Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. She, and she alone, owns the rights to these characters, etc.

A/N: Like many here, I am a huge Harry Potter fan. After taking several years off from my Harry Potter obsession, I recently reread the books, and my time away gave me a fresh new perspective on Harry's home life with the Dursleys. As a 20-something-year-old now, I realized that many of the things that the Dursleys do in the HP books is quite frankly abusive and neglectful. While I absolutely do not condone any of their behavior in J.K. Rowling's stories or even this fanfic, this idea has been brewing in my head for several months now.

I apologize if this chapter is rather wordy, but it is simply an introduction meant to minimize confusion as much as possible. More action and dialogue will be coming up in the next chapter!

Chapter 1: Life on the Run

Harry Potter was having a terrible day.

He woke up that morning feeling absolutely dreadful- far worse than he had ever felt in his nearly fourteen years. He had been sick many times before, as that was a downside to living on the streets of London without any proper clothing, footwear, food, or shelter, but he had always somehow miraculously recovered exceedingly quickly, no matter the illness or ailment. But this time, however, everything was different.

His illness was not going away. If anything, it was getting worse. It had started out as a mere cold six months ago, but without access to any type of healthcare, it had progressively deteriorated. For the last twelve weeks, Harry had woken up each day feeling extremely feverish and shaking with teeth-chattering chills. His entire body ached mercilessly from head to toe, including a tremendously sore throat and a never-ending pounding headache. His constant dry, hacking cough barely left him any air left to breathe. When he was able to breathe, it was in fast, shallow breaths, which caused his chest to wrench in pain with each gasp he was able to take. To make matters worse, he was very nauseous and had severe difficulty keeping any food or water down, causing him to become severely dehydrated and even more malnourished than his skinny frame already was. Harry worried that if he did not find a remedy soon, he may have to resort to other drastic measures…

No, he thought. Don't think about that right now. Going to a hospital is out of the question. They will find out who I really am and send me right back to the Dursleys. He couldn't afford that. Not after everything he had been through just to survive long enough away from the Dursleys' grasps.

Harry Potter had no parents. In fact, he didn't even know their names. Any conversation regarding his parents had been strictly limited in the Dursley household. The slightest mention of his parents always brought with it harsh punishments from his aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley, in an attempt to push out any curiosity Harry had about them, or quite frankly, anything. That was the number one rule in the house for Harry: Never ask questions. According to his aunt and uncle, his parents died in a terrible car accident when he was a mere one-year-old. His relatives told him that his father and mother were both lazy unemployed alcoholics and extremely neglectful parents, leading to their tragic demise and selfishly orphaning Harry in the process. However, Harry refused to think of them that way. For some reason, or perhaps it was because of his own abusive relationship with his aunt and uncle, he couldn't believe the story that his relatives had told him. His parents wouldn't have just left him all alone with those horrid relatives, would they? If only they'd known how cruelly and callously his aunt and uncle had treated him all those years… Don't think about that right now, he reminded himself anxiously, pushing aside horrifying memories threatening to overwhelm him.

He clutched his ratty old jacket, which also doubled as his blanket, closer towards himself and carefully rolled over onto his side, peering out the second-floor window of the abandoned building that he was currently staying in. He wanted nothing more than to roll over and go back to sleep. In fact, that seemed to be the only thing he wanted to do nowadays since his health had taken a severe turn for the worse. He had not actually gone outside in several days, choosing to stay indoors and sleep the days away instead, so he could not truly remember the last time he had eaten or drank anything. Presently, the position of the sun outside told him that it was already late midday, which was a startling thought for Harry. Typically, he would be up and working by 6 a.m. each morning and stay out long after the sun went down, normally until midnight. But ever since he came down with that miserable cold, his energy level had diminished severely, making it extremely difficult for him to do much of anything at all. Today, he had already lost practically an entire day's worth of searching for money, food, and other vital essentials.

After recovering from another wretched coughing fit, Harry slowly and cautiously sat up. He yet again played with the idea of simply going back to sleep and waiting until tomorrow to find something to eat, but his instincts got the best of him. He felt extremely weak and tired, but he knew he had to get to work. He had to go find something to eat, even if he knew he would not be able to keep it down due to his illness. Perhaps if he was lucky, he would find some spare change along the way too.

It took him several elongated minutes, but he slowly got to his feet. Instantly, he swayed treacherously on the spot, his equilibrium precariously thrown off balance by the sudden movement. He hastily steadied himself with his hands and shook his head in an attempt to stave off the oncoming dizziness rapidly enveloping him. He took several shaky steps towards the bathroom, slowly walking along the closest wall to ensure that he didn't lose his balance again.

When he ultimately reached the sink several minutes later and turned on the faucet, he absentmindedly ignored the odd tingling sensation running up and down his right arm as he did so. As he watched the plentiful clean drinking water run out of the faucet, he was once again reminded of how lucky he'd been to discover this abandoned building. Even though the building had been abandoned for several years, it still somehow miraculously had running water. He'd almost say it was magic, but Harry knew better than that. "There's no such thing as magic," his uncle's enraged voice suddenly rang throughout his ears. Harry frowned at the ghastly reminder of his uncle's wicked voice and quickly shook his head, attempting to clear his thoughts of painful memories before they completely overwhelmed him. He splashed some cool water on his face in an attempt to wipe the feverish sweat off his skin. Turning off the faucet, he dried his face with the shirt he'd been wearing and was about to leave when his reflection in the bathroom mirror unexpectedly caught his attention.

At first, he was exceedingly startled by what he saw. He hadn't actually had access to a mirror in many months, considering he'd been sleeping in empty parks or dark alleys most of the time and always steered clear of any public restrooms. Since he had arrived at his current hideout a few weeks ago, he'd barely had enough energy to walk to the bathroom, let alone look in the mirror, so he was very surprised by what he saw when he looked at his reflection in the mirror.

Staring back at him was a nearly unrecognizable thirteen-year-old teenager. No, he had never exactly been healthy growing up, considering the Dursleys never took him to a doctor when he was ill and always fed him as little food as possible, but now, the reflection in the mirror was practically screaming out for help. Underneath the significant amount of dirt, filth, and grime that he had been unable to wash off his face, his skin was so pallid and pale that it was turning a sickly and unhealthy gray. His face was extremely emaciated and gaunt, and both of his cheekbones heavily protruded from his face, making it quite obvious that he had lost a significant amount of weight, even though he had already been severely underweight and malnourished for his age prior to living on the streets. There were dark and heavy rings under his bloodshot eyes, and his lips were extremely chapped due to his lack of proper hydration. Even his hair had changed. What used to be a thick luscious black mop of messy jet black hair had now been turned into thin straw-like hair, with random patches of hair missing from where it had fallen out due to the inadequate nutrition. The only thing that Harry even recognized in the boy staring back at him was the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead, which was much redder than normal due to his pale and nearly grayish complexion.

After several minutes of staring at the mirror in disbelief, Harry shook his head in disappointment and sighed. He didn't even want to see what the rest of his body looked like, knowing that if he were to take off his shirt off and examine the rest of himself in the mirror, he would see much worse things, including horrible reminders of his past that he vastly wished to forget. He had to take better care of himself, or else he would never survive. Getting something to drink and finding food had to be his new priorities again, since resting did not seem to be helping his precarious condition any. And, he decided, once he had the strength to stay on his feet for longer than a few moments at a time, he would have to find some soap and a new change of clothes. He hadn't had a shower or changed his clothes since running away from the Dursleys. Taking a shower in public places as a runaway teen was much too dangerous, as Harry was fearful people would recognize him and turn him into the local authorities. And on the other hand, he hadn't grown much over the last few years, so he had never felt the need to switch up his current wardrobe. Life on the run meant carrying around as little as possible, so carrying around extra clean clothing was the least of his worries.

He turned the faucet on again, once more ignoring the strange tingling sensation coming from his right hand as he turned the water on (his hands frequently tingled like this for some strange reason that he couldn't explain), and he cupped his hands as he forced himself to take a drink of water. Immediately he found himself on the floor kneeling in front of the toilet, emptying the contents of his stomach as the water made him extremely nauseous and instantaneously ill. He retched violently, gasping for air in the process. He wasn't surprised, quite honestly. He had been unable to keep any food or water down for weeks now. When he was finally finished, he fell onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, taking short uneven breaths and attempting to calm his queasy stomach. His thoughts wandered back to how he wound up in this condition in the first place.

After his parents' deaths, Harry was sent to live with the only living relatives he had: his nasty and downright cruel Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, as well Dudley, their son who was the same age as Harry. For nine excruciating and tortuous years, he grew up living in his aunt and uncle's house, but they had made certain to find a way to demonstrate to Harry on a daily basis that he was most certainly not welcomed in their home.

Firstly, whenever he was not in school, he was forced to do endless hours of chores and tedious tasks for his relatives while they enjoyed their numerous leisurely activities. Since before he could even remember, he did all of the housework, cooking, cleaning, and yard work for his relatives and was not relieved from his duties until his uncle retired to bed late each night. By the time he took a shower, it would typically be midnight before he could even begin on his schoolwork, which meant he often only got three or four hours of sleep each night. Of course, Harry never tried very hard on any of his schoolwork. He had learned his lesson a long time ago that outshining Dudley in anything, no matter the subject or sport, always earned himself a ruthless punishment from his aunt and uncle for embarrassing them at the effort, and to make matters worse, he frequently endured severe bullying from Dudley and his gang for the humiliation of Harry surpassing Dudley in whichever area of life. No, from the time he got home, to the time his relatives went to bed, he labored away for his aunt, uncle, and cousin while they watched TV and played games. Harry learned at an early age that if he complained or mouthed off about anything at all, showed any sign of disrespect towards any of his relatives, or made a careless mistake while completing any of his assigned tasks, he was severely punished. Harry learned to never object to his responsibilities or his relatives' demands, no matter how unbelievable or implausible they were, in a simple effort to prevent any more harm from being directed his way. Most of the time, Harry simply kept his mouth shut and limited any conversations he had with the Dursleys in an attempt to avoid any negative repercussions.

Secondly, even though his relatives had a spare guest room only used on those rare occasions that Uncle Vernon's sister, Aunt Marge, came to stay overnight for a few days, Harry had been banished to sleeping in a small cupboard under the stairs, which was scarcely big enough to fit a small cot inside. Dust and spider webs filled nearly every nook and cranny in the small storage space, and his cousin loved jumping up and down on the staircase whenever Harry was locked up inside, causing dust to fall everywhere around him. Whenever he wasn't slaving away for his relatives, he was constantly locked inside his tiny little cupboard. He was always locked away in his cupboard whenever the Dursleys had visitors or guests, which meant Harry had never had the privilege of participating in any kind of holiday feast, celebration, birthday party, sleepover, or family dinner. To make matters worse, the only source of light in his makeshift room came from the miniscule crack under the door, making it extremely difficult to complete his homework or reading assignments in the dark.

In another display of how unwelcomed and unwanted he was in the Dursley household, he never received anything new. His cousin's old clothes were always handed down to him. While the holes and torn clothing never really bothered Harry much, his cousin was nearly four times the size of Harry, making the clothes uncomfortably large for Harry to wear. His shoes were always too big for his feet, causing him to constantly trip and fall down. He had not seen an eye doctor since he was four years old, which meant that he had to tolerate wearing broken (compliments of his family) and severely scratched glasses that were held together by several pieces of Scotch tape. His birthdays were always dramatically ignored, and since he was not allowed to participate in holiday celebrations with the Dursleys, he never received any Christmas presents.

On a lucky day at Number 4 Privet Drive, he was able to sneakily scrape the measly leftovers from his relatives' plates before doing the dishes. On an unlucky day, he would be given merely a cheese sandwich on one piece of mostly stale bread with a glass of water to fill his stomach. Needless to say, Harry hated living with his only living relatives.

School wasn't much better. Harry was teased and bullied relentlessly by Dudley and his gang before, during, and after school hours. For Harry, there was absolutely no reprieve from the Dursleys as Dudley was always enrolled in the same classes as him. In addition, he had no friends thanks to Dudley and his crew. All of the students at school ignored him or joined in on the bullying and harassment due to fear of retribution from Dudley. And there wasn't much that Harry could do to stop it either. Dudley and his parents had fooled all of the teachers and administrators into thinking that Harry was the bully and always started every altercation that involved his cousin Dudley, causing him to be found responsible for each bad thing that happened to both of them. He had even been suspended from school quite a few times because of the Dursleys' manipulation of the facts, and he always suffered the consequences for it in the worst ways imaginable.

He had tried once to tell one of his teachers the awful truth about his abusive family. One day, when he was nine-years-old, his primary school teacher had questioned him at the end of class upon seeing the black and blue bruises on his neck from where his uncle had nearly strangled him out of uncontrollable anger the previous night. Before Harry knew it, before he could even do anything to stop it, years of bottled up emotions quickly poured out, and he was suddenly rambling off all of his built up frustrations and anguish about his life with his ruthless relatives.

Harry had never before even uttered a single word about his terrible home life to anyone, always fearing the dire and severe negative consequences of what would happen if the Dursleys found out Harry had betrayed them. An hour later, when Harry was emotionally and physically drained, his teacher promised him that he would get Harry out of that house as soon as he could. Harry went back to the Dursleys with the hope that someone actually cared about him and that things were about to get better in his life. Even while his aunt was hitting him over the head several times with her frying pan, screaming at him repeatedly for coming home late from school and failing to prepare dinner on time, Harry was hopeful that everything would get better in just a few hours. He had even played around the idea that he would be able to find a loving family that wanted to take care of him after all. Maybe he'd find someone he could finally call "Mum" or "Dad." But when family services had shown up at Number 4 Privet Drive the next morning investigating Harry's wild yet true accusations, the Dursleys somehow managed to get it all brushed under the rug.

That night, after enduring hours of Uncle Vernon's ruthless beatings, with Dudley throwing in more than his fair share of punches and kicks, and Aunt Petunia's verbal tirades, Harry came to a horrendous realization: Nobody loved him. Nobody cared about him. And nobody would ever help get him out of this situation. He was all alone in this world, and if he wanted to survive, he would have to take matters into his own hands. He would never trust anyone ever again.

To make matters worse, as a particularly cruel form of punishment for making such horrific accusations towards his family, Uncle Vernon decided to pull Harry out of school indefinitely and officially 'home school' him. Needless to say, he was relegated to spending his days slaving away for the Dursleys without getting any academic schooling at all. While the idea of being able to avoid the persistent bullying by Dudley and his friends at school seemed appealing, it also meant that Harry would never again get a reprieve from his dreadful life at the Dursleys. Nowhere was safe for him, and he had no hope for a better future while living under their roof.

He ran away from his aunt and uncle's house nearly three years ago, just fourteen months after being pulled out of school and only a few weeks prior to his eleventh birthday. On that particular day, he had been involved in a violent and escalated row with his aunt and uncle. Even Dudley had joined in. After several hours of yelling, punches, kicks, and objects being thrown at him, he had had enough. Years of pent up rage and anger escaped Harry. Unable to control his emotions, he stormed outside with all intents of simply spending the night outside until things with his relatives had calmed down, but he had somehow managed to find his way to London, where he had been wandering the streets ever since.

He literally could not figure out how he got to London. He had been standing at the end of Privet Drive one second, and when he turned around to go back to the house, he found himself tumbling to the ground in the middle of a busy London shopping center. He supposed he must have simply been too upset and angry with his relatives to have remembered taking a bus trip to the big city and somehow passed out in the middle of the shopping center, but he could not be too entirely certain. Strange things happened to him all the time that he could not explain.

First of all, there was the matter of his hair. No matter how many times his aunt had given him horrid hair cuts that he absolutely dreaded, his hair always grew back within seconds. Then, there was that time that he was running away from Dudley's gang and somehow wound up on the roof of the school kitchens. Now that he lived on his own, strange things seemed to happen to him constantly. He discovered that if he focused on a place and pictured it clearly in his mind, he could instantly travel to the place by simply turning on his feet. He had used this method dozens of times already to escape a particularly dangerous homeless gang of teens. Also, he could move things with his hands if he concentrated on the tasks hard enough. Once, when he was running away from a police officer who was trying to question him about his activities, an abandoned vehicle somehow managed to start on its own and roll to a stop, conveniently blocking the exit of the alley and preventing the officer from apprehending him. Harry also discovered that if he focused on something really hard, he could summon it to him with one of his hands. Just the other day, during an escalating altercation with the gang of homeless teens, Harry had somehow managed to retrieve the weapon one of the boys had been attempting to use against him. Literally, one minute the other boy was holding a bat, and the next second, the bat flew into Harry's outstretched hand. The abnormal occurrences were endless these days, though Harry recently quit trying to perform any of it because the experiences made him severely dizzy and weak afterwards. In fact, the dizziness and weakness seemed to get progressively worse after each occurrence. He had a suspicious feeling his illness had something to do with the physical side effects of these abnormal occurrences.

Life on the streets was harsh. Survival meant spending all of the daylight hours scavenging the streets for food and money. Oddly enough, no matter how desperate and hopeless his situation became, he refused to steal from others. Years of watching Dudley and his gang bully others had contributed to his belief, and he held firmly to it. He couldn't, no, he wouldn't, turn into people like his dreadful relatives. Sure, stealing food and money from others would make his life much easier, but that was against his principles. He would rather go hungry for days than to take someone's hard earned money without their permission.

Instead, he scoured the streets for abandoned money and searched dumpsters for thrown out food. Sometimes, if he was lucky, he would spot a person throwing away food after finishing his or her meal and he would be able to retrieve it from the garbage before insects contaminated it. No matter how stale, moldy, or unhealthy the food was, he had to make due with what he was able to get his hands on, which meant that he was unknowingly severely malnourished and extremely underweight for his age and height. He barely noticed this, however, because his many-sizes-too-big baggy and worn clothes that he had found in an abandoned building when he first wound up on the streets covered up most of his gaunt and emaciated look.

Nights were spent sleeping in abandoned buildings, park benches, or dumpsters. Often, he was able to stay in an abandoned building for weeks at a time until someone discovered his presence and ran him off. When he could not find an abandoned building to seek shelter in, he often slept on park benches. Ultimately, he found that sleeping in dumpsters during the winter time was a much more preferred method of keeping warm than sleeping on park benches in the bitter cold, as long as he was able to make it out of the dumpster prior to the next day's scheduled trash pickup. He'd had an unfortunate close call once. Luckily, the trash compactor unexpectedly froze and jammed prior to actually emptying the dumpster's contents (and Harry) into the truck (another strange occurrence that he couldn't explain) and since then, he made sure to memorize the trash pickup schedule for each dumpster he slept in.

He spent most of his time doing his best to go unnoticed, which wasn't too difficult when he made his way through busy crowds and jammed-pack streets. He always kept his head down, eyes lowered to the ground, refused to look anyone in the eye, and never spoke to adults. He learned that for the most part, if he did not return people's concerned gazes and did not engage in any form of conversation, they would leave him alone. Of course, there had been a few close calls in which people had called the authorities on him, but Harry always managed to escape. Years of running from Dudley and his gang had given him ample practice.

No, he wouldn't choose to live this lifestyle, but it was either this or life with the Dursleys, and he refused to go back to that old life. He had barely survived living with them. No, he couldn't go back. For him, there was no turning back.

Harry blinked his bleary eyes several times, realizing he had dozed off while lying on the bathroom floor. Inwardly scolding himself wasting away even more time that he could have been out looking for food, he slowly got his feet and returned to the main room on the second floor. He took a few steps towards his many-sizes-too-small shoes that were lying on the floor when a noise from behind him caused him to freeze on the spot.

"Hey, kid!" a man's voice shouted from the doorway. Harry's eyes immediately widened in fear as he realized he had been spotted by a middle-aged police officer. Harry cursed under his breath. Typically, he would be safe staying in abandoned buildings during the night, as police didn't often check them in the darkness. During the daylight hours, however, it was a different story. He had slept in too late and was now caught.

Forcing himself to forget how dreadfully awful he felt at the moment, adrenaline and a sudden burst of energy that he could not explain overcame him as he grabbed his raggedy old school bag that carried all of his possessions and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction, inadvertently leaving behind his shoes in the process. The only window in the room somehow exploded into thousands of tiny pieces of shattered glass, but that did not stop Harry. He dove through it and landed quite painfully hard on the concrete below, rolling on the ground several times before coming to a stop. Brushing off the sharp shards of glass, many of which were now embedded in his face, back, chest, arms, and hands, he jumped to his bare feet and took off down the busy street, ignoring the shouts of the police officer. Harry ran down street after street, spectacularly amazed that he somehow suddenly had the power to remain on his feet, and turned down multiple alleys in an attempt to lose the police officer that had chosen to chase after him. After several minutes of running, he found a dark alleyway to turn down. He immediately hid behind a large dumpster and breathed a huge sigh of relief when the officer ran past him and disappeared out of sight. He was safe. For now.

As the adrenaline quickly wore off, Harry recognized just how tired he really was after all of the unexpected and miraculous running. His eyelids were quickly becoming heavy and difficult to keep open. His limbs felt like lead. His labored and short breathing was causing him to become dizzy and disoriented. He needed to rest, quickly. He tried to get to his feet in an effort to find someplace safe to hide in, but he quickly lost his balance and fell backwards against the brick wall that he had been leaning against. He was too weak to stand, let alone move. Resigning himself to his ill fate, he slowly crawled under several cardboard boxes stacked hazardously against the dumpster to hide himself from view. As he laid his head down on the cold ground, relishing in the cool touch to his face, his exhaustion quickly caught up with him. He was asleep within seconds.