Author's note: This is my first Harry Potter fanfic. Actually, it's my first fanfic that I've published, so please be gentle in your reviews. :)

The inspiration for my story comes from all over the place. Obviously JKR has inspired me with the HP Universe she has created in her books. Some inspiration comes from other fanfiction stories I have read. Most of it comes from my own overactive imagination. If I use ideas from other stories I've read, I will try as best as I can to give proper credit where it's due. The spark that got me going on this story was a story I read on called "Harry Potter and the Harem of Honeys". I used the general idea, but not the specifics, as a basis for this story. I will probably also use some stuff from "Harry Potter and the Power of Time" since I absolutely love that story, but these will be VERY VERY general. Hopefully Ross will eventually come back and continue his awesome story. The parallels of this story to his story are that I also intend to make Harry stand up for himself, and not be such a wimp. I don't plan at this time to incorporate Time travel, though.

This will NOT be a super-power Harry Story, though I fully expect that Harry will be both powerful and wise. He will not be manipulated as he is in canon. This story will try to follow canon rules as much as possible.

My story has no beta, but I do try to proofread them pretty thoroughly, so there shouldn't be many errors. I am American, so everything is written with American speech patterns and such. Hopefully I don't anger the brit-pickers. Updates will likely not be on any schedule, as I get spurts of inspiration, followed by sputs of writers block. I don't plan on abandoning the story, but I have absolutely no idea when it will be finished. As of this very moment, I have up to Chapter 12 written, and will upload them if people start reading and reviewing... My current vision is that this is book one of probably four. I expect this book to cover up until school starts, but I don't know how the books are going to be afterwards. I do know that at least some of book four will be post-Hogwarts.

Disclaimer: JKR owns everything you recognize. I own nothing but my own ideas. I make no money on this story. I have no money anyway either, so don't sue me!

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Chapter 1: Harry Potter's dilemma

Harry Potter was not an average boy. At the age of seven, he looked to be about four or five years old. He was very small for his age, and looked even smaller than he really was due to the fact that he wore clothes that were battered and clearly two to three times the proper size for him.

You see, Harry was forced to wear his cousin Dudley's old clothes, and Dudley was a whale of a child. Dudley was shaped like a beach ball with a basketball on top of it, with no neck to speak of. Dudley was a spoiled child, who was given everything he wanted by his parents, Vernon and Petunia Dursley, and Harry was only given the most hideous remnants of Dudley's past clothing.

But at the moment, Harry was sleeping relatively soundly, dreaming of a large man with lots of hair, flying a motorcycle over the city. Unfortunately, the dream was cut short by a shrill voice that cut through his sleep like a hot knife to butter...

"UP! Get UP! NOW!"

Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," said Harry.

"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."

Harry groaned.

"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.

"Nothing, nothing..."

Dudley's birthday -- how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.

When he was dressed he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. As expected, it appeared that Dudley got all of the things that he had asked for. There had to be twenty-five presents on the table, all wrapped in brightly colored wrapping paper with huge bows on top of them.

Harry sighed inwardly, and a part of him was a little jealous of his large cousin. In all of the years that Harry had lived in this house, he had never once received any presents on his birthday. In fact, the only thing he got on his birthday was a beating, and they seemed to get worse and worse every year. It was for this reason that Harry never looked forward to his birthday. Sure, he'd get a slap here or a backhand there, but it seemed that on his birthday, he always got smacked around even worse. Last year, Harry had tried to be strong as his Uncle was smacking him around, and actually asked why he was getting this abuse, which only caused his uncle to get even more red in the face, and hit him even harder. Even as he heard bones breaking and a searing pain shot through various parts of his body at the hands of his uncle, he refused to scream. This, of course, enraged his uncle even more, and by the end of the day, he was thrown back in his cupboard under the stairs, broken and bruised, and left for the night. As Harry had passed out that night, a strange warmth flowed through his body, and he lost consciousness.

The next morning, Harry was almost healed. There was some lingering pain left over from the events of the previous day, but the bones that he had thought were definitely broken didn't seem to be broken anymore. The various cuts and bruises that he had seemed to not exist anymore, and his vision wasn't nearly as bad as it had been when he was put into the cupboard the previous night. His glasses were still broken, and the clothes he wore were still covered in blood, but his body seemed to be in pretty good shape. Fortunately, it appeared that neither his Aunt or Uncle expected him to be in any kind of shape to do the cooking, as he had done every morning since he was tall enough to reach the stove, so they left him be without even so much as checking on his wellbeing. This was fine with Harry, and he spent the day resting and recovering. It was during this time that he was able to give thought as to how his body had recovered so fast. For a time, he believed that the pain that he remembered from the previous day was imagined, but after seeing his glasses and his clothes, he realized that something was different. He was somehow different... It would be almost a year before he started realizing how true that statement was...

As Harry's mind returned to the present, he realized that he hadn't really thought about the events of his birthday almost ten months ago since that time. Shaking himself out of his thoughts, he noticed Dudley enter the kitchen. Harry was almost done the bacon and sausage, and had just started with the eggs and toast. As expected, Dudley immediately threw a temper-tantrum about the fact that his breakfast wasn't ready, which immediately caused Vernon to get up and backhand Harry, knocking him off of his stool in front of the stove, and making him crash to the floor.

"Why isn't breakfast ready?! Get your lazy-ass up and get our breakfast cooked!" screamed Vernon.

"Yes, sir." was Harry's only response. He picked himself up off the floor and got back on his stool and finished cooking the breakfast. Harry had learned at a very early age that any response other than 'yes, sir' or 'yes, maam' was begging for more harsh treatment, so unless absolutely necessary, those were usually the only two words that Harry said to either his aunt or uncle.

After serving breakfast to his 'family', Harry took only two slices of bread and left the kitchen to eat 'his' breakfast in his cupboard. Harry knew from experience that if he had attempted to take any more than that, that he would be severely punished.

Later that same afternoon, Harry found himself in the local playground. He often came here to get away from everyone and everything. He knew that what his aunt and uncle did to him was wrong, and he knew that they knew that Dudley did the same thing to him on a regular basis. In fact, the only physical exercise that Dudley seemed to get was when him and a gang of his friends would get together to beat up on Harry. Fortunately for Harry, this didn't happen too often because Harry was pretty fast when he needed to be. It is for this reason that the only time Harry got beat up by his cousin were when Dudley and his friends cornered him. As Harry became aware of his surroundings, it appeared that Dudley's favorite gift for today would be to beat up on Harry relentlessly. As soon as Harry saw his cousin and his gang coming, with menacing looks on their faces, Harry took off like a rocket, and his cousin gave chase. It seemed that Dudley wanted Harry really bad today, and the chase lasted for quite some time, but eventually it seemed that they had Harry cornered just outside the local school. As they approached, Harry suddenly disappeared with a sharp "crack!"... Dudley and his gang were confused, and looked all around for Harry without finding him. Eventually, they gave up and left, headed back towards the park hoping to catch Harry back there and get him this time. Harry watched his cousin and his gang walk away from the rooftop of the school, and he stayed there for quite some time before climbing back down to the ground.

Harry sat down against the wall of the school trying to figure out what had happened, and how he had got up on the roof. He knew that he did not climb up there. The only thing he remembered was the feeling that he was going to get hurt really badly, and then he felt a warm tingle flow through his whole body, and next thing he knew, he was up on the roof looking down at his previous position.

For a seven year old, Harry was pretty smart. Much smarter than his cousin Dudley, though he could never show that when he was at school. After the first couple beatings and being called a "cheater" by his aunt and uncle, it was very clear that he was not allowed to outshine his cousin in any way, so he intentionally kept his test scores low, but that didn't change the fact that Harry was exceptionally intelligent for his age. He had excellent problem solving skills, and an excellent grasp of common sense and logical reasoning for his age. As he sat at the base of the wall at the school trying to figure out what had happened only an hour earlier, he realized that none of his problem solving skills would help him here. He knew that he had done something that nobody else would be able to do. In the course of trying to figure out how this could happen, his mind was brought back to the events following his last birthday beating, which got him thinking about all of the little things that had happened to him over the past year or so...

Of course, this had all started with his miraculous recovery from his beating, and during the course of this school year, other small strange things had happened, usually when he was scared or stressed in some way. Things like being pushed off of the top of a slide, which was probably fifteen feet in the air, and falling all the way to the ground without getting so much as a scratch or bump on his body. That was at the beginning of the year.

Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left "to hide that horrible scar." Dudley had laughed himself silly at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and taped glasses. Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.

Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls) -- The harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Harry wasn't punished.

And then there was the disaster with the snake at the zoo. Dudley had wanted to go to the zoo a few weekends ago, and because Harry's aunt and uncle could not find a babysitter, Harry was forced to go with them. During this trip was when Harry realized that he could talk to snakes, and could understand when they spoke back. Though, with all the little strange things that happened to Harry, he had cast it into the back of his mind. When his cousin, Dudley, realized what Harry was doing, he quickly ran up and shoved Harry out of the way so he could get a good look at the huge Boa Constrictor, when all of a sudden, the glass between Dudley and the Boa disappeared and Dudley fell right over into the boa's cage. Two things happened at once. Dudley screamed in fear of being in the cage with the boa, and the boa decided it didn't want to be caged anymore... By the time anyone realized what was going on, the glass was back, and Dudley was locked inside the glass cage, and the boa was nowhere to be found. Harry had been forced inside of his cupboard for the rest of that weekend, and for three days after school for that fiasco.

And, as if his life wasn't strange enough on it's own, he had no friends that he could talk to about these strange things happening to him. When these things happened, everyone seemed surprised, so Harry deduced that these things are not things that happen to everyone. Early in the year, he found that he was pretty good at meeting people, but once Dudley's gang came along and decided that Harry was not allowed to have any friends, all of a sudden, nobody would talk to Harry. This mean that Harry had a lot of time to himself, and, returning again to the present, he decided that he would use that time to figure out what was causing these things to happen to him, one way or another...