Disclaimer: This is a fan fiction using characters, settings, and plot lines from the Harry Potter world owned by J.K. Rowling. I own nothing except original characters.

January 17th, 1991

Harry Evans ran through the streets of Newham pumping his legs as fast as he could. He had to get home before night fell or he would get in trouble and lose his job. That had been the deal with his relatives; if he could get back to their flat before night he could work, if not then no job for him. Harry loved his family and after they had run last year finances had been difficult. Harry knew that it was his fault too; if he had not set the lions loose, they could have stayed in Surry and Uncle Vernon could have stayed at Grunnings and they could have stayed the Dursleys. But now they lived in a little two bedroom flat in a seedy section of Newham, Uncle Vernon worked menial labor at a factory, and they had become the Evans. But despite all this the Dursleys – newly christened Evans – never blamed Harry and he loved them even more for it. To repay them for their kindness and help alleviate the guilt Harry felt, Harry had gotten a job. It was a poor under the table job cleaning the streets of trash after school, but it made Harry feel useful and less of a burden.

Harry skidded around a corner a turned onto the slum section of the city. People liked to pretend it didn't exist but that didn't stop its slow encroachment on the city proper. Either way it was an excellent place for cheap, abet unsanitary lodgings and it was almost impossible to track the people that lived here. And this worked great for the Evans family – after all they didn't want to be found.

After a dizzying number of turns and side streets Harry came to his family's flat. It was situated over a roach infested restaurant that Harry was sure was used for drug deals and looked like it should be torched. But despite its leaky roof and crooked shutters that made it resemble an elderly man's slowly drooping face it was home.

Harry quickly skirted the buildings edges and ducked into a side ally. Using a dumpster that smelled suspiciously of weed He jumped and grasped the building's fire escape. Harry and Dudley preferred to enter their flat through the fire escape since the front door became stuck. For Harry it was because he was too scrawny to force the door open and for Dudley it was simply the novelty of entering a house through a window. He joked that he was getting practice as a burglar until Aunt Petunia smacked him upside the head and told him under non-certain terms that he would NOT be a burglar or so help her.

"I'm HOME!" Harry hollered as he ducked through the window and slugged off his work clothes, a pair of Dudley's oversize castoffs.

"In the kitchen!" Harry heard his aunt yell from down the hall. Even though the building was dilapidated it had not stopped his aunt from making it the best home she could possibly make. With a scrub brush and copious amounts of bleach she had attacked every square inch of the flat until every speck of mold, every stain, and every roach was cowed into submission under the fury of Petunia Evan's cleaning.

In the kitchen his aunt was positioned over a tall pot while the steam slicked her hair to her forehead. Dudley sat on one of the mismatched chairs in the kitchen working on what looked like math homework. The fun-loving Dudley that had bemoaned school had become a thing of the past when they moved. While Dudley did not blame Harry for their abrupt change in living (and Harry thanked the stars that he had not) it did open his eyes to the other side. Since then Dudley had become a bibliophile with a burning drive to make something great of himself. Harry understood his thoughts and had vowed with him one night under the covers of their bed to do the same in the wizarding world. Muggle or magical they would be great. Feeling adventurous they had even sealed it with blood like they had seen on a telly once. That had not been fun. They nicked themselves too hard and bled everywhere; their bed sheets now had a coppery stain on it and they each had a matching scar across their palms.

"Harry dice the tomatoes" Grabbing a knife he set about dicing the tomatoes into small even chunks. After years of helping his aunt he had become very proficient at dicing, slicing, mincing, grinding and skinning. During one of his and his aunt's short talks about the wizarding world and the few things she knew about it Harry had discovered that wizards and witches really did create potions. Apparently, his mother had been quite skilled in that subject. He hoped that his skill in the kitchen would help him in the subject.

Hogwarts and his mother had been a point of contention between Harry and his Aunt in the recent months. After hearing that his father had abandoned him Harry had initially stated that he would never go to Hogwarts and refused to be a wizard. His aunt had looked at him then stated that he would be going to Hogwarts and he would become a wizard. Her reply had hurt and angered Harry. He didn't understand why he had to go into the new world that obviously didn't want him, and besides weren't they running? What was the purpose of running if he was just going to go to this magical world anyways? It was only after a screaming match between the two of them and Harry accidentally blasting a hole in the wall with a floating spoon that his aunt had relented and told him about his mother. Petunia did not like talking about Harry's mother because she said that her death was still to painful. But she told Harry about how much his mother had loved magic and Hogwarts and how it was Harry's birthright to learn magic. So, Harry had relented. He decided that he would go to Hogwarts and would learn this magic if only for his dead mother.

Additionally, he apparently also did not have to worry about his father taking him way with the changing of his last name and addresses. Since his mother had been a muggle born the name Evans was of little importance to the wizarding world and most likely no one would make the connection between the Evans boy and Lily nee Evans Potter's lost squib child. Truly, his aunt doubted anyone even remembered that the Potters had had a squib child. Harry's contacts along with shortly cropped hair made him look less like the father that his aunt and uncle had said he resembled; so unless Harry came face to face with his father it was very unlikely that he would be found out.

July 31st, 1991

The smell of bacon wafted into his room and quickly drew him awake. Throwing the bedding of his body he bounded out of bed and quickly stretched. Today was his birthday. He was officially eleven years old. A smile unwittingly stretched across his face pulling so hard he thought his cheeks were going to crack. Today was the day that he would get his Hogwarts letter, his first step on the path to becoming a wizard. He couldn't wait. Grabbing a shirt and a pair of sweats he peaked out of his window looking for the Hogwarts owl. Apparently, the owls delivered to the bedroom of their charges. Why the owls couldn't deliver the mail to the kitchen was beyond him. As he striated up from pulling up his slacks a dark dot appeared in the distant and was moving closer at a steady fast pace. Grin returning, he threw the window open and watched as the owl approached him.

The owl elegantly landed on the window seal and imperiously held out one talon where a heavy letter was tied. With shaking hands, he grabbed the letter startling the owl off its perch. The owl gave an indent hoot before turning and leaving. But that hardly mattered to him. I his hands was his future. Hands trembling from nerves, he broke the wax seal and flicked up the envelope.

We are pleased to inform you…

As if a spell was broken an unholy yell erupted from his mouth and he took off running down the hall. Grabbing a door frame, he hurtled himself into the kitchen waving his letter through the air.

"MY HOGWARTS LETTER CAME! It came! Prongs! Padfoot! LOOK!" He shoved the paper in the faces of the two men sitting hunched over coffee. Both gave jovial exclamations and surged toward him. His father looked down on him with pride and love in his eyes.

" I'm so proud of you Archie"

Yeah so every time I write Archie all I can think of is Riverdale but Archie and Harry both stress the end e (at least where I live) and I feel like their names should kinda? match. So. Archie. Yeah.

Also as a heads up this story will most likely have multiple third person LIMITED view points so its going to be confusing for a hot minute while multiple different views and thoughts are written. My ultimate goal it to make a story where the good/bad people aren't blatantly obvious until after all the shit goes down. You know, 20/20 hindsight and all that jazz.

I'm going to try to keep characters as cannon as possible but with some wiggle room for people like James (I mean he was originally dead so we already going off the deep end of non cannon) and slowly change them to suit my purposes instead of doing a complete 180 personality switch in .005 seconds (except the Dursleys yeah I completely just flipped them). That being said its been a good while since I actually read the books and I am suffering from reading so much fan fiction that I am slowly forgetting what was cannon and not cannon so yeah. Wish me luck. Also I am not actually sure if Newham is as bad as I written it but as I don't live in the UK and have never seen it I just picked a location that is said to be moderately dangerous online and ran with it.