Author's Note: I never read the Harry Potter series as a child, but I've finally read the series recently. I absolutely adore the world of the HP universe, and I completely understand how it became such a beloved series. However, as an adult, I see serious issues with the ways some of these characters are treated. Serious red flags are often ignored, character's potentials are pushed aside, and really, many of these characters just deserved better.

So, basically, this story is going to be just that. A fix-it fic/rescuing Harry from the Dursley's fic/people I love don't die here fic/adults are actually capable fic/etc… It doesn't mean bad things won't still happen, or that characters will be OOC, or everyone lives; I just really feel like there needs to be a fic where these characters get the decent treatment they deserve, and I haven't found one, so why not make one?

This story will follow a majority of the big plot points of canon (save year 3 where I have some different plans), but it will definitely be AU. I also plan to gloss over actual canon scenes, as it bores me to tears when people rewrite scenes that already exist in fanfiction. So if you haven't read the books, you will probably be a bit confused, as I'm only going to include the base details. So fair warning.

It will start out more canon (especially in year 1) but will begin to deviate as we go along. I have the whole thing planned out until the very end, and it's going to be a monster fic series, but I hope you enjoy and will come along for the ride for me!

Also, I am not British, so please pardon me if the tone feels a bit off or words don't fit. Please point anything out to me that you catch. Thanks!

...

Harry Potter was a very unusual boy. Not because Harry himself felt unusual or special, in fact, it was quite the contrary. Instead, Harry knew from a young age that he was unusual because of how his relatives treated him.

Harry could never remember being welcomed or loved by his relatives. His uncle yelled at him often, his aunt only cared if he got his chores done, and his cousin was often encouraged to push and tease him whenever he could.

For as long as he could remember, Harry was called "boy" and "freak" instead of Harry, and he didn't even realize his name was Harry until he was four years old. That was the day he heard his Aunt Petunia explaining how he had been dumped in their care to a nosy neighbor. She'd used the name Harry, but it hadn't registered until a few days later that it must be his name she had used, as it certainly couldn't be anyone else's.

Although Harry knew no other life, he wasn't dumb. He knew he was treated differently, unfairly. As a very young child, he was often told by his Aunt and Uncle that he was "freakish," and that the only way to fix this so-called freakishness was for him to be a better person. So Harry tried, really tried. He did his best at all his chores, to not talk back, to stay out of Dudley's way, and above all, to fix his freakishness. He'd thought for a short time that he could earn a hug, or a kind word, or regular meals, or maybe even if he was very, very good, his own room instead of the cupboard under the stairs.

Unfortunately, that dream was quickly squashed when after three weeks of being perfectly normal his Aunt Petunia hung a "chore chart" up on the fridge. Under Harry's name was a list a mile long, filling the entire paper with even more chores than he'd ever had before. Meanwhile, Dudley's only chore was listed as "watching" Harry to make sure he did everything up to standards. Which, of course, Harry knew meant pushing him, beating him, and insulting him instead.

When he'd asked Aunt Petunia why Dudley's list was so short when he made most of the mess, he'd only received a shriek, a lecture about his ungratefulness, and a smack to the back of the head with her frying pan. (That was before he'd learned to duck.)

Harry knew from that day on that fairness wasn't something that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon cared about. And, more importantly, fairness wasn't something that applied to freaks.

Still, he knew he had nowhere else to go, as Uncle Vernon often liked to remind him, and he had to make the most of it. So Harry learned when to work hard. He learned when it was safe to stand up to Dudley and when it was best to avoid him entirely. He learned when he could sneak in a snarky word to Uncle Vernon, and when to keep quiet to avoid a slap to the back of the head.

Another thing he also learned quickly was that the things that made him unusual, "freakish," in his relative's eyes were things he couldn't change.

"Fix your wretched mop of hair!" Aunt Petunia would shriek. But no matter how he tried he couldn't get it to stay down, and look "respectable."

"You're just like your no-good parents. Useless the both of them, driving drunk like that." Uncle Vernon would snort. But Harry didn't see how that was his problem. Even if his parents were "no-good layabouts" like Uncle Vernon often said, they had died while Harry was still a baby. He couldn't change that.

There were of course also all of the "freakish incidents" that happened around him, like floating toys, or the flower that had suddenly gone from dead to blooming, or the time that Harry had wanted to see a sparrow up close and fifty of them had started following him and his relatives around and affectionately tweeting at them. Harry wasn't sure how those things happened, and even though they were weird, he was certain they couldn't be entirely his fault.

Still, despite all that, Harry only truly realized how bad it was living at Privet Drive when he was finally able to go to school. Of course, Aunt Petunia avoided sending him for as long as she possibly, and legally, could. Her precious Dudders went to every children's program, daycare, and event possible. (Although Harry didn't think it was doing him any good. He was still as dumb as ever.) Harry, on the other hand, was made to stay at home and do all the chores, except for the really big jobs that he wasn't able to do. Those Aunt Petunia did begrudgingly.

But Aunt Petunia, although she would have liked to, couldn't keep him out of school forever. And so to school he went, dressed in the best of Dudley's hand-me-downs that he had and carrying only a paper bag with two pieces of bread and a slice of cheese for his lunch, as well as Dudley's old backpack with the broken strap. His school supplies were all of Dudley's used items: broken pencils, crayons, and half-used notebooks.

The beginning of classes went well. Harry managed to make a few friends whom he played with until lunchtime, and Dudley seemed to ignore him for the most part.

Lunch was a different story. His new friend Lucy noticed he didn't have much in his lunch sack and she started asking him weird questions about where all of his food was. When he said that special snacks were for Dudley, she thought he was joking with her for some reason. When he tried to tell her he wasn't, she thought he was lying, and refused to sit with him again.

The few other friends he had made were chased off in the evening by Dudley, who quickly got bored in recess time and decided chasing Harry and anyone near him would be fun. Thus began the start of Harry's lonely school years, and "Harry Hunting".

But although his school years were lonely, Harry learned a useful skill at school. Listening.

Because no one wanted to be around him, he often sat alone, outside of every conversation and forgotten just enough that people didn't mind what they said around him. And so he learned a lot of things. Sometimes this information wasn't very useful, like knowing that Susan Brown was afraid of frogs, or that William in Year 6 was the most popular person at school. However, other things were important things. Things that made Harry understand not only was his life not fair, but it wasn't normal either.

Harry learned quickly from listening that other children didn't sleep in cupboards. In fact, children apparently didn't sleep anywhere but a bedroom! Other children also received three full meals every day, and usually only had a few chores! Harry could barely imagine how wonderful that must be.

From information like that, it hadn't taken long for Harry to realize that he was the exception, and it had been an even shorter time for him to realize that this meant something was wrong at the Dursleys.

That was how, one day, he finally got the courage to speak to someone, one of the few teachers who had ever been nice to him; Mrs. Lynn.

Mrs. Lynn was kind. She always had a smile for everyone in the class, not just her favorite students. She would play fun games with them, tell them jokes to make them laugh, and once had even brought in cookies for the whole class to share. She was one of the few adults, really the only adult, that Harry felt he could maybe trust.

He'd chosen to speak to her during recess, standing back from the other children as he normally did, and waiting until it was just he and Mrs. Lynn standing alone by the old swingset.

"Mrs. Lynn?" He'd hesitantly spoken her name, tugging on her sweater lightly.

"Yes, Harry?"

Harry had beamed up at her, happy to hear his name. He hardly ever heard it spoken if he wasn't at school.

"I was just, I mean it's hard to say, but-" Harry had rambled a bit, before cutting himself off and taking a deep breath. "I think something is wrong with the way things are with the Dursley's. I mean, at my home."

Mrs. Lynn's kind face morphed into a frown, but it was a concerned frown, not an angry one like Aunt Petunia's.

"Whatever do you mean by that, Harry?" She had asked.

And so Harry had told her, looking distractedly at his tattered sneakers the entire time instead of her face, about the cupboard, the chores, Dudley, everything. Except for the name freak. That was one secret he couldn't bring himself to share.

When he'd finally finished, he felt a soft hand settle on his shoulder, and he looked up to find Mrs. Lynn looking extremely concerned.

"Harry, I want you to go sit on the steps by the door for a moment. Can you do that for me? I need to talk to your cousin."

"Yes mam," Harry mumbled. He wondered what good speaking to Dudley about any of it would do, but he nodded his head anyway.

"Good, thank you, Harry. I promise everything will be alright. Off you go now." And with that, she shooed him to the steps.

He sat and watched nervously as she spoke to Dudley. At first, her face was concerned, and she seemed to be questioning Dudley rather harshly. Harry felt hopeful for the first time ever. Maybe she could do something, like speak to Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, and tell them how normal children were supposed to be treated. Maybe they would listen to someone as smart as Mrs. Lynn. Maybe they just didn't really realize how they treated him.

But suddenly, her face changed. She started looking sort of funny as if she'd just woken up from a dream, and she kept glancing at him and frowning. Harry's heart began to sink.

After a few minutes, she walked back over to him, her face still in a frown, but this time it was a frown that told him he was in trouble.

"Harry, I can't believe you would lie like that. It's very serious to lie about such things. I'm very disappointed in you." Her voice sounded very bland, not her normal happy tone, and Harry thought it almost sounded like a bad actor from one of the cheesy horror movies Dudley would sometimes watch.

"Sorry, mam." He mumbled, not bothering to correct her. He knew how things went when people believed he was lying.

"Yes, well, you shouldn't..." Mrs. Lynn began before her voice began to trail off. "Where was I now...? Were you in trouble Harry?" She asked him, before shaking her head. "Well, you shouldn't be sitting here! It's a nice day! Go out and play."

And with that, Harry was pushed towards the playground. Mrs. Lynn never brought it up again, and neither did Harry. She was still kind, and still smiled at him, but he never felt safe around her again. Not like he had before. And he certainly never told her any big secrets again.

In fact, after that day, Harry learned another valuable lesson, that even though the Dursley's didn't treat him normally, there wasn't anything he could do about it. And no one was going to do anything about it either, so it was useless to say anything about it.

And so life carried on, day after day, full of chores, unfairness, and being considered a freak. Still, Harry hoped that someday, something would finally change, that things would be better, even if he had to wait until he was a grown-up.

But thankfully, he didn't have to wait that long. Because without warning a giant arrived with a letter, and suddenly everything was turned upside down.

Suddenly, he wasn't Harry the freak. He was Harry Potter, a wizard, with parents who had loved him. And, he was going to Hogwarts.