His second week….his second week in the Wizarding World was spent searching out the exact members of each party, their numbers, their homes, their views, their actions and lack of action…he researched each member as thoroughly as he could manage. He found scraps of information around his hiding places. Things like what kind of wards each member prefered on their homes, when they were seen in public, what they voted on in the closed sessions of the Ministry.

His allies were limited in what they would do, but they showed their support and he felt warmth creep into his chest at the knowledge. Those happier thoughts usually invited memories of Reborn and the others.

He would admit, he even missed the Arcobaleno- it would go much faster with them at his side, but he would not drag them into his war. Not to mention the fact that the Arcobaleno had no experience with magic and all the things it would allow a wizard or witch to manage. It was a much more…flexible…sort of medium when compared to Flames. He had no doubt at all that they would adapt, that they would dominate a fight with any magic folk given the proper amount of time and training but…

Skull didn't have the time to teach them. His family was in danger now. The only other people Skull may have trusted aside from himself to prepare the Arcobaleno for fighting magic users were the people he was going in to rescue or those who were already helping him now.

So he would act alone.

Besides. Skull really wanted to maim the people who had dared to touch his family himself. He knew himself enough to know he'd get…twitchy if anyone tried to get in the way of that.

So his second week was spent using a combination of all the magic and habits he had learned during the war, and all the tricks and trades he had learned during his thirty three years in the mafia gathering information on his targets. Old habits and knowledge slid easily to the surface to blend with the newer ones. The pieces of himself that he buried were unearthed and he couldn't help but whisper the incantations of spells he hasn't used in decades.

Skull didn't think he'd ever forget the things he had learned to do and the person he become on a warfront. It had always been there, ruthlessly suppressed in the presence of the Arcobaleno, but here and now Harry was marching into war as a one-man-army and it was as easy as breathing to slide back into old habits made all the more deadly by his stint in the mafia.

Week three….week three was the beginning of the end for the wizards- not that they realized it at first.

Week three was where Skull began to slip and slink through the shadows taking people out of the picture permanently. At each place he visited, he left a vivid violet colored, tribal looking cloud motif on the walls for both his enemies and Aurors to find at each site. The image would spread into the populace via some slip or another and soon he would be front page Daily Prophet news.

He had never been the sort of man to brag about kills or anything, but he made an exception this time for two reasons.

The first: he wanted the wizards to whisper about it, he wanted the news of someone taking out Neo-Eaters and leaving that mark behind to spread. His family would know what it meant, his allies would as well. They would hear about it- either from the newspaper, whisper in the Ministry or somewhere- and know he was here to set things to right.

The second…

The second was purely from his Cloud instincts. He wanted these people to know he was coming for them. He wanted them to know he had been the one to do it- even if they didn't know who he was yet or why he was doing what he was doing. He wanted the Neo-Eaters to panic as their numbers slowly diminished, as it hit them that all of them would be hunted down, no matter where they went or what defenses were placed in his way.

Inverted Clouds were much more dangerous to anger then their Classic brethren. The whole mafia world whispered of the Classic's rage, the destruction they left in their footsteps.

This is because Classic Clouds raged in and demolished everything in their path in the way of whatever target had roused the anger. They left survivors to spread the story. Inverted Clouds…were different. They had a much longer fuse, so when something did manage to set them off, Inverted Clouds didn't rage, rush in to carve a swath of destruction through whatever pissed them off. They plotted. They were meticulous. They hunted their prey down, stalked in from the shadows before lashing out.

Classic Clouds were natural disasters. They left an impression, people saw them coming and were demolished if they did not leave the line of fire. It was possible to weather the storm if they were not the main target of a Classic's rage so people were left in the path of their destruction and were able to spread warnings to others. Inverted Clouds were predators. They hunted. No one was left untouched. They would hunt every single person and piece involved with their target down and, if they saw a reason, destroy them. No one was left to whisper warnings about the Inverted Cloud when they were done.

Skull was going hunting.

LINEBREAK

Skull relished in the panic of the Neo-Eaters.

He knew they didn't suspect Harry Potter to be the one whittling their numbers down. (Harry was the 'savior' after all- a bright and shining war hero and perfect example of a Light Wizard who would never sink to killing them this way) This has the benefit of ensuring his family wasn't threatened and that his family was being moved with the surviving members. He knew that. They had left him their own signs in the rooms they had been held in. He had just ripped information from the minds of the Neo-Eaters he found and jumped from base to base, carving his way through them so he knew where to look when he got there, and he recognized that his family was still alive and knew he was coming for them.

Good.

If his family had been harmed…well.

It would have gotten much worse for the Neo-Eaters.

It doesn't even cross his mind that he hadn't called or checked in with any of the Arcobaleno since he had stormed away. He doesn't think about how he has fallen into war patterns. He doesn't think about the last time he actually ate, or the last time he had slept more than an hour for every twelve he was active.

He doesn't pause to think beyond the knowledge required to take out everything Neo-Eater in his path, and keep himself in fighting condition.

Considering the circumstances of what Skull considered 'fighting condition' and what he had faced in the past with worse than he was doing to himself, Skull wasn't really taking care of himself as he should. After all, he grew up accustomed to being on the cusp of starvation until he turned eleven. Then it was almost starving every summer. And then there was the slim amount of food to be found while on the run, and hunted, while at war. He fought through impossible odds his entire life and won through all of them.

Besides, the Arcobaleno were used to leaving Skull as the odd one out. He went years without contact with one of his fellow cursed companions. They weren't magic anyway and he didn't have time to deal with their preconceived notions about him. Granted, he reinforced those every time they interacted, so they couldn't be blamed for that. But the fact remained that he didn't have time for them.

His condition, was one he was well acquainted with. Alone, with limited supplies and work to be done that no one else would do. It wasn't affecting his warpath across the British Magical Community (without magic or Flames so he wouldn't draw the Ministry or Vindice to his location- just old fashioned straight up killing) in the slightest.

So Harry just kept going.

It's only a matter of time before the Potter Luck strikes again and something goes wrong.

This turns out to be in the middle of a highly warded mansion of one of the 'earth shakers' in the Neo-Eater party. One of the members that really knew what they were doing, who pushed through the laws and legislature so cleverly worded and twisted to the Neo-Eater's agenda that the mafia man in Skull would appreciate it, if it wasn't aimed against him, he would have admired how no one was the wiser in any other situation.

It just so happens that this fucker had targeted some of his, and Skull had a track record of toppling regimes that targeted his people.

Harry gets in without issue, and even succeeds in killing the majority of the people in the mansion aligned with the Neo-Eaters without alerting anyone. (He takes a few dives into the Neo-Eaters' heads as well to pull more information from them. His Occlumency isn't much better then when he was in school, but he's got lots of trauma to throw at anyone who tries to enter. Not to mention most wizards had no idea how to handle Flames. His Legilimency is honed and practiced.)

The issue pops up when he walks straight into a meeting. Because of course he does. It was exactly the kind of thing that would only happen to a Potter.

(Skull was of the opinion that somewhere in the past a very, very powerful Chinese magical had cursed his family line 'may you live in interesting times'. Fon's ancestors probably had something to do with it, because that was his luck.)

Naturally, it erupts into a fight almost immediately. Everyone's got to stare for a moment in astonishment as what appears to be a muggle crashing their super secret meeting. So Harry goes for overpowering some of his basic spells. You can catch a lot of people with a highly overpowered Reducto.

In the end, Skull kills everyone in the mansion before they can alert anyone, but not before the earth shaker himself, the Neo-Eater who would have died one thousand times over in the first five minutes if he had not kept using others as meat shields, was the one to land a glancing blow with an oddly colored spell he didn't recognize.

It turned out to be all that was needed to cause even more problems as Potter Luck kicked in with a vengeance for the second time.

(God, it was second year with a fucking Basilisk all over again.)