A/N: Hey ! so this is my first real attempt at a proper rewrite of Harry Potter to change like... everything I don't like essentially. Anyways, the updates will probably be slow for a while, I'm currently working full time and getting ready to move back to uni in between that, but there should (hopefully) be one every month or so, probably on the last day of each month to give me the whole month to write something (pls dont hold me to that). There is also no beta on this story as I don't think I have the time to confer with someone else on it, so sorry for any errors ! I am also aware that this chapter drags a bit because of me introducing the scene, but I wanted some creative freedom with this and I think it adds to the story so if you don't like just skip the first few paragraphs. So, enjoy ! Also, usual disclaimers none of the characters or the universe is mine, it belongs to someone else.
The late July sun beamed down on the pristine yards along Privet Drive. Each uniform house sharing the same dull look, the same wilted flowers and the same desperation to be viewed as superior. Simply put, nothing about these gardens suggested anything unusual may be about, nothing suggested that the people who lived along this quiet suburban street were strange or didn't belong.
Nothing, except one bespectacled, scrawny young boy with a mop of unruly black hair and broken circular glasses, who was currently tending to a rather well pruned rose bush. He wiped his dirt covered forehead as sweat dripped from his hairline and continued on, not realising how odd his appearance was. Not noticing the way people stopped and stared in disdain for a moment before rushing away, nor the way people whispered
behind their hands to each other about him.
"Potter! That's right, a real troublemaker if you ask me!"
"Look at those baggy clothes!"
"Look at his messy hair! So unkempt!"
"I hear he bullies his cousin, Dudley."
"Why do Petunia and Vernon keep the boy then?"
"His parents! The drunkards they were, they got into a car crash when he was just a baby, the poor Dursley's took him out of the goodness in their hearts hoping he wouldn't turn out like them but look at the boy! He's a disgrace!"
The people on Privet Drive were very unhappy with the young Potter boy, seeing him as a stain on their perfect neighbourhood. There were many rumours about the boy, about his poor behaviour in school and lack of academic achievement, about how he attended St Brutus's Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys, and how strange and peculiar things always seemed to occur around the boy.
Little did they know, this boy was Harry Potter. The same Harry Potter who was famous, the same Harry Potter who was loved and adored and awed by people all across England. You see, Harry was a wizard, and so were his 'no good' parents. When Harry was one, a dark wizard named Voldemort came and killed his parents as well as himself, but somehow something went wrong. Thus, Harry was branded as the boy who lived, Voldemort was vanquished and the wizarding world was saved. Or so they thought.
Since Harry turned 11 two years ago, he had been attending Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, in which he had encountered Voldemort in some form no less than twice, once at the end of each year. This puzzled Harry, and as he dug a particularly hefty weed out of the ground, he thought. How could it be possible for Voldemort to be alive? Everyone believed him to be dead, except his headmaster who seemed to know everything and nothing at once. But if he were dead, how had he infiltrated Hogwarts, supposedly the safest place in wizarding Britain not only once but twice?
Nothing was adding up for Harry, and as he moved onto Aunt Petunia's peonies he continued to contemplate what this meant. He had thought about this all summer, about how somewhere could have a reputation for being so safe and yet have children almost dying at least once, sometimes twice a year. He wondered how a troll had entered the school in first year and almost killed one of his best friends Hermione Granger, or how Professor Quirrel had been possessed by Voldemort and yet no one had noticed.
Even this past year, an extremely dark artifact had passed through Hogwarts legendary and supposedly invincible wards and began possessing a first year named Ginny Weasley, opening the Chamber of Secrets and petrifying many students, including the aforementioned Hermione Granger.
Harry saw the patterns in these events, particularly in how both major incidents the children were expected to solve the problem. In his first year, the traps were easy enough for him, Hermione and another first year named Ron Weasley, who was his other best friend, to get past with little trouble.
In second year, they sent the Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher Gilderoy Lockhart, who was a known fraud, to try and save Ginny Weasley and then simply sat around waiting for her to die.
None of these things so far seemed to add up with what he'd heard of Hogwarts, and Harry, aside from having made new friends and been able to find out more about his parents, was extremely disappointed with how it was going. He thought back on his begging to be allowed to be left at Hogwarts in particular, and how the old headmaster's eyes had twinkled knowingly and assured him that whilst he could not stay at Hogwarts, he would be just as safe at his relatives. Nevermind the fact that he was starved and locked in his room, forced to work as a house elf and treated to the belt if he misbehaved.
The way Dumbledore's eyes had twinkled did make Harry question whether the headmaster knew of his treatment and decided not to do anything about it. Surely not, Harry had told himself, but a little voice in the back of his head questions why he was put with his magic hating relatives when there were so many people in the photo album Hagrid had given him. Surely one of them could've taken him in, given him a loving home?
Harry finally finished up with the last of his chores for that day, dusting the dry mud off his knees as he rose to go inside and hopefully get a glass of water. He trudged his way back into the house, mindful not to leave muddy footprints one the clean floor as he knew the trouble he'd get into for that.
Filling a glass up, Harry gulped it down as fast as possible before Aunt Petunia noticed he had taken something without asking. Quite often he'd get slapped up the side of the head for not asking for food or water before he took it, which contradicted their first rule; No questions. Just one of the many injustices Harry's relatives performed against him, although Harry himself was quite used to it by now.
His train of thought resumed, and he wondered why nobody from his parents' friend group took him in, why none of his other family wanted him. Anything would be better than the Dursleys he knew, and he wondered why the headmaster was so insistent that this was the best place for him when it clearly wasn't.
Harry wanted a change. He was sick of dumbing himself down in school, being terrified of his relatives when he was the boy who lived, the boy who had faced Voldemort 3 times now and came out alive and well. He wanted to learn more about his parents and their friends and why they never rescued him like he had hoped as a little boy in the cupboard under the stairs all those years ago.
Making up his mind, Harry washed his cup and returned it to its place, being careful to not leave a mess behind him and snuck over to his cupboard, where all of his school stuff was. He noticed the lock on the door was still firmly in place and decided to try picking it with one of Aunt Petunia's bobby pins that she had in the little dish on the mantelpiece where she kept all her hair products. At first he struggled, trying to create enough tension in the lock to make it seem like he was turning a key whilst also trying to use the other end of the pin to jiggle the pins into place, but after a few minutes he heard a series of clicks and the lock popped off the cupboard door, landing with a large thud at his feet.
Harry grabbed his books, his wand and some parchment, a quill and his ink. He decided he was going to go through all his old school books, make notes on bits he didn't understand and then possibly write to Hermione to find out if there was a way to get more books without having to go to Diagon Alley, as he knew his relatives would never take him.
As Harry shut the door to the cupboard and reattached the lock, he smiled ever so slightly at the prospect of getting one over on his relatives and finally taking control of his summer, and his own life.