Unnecessary disclaimer:
Like basically every fanfiction out there this story is AU.
And like every fanfiction author I do not own Harry Potter or any related characters, I hope to do this disclaimer once will be enough and I won't have to repeat it at the start of every Chapter.
ANs will be at the end of chapters unless they have to be used as disclaimers of some sort.

Nightmare Child

October 1985

Harry was a relatively healthy five year old boy. The only problem, he was dying.
He lived with his aunt Petunia and uncle Vernon who had raised him since his parents had died when he was only one year old. They were not the friendliest of people, but they loved each other, and they loved the two boys they were raising. But it was this love that was killing him. Constantly being showered with love did nothing but starve him. The lack of negative emotions was killing something inside him, and he needed it to survive. To be fair, it was not like they did not have any negative emotions, but most of them came from things at his uncles work place or other such places and his uncle tried his best not to bring those things back home with him.

On the night of Halloween Harry had a very weird dream.
One in which he argued with himself.
And finally after he agreed with this other him, he woke up crying.
His mother had wanted him to be alive. And that is what he intended to stay, whatever the cost.

July 24, 1991

Harry was frying bacon when the mail arrived.
"Dudley can you go get the mail, my dear" said Mrs. Dursley with her sweetest voice, but Dudley was having none of it. "Make Harry do it", he said in a whiny voice while looking at his father.
"Yes you do it, boy", Mr. Dursley said with a dirty look at his nephew.
Harry took a look at the bacon, gave a small sigh and then shrugged. He put the bacon on a plate and went to collect the mail. He picked up the letters and made his way back looking through them. There were some bills, a letter from uncle Vernon's sister Marge and for some reason a letter with a red wax crest on it.
Even more strange, the letter was addressed to Harry Potter Privet Drive 4 the cupboard under the stairs. The fact that it even said where he slept worried him slightly but in the end, it mattered little.
He thought about throwing the letter through the slits of his door before entering the kitchens but decided against it.

What followed was a weirdly amusing scene in which Mr. and Mrs. Dursley looked worried because Harry had gotten a letter from something called Hogwarts or something like that. Dudley was shocked that Harry got a letter at all, no matter how odd. After a few moments Mr. Dursleys expression changed from worry to anger and the to smugness as he ripped the letter apart.

After Mr. Dursley had destroyed the letter he grabbed Harry shoved him into his room and locked the door.

Harry just sat there in the dark.
The lightbulb in his room actually worked even if his aunt and uncle believed otherwise, but Harry rarely if ever turned it on.
After almost two minutes he suddenly began blinking rapidly and shook his head a few times.

"Was that what I think it was?", he asked himself quietly. "I think so", he said after a moment.
"But what do we do now?" "I'm not sure. We could just wait and see what happens. If we don't reply, they might send someone."

He was silent for a moment.

"We should still try to get our hands on one of these letters."

Over the next days there came more and more letters, but his uncle managed to destroy them before Harry had a chance to steal one, but when Sunday came everything changed.

His uncle was just boasting about how Sundays were his favourite days of the week because there was no mail on Sundays when all of the sudden the whole room exploded with letters.
They were everywhere.

He knew he would not be allowed to keep any letter he might be able to grab so he pretended to be an idiot, trying to catch one of the letters that were falling down while kicking as many of the fallen letters as he could into the hallway hoping that one of them would slip under his door. When he finally caught one and his uncle pushed him into his room he managed to kick a letter under a short table in the hallway so that if his first plan had failed he could grab that one later.

He needn't have bothered for he had three letters in his room and after hiding one of them let himself get caught with one of the other ones. After a quick search of his room produced a second letter from underneath his pillow his uncle was sure he had once again outsmarted his nephew.

To make sure they escaped this letter madness his uncle made all of them relocate to some deserted island and got a gun from somewhere.

Later that night while Harry was still thinking about whether or not to open the letter, because as he noted "maybe they only keep sending them because they have a way of knowing that the ones that they sent were not opened", the door boomed with an ear-splitting sound. And then there was a man inside the room that looked like he could eat Vernon Dursley alive and still have room for desert. He had to keep his head down, so he would not hit his head on the ceiling and how he got through the door was something Harry did not understand.

After a short moment Uncle Vernon made an appearance form upstairs, his gun in hand and screaming his lungs out. "Get out off this house or I'll shoot you".

Instead of backing away the man took a step towards Vernon and just graped the gun, but before he could take it from Vernon there was a loud booming and smoke came out of the gun still pointed at the giant man.

"Tha' hurt you big muggle. No' giv' tha' here before someone gets hurt", the giant man said.

"I'm here ter give Harry Potter his Hogwarts letter, tha's all."
With that he turned towards Dudley have started fumbling the inside of what looked like a moleskin coat made of at least a few hundred animals.
"You're a little heavier than what I had expected but who am I ter juge, ehh?"
"Excuse me but I am Harry."

"Heh, ohh didn't see yer there. Guess that makes sense, yer look a lot more like James than that whale over there", the man answered.

A while later Harry was on his way with Hagrid the gentle giant towards some place called the Leakey cauldron, which in Harrys opinion sounded way too cliché too be a real place, but then again, he knew next to nothing about what it meant to be a wizard.

From the Leakey cauldron they went to diagon ally by hitting some bricks on a wall with an umbrella. They first visited some big white building that was called Gringotts that was apparently the wizarding bank. Harrys parents had left him with a big mountain of gold and silver coins, some of which Harry converted into muggle money while Hagrid got something out of another vault. They visited all sorts of shops to buy his school supplies. As Harry got his robes there was another boy getting his robes done. He was not to nice and said some things about muggleborns that obviously displeased the woman working on his robes and when Harry told Hagrid about it later, he told him that it was rubbish and that witches and wizards from muggle families were just as good as those with what he called pure blood.

Hagrid got Harry a beautiful snow owl when he noticed that it was Harrys birthday and he hadn't gotten him a gift yet. After that the only thing Harry was missing was a wand.

Getting his wand took ages, but when he finally got it the feeling was amazing. When he grabbed the holly wand it was like a surge of power flooding his body. The wand sprayed red and white sparks. Hagrid applauded and Mr. Ollivanders said "good good, very good… how strange… very strange…".
"Excuse me", Harry said. "But what is strange?"
Mr. Ollivander gave him a look.
"I remember every wand I ever sold, Mr. Potter. Every last one of them. It so happens that the phoenix whose tail feather is in your wand, gave another feather – just one other. It is very curious that you should be destined for this wand when it's brother is the one that killed your parents."
Harry paled slightly at that.
"Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. It is strange how these things happen. The wand chooses the wizard remember that… I think we can expect great things from you, Mr. Potter … In the end he-who-must-not-be-named did great things – terrible things, yes but great."

When Harry was back home the Dursleys were already back and tried to pretend that Harry didn't exist. He tried to get all his things into his room but then decided just to leave most of it in front of his door. Hagrid had given him a letter with his ticket to Hogwarts and said that should be on the train station on the first of September, which meant that he still had to wait a whole month.

At first, he spend most his time reading his school books in his room, but while his lightbulb worked it was not a great place to read and sitting somewhere else in the house was not something he would consider.

After a few days he decided to use some of the money he had converted to get to the Leaky Cauldron.
He tried to get through the wall, but could not remember the correct bricks to poke with his wand. After a long moment's hesitation, he got back into the Leaky and asked the barman Tom to help him. A few minutes later he went into Flourish and Blotts to see if there were any helpful books about the wizarding world, or if not, were he could sit down to read the book he had taken with him. He was reasonably sure that the Dursleys would leave the rest of his stuff alone because they probably were still intimidated by their meeting with Hagrid.

He found a couple of books he was interested in and started reading, when a family of redheads entered the store. There were so many of them that it felt like the store was full of people all the sudden. He did not like crowds even if that crowd consisted of only 5 children and their mother, so he stopped reading and instead started watching them warily.

When three of the children immediately ran into the depths of the store as their mother was not looking for a moment with another one following them shouting not to run, said mother was just shaking her head with amusement before looking back at her daughter and continued arguing about something.

A moment later the daughter stormed away towards a comfortable reading chair and slumped down into it. She started muttering about something, probably how unfair the world was from the tone of it but then she noticed Harry blushed and was silent.

"No need to stop complaining just for me", he offered with one of the best fake smiles he had ever managed.
"I was not complaining", she snapped back before putting one hand over her mouth.
"Soo, what was it you weren't complaining about then", he asked with some amusement after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence.
She rolled her eyes at him before answering.
"Well you see all my brothers are going to Hogwarts this year and so it will be very boring at home. While I understand that I can't just go with them I thought that maybe I could get some of my school books early so I'd have something to do, but mum says they are to expansive and that we don't even know if I will need the same books next year, which is nonsense because almost all the books for the first year are always the same."

"So, is the money the problem, or does your mom just hate the idea about wasting money for no reason?" Harry asked.

She blushed at this.

"So, it is the money", he concluded with a frown.
"Yes, but my mom would never take any money from charity or something like that", she answered in a squeaky voice.
He frowned and then got up from the chair.

He walked through the store until he found a table with second hand books.
He looked through them and bought a few.
Then he got some paper and labelled them free before he walked over to the red haired woman who was currently trying to find her sons.

"Excuse me", he said while approaching her.
"Yes, my dear, do you need help or something", she asked with a friendly smile.
"No, I mean, I overheard you saying something about books for first years being to expensive and I saw some old ones being given away for free back there and thought you might want to know about that."
The woman was visibly struggling with herself but then went to the table with him and called for her daughter, whose name was apparently Ginny.

When Ginny got there, she looked confused from her mum to Harry and back.
"You seem to have luck because this young man here found some free books and some of them are those you wanted", her mother told her with a big smile.
Ginny looked frightened to Harry before thanking him and taking them.
"Where are my manners", said the woman while looking at Harry. "I'm Molly Weasley and this is my daughter Ginevra", she said with a smile.
"Nice to meet you, I'm Harry", he answered.

When he went back to his reading chair Ginny followed him.
"I told you that we didn't want charity", she said accusingly.
"First of all, you said you mum didn't want that and secondly those books were free", he answered without looking up from his books.
"Sure the exact books I wanted just happened to be free", she said with a voice that was dripping sarcasm.
"I know how it is to be poor, so I can relate, but since you can't or in the very least won't prove that these books weren't free you can stop accusing me", he answered finally looking up from his book.
There was a long silence between them.
"I'm Ginny by the way."
"So I've heard, nice to meet you Ginny, I'm Harry."
"Are you ten as well", she ask after some hesitation.
"No I'm eleven, why are you asking", he answered a little startled.
"Oh, you don't look like eleven", she answered before blushing ones again.
At that moment her mum came over with Ginny's brothers and told her that they needed to leave to get some more school supplies and Ginny went with them after saying goodbye to Harry.

The rest of the month was very boring because he decided that wasting the money his parents had left him with by going to the Leaky by train everyday was not something he wanted to do.

AN

Like every fanfiction this story will be AU, I intend to change a lot of things, including how magic works (not that JKR gave us many restrictions when it comes to that).
While the plot of the first year will be relatively close to canon I don't intend to cling to it in later years, I may keep stuff I like and I may leave it out if I see fit.
I´m also currently thinking about placing the story ten years later, because since I was not yet born in 1991 it feels weird writing about such a time.

While the first year is neither filled with much swearing nor with anything I would call inappropriate for teens (yet) I expect the story to take quite a few dark turns that may even require me to use some other website, because M is the highest rating allowed on this site. In such a case I would start a chapter with an AN that would provide a link to the uncensored version of the chapter.

This story is not supposed to be about romance, but it will probably contain romantic elements later. If you choose to see a romantic context in scenes of the first two or three years that is of course up to you, but please remember that we are talking about little children here.
If you have any OTP you are free to tell me about it, but if you think you can make me see stuff the way you do, you better have a few very compelling arguments to back it up.

Since my native language isn't English feel free to blame my beta (sarcasm) for any typo you find (don't do so, we are all just human and it's probably my fault anyway). If you do find typos or anything alike feel free to tell me, but if possible provide the sentence surrounding the error, so I can find and fix it.

While you are free to ask about anything you want to have explained I will reserve the right to not answer if I think it would spoil the later plot or if I just don't want to answer. Also, I don't plan to answer questions in ANs so if you ask a question without giving me a way to answer it you won't get an answer. (PM or email preferably)

I first got the idea for this story when I was re-reading Harry Potter and the Prince of Slytherin by the Sinister Man. To be exact I got the idea when I was reading through the spells listed to be contained in the Anathema Codex and was imagining what they would or could do. I don't consider this stealing the idea, because so far it was not shown what those spells can do, with the exception of the Horcrux spell and Imago Dei of course. I will not try to simulate the Prince of Slytherin story, while I may use some ideas explored in that story those cases will not be intentional. At this point coming up with your totally original story is virtually impossible because the probability that no other fanfiction author has ever explored an idea that is at least vaguely familiar to one of yours is more than slim.

One last thing, if you see anything that sounds like it is very close to something that was said in one of the original books, keep in mind that while I could change each and every thing ever said in Harry Potter sometimes that just does not add anything to the story. I so far came across two scenes that would not be effected by the changes I did and so I mostly kept those the way they were. The first one is in this very chapter. Changing the entire conversation between Ollivander and Harry would have been a thing I could have done, but doing so would not have improved the story, instead I changed a few details and otherwise left it as is. Also keep in mind that I did not read those books in there original language and have by this point read more fanfiction about Harry Potter then I have read Harry Potter. If I ever happen to use a line from another fanfiction it will either be by accident or it will be noted in the AN of the story.