Saviour of Magic

Welcome Home, Harry

Harry Potter was a weird child. That was the consensus among everyone in Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. The boy was said to have been orphaned because of a car crash that killed his parents when he was just a year old. No one knew much about his parents, but Petunia Dursley, the boy's aunt, had told everyone that the boy's father had been a good for nothing drunk and his mother, a whore. She had also warned everyone that the boy was a delinquent. Seeing him in large clothes and looking scruffy all the time just reinforced that image.

However, Harry Potter was anything but such a child. He was unusually intelligent since young, but the Dursleys always did their best to discourage him. The boy had always known that he was different. For as long as he could remember, Harry was called a 'freak' by his relatives and they spoke about his 'unnaturalness'. This confused the young boy because he wondered what they were talking about. But he didn't dare ask what it meant because he knew that doing so would make his relatives angry. The last time he had asked about his parents, Uncle Vernon had beaten him up and not given him any food for three days. Harry didn't really care for a repeat performance.

Things slowly started to change as Harry grew up. Strange things started to happen as he began school. For one thing, he could instantly grasp everything being taught by the teachers and he could remember what he had studied or learnt with excellent clarity. This, of course, led to more problems with his relatives. His cousin Dudley, who seemed to be inflating on a daily basis due to the amount of food going into his mouth, couldn't even pronounce anything other than his own name properly. This led to more punishments as the Dursleys claimed that he had cheated on his tests.

As he grew up, things only seemed to get worse. Harry was given an unending list of chores around the house. He had to cook, clean, weed the gardens, wash the dishes and was essentially a slave to his uncle, aunt and cousin. He was given very little food while his whale of a cousin could eat anything he wanted. His hand-me-down clothes were all too big for him and he was forced to sleep in a tiny cupboard under the stairs. He was not allowed, because it made the Dursleys angry, to be happy or sad. Harry personally felt that didn't have anything to be happy about. And dare he ever reveal that he was sad or angry, he knew that Uncle Vernon would be furious; he did not have a death wish.

Harry hated his relatives. Even as a four-year-old child, he hadn't liked them. As time went on, he realised that strange things happened to him when he was angry or upset. That horrible teacher's hair had turned blue on the first day of school because he hadn't known his name; it really hadn't been his fault! How was he supposed to know his name if the Dursleys didn't tell him? Freak could hardly be his name; he was smart enough to know that. However, the strange occurrences, just like this one, never stopped.

When Aunt Petunia had shaved him nearly bald one day, his hair had surprisingly grown back the very next morning! Of course, Aunt Petunia had shrieked and shrieked for an hour and he was punished for it, but it made him very curious as there were several other similar instances over the years. Then, today, during one of Dudley's routine Harry Hunting games, he had wished himself to escape from his tormentors and the next thing he knew, he had appeared on the roof of the school!

That had blown things way out of proportion.

Harry was seven-years-old now. He dreaded to go back home, knowing what was going to happen. He didn't know how he had appeared on the school roof, but it had triggered a major scene, bad enough for the Headmistress to get involved. There were no stairs to the roof, so the fire department had to be called to rescue him. Harry knew that he was in trouble. His heart thumped in his chest as he pondered the question. Did he have some strange power like the superheroes on the telly? Is that how he could do such things? His bones had always healed themselves the next day after every beating. Normally, he should have been covered from head to toe in bandages for months, but even after sustaining several injuries, he was still fine the next morning!