Prologue
To a five year old Harry, being told that he had to protect his twin was confusing. It was confusing for no other reason other than it being so incredibly obvious that he didn't think it needed to be said. For Harry, protecting his brother was simply a fact of life, a thing that he did without really thinking about it or questioning it, in the same way as the sky was blue, grass was green, and Uncle Remy and Dad could not be left in the same room without something mysteriously exploding or combusting.
Harry had learnt his ABCs with very few hiccoughs to the delight of his tutor, a little under a year ago, and liked to spend time in the family library on the estate, reading the thinner books he could reach and carry. He'd stumbled upon, quite literally tripping over a stack of books and falling into, accounts of Voldemort's attack on his family in Godric's Hollow one chilly autumn evening when he was around four. A thin volume of The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts had fallen out from the lowest shelf of the tallest bookcase as he collided with it, the small thud muffled slightly by both the library's thick carpet and Harry's foot. After the throbbing pain radiating from his toes had subsided, he'd picked up the small hardcover book and then proceeded to devour it. On that day, the knowledge that an evil wizard wanted to harm his brother wasn't fully processed by Harry, partly because he was too young to fully realise what it meant, and partly because Alex had fallen from his toy broom and had broken his ankle that same evening.
Seeing Alex sobbing with pain and clutching his ankle was somehow more painful to Harry than anything else he had felt before. He'd wanted to somehow transfer Alex's injuries to himself, to take all of his twin's burdens as own because, even at that young age, he had just wanted to see Alex smile again. And then, Harry decided that he would protect his younger twin from anything and everything else that would threaten to hurt him, and he made a promise to Alex that same night, when both of their senses were dulled by the haze of sleep, to always stay by his brother and best friend's side and look after him, no matter what might happen.
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A/N: Ah yes, another Harry-is-not-the-boy-who-lived story. Now that summer has come, I get to finally have enough time to write! Feel free to give me ideas on what I should do with the fic (I could really use them, honestly). I'm set on Alex being a Gryffindor, and I think I'll make Harry a Slytherin. Any characters you particularly want to see? To not see?