Prologue

November first, 1981 was a new day. A changed day. November first was a day that would have been unrecognizable, inconceivable, just twenty four hours before.

Twenty four hours before had been the wizarding holiday and feast day Samhain, known among the more mundane as Halloween. It was the beginning of the dark half of the year, the time when humanity's ancestors took their flocks in and culled them in preparation for the coming cold. This was the time that changed the fate of the world, a fate which had been building for more than a decade.

On this day, in the wee hours of the morning, the self-styled Dark Lord Voldemort came knocking at a charming cottage in the village of Godric's Hollow. He sought to end the life of one prophesied to destroy him, and as is so often the case with prophecies, in doing so brought about his own destruction.

The charming cottage in the valley that was Godric's Hollow was property of the Ancient and Noble House of Potter, and was inhabited by a couple and their child. James Charlus Potter, Lily Marie Potter, and young Harry James Potter.

That quiet and dark morning was interrupted by fire, lightning, the roar and clash of conjured creatures, and finally the silence of death. The gods alone know what transpired in that small home, but the results were free for anyone to see. James and Lily, loving parents and caring friends, were killed. Tom Marvolo Riddle, the Dark Lord, was banished. Harry survived, marked for his short time on this mortal coil by shadowed memories of a family he would never know, and a scar on his forehead.

In the coming years many would remark on the scar. Some would say it looked like a lightning bolt. Others would see it as a mark of a life yet to be lived, a rune forged in the dark heart of a magical event, Sowilō, the mark of the sun. The mark of the purifying light.

Only a sad few would truly see it for what it was. A permanent reminder to a young orphan of what he had lost, nothing more, and in the cruel dance of fate, nothing less.

Mere hours from that act of prophecy Harry James Potter was plucked from the wreckage of his home, and by the order of the reigning leader of the times, sent to live with his last remaining blood relatives. Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

The young couple knew the boy was different. They had known his parents, and they knew the boy was part of something much larger than their lives would ever reach. They hated him for it. Harry was neglected, sentenced to live in a cupboard, a space unfit for even the storage of cleaning supplies. They did not feed him as the tiny child needed, ignoring his cries. They spared no band-aids, no sippy-cups, and no object not already at least third-hand for the boy.

They had their own son, Dudley, a son who grew around, but untouched by, this deprivation. Dudley grew, and he acted on the examples he was given, and soon Harry was target practice for the youngest Dursley and all of his friends. The neighborhood boys were not gentle, and they were not reserved. Without an adult telling them when enough was enough bones were broken and blood was spilled. They behaved with the shameless intolerance and anger that only children possess. Vernon and Petunia were careful to never touch the boy themselves, they had no need to after all, and by an understanding reached inside Harry's earshot, nothing was done in view of the adults letting their abuse of, and power over, this boy continue.

Sometimes life, sometimes magic, and sometimes fate are each curious things.

These actions did not break a child who denied knowledge even of his own name. No. These collective actions forged steel inside the young boy. Fear and adversity enough to destroy anyone else just fed the fire inside him. There was a reason the boy was injured so. He never backed down. His hide bore the work of a gang of budding thugs and he fought them as best he could, knowing that if he didn't no one would.

Thus the stage is set for our tale. In another world, many have remarked that Harry Potter was fate's whipping boy and fate's bitch. What if, on one day early in the year 1990, fortunes were reversed, and instead Harry made fate his bitch?

[A/N]: 10April2018

After nearly two years of off and on requests, I've decided to re-upload my old works. I still have plans to come back and re-edit. Iron some details out, maybe, and get to the end I've been keeping notes on for two years.

This is my shitty and slow commitment to you, the reader. These works are still on my mind, I've still got notes, and I will finish them. I just have a job, and a few friends, and entirely too much shit to do. But I'll get there.