So far the summer has been one of the worst that Harry could remember. At day, Harry had to do all the chores at his relatives' house, and if he was lucky he would get some food. At night, Harry had nightmares with Wormtale, a mysterious man, a big snake and some other speaking thing (that looked like a really disfigured baby). To top it all, his friends haven't sent Harry any letters. All things considered, Harry thought that he wouldn't be able to survive until September 1st.

The Dursleys, not his family as much as Dumbledore insisted, were treating him worse than ever. More work and less food, Harry was starting to think that they were trying to murder him. The Boy who lived starved to death, he could already see the headline in The Prophet.

Nightmares made Harry's scar burn, and woke him up in the middle of the night, sweating and feeling more tired than before the dream. Between little sleep, awful amounts of work and almost no food Harry was starting to get sick after 2 mere weeks of summer.

One night after an especially awful nightmare, Harry couldn't go back to sleep and decided to start planning his survival. The Sorting Hat had thought almost 3 years ago that he would have made a great wizard in Slytherin, and now Harry was going to embrace that part of himself. The first step in doing so was making a list, well the real first step was getting out of bed and finding in the middle of the night some ink, quill and parchment.

Harry stumbled through his tiny bedroom, knelt in from of his trunk and after rummaging through his things, he pulled out all the necessary equipment. As lighting the small and little bright bulb would infuriate his uncle if he found out, Harry got close to the window and started writing under the light of the moon.

1.- Find a way to get food (preferably 3 times a day and full meals)
2.- Buy new clothes (Muggle and magical)
3.- Get out of the Dursleys
4.- Find a way to contact Sirius without anyone else knowing

The list was short, just the elemental things to survive, get through the summer and go back to Hogwarts and see his friends again.

His friends... Ron and Hermione haven't written to him, even though they knew about how little he liked the summer holidays. Have they forgotten about him, or have they prefer to pretend he didn't exist because they were always in trouble when they were with him.

Another week passed by, and nothing had changed in the perfectly normal Dursleys' house. Three weeks into the summer and no letter for Ron or Hermione, they said that they would write each week, but they haven't. Harry had written them letters, but he hadn't received any answers. Harry looked out his open window, Hedwig had just come from one of her hunts. He had asked the intelligent owl if she had a letter from Hermione, having previously ask owl to see if any of his friends had written a letter to him, and needed the owl to sent it. Hedwig negative hoot was enough for Harry, if his friends have forgotten about him he will survive without them.

A thought occurred to him, without Ron jealousy and Hermione perfectionist, he could excel. If they didn't care about him, he will become better than them to show them what they have lost. With that in mind, the list got bigger that night.

5.- Study and review last years magical books. Do homework.
6.- Study Muggle subjects and other optional Hogwarts classes.
7.- Find books about wizard culture, history...
8.- Find about the Potters (Did he have some distance relative he could live with)

With the long list in mind, Harry started to spend most part of the nights reviewing his textbooks. He started with 1st-year text, continued with 2nd and finished with 3rd. He even studied two of his least favourite subjects: potions and history. Hermione would have been proud, but Harry preferred not to think about her.
Another thing in his list that wasn't difficult to solve was the lack of food. After realizing that Ron wasn't an option to get food, as he couldn't ask him for Ms Weasley's food, he sent a letter to Tom. Hedwig got back the same day with a delicious package of food and an attached letter. The letter was short but gave the name of a shop that would swll him equipment to camping, including a food dispenser, and instructions on explaining how to pay through him Gringotts' key. It only took two days before Harry was eating 3 full and healthy meals without the Dursleys knowing.

With plenty of food at his disposal, the awful amount of house chores weren't so bad. Between the food and the work, Harry was even starting to grow some muscle, for once he was thankful for the big hand-me-down clothes that hid his body.

After getting the magical food dispenser, Harry had another idea of sending Hedwig to the Apothecary to see if he could buy some Dreamless potions. A one-month supply of Dreamless potions was bought soon after that, and no more nightmares since then.

A month into the summer holidays, still without a word from his "friends", Harry had already reviewed some of his 1st and 2nd books and had started with 3rd. The only textbooks that he didn't review were Lockhart's and divination, and Harry thought that it would have been better to have taken runes or arithmathy last year.

The day started the same, nothing to anticipate that today was going to be different from other days. The sun had just risen and its light illuminated the inside of the smallest room in Privet Drive 4th, a teenager with black hair and intense green eyes was having breakfast before his aunt called him. The day continued as normal, Harry made the meals for his relatives and all the chores around the house, except the garden as he was forbidden for going out since the beginning of the summer for unknown reasons. Truth to be told Harry was starting to miss working on the garden, as he could imagine that the roses and bushes were magical plants that he studied in herbology. That was until dinner arrived and his Uncle announced that "Aunt" Marge, Vernon's horrible sister, was going to visit for a week starting the next day.

The next day the sun didn't rise, storm clouds covered the sky announcing rain.

Even though Marge didn't remember last year incident, she was the same horrible and mean person, because her favourite beast, the dog Ripper, had died last winter. At last, Harry thought, she didn't bring another one of her nasty dogs. By the end of the week, Harry was happy to see her go. Marge had spent the whole week insulting him and his parents, and joining the family in enormous meals, that he had to cook but never enjoy. And he couldn't hide from her outside the house, as it was still forbidden for him to go out of the house. He had tried, of course, but the result was a beating from Vernon, that magically and luckily healed overnight resulting in another punishment. Those were the first times that Vernon had hit him more than a couple of slaps.
As soon as the week was over, after a small feast like lunch, Aunt Marge was on a train to wherever she lived. While Dudley was playing with one of the many new videogames, courtesy of Marge, Vernon picked Harry up for the collar of his large shirt. Harry was rudely dropped in the cupboard under the stairs and locked inside. Minutes later the family was out of the house, probably to have dinner in a fancy restaurant in London.

When the Dursleys returned home, Harry was once again under the "merciful" hands of his uncle. Between hits Harry heard how his uncle was blaming him for the horrible weather the whole week, only getting sunny after Marge was gone. Of course, he was blamed for something out of his control, Harry had never heard of wizards that could control the weather. It seems that his uncle wanted to show her sister something and the bad weather made it impossible.

Outside the storm seemed to be back at full strength, thunder was heard one stronger than the previous. Soon the whole house appeared to be shaking with every thunder and lightning was the only thing illuminating the room as electricity was out. But all of it didn't deter Vernon, in his little and devious mind it was a reaffirmation of Harry's freakiness.

Another boom was heard and the black door opened, wind and water pouring inside the kitchen as someone entered the house. It was a deja vu for four people in the house. Dudley quickly ran upstairs, hands in his bottom, faster than one would have expected taking into account his size. Petunia screamed and hid behind Vernon, who advance to the person after dropping him in the ground. After hitting the ground, Harry lost conscious.