A/N : Hi all! Thank you for all the positive encouragement that my humble submission has generated! And with my thanks I give you my next chapter! Hope you enjoy it!
Disclaimer: i don't own Harry Potter OR Naruto.
Harry Potter took the books home in three days, And the box itself, all folded up on the fourth. It was not that the books themselves were a huge weight, even if some would have said so, considering his frame or lack thereof. No it was more a question of sneaking them past the occasionally eagle eyed Dursleys. After all they would have no guilt attacks if anything that Harry called his own disappeared in flames, in pieces or into a black hole. They barely paid for his necessary school supplies as it was. Instead this was a smuggling operation where, his over sized clothing proved their worth for once. Richards was persuaded to and had stapled a few cloth bags on the inside of his clothes, where the bagginess just served to hide the fact that contraband was stowed away. After all, who would question the puffiness that came from his frayed cords wrapped over a shirt a couple sizes too large?
After he had safely secreted the whole crate of books, Harry had mentally expressed his unequivocal gratitude, that Whale Jr. was a barely disguised idiot, Horse face couldn't stand to look at him at all and finally that Whale Sr. went to his normal job and had drinks at a 'normal' pub and consequently came home at a "normal" time, by which time his cargo was safely unloaded. He also thanked Richards for his flashlight. Reading in the dark was one venture that he did not really fancy trying a hand.
The holiday was just like his previous ones. It was not much of a holiday at all. Yet again, Harry was expected to maintain professional levels of quality control in gardening, cooking, house painting and other chores. Being the first day, Petunia was quite smug as she happily watched over him struggling to complete a full seven hours worth of chores, with just a glass of water being given to him the whole day. Oh how Harry loathed those accursed Dursleys...
Unfortunately, this opening salvo, accompanied by the usual vitriol, ensured that Harry just fell asleep, praying that he would not die for want of water. No book, no matter how enthralling in its very possibilities could sway the overwhelming might that of sleep after a tiring day. The next morning, he woke with parched throat and sandpaper tongue. After his ritual curse on his relatives, he tiredly went on to do his chores for the day. He was very careful to do absolutely everything perfectly. Nothing would keep him away from his booty that day. Eventually, his hard days work ended with dinner, food that was barely enough to satiate a hamster. Harry was beginning to suspect that the Dursleys would just drop dead from the sheer amount of malice he was mentally directing at them. One could only hope.
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Harry's first impressions of Richards gift were quite mixed. The whole 'problem' that existed in his head was because he already had an idea of what 'real' ninja were supposed to be. They were silent, swift and deadly assassins, not flamboyant weapons of mass destruction. It took a few days before he was finally able to get his head around how the ninja in Naruto functioned. But eventually the child in Harry finally managed to do the simplest thing any child ought be able to do, simply believe. And in that moment, the simple acceptance of stated fact nudged the power that lay dormant in him ever so slightly in a new direction. Indeed, it could be said history itself was rewritten, all because of the power of a child's belief in the impossible.
The first complete reading of what he had in his hands took two weeks of careful and covert activity. He read at night under the cover of the same moldy sheet of nastiness the Dursleys had passed off as his blanket. The small flashlight he had been given ensured that he was able to spend his nights in a much more productive fashion than cursing the Dursleys and imagining their bloody painful demise would possibly allow. There were a few close calls of course, like the time Vernon had sleepily poked his head in, attempting to see if his freakish nephew was up to no good. After that Harry began to regularly check his surroundings, attempting to divine if the Dursleys were astir. Needless to say, by the end of those two weeks, Harry was quite the paranoid fellow. Unfortunately, he was quite justified, because they really were out to get him.
After his initial disbelief, and subsequent "conversion", Harry's intelligent and inquisitive mind slowly began to churn out an understanding of what he was reading. He slowly built up an awareness of the mechanics of the Naruto universe, the way people thought, the elementary assumptions that everybody made about everyone else. He was slowly integrating the mindset of the 'proper' ninja of a hidden village. Of course, at this stage it was more of the childish enthusiasm for the whole thing, as evidenced by the swirly leaf designs he idly lightly carved in the remote corners of his...space.
That however was not the end of it. He had already made the connection to the parallels that existed between Harry and Naruto, that of orphans that were treated horribly by the very people they were entrusted to. Indeed, a certain perspective, the only real difference was the lack of a tailed beast in Harry's belly(he'd checked, thoroughly). They called one demon. They called the other freak. What was the difference anyway?
But that was not exactly the most earth shattering discovery he made. No, what was truly mind blowing was the correlation he made between Naruto's own healing and the one he exhibited. Both kicked in when the person involved was highly injured, and both were truly accelerated healing. Two days worth of thinking later, Harry finally began to wonder...
What if, what he had was chakra. After all, when everything was said and done, the Dursleys were right about one thing - he had something uncommon, if not unnatural inside, and whatever it was that was healing him was just begging to be used.
With that question in mind, Harry decided that he just had to find his inner power. So, keeping in mind long forgotten methods for meditation, he attempted to see what he held within. And he failed is only so much a 7 year old could focus before his mind wanders to other things.
So in a sudden feat of misguided brilliance, that was in retrospect quite foolish, he decided that the best way to quickly find out what this power of his was to get hurt and watch it heal him. Perhaps now that he was actually looking for it, he would actually find it! It was a deaf, dumb and blind leap of faith, but unfortunately for our good friend, common sense had decided to take its own mandatory vacation that day.
Harry did not fancy cutting himself. It was just plain wrong; why hurt himself when there was enough and more of that from the Dursleys? So in another feat of misguided brilliance, he decided that if he was going to get hurt, he might as well do it in a way he was intimately familiar with.
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The next morning, while Vernon was watching, Harry 'accidentally' scratched the car while washing it. It had been done in as accidental a manner as could be accomplished of course. No need to get killed over it after all.
Like clockwork, Vernon's face began to purple. His hands curled to fists and as Harry watched and prayed to some higher power that he wouldn't die that day, Vernon swung his arm. A good three hours later, Harry woke up from his unconscious state, mentally wondering exactly what had prompted him to attempt suicide. He tried to move himself in a practiced manner, trying to see exactly where he had been damaged. After the fifth fracture he found, he sighed and lay back, trying not to fall asleep while waiting for his "miracle" to happen.
By 5 pm, something did occur. Harry's wandering attention, which had been engaged in the half futile act of blocking out the admittedly immense pain while still staying awake, was snapped to focus when he literally felt his immobile, purple and swollen arm creak. It was so shocking that he yelped in surprise. The weird feeling continued,admittedly lessening the pain as arms, legs, ribs, his dislocated joints and other damage was slowly and painfully reversed. It took till 5 in the morning when Harry was finally in a state a normal human being might call 'functional'.
Harry was both jubilant and annoyed. On one hand his totally idiotic scheme had somehow pulled through and he finally knew the feeling of whatever inner power coursed through him. On the other hand his chores would begin too soon for him to get any more sleep. In other words, he would have to do that day's chores half asleep.
Of course, it was at this point that he realized that the Dursleys wouldn't call on him for a while yet, after all they had just finished trying to beat him into a coma, and trying to get the half dead kid that he had been mere hours before into public was just begging for trouble. So he decided to take the opportunity and slept, all the way till the next morning.
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The next day, the Dursleys were treated to a very peculiar site – happy Harry. Now while normal kids spent most of their time laughing or crying (or in some cases pouting), Harry was known to them to be, peculiarly enough, in a perpetually blank emotional state. There was no rage, frustration or any of the 'normal' reactions to their heaped abuse. In fact that was one of the reasons the Durselys tried so bloody hard to get a reaction out of him. No matter what their end of the equation, a kid who doesn't get the least bothered when a grown man tries to kill him was 'freakish', at least, to them.
With that in mind, the horribly malicious glint in his eyes and the happy grin did not bode well for the Dursleys. Even Dudley could feel it. And for once, Vernon, who from Petunia's reluctant tales, knew exactly what a seriously annoyed wizard could do, felt the tentacles of fear slowly worm their way into the frigid crevices of his utterly inhuman heart. Even so, he could not let this pass. So he decided to ask the 'freak' exactly what the matter was.
"What happened to you, boy? Why are you so cheery all of a sudden? You wouldn't be doing something freakish now would you?!" Vernon huffed, mentally adding the unsaid, but understood 'after I walloped you so thoroughly not too long ago'.
Harry grinned even wider, unsettling Vernon even further. "Nothing at all Uncle Vernon. Nothing - at - all."
And he happily twirled to the counter and flipped the bacon. Vernon decided not to pursue the matter. Not with his attention diverted by the bacon at any rate.
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Harry spent the rest of the month happily experimenting with his new found ability. He literally had a brand new toy to play with. The first thing he did was of course to try and mold chakra, which contrary to his prior opinion, did take practice to get right. Then he did it while forming the 12 'standard' handseals he had gleaned from the books, and noted down his 'results'. Then he began to try doing the simplest and least chakra intensive discipline of them all, genjutsu.
It was not that genjutsu were easy to learn or do. It was just that Harry had confidence, determination and a quite literally a goal to die for. As a result, even though his handseals were not up to his childishly exaggerated expectations, and his genjutsu were literally sucking him dry, he persevered.
The funny part of course was that basic genjutsu were visual, because that was the most clearly used sense of the five. And differences in brain structure meant that it was not possible for him to trap animals with a blunt force genjutsu. That meant only one thing, Human Experimentation.
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It was a poor time for Dudley. He had recently been the frequent subject of daytime nightmares. Sitting still one moment and dying in increasingly imaginative and horrifying ways the next. The Dursleys were so worried sick that, in an ironic twist of fate, they forgot to blame the one person who was actually responsible.
But even when Harry eventually tired of his little game, he could honestly say that it was the single most satisfying thing he had ever done. However he decided to stay his real vengeance for a later date, when he could do much more imaginative things with chakra. After all, didn't someone say that revenge was a dish best served cold?
As the new month began, in the cupboard under the stairs, Harry James Potter began to smirk maniacally, the promise of death dancing in his eerily glowing green eyes.
A/N : another chapter done. My updates are likely to be a bit irregular so don't fret if I don't post on time. Anyway, thanks for reading and as always,
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