Disclaimer: All HP characters are the property of JKR, the WB, and respective publishing companies and all Naruto characters are the property of Masashi Kishimoto. This is nothing more than a simple FanFiction that I have written. I have made no money from this or any of the other stories I have posted on this or other sites.

Warnings: Mild to moderate violence, character death, alternate universe (i.e. kiss canon goodbye), OCC behaviors and personalities, a number of original characters and obscure canon characters to flesh out family trees, random chosen last names to give a number of characters surnames, and who knows what else.

AN: This story is self-beta'd; so there may be occasional grammatical or spelling errors that crop up every now and then and for those I apologize in advance.

The Unbound Soul
Chapter One: The Experiment

October 31, 1981, 11:57 PM
Godric's Hollow, England

"Lily, it's him! He's here! Take Harry and run! I'll try to buy enough time for you to get the two of you out!" Dad's voice bellowed just seconds before Mum's arms scooped fifteen month old Harry James Potter off of the floor.

"Be careful, James!" Mum cried back as she began running for the stairs.

Frightened by the fear he could hear in his mother's voice, Harry twisted around in his mothers arms to stare over her shoulder at his father. As he watched, the door to the small cottage he'd lived in with his parents for as long as he could remember was blown open and a scary looking man with black hair, pale skin, and red eyes stepped into the house. Little Harry's eyes widened in fear as he watched his father step in front of the scary man with his arms wide open in an effort to block the man's path. Harry let out a cry of fright as the scary man cast a frightening green light at his father from the pale wand Harry could see in his hand.

"Dada!" Harry cried desperately as he watched his father fall to the ground the instant the green light touched him.

"James…" Mum sobbed as her arms tightened around Harry's body as she briefly stumbled on the stairs in her haste to reach the second floor; a trickle of blood coating her mouth from where she'd bitten her lip.

"Dada!" Harry cried again as his mother dashed into his room and slammed the door shut.

"I'm sorry, daddy can't hear you now, baby," Mum brokenly whispered as she kissed Harry's forehead; her tears soaking his hair and her bleeding mouth leaving a smear of blood on his forehead. "Mummy and daddy love you so much…"

Whatever else his mother was going to say was cut off when the door to Harry's bedroom was blown open by the scary man; who had followed them upstairs. Harry stared at the scary man that had hurt Dad and desperately clung to his mother as she stumbled backwards.

"Mercy, please, have mercy," Mum begged as she stumbled over his stuffed dog.

"Give me the boy," the scary man ordered.

"No, not Harry! Take me instead!" Mum countered as she spun around and roughly dropped Harry into his crib before she placed herself between Harry and the scary man.

"Foolish girl, stand aside!"

"No! Not Harry! Not my baby!"

"Get out of my way!" the scary man hissed as he raised his wand and cast a spell that threw his mother out of the way.

"Mama!" Harry shrieked in fright as he pulled himself up onto his chubby legs and stretched his arm out towards his fallen mother. "Mama!"

"Say goodbye, Harry Potter," the scary man stated as he pointed his wand at little Harry this time. "Avada Kedavra."

"No! I will not let you harm my son," Mum yelled as she scrambled up off of the floor and threw herself between Harry and the terrible green light that was rushing towards him.

"Mama!" Harry cried shrilly as he watched his mother's long red hair whip around her body as she spun about and fell down as the horrible green light washed over her.

"Foolish girl," the scary man sneered at his mother as he stepped over his mother's unmoving body before he moved deeper into the room and raised his wand at Harry once more. "It is time for you to die so that I might live to rule the world as I was born to."

Tears coursed down Harry's face as he dropped his eyes from the terrible green light rushing towards him to stare at his mother once more. His little fingers wriggled desperately as he again cried out a desperate, "Mama! Dada!"

His desperate cries called forth the spirit of his mother and her ethereal form threw itself in between him and certain death for the second time that night. A heartbeat later, little Harry's world exploded in pain as the green light knocked his mother's ghost into his body before it slammed into his blood smeared forehead. The fifteen month old screamed and cried in pain as he fell back onto his bottom while the terrifying green light was reflected back at the scary man by the remnants of his mother's magic that had clung to the blood on his face and to her ghost. An explosion rocked the room at the same time and Harry cried out a second time as a piece of flying debris cut deeply into his forehead.

He would scream a third time when a black shadow with red eyes rushed towards him. The shadow passed through Harry's body a split second later, stealing magic from his immature core, before it fled from the ruined house. In its passing, the shade left behind a small fragment of itself that burrowed deeply into the bleeding cut on Harry's forehead and latched onto his magical core in order to sustain itself. Harry had no idea what was happening though; he was too young to understand and all he wanted was for his mother and father to pick him up, hold him close, and kiss away his hurts like they used to.

"Mama," Harry called through his tears as he rolled towards the bars of his crib and stuffed his arm between two bars as he tried to touch her. The scuffing of a shoe on the floor drew Harry's attention back to the ruined door where he saw a man wearing a scary mask hovering nervously just outside of his door. The man pulled the mask from his face as he stepped into the room and walked up to the crying toddler. Harry recognized him and felt a measure of his fear recede as he reached his arms out to the man and babbled, "Wormy… Mama booboo… Dada booboo… Wormy help…"

"It would have been better if you had never been born," the man known only as Wormy to little Harry spat at the toddler as he ignored Harry's outstretched arms and lifted his wand. "If not for you, then they would not have had to die. It's your fault the Dark Lord killed them. It's your fault I had to betray them to my lord."

The man then pointed his wand at Harry and fired the same green light that the scary man had used. This time, when the light struck Harry, there was no pain as a gold light surrounded him at the last second and reflected the death curse back at its caster. Little Harry felt a rush of wind steal his breath away while his parents' voices whispered comforting words to him. The wind and his parents' voices soon vanished as the gold light flared bright white and burned hotly. The light and heat disappeared almost as quickly as they had appeared and little Harry found himself sitting in an unfamiliar place surrounded by giant trees and dark shadows.

Confused, frightened, in pain, and alone, Harry did the only thing he could; he cried.

October 31, 0281 AtD through December 13, 0283 AtD*
Konohagakure no Sato, Hi no Kuni

Twenty-seven year old Orochimaru scowled as he stalked through the forest just outside of Konoha. He was frustrated over the poor results of his Kekkei Genkai experiments. It wasn't the growing number of lives that his experiments had claimed that frustrated him though; it was the complete lack of success that annoyed him. After spending the past decade researching Kekkei Genkai and human genetics, he had pieced together a method of implanting the genetic marker that would allow a person to use the Kekkei Genkai of whatever bloodline had been implanted within them.

He'd gone over his notes a hundred times and knew that the process should work but for some reason it wasn't working at all and over one hundred and thirty individuals had died as a result of each failure to date. He'd dissected each failure in the hopes of finding the key to making the new host accept the implanted genetic materials but so far he had found no clues as to why the integration was failing. The only information he had learned was that each of the one hundred and thirty-seven subjects he'd used in the experiments had died painfully as their chakra coils were shattered beyond repair after being altered to accommodate the new bloodline or when the implanted brainstem cells carrying the genetic markers were violently rejected by their body.

The constant failure was just so frustrating; especially when his initial experiments using lab rats and the dead bodies he'd recovered from various battlefields had shown such promise.

As he moved through the forest, Orochimaru toyed with the idea of abandoning the bloodline projects and focusing on another method of gaining the power he would need to complete his goal (which was mastering every jutsu in existence and becoming the world's most powerful shinobi); such as obtaining the eyes of an Uchiha. He was just contemplating his chances of kidnapping one of the Uchiha Clan's less impressive individuals when the forest was disturbed by a bright flash of light and a wave of intense heat. Curious, Orochimaru took to the trees and headed towards the disturbance. He paused briefly when he picked up the sound of someone crying before he began moving once more as he followed the sound until he came upon a bleeding toddler sitting in a circle of scorched trees.

The child fell silent the moment Orochimaru dropped down to the forest floor and began to approach the child so that he could get a better look at it. Based upon the color and style of the filthy clothes the child wore, Orochimaru guessed the child to be a boy. The child had wild hair that was black as sin, deep green eyes that would put emeralds to shame, skin so pale it would make a geisha jealous, and a jagged cut on his brow that still bled freely; the thin river of dark red bisecting the child's face and contrasting sharply with his pale skin. Orochimaru sneered when he drew close enough to the boy to sense the child's weak chakra network.

Orochimaru stared at the child while he weighed the benefits of alerting one of the ANBU Guards on duty to the child's presence or giving him a mercifully quick death by feeding him to one of his summonses. He had just decided to put the child out of his misery (the boy would be weak and useless due to how pathetic his chakra coils felt) when it occurred to him that such a young child might just be what he needed for his Kekkei Genkai experiments. After all, all of his other subjects had been older teens and young adults that he had taken prisoner during missions (since prisoners would be less likely to be missed than villagers) and they had all died.

Maybe using a young child, whose chakra coils were still flexible, as a test subject would increase the chances of the integration of a new bloodline being a success?

"It looks like tonight is your lucky night, little boy," Orochimaru murmured as he crossed the distance separating him from the boy and scooped him up in his arms.

The child immediately whined and began squirming in an effort to escape from his hold. Orochimaru scowled in response to the toddler's antics as he reached up and firmly pressed on key pressure points in the child's neck to knock him out effortlessly and painlessly. It wouldn't do to have the child draw attention to them as Orochimaru carried him back to his lab, after all; someone might whisk test subject number one-thirty-eight away so that he could be returned to his absent family or sent to the orphanage and raised as cannon fodder for the next war.

A mere twenty-two minutes later, Orochimaru deposited the unconscious child onto an empty surgical table within his lab's infirmary and promptly stripped him out of his soiled clothes. Orochimaru took a moment to strap the child to the table to prevent him from falling off should in the event that the child woke before he finished giving the boy a medical exam. Wrapping his hands in green healing chakra, Orochimaru began his exam with the bleeding cut on the boy's forehead only to discover that the cut had healed during the time it had taken him to transport the child from the forest to his lab; leaving behind a jagged scar on the child's brow.

"What a surprising little trick you have, little boy," Orochimaru stated as a predatory smile formed on his face. "It would appear that you are far more interesting than I originally thought you to be, child."

Over the course of the next four days, Orochimaru would subject the child to a full battery of medical scans and tests in order to get a clearer picture of the boy's current health. He took note of the child's blood type (AB positive), chakra nature (wind), any antibodies present in his blood (close to a dozen; all of which were unfamiliar), the sequencing of his D.N.A., and the current state of his chakra coils (chaotic, stressed, and collapsing). Additionally, he took extensive notes on the child's innate healing ability; which curiously did not draw upon the child's chakra like most healing abilities did.

During the entire testing process, Orochimaru was forced to frequently and repeatedly sedate the child so he wouldn't have to hear him whine due to the fact that he woke up far too often; something that both annoyed and fascinated him. If not for the presence of the child's internal healing ability and the potential it held, Orochimaru would have killed the little gaki in order to spare his ears from the child's incessant and incoherent cries each time he woke up. The Snake Summoner may enjoy making grown men and women scream but not even he could find joy in the wailing of a child.

Especially not when said wailing distracted him from his work.

Once he had run the final test and compiled all of the test results, Orochimaru began running several experiments on test subject one-thirty-eight's blood in preparation of introducing the D.N.A. from one of the many dead Kekkei Genkai users that he'd collected through the years. The experiments were needed to determine which Kekkei Genkai would be the most compatible with test subject one-thirty-eight's blood type and chakra affinity. He was also looking to learn how test subject one-thirty-eight's natural healing ability would affect the bloodline integration.

At the same time as he was running those experiments, he placed test subject one-thirty-eight on a very strict physical conditioning regime in order to improve the subject's overall health. The first problem he addressed was test subject one-thirty-eight's poor chakra network; flooding the child's weakening coils with a constant influx of chakra in order to forcefully expand and strengthen his coils. The boy was in constant agony for the duration of each session due to the subject's chakra coils being ruptured by the flood of chakra coupled with the gaki's growing resistance to the various sedatives used. If not for the boy's innate healing ability repairing the damage almost as fast as it occurred, the process would have killed him before the end of the first session.

Orochimaru was also pumping an assortment of vitamin supplements and enhancement drugs through an intravenous line in order to increase test subject one-thirty-eight's bone density, strengthen the child's core muscle groups, boost his brain activity, improve his circulatory system, and double the child's production of blood cells. The idea behind those enhancements was to prevent the boy's body from breaking beneath the physical stress that the integration procedures would place on the child's body. In conjunction with the enhancements, the dark haired shinobi had his most trusted underlings diligently stretch and exercise the child's core muscles to increase his flexibility and mobility.

It would take the snake summoner a full year to get test subject one-thirty-eight's body into what he considered optimum condition. Over the course of those twelve months, Orochimaru had also handled the other preparations necessary for the series of invasive procedures that would give test subject one-thirty-eight a Kekkei Genkai. Those preparations included; drawing and storing a significant amount of the child blood (to be used for transfusions during surgery and for additional tests or experiments), cultivating a supply of the selected donor's blood (also for transfusions), and preparing the various tissues and cells that would be transplanted.

During that time, he also had his underlings start collecting additional orphans to use in the experiments. His orders had been for them to take only those orphans that would not be missed; those that came from families outside of Hi no Kuni or those that were from civilian backgrounds with no records of the family carrying a Kekkei Genkai. Those children would then be put through extensive medical evaluations before they were put through the same conditioning regime that the first boy had undergone in order to improve their overall physical health and chakra networks.

At the end of the year, Orochimaru eagerly initiated the implantation process on test subject one-thirty-eight. The Kekkei Genkai that Orochimaru selected to use for the procedure was the Hyouton due to the child's inborn affinity towards wind (one of the two natures that made up the Hyouton). He would have preferred to integrate the Mokuton into the child but forcefully adding two additional chakra natures on top of a subject's inborn nature had proven fatal in earlier test subjects long before he reached the point where he'd started using living humans in his experiments.

The first procedure took twelve hours to perform and involved giving the child several bone marrow transplantations from the deceased donor (an adult male from the Yuki Clan in Mizu no Kuni) and a blood transfusion (containing both the child's blood and the donor's blood). The process involved injecting each of the boy's individual bones with the cells of the donor (the larger the bone, the higher the number of injections required). Orochimaru would then monitor test subject one-thirty-eight for a full week after the implantation to insure that the transplanted cells were not being rejected by the child's body; taking numerous blood and tissue samples twice daily in addition to x-raying the child's full body each evening.

At the end of the week, it was readily apparent to Orochimaru that the implantation had been a success; mostly due to the child's healing ability speeding up the integration of the newly implanted cells (a process that usually took months). Now that the child's body was producing blood cells that contained both the child's original D.N.A. and the donor's D.N.A., the Sannin began the next procedure; grafting sections of the donor's chakra pathways into test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra pathways. The process would take over seventeen hours as Orochimaru meticulously inserted uniform threads of tissue taken from the donor's chakra pathways into the pathways of test subject one-thirty-eight.

A second blood transfusion would be given at the end of the surgery; this time containing a combination of test subject one-thirty-eight's original blood, blood from the deceased donor, and a small amount of the blood the child's body began producing after the first procedure. Another seven days would then be spent monitoring test subject one-thirty-eight for any signs of degradation throughout his chakra network and recording any fluctuations in test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra production. After that second week of observation, Orochimaru was extremely pleased with the progress of the integration.

He would start the third procedure on the November sixteenth of two hundred eighty-two; grafting roughly one-fifteenth of the donor's chakra coils onto the subject's chakra coils. The five hour procedure was meant to increase the size of test subject one-thirty-eight's chakra reserves and introduce the Hyouton user's water affinity to the boy's system. The procedure was also the most critical stage of the Kekkei Genkai integration and the point at which eighty-seven percent of the previous attempts at integrating a Kekkei Genkai into a living subject had failed; the remaining thirteen percent had failed immediately after the fourth stage of the integration.

Once he'd finished performing the third surgery, Orochimaru would spend the rest of November closely monitoring test subject one-thirty-eight. Hundreds of tests were performed on the boy during that time and the results carefully recorded so that he could compare them to the results from earlier test subjects. The moment that he was certain that the third procedure had been one hundred percent successful, Orochimaru would spend another month reconditioning the child's body in order to bring his health back to where it had been prior to the procedures.

On January first of two hundred eighty-three, Orochimaru initiated the fourth procedure of the Kekkei Genkai integration on test subject thirty-eight; transplanting brainstem cells from the donor into the test subject to give the boy the capacity to use the implanted Kekkei Genkai on an instinctive level. Once the procedure was complete, Orochimaru selected thirty-four of the sixty-eight orphans that his subordinates had kidnapped on his orders and sent them through the first three procedures with the help of a handful of his trusted underlings during the twenty-one days that he spent monitoring test subject thirty-eight's response to the brainstem implantation.

At the end of the three week period, Orochimaru was pleased with the results of test subject one-thirty-eight's most recent procedure. On the other hand, he was greatly frustrated by the deaths of test subjects one-thirty-nine through one-seventy-two; not a single one of those thirty-four children had survived the third procedure. The snake summoner would spend the remainder of January away from the village and his lab, leaving the care of the remaining orphans and test subject one-thirty-eight to his underlings.

When he returned to Konoha on the thirty-first, Orochimaru was no longer quite so frustrated with his failures and instead focused on the child that was promising to be his first success. After spending time away from his lab, the man had come to the conclusion that test subject one-thirty-eight's inborn healing ability was the key factor in why the child had survived where all others had died. With that knowledge, Orochimaru decided to integrate the boy's healing ability into the remaining orphans using the blood and tissue samples that he'd taken from test subject one-thirty-eight prior to initiating the first procedure on the child.

That process would take the better part of six months and only fifteen of the thirty-four orphans being used in the experiment would survive the implantation of test subject one-thirty-eight's cells. Out of those fifteen survivors, seven of them would gain a weaker internal healing ability while the other eight only received a slight boost to their immune systems. All fifteen of the survivors would then be prepared for the first three procedures of the Kekkei Genkai integration project.

During that time, test subject one-thirty-eight was receiving another around of chakra therapy sessions; this time his chakra network was constantly flooded by the water natured chakra of two of Orochimaru's subordinates to shock the child's system into producing water natured chakra in addition to his inborn wind natured chakra. He was also being subjected to a ruthless physical therapy regime to prepare his body for the final procedure which would activate the newly implanted Kekkei Genkai. The newly implanted Hyouton would then be activated on July thirty-first of two hundred eighty-three.

Immediately upon activation, test subject one-thirty-eight was encased completely in ice and Orochimaru had at first believed the experiment had failed yet again and that test subject one-thirty-eight was dead. He left one of the medics that worked for him to monitor the remains and inform him the moment the ice melted so that he could perform the autopsy to determine just what had gone wrong. Exactly one hour after the activation of the implanted Kekkei Genkai, the medic he had left watching over the dead child informed him that the ice formation containing the child had melted and that the child yet lived.

Orochimaru was shocked to learn that the boy very much alive and relatively unharmed after spending an hour frozen solid. After arriving in the lab, he had stared at the child in disbelief for a full minute before he shook off his stupor and hurried forward to scan the child for injuries and potential medical complications that might have resulted from the turbulent activation of the Hyouton.

The day immediately after the successful activation of number one-thirty-eight's implanted Hyouton, Orochimaru would start the first implantation procedure on the fifteen surviving orphans using cell cultures from the Shodai Hokage for his Mokuton. On a whim, Orochimaru would include test subject one-thirty-eight; the nearly twenty-nine year old Jounin was curious to know if it was possible to integrate a second Kekkei Genkai and drunk on his first success after years of constant failure.

There was also no denying that the mere possibility that he could create and control the only person capable of using every known Kekkei Genkai in the world appealed to that part of him that craved power. And if he should finish and perfect the jutsu that would allow him to transfer his soul into a new body as a method of granting himself a form of immortality, having such a powerful individual from whom he could breed an unending supply of powerful replacement bodies would be invaluable.

He would lose nine of the children after the third procedure; leaving only test subject one-thirty-eight and six of the stolen orphans that had gained a weaker version of one-thirty-eight's innate healing ability. The next two weeks would be spent observing and testing all seven children. Once it was clear that the latest integration had taken, Orochimaru spent another four weeks restoring their physical condition back to optimum health to increase the chances that the fourth and final integration would be successful.

After the fourth implantation failed in five of the seven children, Orochimaru put off integrating the brainstem cells of the Shodai in test subjects one-thirty-eight and one-eighty-one (the last remaining orphan with the integrated healing ability) for another four weeks in order to study the remains of the failed test subjects. At the same time, he sent both remaining children through another series of tests and administered two extra blood transfusions (containing the Shodai's blood and subject one-thirty-eight's original blood) to increase the percentage of the Shodai's and subject one-thirty-eight's original D.N.A. circulating through both boys.

It was just one day shy of the two year anniversary of the day Orochimaru found the emerald-eyed boy in the forest when the Snake Summoner ordered both boys to be prepared for their final surgery. Orochimaru would personally perform the stem cell transplant in test subject one-thirty-eight (due to it being the boy's second implantation) while two of the more competent medics on his staff performed test subject one-eighty-one's implantation at the same time. Both surgeries were completed within minutes of each other. Over the course of the next seven days, both children would be monitored around the clock for any signs that the procedure had failed once again.

Elation filled Orochimaru once it became apparent that both implantations had been successful and he didn't hesitate to collect all of his research notes in order to compile a proper journal on the method he'd used so that his work could be well documented for future projects. He even began making plans to start gathering new test subjects so he could start another round of experiments as soon as he could comb through all of data he'd collected from the failed experiments and compared it to the two successful experiments in order to determine why those two children had survived when the rest of the children had not.

At the same time, he had both boys subjected to chakra therapy sessions to expose them to the newest chakra nature that had been integrated into their bodies; earth for number one-thirty-eight and water for number one-eighty-one. He would leave his underlings to monitor the progress of the two children while he reveled in the feeling of accomplishment he felt over the three successes (the Jounin counting the dual implantations in subject one-thirty-eight as separate instances) and turned his attention to a couple of his other projects.

After a mere five weeks of chakra therapy, Orochimaru made a critical error when he allowed his irritation over Sarutobi's politely worded refusal to name him as his successor (his sensei claiming it would be unwise to change the village's leadership while Konoha's relationship with Iwa was so rocky) cloud his mind. Frustrated over the apparent snubbing and rather impatient to see the positive culmination of a decade's worth of work on his Kekkei Genkai project, Orochimaru moved the activation of test subject one-thirty-eight's second Kekkei Genkai up by six and a half months.

The first indication that something had gone terribly wrong came when the boy began whimpering and thrashing about wildly in pain beneath the straps that held him to the table; something that had not happened during the activation of the child's Hyouton. Orochimaru had only a split second's warning in the form of a sharp spike of chakra from subject one-thirty-eight just before hundreds of ice spikes snapped into being around the boy as he began screaming; the man barely dodging back in time to avoid being skewered. The child's scream soon rose in pitch as the icy spikes grew leaves that immediately froze solid before crumbling into dust.

Orochimaru retreated from the room at that point in order to save himself as more leaf bedecked spikes of ice began forming in an ever widening ring around the child. Another spike of chakra heralded the end of Orochimaru's shinobi career in Konoha as a large tree woven through with veins of ice burst forth from the center of the leaf riddled spires of ice surrounding the child and shot straight through the roof of Orochimaru's underground lab. Knowing there was no way that the village's ANBU on duty wouldn't notice the strange tree growing inside of the village and that there was no time for him to destroy all of the evidence of what he'd been doing, Orochimaru hurried away from the lab rooms to gather his most prized possessions and as many of his notes as he could.

Behind him, test subject one-thirty-eight's scream abruptly cut off as the child's undiscovered magic clashed violently with his chakra on the heels of the conflict between the three chakra natures and the two Kekkei Genkai that now resided within the child's body. A violent conflict that had been triggered the moment Orochimaru forced the activation of the child's implanted Mokuton. At the same time, the boy's forehead split open to pour forth blood and thick black tar when the hidden soul fragment that had lodged itself inside of the child two years earlier died due to that same conflict.

December 13, 1983, 7:14 PM
Headmaster's Office, Hogwarts Castle

Albus Dumbledore was sitting at his desk reviewing the student progress reports for the fall term when the small device that was monitoring the life force and magic of the missing Harry Potter began whistling shrilly. Albus smacked his knee on his desk when he jerked his head up and half turned to stare at the device in horror. The second his eyes fell on the device, the whistling sound was cut off as the silver instrument was suddenly engulfed in ice crystals. Albus was just rising out of his seat when the ice shattered as a small, grotesque tree took root in the center of the instrument and destroyed it completely.

The elderly wizard fell back into his chair in shock even as tears of sorrow and despair filled his eyes; the destruction of the device monitoring Harry Potter could only mean one thing – Harry Potter was dead. His thoughts were soon filled with the memories of the night that the young Potter heir had been orphaned.

He had barely finished preparing for bed after spending four hours going through the paper that had piled up on his desk when four of the devices monitoring the life forces of the members of the Order of the Phoenix had sounded an alert. The aged wizard had rushed back towards his office the moment the first device had let out the loud tolling of a church bell that indicated someone had just died and reached the room at the same time as the second device activated. It had taken him less than a minute to locate the two devices in question and he'd let out a curse the instant he discovered that it had been James and Lily Potter that had just been killed.

He'd barely drawn his wand in order to alert the rest of the Order when the device monitoring the Potter's young son let out a wailing siren; indicating that the young boy had just been injured. He had immediately lamented over the fact that his phoenix companion had just gone through a burning day and was therefore unable to fetch the child for Albus and bring him to safety. Shaking off the useless emotion, Albus quickly cast the communication variation of the Patronus Charm to alert the Order. His phoenix patronus had barely left his wand before the last device had begun tolling out the death of Peter Pettigrew; a close friend of the Potters. Albus's gaze flicked towards the silent devices monitoring the life forces of Remus Lupin and Sirius Black before he sagged in relief when he noted they were both silent.

A mere twenty minutes after the first device had alerted Albus to the attack, the Potters' home was swarming with people searching for the small family of three. Tears of grief and anger would be shed over the bodies of James and Lily Potter when they were recovered from the wreckage. The discovery of Peter Pettigrew's dead body in full Death Eater regalia at the scene of the attack (in what had formerly been little Harry's nursery) raised hundreds of questions. Sirius Black had needed to do some fast talking to avoid being accused of being Pettigrew's accomplice and the reason that the Dark Lord had found the Potters as Black was supposed to have been the Secret Keeper.

Evidence that Voldemort had been defeated (in the form of the Dark Lord's ruined robes and slightly charred wand) would see the wizarding world rejoicing and hailing the missing Potter child as their hero. Unfortunately, there was no sign of little Harry to be found and many believed he had died that night. Albus Dumbledore knew the child yet lived the same way he'd known that James, Lily, and Peter had been killed that night; through the monitoring charms he'd created for every single member of the Order of the Phoenix.

A nation wide search would be initiated by Albus and the surviving members of the Order of the Phoenix. Sadly, no trace of the child had been found over the next two years and the device monitoring the child's life force had often sounded a warning alarm to indicate that the boy had been seriously injured time and time again. Not even Fawkes had been able to locate the missing child. There had been many days when Albus wished he'd thought to tie a tracking charm onto the monitoring devices so that he could have used it to hunt down the missing child but it had been difficult enough just to link the monitoring charms to the devices.

As his thoughts returned to the present once more, Albus bowed his head as the knowledge that the loss of the Potter's son would be a huge blow to the still recovering wizarding society filled him. He then winced as he imagined how Sirius and Remus would take the news that their missing godson (honorary in Lupin's case) had perished. Worry flittered through the venerable wizard just split seconds later as he began to wonder exactly how the child had died and who was responsible for the terrible deed; his eyes flickering to the rotting mess that had been made of the child's monitoring device.

Grim determination filled him a heartbeat later as he got up to vanish the remains of Harry Potter's monitor. He then transfigured an exact replica out of a piece of parchment and enchanted it to function the same way that the original monitoring device had. Once that was finished, he set about making plans to find a child to replace the lost hero in order to protect the world he loved. No one would ever know that Harry Potter had died; not if he could help it.

Albus shoved aside the guilt and grief that filled him the moment he reached that decision; he couldn't afford to have a conscience when the fate of the world rested so heavily on his shoulders.

At the exact same moment that Harry Potter's life force monitor was destroyed, deep within a foreboding forest in the wilds of Albania, the sleeping shade of Lord Voldemort and the rat he was currently possessing woke up in excruciating agony. The shade and its host soon let out a piercing scream that frightened a nearby group of muggle teenagers that had been camping in the forest and further fueled the rumors that the forest was haunted. Just seconds after giving voice to his agony, Voldemort's shade and the rat it had been hitching a ride on froze solid before a small tree growing out of the rat's heart killed them both through the link that had bound the shade to the soul fragment that had attached itself to Harry Potter.

The phenomenon would be repeated on an old diary stored in a hidden room within Malfoy manner, on a golden cup locked up in a vault deep beneath London, on a silver and emerald locket stashed in a curio cabinet in a gloomy old house, on a gold ring holding a mythical stone secreted beneath the floorboard of a rotting shack, and on a tarnished diadem stashed within a hidden magical room filled with thousands of lost and forgotten junk.

All five objects destroyed beyond repair and the magic that they had once held forever lost.

Harry Potter had unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy that had tied him to Lord Voldemort without lifting a finger; a fact that no one would ever discover.

At the same time, the thin Thread of Fate that had tied the last Potter to the world he'd been born into shattered beyond repair and the young wizard's future was set adrift outside of Fate's Pattern and therefore outside of Fate's Control.

Translations: Japanese to English

Gaki – brat
Hi no Kuni – Fire Country
Hyouton – Ice Release
Iwagakure (Iwa) no Sato – Hidden Rock Village
Kekkei Genkai – bloodline limit
Konohagakure (Konoha) no Sato – Hidden Leaf Village
Mokuton – Wood Release

Notes:

Okay, just a few notes here.

First up, I am not a medical professional and my portrayal of the process that Orochimaru used to transplant the Kekkei Genkai into Harry and the other unnamed boy who survived (and I'm sure most of you who are familiar with the Naruto verse already know the identity of that other boy) is entirely made up based upon what I imagined one might need to genetically enhance a body to give them a Kekkei Genkai. I researched as much as I could to make my plot sound realistic enough to pass muster (in my own head at least) but I'm sure there will be some readers that are dissatisfied. For that I apologize but I'm not going to go back and change anything because I already put a lot of work into this story.

Next; an explanation about what exactly happened to Harry at the end of the chapter and what it will mean for him will be given in bits and pieces throughout the story. Also, I feel that I should point out that the HP universe won't play much of a role in the rest of the story from this point forward, though there may be an occasional reference to what is happening in that world. So no, Harry will not be going to Hogwarts and none of the other HP characters will find him in Konoha. I already wrote a story using that kind of plot line and I wanted something slightly different for this one.

That brings us to the Horcruxes & Voldemort's shade. In this story, I used the concept that Voldemort's horcruxes are anchors made from small pieces of his soul that tie him onto the mortal plane; meaning that he has to be connected to each and every one of them for the anchors to have held him in the land of the living. That also means that he was connected to Harry through the accidental horcrux and the moment Harry's magic spiraled out of control against his chakra, the backlash that created the ice riddled tree would have affected Voldemort and through Voldemort, the rest of his horcruxes. The same would apply to Dumbledore's monitor device – since the device was linked to Harry's life force (his chakra) and his magic.

Lastly, I just wanted to remind all of my readers that I will be playing fast and loose with canon (for both verses, though we won't see much of the wizarding world now that the prophecy has been fulfilled) because Harry's presence in the Elemental Nations is going to cause ripples of change. He isn't going to go out of his way to fix everything that is wrong or save every single life but his actions, thoughts, and words will have an impact on those around him. There will also be quite a few OOC moments for all of the characters because of the effect that Harry has on them and they on him. If that bothers you, then you might want to avoid reading any further.

* AtD – Stands for After the Divide and it refers to the moment when the Rikudou Sennin split the Juubi into the nine Bijuu just before he died. To me, it was a more logical starting point for the time line than the founding of Konoha since I can't see the other villages wanting to constantly recall the fact that Konoha had been the first hidden village (at least I think it was the first village – I could be wrong on that). All of the hidden villages have their pride, after all.

11-14-15: Minor edits made to chapter to fix spelling/grammar mistakes and removed unnecessary author's notes.