Chapter 2: Growing Up

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One would have assumed that two years would pass slowly for a baby or, at least, a teenager in the body of one. After all, a baby had practically nothing to do.

They would be wrong.

Harry didn't stay listless doing nothing all that time. In fact, he moved his arms and legs as much as possible just so he could exercise the muscles. What would look on the outside as the typical random limb flailing was him disguising exercise as something less alarming.

He realized quite fast that the room he and his half siblings were left in had a camera, so he couldn't be too suspicious. That meant not using his magic either.

Speaking of his half siblings, aside from Yon (4), he had two more sisters, which were Go (5) and Jyuu Ni (12) and a brother, who was Hachi (8). Of the remaining mothers upon his birth, two had complications at birth and the other one had been a former kunoichi that had blown herself up along with her child and the nurses. Why she hadn't done so before then, no one had a clue. Then again, she might have simply wanted to get the 'super' baby but then realized the mothers were being killed and decided not to go without a fight.

That was, at least, what the nurses had transmitted to the scientist when he'd asked.

Harry as also found out that the premises he was in and the group that had him wasn't legal on the village he was in, but were in fact an underground group that fancied itself as the village's illegal black-ops. Harry didn't know much about it yet so he didn't pass any judgements on the legal side of the village. He only hoped that the legal side of the village didn't condone brainwashing kids into becoming ruthless soldiers without feelings.

He also learned that he was in a ninja village and that 'Danzou-sama' expected him to become one of his private army, though he wasn't supposed to have one. In fact, it probably bordered on traitorous, though, once again, Harry didn't have enough information to discern whether that was truly the case or not.

Aside from that, all that Harry had really found out, already a year after he was born, was that the 'genetic material' that had been used to create him and his half-siblings hadn't been gotten legally.

When discussing how the mission on getting the HK-2 sample was going, Harry found out that the ninja they had acquired the sample from had gotten knockout drunk in grief once, at which time a root member had approached him while unconscious and 'milked' it out of him.

Harry was even more creeped out by that. It wasn't enough that they bought and kidnapped women to serve as incubators and then killed them, but not even the biological dad was aware or consenting in the whole thing.

The bio-daddy of the lot hadn't ever gotten that drunk ever again, though. In fact, it had seemed he became even more paranoid than before, despite it being impossible for him to have any recollection of the facts, so the root members assigned to get the HK-2 were failing their mission massively and were trying to find other ways to get him unconscious without being too obvious about it.

After all, if anyone cottoned on to what they were trying to accomplish, the current Silver Generation project would be done for.

Since Harry didn't get to find out anything more aside from that, he focused instead of pacing his 'successes' in his development.

Initially Harry didn't see much of his siblings aside from the impression of pale skin and a shock of silver hair on the neighboring cribs around him. In fact, he was pretty sure he also had silver hair, from the few strands that he sometimes had to brush away from his face, but he couldn't be too sure since the hair was too short for him to properly pull on it and see. Still, despite limited, he could still see enough of his siblings to follow the first few steps into growing up from baby to toddler.

So, as soon as Go started turning on her stomach and lifting her head, Harry did the same. The same thing when Yon started sitting up.

Then the scientist and a few other staff members started putting the five of them in a play pen. That was the first time Harry actually saw his siblings.

All of them had the same silvery color of hair. The tendency was for that hair to spike up in a way that defied gravity, especially while so short. Harry gathered that, if they let it grow enough, it would trail down their backs somewhat, but never really settling down. It was quite thick. The only exception to the spikiness of hair seemed to be Yon, whose silver hair was smoothed down her skull, always looking perfectly coifed even after a tantrum fit.

Harry guessed the reason they were called Silver Generation was because of the hair. He also suspected that silver hair must be a characteristic of their male donor. After all, he knew his mother certainly didn't have silver hair, and he also knew he and his siblings had different mothers, which meant the only thing they had in common was their father.

Aside from the silver hair and pale skin, everything else was different about them.

Yon was small and delicate. Harry recalled that she was the one the scientist thought would be better of as another scientist rather than another fighter. Like stated before, she was the only one that had silky hair. She also had pitch black eyes that always seemed to be looking at every single detail around her. Though it was too soon to say for sure, Harry thought she would definitely be a beauty once she grew up, perhaps rivaling Fleur's. While Harry was pretty sure their father was probably also a handsome man, considering all his siblings seemed to have pretty faces, but Yon's were even beyond that. Whoever her mother was, she was probably on the same level as Fleur for sure.

Go, while also pretty, was more of a cute kind of pretty rather than classical beauty, with a round face and big, sparkling violet eyes that innocently looked around her. She also looked far more robust than Yon.

Hachi was the only other boy aside from Harry himself. Body-wise he seemed to be larger than Harry, but his skin had a slightly sick cast to its pallor. He also had the makings of a boy who would grow up to be a ladies-man. It reminded Harry a bit of Sirius' pictures of when he was young. For a moment Harry pondered if he might be Sirius' reincarnation, especially considering his intense grey eyes, but then dismissed it. Samsara had told him Sirius had being reincarnated two years before him, so he couldn't be a baby boy that was born a few days after his own birth.

Finally, but not less important, there was Jyuu Ni. She was neither the classical veela-like beauty from Yon, nor the cute kitten-like adorableness from Go. Instead she was an androgynous kind of attractive, the sort of attractive that didn't fall neither of feminine nor on masculine. Her facial expression also reminded him of the dreamy sort of expression that was seen frequently on Luna's face, though Jyuu Ni's eyes were brown unlike Luna's. She also had a beauty mark just below her right eye.

Harry still didn't know what he, himself, looked like, though.

With this new interaction available, Harry had new actions to copy so, as soon as Hachi began crawling, Harry did the same. As soon as Yon started 'speaking', Harry copied her. As soon as Go started standing up, Harry did the same.

Everything seemed to be going fine for him and his siblings. The only sibling not developing that well had been Jyuu Ni, but Harry hadn't considered it all that serious. Still, the scientist decided to analyze why her development was so slow and came to the conclusion that, due to a birth complication, she'd been deprived of oxygen to the brain for too long and that she was lucky she wasn't worse than she was.

Harry shouldn't have been surprised with Danzou's solution to that…

Harry grieved his lost sister when she was taken from her cradle at night and never returned. Considering what had happened to subject seven (Nana) and all of their birth mothers, Harry was pretty sure she wasn't alive anymore.

Still nothing would have prepared him for the confirmation of her fate.

Two days after she was gone, he heard the scientist comment with another Root Shinobi how one of the new recruits had refused to hurt the baby and was now undergoing conditioning because of that.

Apparently, she'd been used as kunai target practice and one of the youngest members couldn't take it anymore.

What an awful way for a baby to go. What a horrifying way for his baby sister to die.

For the first time since he was reborn, Harry cried endlessly right where he was and shouted out to the heavens in anger and helplessness. His magic went haywire and the lamps all blew up.

Fortunately, all of it happened too fast and, after the explosion, all his remaining siblings where crying with him, so no one associated his 'tantrum' with the destruction of every electronic in the room.

Of his siblings, the only one that seemed to have noticed Jyuu Ni was gone was Yon. She didn't cry or anything, but Harry noticed her constantly looking around with questioning black eyes, looking for something she never did find.

At one years old, the scientist had his staff provide educational toys to them and tried to rush their learning process. Somehow it worked on his siblings and soon Harry didn't have to pretend to be so ignorant and could freely practice certain movements and actions that, if attempted before, would have certainly raised innumerous flags.

On their second year, they started learning how to read and wield wood weapons that certainly reminded Harry of the ninja his cousin saw on the telly. They started learning martial arts that Harry didn't recognize. He only knew Karate and Kung Fu from the shows Dudley used to watch and, while somewhat reminiscent, these looked vastly different from either of those.

They also started them on manipulating an energy that they had on their bodies. An energy that, surprisingly, wasn't magic. Actually, it looked like it was actually life essence, something that was said very few wizards and witches ever attempted since they already had magic and felt it was unnecessary trying to acquire another 'lesser' source. There was also the fact that if one wore out their life essence, they would die, another reason why almost no one wanted to try it.

Harry only even remembered that tidbit because Hermione had been pretty fascinated with it after reading a brief mention while researching for the third task of the try-wizard tournament. While he hadn't really paid much attention to it back then, considering the pressure he had on him, he did retain some semblance of knowledge and now regretted not paying more attention to Hermione's ramblings.

During the beginning of their second year, Hachi caught a bad fever.

He didn't last, dying in his sleep. Harry's only comfort was knowing that, at least, his brother hadn't been used as target practice. This time both his sisters noticed he was missing, not just Yon, and Go cried when she noticed he wasn't returning. She even toddled to where his cradle used to be once, when she managed to escape the pen.

It comforted Harry somewhat that he wasn't the only one grieving this time, but it still hurt that he was gone.

Still, he didn't let grief stop him. He knew he had to find a way to take his sisters and get away from there as soon as possible.

Of the three of them, Harry realized he was more advanced on both the reading, chakra control and martial arts than his sisters. It made sense. He had enough knowledge from his previous life to set up a studying method and was more determined in learning what he could so that they could escape.

He felt that he had a lot riding on his shoulders to not give his very best. The exception to his self-discipline was only regarding his magic. He needed a hidden ace tucked up into his sleeves. The Deathly Hollows sign was manifesting quite vividly, comparing to the initial light discoloration on his skin upon his birth. While the Root staff had noticed the mark, they had merely thought it was some childish scrawling he'd done, even if it looked too perfectly geometrical. They assumed he must be some sort of genius to get those forms that correct with his non-dominant hand.

Since he had yet to actively use his magic, no one really noticed anything special about the marks aside from the fact that they didn't fade with a bath.

The reason why he wasn't training his magic was simple. He was quite aware that there were Root ninja constantly watching them. Initially it was the fact that they showed up out of no where that kept him from training. But then Harry read a small bit about chakra sensing and started training that at night.

Since babies' and toddlers' chakra moves erratically while they sleep, no one noticed he was training his ass off to acquire the best chakra sensing he could every single night on the first few hours he was supposed to be asleep.

As his senses got better, he soon realized that the Root ninja didn't just appear out of nowhere. In fact, they were always there, always invisible and suppressing their chakra. So, while before his reluctance was that they would catch him while he was practicing by teleporting in the middle of training, now he was sure he couldn't train his magic at all because they were always there, and they were even rotating their shifts so that he and his sisters were never alone.

That didn't keep him from trying to improve in the other areas, though he still hid most of his progress as much as he could so that the scientist, the Root staff and Danzou underestimated him. It didn't keep him from being hailed as a genius among his sisters since, especially when it came to martial arts, there wasn't any way to properly pretend to know less without undermining his training a great deal.

As for everything else, he could still pretend to not know the more complicated words on the texts, could purposefully aim to an imaginary point beside the target to practice his accuracy without the staff knowing just how accurate he was, and after getting the chakra control exercise perfectly just once, purposefully failing the following times so as to seem like it was a fluke.

Halfway through the second year, he and his sisters were put together with the most recent batch of acquired children for Root, which Harry was quick to understand meant adopted from orphanages that didn't require a lot of paper work or kidnapped for the sin of showing too much potential to be 'wasted' on regular education.

The kids were all older than them and just as innocent regarding what was coming as Harry's sisters, perhaps even more so. Most were downright scared, actually. It didn't surprise Harry, considering he knew they had been kidnapped and not offered any explanation of what was happening. The ones who were adopted were wary to say the least, having already noticed before that their new guardians were not quite right.

While Harry had always been pretty insensitive to most his own problems until his teen years because of everything the Dursey's put him through, he wasn't so to others, especially children he viewed as younger than him, for all intents and purposes, even if he was technically two years younger than the youngest ones there. So, he took it upon himself to console them once he was sure no adult was watching by using his chakra sensor powers.

He quickly looked for any hidden cameras, another habit he'd gotten, like with chakra sensing, out of necessity rather than innate talent and, once assured everything was clear, he quickly set upon his self-appointed task.

They had all been moved to a vast enclosed underground building. From the little he'd seen before being locked in, the building had a large training area for group sparring, a infirmary, though Harry doubted it would be truly put to it's full use, considering what had happened to his siblings, and several training areas created to imitate several different kinds of ground, including, but not limited to, a desert area, a dense forest, the closest thing to a indoors volcanic landscape and a snow covered field. There was also a vast library with what looked like scrolls. It was somewhat similar to the piles of homework each teacher received from their student's at Hogwarts, only a bit more organized. There was probably more, but all the children were now locked in the living quarters.

The room was probably to be shared among all the kids, having several bunkbeds with sparse furnishings and not even a small toy in sight. So far, the kids hadn't gone further than the first few beds near the door, kind of like they were afraid there was something hiding further into the room.

And Harry, being the kind of person he was, decided in that instant that he wouldn't leave these kids behind. He would have to make a plan that involved them escaping with him too.

Harry tugged his sisters by their hands closer to the group. They resisted, looking a bit afraid of the strangers but, due to their brother's reassurances, followed without making a fuss.

Harry decided to use, for the first time, his long-neglected magic. This was the first time he was truly sure no one from the staff was monitoring him closely, after all. He placed his right hand against his throat and mentally commanded the spell sonorous into it.

"Hi?" He asked not too loudly, seeing with satisfaction that his voice was still loud enough to attract everyone's attention to him, even with his clearly hesitant voice.

There were about sixty kids in total, from what he could tell, all of them scared and staring at him in disbelief.

"Could you please calm down for a bit, please?" He continued to ask, knowing that now that the focus was on him, he had to keep it there as he tried to calm them down.

"Calm down!? How do you expect us to calm down?! I was just kidnapped from my family!" A girl protested.

She had pale white skin, dark brown hair just a couple of shades shy of black and dark eyes. She was just as flawlessly beautiful as Yon, which was quite hard to match. She didn't seem any older than seven. As she talked, the air around her seemed to cool down drastically, causing a few shivers on the kids nearest to her.

Harry had read a bit about clans and knew this was a dead ringer of the Yuki clan, which was odd because he'd read that the Yuki clan was from the Land of Water and, however much he didn't know about geography, he was pretty sure they were in the Land of Fire. Then again, Danzou seemed to be covered ten feet under all of the illegal things he did, so why was Harry even surprised? He wasn't above kidnapping foreign women to breed them so this wasn't any different.

This revelation took Harry only a fraction of a second. He was aware now that the kids were focusing on him in expectation, even though he was younger. He realized that these kids were so desperate that he himself was seen as some sort of salvation to them, despite being a toddler. In fact, he could have been a bug for all they cared about. The mere fact that he wasn't fearful made them want to rely on him if he could prove himself worthy of it.

So, Harry tuned into all he knew of Dumbledore and how he commanded attention and remained as calm as Dumbledore would have been.

"Then, by all means, do continue panicking. I personally find it counter-productive when trying to figure out a plan of action. I'll even let you come up with the first idea on what to do." He said calmly, looking the girl in the eyes.

"H-HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO COME UP WITH A PLAN, YOU IDIOT!?" She shouted back upon being made the center of the attention, especially while so panicked.

"Precisely my point. Panicking isn't helping you right now. All it does is making you lash out randomly and making it harder for everyone else to plan out what to do next." He stated bluntly and, this time, he realized it was all him.

Perhaps Dumbledore would have said something along the same lines, but he would have said it much differently if he had. That said, it still made the girl think she was being a bit silly, considering how calm he was, and that did calm her down a bit. The attention was now back on Harry.

"I'm going to tell you all I know about this place which, granted, isn't a lot, but it's still much more than what you know. That way we'll all be on the same page. I'll warn you, though: it's not pretty." He stated.

And so he spent the next half an hour filling them in on all he had experienced and discovered while living in the lab. As expected, the prospects of becoming an emotionless child soldier horrified most of the kids, especially the civilian born ones. Some of the clan kids had expected to become Shinobi eventually and it was the emotionless part that terrified them instead. When he finished explaining what he knew, all the kids were too shocked to even begin to panic just yet, so Harry took the opportunity that silence presented.

"I know this sounds bleak. We are just kids, after all, what could we do? Well, I'm going to tell you! We could do a whole lot! They also think we are just kids for now, so they won't be too concerned with us knowing too much just yet. I want to plan an escape but, because I've never been outside of the lab, I don't know much about what you might consider common sense regarding how people behave or places it's safe to be in. All I know about the outside is what Danzou deems 'appropriate' for me to know and, obviously, I'm not too keen on considering it as being unbiased information." Harry said calmly. "That's where I'm going to need a lot of help from you. That and helping me gather information once they start letting us into the archives. The more information and techniques we can gather, the better we'll be able to defend ourselves from being captured again."

The kids nodded, slightly elated at having someone rely despite feeling so helpless themselves. It certainly raised their moral quite a bit, which was what Harry was going for.

"Once we have enough information to find out where we can safely stay hidden from him, we'll plan our escape. Are you with me?" He asked, but he didn't need to have asked. After everything he'd explained, no one could help but believe in him.

Harry only hoped there weren't any 'Mariettas' in the batch. The last thing they needed was a sneak in their midst.

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A/N:

This is it for now. I won't be updating this fic as regularly as the others because I'd like to focus on the older ones first, but you can still expect more chapters in the future. We got more clues as to who Sirius might be, as well as about Harry's new self as well. So... any guesses yet? or suggestions for other possible reincarnations?