9

As our group walked back to the faculty lounge, everyone looked at me strangely. This stunt of turning ALL the matches in the classroom into needles took everyone by surprise. And when McGonagall decided to hand out new matches, the box spilled... needles. McGonagall decided to try to crack them, but out of five attempts, none worked.

And I wondered why this had happened. And now, under the astonished gaze of my entire class, I looked at my source of magic and was shocked. For it had grown. Twice as big! And the process of it growing hadn't stopped! I was growing because I was drawing energy from my magic source and I hadn't used it all, so my energy reserve had increased. About six times! And then the source energy began to affect my energy, and then the core itself, stimulating it to grow two bloody times overnight!

Now it was clear what had happened in class. Because of the increased amount of energy, my control was at a disadvantage, so the point effect on the match was no point at all! And with the amount of energy I had, the spell was turning all the matches in the class into needles. And that, miraculously, was just in the classroom. But as we passed a group of Slytherins, I heard a faint noise:

- No, did you see that? My matches turned into needles! I even pricked my finger! How could you do that? We weren't in Transfiguration, were we?! We were in History! - I grinned at what I heard and sped up. Once inside the room, I couldn't stand the strange stares of the two neighbours and, after changing my clothes, I hurried into the secret corridors. To hell with them!

He made his way to the same entrance as before, cleared the floor, sat down and began to meditate. In fact, the energy I had ingested could not have pumped my core and reserves that high! So I searched for the anomaly and found it. In the centre of the picture, the light flashed into the darkness, and then I suddenly became aware of the presence of a huge bombardment of energy from the castle, from the very heart of Hogwarts! And these currents of energy only increased in strength and conductivity with each passing moment. My personal reserve and my Core strength were also increasing rapidly. After all, the Core has to supply a certain amount of energy in order not to degrade, but at any moment that very degradation could begin! And I didn't need it! To become a detonator? No way!

Immediately, I twisted my arms in a gesture of weaving, causing the air itself to glow with strands of energy. Strange sounds began to emanate from my throat, resonating through the air and pouring more and more light into the complex web, which at a certain point became very difficult to hold with the resources of the corporeal mind, and so I had to shift partially into energy form. Still, energy integrity is far more important than becoming an appendage of the castle! Incidentally, we need to talk to Filch, and if he's not such an old fool, we could transfer some of the incoming energy to him and make him a wizard. Of course, he'd only be a wizard within the walls of Hogwarts, but as they say, he's already living here indefinitely.

Finally weaving an intricate spell, I opened my eyes and hovered over what was in front of me. It was a complex shape, multi-dimensional, with many runes, outlines and such, and it took up the entire space of the small hall in which I somehow found myself. Even the walls were glowing with patterns and runes in great numbers. But I gave up on the light show and used my will to squeeze the whole thing down to a ping-pong ball, and with a punch in the right place, I drove it straight into the magical core. And instantly it howled in agony. And then he fell into the darkness of unconsciousness.

Castle, watching the boy and seeing that he lacked the space for an intricate magical web, expanded the corridor in which he sat and continued to do so until the web stopped growing. And now he watched the screaming and instantly unconscious boy with compassion and wild excitement. And then something incredible began to happen to the ward.

Flashes of scarlet fire began to run through his magical core, and then the energy from the lock and the heart seemed to 'flow' around him and immediately into the energy filter, which became noticeably more complex and powerful, becoming more complex and powerful with each passing moment as the energy flow intensified. And then the energy of an incomprehensible spectrum burst from the core, splitting into two streams, the sky-blue stream rushing to the boy's head where it was anchored, while the bright scarlet stream of this unknown energy spread throughout his body, partially penetrating the head and merging with the blue stream, beginning to grow its channels in the body, causing the boy to arch and gasp. The scarlet energy penetrated everywhere: muscles, bones, ligaments and bone marrow, and then the boy's body glowed with many red spots on his skin, and in the next instant the energy burst from them, surrounding his body in a kind of cocoon, turning the energy outlets into microscopic vortices.

After about ten minutes of holding the energy outwards, the energy dissolved and the two strange sources in his head and around his magical core blazed simultaneously and began to resonate, causing the boy's body to immediately drop and breathe more calmly. The energy mixed and began to weave itself into strange patterns that, after a few moments, seemed to erupt and... The castle froze in surprise, watching the birth of new and incomprehensible sources of this new energy. In his head a purple source of energy blossomed, in his back a blue one, in his chest a green flower with a magical nucleus in its centre, in his stomach a yellow flower of energy opened its petals, underneath a scarlet source blazed with blood and finally the last flower in his groin blossomed bright orange. Then all the new formations flashed their colours and a stream of energy flowed from purple to orange, each flower becoming more powerful and more intertwined with the new colour of the source, until from the orange, a dazzling stream stretched towards the boy's heart, entering it without a trace and suddenly stopping.

The castle was frightened, but no sooner had it called the housekeepers for help than the heart thumped once, twice, and beat rhythmically again. Now, however, it glowed with an evenly distributed iridescent light and a new flower bloomed in it, with all the colours of the other flowers and two new colours: black and white. And then all the flowers in the guy's body burst into flames, drawing energy to a place beneath the Magic Core, forming a kind of strange vortex that, instead of drawing energy in, began to produce it. It was so strange that Castle didn't know what to think. Then, from the strange last formation, energy flowed through the newly formed channels, and as soon as it had filled all the capillaries and the system, all seven flowers went out, leaving a barely visible glow in their place. And the boy simply fell asleep.

Nevertheless, the castle summoned the housekeeper responsible for this difficult apprentice, who immediately made a bed in the place where the boy had been found, cast a spell to cleanse the boy of sweat and dirt, washed his clothes and placed him in a bunk, carefully covering him with a blanket.

And it took the castle a long time to figure out what had happened to the boy and his energy, which had become so complex that it was extremely difficult to understand anything in that heap.

But there was one thing he could see more of. At some point, the boy's energy changed completely. The colouring of the core fluttered and changed. And the boy's soul flared and unfolded into something so complex that the castle froze in shock. The old soul of the body intertwined with the new structure, giving birth to something entirely new and unified. The connections intertwined into a tight knot, the parts of this something intertwined and docked with the old. Until the complex structure burst into finality and the soul stabilised, unlike anything the castle had seen before.

Then a new source of incomprehensible energy seemed to take hold, and blue and red energy began to mix in a vortex, travelling through the body to muscles, bones, ligaments, veins and the nervous system, complicating and strengthening everything, changing at an incredible rate. And when the energy returned to the vortex, there on the bed lay the same boy on the outside, but on the inside he had become something more than just a human or a mage.

***

When I opened my eyes, the first thing I felt was a strange lightness in my body and something else. A strange and incomprehensible emptiness? A loss? I looked at my energy level and was stunned. And there was a reason for it.

- Where the hell did my chakra come from? - The shock was really big and so thick that it pushed all other thoughts out of my head. I got out of bed, looked around the small hall and, still not believing what had happened, folded a series of seals, the warmth of the SCS immediately echoing inside, and found myself at the opposite wall of the hall. The Shunshin worked as it was supposed to. More substitutions, Henge, Illusion and Shadow Clone followed. And it all worked quite easily. However, I felt the coldness in my body more and more. The Yang component of the chakra was running out. I had to be careful, because even though I was training in this body, it was far from shinobi training, because without chakra, it would simply not be able to withstand the strain. I also thought that I might have to start training in the Green Beast style if I didn't want to be weak in that discipline. After all, the chakra and the body are connected.

After finding the chakra, I went deeper and deeper and became more and more anxious with each passing moment. Because I could not feel my shard, the centre of my being. Then, having completely ruined my mood, I reached into the inner world where Harry had previously resided. I didn't find him. The inner world, however, had changed dramatically. Before, it had been a piece of the Shinobi world, but now... it was an endless forest. A forest before sunrise on the horizon. One that was in no hurry to rise.

After investigating the changes, I understood nothing and, coming out into reality, went into my head to see the real mess there. Memory, essence and many other things had been re-rooted and were somehow interacting with each other. There were new structures in memory. And so I began the process of stabilisation, only to fall to my knees a moment later with tears streaming from my eyes.

- How?! Why?! What happened?! - I cried into the emptiness of my heart. For Harry Potter's soul was gone. And in response, memories came crashing down on my head. There I was, lying there, with the baby's hand moving the rattle above me, and the pretty, green-eyed girl leaning over the cot, smiling at me in a native, motherly way. Then the picture changes. I remember myself crying desperately in my cot as explosions and spells are heard from the ground floor. Then Dumbledore appears in my room from under the cloak of invisibility and, with a swift movement, weaves a golden bell into the rattle hanging over my face. Then he disappears under the cloak, only for a tall, brown-haired man wearing a black cloak and carrying a wand to fly into the room. When he sees me, the man makes a strange grimace and clutches his head.

- It's a child, Tom! Just a child! - and immediately his voice changed. - This child is our undoing! It's him or me! - The voice changes again. - He's a baby! What can he do? - Another voice, like Voldemort's schizophrenic. - Nothing yet, but babies have a chance to grow up! - The voice changes again. - But...!

- Don't interfere! - Voldemort shouted, pointing his wand at me, "Avada Kedavra!

But the green flash flying towards me hits the rattle, and the bell dangling from it reflects the attack back to the Dark Lord, who crumbles to dust. Only my cloak and wand remain intact. And my forehead hurts from the impact of the bell, which has burned the rope from which it hangs and fallen directly onto my forehead, its glowing facets leaving a trail of lightning behind me. Dumbledore, who then appeared, walked over to my cot, ignoring me, and moved it to retrieve the bell.

- And you, Tom, are a fool! You know you can't destroy your own soul box! And by attacking it, you have attacked yourself. Heh, but that's even better. Anyway..." he inspected the bell, then frowned and leaned over my bed to examine the burn. - Damn, I didn't see that coming! A bloody shard of soul had moved into the baby! Although... Hmm, this could play into my hands.

He pulled out his wand and started to do something to me, which only made the pain in my forehead worse and my head foggy and much harder to think.

- That's better. The bookmarks will turn him into an idiot and keep Tom from taking over the guy's body too quickly. And then... let's see how we play this card," Hagrid entered the house, and there was a howl of pain and explosions from the street.

- Take the baby and get him to Sister Lily. The Blood Protection should keep him safe there," Hagrid looked around, sighed guiltily and, having changed me and wrapped me in a blanket, headed for the exit, got behind the wheel of a motorbike and sped off. Hagrid apologised to me all the way out. And he said this:

- I'm sorry, Harry, I dare not disobey Dumbledore. An unbreakable vow. I foolishly gave it to Dumbledore when I was young and there's nothing I can do about it, now he has every right to order me about and I have no right to disobey. I'm sorry, Harry...

Next, I was consumed by memories of the real Harry James Potter. His dreams, his tears, his desire to kill himself and the fact that magic prevented him from doing so. And then the way he flooded his treasure with tears and blood from his broken lip and nose, praying to unknown gods for help. The last memory was a strange one. The white room and Harry standing there, smiling at me.

- Don't be sad because I left, Naruto. Yes, I know who you are. I went to see my parents. My mum and dad. I went of my own free will and I found a way to do it. I'm sorry for that. You didn't kill me. I willingly gave you part of my soul and all my memories. I don't need them here anymore. It was only when you came to my prayers that I was able to rest and even remember what it was like to smile and laugh. But I had not lost my desire to leave. You know from my memories now that I tried many times, but it didn't work. You wanted the best for me, I know. But I don't agree. I wanted to go and I'm going to my family. Goodbye and don't blame yourself. I would have gone anyway, sooner or later. And again, don't blame yourself and live a good life...

And it was all gone. There was a lump in my throat and pain in my heart. Tears welled up in my eyes. And I couldn't hold them back. I just felt sorry for the man. For his soul and his life. But when I came to my senses, I stood up, wiped away my tears, clenched my fists and looked out at the world with piercing blue eyes.

- Dumbledore, you're dead, you scum...