Prologue
The Dursleys were a perfectly normal family. Mr. Dursley was a large man, who worked at Grunning`s – a firma that sold drills. His body held a strong resemblance to a big killer whale with a moustache. His wife – Petunia Dursley – was a tall woman whose only job was that of a housewife. Her hobby was spying on the neighbours. Her neck was twice as long as normal, and she looked like an anorexic giraffe. Dudley Dursley, the son of these two, could be best described as a boy who had been spoiled all his life, but was seen by everyone as someone who could do nothing wrong. Well, at least everyone who did not have all that much contact with him or had a similar character. He resembled a pig, a big, fat pig that had been fattened its whole life. His intelligence was probably even lower than that of a stone. It was a wonder that he got around without running into a wall… though he probably did that too sometimes.
If someone saw them together they would think that they broke out of the zoo.
They lived in a normal neighbourhood with normal houses, normal gardens, and normal people. Their house was always perfectly clean and the garden perfectly mowed. Not a single thing was out of place. In the house were several photos showing Dudley in different situations. Or rather there were photos of a bright pink blob wearing different costumes. Most viewers of these pictures would not be able to notice a difference. All in all they were a perfectly NORMAL family.
Nothing indicated that there lived anyone else there, besides these three. But there was. In a little cupboard under the stairs slept a ten year old child. This child was Harriet Lily Potter.
Harriet had long, wild black hair and was rather small for her age. She had a bandage over her right eye above which you could make out a rather fascinating scar in the shape of a lightning bolt. Her left eye was an intense emerald green. The colour was so vibrant that it looked unnatural. The little girl had no idea about the influence she had in the magical world. As far as she was aware she was just a normal child whose parents had unfortunately died in a car crash when she was barely a year old. A tragedy, yes, but nothing too uncommon. There were other orphans out there who had it worse than her. However, in the wizarding world she was known by the title “The-Girl-who-lived”. Every single witch or wizard knew of her. In fact, many parents told their children stories of her. She was even mentioned in a few books, both fictional and not. Not that any of those stories were true, since she had not met any witch or wizard after her first year of life. Harriet was one of the most well-known celebrities in the magical world and she was completely unaware of it.
The reason for this was that Harriet had survived the killing curse and defeated the greatest dark lord in recent history. As the name already said, the killing curse did exactly what it implied and was supposed to be impossible to block. In fact, there were no other recorded cases of people who had managed to avoid death after being hit by it. Aside from her. The wizard who hit her with it was so feared by the entire British wizarding community that no one dared to even speak his name – not even his own followers. Nearly all purebloods and many half-bloods followed him. Even some muggleborns had been converted to his side, even though he was known for hating them. He had alliances with various magical creatures and some other magical communities. He was unlike any other before him. Even other dark lords had not managed to popularize the British wizarding world in the way he had. He was known as Lord Voldemort.
On the 31st of October the dark lord came after Harriet and her parents Lily and James Potter. Her mother and father were both killed by the same curse, that she survived later on. No one knew how she had survived. The only thing the public was sure of – or rather thought to be true – was that the then one year old had managed to “kill” the dark lord. After this event the young baby was left in the care of her muggle aunt and uncle. These two unfortunately hated everything different or magical. Therefore, they absolutely despised their niece. She was a witch after all.
They stuck her in a small broom closet under the stairs and only let her eat their leftovers. There were days when she would have to go to bed hungry, because her fat uncle and cousin only left a few scraps usually. It was a wonder that she even survived as long as she did with this treatment. It was cruel to give a baby only the bare minimum of things they needed to survive, and no person to connect with. Young children needed love and attention to thrive. The Dursleys almost never touched her, and if they did it was usually in a violent or forceful manner.
As soon as she could reach the stove she was forced to cook for her relatives and clean the house. If she did not manage to completely the chores in the instructed time she had to suffer through punishments.
Usually, these punishments consisted of getting locked in her cupboard for hours at a time or even whole days. Sometimes Vernon would get angry with her and just slap her. On one memorable occasion that had resulted in her falling against a wall and breaking her arm. When her aunt had noticed that her arm was bent in a weird direction, she had gone pale and for the first time in Harriet’s life she had actually seen her aunt stand up for her against her uncle. Petunia had then taken her to the hospital to get a cast. She had explained the injury to the doctors as resulting from her falling off a swing set.
Her relatives’ treatment of her had gotten a bit better for a while, but in the end, it had reverted to how it had been before that incident again. The only difference was that Vernon would not slap her anymore, but rather just throw her into the cupboard.
Harriet had no friends in school, because her cousin Dudley and his friends would call her a freak and frighten the other children away from her. They had started bullying her early on. Dudley even started a game called Harry-hunting. If she could not run away fast enough, she was beaten up by his little gang of friends. This unfortunately was also a regular occurrence in her life, though it did give her a motivation to become faster. In school she had managed to do decently. Her grades were mostly good, and she even really enjoyed some classes.
The little girl had a miserable childhood, but hopefully that would change with her eleventh birthday.