Chapter 2:

On his way to his mother's vault, Edmund was going through a myriad of emotions. Reading his mother's will and learning about the deceit of the Vulpis family patriarch, that forced her to marry his father, made him furious.

Edmund's grandfather had not only forced the marriage contract on Clair, but also killed off the rest of her family a day after the marriage. With a wand aimed at her little sister, Clair was forced to take an oath to never harm the Vulpis family. Later, her entire family was slaughtered by death eaters.

All this time, Altair was completely unaware of the will. Clair had carefully hidden a lot of her family scrolls and galleons in her vault. She had written about how the Vulpis family betrayed Whirlpool family's trust and took over all their business and land.

To say that Edmund was angry was an understatement. When he had finished reading the will, he lost control over his chakra and the goblins got a glimpse of what could happen to the boy's enemies.

His first goal was to slowly cripple the finances of the family while keeping a low profile. By the time he reached majority, the Vulpis family would be reduced to beggars.

By providing a few drops of blood, he opened the vault. There were a few storage scrolls that had various weapons stored in them. There were quite a lot of scrolls on various ninja arts and hand to hand combat techniques. Then he saw the Uzumaki swirl on the wall of the vault that made him feel oddly nostalgic. The Whirlpool family used the swirl as their family crest to remember where they came from. A quick accounts check informed him about the total amount of money he had.

After taking all the necessary scrolls and storing all of them in a bigger one out of the vault, he travelled back to his accounts manager and asked for help in increasing his wealth and bringing down the Vulpis family. After being asked why he wanted to do so, he reluctantly shared his story. At the end of it, the manager had a vicious grin on his face and readily agreed to help Edmund.

After a two hour discussion on counter investments against Vulpis family and an agreement on regularly emptying his trust vault into the Whirlpool vault and keeping the transaction hidden, Edmund thanked the manager and left the bank to buy other stuff for Hogwarts.

Five hours later, he approached his last destination in the alley to buy a wand.

The old man in the shop was oddly unnerving. Edmund kept his guard up.

"Ah, Mr. Vulpis, I've been expecting you. I still remember when you mother and father-," but looking at the menacing glare Edmund shot at him at the mention of his father, "-though I guess you don't want to hear about that."

Edmund nodded.

"So, which is your wand arm?"

"Ambidextrous."

"Ah! Alright." Quietly, he took the measurements but on the inside, he was itching to say something. The young heir was quite difficult!

"Mr. Vulpis, try this one... *CRASH* no definitely not... this one... uh, no. Please try to hold back on your magic. Try this one... *BOOM* yeah, please hold back a little more. I don't have infinite supply of wands. Try this one... uh, no. Agumenti... maybe, Mr. Vulpis try this one... "

After trying thirty wands and destroying twenty of them along with burning half the store, Edmund finally found a wand that fit him. Not that it really mattered. Wizards and witches were not extraordinary in terms of speed and strength, so, he could always dominate them by casting faster. It didn't matter if his wand was strong or not. Being able to use chakra, magic was a novelty for him. Although magic was useful in its own way, chakra had more offensive power.

Quickly putting the wand in his holster and paying generously for the damage as it was his father's money, he went to the Leakey Cauldron and flooed back to his manor.

Over the next few months, Edmund subtly got away from any kind of torture after he learned some genjutsu. Since no one else had chakra, dispelling even the weakest of genjutsu was beyond the wizards. His father had completely forgotten about punishing him and went on with his usual business. Genjutsu allowed Edmund to fool his father and train freely.

After he learnt some decent amount of genjutsu, he focused mainly on chakra control, fuinjutsu and some other basic ninjutsu. Along with that, he had his shadow clones read through the weapon scrolls and his first year course books. At evenings he would practice taijutsu against his clones while some other clones would sit on the side lines and analysed the spars.

The day he came back from diagon alley and read some scrolls, he was elated to see the technique that could prove to be a boon for him. It was Naruto Uzumaki's most used jutsu in his younger days, Shadow clone jutsu.

At first he was able to produce twenty five clones and could maintain them for half an hour. But gradually, he increased that number to forty five and could maintain them for two hours. Using shadow clones gave him a much needed boost in his learning ability and chakra control.

September came quickly and he was ready to go to Hogwarts. Packing everything he needed, he got dressed in his school robes and flooed to platform 9 3/4.

At ten, the Hogwarts express started moving. Edmund sat in an empty compartment in the middle and began reading a book on ancient runes which he found in the Whirlpool family vault. A few minutes later, the door opened and a girl glanced into the compartment and asked meekly, "Hi, may I sit here? I wanted to sit somewhere quiet."

Edmund didn't lift his eyes from his book and replied blandly as he turned the page, "Sure, why not?"

The girl sat comfortably opposite to him and began enjoying the scenery outside. Edmund was silently relieved that the girl wasn't talking to him. But the peace did not last long as the door of the compartment was violently opened and a boy entered.

"Hi, can I sit here? My brothers' friend was showing them his pet acromatulda and I am not a fan of spiders."

The girl glanced at Edmund with uncertainty. Edmund just nodded, again without looking up, said, "Sit."

The boy immediately sat down next to him, a bit too close for his liking and began talking to the girl straight away. "Hi. I'm Ron, Ron Weasley. And you are..?"

The girl gently smiled and replied, "I'm Iris, Iris Potter."

That made Edmund look up from his book. Iris had the prettiest emerald eyes he had ever seen. She had wavy black hair that were tied in a pony tail. Her bangs were hiding her forehead and her scar. Her skin was pale but the colour was not healthy. It took a few seconds for Edmund to deduce that she was undernourished. That made him narrow his eyes. "Why is the girl-who-lived so scrawny and underfed? She looks like she'll collapse any moment now. Isn't she being taken care of?"

He again focused on her eyes. He noticed she was lacking something else. She did not were spectacles. The famous eyesight defect in all Potters was missing. Her eyes exuded kindness, purity, hope and wisdom beyond someone of her age. "Iris, fitting."

Ron, upon hearing her name dramatically widened his eyes and shouted, "Are you really?!"

Edmund slightly cringed. "She's sitting three feet away, no need to shout you twit!"

Then Ron asked something that Edmund thought was quite stupid. "Do you have the.. um.. scar?"

Iris shifted uncomfortably in her seat for a moment but then smiled and lifted her bangs to show the famous lightening bolt scar. It wasn't as big as was depicted the books, but it was there. Edmund deduced that Iris didn't like people looking at it so he went back at observing her eyes.

Ron again asked a question that almost made Edmund to slap his forehead. "So, do you remember how they died? How You-Know-Who looked?"

"What an ass. You do not ask a child if she remembers how her parents died or how the killer looked. This git didn't even think before asking that. Definitely the worst kind of Gryfindor. He'll put Crabb and Goyle to shame."

Iris's lip twitched as her smile fell. She had was fighting herself from lashing out at Ron. She calmed herself down and replied, "No, I don't. I was fifteen months old. I don't remember anything from that time."

Ron had the decency to look sheepish. He looked towards Edmund and asked the inevitable, "Hey mate, what's your name? You've been quiet the whole time."

Edmund stared into his eyes. Ron backed away a little. Those sapphire eyes were really haunting. Edmund had been training in what he called 'The Tenzo Face' because it was a bit creepy. Ron felt like he was being stripped down to his very soul. Fortunately for him, Edmund turned away and stared at Iris who was looking at him expectantly.

"Edmund."