Chapter 27: 1-17: Revelation

Disclaimer: Being neither British nor Japanese, it should therefore come as no surprise that I own neither Harry Potter nor Naruto, nor anything from their respective franchises.

Once the usual pleasantries had been exchanged, and his guest seated, Professor Dumbledore gave Iruka a knowing smile. "So, Professor, I asked you here because I hoped that we might discuss your background as a child soldier."

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Iruka tensed, then visibly relaxed after a second of running several escape/combat scenarios through his head; it was obvious that none would be necessary. "I take it I should have spent more time learning how to detect and counter eavesdropping spells?"

Dumbledore nodded. "I must confess to having engaged in something of a persistent campaign of surveillance upon you since you began meeting with Messrs. Potter and Longbottom and Ms. Granger." At a dark look from Iruka, he quickly continued in a placating tone. "I myself have heard very little of your conversations, rather trusting to the judgement and discretion of one of my predecessors." Here, he gestured to a nearby portrait of a witch, labeled 'Dilys Derwent, Headmistress 1741-1768', the occupant of which nodded to Iruka with a warm and approving smile. "Prior to her tenure as Headmistress here, Dilys was a Healer at St. Mungo's, and is thus well-acquainted with the handling of confidential and personal information."

The Headmaster's face became stern. "You must understand that when you first came here, you had very little in the way of character references, for good or ill. Given both Harry Potter's publicly-expected arrival and the far-less-public plan to relocate the Stone here for safekeeping, I'm sure you can see why I felt the need for caution. Your actions at Halloween eased my fears somewhat, as you risked one of your secrets for the sake of a student. I questioned the portraits in the relevant corridors, you see, to check whether you had made any attempt to probe the forbidden corridor. Imagine my surprise, then, when they said that you had moved in ways heretofore thought impossible for a human being. Out of respect for your actions, I commanded the paintings to keep your rather extraordinary mobility a secret."

"My concern was again prompted when you took such a direct interest in Mr. Potter, as well as two other first-year Gryffindors. Surely you can understand why I felt the need to make certain that nothing... inappropriate was occurring. What little I heard was well within acceptable boundaries, and Dilys has assured me without sharing any details that your subsequent meetings have remained so."

"Beyond that, I have managed to get a look inside your rather remarkable configuration of the Room of Requirement - a truly marvelous secret of Hogwarts, would you not agree? - but I can only assume that your specifications for the Room included privacy, as the listening charms I placed proved ineffective. Assuming that we do not find ourselves irreconcileably at odds, I should very much like to see at some point what form of training and exercise the four of you take part in. Regardless, you have throughout this year demonstrated by word and deed that you place the welfare of your students first and foremost; you have also been honest in all regards save for the concealment of your background and capabilities, something for which I cannot truly blame you."

"And finally yes, I did place a listening charm near Mister Potter's bed, though I have since cancelled it. Your behavior at Halloween was my first indication that you had been a soldier of some sort, but I have been trying to piece together the puzzle that is Iruka Umino throughout this year. My instinct told me that your conversation with young Harry would provide the missing piece that would allow the others to make a coherent whole, and your account of your history proved said instinct accurate. I felt that with that revelation, it would be best to clear the air between us; this year's events have proven that you could be a potent and valuable ally and comrade in what I fear is an inevitably coming struggle against Lord Voldemort and his followers."

Iruka nodded. "I certainly can't fault you for your caution; I'd have been at least as suspicious as you were and probably a lot nosier. As you figured out, I'm a professional soldier; the terms we use are 'shinobi' and 'ninja'. I've found that these terms apply to a group of people from Japanese history, but those ninja honestly only bear the vaguest resemblance to what I am. They were mostly spies and saboteurs; their skills were focused far more on disguise and infiltration than on combat. We are more combat-oriented, though naturally there are those who specialize in various areas both combat-related and not. These historical ninja were also, at least as far as the Muggle sources I found them in could tell me, unable to use magic or other similar abilities."

"Something that I've kept from almost everyone in Britain is that Hi no Kuni is, as far as I can discern, not in this world. It's part of a continent we know as the Elemental Nations, with many countries of various sizes, and no part of the maps or globes I've looked at shows anything familiar. My best guess, and Pandora and Xeno have reached the same conclusion, is that I'm somehow from another world."

Dumbledore blinked. "Well, I suppose that would explain why you've had so much difficulty in finding your way home. There are fanciful tales of travel between alternate worlds, but to my knowledge you are the first confirmed case of this. If you and Pandora agree, and if I can somehow find time to do so, I would very much like to take a thorough new look through your work thus far, this time in light of this information."

Iruka shrugged. "I'll ask Pandora, though I'm sure she'll be fine with it. Her concept won't be able to get me home, but I'm still holding out hope that some other method will come up that could work. Regardless, you should probably know a bit more about shinobi, our role in our world, and our history..."

He proceeded to give Professor Dumbledore an explanation very similar to the one he'd given Xeno and Pandora when they were considering Luna's request to train with him. As with the Lovegoods, he painted an honest but still biased picture, focusing on the more positive and more recent aspects of shinobi life rather than uglier parts like ANBU and ROOT. Iruka also shared a couple of the more positive anecdotes from his own career, to contrast the darker and bloodier tales the man had apparently heard from his conversation with Harry.

"To be honest, I'd been considering talking to you about all of this anyway after the events last Thursday night. I went into that room expecting a fight, and yet Quirrell caught me by surprise and had me incapacitated with frankly humiliating ease. If my students are going to be in danger from wizards again, and it certainly seems like they will be, I need to be able to protect them. To do that, I need to learn more about how wizards fight, and how to fight against them. Since you already know about my background and will likely soon see more my capabilities, I was hoping I might be able to ask you for help."

The aged wizard nodded with a smile. "If the opportunity presents itself, I would be happy to assist you in that regard, though my various responsibilities may make such occasions rarer than you would prefer. Filius Flitwick would be an excellent person to approach in this matter, should you be willing to expand your circle of trust to include him; having known the man for decades, I can vouch for both his character and ability."

"While your past history may be rather more... colorful than my other staff, the context you've provided shows that you have spent much of your adult life in the service of others, whether that be by protecting or by teaching." The Headmaster smiled broadly, his eyes twinkling brightly behind his half-moon spectacles. "I would be happy to see you continuing to teach here at Hogwarts, and would be very pleased if you would call me Albus."

"I'd be happy to stay here, Albus," the chuunin replied with a grin, "and please, call me Iruka."

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All three members of S.E.N. returned to their classes on Monday, pushing aside thoughts of the previous week's adventure while they completed their exams. A few more days passed before Harry and Neville were both declared fit for vigorous activity by Madam Pomfrey, and so it was that they travelled to their training room on Saturday. Upon entering, they were clearly startled to see someone familiar standing beside the teacher they expected.

"Headmaster Dumbledore? What are you doing here?" Hermione blurted out her question before a look of embarassment came over her face. "I'm sorry Professor, I was just-"

A raised hand and gentle smile from the venerable mage halted her babbled apology. "It is quite all right, Ms. Granger. I suppose it must come as something of a surprise to the three of you to find me here, but Professor Umino was kind enough to allow me to witness one of your training sessions. Please, carry on as if I were not present."

At a confirming nod from Iruka, the three first-years did as asked. "They're just changing into their exercise clothes," he explained to his guest as they waited, "since they'll need to be able to move freely without their clothing binding, catching on things, or exposing more than it should."

"Sensible." The Headmaster nodded. "I note that your clothing is the same as that which you wore last Thursday night; I take it that this is your official uniform?"

"That's essentially right. The only part of this outfit that is strictly part of my duty uniform is this." Iruka pointed to his hitai-ate. "Every shinobi is given one when they first graduate, as a symbol that they are now a ninja. The engraved symbol differs for each village, generally a symbol or stylized version of whatever the village is named for: A leaf for the Village Hidden in the Leaves, a musical note for Sound, and the like. Vests like this one are given out when a shinobi earns a promotion from genin, the lowest rank, to chuunin, the intermediate rank. Everything else I'm wearing is essentially the basic standard garb for a Konoha ninja; plenty of us wear this outfit on duty, sometimes with slight variations, but many choose to wear clothes that better suit their own personal fighting style and fashion sense."

By this time his students had begun emerging from their locker rooms, so Iruka began their lesson as usual while Dumbledore took a seat in a conjured armchair at the edge of the vestibule.

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This, Albus felt, was truly Iruka's element. He watched as the younger wizard - no, ninja, he corrected himself - led his students through various physical exercises interspersed with periods of rest and meditation and what was clearly some form of martial arts routine. All the while, he kept up a constant stream of encouragement, praise, and information (the lattermost of which Albus listened to avidly). While he was certain that the younger man would handle a full-sized class of children differently, his methods here still showed the benefits of many years of teaching the material involved.

All three students were demonstrating noticeably greater strength, agility, and endurance than many of their peers could boast. Given that this was after only a matter of months, Albus could only assume that if they kept up their training through to graduation, they would be in fantastic physical shape and likely enjoy particularly good health as a result. A part of him also noted that such speed, stamina, and coordination would be tremendous assets in a duel, and that all three could likely become truly fearsome combatants in the years to come. Harry would stand in much better stead to face Voldemort and his followers as a result of this training, with two powerful and devoted allies by his side as well if things continued on their present heading. And yet, in spite of training for battle, all three children were clearly retaining their youthful (why did Iruka just cringe?) innocence and their ability to love and care for others. It had been a long time since the aging warlock had felt so optimistic about their society's future.

Before the A/N, I wanted to give a bit of insight into Dumbledore's character in this fic, specifically how he settled on the third-floor obstacle course protecting the Stone. I'd have put it in the story proper, but unfortunately Dumbledore isn't sufficiently self-aware to recognize what's going on and nobody else has sufficient access to the inside of his head.

If you're anything like me, you've occasionally had an idea that you absolutely loved. It was amazing and brilliant and ingenious and all those other wonderful things. Then you tried to actually put that idea into action, and started running into little problems here and there, things you didn't think about when you first came up with it. You did other things that weren't exactly ideal, but you needed to do things that way to make use of your great idea. Eventually, a clever initial idea was surrounded by a shell of adaptations that were not clever.

Dumbledore started from the idea of hiding the Stone in the Mirror of Erised as he described, and it was a fairly clever idea, but he fixated on that idea as the solution to protecting the Stone and built everything else around it. There were almost certainly ways to keep the Stone safe that were more secure, less labor-intensive / resource-intensive, less dangerous to students, etc., but Dumbledore was too caught up in how clever his defense was and failed to notice when he passed the point when it would have been more practical to scrap the entire concept and take a different approach. His hubris and his difficulty acknowledging that other people might have better ideas and/or information than he does certainly didn't help, either.

A/N: First off, FYI, I've added some more entries to last chapter's Omake section.

Anyway, short chapter, I know. They'll start getting longer going forward, though a couple will still dip back to a similar length.

Fic Recommendation: "Rhymes with Shmaliens" by BovinePirate - It has Xander Harris meeting Jack O'Neil. Let the snarking begin!

Posted 11 March 2018

Current WIP Chapter: 53

Updated 25 April 2018

Current WIP Chapter: 58

Updated 1 December 2019: Character-specific dividers