Chapter 09

You should have gone back, Tashaneri chided as she began yet another argument with Harry. It had been a month since Hermione had caught him outside of the wards and Tashaneri took great pride in beating him up about leaving her in tears. The poor girl obviously cares about you!

"Leave it," Harry hissed as his aching arm raised the daito katana again. Tashaneri had begun to implant her knowledge of tameshigiri into Harry's mind so – in essence – teach him swordplay and cutting. He had bought the best Japanese forged long katana money could buy and the muggle-liaison goblins could find. It was custom forged by a distant uncle of Tashaneri's, who had been dead in her time. Nodochi Nobura had been one of the finest bladesmiths in recent family history, and grudgingly made Harry a sword when the $100,000 cheque was waved in front of his nose.

Having just received it about three days ago, Harry was putting what he learned mentally to practice in real life, and so far he had gotten the footing correct. Having the knowledge was one thing. Actually doing it when your body had never done it before was another. Even with Tashaneri's help in strengthening every physical aspect of Harry's body, he was still clumsy when it came to the intricate artwork that was Iai. Still, the descendent of Yagyu Jubei had to admit that he wasn't terrible for a total of nine hours' worth of practice through three days.

The sword itself was beautiful. The 40 inch blade had been mirror polished with seven polish stones, and also laminated to give a brilliant shine. It had 2lbs of total weight taken off with bo-hi / blood grooves. The overall curvature was about 3 inches, pretty normal for a sword of this length. The hamon / temper line was very defined, showing a grainy jagged wave that represented turmoil and anger. You could see the grain across the entire blade, since the sword had been folded Damascus style, showing wavy patterns all over. It was also coated in silver dust.

The tip of the blade was shaped like a spear, which would provide clean stabbing and the boshi was slightly longer than normal.

The tang / handle was an unusually short 13 inches, for it didn't match with the blade's length, which would make it an awkward balance for a normal person. However, with Harry it was supposed to be so that his movements would have more weight to them, thus inducing heavier cuts. The tang was double pegged with two bamboo pegs for strength. It was wrapped in creamy dragonskin found on the underbelly of most dragons. On top of the dragonskin were traditional leather wrappings dyed a deep royal blue (ironically, Harry's favorite color, unlike the emerald green Ginny thinks it is). The end cap was made out of brass, depicting a lily flower.

The handguard was a small, rectangular piece of forged iron, to slightly help the balance. It was powdercoated black, and also depicted several lilies. The top and bottom had thin white tassels. The saya / scabbard was also royal blue, with very beautiful real gold specks all over. On top was several layers of gloss, making the saya very glossy and especially pretty with the gold shining in the slightest light.

Of course Harry could make it dull as grey with a spell if he wanted, for night.

In both of their opinions, it was an incredible sword. Tashaneri bemoaned the fact that her great uncle had had to die thirty odd years before she was allowed a sword, or even born. She cursed her bad luck.

The relationship between the two was strange at first, as it should have been. Two souls sharing one container of a body would not be considered normal, or even useful to some but somehow, Harry and Tashaneri pulled it off quite nicely. Harry especially liked their long talks during training, or the times when he would recess into his own mind as Tashaneri took control of his body for short periods. She could never do more than move around a bit, since it was so hard to do so, but they were working on it.

Another added perk of having two souls in one body was the power that they offered it. While Tashaneri had no magic whatsoever originally, it did not matter since the soul itself contained magic. Accidental magic that children performed was caused by heightened emotions due to something happening to them at the time. What no one knew was that the soul was the catalyst for human emotion, and accidental magic drew their very energy from the soul. How else would one explain it when a person had their soul sucked out by a dementor? They were emotionless, a vegetable at best. Anyone could have magic, as long as they had a soul.

Bringing this back to Harry and Tashaneri, they now had one body containing two souls, which meant a large increase in power. Power that Harry could not wield yet. Harry could not manage to bring himself to such powerful emotion to bring forth the magic from his or Tashaneri's soul, since it was a lot harder than it sounded like.

Some hours before Harry's 16th birthday…

It looks nicer LONGER! Tashaneri screeched. Harry's hair grew several inches and ended near his shoulder blades.

I look like a GIRL! Harry hollered, forcing the hair to return to its short unruly mop.

NO! Tashaneri shouted, making it longer again. You're keeping it and that's final!

How did we get to such an odd situation? Well, we'll have to rewind six days previously…

Flashback:

Harry I see here that your aunt cut all of your hair off, but you grew it back overnight? Tashaneri asked. How is that possible?

Harry shrugged as he ate his Shreddies. Dunno, I guess it was accidental magic or something, he replied. A thought struck him. Wait a minute, maybe it was metamorphing, like Tonks!

What's… Oh, nevermind I just pulled it, Tashaneri muttered, bringing forth a picture of Tonks with a pig nose. Sounds interesting, you should try it!

End Flashback! BAM!

And try it he did. Harry discovered that he had some talent in being a metamorphmagus, and had owl-ordered several books about it as he set out to practice yet another talent of his. When he had gained enough experience to change his features, he decided on making himself look more like his mother than his father, for he always felt exasperated when someone said, "You look so much like your father!"

His face was now more oval-shaped than its previous look and his features were much softer, with higher cheekbones and a slender jaw. His brilliant green eyes remained mostly the same, just much larger and wider than before. Tashaneri explained that his eyes somehow disappeared when he would laugh. They retained their almond shape, just slightly sharper, and not as girly round. Harry lost the glasses since they didn't fit his face now and bought some hard contacts that he could leave in and sleep with if he wanted. The contacts had a sheen that made his eyes even brighter looking than before, which was a feat in itself.

His daily exercise and workouts alongside with Tashaneri's physical reconditioning through her work had gained Harry about 15lbs worth of muscle so far, which raised him up to a respectable 145lbs for his age and height of 5' 7". He was still far too thin in his opinion, and vowed to keep working out for the year ahead. For now, his body resembled one of a newbie professional swimmer.

His goblin friend, Ragnok had informed Harry that Dumbledore had tried to find out where he was repeatedly during the month of July. Though Hermione had told the old man where she had seen Harry – which infuriated the young man to no end – even the great headmaster could not penetrate the goblin wards. He had then marched into Ragnok's office uninvited and demanded that the bank manager give him the locations of all of Harry's home. Dumbledore was sent out of Gringotts by two dozen guards, with a temporary ban for one month.

Voldemort had begun his attacks in earnest once his return was made public. So far, there were a few attacks, some deaths but mostly muggles. Giants had attacked, dementors had attacked, and the Dark Mark was left at all scenes. What surprised Harry the most were the vampire attacks. London had been hit the worst, with muggle newspapers showing horrible pictures of people who had been bitten, maimed or worse. In total, nearly a hundred people had died from vampire attacks, and one hospital was completely devastated when 28 victims turned and wreaked havoc. Fortunately, it was sunrise when they had turned, so all the new vampires succumbed to the sun, and the Ministry of Magic was quick to obliviate everyone. The whole attack was written off as another terrorist attack.

But still, Harry trained on. He ignored the outside world for the moment, only concentrating on what he needed to do. The prophecy bored deep into his (and to a lesser extent, Tashaneri's) mind and all he could think about was avenging his family. This is what drove Harry Potter, and Tashaneri began to get worried for him, but never showed it.

Harry's birthday arrived without fanfare, as all owls delivering him presents were sent away by the wards and he wanted no visitors. He merely spent the whole day training hard and absorbing as many books as he could, knowing that two minds learned quicker than one. His rate of reading had increased, and his ability to retain knowledge was greater. Simply reading the book once was saved into one of the many 'file cabinets' in his mind, thanks to Tashaneri.

There were several sections, including Defense, Darks Arts, Battle Magic, Light Arts, Techniques, Strategy and so on. Each one with their own cabinet with their own sections. It was incredible. If Dumbledore tried to use Legillimency on Harry now, all he would see would be shelves and shelves of books and files.

Hermione could be seen sometimes, making laps around the area where Harry lived. She was a bright young witch, Harry knew that, and he knew that she probably figured out that he was under a Fidelius charm. It didn't matter. She would never know. However, a few weeks after that, in August, Harry noticed that Ron would join her on some of the laps. They would come precisely once every three days. It was something Harry thought about a lot sometimes, but usually brushed it off in favor of lifting weights or cutting dummies to ribbons with his sword.