Chapter 1: Chapter 1: A Disappointing Childhood
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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
I would like to thank my beta, Akisu, for his help in this chapter.
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13th March 1990, Privet Drive, Surrey
In the smallest bedroom of 4 Privet Drive, a boy with messy black hair, was sleeping peacefully on a rather small bed. The boy opened his eyes, revealing two emerald-green eyes. His name was Harry Potter, and he was without a doubt, the odd one out of this house.
Four people called this house that screamed of mundanity and neat freaks bordering on the psychotic, their home. Yet, any outside visitors would have thought that only three people lived there. The photos were of a thin tall woman, a rather obese man with a comical moustache, and a young boy that seemed to be on his way to matching his father in his weight. No one would have thought that there was another child in this place, no one would have believed that Harry Potter lived in 4 Privet Drive.
And yet, the young boy did. He looked nothing like his relatives. He was thin and rather lithe, as opposed to his cousin's rather large figure. He shared nearly no facial features with his aunt Petunia, which was his only living relative, outside her son, that is, but he didn't really count. As far as the world knew Harry Potter's parents died when he was eighteen months old, which is why he lives with his aunt and uncle.
Inwardly, Harry was glad that he looked nothing like his relatives. Vernon Dursley revelled in his career as a manager in a drill company, and his wife was the typical gossiping housewife with too much time on her hand. As for their son, he was barely more than an underachieving student that barely passed primary school and passed his time bullying his fellow students.
Years ago, Harry remembered craving his relatives' love and approval, hoping to be acknowledged one day as a member of this family, distasteful as it may be. The young boy had grown out of that ridiculous phase. The two elders Dursleys did their best at ignoring him, although for what seemed to be different reasons. Harry didn't understand why his aunt constantly looked at him with a pained expression of distaste and grief, it probably had something to do with his mother. He didn't understand why Vernon Dursley looked at him with fear and rage in his eyes. But one thing was for certain. The Dursleys have done their best to show Harry that he wasn't a part of their family and that he would never be.
It was devastating for a young child to realize that, but Harry was an oddly mature child. He simply accepted the fact and moved on in a way that was simply unnatural for a child his age.
While no one would ever deny that the Dursleys did not shirk their responsibility in providing him with his basic needs. He was always treated with this cold dismissal. As far as they were concerned, Harry did not deserve a single drop of warmth as far they were concerned. The young boy did not have any birthday parties, or expensive toys to play with. He was never hugged, nor congratulated on getting a good grade in school. They simply bought him his clothes and his amenities, paid for his basic needs and left him alone.
Of course, they also did their best in making sure that everything he had would be less than Dudley's. His clothes were always second hands while his cousin got fancy ones that he would grow too fat to wear in a few months. Dudley was allowed to have swimming lessons, expensive toys and trips, while Harry sulked in his room.
Still, things could have been worse. Harry knew for a fact that this was better than being sent to an orphanage. One of his classmates lived in one, and he told horror stories about the understaffed building, with too many hungry orphans running around, desperately hoping to be adopted into a family. Harry had a room for himself, stable food to grow, and all his basic needs catered for. After graduating from school, he would do his best to either go to university or just get a job to move out of Privet Drive forever, leaving behind the hateful beings that he calls his relatives.
As for now, Harry could live with his guardian's dismissal. In fact, after accepting that they don't care about him in any way, he thrived in it. He mowed lawns and did odd jobs in the neighbourhood to earn his pocket money. He got good grades in school and was known as the smartest boy in their grade. Not that the Dursleys cared, only celebrating their son's mediocre marks.
Harry's pondering was broken by the shrilly voice of his aunt Petunia, "BOY! You have two minutes to come down before we leave for school without you, and you'll walk to school."
Startled, the boy in question looked at the alarm clock that seemed to have frozen in the middle of the night. Seeing that he had almost overslept, he stiffened and immediately sat up.
Aunt Petunia wasn't bluffing; he learnt that the hard way. As so, the boy quickly replied, "I'm coming down Aunt Petunia."
He quickly put on whatever was around and ran down the stairs straight to the car. Uncle Vernon had already left, and as usual, there was no breakfast for him. If he wanted something, he had to make it for himself. As far as Harry was concerned, the only meal he was allowed to have, was Dinner. His Breakfast and his school lunch were his own responsibility to prepare.
He quickly ran to the garage and entered his aunt's car. She had bought it for the express reason of driving Dudley and him to school. Before Uncle Vernon's big promotion, things didn't look up financially, but that was years ago, and now the Dursleys had enough to splurge at their leisure. God, they even gave their son an obscene amount of gifts for Christmas and his birthday. Like honestly, Harry could understand spoiling your child by buying five or so gifts, but thirty was just too much.
Harry met his aunt's derisive frown with an impassive gaze, "You were almost late."
The boy shrugged, "The alarm broke. I'll need to replace it."
"I'm not paying for it. Either fix it yourself or buy a new one with your own money."
Harry nodded, not expecting anything else from the woman. Aunt Petunia sniffed and nodded to herself as if she had won something and started driving. He ignored his cousin's childish taunts and looked out the window.
Dudley for some reason absolutely hated Harry. Well, that was what Harry assumes at the very least. He seemed to understand his parents' distaste for his cousin and tried to do the same in the only way anyone his age could do, with violence.
Before he started primary school, the obese child was too young to put things together, but when he tried to do the same in school and Harry complained to the teachers, the Dursleys claimed that he was a compulsive liar or something, and both Dudley and Harry ended up getting a warning without any consequences.
The very next time, Harry made sure that a teacher was nearby whenever Dudley tried anything. After the obese boy was witnessed doing it multiple times, the teacher started to believe Harry almost all the time, and adding in Harry's signs of high intelligence, the teachers tended to back him up.
Speaking of his intelligence, Harry was called a genius by his teachers. And they might be right; Harry had an easier time learning new things than his peers. Some of it was genuine intelligence, but for some reason, almost everything felt familiar to him. It was more like relearning than anything else.
The boy knew that when he learnt French with prodigal speed, but Latin took ten times that time to learn. Even now, he hadn't mastered the language, at least compared to his almost fluent French. Oh, he was still impressively fast in learning the extinct language, but it wasn't on the same ridiculous level as him mastering the entire French language on his own in a few months. Truthfully, Harry kept at it, even if it was mostly useless to him because it was proof that he was still intelligent even with the whole weirdness about his rate of learning in most other subjects.
Harry had known about this for a while and hadn't told anyone. Because who can he trust to confess his fears, dreams, and sorrows? Harry Potter was alone, and that was a sad fact that isn't likely to change anytime soon. Oh, his teachers tried, but in the end, they were primary school teachers that were overworked and had to deal with dozens of brats every day.
Even Harry's classmates didn't like hanging out with him, or rather, he didn't make the effort to hang out with them. He was just too developed, so easily bored by their behaviour, that he would choose to spend his time in his own company, either with a book in hand or by learning a new skill. These brats really had too much energy, and Harry just didn't have it in him to run around playing a nonsensical game that he wouldn't enjoy. Sporting activities just weren't for him, and as far as he was concerned, a balanced diet would stop him from gaining too much weight. He didn't need to play sports to keep his figure. And it's not like the Dursleys would pay for any lessons, and even if he joined a club or another, he would probably end up walking home every day, which is not something he's looking forward to.
And all of this was without mentioning Harry's weirdness, or whatever Aunt Petunia refered to as freakishness. Oh, he had no idea what she was talking about, but considering that he was practically warned every day that he shouldn't do any freakishness or whatever, there had to be some substance to it.
And she was right, odd things tended to happen around Harry, impossible things. Aunt Marge's dog – which he actually forgot its name – somehow ended up completely bald and covered in warts when he tried to chase down Harry in the garden when his owner wanted him to demonstrate the effectiveness of her commands that she taught the damn thing. Harry would never deny the satisfied– and confused – smile at the little beasts sudden whimpering when it chased him down.
Similarly, Harry remembered the ground turning into a sponge when he fell down a tree he was climbing and could have hurt himself. He remembered how the stones that Dudley and his friends once tried to throw at him had somehow been sent back at his aggressors.
Harry theorized that this weirdness was to protect him somehow. But as many times this weirdness happened, there were ten occurrences where he was actually hurt. Harry didn't trust such a wild phenomenon for his protection. And to be honest, he could understand why his aunt was weary of it. It kinda freaked him out as well. Oh, he tried to control it by following a fiction book she read from the library. It's not like there was a manual called 'How to control superpowers' or something. Anyway, he found himself unable to do anything, and he wasn't willing to put himself in danger for the sake of trying to recreate the occurrence which seemed to be very random and chaotic. So, he left it alone. It would be better to learn the truth from Aunt Petunia one day than hurt himself by trying to experiment with something he didn't understand.
Oh, his aunt definitely knew about it, and for some reason, it was the thing that made her dislike him so much. Her constant warnings about his 'freakishness' were evidence of that. If he had to guess, Harry would say that his mother had it too, and his aunt was afraid of it. But that's a wild guess at best.
Harry noticed that they had arrived at their destination, and he left the car with his cousin to get to school. As usual, Harry walked to the building with gusto to get to class. He had math class, and he didn't want to be late for it. After all, this was a typical Tuesday at school. It's not like anything interesting would happen, wouldn't it?
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I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions of them so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.
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