A/N: So, we have the 'Manipulative Dumbledore who causes everything bad ever.' stories. But what if Dumbledore wasn't to blame? What if someone else was responsible? In this story, the Weasley's are good guys, Dumbledore is a good guy, and everything you think you know is false. Lies, deception, manipulation and danger. Welcome to our world.

It would not be remiss to say that Harry James Potter's home life was unpleasant. Indeed, the boy in question would probably agree with you. That isn't to say he didn't do his utmost to make it pleasant. Quite the opposite, in fact. Very often, Harry woke up three hours before the dawn chorus, and five hours before anyone else at Number Four, Privet Drive. Why did he do this, you may wonder? The truth was, though he was never beaten by his relatives, they certainly were not above withholding food from him if he didn't get the bacon to just the right level of crispiness. Or if the lawn hadn't been mowed to precisely three centimetres tall. Or if the bathroom wasn't so clean you felt as though you were in a house of mirrors. Or any of a hundred and one other minutiae.

And if the sausages were even slightly overcooked? God have mercy, as young Harry would be locked in the cupboard under the stairs for at least a day, and possibly longer, depending on whether they remembered he was there or not. And the Dursleys didn't exactly make an effort to remember Harry's existence. Harry had considered telling the law about his relatives (he refused to call even one of them 'family'.), but he had looked into orphanages he could go to, and most of them were worse than the Dursley's house. The few that were decent had no room, and so Harry consigned himself to waiting until he was old enough to live on his own before having the Dursleys arrested.

Of course, this isn't to say he did nothing. No, indeed Harry was the sneakiest eleven year old you would ever meet in Surrey. He added oil to his Aunt Petunia's shampoo, making her hair greasy every time she washed it. She had gone through every type of shampoo on the market, and the problem persisted. Harry smirked a little on the inside every time she complained to Vernon, her husband. She tried blaming Harry, but as there was no proof, she let it drop. But that wasn't all, no, far from it, in fact. Harry, ingenious little bugger that he was, added an extra dollop of butter to the bowl Aunt Petunia was using to make cakes every time she held one of her 'Ladies Get-togethers'. The neighbourhood ladies never accepted cakes from Petunia now, claiming they were 'watching their figure' every time she offered. Occasionally, Harry would use whatever odd power he had been born with to make one sock from every fifth pair disappear, or a pair of underwear shrink just enough for it to have shrunk in the wash.

But the revenge Harry was most proud of, was an untraceable one. Petunia had decided to grow her own vegetables a while back, and had a little vegetable garden out the back of the house. Every three days, while Harry was weeding the flowerbeds before dawn, he would take a cup of salt, and pour it over the earth. Nothing grew, no matter what Petunia tried, and she despaired. Eventually, after one snippy comment too many from the neighbours, she got rid of the garden entirely.

So yes, Harry's life was miserable, but he made damn sure their lives were miserable too. It was all he could do, so he did it. And anyone who crossed him, quickly became miserable. But if you were nice to him, he'd be perfectly nice to you. The only problem was, Harry didn't trust humans. It was a sad fact, but the treatment of the Dursleys had prevented Harry from fully trusting any human. This was probably why he spent so much of his time talking to the birds and small animals that he encountered in Surrey. Little was Harry expecting his whole life to change so suddenly, however.

The day had started out normally enough. Harry had been awake for three hours before Petunia woke up - she always woke up two hours earlier on Dudley's birthday, to bring down the obscene number of presents Dudley received every year. Looking at the food Harry had prepared, she grunted slightly, before jerking her head ever so slightly - the closest to approval that he would ever get from her. Seven hours later - Vernon always took the day off work on Dudley's birthday, and let Dudley stay home from school - the other two males in the house came stomping downstairs, shaking the dust off the ceiling of the cupboard under the stairs and into Harry's face. Coughing lightly, Harry glared at the underside of the stairs, silently vowing that Vernon and Dudley would appear to outgrow another pair of underwear, and lose a few more socks than usual, very soon.

The silence lasted a while, as Lardo and Lardo Jr., as Harry affectionately referred to Vernon and Dudley, stuffed their faces. Of course, nothing good ever lasts as long as we would like it to, and soon enough, Dudley's whining could be heard, following Petunia's pronouncement that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, and couldn't look after Harry while the Dursleys went to the zoo. Harry was dragged out of his cupboard, and made to stand there as the Dursleys discussed ways to get rid of him for the day. Half an hour - and a lot of 'heated debates' - later, Harry was squashed between Dudley and his friend, Piers Polkiss, going on his very first trip to the zoo. After very strict warnings from Vernon about not doing any 'freaky' stuff. Harry nodded, but honestly couldn't have told you what his uncle had actually said. After three years, he had become very good at ignoring what his uncle said.

On the trip there, Vernon complained. This was his favourite thing to do. He had a long list of things he enjoyed complaining about, and Harry was fairly certain that his name - or some variant of it - appeared at least twenty times on said list. Today, however, the topic was motorcycles.

"Roaring along like hoodlums, no regards to the law, any of them!"

'Interesting,' thought Harry privately, 'that you would talk about a lack of regard for the law, Vernon. But then, you always were a hypocrite.' Harry remembered a recent dream involving a motorcycle that could fly, but had the good sense not to mention it. Talking about anything abnormal was always a one-way ticket to the cupboard, and with no cupboard available, Harry didn't particularly want to discover the alternative.

Before he had time to contemplate any further, Vernon screeched into a parking space, and everyone piled out of the car, Harry being sure to get out quickly, as he wouldn't put it past Vernon to leave him in the car, no matter what he had said earlier. The Dursleys, despite their protests against him going initially, insisted that Harry stay close at hand, so they could make sure he didn't do any 'freaky stuff'. Harry had planned to ignore them, but decided he valued being able to eat without sneaking around more than he wanted to rebel. It turned out to be quite a profitable decision, as the Dursleys had bought Dudley and Piers two large ice cream cones, but the woman at the kiosk had smiled at Harry and asked him what he would like, so the Dursleys had bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. And to think, they actually believe they are making me unhappy, thought Harry. The Dursleys didn't know it, but Harry's favourite flavour was lemon.

The first sweet Harry had ever eaten had been a sherbet lemon. He had a habit of picking up coins people had dropped on the ground, and with the first pound he had made this way, he had gone to the sweet shop. (In all fairness, he was only six at the time.) At the shop, he had picked the first sweet he had seen, which just so happened to be a sherbet lemon. And thus began his lifelong love of the sweet, which people would one day joke must be something unique to powerful wizards.

But Harry did not yet know of the magical world - though he had his suspicions. He was not an idiot, no matter who said it! - and so he knew nothing of events in the future yet. And so he simply enjoyed his ice pop while listing - in his head, he didn't have a death wish! - the similarities between "Dinky Diddydums" and the large, rather ugly gorilla scratching itself in front of them. The Dursleys - and Harry, though he doubted they actually knew he was there - went past the lion enclosure, just in time to see them being fed. Harry thought it was kind of mean, the way the females did all the work of dragging the food back home, yet the male got most of the food. He made a silent promise never to be so lazy himself, and in another place, outwith space and time, a red-haired woman smirked at her husband. Moving on to the tigers, Harry found himself connecting with them on some level, as though he understood them without thinking. The graceful, yet powerful way their bodies moved, and of course the fact that they shared in the hunt and the kill, an equal reward for equal amounts of work, appealed to Harry somehow.

But soon, Dudley grew bored, and of course Piers followed suit. Piers was kind of sad, in Harry's opinion. He hung around people more powerful than himself in the hopes of gaining some sort of power for himself, acting macho in the hope that people would believe he really was macho. Harry actually pitied, rather than hated, Piers. Several years from now, Harry would be reminded of Piers Polkiss by another watery-eyed, rat-faced individual by the name of Peter Pettigrew. And one day, he would realize that Piers actually was descended from a squib cousin of Pettigrew's. But none of that had happened yet, and right now, Harry was heading to the reptile house. This was another place that instantly appealed to Harry - dark, slightly damp, and quiet, peaceful even. Maybe it was because of the years spent living in a cupboard, but Harry liked enclosed dark places a lot, knowing every nook and cranny in his primary school by the age of eight. If you needed to know of a place to hide something, Harry could probably tell you the perfect place. And if he couldn't, give him a day or two, and he'd have found somewhere that was just perfect.

While Dudley - and Piers, though Harry knew the boy was deathly scared of reptiles of any kind due to a bad experience with a boa constrictor as a young child - scampered off to look at the largest snakes in the place, Piers pale as a ghost the whole time, Harry went to look at one of the iguanas. 'Heh, looks like a miniature dragon.' thought Harry, before wondering why he had immediately thought that. Harry often did this, comparing mundane, everyday objects to things that only existed in fantasy novels.

~Bloody loud, obnoxious, smelly humans!~

Naturally, young Harry was rather startled by this string of insults. Especially since he had just seen the iguana open it's mouth right before the words were spoken. And that no-one else was near enough for a near-whisper to have carried so far. Clearing his throat slightly, Harry nearly jumped when the iguana opened it's mouth again.

~Oh, lookie here. Another of these drooling idiots come to look at the 'pretty lizard'. I'm an iguana, you mousling twits! At least call me by my name if you must be idiots in my presence.~

Gaping ever so slightly, though he would deny it forever, Harry decided that no, he wasn't having a psychotic episode. The iguana was talking to him. And since it was trying to make conversation, it was only polite to talk back, wasn't it?

~Um...I'll be sure not to call you a 'pretty lizard', sir.~

The iguana's reaction to this? It fell off it's branch, and went sprawling on the floor of it's enclosure. Once it had recovered, and climbed back up to eye level, it stared at Harry.

~So... one of you morons has finally learned how to talk, have you? About time you evolved this far. I was starting to think we'd have to invade and overthrow humanity before you imbecilic twits would become smart. Well, since you're here, give me something vaguely resembling intelligent conversation, would you? Don't worry, you've only just evolved this far, I'm not expecting miracles. I don't know, um, let's see, what's the weather like outside?~

~Err...not too bad? I mean, it's a little windy, but it's not raining or anything. So, how is it that I'm able to talk to you? And what language are you speaking?~

~Hmm. Not bad. You seem to have at least basic linguistic skills, anyway. As to what language we are speaking, it is called Parseltongue. As to how you are able to speak it, I can only surmise that your family have reached a point in the evolutionary process at which you have developed the ability to speak the language. This is rather fascinating. Perhaps you could find some way to free me from this tank? I could accompany you, and study this phenomenon further.~

~ Erm... I'd love to, but my relatives don't exactly like me, so I don't think I could keep you.~

~Nonsense. Your clothes are rather loose fitting, yes? I could hide within them, you smuggle me out of here, and I hide from your relatives. Simple, yet brilliant, yes?Well, shall we?~

~Um, okay then-~

At this point, Dudley had realized that something interesting had happened by the iguana, and had come waddling over, punching Harry in the ribs and knocking him to the floor. Glaring up at him, willing something bad to happen - while also, subconsciously, willing the iguana it's freedom - to Dudley, Harry was shocked when Dudley suddenly disappeared with a crack like a gunshot, before reappearing inside the iguana's enclosure. While the iguana managed to appear where Dudley had been, sneaking into Harry's overly baggy t-shirt before anyone could notice.

Three hours later, during which the zookeepers had been sent off to search for an escaped iguana - and Harry had to stifle his giggles at the comments said iguana was making, most of which involved humans that couldn't speak Parseltongue being idiots - Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon being made several cups of tea by the director of the zoo, and Dudley swearing the iguana had tried to eat him before escaping - to which said iguana scoffed and replied, ~As if I'd eat you. You'd give me indigestion.~ - Harry and the Dursleys had dropped Piers off at home, and were heading back to Number Four, Privet Drive. Harry was enjoying his freedom while it lasted. Though the Dursleys couldn't pin it on Harry, it didn't matter - he had been nearby when it happened, so he was to blame. Standard procedure, to be honest.

Once through the door, Vernon had only managed to wheeze out, "Cupboard...go...stay...no meals...", before collapsing into an armchair, while Petunia ran to fetch him a large - by his standards, so enough to knock out a bull elephant by normal standards - brandy. Harry moved, but wasn't quite fast enough, as Dudley punched him so hard he flew into the doorframe of his cupboard, shattering the watch he had painstakingly repaired. Glaring mutinously, Harry skulked back into his cupboard, silently cursing the Dursleys for existing, and promising retribution when he was older. The Dursleys were the only people Harry had ever hated. Sure, he disliked his parents for being alcoholics that got themselves killed, but he didn't hate them for it. He disliked the school nurse, who had seen the signs of malnutrition and simply passed it off as him being skinny on Vernon's say-so. But he didn't hate her either. He just felt rather apathetic to them. They had done nothing for or against him, and so he would do the same. And of course, he now had no idea how to tell when it was safe to sneak out and steal food from the kitchen. If this imprisonment was similar to the last ones, he would need to do so to ensure he didn't starve.

Three weeks later, Harry was finally allowed out of the cupboard - officially, at least. In that time, the Dursleys had informed the school that he was ill, Dudley had broken most of his new toys - the most spectacular breakage being when he had knocked down Mrs. Figg on his new racing bike while she crossed the road on her crutches - and 'that woman at Number 6' had had her house repainted in what, according to Petunia, was the most gaudy shade of green she had ever seen. Harry, on the other hand, quite liked the change. The colour was similar to the shade of his eyes, which probably was part of the reason Petunia disliked it.

Harry had gone along to talk to Damien, the man who owned the sweet shop, though officially he was to get Dudley some sweets, two days ago. Damien had commented on the fact that Harry hadn't come by recently, and he had responded with 'family stuff'. Not long after Harry had first met Damien, the man had asked several pointed questions about his home life, to which Harry had demanded that Damien not interfere, stating that he could deal with it, and anyway, it was nowhere near as bad as Damien had made it seem. In the interests of staying friendly, Damien had dropped the subject, but stated that if things ever got too bad, Harry was welcome to live with him. Harry had considered this a great many times, but had never accepted the offer. He might not have paid much attention to the Dursley's rants, but some of it got through, ensuring that he didn't want to be too much of a burden to the people he respected.

But today was the day everything changed. His uncle sent him to collect the post, as usual. And there, sitting on the carpet, was a thick, yellowing, parchment envelope, with the address written in shimmering, emerald-green ink;

Harry James Potter
The Cupboard Under The Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

A/N: Well, what do you think? Should I continue? Anything you want me to explain slightly? See if you can't catch the foreshadowing in this chapter. There's a fair bit of it. Some characters will be less important as the story goes on, while others will become more prominent. One thing. Yes, Harry will be an Animagus at some point. His form is already decided, so don't ask for a specific one please. That said, have a guess. Ten points to the House of your choice if you get it right.