Chapter 1
1.
Obito Uchiha dies with wishes of atonement on his tongue.
Severus Snape is born screaming.
2.
The first years were the hardest, he wasn’t fully conscious yet, stuck in a limbo of pure land and existence. It wasn’t until his 3rd year he fully registered his memories. He remembers dying, the look in his -best friend, enemy, comrade- rival’s matching red eye when he saw Obito for the first time after his “death”. He remembers Rin, her eyes, her smile, everything that made him love her enough to conquer the world to see again.
He aches. He knows logically, that with the seal in effect there was no escaping his- no Madara’s cause, but he can’t help but think of the lives he’s ruined. His teachers, his clans (he tries not to remember the sick sort of satisfaction he had felt as he watched the elders die, the utter pride from stealing their eyes), hell, he started an entire shinobi war! This must be a sick sort of karma, being reborn as Severus with a deadbeat dad and a frail, submissive mother instead of passing on with Rin.
He looks down at his tiny hands that don’t hold as much of a callus, innocent enough to never have felt the consistency of blood, and can’t help the urge to cry. This body is small, slightly underweight from his father’s neglect but thankfully his neglect has not turned to abuse (yet). That does not stop the fact that this body feels wrong like a henge instead of anything close to natural. He holds his childish hormones in with the familiar whispers of ‘crybaby’ trickling into his ear. Trying to distract himself, he gives in to the urge to mold his charka. He can’t help his gasp as he feels the water-like consistency instead of his usual solid, constructible chakra. The ma- boy tries again, hoping it was a fluke, but he can’t grasp the fluid-natured energy no matter how much he tries.
He can't help it this time, he’s under too much strain, without chakra, armed with only a child’s body he lets himself shudder under the weight of his situation. He weeps at the injustice of it all. He died! He should be in the pure lands with Minato-sensei, Kushina, Granny, and Rin. Hell, he wouldn’t even mind waiting for Kakashi to join them before passing! Now he's in a totally different world full of civilians (Civilians of all things!) with weird chakra and no way back home.
What the hell is he supposed to do here? The entire world seems like a fairytale. No war, no conflict, just civilians living their perfectly civilian lives, it's Itachi’s wet dream. He hates it. Obito was born and bred for conflict, for the adrenaline that comes with clashes of kunai and fiery Jutsu. They have none of that here. Obito falls.
Obit- Severus (He hates his new name) is 6 years old and bitter. He was never a prodigy, he learned much better with his hands and his memory is not the best the Uchiha clan has to offer, but even he feels that this world’s school system moves too slowly. The math is easy and the writing formats are similar enough to his old world, history is the only subject that could attempt to phase him, but that is easy enough once he tries to memorize it by comparing it to Konoha’s history.
Everything in this world is too easy. Need answers? Use the library that's full of information at your service. Need transportation? Get on a bus. While he has to admit that the technology is fascinating and he would kill to pick the inventor's brain, sometimes he hates it. There's nothing to do, everything in this world is already done.
So instead, he learns. He spends hours upon hours in the public library, searching for everything from literature to fantasy. He learns that this world is not as conflict-free as he believed, they've had two ‘world wars’, (which he guesses are the equivalent of Shinobi wars) both bloody enough that a Kiri-nin would approve. The only difference he could see is that this worlds wars are far more widespread and they don’t recruit anyone under the ‘legal adult age’ no matter how prodigal (He thinks of Itachi and how his madness grasped onto the concept of peace at such a young age, thinks of Kakashi and how he watched him break at the memorial stone rubbing his hands raw from the other side of his Sharingan and imagines what could have been).
Obito drifts, half reminiscing and half researching, allows himself to bask in the zero expectations this world gives children. The most that are expected of him is grades above a B! Now, this doesn’t mean he grows compliant, (Sometimes he doubts Uchihas can grow compliant) he tries to control his new chakra and finds that instead of constructing and molding, his energy now is more focused on willpower and desire. His energy is like a puppy eager to please, throw it a bone, and have it return it for him. He doesn’t use it too often, his mother watches him too much to do so, but with his magic allowing him to do imitations of low-rank jutsus, he’s back at genin level and terribly satisfied.
4.
Obito Uchiha was an orphan from birth. His father died in a battle against Kumo-nin, and his mother died in childbirth. He grew up with his Grandma until she died shortly after he was taken by Madara.
Severus Snape has an apathetic father but he also has a mother who loves him wholeheartedly. Obito will admit, he didn’t like her at first. No matter how much she unconditionally loves him, she is weak. Without a backbone, letting his trashy father walk all over her. After three years of observing her, he pities her. From what he can understand she came from this world's equivalent of a clan and got disowned for marrying his father, ignorant to the abuse she would receive from him. She cannot leave now, even if she could scrape up the funds to pay for both of them to live. In this country, divorcing a marriage is a scandal and looked down upon. Her former clan will not allow it, even disowned as she is.
Despite this, she isn’t too bad of a mother. She keeps him fed and tries to shield him away from his father. She is quite like a ghost in her own house, weary and tired and he can’t help but feel an inkling of respect for her not to give up yet. He doesn't love her, not in the way a child should love their mother, but he will admit he feels some kind of affection towards her.
He allows her to tell him stories during late nights where she can speak freely. She quietly tells him of the Prince family with a light in her eyes that he rarely sees in the day. His mother has 2 sisters, the eldest being the heir and the youngest an aspiring scholar.
“Quinten was very smart, much smarter than me anyway, even being the youngest,” she murmured to him, he laughed at that, though not unkindly.
She tells him of the hidden community full of “The Noble Families' ' (clan compounds he wishes to correct) that rarely talked to the outside world. She speaks about bias that he knows all too well, this time though it's split into pureblood and muggle-born instead of clan children vs civilian raised. How, when she married an outsider “A muggle,” she calls him, she was thrown out. He discovers that all those in the community have chakra, though they call it “Magic”.
“Every magical child, no matter where in England, receives a Hogwarts letter.” She smiles at him when she says it, a happy smile he doesn’t think he can ever recall being on her face. A school. A purpose, something inside of him calls. Quietly, just a tiny shred in the back of his mind, he allows himself to hope.
‘I guess this world is a little bit bigger than I expected’ he can't help but think.
5.
He is 9 and has read every book his mother has on magic. Magic is nothing like chakra. Chakra requires control and restraint, magic needs will and imagination. Instead of hand signs, magical use wands (HAHA wands!) as a conductor and his own use of wandless magic is the parallel of shinobis doing signless Jutsu, oops. They don't use any sort of bodily combat outside of the foolish dueling sport (Who the hell decided it was okay to turn away from the enemy?) and using taijutsu or martial arts is seen as ‘unsportsmanlike’ and ‘weak’!
That little flame of hope is rapidly diminishing as he reads what exactly the school is like. The Hogwarts guidebook is a bunch of propaganda and he can practically feel the conditioning inside of it as he tosses it aside, unread. The etiquette books were useful, the traditions and customs of the wizarding world are much different than the Shinobi, but he was not tossed from the Uchiha clan for a lack of manners and he learned it quickly. The only truly interesting thing in her stack of books is the textbooks.
The magic theory is easy, he's been doing transfigure and wandless magic since he was 6, but the ruins and magical animals catch his attention. Wizarding ruins, from what he can tell, are superior to even the Uzumaki at non-combat seals. While he admittedly doesn't know much fuinjutsu, one does not stay around during one of Minato and Kushina’s debates without picking some things up.
Magical animals on the other hand remind him of a bizarre version of summoning animals. It’s fascinating, the selection of magical animals, not to mention real-life god damn dragons. It’s any Uchiha’s dream, a bloodthirsty fire-breathing dragon. Even the thought of it gets him giddy in a way only arson can.
He continues school friendless but at the top of his class, and can't help but long for time to move faster. For all he is learning and experimenting, he wants to see the wizarding world. He needs to know it, every crack, hole, and corner, not hear false praise sung about it. Obito needs to know its faults and wants to know if it’s worth it. (Because for all Konoha provided for him, it still made him a killer at 12)
You must understand, Obito didn’t accept Madara’s offer just to see Rin again (though it was a large contributor). He did it because, despite Konoha’s love to preach itself as the nicest village, the fair village, it is still run by a military dictatorship. It’s still the same Konoha that treated Jinchuriki like trash and ordered a 13-year-old to kill his entire clan, his family. Despite his loyalty to Konoha, it was never his home, he can’t help but think his defect was inevitable, Rin’s death only severed his last connection.
So Obito has to wonder, what the catch is to this seemingly perfect world?
He is 10 when his new life goes downhill. He should have really expected it. His father is like an afterthought in his life. There, but not relevant aside from the occasional hits and bruises. For all it is degrading to the shinobi inside of him, he lets the man beat him. One thing he learned quickly is that this world is against killing. He doesn't want to end his new life before it has begun. Other than to share words meant to hurt that he was trained against reacting to, his father is mostly absent from home, usually at work or drunk at bars. Unfortunately for Obito, this also meant he wasn’t expecting the burly man to see him practicing magic.
“BOY!” The man roared, taking quick strides to the rushing boy, “What did I say about doing that freakish shit!”
His instincts were practically screaming at him, bared teeth and hungry for blood and he had to dig his nails into his bloody palms to restrain himself from killing the man when the back of his palm made contact with his face, making a ‘slap’ sound in the quiet room. His magic flared and crackled before he could stop it, the air became heavy with saturation, making the man take an instinctive step back. The seething glint in his eyes now held an almost animalistic fear as he felt the pressure bare down on him.
“Get out of this house.” The command was quiet, quieter than Obito’s ever heard him and he couldn't help but let out a stupid ‘what?’.
“I said, get the hell outta this house, right now!” This time it was much louder and Obito complied quickly but not without thinking of all the possible ways he could stick a kunai down his throat. He rages quietly as he passes his mother's huddled figure in the hallway and forces a strained smile when she mouths ‘sorry’ to him.
It wasn’t hard for him to find a place to camp out in the local park. He pretends he was still a screw-hardy genin during the simulations they used to do in the forbidden forest while he wills his magic to his legs to jump up on a sturdy branch. He doesn’t hate his father, (Uchiha's hatred burns bright and doesn’t flicker until the target is dead) he thinks of him more as a pebble in his stroll or a fire ant that bites his feet, somewhat indifferent but he’ll still kick the pebble and crush the ant. For all that Obito wishes for redemption, he is not good enough of a man to let people walk all over him.
He watches people from up in his tree and can’t help the way his breath hitches as he spots a familiar color of hair. The girl’s hair is as red as flames and reminds him so much of a ramen-loving Uzumaki, he can’t breathe. That doesn't even include her smile that steers him towards thoughts of a lost teammate. She is mounted on a sky blue bike without a helmet and when she steers from her path hitting a curb that threatens to bump her off, despite his better judgment he really can’t help himself.
He really, really shouldn’t. Obito has been alone for much too long in both lives, lost way too much to allow his dried heart to help anybody without reason. But she’s not just anybody, he's been in this world for 10 years without an ounce of anything close to familiar so he doesn’t stop his already moving body from dashing towards her.
He won't reach her in time. Obito is fast compared to the people in this world, but his underweight and sore body can only handle so much speed without cracking under the pressure. He is left with two options, leave her to fall and potentially crack open her skull, or use his magic. It wasn’t really a conscious decision or thought, -Kushina, RIN NO!- and his magic reacted pulling the moving bike from the ground lifting it midair as the girl let out a shriek. She looks like she's about to cry but Obito isn’t really paying attention to that, still in a fight or flight trance that he hasn’t felt since before. So instead he wordlessly makes the girl and bike gently reach the ground before calling out.
“Are you okay?”
“What the hell was that!”
“Oh.” As though realizing what the hell he just did, his eyes widen to the point that his onyx pupil looks small, and he sort of just gapes at them both. Fuck. He just used nonverbal wandless magic, in public. In front of muggles. He can’t help but think he must have gone crazy. He remembers a time where, as Tobi, he could stand idle as Deidara massacred hundreds and just now, he just saved a little girl from an injury that was not even guaranteed to kill her on a whim because she looks like someone he hasn’t thought of about in years.
He’s gone soft, the same kind of soft he used to sneer at Itachi for possessing. He thought he was in control, now it's just showing how much he’s steered off of his path. The worst part is that he doesn’t hate it either. All that he was born in this world never felt like his home, too civilian, too peaceful. Now though, he is really realizing that right now, he’s no different than them. Obito is now a civilian in peacetime, even worse, he’s a child! Kakashi is probably laughing at him right now for this.
“OH!? What the hell do you mean oh?!”
But first, What the hell is he gonna do about this? Now that he’s standing next to her he can feel the magic radiating off of her, unrestrained and wild. He could tell her about magic, but does he really want to be the one to explain it to her? No. Is she gonna let him go before he does? Most likely not. Ah, fuck it.
“It's magic-”
“WHAT THE HELL IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN!!'' The girl is all but screaming in his face now. He takes back what he said about her being anything like Rin, this girl is practically a miniature Kushina.
“Be quiet!” Obito whisper-yelled as eyes turned towards them, “Look, we can’t do this right next to other people, just follow me and I’ll explain.”
She shoots him a suspicious look that he dutifully ignores before taking his outstretched hand. The moments spent guiding her towards a quiet place are filled with awkward silence as he inwardly panics. How is he supposed to explain magic without sounding crazy enough to get sent to a mental hospital?
“Okay we’re alone, now tell me how you did that crazy levitation thingy!” She babbled, waving her hands around. He can’t help but send her an incredulous look. Is she supposed to be so excited about this? He can’t say he spends much time around other children but he thought she’d be scared.
“Look, before I tell you, you can’t tell other people about what I can do.” He tries to persuade. “It’d get me in a lot of trouble, understand?”
The girl grumbles about not telling her sister but caves letting out a drawn-out ‘yess’. He sighs before he starts to explain.
“The wizarding community is small, only around 8% of people in England are magical. What I did was wandless magic,”
The redhead who has been gazing at him with disbelieving eyes, let out a small yelp, before staring transfixed at the small twig that he transfigured into a small toad, letting out bellowing croaks.
“powered on my desire to stop you from falling.” She was gaping at him now, opening and closing her mouth as though she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. He quietly waits for her to collect herself, unsurely rubbing the back of his neck. How much is he supposed to tell her? He imagines that he should tell her that she herself is a witch, but that would make this more complicated than needed. He should just wait for her to get her Hogwarts lette-
“Can I be a wizard?” And she just took the choice away from him. Gazing down into her twinkling eyes, so much like a certain Jinchuriki’s, he winces at the thought of lying. He should leave, there’s still a huge chance of him getting caught for underage magic. The girl will be fine, a little sad sure, but she’ll get her letter soon enough. So why are his feet glued to the ground? Letting out a loud groan, he crouched until he was at eye level with her unnaturally green orbs.
“You have magic, you’ll probably get a letter from Hogwarts.” He finally gives. He can’t say it wasn’t worth it when he basks in the delighted laugh she lets out.
Forget soft, he’s practically a liquid now! Can’t even lie to a little kid, hah, he’s screwed.
“Wait, Hogwarts?”
“It’s technically Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, but it’s basically a private school for learning to control your magic. Everyone in England that has magic gets a letter on their 11th birthday to register,” Subtly watching her face turn to a thoughtful frown he lets the toad-turned-twig fall to the ground.
“Oi, the sun’s setting. Go home.” He turns away from the cross-legged girl, stuffing his hands in his pocket before taking strides towards the park’s exit.
“Hey wait!” Shifting, he turns his head back to her with a questioning hum. “What’s your name?”
“..Severus Snape, you?”
“Lily Evans and don’t you forget it!” Lily shouted with a pointed finger.
“Naruto Uzumaki, the next Hokage, and don’t you forget it dattebayo!”
For a moment he could only stare wide-eyed as their images overlap before bending over with an airy chuckle.
“I won’t!”