Muggle-Raised Champion

Prologue

Disclaimer – I solemnly swear that JKR owns everything Harry Potter. Whether or not I am up to no good with her characters is for you to decide.

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5:30pm

Saturday, 31 August 1991

4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey

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Harry Potter's face split into the widest of grins as he plucked the pencil stub off of his desk. Then, with his eyes sparkling in anticipation, he ticked off the second to last little square on the calendar that he'd made and pinned to his wall.

Just one more day, he thought, one more and I'll be leaving the Dursleys.

Harry's world had changed dramatically almost exactly one month ago on his eleventh birthday. Although, come to think of it, it had really started some days before that. That was when those mysterious envelopes addressed to him in green ink had started to arrive.

At first, it'd only been the one lying on the doorstep with the other mail and Harry, in his befuddled ignorance, had taken it to the breakfast table where he'd tried to open it in front of his aunt, uncle and cousin. A single look was all that it seemed to take for his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon to put a stop to that. Harry hadn't realised it at the time, but that one little letter had seriously scared his relatives.

That letter had been burned unopened without the chance for Harry to know who had written him his very first ever letter.

And then had begun the Battle of the Letters.

Every day after that, more and more letters began appearing. First one, then three, then twelve letters had arrived for Harry over the next few days. All addressed to Harry, and each time mentioning his exact room – firstly the cupboard under the stairs and then the smallest bedroom. Not even Uncle Vernon nailing the post flap shut had stopped them being delivered.

On Saturday, two dozen were delivered inside the eggs that Aunt Petunia tried to cook for breakfast. Even then, Harry had known that it had to have been done with magic, no matter how much Uncle Vernon had vehemently denied its existence. Thirty or forty letters had come shooting out of the fireplace on Sunday, the day that there was supposed to be no post at all.

That had started a chain reaction in Uncle Vernon that included a mad drive across the country and the family sleeping in the crudest of huts in the middle of the sea in the fiercest of storms. And at midnight, exactly when Harry turned eleven, he finally received his letter.

It'd been hand delivered by the biggest man that Harry had ever seen. Hagrid, for that was the giant of a man's name, had appeared at first and even second sight, to be incredibly scary, especially after he'd knocked the door flat to get into the hut, boomed his big voice at his relatives, plucked the shotgun out of Uncle Vernon's hand and tied it into a knot and finished with giving his cousin Dudley a pig's tail by magic.

After spending the day with Hagrid exploring the magical shops in Diagon Alley, Harry know knew that Hagrid really was a kind, gentle man. And how could he not think that after Hagrid had given him his first ever birthday cake and bought him his first ever gift – his best friend and owl, Hedwig. Hagrid had also introduced him to the world that his parents came from – the Wizarding world.

And now Harry knew that he himself was just like them; he, too, was a wizard. That was why freakish things always seemed to happen to him and around him. And to learn it all, Harry had to attend a magic school – Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in fact.

That thought brought him back to the scrap of paper that he'd turned into a calendar that he had pinned to his wall counting down the days until he could leave the Dursleys, if not for good, at least for the next ten months.