August 8, 1988
England, Little Whinging, 4 Privet Drive
Amazingly enough, they did not punish me. Instead of locking me in the cupboard beneath the stairs, as they had done a couple of times during the past week whenever my relatives began having one of their episodes about me, Aunt Petunia took a deep breath as though preparing to dive underwater and blurted out to Vernon-san and Dudley-kun:
"Harry'sawizardjustlikehisparents."
I did not understand what she had said. I was not the only one.
"What was that?" Uncle Vernon's reddish eyebrows shot upward.
"Harry is a wizard?" Dudley had heard her better. "A real wizard? Wow!"
Uncle Vernon made a strange wheezing sound and clutched his heart.
"Easy, darling!" Petunia-san pulled herself together and rushed to her husband, who had gone pale at the news.
Like Dudley, I became seriously frightened for his health. But while my cousin fluttered around uselessly, I felt a strange warmth in my chest. A stream of water flew out of the tap toward the wheezing Vernon and poured itself over his head.
The shower revived Uncle instantly. He made a sound like 'brr-br-br' and moved his broad moustache in a ridiculous way. I absolutely loved that moustache. It was excellent camouflage: if he ever needed to hide, he could shave it off and no one would recognize him.
"I'll clean everything up!" I grabbed a cloth and quickly wiped the puddle from the kitchen floor.
"Dad, are you feeling better?" Dudley asked.
"Yes," Vernon-san answered in a muffled voice while drying himself with a towel.
I made myself inconspicuous, practically merging with my chair as I waited for the family's verdict. It had to be difficult for them to accept my peculiarities. I imagined it was hard for any ordinary, normal family to raise a child around whom strange things happened without the child being able to control them. People who could use chakra often felt much stronger than others; there was a side effect of 'power'. But most shinobi only became capable of controlling chakra between the ages of eight and twelve, unless one counted clan prodigies such as Uchiha Itachi or Hyūga Neji. In our world, that meant there were no such 'surprises'. To do anything extraordinary, one first had to work and train hard. Chakra control required discipline: regular exercise, special breathing practices, and meditation. Such things did not come easily at a young age—or rather, not to everyone. Shinobi were considered adults from the moment they received a genin forehead protector, which could happen as early as ten. Clan children also began training around the age of three, while the Academy accepted students from six. Comparing eight-year-old Dudley-kun with me or Sasuke at the same age was therefore pointless.
What bothered me was that I had been unable to control two processes that had occurred only minutes apart. First I had flown; then I had controlled water. Could I have been suffering from chakra... no, magical exhaustion before, only for everything to return all at once? Perhaps Harry had used his accidental childhood magic to pull my soul into his body. The last time he had 'summoned a demon', I remembered him being listless and saying that the summoning had consumed too much of his strength.
What if things like this had happened constantly? If a child in my family could suddenly fly, set someone's hair on fire, or make kunai spin through the air, I would have been extremely nervous. Especially if I were not a shinobi myself. What if that child injured someone I loved? What if he exposed me to everyone else? Frightening him and keeping 'normal people' away from him did not seem like the worst possible response. The frightening part was not what a little wizard could do, but that he did not understand the harm he might cause those around him.
Once, I had seriously injured Sakura with my chakra after releasing a bijuu cloak. The problem was that in that state, you remembered nothing and had no control over yourself. That was the price of power. Sakura was a first-rate medic-nin, but even she took a long time to remove the ugly burn left by poisoned chakra. She stubbornly kept quiet about it because she did not want to upset me by saying I had done it to her. Fortunately, Captain Yamato told me. It forced me to view the problem differently. Being strong was not enough. It was nowhere near enough. You had to accept responsibility for that strength.
"Vernon, you should lie down," Petunia-san said firmly. "Dudley, sweetheart, please look after your father and sit with him."
Uncle gave me a thoughtful look but obeyed his wife. He and my subdued cousin trudged upstairs together. Aunt Petunia took another deep breath, smoothed the folds of her dress, and sat down opposite me with determination.
"Harry, you probably have questions. Ask them," she permitted.
"You're not going to throw me out, are you?" I asked awkwardly. It was a relevant question after what had just happened.
"No. We can't." Aunt Petunia looked away.
"I'll try not to do it again. I'll try to control it," I blurted, biting back the words 'or my name isn't Uzumaki Naruto'. This child's body, along with the chance to be a child within a family at all, had weakened my critical judgment somewhat.
"I doubt you'll be able to," Petunia-san said, shaking her head. "Similar things sometimes happened to Lily, though not on this scale and not very often. She could revive a wilted flower, or falling leaves in the garden would turn into butterflies... Once, I scratched myself badly and started bleeding. She became frightened for me, and the wound healed instantly. But with you... When you were brought to us, you cried constantly. Neither toys nor songs helped. Objects flew around the bedroom, and the curtains smoldered... I... I was terribly afraid for Dudley and Vernon. In the end, the solution was... the cupboard beneath the stairs. Upstairs, where Vernon and I sleep and where Dudley's room is, they might have seen it or been hurt. So I made a little room for you downstairs. You calmed down quickly in the dark. And I no longer had to fear that a small child might suddenly float out of a window. After I moved you to the ground floor, the magical outbursts almost stopped."
"I see..." I murmured. The mystery of the cupboard had been solved. "But I'll still try. And I promise no one in my family will be hurt."
"That would be wonderful," Petunia-san said, forcing a smile. I could see that she was barely holding herself together. Acting on instinct, I walked over and hugged her, though part of me still expected her to push me away. No one had hugged me when I was a child, and even a light touch on the head had felt like a miracle. She sobbed and wrapped her arms tightly around me.
"You have her eyes," Aunt Petunia whispered hoarsely. "Lily's eyes. The wizarding world swallowed my little sister. She delighted in the wonders she could perform. She loved studying at that magical school, and she did very well there... Then they killed her. She had only just turned twenty-one. So young. Naive, trusting, and in love with that father of yours—Potter. And now they'll take you away to their Hogwarts too..."
Aunt Petunia pulled back and blinked rapidly, restraining tears that still refused to fall.
So much for the coldhearted, evil relatives. Could it be that because Aunt Petunia believed Harry was doomed anyway, she had preferred not to notice him and had concentrated all her love on her own son? Human psychology was peculiar. But I did not think it had done either the 'underloved' Harry or the 'overloved' Dudley any good.
Still, if Petunia-san could now speak about Harry's mother, she had probably overcome or broken whatever spell or mental influence had been placed on her.
"Tell me, Aunt Petunia, do you know any wizard or witch who was acquainted with my parents and might help us with my problem controlling this magic?" I asked the question that interested me most. "Since neither you nor Uncle Vernon is magical, we were all lucky nothing terrible happened today. I don't even understand why any of it happened. Why I started flying, or why the water moved."
Aunt Petunia thought for a moment.
"Lily hardly ever introduced me to any of..." She frowned, then smiled faintly. "Oh, of course. Severus! A boy who lived near us in Cokeworth. He was a wizard too, and he explained many things to Lily... Perhaps that was why she never had any very powerful or destructive outbursts. Later, Lily said they were friends at school, though they belonged to different houses... What was his surname? Severus... Severus... Severus Snape!"
The moment she said that short surname, I saw my own notes in my mind, together with a newspaper clipping showing a serious black-haired, black-eyed man of about thirty-five. A Potions Master and a double agent! The only person from Harry's stories whom I had liked. He also reminded me of Sasuke, except his nose was slightly larger than my friend's.
"Severus Snape," I repeated after Aunt Petunia to fix the name in my memory. During my previous visit to this world, I had not needed to remember it because I had never intended to stay for long. This time, however, it seemed I would have to take on the role of the 'Chosen One' myself. I had no desire to make a complete disgrace of myself. I had already spent one life as the heir to the aristocratic Uzumaki clan while behaving like a savage. Ino-chan had only opened my eyes at sixteen and taken a little responsibility for my upbringing, giving me a few scrolls and books on etiquette and High Speech.* Before that, I sometimes could not even understand Neji when he spoke with Hinata.
It was decided! I would find Severus Snape and ask him to take me as his apprentice!
Hmm... But how was I supposed to do that?
* One distinguishing feature of Japanese is the presence of special grammatical categories of politeness, divided into casual speech, polite speech, and honorific or elevated speech.