Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Naruto. Or any random song lyrics that I sometimes change into sentences.

Warnings: hmm hmm Brace yourself…SLASH, Suicidal thoughts, Pretty Dark thoughts/actions/story Maybe graphic War/Death, at least in Harry's memories, Almost Insanity, Maybe Character death(definite past character death), Messed up Naruto timeline, swearing ummm…Probably some more later…

Pairings: Hmmm…Well, main pairing will be Slash, since I'm better at writing that. I think it will be Harry/Naruto AND Harry/Sasuke. Could be a bit of Naruto/Sasuke but not sure. Other pairings…I don't have any preference at the moment. Drop me a line if you have any ideas…

IMPORTANT: To make this fit, I've changed a large chunk of canon. Sasuke DIDN'T go with Snake man, though it was a near miss, and instead trained with…someone I haven't thought of yet. Naruto and Sakura still trained as they did in the manga, so team 7 was split for a long time. They're all back in Konoha now, but everything's not peachy. This means Sai hasn't appeared, and I'm not sure what to do about Akatsuki yet. Also, I haven't seen a lot of the anime or read a lot of the manga, and no, I haven't read much Naruto fanfiction either (except xovers). I've read/ seen enough of the early Naruto to know the basics; I've read all the character profiles/story arcs etc on Wikipedia and other websites. This means, I might need to ask you guys for help with some things, especially battle, and any pointers/ideas etc, will be welcomed and appreciated.

On the HP side of things, Half Blood Prince never happened, because I wouldn't be able to fit in the end of the war with the age I want him to be. However, Dumbledore is dead, along with quite a few other canon characters(please don't kill me…). Anyone who's read anything else I've written will know that I write better with angst. But as a general rule, I'm a sucker for a happy ending. In this however, there's no promises. It's looking pretty dark at the moment…

But since I'm probably boring you, if you've got the time tell me what you think/ if anything is seriously wrong/ if I have amazingly bad grammar/ if it's amazingly bad full stop. Or, you know, you could tell me what you like… : D

The Astronomy Tower, Hogwarts, Scotland, June 12th, 1998, 12:45pm

He watches. It is a favourite pastime of his these days, to just stare out of the window as children run and laugh and play. They look so happy, so carefree, as if the last couple of years haven't happened. Sometimes, Harry wishes he could join them, thinks that he'd give anything to be like that, to live one day in their shoes. Other days he hates them. Hates them for forgetting things that no one should ever have to see, hates them for moving on, when his every moment, waking or sleeping, is fixed firmly in the past. They are just children, he tells himself, when this resentment stirs within. Yet they are not much younger than he, and Harry himself is not yet considered an adult by law, though he is denied nothing and treated with a reverence and respect that borders on fear.

He watches, and it is no longer nameless, blurred faces he sees, but himself and Ron and Hermione, walking the path to Hagrids hut, throwing stones to the giant Squid, lazing in the brilliant sunlight. He sees a girl with warm brown eyes, and bushy hair, holding the hand of a tall, gangly red head. He sees them kiss and laugh and joke and bicker. And then all merges into red vision and screaming, and cool air against oh so pale skin. All is lost to this new sense of freedom, this brilliant exit, as the breath is stolen from his lungs and his eyes water.

And then he sees a boy.

He's small and delicate, with the barest hint of a tan. Ebony black hair, tinted red in the sunlight, curls against neck and ears, messy and wild. It matches the eyes, eyes of the deepest, feral green which flash brightly with mischief and the deep joy of someone who is happy to just be alive. Red lips are stretched wildly in a captivating smile, a sight which makes his stomach twist because it's so familiar and yet he just can't place it. But the beckoning hand is so inviting and he soars towards it, arms outstretched, ready to dive inside this beautiful boy, to melt into his skin and swim through his veins and merge with this being who is everything he can never be.

And as the first, true smile in months stretches across his face, a wild laugh trying to escape from his throat, his eyes open involuntarily. And as the ground rushes up to meet him, he doesn't even have time to scream.

A Field, Devon, England, Same Day, 16:45pm

Alastor Moody doesn't fit with his surroundings. He somehow seems to clash with the green of the fields, the features of the forest, and the glaringly hot sun. A weathered bowler hat rests beside him on the grass, leaving a rolling, electric eye exposed to any who could be watching. Yet Moody surrounds himself with a cage of wards, so he knows if so much as an ant comes close. Constant vigilance! It's kept him alive, even if it couldn't save his eye, or his leg, or that chunk out of his nose. Constant vigilance. He taught the boy that much, taught him everything he knew about war. It's only now that Mad Eye realises that no one thought to teach him about life.

It's been a long time since he's sat in this place, sat and thought over past decisions. He learnt early on in auror training that second guesses only lead to insecurity, which leads to mistakes, which eventually leads to death. He learnt to take his gut instinct, to trust that he knew how to take care of those he directed. Yet right now, he can't help but wonder if he's made the right decision, can't help but wonder whether it was his decision to make, for who is he to send the boy away? He's already failed the kid enough, helped make him into what he is. So what right does he have to send him away, to fob him off on friends on another continent? To throw him away like a failed experiment and do his best to forget? He owes Harry more than that, he knows, but he's finally accepted that he's done his best, that it is beyond his ability to fix the boy he helped to break.

And maybe this will solve nothing, but Harry is a soldier in a school of children, a warrior with more experience and more power than those who are trying, and failing, to teach him to integrate into a society that both loves and fears him. So where else can he be sent, but a place where children are brought up to be weapons, where life is based on fighting and power? There are no ghosts that reside there, no enemies strong enough to follow him across the water, and there is no name to live up to, and no past if he chooses to forget it. It will be Harry's new beginning, whether the boy likes it or not!

Moody knows this is the last choice he'll ever make for Harry, that this means he is relinquishing control of him to people who might not be trusted not to use him, who might not be able to handle a disillusioned , and apparently suicidal, saviour. But if sending Harry to Konohagakure makes the boy give a damn about something, then Moody will consider the idea a success. And maybe, he'll start to forgive himself.

Konoha, Land of Fire, General vicinity of Japan,

The Fifth Hokage eats a bowl of ramen, while trying to recall why exactly she agreed to Alastor's request. The man is an old friend, yet with Orochimaru up to no good there is no time to waste. It doesn't help that Naruto is no closer to being accepted by the village, and that Sasuke is growing ever further away from Team 7. They were lucky that they had managed to keep Sasuke in Konoha after the attack two and a half years ago, when he was so close to leaving. They had been lucky that something had held him back, but Tsunade gets the feeling that that luck is running out.

She doesn't know much about the kid. His name is Harry, sure, and he's almost 17. Grew up without a family or love, trained to be a weapon, lost all his friends to a war and not adjusting well to peace. She's not sure how she can help. But she owes Moody from way back, so if this is what he wants in repayment she'll gladly accept.

She wonders whether he'll be more like Sasuke or Naruto, though of course he might be nothing like either of them. All three are orphans with messed up childhoods, all three have expectations heaped upon them. None of them are ordinary. It will be best to ask Naruto to look out for him, she decides, since the kid (though he's 16 now) needs all the friends he can get, and can be trusted to look after a stranger. She hopes.

Well, he'll be coming in a day, so with a sigh she gets up and runs her speech through her head. Addressing the council is always tedious, especially with a bunch of morons like Danzo questioning every decision she makes. But this Harry Potter is powerful, Alastor had told her, and skilled, and if anything will persuade the council it is that.

At times like this, Konoha needs all the help it can get.

Hospital Wing, Hogwarts, June 13th, 13:34pm

He wakes up a day later, his muscles aching and his pulse like a drum beat in his head. He doesn't need to look around to know where he is, having spent so much time in the Hospital Wing that he recognises the sterile vibe immediately. He relaxes and sighs and wonders how he got there. He opens his eyes, squinting to adjust to the light, and once again thanks whatever deity exists for the production of the eye correcting potion. He reaches out and grabs the glass of water, pouring the cool, smooth liquid down his throat. Then he sits up suddenly, chocking and spluttering as the water goes down the wrong way. Quickly looking around the room to make sure no one witnessed his embarrassing lack of composure, Harry glares at the glass, as if it is the sole reason for all his problems.

Finally, he lies back down, and tries to remember why he hurts. He doesn't hear the door open as he searches his mind. And in his memories he finds nothing useful. He was sat on the astronomy tower, he knows, but past that he sees nothing but flashes of ground coming closer and ghosts from the past.

"Harry?"

He doesn't acknowledge the obvious concern in her voice, barely seems to notice her, as he dredges up memories of a freefall that has no beginning. He's falling, falling in this memory that is too vivid to be false, but he doesn't know why he's falling.

"Harry?!"

He doesn't remember being scared, until that last moment when his eyes opened. But he must have been, surely…

"Open your thrice damned eyes Potter and get your head out of your ass before I yank it out for you!!!"

He's rolling out of the bed before his brain fully processes the words, body crouched and hand grasping for a wand he's surprised to find isn't there. A brief flash of panic rushes through him, before his eyes go blank and his mind ventures to that cold place inside where morals don't exist and there is only kill or be killed.

"Harry stop that! Don't look at me like that! Calm down!"

He reaches deep inside for that reserve of magic that all wizards have but few know how to use. He does not stop to think that he is too weak, that this magic is what is holding him together; he only sees a threat before him. And All. Enemies. Must. DIE.

As the girl runs to the door it slams shut, and Harry rises from his position, advancing slowly, a predator secure in the knowledge that its prey is taking its final breaths. She is nothing more than his enemy, for in this mind state opponents have no names or faces, no families or futures (because it's so much easier to kill a bunch of cells than a pretty, screaming, crying girl who's getting married in a week and has just bought a new house and who constantly has a smile on her face because her future is bright and she knows it).

There's banging and shouting and the door knob rattles as people try to get in while the girl desperately tries to escape. Yet Harry's eyes are no longer fixed on the cowering nurse, though they still seem to stare blankly in her direction.

No, his eyes and mind are focused on horrors most cannot imagine, in a time that came and went so quickly, for all the lives that were lost within it. It is not the nurse he sees anymore, but an order member being tortured by the enemy, a death eater cowering before the anger of the Boy Who Lived, that tiny, precious little girl who was too young to have truly lived, and too young to die. The faces of the dead merge until there is no distinction between them, no features to the faces or ages to the voices, just pleading and screaming and accusing eyes.

And he grabs his head and yanks at his hair as he tries to shake free of the memories, tries to dislodge the little pixies of the past that cling to his brain and burrow into his eyeballs. He lets out a chocked sob, crumbles to his knees, not noticing as he they hit the stone or that the door has finally swung open. He leans forward so that his head is almost touching the ground, and lets out a long, keening wail. Nails dig into skin, and he either doesn't notice or just doesn't care.

He's not who he used to be, the spectators sigh to themselves. Yet they can't help but wonder if they ever truly knew him at all, if they ever knew the truth of this tragic hero, this living martyr. The dead eyes, and pale skin, the walk that tells of someone who has nowhere to go and nowhere to go back to, the hollow voice…all masterfully hide the youthful boy he once was. He's searched and searched for something to hold onto, and so has changed and morphed into whatever people asked of him, and now he lives inside someone he does not recognise, taking another look whenever he catches his reflection on accident.

No one steps forward to comfort him, as he breaks apart on cold stone flooring, tiny tendrils of sanity seeping from his pores and along the cracks in pretty red rivers. Maybe they don't know what to say (for who does at times like this?), maybe they don't care (because the war is over and Harry's no longer the happy little Gryffindor who would die for a stranger), and maybe, maybe they're just frozen (You know the feeling? You watch the car crash and hear the screaming, yet you. Just. Can't. Move.). The Professors shift nervously, thinking up excuses to be anywhere but there. And maybe you can't blame them, for they are trained to comfort home sick 11 year olds, and teenage girls crying over their boyfriends, not weapons who grew old before their time.

And they all heave a sigh of relief as the headmistress enters and ushers them out with impatient movements and a shake of her head. She crouches down, ignoring the pain in her back, and half carries, half drags the far too thin boy back onto the hospital bed. He doesn't move or make a sound, looking for all the world as if he had just died there on pristine white sheets, green eyes visible through slits. But he isn't dead, Minerva reminds herself with a harsh reprimand. She'd promised Albus she'd keep him alive, and so she will, whether that plan meets with Harry's approval or not!

She sinks wearily into a chair beside the bed, and carefully brushes a length of hair out of Harry's face, who doesn't acknowledge the cautious touch. She sighs, and resists the urge to draw him to her chest and hug him as if he is her own child. He is the closest to a son she has ever had, and she cannot bear to see him so.

"Oh Harry…How did we go so wrong?"