Prologue

#4 Privet Drive of Surrey England was an ordinary house in an ordinary city just southwest of London. The residents of #4 were thought of as perfectly polite and pleasant people, well mostly.

For years the good people of little Whinging would gossip over tea about the town's notorious troublemaker, Harry Potter. It all started 2 years ago. Graffiti on the playground equipment and damage to said equipment. Cars broken into and their change stolen. No one was ever caught causing the damage and stealing but everyone had their suspicions, after all, you just needed to look at the clothes and general state of the local hoodlum. Baggy and ripped clothes, hair that was unseemly long and shaggy. It didn't take a genius to know anyone who dressed like that was no good.

No one resembled the ideal "troublemaker" more than Harry Potter. Although only 8 years old, the town's residents had all heard of the tragic story. Alcoholic parents, a car crash, and an orphan with a scar. At first there was sympathy, but like most tragic events time has a way of smoothing over the rough edges of shock and empathy, leaving a level of apathy and indifference; after all it was their own fault for getting behind the wheel.

What most people forgot was that kids hear things and since Harry was only one and a half years old when the accident happened, He didn't have any memories of his parents. All he knew was what he overheard from the gossiping housewife's careless chatter. And so, Harry grew up thinking the worst of his parents. The day they had died, so too did any chance of normalcy for the young boy.

Chapter 1

I think, therefore, I am. - Rene Descartes

June 27th, 1988

Bang! Bang! Bang! Wake up freak! A small boy jolted awake and sprung out of bed, well he tried. Instead of standing up off the mattress that was crammed into the corner of his room, he raised his head about three feet before it collided with the underside of the staircase. "Bugger!" He thought, "and I was having such a nice dream." Harry then grabbed his glasses and crawled out of his room. "His room" Harry thought. It wasn't even a real room but the cupboard under the stairs. He thought back to a few months ago when he asked his aunt Petunia why Dudley had two bedrooms and yet he slept in a cubby. The answer he got was; "because ungrateful freaks don't deserve a room" and he should be thankful that they even put up with him in the house. Needless to say, he stopped asking questions because even at 7 years of age he could understand what wasn't being said out loud, he wasn't wanted in the house.

"Strange" he thought. "I'm not wanted here, and I don't want to be here." Oh, he had thought about running away but run to where? He knew he was close to London but close was a relative term. In the school library he found a map of England in the geography section and out of curiosity he searched for his house.

Finding his house was around 60 kilometres from downtown London he knew it was over an hour away by car if the angry rants about traffic and tolls that his uncle was always shouting about had any truth to them. An hour by car wasn't all that bad he figured, but since he didn't have a car or the ability and knowledge to work one, he thought of another way to get to London.

Trains were the obvious solution; little whinging had a train station. The problem then, he thought, was he didn't have any money. The Dursley's would never give him an allowance. Hell, they didn't even feed him well. So, like with most of Harry's dreams, he had put the thought to the back of his mind for further consideration at a later date.

Harry started cooking breakfast while thinking back to his plans for freedom. He started placing rashers of bacon in the frying pan knowing that he wasn't going to be able to eat any but enjoying the monotony of cooking all the same. He realized that running away wouldn't solve his problems and that at least he knew what was expected of him while under this roof. "Still" he thought "if I can't leave this place yet maybe I can make my life here better."

There was no love to be found from his relatives and since he didn't know what familiar love was anyway; his mind went to the next best thing, and that was, well, things. He didn't really have things. He has his glasses, but they were a necessity and probably not even good for him. He couldn't ever remember going to an eye doctor. His aunt just found them in a bin at a thrift shop since the school nurse told them he needed glasses. All his clothes were Dudley's cast offs and the whale disguised as a child was 4 times the size of himself. They didn't fit and made him look ridiculous.

He did have a book that he found in the park and had spirited it away to his room. To Kill a Mockingbird was a good book, although he didn't understand why being black made Tom Robinson guilty or why anyone would care about such things. Harry did feel a strange kinship with the unlucky sod. Harry was always being blamed for things going wrong; end up on a roof, you're a freak. Your teacher's hair turning blue, you're a freak. "Yeah" Harry chuckled to himself "I'm the freak, not the lady with blue hair and the anger management issues, but me sitting there minding my own business am the freak. Either way getting blamed for things out of my control and poor Tom being blamed for assault aren't exactly comparable." "Apples to oranges" he thought. Still fruit but different all the same.

"What else do I own…nothing. And isn't that just depressing." So as Harry plated up breakfast for his relatives, he decided to acquire a few more possessions. It started small. Just things that no one would miss. While doing laundry he would take a few pence here and there from the pockets of his uncle and a pound or so every week from Dudley. Over the next few weeks Harry had liberated almost £20 from the Dursley's. He didn't feel bad about stealing from them, after all he figured between weeding the garden, washing the car, cooking, and all of the other chores that he was assigned, he figured that some compensation besides a cramped storage closet and a few slices of bread and a single can of soup a day surely wasn't a fair trade. Plus, if they didn't care enough to look after the money then it was up for grabs, and besides he wanted to buy a chocolate bar or try some crisps every now and again. He was a kid after all, and every other kid got to enjoy such things.

Harry soon realized that if he wanted things like toys or books, he needed somewhere to hide them. His cupboard wasn't big enough and anytime Dudley caught him with a new toy he would take it from him and break it. Maybe, for now, he would just have to be happy being able to have food when he was hungry. A bummer to be sure but stashing his toys in an old thrift store backpack and hiding it in a bush at the park wasn't very secure. Dudley could easily follow him one day and even if Harry outran him and his gang then all Dudley had to do was tell his parents and Harry would be grounded for a week and wouldn't get dinner at night.

Being grounded was a bit odd. Since Harry didn't have anything to do but chores and sleep, the only thing being grounded did was to give Dudley the impression that he was being punished. Harry would get his revenge though. Whenever Harry was told to clean Dudley's room things would end up broken like the favourite toy of the week or Dudley's chocolate stash would be raided. The sad thing was he never seemed to notice. Oh, sure he would be upset and cry about his newest action figures arm falling off until Vernon would come home from work with a new toy for Dudley and then all was forgotten. Harry decided that the effort just wasn't worth it and vowed to find another way of paying his cousin back in kind.

One way he found was particularly satisfying. One day during the ever fun 'Harry hunting' game that Dudley and his gang enjoyed so much, Harry decided to fight back. He knew he couldn't win but what was the point in exhausting himself just to end up being caught off guard later that day and be attacked anyway. So, when Dudley and his gang surrounded him at the park one day Harry decided to try fighting back, first with words and then with everything he had. Harry watched as Dudley approached him. His goons flanking him and forcing Harry into a corner. Dudley stepped forward and said, "Look what we have here boys, a freak that needs to be taught a lesson." Harry just chuckled and said "you, teach me something? You couldn't teach a pig to roll in mud. For fucks sake dudders you can't even tie your own shoes."

Dudley's gang were all taken aback. "You swore." Dudley said pointing his finger at Harry. "I'm going to tell mom and dad." "You do that piggy" Harry said flippantly "what are they going to do ground me?" Dudley took a step forward and raised his arm getting ready to throw a punch at Harry. Deciding that it was now or never Harry's leg kicked out and struck Dudley right between the legs. He went down instantly with a whimper of pain. Right after he collapsed Dudley's friend Pierce threw a punch hitting Harry in the jaw forcing his head to snap to the side while also flinging his glasses off his face.

Hurting and near blind Harry threw a punch back towards the fuzzy blob that Harry thought was Pierce while stepping on Dudley's hand as Dudley was reaching for Harry's glasses. A solid thump and grunt from in front of him let him know he had hit someone while a shriek from the ground distracted Harry long enough for another friend of Dudley's to tackle Harry to the ground. Harry figured that it was time to give in and curled into the fetal position while Dudley's gang rained down punches and kicks. It hurt, but Harry figured he did well. He was outnumbered and still managed to inflict some damage. "Sometimes," Harry thought, "you just have to celebrate the small victories."

The weeks and months after that first fight would see Harry gain a reputation as a dangerous and unstable kid. While Harry's first attempt at standing up for himself wasn't brilliant, he would use it as a good starting lesson. The fight saw Harry losing quite spectacularly having been given a black eye, a bruised jaw, broken nose and tender ribs he was then, also, grounded and thrown, quite hard into his cupboard. The next time, Harry got a few more hits in and took a bit less damage. The time after that he was able to verbally destroy Dudley and insinuate the Pierce was a puff since he liked touching boys so much. Harry knew that beating the snot out of younger and smaller boys didn't make Pierce gay, just a prick and while Harry didn't have anything against or even really understand what being gay was, he knew that it was something that would piss Pierce off and that was the point of all this.

Harry needed to show Dudley and his gang that it just wasn't worth the effort and pain to pick on him anymore. Harry figured soon they would move onto easier targets. At first Harry didn't understand that his snarky comebacks and his ever-expanding vocabulary was giving him an even worse image at school and in his neighbourhood. Soon the gossips would be bemoaning his existence in their perfectly ordinary town.