Maybe it was the ten years of verbal degradation. Perhaps it was Dudley punching him one too many times. Maybe it was Aunt Petunia with one too many frying pans to the head. Maybe it was being suffocated weekly by Vernon. Maybe it's Maybelline.

Whatever it may be, Harry Potter was not normal.

Now the Dursleys would say that Harry was never normal to begin with, a 'freak' they would call him more often than his own name. Aunt Marge would say that it was his bad breeding that made him the way he was.

But Harry was more than just a 'freak'. He was now a wizard.

Even by wizarding standards, Harry Potter was not normal.

Oh when Hagrid the half-giant came to pick him up, he played along. Harry could pretend to be normal, sometimes. But not for very long. Never long enough to be considered normal. But he had lasted the entire trip with Hagrid to Diagon Alley. He was then returned to the Dursleys to wait for the 1st of September.

Harry wasn't going to wait that long to re-enter the magical world now that he knew about it though, and with the Dursleys officially too scared of him to stop him from doing as he pleased, Harry returned to Diagon by himself.

Diagon Alley was a riot of color, sounds, and smells. It was almost overwhelming to poor 11-year-old Harry's senses, but Harry was here on a mission. He had a vault full of money and no adult supervision.

Harry's first mission was to buy clothes. Harry had seen how the pretty posh boy in Malkin's had looked. Harry was going to go to a new school far from the Dursleys' influence, and Harry didn't want them or their hand-me-down clothes to be threatening Harry's new standing in this new world.

Walking past Malkin's, Harry made his way further down the alley and found Twilfitt and Tattings for everyday wizarding robes.

Now while Harry knew his clothes needed to be nicer, Harry still had no proper directions on what actually looked good. So on the advice of the tailor tending to him, Harry got 7 everyday wizarding robes with all the charms they could add to the fabric, but Harry also got them in every color he could. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Pink. The tailor tried to persuade Harry away from the more violent colors, but Harry wanted color, all of the colors. He was tired of constantly wearing drab grey, white, and black cast-offs, tired of forcing himself to be 'normal'. So Harry was going to find as much color as he could.

The next stop Harry found was an eye healer. Harry definitely wanted his glasses gone, and for a convenient 7 gallons, Harry was able to finally see everything around him.

After that, Harry was at a hairdresser talking a witch into cutting his hair neater, shaved at the sides but the top still long enough to cover his scar, and then he convinced her to dye his hair.

An hour later Harry walked back out into the alley 12 gallons poorer and with vibrant eye-catching purple and orange hair.

Aunt Petunia was going to lose her shit later.

In one of the side alleyways Harry found a muggle clothing store for wizards, and Harry fell in love because it was full of color. Harry bought everything from socks and shoes to underwear and ripped jeans, but he especially bought 15 of the brightest colored shirts he could find in the store and he did not stop to look if they were appropriate for school or not.

The very nice young witch at the counter helped Harry discover more than brightly colored shirts though. She introduced and made Harry dress up in more than half of the store. And even as Harry added 5 skirts, jewelry, and makeup to his ever-growing pile of purchases there was a small voice in the back of his mind saying how the Dursleys were going to kill him for dressing like a pansy. But Harry had learned to stop listening to that voice years ago.

Harry walked out of the shop in a pair of yellow plaid leggings, a yellow pink, and orange floral dress, a rainbow of bracelets on both wrists, purple flats, eyeliner, and a giant smile on his face. Harry had never felt so free in his entire life.

He was going to keep this newfound freedom, he was going to be happy and fuck anyone who got in his way.

—-

Dumbledore sat at the head table looking over the returning students and smiled genially. Today was finally the day Harry Potter would arrive at the castle. Any moment now the first years would walk through the great hall doors and Dumbledore would get to see how the Dursleys had shaped and molded Harry. He had been tempted over the years to check in with the boy to make sure he was being raised the right way, but he restrained himself from interfering.

But today was the day and Minerva was opening the great hall doors and looking rather frazzled. Which was odd but the first years were often unpredictable.

Eyes quickly scanning the group of first years for the telltale Potter hair Dumbledore was quickly met with bright multicolored hair attached to his savior's face. Had someone already hit the boy with a color-changing charm? Why hadn't Minerva canceled it? The boy didn't seem upset with the hair color, but rather the opposite.

The brightly colored hair was attracting all of the student's attention away from those that were being sorted. No one had seen hair like that since one Nyphadora Tonks graduated earlier that year. The boy's plain black school robe looked almost dull in comparison to the boy's hair and violently purple shoes.

"Harry Potter" Minerva finally called and the multi-colored boy stepped onto the platform and let the hat be set on his head and then they waited, and waited, and waited some more. As several minutes went by voices from the students started to pick up, the words 'hat-stall' being murmured most often. It had been a very long time since a true hat stall had been sorted in this school.

Before Albus could stand to say anything the hat finally yelled out one damning word that would ruin all of Dumbledore's plots.

"Hufflepuff!"

Everyone in the great hall lost their minds. The Boy Who Lived, in Hufflepuff? Harry bloody Potter was going to be a badger?!

Harry himself didn't seem at all bothered about being a Hufflepuff, or the whispers that broke out saying his name. Although Harry didn't seem to be all there either, his bright green eyes held an almost vacant expression on his face.

The house of the badgers was both shocked and amused. Quickly accepting the strange colorful boy into their ranks without a single question. Of course, this weird otherworldly boy would be in the 'Puffs' house. No other house would accept him and his excentricities so effortlessly.

Harry Potter himself seemed rather pleased with being put into Hufflepuff as well. Which just sent the gossip spiraling out of control around the great hall as the last of the first years were sorted into their houses. Why wouldn't the boy-who-lived want to be in the same house as his parents? Was there another house the hat was considering for the small boy that was worse than Hufflepuff?

Harry himself seemed rather oblivious to the turmoil and gossip going on around him. Staring off at a wall with a vacant stare, many already saying something was wrong with the boy.

Dumbledore finally cleared his throat to start his speech and found himself looking into Harry Potter's unsettling green eyes. Not only could Albus not slip into his mind but the stare from the boy sent chills down Albus' spine. He felt as if the boy were looking at his soul and finding him lacking. It took great strength to tear away from the boy's heavy gaze.

His speech to the students was quick and hurried in a way they hadn't seen before. Something had shaken the old man and most of the older students and Slytherins were smart enough to guess who had rattled the old man so profoundly.

One short malnourished Hufflepuff boy, the former boy-who-lived, who was staring at his shepherd's pie like it held all of the secrets to the universe.

It was going to be an interesting year at Hogwarts.