Chapter 1 - 1: Edmund Vulpis (2/2)

When he touched the scroll, he felt a similar kind of warmth rush into him which happened only when his mother hugged him and all his wounds would heal. He knew it wasn't magic as his mother told him, but he was quite familiar with this kind of warmth. He knew he had the same kind of warmth in him but no one else seemed to have it. He could sense it in his mother, but no one else.

Quite similarly, the warmth from the scroll healed his wounds and beyond. He opened the scroll and looked at the scribblings carefully. They were in the foreign language which Clair had taught him. As he read the scroll, he learnt briefly about his mother's house and its history. Following the instructions, he pricked his thumb and placed it on a circle with strange symbols on it.

He woke up two days later in St. Mungo's. After being discharged from hospital, he attended his mother's funeral. Nobody noticed the looks of un-a.d.u.l.terated hate he was sending towards his father who was casually talking to Lucious Malfoy, another death eater who avoided Azkaban by throwing galleons away. That was the night when he first had the dream about Naruto.

Since then, he had been having dreams about Naruto's life. He learnt that the strange warmth was called chakra, a mixture of spiritual and physical energy that people in Naruto's era used to do all kinds of stuff and was essential for their survival. In some ways, it worked just like magic. But, it was more dense, more saturated and much rarer form of energy.

He learnt how Naruto became the jinchuriki of the kyuubi, how he spent his early life, his life as a genin and the various shinobi wars he was part of.

Naruto was hailed as a hero by his people. For hundreds of years he had lived and fought for peace in his land. But nature itself seemed to be against him. A highly mutable virus came into existance that fed on chakra. Slowly, everyone died due to loss of chakra and children were being born completely devoid of it. The last of the ninjas died as Naruto's descendants left the Elemental Nations after a lot of persuasion.

Four years of having dreams about Naruto's life, Edmund learned how he finally ended his life, thus freeing his friend from his prison.

In those four years, Edmund had grown into a healthy eleven year old despite all the torture from his father. Since the day he awakened his chakra, Edmund was rather tolerant to pain. His senses became stronger, he had faster reflexes, heightened awareness and a sturdy body with denser muscles. Although he was still a kid, one could see that he had a rather defined body and was taller for his age.

Having seen the life Naruto lived, he knew how important it was to be able to control chakra. So, he began practicing chakra control. At eleven, he was able to run on water for hours before he was down to twenty percent of his chakra capacity. To increase his reserves, Edmund would drain himself to exhaustion before going to sleep and use chakra whenever he got a chance.

Since he didn't have any scrolls for how to perform different ninja techniques as his mother had very scarce amount of chakra because of dilution of genes, he had to postpone his plans for them till he could access the Whirlpool family vault in Gringott's. The scroll had told him that there were some scrolls based on various ninja arts stored in the vaults. He recalled how Naruto learned Rasengan and was able to perform it after a few weeks of training. He knew that the technique would be rather lethal if used on normal humans as they didn't have chakra enhanced bodies.

He was able to do some other simple ninjutsu techniques such as Kawairumi, bushin and henge. He had learnt them with little effort and was quite proficient in them. He had seen ninjas perform them without hand seals in the dreams and trained in doing so himself. He was rather envious when he learnt that his chakra reserves were nowhere near as huge as Naruto's, but he knew he could compensate it with heightened chakra control and gradual increase of chakra capacity.

He was broken out of his musings when an owl arrived with his Hogwarts letter. He quickly sent his reply and went downstairs to inform his evil father about the letter.

Altair was waiting on the dinning table for breakfast. He noticed Edmund approaching him and understood that the letter had arrived.

”The letter came. I've sent the reply already.”

He only received a nod with a grunt.

They had their breakfast quietly. Just as Edmund was about to leave, Altair spoke up, ”Go to Diagon Alley yourself and buy what you have to.” He threw a pouch towards Edmund rather arrogantly which he easily caught, and continued, ”I don't have time to babysit you so get what you want yourselves. The pouch has around 2000 galleons and that's all you'll need.”

'Pompous shit,' Edmund cursed in his mind as he nodded and left the dinning room with a menacing glint in his eyes. 'Just you wait, I will rip you apart with my b.a.r.e hands, but before that, I ruin your life and dissolve the Vulpis house that you're so proud of.'

After about an hour, Edmund changed into his public robes and used the floo network to go to diagon alley.