Prologue
Aunt Petunia always bought a lot of delicious sweets when she went shopping for groceries, but she always kept them reserved for his cousin Dudley and his friends, and if Harry so much as looked "the wrong way" at the sweets(though he didn't know how that was possible), Aunt Petunia would glare at him. Uncle Vernon got Dudley all the toys he wanted—even if he had to buy ten toys a week to keep Dudley happy—and they still had money left over, but they never spent more than the bare necessities on Harry.
Harry didn't even have his own room; he lived in a cupboard under the stairs. Every time he did something wrong, he was roughly shoved into the cupboard.
Harry didn't always know what it was that he did wrong. Sometimes he knew that it was because he'd burned the breakfast or because he hadn't sorted the clothes properly, but other times…he just didn't know what was so bad about him saying "My favorite character from the story was Merlin," especially when Uncle Vernon had been so eager to know. Harry had only said it because he thought Uncle Vernon would be pleased to hear it; Dudley had said the same thing to their teacher, and the teacher thought it was wonderful how Dudley thought helping people was the best thing ever.
And Dudley and his friends always made sure Harry was as miserable as possible when in school. Dudley and his gang were the biggest bullies in their primary school. They liked bossing the little children around and beating up the kids that seemed to like Harry, and their favorite sport was Harry Hunting. Harry therefore, had to constantly be on alert around them, and because of that he had quick reflexes. Not that quick reflexes and speed helped much when they caught him and beat him up.
Harry knew that his life was awful, and he was quite sure that it would never change, not even a little. He didn't know how wrong he was.