Hi! Im Hannah, and this is the first chapter of my fic, Finding Home. (Disclaimer, I don't own Harry Potter or any of the people/places/things (basically any proper nouns) mentioned in this chapter.) At first it may seem very similar to the original books, but I assure you, the next few chapters things start to change pretty quickly!
Chapter One - Life with The Dursleys
Harry James Potter did not know his parents, obviously he had met them, but he couldn't remember them. He didn't know what his father's smile looked like or how his laugh sounded. He couldn't even recall the scent of his mother's perfume. Harry felt that such things would be incredibly blasé to normal children, but Harry knew that he wasn't like normal children. This fact had been made incredibly clear to him by his aunt and uncle.
Petunia and Vernon Dursley's lives had been irrevocably altered the moment their retched nephew had darkened their doorstep. He had been nothing but trouble, always whining and attempting to take their attention away from their darling son, Dudley. However, as he aged his attempts began to lessen. After one particularly nasty incident on Mother's Day when he had brought Petunia breakfast in bed, in which he spilt orange juice on the carpet, Vernon sat him down and had a talk with the boy.
He explained to Harry that he was nothing, especially not their son. Harry was a constant reminder to his aunt of the sister she had washed her hands of. Vernon told him how ashamed they were to have to care for the boy that even deadbeats like Lily and James Potter did not love, nevermind respectable people like themselves.
After that, Harry avoided the Dursley's like the plague. However, he could not avoid his classmates. They ridiculed him for everything; from his glasses to his oversized hand-me-down clothes, some going as far as to laugh and point at him outright. He spent most of his time hiding in the bathrooms or being chased around by his cousins and his friends, dodging the things they threw at him.
Harry hated school almost as much as he hated the house at number four Privet Drive where he lived with the Dursleys. It was a relatively normal house, with four bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms. There was the master bedroom where Petunia and Vernon slept, then there was the guest room, where Vernon's sister Marge stayed every few summers and of course there were Dudley's rooms. His first bedroom was where he slept and kept all of his stuff that he liked and his second bedroom was where all of the things he had broken or simply didn't like were kept.
As there simply weren't enough bedrooms in the house for all of them, Harry was forced to sleep in the only place there was room for him, the cupboard under the stairs. Harry's cupboard was the one place in the world that was his, and he didn't even get to be alone in there as it was also home to a dozen or so spiders. Harry didn't mind the spiders so much, he figured they had probably lived there for just as long as he had and he didn't want to bother them.
During the day, Harry left his cupboard only to do his chores and go to school. He was woken every morning at six when Aunt Petunia rapped on the door to give him his chore list. Harry didn't see why she always gave him a list, it had been the same every day for as long as he could remember. The first thing Harry always did was all of the outside chores that needed to be done, from watering and weeding Petunia's garden in the warmer months to shoveling snow in the colder ones. After he finished the outside chores he would wash up before starting to cook breakfast at seven thirty. Once breakfast was served, Harry would get the mail and bring it to Uncle Vernon before starting to pack lunches for his uncle and cousin to take with them to work and school respectively. With the lunches packed, Harry was then allowed to start his daily walk to school, Dudley and his father passing him in the car about halfway there.
After school, Harry would go straight to his cupboard and stay there until it was time for him to make dinner, after which he would return to his cupboard for the rest of the evening. He came out only at night, after the Dursleys had gone to bed, to get some food. He would tiptoe through the kitchen careful not to make a sound while he made himself something to eat. When he finally went to sleep, he always woke feeling more tired than he had previously. His sleep was fitful, plagued with screams and cruel laughter, distorted images of a woman falling, her bright red hair starkly contrasting the harsh green light. But the scariest thing by far were the hands. Pale, cold, disembodied hands reaching for him, grabbing him and lifting him up into the darkness.
By the time Harry was ten, the nightmares had become a nightly occurrence, leaving him exhausted. With his pale complexion and skinniness, the dark circles under his eyes made him look like a walking corpse. If the Dursley's noticed his condition, they did not mention it. Harry himself tried to ignore it, avoiding looking in the mirror, though this was partly contributed to the fact that he hated his eyes. Their bright green irises reminded him of his nightmares.
When school let out, it was both a blessing and a curse. Harry was free from the mockery of the other children, but it became harder to avoid the Dursleys. During the summer, Harry kept up with his routine of early morning chores, then being virtually left to his own devices until dinner time. Harry spent his time either in his cupboard or roaming the town of Little Whinging, Surrey. Harry was sure that he knew the town better than anyone, except maybe Dudley and his friends who spent much of their time wandering as well.
Dudley and his friends were the reason all of the other children at school hated Harry. They told everyone how horrid he was, that he was so awful that not even his own parents had loved him enough to keep him. They were the most feared kids in town, even most adults would duck their heads and look the other way when they saw Dudley and his friends walking up the street. Their favorite ways to pass time included, but were not limited to, throwing rocks at parked cars, relieving other children of their pocket money and, of course, chasing Harry around town.
Harry knew all the places in town to hide from his cousin, including behind the bins outside the town's only restaurant and Harry's personal favorite, at the top of the big tree in the park.
Harry loved to climb, he always had even though it had gotten him in trouble when he was younger and had a habit for climbing onto the counter or the table while the Dursleys were having dinner. Even as a ten year old, Harry still loved climbing things. He loved the feeling of looking down at the ground from what seemed like an impossible height. Sitting at the top of the big tree, Harry felt almost as if he were flying, enjoying the feel of the breeze through his perpetually messy hair. Oddly enough, it was at the very top of the tree that was the only place Harry felt right. Everywhere else he felt out of place, as if he didn't fit.
Once, when he was younger, Harry had mentioned how out of place he felt to his aunt. She had looked at him with disgust and exclaimed that it was because he didn't belong, because he was an unlovable freak before returning to her book. Harry supposed she was right.
It was obvious, really, how could anyone love him if his own parents hadn't? They hadn't loved him so they had given him to the Dursley's to raise, and the Dursley's being the kind people they were, took him into their home and fed and clothed him. However, due to his unlovable nature, they couldn't bring themselves to treat him as if he were their own son, but Petunia's regret at not being able to keep her sister from becoming such a disgrace to society kept them from sending Harry away to an orphanage.
Harry was very grateful to his aunt and uncle for this because he knew that he would never be adopted, who would want a freak for a child? It was because of this gratitude that he eagerly did all of his chores, knowing that it was the least he could do to earn his keep. He did everything he could to make his aunt and uncle happy, but sometimes things happened that he could not control.
For example, his messy hair, try as he might to keep it neat, it was always flopping all over the place, much to his aunt's annoyance. Harry remembered the time that she had taken one look at him one morning and declared that he needed a haircut. She had grabbed him by the hair and yanked him into a chair before getting the kitchen scissors and hacking off all of his hair except for his bangs. She left the bangs in order to hide the scar on his forehead. Harry hated his scar just as much as his aunt, he thought of it as his freak mark. It declared to the whole world how abnormal he was.
Harry had gone to bed that night worrying about his classmate's reactions to his new hairstyle, but he needn't have worried. The next morning, to his and the Dursley's shock, his hair had grown back completely overnight and was just as messy as ever. His aunt had been furious and had locked him in the cupboard while he apologized profusely. His uncle had been completely flabbergasted. He kept asking how it was possible and muttering under his breath about how he wished he could grow back his hair.
Unfortunately for Harry, growing back his hair wasn't the only odd thing to happen to him. In fact, strange things seemed to follow Harry wherever he went. He supposed it was the world's way of reacting to the freakiness of him. Once during class, his teachers hair had turned blue and it had somehow been determined that it was his fault, even though he had no idea how he could possibly have changed his teacher's hair color. Of all the strange things to happen to or around him, Harry could never repeat any of them no matter how hard he tried, except for one thing and he had discovered it by accident.
One night, when he was sneaking through the kitchen, making himself dinner, he had dropped a glass. He had frozen in fear because he knew the sound of it breaking would wake the Dursley's and he didn't want them to know that he was stealing their food. But to his amazement, the glass had frozen too. It hovered inches from the ground, suspended by nothing. Harry watched mesmerized as it floated up from the ground and back into his hand. At the time, Harry had been terrified, but eventually he became used to moving objects with his mind, often doing it purposefully when he was alone.
Harry kept this power to himself, knowing that it would only add to his persona of the town freak. He didn't even tell his aunt and uncle, knowing they wouldn't approve of such an abnormality. When he discovered his power, everything suddenly made sense to him. There really was something wrong with him, something strange and unusual to cause his unlovableness. His parents must have seen it in him when he was young, and that was why they had given him up. That was the reason the other children had such a negative reaction to him, because he was something wholly different from them.
AN: Thank you for reading the first chapter of Finding Home! Please leave a review with any comments/suggestions/opinions! I would love to hear some feedback so i can improve my writing!