Perenelle shook her head tiredly and helped him up.
— All right, let's go. The girls should be waking up soon, and I still have to cook lunch.
Victor got up from the ground. Red smoke enveloped his torn clothes, restoring them to their original state.
— You go ahead, I'll practice a bit more.
Perenelle gave a warm smile and nodded:
— Are you finally going to start using your wand again?
Victor quickly hid his hand behind his back, where his long-forgotten wand instantly materialized:
— No!
Just a short while ago, he had been confidently rambling about how he didn't need a wand at all. Now, looking at Perenelle, he didn't want to admit he was wrong — even if that was precisely the case. The wand in his hand vanished immediately, replaced by his familiar walking cane.
— I'll practice with my sword, — he demonstrated the cane, but upon seeing it, Victor froze.
— Where is the katana? — Perenelle inquired, also noticing that the top of the hilt was missing and Victor was holding nothing more than an empty sheath.
— It seems... I left it at Fenrir's base, — Victor remembered plunging the blade into the ground to activate the sword's anti-Apparation ability.
He let out a heavy sigh, and the magic wand materialized in his hand once more in place of the empty sheath.
Perenelle eyed him with a triumphant, self-satisfied smirk.
Victor merely rolled his eyes in annoyance:
— Yes, yes, I'll practice magic! I was wrong to ignore it, and you — a sweet, generous, wise, and insanely beautiful grandmother — turned out to be absolutely right.
Perenelle nodded in satisfaction:
— How wonderful that you've finally realized it! Well, I'm off, don't stay out here too long.
Victor nodded and remained standing there, watching the spot where Perenelle had just vanished with a pop.
Victor looked at his magic wand and, with a sigh, gave it a light wave.
In that very instant, a raging orange fire mixed with somber shades of black burst forth. Hellfire scorched everything around, leaving behind a perfectly flat, neat clearing. Once the flames completely vanished, Victor frowned in dissatisfaction:
— Now how am I supposed to tell whether my Hellfire became stronger with a wand or not? Hm-m-m...
Victor opened his fingers, leaving the wand hovering in the air beside him. He decided to try doing the same thing without it to compare the results.
However, when he attempted to summon the fire again without a wand, his Sharingan activated involuntarily. The three tomoe in his crimson eyes spun rapidly, merging into an entirely new, intricate pattern. Flames as black as pitch dark instantly erupted right where his gaze was directed, consuming absolutely everything in their path — including the very earth!
Victor squeezed his eyes shut, and the flames extinguished at once.
Opening his eyes again, he froze. Standing in a stupor for a couple of seconds, he chuckled and rolled his eyes:
— Hallucinations again? For a second, I thought I summoned Amaterasu! Ha-ha-ha! — He laughed out loud at the thought, but as he looked back at the spot where the black flames had just raged, his smile slowly began to fade.
Conjuring a mirror before himself, Victor received another massive blow to his psyche. His Sharingan had indeed changed, taking on the design of a black three-bladed propeller against a bright red background.
— Uh-h-h... — he went rigid, staring at his own reflection. He rubbed his eyes with his fists, but the pattern didn't go anywhere. — Right... My Sharingan transformed into a Mangekyō Sharingan. And there is absolutely nothing weird about that!
Victor tried to nod convincingly at his reflection and smile, but the longer he stared into the mirror, the more nervously his face twitched. Until he finally couldn't hold it in anymore:
— WHAT THE HELL?! DO I HAVE AN ACTUAL MANGEKYŌ SHARINGAN?! — his desperate, shock-filled shout echoed across the entire forest.
A few minutes later, Victor was sitting silently on the ground, thoughtfully drawing patterns in the grass with his magic wand:
— Okay, let's start from the very beginning... At my whim, Nicholas created an artificial Sharingan capable of accelerating my perception, helping me instantly analyze information, enhancing my vision, and, of course, launching mental attacks. Then these eyes somehow miraculously came to life. And now I've also discovered that they evolved into a Mangekyō Sharingan! Did I miss anything? — he asked himself. — Nope, that's exactly how it went down. And what do I have as a result? I now possess the exact same Sharingan I know from canon. Fine, we sorted that out. But why Itachi's Amaterasu?! Upon awakening the Mangekyō, shouldn't I have unlocked my own unique technique specific to these eyes?
Victor paused for a moment in thought:
— Maybe... is it because I subconsciously expected these exact abilities from the Mangekyō? Hm-m-m, now that is actually interesting! Can I use other Mangekyō abilities as well?
He scrambled to his feet.
His Sharingan activated once again. The tomoe spun rapidly and assumed a completely new shape: now the pattern looked like a black three-lobed pinwheel with a round cutout in the center, its elongated teeth curving counterclockwise, resembling a mechanical gear.
Right in front of him, the surrounding space rippled heavily with a quiet crackle... But in the next second, everything cut off abruptly. Victor's eyes instantly snapped back to normal, and he collapsed helplessly onto his back, breathing heavily and raggedly.
It took a few minutes before he more or less recovered:
— Did... did I just completely drain my entire supply of magic?! — This stunned him. Mind you, after absorbing magic from the eyes, his reserves had doubled. If he used to be roughly around Snape's level, he was now on McGonagall's level. And that was a noticeable difference — while the movies didn't convey it clearly, having become a wizard himself, he understood that Minerva McGonagall surpassed Severus Snape in power. — Just how much magic will I need to freely activate Kamui? And how much will go into a full Susanoo?..
Victor quickly drank a Pepperup Potion and tried again half an hour later — this time attempting to summon Susanoo.
However, the result was the same. Once again, he lay helplessly on the grass, but this time he managed to grasp something, and that realization made him frown deeply.
— It's not about the amount of magic at all... Something is blocking me.
On his second attempt, he realized: the magic inside him wasn't simply being consumed by Susanoo — no, it was leaking out and dissolving pointlessly into the surrounding space.
Victor lay on the grass for a long time, lost in deep thought. Why was this happening? Why had he managed to summon Amaterasu on his first try, while everything else remained out of reach? How did Amaterasu differ from Kamui and Susanoo?
The only thing that came to mind: Amaterasu, though an incredibly deadly Mangekyō ability, was essentially just a superior form of Hellfire — the only difference being that it was far harder to control. Susanoo, on the other hand, was a gigantic manifestation of power capable of altering landscapes in its completed state.
— And Kamui?.. — Victor narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. Obito's technique might not possess such devastating destructive power, but it directly tears through space. It's the ultimate space-time ninjutsu, capable of transferring objects, people, and oneself into an alternative pocket dimension.
Time passed. Dusk was beginning to settle outside, but the young man hadn't moved an inch, still lying motionless on the ground. He tried to solve this puzzle, but even after several hours of fruitless thinking, he hadn't found an answer.
— Hah... — Victor sighed heavily. — To have access to literally all the Mangekyō Sharingan techniques, yet be unable to cast them...
A wave of mild disappointment washed over him for a second, but then a reckless, competitive smile bloomed on his face. In the end, he had plenty of time! The main thing was that these abilities were already ingrained in his eyes, and he would eventually find a way to master them.
Realizing that comprehending the true nature of his eyes would take time, he decided to do what he did best — put the problem out of his mind for now.
Groaning as he got up from the ground, he gripped his magic wand:
— Alright, where did I leave off? Ah right... — with a light smile, he extended the wand forward and shouted loudly: — EXPECTO PATRONUM!
After training, Victor returned home and discovered that Adele and Abigail were gone. He asked Perenelle, but she merely shrugged — when she had returned herself, the girls were already nowhere to be found.
Victor shrugged as well and settled in beside her to help prepare dinner. He wasn't worried about his sister in the slightest: Adele was a smart and capable enough witch to stand up for herself in any situation.
A couple of hours later, the click of the lock sounded at the front door, followed by Abigail's merry laughter. Victor stepped out into the hall and caught the two of them standing there with a mountain of glossy shopping bags, clad in stylish new outfits and sunglasses, looking as though they had just stepped off a runway.
— And where have you two been? — Victor asked with a smile.
Abigail beamed brightly:
— We went for a walk and had a little shopping spree!
Adele nodded silently and calmly, confirming her words.
— Alright then, go wash up, we'll be having dinner soon.
Abigail nodded and, barely managing to hold the armful of purchases, happily hauled the bags off to her room.
Adele, however, lingered by her brother.
— I spent absolutely all the money you gave me, — she stated in a flat voice.
Victor smiled softly:
— That's fine, don't worry about it, I've got plenty of money left. The main thing is that you had fun.
But Adele simply gave a small smile and shook her head:
— I'm not worried. Give me more.
Victor froze, momentarily at a loss for words. Here he had thought she was stressing over the spent money, when in reality she was just dryly stating a fact and demanding a balance top-up!
— Ha-ha, no problem at all! — he burst out laughing. — Next time you go out, just take my card.
He truly couldn't care less how much she blew on shopping. Victor enjoyed living large himself, and financial matters no longer bothered him — especially now that he was the grandson of Perenelle Flamel, who possessed a mind-boggling fortune not just in Galleons, but in Muggle currency as well.
Adele gave a short nod, gave her brother a tight hug, and headed to their room in high spirits.
Victor smiled affectionately as he watched his sister walk away. No matter how cold and serious Adele appeared, she was still a little girl who enjoyed browsing through shops, buying pretty things, and just taking a stroll somewhere.
The next instant, however, a cool smirk appeared on his face:
— Have fun, sweetheart... While you still can.
This summer, he intended to take her training seriously. She was his sister. And if Adele truly wanted to keep standing side by side with him, being merely "strong for her age" was catastrophically insufficient. She had to become better. Better than absolutely everyone.
After dinner, while they were sitting in the library, Perenelle suddenly brought up a topic that Victor had completely forgotten about amid all the chaos:
— So, what's this project?
Victor blinked in confusion:
— What project?..
Perenelle looked at him in surprise:
— Well, you said yourself that you have a grand project that requires my help, — seeing that Victor was still struggling to catch on, she added: — You even asked for Galleons for it, remember?
Victor froze, and the very next second he leaped up from his seat:
— Damn it! I actually forgot! Right, I do have something in mind! What am I even waiting for?! Argh, how much time I've lost! — He spun around sharply toward Abigail, who was absorbed in a book in an armchair: — Abigail, get your lazy, gorgeous ass up and come with me! You're going to be a Daphne-replacement!
— A who?! — Abigail asked, looking up from her book.
— You're going to be my assistant! Your job from this moment on is to walk beside me, write down all my spontaneous ideas and plans, and then remind me about them in time. I'm too busy a man to keep everything in my head! — quickly finishing his explanation, he dashed out of the library.
Abigail stared after him in utter bewilderment.
— Well, what are you sitting around for? — Perenelle nudged her.
— Ah, right! I'm an assistant now! — She scrambled to her feet instantly: — Victor, your assistant is on her way! Don't plan anything until I'm by your side!
The girl rushed after him, but just before the exit she pulled up short in front of a large mirror. Scanning her reflection, she nodded in satisfaction:
— It really is a gorgeous ass, though... I completely forgot how sexy I was in my youth!
— Abigail! — Victor's impatient shout echoed from the corridor.
— Coming, boss! — She cast one more self-enamored glance at her reflection and ran to catch up with him.
Perenelle quietly watched as Abigail's long hair disappeared past the doorway, and remarked thoughtfully:
— They really are alike in some ways... I wonder if they were born like this, or if the asylum made them this way?