Chapter 06

Soon Harry was becoming quite well versed in the use of his quite inventive imagination in creating new, more subtle genjutsu on the Dursleys, things like smoke, fire, wet floors and stuff, simple and realistic reasons to get people to stay away from somewhere, as opposed to a giant Chinese dragon chasing after you, which, without the level of impressive detail that only years of practice and focus would take, nobody above ten would believe was real, even with that level of detail. Of course, it also lead to some rather hilarious incidents involving the fire department, which definitely disturbed any notion the neighbors had of their normality.

Petunia was left tearing her hair out, at the locally generated gossip that was beginning to head towards the conclusion that Vernon had either developed some mental disorder or that he was attempting to draw attention to himself for some unknown reason. Harry was quite amused when he found a little piece in the newspaper that pointed to a false alarm being given to the Surrey fire department.

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July 31 was a date Harry did not particularly care about. This despite the fact that, 1. He was eight years old, 2. It was his birthday, 3. Eight year old kids love birthdays.

However, since his ever affectionate relatives preferred to celebrate his birthdays with even less joy than funerals, specifically with more work, he had not given cause to remind them either, by the simple means of showing not even a twitch out of place to any other day. Of course, internally he was reviewing exactly where his life had gone wrong, that he had to pretend his birthday never existed, a quite abnormal situation in an ultra normal home.

In the meantime, Harry quietly reminded himself that ninja were supposed to be emotionless uncaring assassins who did not let small childish things like the absence of birthday celebrations because of relatives who deserved to be bijuu fodder distract him from his life's greater purpose. Well, maybe not in so many words, but still.

One thing that he did do was find a rather disturbing fact about himself. He looked awful. It was true. A few weeks and immense gains in his ability to wield chakra simply did not translate to a change from the scrawny malnutrition afflicted skeleton that his body so disturbingly resembled underneath Dudley'ss cast offs. Even if he was now looking a lot better, thanks to his recently begun practice of buying take out with Vernons "misplaced"cash(which Harry felt he might as well be owed due to all his slave labor) his overall physical condition had not changed much from the beginning of the summer. And now that he was finally paying attention to his appearance, which his mantra of 'unseen and unknown' had driven clean out of his head, he was quite annoyed that he looked somewhat like the same concentration camp victims Richards had described with such horrified fascination. Harry was suddenly bombarded with the image of Vernon wearing an SS officer's uniform. Not exactly the prettiest of sights as anybody who knew the man would tell you. Even if it was oddly fitting.

Of course, such thoughts inevitably spiraled to the thought of what he should look like. It was a thought that deserved more thought, as Harry's newly-aged-by-one mind supplied helpfully. He strove to be ninja, so what did a real ninja look like? Indeed, what effect would he even attempt to achieve? The harmless fellow? The most intimidating person any had ever seen? Or the shadow that nobody in their right minds would ever believe they had seen? It was a thought for tomorrow. Maybe he could brainstorm with Richards. The thought of which went into an even more quirky direction. Just what would he tell Richards?

Harry as a rule trusted no adults. The exception of course was his librarian friend. But would that trust, built up over a year of mostly silent conversation necessitate that he tell the old man what his greatest secret was? Indeed, would he mention anything beyond reading the most important set of books he had read in his life? It was a struggle of the heart, something Harry understood subconsciously, yet could not bring himself to face. It took an hour, but eventually he decided. His friend/family/mentor, the aged veteran of the second world war, the great Daniel Richards, would be kept in the dark, even if it made him feel slightly guilty. It was the shinobi thing to do, and his first great secret, one he would have to carry for the rest of his life. Harry firmly turned his mind away from this train of thought. His roving mind, in desperate search of distraction, landed on a another problem, weapons.

Harry, for the second time that day, felt a pit in his gut, a feeling of horror as he realized that he had no ninja gear to speak of. No shuriken, kunai and nothing that could compare to a real sword, unless he counted his experience with the knives he used to chop vegetables. Harry literally began to bang his head on the wall, which was not the wisest thing to do in retrospect.

"What's that racket boy!" Petunia's high pitched, if strangled voice carried from the kitchen, startling the wannabe ninja from his bout of self imposed punishment.

"Nothing Aunt Petunia! Just a spider!" he answered, keeping a disinterested tone in his voice, adding one final whack for good measure.

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