ‘pollutants’, ‘potions’, ‘purify’, ‘rejuvenation’, ‘uninhabitable’ and so on ran over and over in his brain but he knew that he didn't quite have all of the pieces just yet.

‘I’ll need to look for more information,’ he thinks. But first, he had elders of the clan which he needed to talk to.

____________________________________________________

Severus shoos the two brats home and decides to just face plant into his bed for the rest of the evening.

He knows Itachi has gone home as he can sense another Uchiha in the trees nearby.

‘The boy has probably gone home to update his clan about the Nara and the deer-summons,’ he thinks with a groan.

He really didn't want or need another alliance. Why couldn't he just fade into the background and live his life as a simple tea brewer?

“Well, that was certainly unexpected,” Kurama tells him with a smirk as he crawls out of his coat pocket.

“Although with your luck it should have probably been a given,” the kyuubi booms out a laugh.

Kazu croaks out his agreement.

“I hate everyone, I really do,” he grumbles into his pillow.

‘I just wanted wood for a cabinet. Is that too much to ask?’ he questions the universe. 

The next morning, Nara Shikaku walks in bright and early into the tea shop.

“We'll send the logs over to your house tomorrow,” he tells the tea shop owner who glowers at him.

Shikaku merely smiles pleasantly, orders some roasted black tea and plops himself to sit opposite the Uchiha head who also glowers at him from across the table.

“Well, it looks like I’ve evened the playing field a little, huh?” he says to the annoyed-looking man.

Severus just sighs inwardly at the two and proceeds to ignore them.

Tomorrow he’ll get the logs and then the two of them had better watch out if they didn’t want to be vanished to another country. 

‘I hear the Land of Snow is at its coldest this time of year,’ he thinks evilly.

____________________________________________________________

*Rejuvenation Potion*

• Red dawn leaf (crushed, 15 g)
• White sun blossoms (10 petals)
• Dawn forest dew (20 ml)

______________________________________________________

Chapter Text

Chapter 10: Snape’s Energising Brew

Walking out in his sleep-lounge robes to pick up the morning newspaper, he had opened the front door only to be greeted with the sight of a group of shinobi waiting patiently outside his front gate.

And it looked like they had been standing there for quite some time.

“Good morning Snape-san, we’re here to deliver the logs as requested,” calls out one of the many ninjas in greeting. 

It’s barely eight and Severus curses the fact that shinobi have a tendency to be early risers. 

He squints and tries to figure out if he recognizes any of the dark-haired and slouching shinobi in the group only to realise that he does, and many of them have even been frequenting his tea shop of late. 

He sighs internally. Thanks to some pesky deers, he now has more stalkers dogging his footsteps. 

As if the Uchiha clan wasn’t enough. 

“Kuro-sensei! Who’s that at the door?” Naruto questions him loudly from the kitchen and soon comes barreling down the hallway with footsteps so loud Severus could have heard him coming from a mile away. The blond child promptly launches himself to throw his arms around his sensei and peeks curiously out the door from behind the wizard. 

“Brat, it’s too early for this, let go,” the dour-looking man admonishes and tries to pry the blond leech from his legs but the child only latches on tighter. Naruto glances mischievously up at him and sticks out his tongue.

With a sigh, Severus decides to ignore the brat and calls out to the waiting Nara shinobi outside with a languid wave of his hand, “The gate’s unlocked, come in.”

The Nara call out token greetings of ‘good morning’ and ‘sorry for disturbing’ before hauling in piles and piles of dark red Dawn Wood. 

Severus watches them carry around the thick wooden logs as though they were carrying styrofoam instead of solid wood and once again admires the shinobi of this world for their physical strength. He could probably do the same if he had ingested a strength-increasing potion before attempting to lift the logs but he doubts he could lift even one on his own without a bit of magical help.

He was as weak as a baby bunny in comparison to this world’s shinobi in that aspect. 

What is it that Washi keeps telling him? 

Oh yes, he had better leave the fighting to those with chakra and keep his bonny backside away from shinobi battles.

‘You can just throw me at them and curse them from afar while I’m punching them to smithereens,’ Washi had joked. 

Severus, having witnessed Washi’s feats of easily splitting the ground into multiple chunks, had decidedly agreed that he wasn’t ever going to get into a fight with these shinobi muscle-heads if he could help it.

“Hey sensei! Are these the logs for the vanquishing cabinet you’re going to build?” Naruto calls out to him and Severus breaks away from his thoughts.

“It’s ‘vanishing’ cabinet, “ he reminds the blond and immediately thinks that it’d be a pity to use all of this high-quality Dawn Wood just for a prank cabinet. 

A thought strikes him and he decides that he’d be experimenting with runes again tonight. 

If he could achieve what he was thinking of doing, then it’d save him the hassle of constantly drawing out runes for traveling, especially between pocket dimensions and long distances. Apparating to another country takes a lot of magical energy, after all.

“We’ll just leave these here if that’s alright with you, Snape-san,” one of the Nara tells him as they plop down all the logs in a triangular pile next to his garden wall.

“Thank you,” he says to them and offers to brew them some tea for their efforts.

The moment the words, ‘...some tea’, leaves his lips he sees a couple of other Nara shinobi shushin right into his front yard. Among them is the Nara clan head, Shikaku, who scratches the back of his neck lazily and thanks him for his generous offer with a smile. 

Severus is speechless for a while before deciding that it was too much to argue with the clan of sneaky ninjas this early in the morning.

“Naruto, could you lead them to the patio out in the back garden?” he instructs the blond child, already feeling like he wants the day to end.

“Sure sensei!” the brat calls out and rushes off to play co-host with the Naras.

“This way!” he hears the blond calling out loudly, “I think sensei has the best garden in all of the village! Even the peacocks from Suzuno-san’s garden next door like to come over, not that we like them but still….” he hears the kid chattering on and on to the Naras who suddenly look like they might be thinking twice about staying for tea.

Snape smirks. 

That was what they got for disturbing him at this god-forsaken hour. 

‘I think I might just increase the brat’s wages,’ he decides.

He closes the front door, walks back down the hallway to the kitchen to brew more tea for some pesky stalkers.

As Severus walks out back to his garden patio, he hears the brat’s loud voice chattering away about his schoolwork and how some of the teachers at the academy are marking him down, “I’m sure of it!” 

He observes how the Nara shinobi have very bored-looking expressions on their faces as they lounge around the patio, some sitting on the chairs and some slouching against the wooden pillars. 

Shikaku, whom Naruto is mainly loudly talking to, had a very distinct pinched expression on his face that Severus knows indicates a migraine of epic proportions. He’s seen a similar expression on Sarutobi’s face when he walks into his tea shop after a long day of looking through paperwork and dealing with troublemaking shinobi, the usual Hokage duties in short.

Severus almost grins at the sight. 

He approaches the patio and notices that none of the Naras turn to look at him. ‘Shinobi hearing, they probably heard me walking towards them the moment I left from the backdoor,’ he decides.

When he sets down the tray laden with a glass teapot and some teacups onto the patio table, Shikaku glances up to him with a very put-upon expression that says something along the lines of , ‘I am seconds away from either strangling the kid or myself.’

Severus, deciding to have mercy on a tortured soul, places his hand gently on Naruto’s  head and ruffles his messy hair. “Don’t you have to get to the academy soon ? Why don’t you start getting ready?” he says to the brat.

Naruto’s eyes widen in realisation and he almost shrieks, “I have to get there early today or Mizuki-sensei will punish me for being late again!” and promptly dashes off towards the direction of the house. 

Severus just shakes his head in amusement and seats himself next to the Nara clan head.

He lifts the glass teapot and reaches out to pour the steaming tea into the small teacups. But before he even tips the teapot, a hand reaches out to stop him from proceeding. 

He throws a questioning glance at Shikaku.

“Perhaps we should adjourn to somewhere with a little more privacy?” the dark-haired shinobi suggests, eyeing the open garden around them where any number of eyes could be watching.

Severus smirks and tells him, “I’ve covered the entirety of my property with magic that forbids any sort of spying or uninvited entry. If anyone is trying to look in on us from any buildings or trees outside the demarcated area, all they will notice is an empty garden. So it wouldn't be wrong to say that you are currently in one of the most secure places in the whole of Konoha.”

‘Or even perhaps the whole of the Shinobi continent,’ he thinks to himself, recalling all the painstaking effort he had put in to ensure that his house was akin to a bonafide magical fortress. 

“Oh?” Shikaku asks with raised eyebrows. “But we managed to walk into your house earlier with no obstructions.”

“You were invited in when I gave permission to the rest of your clan to haul in the logs,” he explains. “Would you like to confirm it for yourself?” 

Shikaku nods and gestures at two of the Nara shinobi to his right who immediately sprint outside the garden fence. The moment they step foot outside, the two seem to look confused as they try to look towards the gathering of people in the patio but only see an empty garden instead.

After a moment, Shikaku calls out for them to come back in but the two act as if they do not hear him and merely linger outside the property, trying to get back in but unable to even lift a foot forward past the fence. 

“They have to be invited in,” Severus mentions smoothly and with a flick of his wrist, the two suddenly seem to be able to jump over the waist high fence again and rejoin the group in the patio.

“Fascinating,” Shikaku remarks. ‘This wizard has more power than I expected. I’m sure that he has even more powerful magic up his sleeve,’ the Jounin commander mulls over.

“Tea?” the wizard asks, pushing a filled teacup closer.

“Thank you,” he politely replies. He lifts his teacup to his nose and takes a sniff. The minty scent he inhales suddenly fills his nostrils and flows down into his lungs. For a moment, he feels rather rejuvenated and energised.

He turns to look at the wizard with a question on his lips when the other man replies, “My version of an energising tea brew.”

“I’ve noticed that the Nara in general have a tendency to look rather exhausted most of the time, I thought this might help,” the wizard says with a shrug.

Shikaku inhales more of the minty tea-scent and then takes a small sip from the teacup. Almost immediately he feels not only energised but also at ease, as if he had just taken a long undisturbed nap and is now feeling the glorious effects of it. 

‘Now I think I know why Hokage-sama’s office is often littered with take-away cups of migraine-relief brew from Snape’s teashop,’ Shikaku remarks to himself and then continues sipping the very effective tea brew.

Snape offers the rest of the teacups to the other Nara scattered around the large patio and pours himself a cup as well.

“The Nara often suffer from symptoms of mild fatigue,” Shikaku comments almost nonchalantly, “A tradeoff for the ways in which our clan functions due to our increased intellect and the copious use of yin chakra for our shadow techniques. It is a weakness we hide by portraying it simply as laziness to outsiders of the clan.”

“Should you be telling me this?” the wizard asks, eyebrow raised.

“Isn’t this why you’ve served us this tea brew?” the Nara clan leader questions calmly.

“You’re mistaken,” Severus denies, “I usually brew this tea in the mornings for when the brat is staying over on a weekday and is usually only half-awake when I prod him to get up. It helps wake him up and keeps him energised for the rest of the school day.”

Shikaku ponders over that statement for a while before he chortles.

“Well, then I guess you now know more about the Naras than you did before. Don’t you feel much closer to our clan already?” Shikaku grins.

“Not particularly,” Severus huffs out.

The Nara around him smile in amusement and then go back to enjoying their tea brew. Severus even spots a few younger Naras downing their teacups in one big gulp and helping themselves to more of the brew from the glass teapot on the table. 

“So, may I ask why you’ve decided to stop by for tea at my house today instead of the tea shop?” Severus inquires once everyone has gotten their fill of tea.

“The Nara have come to formally offer you an alliance with the clan,” Shikaku replies with a smile.

The wizard pinches the edge of his nose in annoyance and contemplates moving back to Lone Moon Forest with the rest of the ravens. At least there, there would be no more pesky humans to vex him.

“And what would this alliance entail?” Severus asks.

“The Nara would pledge to offer assistance when you need it and you would do the same for us,” Shikaku informs him. “I assume the Uchihas have similarly pledged the same?” 

Severus raises an eyebrow and asks the crafty Jounin commander, “And how would you know about what the Uchiha have pledged?”

Shikaku smiles and tells him, “They’ve been your security detail for the past few weeks, it’s obvious enough to anyone who has eyes and a brain to make this conjecture.”

“If I’m not mistaken, the sudden increase in Uchihas who have been almost, shall I say, ‘magically’ healed from their sharingan-caused blindness are all thanks to you,” the shinobi says. “It would make sense that they would want to put priority in your safety if you’re the sole reason for this sudden cure.”

“They’ve also begun making small movements among the rest of the shinobi forces,” one of the older Naras sitting across the table interjects.

“As for their purpose, we had once believed that they might be plotting a rebellion but as of late they seem to be trying to ‘root’ out certain forces,” Shikaku smoothly continues.

Severus eyes the relaxed-looking Nara around him and wonders how much they actually know.

“It would be evident to conclude that their recent actions have something to do with you, Snape-san, as the timing coincides with the emergence of the increased security around you,” the jounin commander points out.  

“And you’re asking me to tell you what I know now?” Severus questions.

“That would be helpful but no, not so much,” Shikaku says. “We’re here to, as we talked about earlier, ask for an alliance.”

“When we enter into an alliance with you, we assume then that that would put us firmly on the same side as the Uchiha clan as we would be working towards both your goals, whatever they may be. Coordinating with the Uchiha would be the next logical step and surely you would then need to inform us of your plans for that to happen,” he goes on to say.

“You assume that whatever the Uchiha are planning would align with your own goals? How sure are you that both the Uchiha clan and I are not thinking of rebelling against the village?” the wizard asks. 

“By pledging to an alliance you would be agreeing to do something you aren’t even quite sure of,” Severus smiles sharply at the Nara head.

Shikaku nods pleasantly.

“We trust our allies, Snape-san. And the Nara deer-summons have been our allies for centuries,” he reveals. “If they have urged us to ally with you, something they have not done to any individual or clan in all the centuries before, we know then that this must be an imperative request.”

Severus heaves a sigh.

“If I agree to this alliance will you at least go bug the Uchiha instead of me?” he asks exasperatedly. “If anything, I’m at most a consultant in this scenario.”

Shikaku smiles and tells him almost non-committedly, “Of course. We will only look for Snape-san if we need to.” 

Severus studies the smiling face of the Nara and thinks the Nara will probably find all kinds of excuses to bug him anyway, knowing these sneaky ninjas.

“Fine,” he grouches out. He probably wouldn't be getting rid of them anyway without agreeing to an alliance, based on what they’ve surmised so far.

He holds out his hand reluctantly and Shikaku grasps it.

 “I, Severus Snape, agree to the alliance with the Nara clan and we shall both assist each other whenever there is need of it and bring no harm to the other,” he says a simple oath and the magic around him flows between himself and the Nara around him, sealing the pledge between the two parties. 

“If the pledge is broken between either party, the other will be notified via magic,” Severus informs the Nara around him. “Be prepared to get a migraine if that is the case.”

“Oh? Do we not pledge on all our lives?” one of the elders asks.

“No, there are too many of you in the clan. A mistake of one should not be the mistake of the rest. I’ve sat down with the Uchiha clan elders to talk about the oaths and this is the exact one which I've bound both your clans with,” he answers. “In any case, if any of us should be betrayed, magic will inform us of the incident and of whom who has carried out the betrayal.”

“How would that happen? Do we get a note?” a younger Nara pipes up. The Nara closest to him whacks him on the head and tells him to ’shush’. 

Severus laughs at that. “Like I said, be prepared for a migraine,” he tells them and leaves it at that. 

He had been researching frantically about the dark marks and magical pacts back when the Dark Lord had first fallen with the purpose of getting rid of the mark that bound him to the Death Eaters. Although his research did not lead him to the answers he wanted, he did however discover many methods of magical binding and had thoroughly employed them when he made magical pledges with the shinobi clans.

He’s about to tell them to go away and pester the Uchiha instead of him when he hears a familiar voice call out, “Ohayo gozaimasu, shisho.”

Severus startles and turns his head to spot his dark-haired student standing a few paces away from the garden patio.

The Nara had probably heard him coming because none of them were startled at the young man’s greeting.

Severus notices the young Uchiha eyeing the many Nara around him with an admittedly blank expression. “Shisho, were you expecting guests?” the dark-haired boy asks steadily.

The Nara around him suddenly tense at his tone and start eyeing him in return.

‘Ahh, the scent of killing intent early in the morning,’ Kurma comments from his coat pocket. The fox had a rather perplexing habit of snugly sitting inside his coat pockets these days. He would have thought that with years of imprisonment the kyuubi would have taken the opportunity to explore around Konoha but it had instead chosen to follow him around.

Severus clears his throat deliberately and tells him, “ Yes, the Nara were kind enough to bring over the Dawn Wood earlier this morning.”

“Did they need so many Nara to be here to carry in the logs?” the Uchiha evenly questions.

The Nara shinobi continue to eye the Uchiha tensely.

“Ah Itachi-kun, I see you got back early from your mission?” Shikaku speaks up.

Itachi simply nods. 

“Great! Just in time too! I was just going to see your father,” Shikaku expresses calmly with a smile.

Itachi looks towards Severus and the wizard nods at him. 

“Father should be at the compound at this time,” Itachi tells him and finally relaxes his stance.

The Nara, seeing him do so, answered in kind by relaxing their own stances.

Shikaku then stands up to indicate that it was time to go. The rest of the clan shinobi are also soon saying their farewells and ‘thank you’s’ for the tea.

When the last of the Nara shushin away, Severus finally sighs in relief and beckons Itachi closer. He throws a light medical-spell the young shinobi’s way to check for injuries but luckily detects none.

“Shisho, you have made an alliance with the Nara?” Itachi questions him as he sits himself next to the wizard.

Severus nods at that and grouches out, “Like they gave me a choice.”

“It was either agreeing to an alliance or facing more pestering from them,” he laments with a wave of his hand.

“You are too kind-hearted, Shisho. They will surely require more help than you yourself need,” the Uchiha replies. ‘Like the Uchiha,’ he thinks to himself. 

“One of the deer summons came to see me last night and wouldn’t stop licking my head till I agreed to consider the alliance,” he gripes.

Itachi smiles at him and pours more tea into the wizard’s teacup. He thinks that it’s probably time to quit the ANBU and spend more time in the village to guard his shisho. 

The wizard could be too trusting at times. 

‘There are already too many eyes watching and waiting to swoop in for the kill,’ he grimly ponders.

Sitting at his desk in ROOT headquarters, Shimura Danzo looks through the relatively short file on the owner of Snape’s Tea and Brew.

“05,” he calls out. 

A shinobi in an ANBU mask of a chameleon soon pops into the room in a puff of smoke.

“Increase monitoring of this Snape Severus,” he instructs.

The ANBU answers with an ‘affirmative’ and quickly disappears the same way she got into the room.

Close by, an inconspicuous crow sits on a branch hidden in the trees and watches the shinobi going in and out the tunnels built under a large Konoha tree.

That night, after sending the brat off home and convincing Itachi to go home to get some rest after his mission instead of ‘guarding’ him, Severus decides it’s time he puts the Red Dawn wood to use. 

He coaxes the many red logs up into the room he calls’ The Experimental Magic Room’ and starts using magic to cut and hammer the logs into an adult-height shiny new cupboard.

He then proceeds to spend the wee hours in the night drawing rune after rune before he finally stumbles onto the correct one. 

Kazu and Kurama watch him sleepily from a corner or the room before giving up and deciding to catch some shut eye. 

When he finally exclaims, “Ahah!”, the bird and the fox startle awake for a bit before wondering what had made the wizard grin so maniacally when they turn to look at him.

“You’re looking at Snape’s new and improved teleportation cupboard,” he tells them in pure triumph, gesturing towards the red-wood cupboard.

The two look at him quizzically before he decides to just show them what his latest magical invention does.

“So, you just hold on to the knob, mention where you want to go and then push open the door when the runes light up,” he tells them. 

He then grabs onto the knob, says “Poison Valley Villa, Tea Country” and swiftly pushes open the door.

In an instant, the door swings open and they are treated to the sight of a thin green-haired man who is lounging in a cosy-looking kitchen in his polka-dotted pajamas whilst holding a steaming pot of tea. 

The young man startles at the sound of a door squeaking open and turns around to suddenly witness the sight of the kitchen cupboard standing wide open to reveal a familiar dark-haired wizard.

The two stare at each other in surprise for a while before the younger man asks in a deadpan manner, “Would you like some tea?”

*Snape’s Energising Brew*

• Sun-dried white mint leaves (30g)
• Roasted oolong tea (20g)
• Orange dessert grass (5 g)

Chapter Text

Severus wishes that he had a broom.

He had never been fond of flying via brooms in the past but he’d rather be traveling on that dreaded flying contraption than walking for miles on end up this rocky and mountainous landscape with his own two feet.

Wizards just weren't meant for this kind of travel.

“What’s the name of this accursed mountain again?” he grumpily questions the raven on his shoulder with a tired huff.

Kazu cocks his head at him and comments, “It’s a hill, not a mountain.”

The bird rolls its eyes at the weak-ass wizard and wonders if the human might start passing out any moment now from exhaustion.

“Are you sure it’s a hill? We’ve been walking uphill for hours and I don’t think we’re anywhere near the top,” Severus bites out through gritted teeth. If it wasn’t for the cooling spell he’d casted on himself a few miles back, he’s sure he would have been sweating through his travelling cloak by now. The shady hat on his head, which he’d transfigured from a leaf, provided barely any relief from the glaring summer sun above.

“You’re almost there,” the raven encourages him, “it’s just round this bend and then we should be able to see signs of the village.” Kazu had taken flight a few hours back to ascertain exactly where they were from the sky and had confirmed that there was a small village atop the hill they were climbing.

When they had landed in the middle of the wilderness of Tea Country, Severus had grumbled under his breath at the cruelty of one white raven for dumping him and Kazu miles away from any indication of human civilization.

‘She couldn’t have left us conveniently next to a town somewhere?’ he had pondered irritably before deciding that the two of them should start discussing what to do next. It was better than simply standing there and gawking at the green and hilly landscape at any rate.

“Why don’t you just use that ‘divination’ magic you’ve been trying to work out,” Kazu had cleverly suggested.

Which brings them back to the current ‘mountain-tracking’ situation the two of them now find themselves in.

The wizard, with his still-experimental practice of divination, had divined that they were meant to climb up in the direction of the village so as to come upon a fortuitous encounter.

“So, a ‘fortuitous encounter’ huh?” the raven quizzes him almost teasingly. “Do you think we should have maybe apparated straight to the village instead of climbing the hill on foot?”

Severus pauses a moment to catch his breath and wipe some sweat away from his brow.

“No, we’re meant to walk up towards the village,” he insists with a frown.

“Couldn’t you have divined exactly how and where we would have this ‘encounter’?” Kazu cocks his head questioningly.

Severus covers his face with a palm and points out exasperatedly, “I did tell you that my practice of divination is still a work in progress.”

Kazu squawks out in amusement at that.

Severus soon hears the gurgling of running water. He turns from the path he was climbing and slowly trudges towards the source of the sound. He certainly wouldn't mind stopping by a stream or river for a bit to soak his aching feet in the cool water.

The pair duck under a few overhanging tree branches and after walking for a few minutes, were treated to the sight of a small but clear stream.

Kazu suddenly lifts off from his shoulder and dives into the clear stream. He surfaces a moment later with a struggling fish in his beak. Severus watches in fascination as the raven swallows the fish in one gulp and wonders if maybe the raven had a bird of prey in its family tree somewhere.

“You want one?” the bird inquires politely but Severus merely shakes his head to decline.

He instead walks up to a small boulder by the stream and starts removing his shoes. He leaves his footwear on the boulder and wades into the shallow running stream. The cool water feels heavenly and he’s almost tempted to remain here for the rest of the day.

“Your trousers are getting wet,” Kazu comments pointedly but the wizard ignores him. It was nothing a bit of drying spell couldn't solve. He’d like to just stay here and soak himself in the water like a particularly dehydrated plant for as long as he could, thank you very much.

A slight rustling in the overgrowth breaks the tranquility of the moment but before Severus could even turn to look at the source of the sound, Kazu launches himself towards a patch of tall grass and disappears into the dense growth.

Severus immediately takes a stance and has a stunning spell at ready.

A few tense seconds later, the raven bursts back out from the tall grass and lands smoothly on his shoulder.

“I think I found our fortuitous encounter,” the bird informs him warily.

“What is it?” he inquires, trying to guess at what might be hiding in the overgrowth.

“Didn’t you say that a clue to your divination would be the colour green?” the raven reminds him.

Severus nods. He had presumed that the colour green indicated the trees in the forest where they would come upon the ‘encounter’. It was the sole reason why he had chosen to go up to the village through the forest trail rather than the well-used road.

“There’s an injured boy lying in there with green hair,” Kazu reveals. “Guess you were right about taking the forest trail.”

“Does the boy need immediate medical attention?” Severus questions as he wades his way back to his footwear.

“Judging by how corpse-like he looks, I would say that he needs a miracle,” the bird tells him morosely.
Severus quickly puts on his walking shoes and uses a quick drying and cleaning spell. He hurries towards the patch of overgrown grass and pushes the tall green stalks away.

The green haired boy is curled up in a fetal position on the forest floor. His skin is almost too pale and his clothes look like they had been through a shredder. There were multiple bruises and cuts on his scarred skin from what Severus could see through the holes of his shirt. The boy looked like he had been through a few rounds with a Hungarian Horntail and got spit right back out.

He casts a diagnostic spell on the boy and is soon bombarded with so much appalling information that he’s tempted to just put the boy out of his misery.

“What’s wrong with him?” Kazu asks anxiously. The kid was just a child after all, he shouldn’t have been left for dead in the middle of nowhere in such a condition.

“What's not wrong with him?” The wizard angrily grimaces and starts going over all the potions he’ll need to start treating the boy.

“He’s been poisoned to his gills with so many different types of substances, he should have been dead years ago,” the wizard bites out. “We’ll need to find a place to treat him.”

“Put him on my back, we can fly him to the village,” Kazu urges him.

But before the raven could transform to his larger form, Severus stops him.

“Wait.”

The wizard contemplates for a bit and then says,”The diagnostic spell detected long years of physical abuse both to his internal and external organs. We don’t know who has been abusing him and I’m not sure if the village is a good place to take the boy.”

“You think the villagers did this?” The raven cocks his head to eye the child.

Severus shrugs and casts a simple healing charm on the boy to keep him from dying on them. “Let’s heal him and then we can ask the boy himself.”

__________________________________________

That’s how they find themselves flying on Kazu’s back whilst heading towards a direction North.

“Are you sure it’s this way?” the bird questions as they cross overhead above acres of terraced fields planted with tea and rice.

“It’s supposed to be a valley hidden between a few hills that look like the shape of an almost perfect triangle,” the wizard responds as he holds onto the boy whilst they’re riding atop the large avian.

“Is that all your divination could tell you?” the raven asks with a sigh.

“I was divining for the closest place to build a safehouse and that was the only hint I got,” the wizard grouches out. They might cause too much of a spectacle if they barged into a town or village with an almost-dead boy and a giant bird, he imagines.

They fly a few more miles, this time going North-East before they spot what they were looking for.

Kazu lands gently in the middle of a clearing and slowly they lower the boy down onto a transfigured bed made from a dead branch lying on the ground.

“What now?” the raven questions, looking around and seeing only wilderness. The tall hills surround them on all sides and a patch of triangular blue sky could be seen above their heads. Besides that, a lush forest surrounds the clearing they’ve landed in. They certainly weren’t going to find any handy hospitals or healing rooms here.

“Now, I get to work,” Severus glances around to study the environment. He most definitely had a lot of transfiguration spells to cast.

He pulls out a few colorful bottles from his magical sack. “Feed him these few potions first,” he instructs the bird and then proceeds to walk away muttering about make-shift camps and security wards.

Kazu looks at the few potions by his feet and then to his avian-claws before looking at the unconscious boy. It was definitely going to be a long day.

_______________________________________________

The first time he wakes up, he knows he’s being moved from the forest ground where he assumed he'd breathe his last.

He had been resigned to his death and thought that it might finally be a welcome change. There would be no one to whip him when they were bored or use him as a test subject. He’d finally be free, just like the birds he’s seen flying outside his cell. He wonders if that was what death was like, the freedom to go anywhere he wanted.

It was only a pity that he couldn’t take them all with him when he finally kicked the bucket. He would have savoured their dying screams. He imagined using the poisons he had been given throughout the years on them, it would have been such a satisfying sight. Their pain would have been so beautiful.

He’d long since become numb to pain but he remembers what it was like. After years of being injected with poisons though, his body had learned to shut it out as a ‘defense mechanism’. He understands what that means and all their other medical jargon and theories which they had discussed among themselves while they observed the effects the substances had on him.

They were usually disappointed when he kept surviving poison after poison. His ‘grandfather’ had even decided many times to try to speed up his demise by sporadically whipping him with a horse whip when he was in one of his drunken spells.

He should have at least stayed long enough to stab the man to death with a blunt knife before his escape into the forest.

He knew however that his body was failing, death was soon to be at his door and he wanted to at least be outside his cell and free for that.

He’s soon jostled from his position and his mind gathers itself to pay attention to what’s happening to his body. He’s being carried, almost gently, in someone's arms. He hears two people talking about healing him and wonders who they are and why they’re thinking of saving him.

He knows his own body and he recognizes that no medicine or healer in the world could possibly heal him at this stage of his condition. He knows it’s too late.

His mind soon falls back into consciousness but before it does, he thinks that he’s glad that at least someone had, for once in his life, tried to help him.

________________________________________________________

The second time he wakes up, his mind is still foggy but he is a little more conscious of what’s happening around him. He takes in the feeling of the soft bedding he’s lying on; he doesn’t think he’s ever laid down on such soft material.

He opens up his senses with whatever remaining chakura he has and detects that there’s no one in the room with him, which makes him lower his guard for the moment. He then looks inward with his chakra and is instantly surprised at the state of his body.

The poisons that were once slowly killing him little by little were no longer doing so and if he isn’t wrong with his own self-diagnosis, they have even begun to coexist in his very cells. He’s still carrying the poisons but they were no longer a danger to his own health. In fact, the very organs that were slowly breaking down due to years of the abuse have even been healed to peak condition.

He wonders if he’s dreaming. No one could possibly have healed him to this extent.

He throws his senses out with chakura to beyond the four walls of the room that he’s in. He tries to decipher if he’s now being held prisoner once again and if this is just another more comfortable cell.

He discovers that he’s in a large house with many rooms and beyond that, there’s a large forest filled with tall trees surrounding the place. He tries to look for any signs of life besides his own only to realise too late that he’s overused his chakura.

He falls unconscious once again.

________________________________________________

The next time he wakes up, he hears the sound of rain falling on the eaves of the roof and tapping on the glass window panes.

He detects that there is someone in the room with him and he tries not to tense up in alarm, pretending to still be unconscious. He doesn't even try to throw out his chakura in fear that the other would be able to detect it.

He strains his ears instead to listen to what the person might be up to.

The sound of fingers flipping through paper clues him in to the idea that the person might be reading something.

‘Reading? What’s this person doing reading in here with me? Is he looking at my medical chart in order to think of what to experiment on with my body?’ the thoughts float through his panicked mind.

His fears prove unfounded as the person proceeds to spend the next two hours just sitting there flipping through pages of a book, he decides, and occasionally sipping on a cup of tea; he smells the comforting scent of green tea from where he was lying on the bed.

Lowering his sense of vigilance, he decides he’d like to know more about the other. So far the stranger didn’t seem to have any ill-intentions towards him and he might even be the healer who had healed him.

He spends the rest of the next two months pretending to be unconscious while he observes the man called, ‘Severus’. The man who had rescued him.

____________________________________________________

He listens in to all the conversations between the man and his raven.

He learns bits and pieces about who they are and why they’ve saved him. He doesn’t quite know what they mean by a ‘fortuitous encounter’ and how he could be of any help to them. Everyone else in the village had deemed him as being a disgrace and a shame to the community, so to be looked at as something ‘fortuitous’ seems somewhat absurd.

He learns that the man is someone called a ‘wizard’ and that he has powers beyond imagining. He had even used those powers to save him, someone who had already been knocking on death's door before he had been rescued.

He hears about the world of the summons and that many of them regard this man as their friend and kin.

They appear sometimes, the different animal summons. They poof out in clouds of smoke to visit the man on a frequent basis from their own pocket dimensions. They come in all shapes and sizes, young or old, furry or scaly, eight legged or none, but the one thing they have in common is that they all treat the man as their own. They show him affection the same way they do one of their own and the man responds in kind, offering solutions to their problems with his power and his miraculous potions.

Many weeks in, he wakes up one morning and detects that the man is in the kitchen with the raven, Kazu, and a small koi-summon that swims lazily around in a glass bowl by the kitchen shelves.

“How long are you going to wait for him to wake up?” the fish summon asks, blowing colorful chakura bubbles up teasingly at the man.

“I never give up on a patient,” the man says simply to the koi and proceeds to sip his morning green tea.

The boy suddenly thinks to himself, ‘I want to be there. I want to meet him,’ and he opens his eyes for the first time since he’s run away from the village.

_____________________________________________________

Severus is in the kitchen one morning, having breakfast and conversing with one of the visiting koi summon when he hears the sound of pattering feet running swiftly towards the kitchen.

He looks up and sees his green haired patient standing at the threshold of the kitchen, dressed only in his simple white healing robe.

The boy smiles tentatively at him and shyly asks, “Can I have some green tea?”

And that is how Severus Snape meets his adopted brother, Shiki.

______________________________________________________

*Snape’s Family-Recipe Green Tea* by Snape Shiki

-Fresh roasted green tea (15 g)
-Ever-Spring water (50 ml)
-Lots of love