To a Distant Shore
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or the awful WrongBoyWhoLived story idea. However, I do have an idea for how to fix it.
Lily Potter was a brilliant witch, smarter by half than most any other student you could name at Hogwarts. She was also an avid student of both Charms and History, studying records of ancient magic to try and reconstruct how it was cast. She avidly followed the rediscovery of the ancient Fidelius Ritual, and its conversion into an experimental Charm form, and, when the time came for her family to go into hiding, Lily procured the instructions for the experimental charm, and performed it on the small cottage she and James were living in, entrusting the secret to Peter Pettigrew. However, brilliant as Lily was, she didn't know everything, and unbeknowst to the Potters, Peter had almost immediately run off to give the secret to his master, Lord Voldemort.
Voldemort chose the evening of Samhain to take out the threat the Potters and their young child posed to his plans for the Wizarding World. He approached the cottage, stepping casually down the deserted street. At the edge of the wards, he paused, then cast a spell, which activated a trio of stones he had placed around the property moments before. Anti-transportation wards snapped into place across the surface of the Potters wards, pushing down on them. Voldemort grinned as he saw flurried movement as he strode up to the front door.
A single spell pulsed out from Voldemort's wand, smashing the door, and large sections of the surrounding wall, into the cottage proper. Several spells placed on the door sparked and shot off widely, none coming even close to striking Voldemort. Immediately, he came under assault by a mix of hastily transfigured animals, and a wide barrage of curses from James Potter, who stood in the entrance to one of the rooms in the cottage. Voldemort erected a shield to block the curses, while simultaneous banishing several pieces of debris from the door into the charging animals, killing each of them.
A few furious seconds of flying spells and counter-curses, was broken by a lazy stab of Voldemort's wand. The green Killing Curse oozed out of his wand, before zipping across the space towards James Potter. Potter, however, was not idle, summoning a couch from the room behind him into the path of the curse, causing the couch to snap in half and ignite. Voldemort stepped forward to press his advantage, before he felt a pulse push on his wards from the upper floor. The woman was trying to escape, probably with his true target, the prophesied child. With a snarl of anger, Voldemort spun a pair of spells together. The first crashed the halves of the couch into Potter, pinning him between them, while the second banished them at high speed at, and through, the far wall. Voldemort followed with a trio of over-powered blasting curses. If Potter survived, Voldemort would deal with what was left once he disposed of the child.
Meanwhile, upstairs, after failing to pierce through the wards Voldemort had erected, Lily had turned to her back-up plan. In this reality, Lily had turned to a book of Ancient Chinese Protection Magic, specifically a ritual that was supposed to call on the spirits of a child's ancestors to defend them from evil. It didn't require a great deal of preparation, but it couldn't be used often, and could summon some nasty specters if done improperly. However, between potential poltergeists and certain death for one of her boys, Lily could live with Poltergeists. With quick flourishes of her wand, she burned the ritual circle from the book into the floor around her twin sons' crib, quickly sketching out the odd whorls and lines. She had practiced and memorized the form of the circle for several days previous, and was confident in her ability to accurately power it.
Unfortunately, she didn't realize that there had been several errors with the translation charms used to translate the Chinese version of the text into English. The charm didn't take into account the fact that Chinese books are read from right to left, rather than left to right, meaning that the ritual circle shown with the protection ritual was in fact a transportation circle from the next ritual in the book. If Lily had had time to test the circle, or had the time to fully study the characters involved, she would have realized this. If she had turned to Celtic magic, as many of her alternate selves did, she could have invoked a blood protection that would have defended both twins. As it was, she pushed as much magic as she could into the spell circle, just as Voldemort blew the door off its hinges.
Lord Voldemort had expected Lily Potter to be standing, facing the door and ready to fight, and so he had blasted the door in such a way that it would slam into her legs, forcing her to kneel before him. However, Lily had instead been crouched, her back to the door, and so the oak door caught her in the back, hurtling her head first into the side of the crib she was protecting. A long trail of blood from her head lashed out, cutting across the ritual circle.
Voldemort frowned at how easily he had defeated the woman. Still, Severus would be happy to have his plaything, so Voldemort simply banished her and the door off to the side, then stepped up to the crib. He stopped just short of the circle he noticed was carved into the floor, recognizing it as a Chinese Spell Circle. With a slash of his wand, he cut a gash in the floor, thinking to thereby break the protection of the circle. However, he inadvertently created a gap on the exact opposite side of the circle as the line created by Lily's blood. Voldemort then turned his attention to the two children in the crib. One of them was hiding his face in the pile of blankets, while the other was staring up at him, looking confused, scared, and a little angry. Voldemort smiled.
"Yesss. Face your doom, boy who would be my equal. Avada Kedavra." An undamaged circle of the type Lily had hoped to make would have sucked the deadly spell into itself at this point, and unleashed the fury of generations of Potters onto Voldemort, resulting in him being literally dragged into the afterlife, his Horcruxes broken. Instead, only a third of the symbols in the broken circle lit up as Voldemort's spell struck Harry Potter in the forehead. Beside Harry, Lewis Potter continued to huddle down, as many of the symbols in the circle, active and not, began to twist, distort, and even lift off of the floor, floating like scratches on the very air. The air twisted as the green light linking Voldemort's wand to Harry's forehead brightened, growing stronger and stronger, until with a pulse of energy, the world seemed to twist sideways. Voldemort screamed in tandem with Harry as his very body seemed to twist and distort like a noodle, before the circle shattered along the two lines made in it.
A massive blast of magical energy was shunted through the two breaks, attempting to fulfill the circle's original purpose, transporting its contents. However, given her ignorance of the circle's purpose, Lily had not specified a location for the circle to transport too. So, the circle did the runic equivalent of "throw them out and hope for the best". A portion of the magic swirled around Harry, breaking the deadly connection between him and Voldemort's yew wand, and shot out through the break caused by Lily's blood, while the remainder of the magic gripped Voldemort and cast him out through the slash he had broken in the circle. The walls of the room in either direction exploded as the magic ripped through them, leaving a pair of jagged holes, a burned circle of symbols, and a tattered blood-stained cloak the only sign of the ritual. As Voldemort had been half-outside of the circle, he was essentially splinched, leaving behind bits of skin, blood, and his left foot in his cloak while the rest of him was transported away. Miraculously, in the center of the circle, Lewis lay completely unharmed, save for a minor burn on his back.
Somewhere in Nepal
There was a singular thunderous crack as the transportation magic dragging Voldemort along broke, slamming his battered body into the side of a mountain. His body slid down the ice and snow to land in a bloody heap at the base of the wall. As his wand arm was the only part of him actually within circle when it triggered, only his arm was defended against the rigors of the transportation, leaving the rest of his body, and more importantly, Voldemort's mind, unprotected against the ravages of hurtling through the tear in space-time that he had just traveled through.
Thanks to the protections he had in place, he was not actually dead. It would take close to three days before his body would finally succumb to the freezing temperatures, leaving his spirit wandering among the frozen mountains, well on its way to full insanity.
Somewhere in North America
There was a singular thunderous crack as the transportation magic carrying Harry Potter broke, blasting apart grass and dirt as it plowed into the field. Sheltered by the transportation magic, Harry was unharmed, though badly shaken, and laying in a large furrow of upturned grass and dirt. He quickly broke down in tears from shock and fear, wailing at the top of his voice. Some distance away, in a large manor, lights came on as Harry's arrival was detected, and the inhabitants of the manor quickly raced out, to find the young crying child.
Ok, so, this is the start of a Wrong-Boy-Who-Lived story done right. No, horrid parents!Potters or Harry being sent to the Dursleys on some ridiculously flimsy excuse.
Basic idea: Harry lands on the lawn of some magical family or magical school in the USA. It could also work for him to end up on the grounds of some rich Muggles estate, or the grounds of a prison, or even the farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent. He could even be transported to some other country outside of the USA. The point is that he is raised in his new home, growing up loved (or neglected or even hated), and learning about his magic.
Meanwhile, back in Britain, Lewis is hailed as the Boy-Who-Lived, while Harry is mourned only by his family and their close friends. Lily, after studying the remnants of the circle, is convinced that Harry might be alive, but attempts to trace him all failed. Then, when the Hogwart's Letters are being sent out, McGonagall finds a smudged letter with Harry's name. It is faint, meaning that he is outside of Hogwart's "jurisdiction", but as Harry's "name was down for Hogwarts before he was born", it managed to gain a connection to him. The spell used is boosted, temporarily, and a letter is sent out, tracked by Lily and James, and the two of them meet with Harry and his new family, and he is offered a place at Hogwarts. How it goes from there is up in the air.
If I post Continuation Chapters, they will take place at the Wildthrone Academy for the Improvement of Magical Gifts, Talents, and Abilities, a OC magical school in America that I made up. I have ideas for all of the staff, as well as several students.