Harry hated the orphanage, and it hated him.
The building didn't hate him, just the people in it- there were mutters of devil child, growls of freak, and, worst of all, cries of girl. At eight years old he was showing what Aunt Tuney had called accidental magic, and couldn't control it at all. Some things, like vanishing the glass on a window, were almost funny before he got punished. Other things, like making the bars on his door vanish so he could sneak into the kitchen and get extra food, were merely his magic reacting to his immediate needs. And he still never seemed to not be hungry.
Dudley tried to protect him, at first, but then he got targeted too. At least they were still close in private, making up stories and telling them in the tiny room they shared.
Then Dudley got sick.
...
Severus paces his room. Back and forth, back and forth. He paces, because Lily's child is here at Hogwarts. The fireplace roars, with the Gryffindor flame he'd have expected a Potter to live for.
...
Albus Dumbledore slipped into a coma in 1987 after amputating his own hand. He had found a ring containing some sort of encapsulated curse, doused it in diluted basilisk venom, rinsed it in the water of a lake (polluting a Muggle village in the process,) and slipped it on a finger.
Back at Hogwarts, no one noticed changes made to the attendance roster, certainly not a note that one child marked as Muggle-raised was not to be given orientation or given their Hogwarts letter by a teacher. Similarly, no one noticed when the name changed.
Headmistress McGonagall did not realize until 1990 that Harriet Potter's name was missing.
...
He got his Hogwarts letter on July 31st, and wrote back on a piece of notebook paper that he'd need help finding Diagon Alley. The woman they sent was odd, but she convinced the nuns to let him go off in the fall. He wondered what Professor Sinistra was like as a teacher.
Briefly, he asked about dormitories, but she seemed to misunderstand and started talking at him about something called the "Sorting" that would apparently decide where he went.
"Afraid I can't tell you how it's done. But maybe you'll get into Slytherin, like me! I loved it there. I'm a relatively recent graduate, just started teaching last year. Did Hogwarts in six years, Astronomy mastery in two, and now this."
He liked her. She talked a lot, and seemed to pay entirely too much attention to little things like the way he disliked pats on the back, but he liked her.
He liked Diagon Alley even better.
Before they walked into Gringotts, Professor Sinistra pulled him over and started rambling again: "Now, I'd like to formally apologize on the behalf of Hogwarts for not sending me or another teacher with your letter. Normally that's what we do automatically for Muggle-raised students. Anyway, you should probably know that I'm a bit well versed in Divination- that's, like, telling the future, or scrying- and scried you before coming here, and what I'm trying to say is you likely have multiple vaults in the bank under your birth name. If you tell it to the goblins, they can change the name they have on file for you and you can access your own money."
"I...have money?"
...
Gringotts was overwhelming but fascinating, and the pile of gold in the first three vaults the goblins took him to was bloody beautiful. He changed his name on their files to Harry Potter; it didn't quite have the same ring to it as the name he used in day-to-day life, but for legal purposes it would do nicely.
...
Severus paces some more. After perhaps half an hour of this, he picks up a jar of greenish dust, takes a pinch, and throws it into the fireplace. Calls out the name before he can stop himself. "Lupin household."