Disclaimer: I do not own Naruto or Harry Potter, or any of the characters from these universes. I am making no money off of this fanfiction.

A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews and feedback. From this point on, I will be referring to Naruto/Harry as Harry Potter unless specifically referencing Naruto's life pre-soul merge.

Chapter 2: Parallel Childhoods

It was odd being in a new body, he decided. The fact that the body in question was that of a toddler probably didn't help. But he didn't really have time to worry about it at the moment, as several things happened very quickly in the first few seconds after his arrival.

Of course the first thing he had to deal with was the extremely strange feeling of two souls merging. For an instant, he could actually feel the sensation from two perspectives as information began to bleed over between the two souls before they had truly merged. This only lasted for the tiniest fraction of a second before what was once two souls became one. Of course, he had to deal with the disorientation of suddenly having two sets of experiences to work through. It wasn't actually as if he suddenly absorbed all the memories of the child. He had actually experienced that a few times when he had used the Rinnegan's ability to absorb the memories of a ripped out soul.

No, this was different. In this case, rather than absorbing a set of memories, he simply suddenly had two sets of experiences. Two sets of simultaneous knowledge and feelings that ran into each other about a second ago and continued as one from that point on. Given that one of these sets was 190 years of clear memories and the other was the vague and short memories and feelings of a 15-month old, Naruto's long years were dominant as would be expected. But it was still quite a strange sensation to not just be aware of what happened so far in Harry's life, but to remember experiencing it. To feel the love both from and towards his parents as he remembered them holding him. Too bad that even the rudimentary understanding of what was going on and the language spoken his younger self had seemed to indicate that said parents had likely died moments before. It was truly tragic to have both your parents killed in front of you when you were still a young child. Twice.

But he had little time to even begin to feel grief as the surprising lack of pain from the soul merging gave way to an extreme amount of pain as all of the things he had linked to his soul applied themselves to his new body. In that moment, the bloodlines which had been attached to his older soul before his previous death, and more importantly, the seal containing the Juubi applied themselves to his body. As he had expected, this was excruciatingly painful. This was not particularly surprising, given that his genetic code was simultaneously being re-written while the chakra of the greatest of the bijuu, and Naruto's own spiritual energy began to flow through his undeveloped chakra coils. Fortunately, a child of under about two years old still had very flexible chakra coils and they were able to stretch and widen as a sudden massive flow of chakra began to run through his coils. But even this would not have been enough had it not been for the simultaneous application of some of the other advantages Naruto had brought with him.

Between the Uzumaki chakra augmentations, his bijuu enhanced regeneration and the benefits of being able to guide his own chakra with the power of the Rinnegan, he managed to survive the experience, but it was still incredibly painful. In fact, it probably would have been enough to knock him unconscious were it not for the much greater torment Naruto's soul had experienced traveling through the timestream moments before.

And it was a very good thing that he was still conscious, because a few seconds after his arrival, he felt a sudden intrusion. For a moment, he thought it was an attempt to mindwalk him, but the mental barriers Ino had taught him were still standing strong. Then he realized that someone was attempting a soul possession on him. It was an interesting coincidence, because he had spent a significant portion of the last decade of his life studying the soul manipulation techniques that Orochimaru had originally pioneered. In fact, he had been forced to move beyond what Orochimaru had been capable of, at least in some areas, in order to achieve the final technique that had brought him to this point.

So he knew exactly how to counter an attempt at a soul possession. All it took was a focused flare of chakra while using the Rinnegan and its absolute control over yin chakra. And with that Harry forced the soul attempting to possess him out of his body away. However, now that he could actually sit up and look at it, forcing himself to ignore the cooling body of his mother for the moment, he found that the soul possession attempt was very different from any that he had read about before.

First, there was no way that little sliver was possibly actually a whole soul, but he couldn't figure out a reason why someone would mutilate a soul, much less how they could survive it. Second, upon him forcing the piece of soul out, it should have been forced to either return to its original body, or move on should the original body be dead, which seemed likely, given the smoking pile of charred robes. And third, there seemed to be some energy maintaining the soul, and pushing it to try and find some sort of host. Most interesting of all was the fact that whatever this energy was, it wasn't chakra. In fact, as far as the Sharingan could tell, it was entirely made up of spiritual energy, which he previously thought couldn't be used without molding it together with physical energy to make chakra.

Apparently he had been wrong. And while this energy was significantly less potent than chakra, it seemed it could so some delicate tasks that chakra likely could not even with the best chakra control. Or at least he couldn't think of any way that chakra could maintain a soul outside of a body for any significant amount of time. But on the plus side, that made tearing away the energy maintaining the piece of soul so it could move on fairly simple through the pure brute force of chakra. And so he went ahead and did exactly that and allowed that piece of soul, at least to move on, though he had no idea what having only part of you going to the afterlife would do.

This would have to be something he contemplated later. For now, he extended his senses to make sure there was at least no immediate threat, though he did note a great deal of this spiritual energy in the area, some of it even still active. None of it seemed directed at him or malevolent though, so he went ahead and carefully lifted himself out of his crib with wind and gravity chakra and floated over to his mother.

As he leaned against her still chest and began to cry, he realized that this was both a blessing and a curse. It was wonderful, in a way, to have actual memories of parents who loved and cared for him. It was something he had never experienced in Naruto's life, even though he knew from later stories that they had loved him even before he was born. But here he had actual memories of them caring for him and protecting him. Hours spent playing with him, or just holding him. Pouring out the parental love a part of him had always craved. Everything that he had tried to give his own children, but never experienced for himself. But it was taken from him so quickly, leaving only grief over the loss of his parents and over the loss of the chance to grow up with them, lost forever because his soul had merged only minutes too late to save them.

Harry was still there and still crying when his Uncle Padfoot arrived a few minutes later. Looking back at his memories, he was pretty sure his uncle's name was actually Sirius, though he seemed to laugh a lot about that name, so maybe that was a nickname. Regardless, he hurried over to Harry and his mother with tears streaming down his face, though he seemed extremely relived that Harry at least was alive.

Padfoot first examined him for injury and finding none besides the small scar on his forehead with a tiny amount of blood from before Harry's regeneration had kicked in to seal the wound shut. After this was done, he carefully picked Harry up and with a last hesitant glance back at Lily, and a considerably longer one which came with a choked sob at James' body downstairs, they left the house.

Once they got outside, they were met by another man. A very, very large man. It was a little difficult to figure out exact sizes when he was so small and his perspective was from his uncle's arms, but just comparing him to his uncle, this man had to be nearly ten feet tall and nearly half that wide. But clearly his uncle knew this man, and didn't consider him a threat.

After a brief conversation, most of which Harry didn't understand with his limited comprehension of the language, Padfoot's grief began to transition into anger.

He then handed Harry over to the large man before disappearing with a crack. Once again, this was accomplished through the use of spiritual energy alone. A fairly subtle one at that, as it appeared to create a space-time wormhole through which the user could travel. It would certainly require a lot less energy than the Kamui or the Hiraishin, but he doubted it was as effective.

But before he could really consider this further, the large man gave a few sniffles, or Harry supposed they could be called that, though they didn't really sound like any sniffle he had heard from a human before. The large man then carried Harry over to what ended up being a flying transportation device which was again powered by spiritual energy.

During the fairly long flight, Harry began to attempt to work his way through his feelings about the night. Although he hadn't expected this life to be any easier than his last one, he really hadn't thought that he would experience such trauma immediately upon arrival. But at least he had a lot of good memories of his parents to focus on, for now at least. And it appeared he had a lot of people who already cared about him. His Uncles Padfoot, Wormtail, Moony, his Aunt Alice, and even apparently this big guy, who seemed to be talking to him softly throughout most of the trip, in spite of the fact that the wind was too loud to hear him at all. But luckily the Sharingan could both give the ability to read lips, as well as a perfect memory of their movements for when Harry learned the language well enough to reconstruct his words. Regardless, being around others who cared for him should help him work his way through even so abrupt a loss.

Or so he thought, until they landed and he was placed on a doorstep in a basket in front of some random house with a note. Where they just going to leave him here?

If Harry had discovered one thing during the four years since the soul merge, it was that the similarities between Naruto and Harry's situations were uncanny. At first, he had thought that he was looking for similarities that didn't exist. He had a tendency to do that.

But in this case, he was pretty sure he wasn't seeing things that were not there. Both were orphaned young because their parents fought against an evil which was attempting to destroy their society. In fact, both children had apparently been specifically targeted by said evil, and both mothers had leaped between the children and death. Both were hated in their childhood by those around them for a power which they did not choose to have. Both were referred to exclusively by a slur-it didn't really matter if it was "the demon," or "the freak," either way, people refused to refer to him by his name. Even their physical appearance had its similarities. Both had a facial disfigurement which apparently even the Bijuu's regeneration couldn't fix, both had untamable hair, and both had unnaturally bright eyes, if of different colors.

But perhaps it shouldn't have surprised him. It seemed that destiny liked to play the same stories over and over again. He had noticed it back in Konoha too. Ninja teams kept repeating history with pairings of detached genius, fangirl of said genius, and deadlast joker who at least thought they were in love with the fangirl. His own team had just followed in the footsteps of Kakashi's team, and even the Sannin in many ways.

Even technological development seemed oddly familiar. Of course it wasn't the same. Every indication was that the society of the Elemental Nations had been entirely lost and humanity had started over again at some point lost in the distant past. Modern technology was much more common and had followed down many paths to do things impossible in the Elemental Nations. But what were the chances of both societies developing virtually identical televisions or microwaves. On the other hand, modern society had also developed instant ramen, so perhaps destiny could be forgiven its trespasses.

But he should really focus more on the present rather than odd philosophical ponderings. The present being his uncle's fist heading towards his face. But it wasn't like he didn't have time for his random musings. His uncle's attack was almost painfully slow, not to mention telegraphed. He really should decide what to do with his uncle this time though.

His past two warnings hadn't worked, apparently. The first time Vernon had tried to hit Harry for backtalk six months ago, Vernon had 'accidentally' tripped and shattered his jaw on the table in mid lunge for the freak. A few months later, after physical therapy, Vernon had tried to hit him again, apparently for being sloppy with his chores, and an overhanging tree branch had 'happened' to break and fall on him, breaking his collarbone, arm, and giving him a concussion.

It was quite odd though. The Dursleys appeared to both simultaneously blame him for these events and everything else that went wrong in their lives, while at the same time believing that he wouldn't do it again if they kept up their behavior. Granted, a lot of the things that went wrong in their lives were his fault, but they deserved to be pranked for their attempted treatment of him. The only time he did anything harmful was when they tried to actually hurt him.

A lot of those had been pretty entertaining too, at least from his perspective. He hadn't done anything the first year because he was focusing on getting used to the changes in his chakra that came with the soul merge to allow him to use the full powers of his eyes and other abilities once again. Besides, at that point, all the Dursleys did was ignore him and underfeed him. The first was pretty annoying, but could be ignored in turn, and the second could be solved by stealing food from both the Dursleys and grocery stores.

But after that, the verbal abuse got worse, they started piling on excessive chores, increased the efforts at mild starvation, and more frequent attempts to lock him up in the cupboard for long periods of time (not that he didn't leave whenever he felt like it, but they didn't know that). He didn't mind the chores, as shadow clones under an invisibility genjutsu made even the impossible amount of chores demanded of him something easy to ignore. That in itself seemed to drive them a little crazy, as the chores were always completed, but they almost never saw him doing them. Which made them certain he was using his unnaturalness to do them, but he just ignored them when they yelled about it.

The starvation attempts were also easily ignored, as food was easily obtained. The verbal abuse was kind of annoying though. He liked to think of himself as a lot more secure in who he was than he had been during his first childhood, so he didn't really let it get to him, but it did get really old when they constantly yelled at him for his unnaturalness and never even called him by his name, just "Freak," or "Boy." So they made excellent prank targets for the next few years. Of course they were not the only people pranked. There were plenty of other good targets around, especially now that he was going to school. He just had to keep those pranks toned down to this side of possible.

But for the Dursleys, he especially enjoyed pranks that were blatantly impossible, but yet small enough that no one outside of the normality obsessed Dursleys really noticed the impossibility. Things like repainting the entire house to a professional standard in bright orange over night. He had done that one seven or eight times now...they kept having it repainted back. Moving the garden and other plants around overnight, but making it look like it had always been like that with Mokuton techniques. Replacing the car with an entirely different model every day for a month. Teleporting Vernon and his car to work immediately after he climbed in from the driveway. Invisibly tying shoelaces together in the middle of company meetings.

With pranks like that, he got to enjoy it twice. Once of them reacting to the prank itself, and a second time as they realized the degree to which they were affected by unnaturalness. But in spite of no one else suspecting the supernatural, pretty much everyone referred to them as "that weird Dursley family" now. Except for Harry, who dressed nicely despite the Dursley's best efforts, was quite fit for his age, and was always very polite and apologetic for his strange relatives. The fact that everyone pretty openly thought that Harry was the normal one and the rest of the Dursleys were weird and possibly insane was probably the best prank of all. And of course every time the Dursleys tried to contact a realtor about moving, they ended up calling a sex-line or driving to a strip-club instead. It turned out that despite how little he had relied on it in his earlier life, genjutsu was a lot of fun.

Of course he didn't restrict his pranks to just the advanced use of chakra techniques he had developed in his later life as Naruto. There was also plenty of inspiration to be drawn from his academy days before he could really use chakra at all. The only downside was that it was far too easy to get away with. Even when he didn't use chakra for assistance, he was used to pranks against highly aware and paranoid ninja. There was no real challenge against civilians. Which just motivated him to try for more and more elaborate pranks.

He did sometimes wonder if he was sometimes going too far and might actually drive them insane though. He didn't want to actually harm them, and he tried to keep his pranks from getting too malicious. He just hoped he could get them to just accept that weird things happened and were a part of life. Maybe learn to laugh at themselves a little. It didn't seem to be working that well so far, as evidenced by the fist which had still yet to reach his face. Though the secondary goal of providing laughs that lasted for hours was going quite well.

With a quick side-step to avoid the blow, Harry met Vernon's eyes to use a genjutsu on him, making him suddenly freeze and scream, "Another tree branch. You broke my arm you little freak."

Harry shook his head with a sigh. Even with the at this point somewhat reasonable belief that Harry could call down objects to break his bones at will, Vernon still had to be insulting and call him freak instead of his name. In a very concerned voice, he said, "Oh, that doesn't look good. You should go to the hospital uncle."

With a glare that might have been at least a little intimidating to someone else at least if it were not for the tears streaming down his face, Vernon turned away and ran back into the house. As he yelled for help from Petunia and entered through the door, he cast one last look back at Harry that was a strange mix of rage and fear.

"Hmm...Am I going too far? I don't really like actually terrifying them and hurting them, but I can't just let them hit me..." Harry gave a sharp shake of his head and continued muttering to himself, "No, they bring this upon themselves. I don't have to like it, but some people only respond to such tactics. Oh well. I really need to get back to training. Changing the entire interior floor plan of the house and moving all the contents around to match the new locations of the rooms took most of the morning while they were out. I need to get back to work."

With a quick smile and shrug, he created a clone to invisibly follow along after the Dursleys and drop the genjutsu after Vernon had spent a few minutes arguing with a doctor that his arm was broken and demanding treatment. Those memories would be entertaining. And maybe a mix of pain and humiliation were what was needed to avoid further abuse attempts?

As his red eyes began to spin behind his own concealing genjutsu, the world shifted and Harry found himself several hundred miles away in the middle of nowhere in his training base, which he had created from scratch two years ago with a combination of powerful earth techniques and the always useful Creation of All Things technique. And in that two years, he had been almost entirely focused on getting back into the perfect physical shape he had enjoyed in his prime. Even with his gravity and resistance seals, it would be at least another decade before he was done, but it was his priority for now.

After reviewing the comments his Sharingan had memorized from the large man who had brought him here four years ago, whose name was apparently Hagrid, Harry would be going to a school called Hogwarts to learn magic when he was eleven. He assumed that was the name for the use of spiritual energy that those people had developed. But it would be a lot easier to learn how from them, so he hadn't put much effort into rediscovering those abilities himself, and instead focused on once again reaching his maximum potential in the abilities he had already mastered long ago.

From what he had seen so far, he was relatively certain that those abilities alone would be enough to allow him to defeat anyone he really needed to, so the use of 'magic' was mostly just a curiosity anyway, if a potentially useful one. After all, without including the molding of physical energy with mental energy through the body to reinforce it during training, there was no way to enhance the human body beyond a fairly low natural limit. So by virtue of pure unmatchable speed alone, he should be able to overwhelm anything magic could throw at him, much less everything else chakra could provide.

So for now, he focused on what he knew and started yet another set of push-ups.

"Boy! Have you finished your chores yet? What are you doing inside?" Vernon snarled viciously at Harry. "And what are you eating? You had breakfast. Get outside, and don't come back until dinner. And where did you even get that?"

Harry's eyes never left the not yet boiling liquid as he waved Vernon away and continued preparing his eighth bowl of ramen. "It's my eighth birthday. I'm not doing chores today. And since you didn't get me a present, I'm making myself one. So leave me alone ya fat bastard."

Judging by the rapidly darkening colors of Vernon's face, Harry knew he probably shouldn't have said that. But he had been able to use the somewhat limited medical techniques he knew to save Vernon the last time he had a stroke in similar circumstances, so it would probably be fine. And though he was better than he once was, he still tended to not watch his mouth quite as much as he should.

It took a full two minutes for Vernon to finally slow his breathing and force himself down from attacking his nephew. In a voice that was more growl than actual words, he said, "Fine, but you had better be in your cupboard early tonight, and up early to get them done tomorrow."

Harry was already eating by that point, but that was strange enough that it was almost enough to make him stop while he considered what was going on. Had Vernon had a stroke after all? He would have to think about it later. Sometimes he wished he had been able to convince the Yamanaka to teach him how to mindwalk someone. Though after a little further thought, he supposed he might not actually want to see what was in Vernon's head.

For now though, there was more ramen to make. He restricted himself to eating it only once a week since the importance of a decent diet in physical development had finally been beaten into him last time through. In his thirties. But hey, no one is perfect, and it looked like he wouldn't be as short this time around. But when he allowed himself to have it, he was certainly going to enjoy it, and his uncle acting even more strangely than normal wasn't going to stop that.

That night when Vernon came into the cupboard with a knife, Harry considered that maybe he should have spent at least a little time thinking about it.

The past three years had gone by relatively peacefully. Vernon being committed to the mental ward probably had a lot to do with that. But when Vernon started actually foaming at the mouth and screaming random obscenities after Harry had offered him breakfast the day after his eighth birthday, the authorities really didn't have many options.

Eventually it came out that Vernon claimed he murdered Harry the previous night and buried him in a ditch because Harry was an evil freak who had to die for bringing unnaturalness into his family. The police had been quite concerned until they dug up a stabbed stuffed animal with the word FREAK written on its head. Well, technically they were still quite concerned, but they stopped looking into open missing persons reports.

Harry felt a little bad about the whole situation, but the man had tried to murder him. He pretty much deserved it. Harry had done everything he could to save Vernon from his own stupidity and bigotry, but ultimately all it did was push Vernon into greater anger, and poison those around him with the same hatred. So Harry washed his hands of the situation, and hoped that maybe some professional help might do Vernon some good.

But the Dursley household had really settled down after that. Harry had been given his own room, and was simply avoided by the two remaining Dursleys, while Harry did the same. Though of course there was still the occasional prank. The Dursleys had resigned themselves to it at this point, and Dudley even thought they were kind of funny sometimes, at least when they were not aimed at him.

And every month, a deposit was made into Petunia's bank account. She tried not to think about the fact that the deposits had started immediately after she had noticed a slightly guilty look on Harry's face when she was crying about what she was going to do without Vernon to provide for them. Best not to ask questions, really.

"Harry, you have...umm. Well, you have a letter." Harry was jerked out of one of his periodic reflective moods as Dudley came into the room with the morning's mail, putting Harry's letter on the table before continuing upstairs.

With a shrug, he picked up the offered item, taking a moment to examine the high quality parchment and wax seal before breaking it open and reading over the letter within. As he did so, he did notice Petunia biting on her lip almost hard enough to draw blood, but she left any objections she might have had silent.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Harry Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagal

Deputy Headmistress

After skimming over the second page which listed the supplies needed, he glanced up at Petunia with a wide smile and said, "I'm going to Hogwarts. Do you know what they mean by 'We await your owl?' And where do you go to get these supplies?"

Petunia paled further, if that was possible, before responding in what she was obviously trying to make a strong tone, but which quivered with anxiety, "What makes you think I know? I mean I don't know. And I'm not paying for...that school."

Harry responded with a shrug. "Well, my mother was a witch, so I thought you would know what she did before she went to Hogwarts. Besides, it's always been clear that you know a lot more about the whole unnaturalness business than you said."

Harry had been wrong in thinking that she could get no paler. And her voice was barely audible. In fact, Harry had to channel chakra to his ears just to make out his aunt's voice clearly. "You knew? How long? You always said you didn't know anything about the...weird things that happened."

Harry gave a shrug and answered, "Doesn't really matter. I know some things. I assume they will tell me more at Hogwarts. All I need to know is how to 'owl' a response and how to get my school supplies. And you don't have to worry about paying for it anyway." He grinned even wider than previously. "I'll work something out."

Petunia looked down at the table for a long moment before finally responding in a slightly stronger voice, though her gaze never left the plate in front of her, "Those people use those foul birds to send letters. They just tie a letter onto the thing and tell it who to go to, and it goes. But I don't know where you get your supplies. Someone from that school came and took Lily." The last sentence was delivered in little more than a snarl.

Harry nodded thoughtfully before writing out a quick response saying he would like to attend and to please send someone to take him to get his school supplies. Once the note was complete, he went outside and found the owl sitting on the front porch. Even Harry at this point was a little hesitant as he held out the note and spoke to an owl. "This needs to go to Hogwarts." However, the owl just hopped closer and offered one of its legs. With a shrug, Harry securely tied the note on and watched as the owl flew away, a little unsure of what to do now. But he supposed he would just have to wait and see what happened.

A/N: This really wasn't one of my favorite chapters. Too much forcing information as quickly as possible, I guess. Torturing the Dursleys was fun, but beyond that, a lot of it was pretty boring, especially since there was so little direct character interaction...But, it was information that needed to be included. Like the infamous 'training chapters' in Naruto fanfictions, it's a transition chapter to get to the more interesting stuff, which should be coming in the next few chapters. Hopefully.

Please review though! I don't care if it's just a short, "I liked it," a detailed breakdown of what you think I did wrong (and hopefully can improve on), or even just informing me of a grammar or spelling mistake, I would appreciate it. But please no flames. I don't mind criticism as long as it is constructive, but a simple, "This is the worst thing ever written," or "You made Harry too powerful. You suck" will be ignored.