James and Lily Potter were a very normal family, and were very proud of that fact; they had a beautiful home in Godric's hollow, they had wealth, both from James' work as Deputy Head Auror, and from the large inheritance he had acquired after his parents had died, and, they had two utterly adorable children, one named Charlie Oliver Potter, and the other, Harry James Potter.
Both brothers had their father's untameable hair of course, though Charlie's hair more auburn like his mothers, and Harry's darker, messier like a chocolate bird's nest. Harry's eyes were like his mothers, though they were much brighter and looked more like the infamous Killing curse rather than the emerald green she had. His brother had his father's eyes, they were a dull brown, so when compared to each other, you would never know they were brothers, just close cousins.
Charlie liked attention and was a very boisterous child, even at the age of 15 months, he liked to pick on his brother and play with his father's wand, 'he acted as any Potter should', quote James; Harry was a quiet baby, he preferred to allow his brother the limelight even at this age, and he had control of his magic too, he learned quickly and he knew, even then, that he would have to protect his brother, as the oldest, from snakes and spiders and the like. Charlie didn't know much about magic, and so he was prone to allow quick bursts of it through, much more than Harry, so everyone thought he was more powerful and quickly started to pay more attention to him.
And so when Voldemort was informed of the prophecy from Severus Snape, his most trusted spy, that a child born at the end of July would bring his downfall, he thought it was Charlie Potter, and so did everyone else. Of course, he couldn't have risked it being Neville Longbottom either and so had sent Bellatrix to deal with that mess. Such a shame, he thought, that The Order had been waiting for her, and she had been captured – as her torture methods never failed to bring a chuckle to his throat.
He couldn't risk this failing, however, and so had decided to take this matter into his own hands, he had made his way to Godric's Hollow, where he had been informed the Potters were staying for safety until he had been defeated, had bound the two weak Potter parents in their sitting room, and had made his way upstairs. He wasn't unnecessarily cruel, the Potter's were of a long bloodline, purebloods of the highest order even if they were bloodtraitors. Before him he found two cribs, surprised that the Potter's had two children, of the same age, as he had only been informed of Charlie. By the way the Auror flouted Charlie's frequent bursts of accidental magic, and spoke of him frequently to The Press, he clearly was the favoured son, and that was also obvious by his highly decorated crib, bursting with stuff toys and magic playthings, compared to the Other boys' however, which was much plainer, and contained only a blanket embroidered with four animals. He made a double take, the two children, whom he had believed to be sound asleep, were apparently not. Charli was still laying there undisturbed, but the other Potter boy was sitting up, looking in to Voldemort's own with a piercing green gaze. He could feel the pure magical power rolling off of the child, and he raised his wand.
"Avada Kedavra!" The bright green light made its way towards the babe, but instead of instantly killing him, the child seemed to absorb the spell, taking in its power and firing it back at The Dark Lord, who could only watch in shock and horror as it made its way towards him, and then all he knew was a muffled blackness.
When The Order had made its way to the house in the morning after the Potters had managed to unbind themselves, they found the nursery in shatters, half blown apart from the pure magic exuded the night before by Harry. His long messy hair covered his new curse scar, a small flaming red lightning bolt. But Charlie's hair was less unkempt, and so when Albus arrived that morning to inspect, he believed the 'V' inscribed onto Charlie's forehead to be the remnants of Voldemort, and Charlie was hailed as the defeater of the Dark Lord, the most villainous of evils since the time of Gelert Grindlewald, The-Boy-Who-Lived.
Harry James Potter would be shoved to the side, to a greater extent than he already was, so that the public could fawn over their new hero and saviour. But Harry was not just any child, and in every universe that he existed in he would perceiver, he wouldn't allow this to deter him from furthering himself and his education, or his mind, for that matter.
It was by chance, that on one of those days the entire family was over, fawning over Charlie, teaching how to fly, harry was pottering around one of the magical gardens this Potter manor had. He was just four old by this point, but had learnt to read fairly quickly, trying desperately to gain his independence as quickly as possible. He had a herbology book in his hand, and was trying to identify as many plants as he could, as this would allow him to gather potions ingredients for his later studies, when he happened upon a small snake, one which h believed to be a Boomslang, though he couldn't understand what such a snake was doing out of the Sahara, where it was a native. He realised, suddenly, he could hear the snake muttering to itself. Could magical snakes speak?
"Must be food around here sssomewhere, I'm ssstarving out here, ssstupid humansss and their glasss boxesss"
"Hello little sssnake, are you hungry?"
The snake jumped, and blinked slowly as it came back to itself, looking lazily at Harry.
"I have never found a ssspeaker before now, little massster." If snakes could chuckle, this one would have been by the way it said 'little master'.
"A speaker? Of snakes?" Harry tilted his head, thinking quickly about anything he had read about speaking to snakes… A Parselmouth! He was a Parselmouth!
"Little sssnake, if I feed you, will you sshed you ssskin for me? Could I collect some fressh sscalesss? And posssibly sssome venom? I am collecting potions ingredients."
That was how Harry started collecting rare based potions ingredients, and though it may seem comically unusual for a such a young child to be doing hard labour, he was aware of how difficult and sometimes even expensive to get hold of these things through other people. If he collected and sold them himself, he could save money and buy himself the things he wanted, like his parents bought Charlie what he wanted.
Every wizarding household had a magic version of a sort of yellow pages, which he used to owl several potions masters, using his solitary house elf to write for him, as his cursive still looked childlike, and when he received their responses, he knew he'd always have at least some sort of income.
From this point onwards his main goal was solely to gain true independence from his family, so he gathered as many educational books as he could with the help of his elf, Dolly, and started studying. Studying, mainly, subjects that which were not taught at Hogwarts, such as healing magic, mine magic, wizarding studies; and subject less common that they did teach, but not often, such as ancient runes, alchemy, magical travel, the dark arts, and earth magic, but mainly he taught himself magical theory, so he could create his own spells, without using his wand like every other European wizard seemed to.
