A Wizards Life in Magical Academia re:

Chapter 1:

Year 1

A lightless lighthouse creaked and groaned, battered and barely standing under the brutal winds and sheets of icy rain. The sudden summer storm brutally assaulting the coastline doing the dilapidated structure no favours. Slamming into the mossy stone, already weary and worn from decades of abuse, and whistling through gaps and howling against the glass.

Within the wet, weary walls was a family of four. A father, rotund and heavy with a thick moustache that gave the man the appearance of a walrus. A mother, a tall thin woman with high cheekbones and knife sharp features. A son, equally as spherical as his father with wispy blond locks and permanently pink cheeks. Then finally... a nephew with a lightning bolt scar that cleaved a path down from his hairline to between his eyebrows.

The time rang as 11:58pm on Tuesday, July 30th 1991. The nephew was the only one awake, his sensitive ears barely able to differentiate the howling of the wind from combined snoring of his sleeping family (whose volume rivalled that of a trumpeting elephant). His finger dragged through years of untouched dirt and grime adding the final touches to a rough picture of a birthday cake.

'Happy Birthday Harry.' on its side and a trio of carefully sculpted candles atop the falsely frosted dust cake.

The nephew, Harry, sighed after processing the incredibly depressing idea that this was the closest he had ever gotten to a birthday cake; a dusty drawing on the floor.

The clock turned from 11:59 to midnight, Harry officially turning 11 on the 31st of June. The single tear that escaped his bottle-green eye at the thought of another empty, loveless birthday was thrown from his face when Harry jolted both backwards and upright. The chime of the clock, signifying the change in hour, had been muted by the higher volume of the vicious strikes on the lighthouse door.

'Outside in that storm… someone is knocking?' The truly incomprehensibility of reality caused him to ignore the frightened gibbering of Dudley off to the side, rudely awakened and quivering in fright. Harry's eyes did find the sudden brightness distracting enough to peak at, looking away from the door to see the light above them (the room that his Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had chosen to sleep in) had been turned on and its occupants staggering out of it and down the stairs. Both individuals still in pyjamas, nightcaps and slippers as his Uncle Vernon waddled into the centre of the room. Holding a double-barrelled shotgun to his blue and white pinstriped chest.

"W- W- Whoever you are!" Vernon's defiant tone a poor mask for his unfathomable terror, "I- I'M ARMED!"

The man brandished the firearm in question aggressively, as if the figure pounding on the lighthouse door could even see the gun he was toting through the doors thick wood.

The knocking stopped, abruptly and without warning. The quartet stared at the door in disbelief, all wondering if Vernon's stammered threat had actually worked. Vernon's moustache twitched as a shake ran through him, Petunia ran cold, clammy hands across her long neck and Dudley, the rotund copy of his own quivering father, hid in the corner furthest from the door. The young blonde's hands clasped over his crotch as he whimpered, fat hands there to cover a suspicious, dark stain.

The whistle and roar of the wind was all Harry could hear over the sound of his pounding heart, his bespectacled gaze (green eyes trapped behind large circular glasses) never left the door.

"T- That's right… THAT'S RIGHT!" Vernon's volume increasing as his confidence ballooned, "Take your freakishness somewhere else you-"

WHAM! His sentence cut short as the door was smacked off of its hinges, the Dursley's (and young Harry) screaming in fright as it flew onto the dusty floor. A figure, a silhouette, black and mighty against the stormy backdrop, was framed in the doorway by the lightning and moonlight of the stormy evening. The figure seemed to pause and take in the terrified family he had stumbled upon before crossing the threshold out of the rain.

Harry's terror fell away to astonishment as the man came into frame, the light from within falling upon his gigantic frame to reveal that the knocker was a huge man. A man who had had to fold himself down towards his ankles to shuffle through the doorway. Straightening out on the other side he easily stood at over ten feet tall, the top of his head (where a waist length mane of onyx hair began the long journey down his shoulders and back) almost brushed the rickety wooden landing that Petunia and Vernon had run down from to reach the ground floor. The man's face was dominated by a thick, bushy black beard that matched in colour his equally dark eyes, said eyes like fat beetles that flicked from one of them to the next in observation. But Harry took this in and still found himself bafflingly, flabbergasted by the man's ridiculous size, his height and sizeable girth covered from head to toe by a humongous coat that looked to be made up of the pelts of many small animals and littered with pocket after pocket. Just as black as his eyes and hair and equally soaked with rain water, it dripped onto the dusty floor as it hung off of his shoulders and covered him up to his black booted ankles.

"S'freezing out there." The mountain of a man spoke up after a too long period of shivering silence, the man taking a step forward (ignoring the many steps back of the Dursley family in response) and scooped the door off of the floor in a single, massive hand. Harry watched in fascination as he turned to the empty doorway with the item in question and reached into one of his many pockets as he strode, stunning the boy in further wonder when he yanked a fluorescent pink umbrella from a pocket that couldn't have possibly housed it. With a quiet grunt and shove, the door was pushed and manoeuvred back into its original place and then tapped a single time with the metal tip of the umbrella. A flash of light and pleasant hum reaching the occupants as the door was fixed and the man turned back to look upon them once more, "Now, which o yeh is young Harry?"

Words escaped Harry, but questions burned through his mind regardless,

'Who is this man? And what does he want with me?'

With a squashed box of birthday cake in one hand and a very familiar parchment envelope in the other, Harry was entirely unprepared for the answer...

"Yer a wizard, Harry." Rubeus Hagrid declared, one knee pressed down heavily on the dusty ground in front of him. The boy's eyes unblinking as he beheld the friendly gaze of the man who had tied Vernon's shotgun into a knot and lit a roaring fire in the fireplace with a jab of his umbrella,

"I-I'm a what?!" Harry hissed in incredulity, certain he'd misheard the man,

"A wizard. Jus like yer mum and dad." Hagrid declared once more with a beaming smile, ignoring the flinch of the tiny boy as he reached forth and placed a gentle hand on his tiny shoulders, "Yeh can do magic, jus like me an' them."

Harry's body shook from more than just the frightful cold of the evening as he stepped out of Hagrid's grasp,

"Magic isn't real." A lie, spoke in a conditioned monotone by the boy who had been told this all his life by the man and woman watching the pair interact with equal measures of fear and hate.

"It bloody well is." Hagrid almost bellowed in his affronted tone, gesturing a hand around the room with such speed and force that Harry was wafted with displaced dust and air, "Whaddaya think this is? How would I ave been able to do all a this then."

Fire out of the end of an umbrella, said umbrella comfortably housed in a coat pocket, the simple fact that man this tall could even exist. Harry may only have been eleven years of age, but he was not a complete dunce. These seemed way too impossible.

"YOU TOLD ME THEY DIED IN A CAR CRASH!"

"A car crash kill James and Lily Potter, ridiculous!" Hagrid seemed to share Harry's rage at the quivering family, flinching away once again. Breathing even heavier as Hagrid turned his attention to Harry once again with a gentle expression, "Harry, yer mum and dad are alive."

Silence. Harry would never know how long he stood there in complete incomprehension.

"W-What?" Harry could only spit the single world in incredulity,

"I know it's hard to 'ear, but you aren't alone. Yer mum and dad are alive." Hagrid calmly and kindly intoned, a wistful expression settling onto his face as he continued, "Clever Lily I think. She was always mighty smart. Hiding you with Muggles, the las place anyone'll think to look for yeh."

"We'll be hearing no more of this!" Petunia roared, statement accentuated by a stomped foot. She stood at her full height before shrinking back in fear under the coal black gaze of the half-giant, "Sh-She abandoned him here. There was noting 'clever' about it!"

"You freaks have poisoned this family more than enough." Vernon continued without a trace of his wife's trepidation, going so far as to brandish his wrecked gun shakily with every word, "And I will not stand for any more of it!"

"Don't be testin me ere today, Dursley." He ordered lowly, making a shiver run the length of all of their spines.

"Are you… telling the truth?" Quick to get over the dark look in the man's eyes, Harry's voice was quiet. Small, painfully meek and hopeful despite how ridiculous he felt to be asking the question,

'If he's telling the truth he would just be repeating himself, and if he's lying of course he'll say it again.' Harry shook a little from a sharp, wet gust of wind, 'I've got no way of knowing until it's too late...'

This man had an interest in him, whether it was malicious or benevolent Harry would not know until he made a decision: Could he trust the man with the warm smile, this giant who'd crossed the tumultuous sea to chase his family down?

He cast a look over his shoulder at said family. Vernon clutching his mangled weapon like a lifeline and not allowing his beady eyes to leave Hagrid for a second. Dudley was clutching at the pigtail by his buttocks with mute bafflement, Harry wondered if he could compute what had happened to him (in fairness, Harry was still reeling) whilst his mother dotted about him whilst issuing mournful noises unbefitting of a human being.

In all honesty, Harry felt bad for thinking ill of such pitiful people, but he didn't try to stop himself. They were cruel, spiteful, petty and deceitful; the Dursley's, frankly, the worst kind of people he'd ever come across. And as much as his gut told him it would be okay, Harry had no way of knowing if this Rubeus Hagrid was any better.

But the thick parchment in his hand was something he'd been looking for for YEARS.

An out.

So, honestly, there was only one decision to be made.

...

...

A day later Harry's head was still spinning. Barely able to focus on this Diagon Alley and the bank he was being dragged towards.

The building of Gringotts Wizarding Bank reminded Harry of something out a dream, then again, so did the entirety of Diagon Alley. The alley itself was a cobbled street, bustling and alive with shops and buildings on either side arching up and out of sight. Men and women in robes and costumes of every conceivable colour marched and shoved back and forth.

Harry's nose was assaulted from all sides by scents both fascinating and foul, his eyes caught by sights so unusual and wondrous that the boy felt ashamed for looking away and his ears assaulted by noises (voices, animal cries, even explosions and cracks of air). Harry transitioned sharply from awestruck observation to fearful, over-sensitised cringing. The magical world, hidden in plain sight from the 'Muggles' was wondrous and noisy and Harry was having trouble taking it all in.

The Gringotts building made of immaculate white marble, almost an eyesore under the bright, warm sunlight and whilst surrounded by the dourer décor of the rest of the street. Columns and steps inlaid with gold displayed the entrance, looking more like the stairs to the pearly gates rather than to bank run by cut throat, sharp toothed, three-foot tall goblins with an unhealthy obsession with gold. Those words had been spoken by the bartender of the Leaky Cauldron Tom not five minutes ago, Harry didn't think they were particularly pleasant so decided he would not be repeating them.

"Come 'long then" Came the genial, booming voice of the man shaped mountain who had announced himself as Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the night before. Hagrid striding up those very steps that Harry had been admiring and leaving him to scurry after. His eyes flicking around nervously the higher they ascended.

When at the huge, dark doors, Harry ignored the large golden plague above them as well as the intricate designs that were painstakingly etched into the stone surface, instead focussing on the armed, armoured sentries on each side. Dressed in armour Harry found reminiscent to Ancient Romans from history at school, wielding pikes and holding large shields. Swords were sheathed at their hips and the sentry on the lefts hand twitched around the hilt. Although they stood shorter than Harry's slight frame, he was intimidated all the same as their black eyes followed their approach and their lips both twisted into an ugly sneer. Harry shuddered and kept walking, refusing to look at them even as he felt their gaze on him.

The interior was illuminated in golden light by a multitude of hanging chandeliers. An immaculate white tiled floor lay beneath Harry's feet that his rubber soled shoes squeaked against with every step, causing Harry to blush in the quietness of the room. Little sound being made otherwise, the soft scribble and scratch of writing and whispered conversations between men, women and the hooked nosed goblins themselves. The goblins sat atop high seats in three piece suits, most wearing small pairs of circular glasses similar to his own. Desks separating them from the wizards and witches they were looking down upon, an air of disdain and forced professionalism hanging over each one Harry's eyes fell upon.

Hagrid, straightened his thick black coat and marched towards the only free desk. The goblin behind it, as Harry approached, was called Griphook (by the name tag on his lapel) and he sighed in resignation as he watched their approach,

"Mornin' Master Teller." Hagrid said, his tone both cheerful and nervous. He tugged at his shaggy beard as his greeting hung in the air for a few seconds,

"Good day." Griphook said curtly as he straightened his glasses, "What business do you have?"

"Erm, well I'm 'ere escorting a firs' year on 'is shoppin'" Hagrid stated, jabbing a thumb down at Harry, causing said goblin to make a big show of leaning forward to get a better look at him.

"Who is this… urchin." He addressed him, looking Harry up and down with his beady, coal black eyes and making it no secret that he did not like what he saw,

Harry silently bristled. His emotionless mask not falling despite his stomach twisting in quiet irritation.

"M-My name is Harry Potter." He declared, his anger at the assessment doing wonders in alleviating his initial fear, "I do say, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance Master Griphook."

"False platitudes will get you nowhere, Mister Potter." The upturned nose and snarky tone at Harry's reply all Harry needed to drop the formalities.

"Then how about brutal honesty? You hook nosed git. Don't judge me, when you obviously fell in the kitchen one day and landed on that butchers knife you call a nose." He snapped out his words with snarling lips and a hot gaze, too incensed to immediately regret it.

The bank was silent, all eyes falling on that mere slip of a child, dressed in clothes several sizes too big, daring to insult a goblin so freely in his own territory (whilst surrounded by his comrades). The goblin in question, Griphook, seemed appropriately affronted,

"I would watch your tongue whilst in this establishment, child." he hissed with a glittering, murderous gaze,

"Or what? You gonna cut it out with that monstrosity you have on your face there? Knife nose." Harry growled, confusion and other swirling emotions finding the perfect outlet in this rude, stubbly creature.

"'Arry! Stop!" Hagrid hissed, looking to Griphook with a nervous, placating smile, "Sorry, e's been raised by Muggles and doesn't really... know what to do..."

Griphook was silent, letting Hagrid stammer along for a bit as he leaned back,

"No bother, I did start it. I apologise for the slight Mister Potter." H eventually put the man out of his misery, though not seeming remotely apologetic,

"And I apologise too, for my comments." Harry responded, he too not entirely sorry. He could sense something from Griphook, something akin to... amusement?

"Do you have Mister Potter's key?" Griphook asked in a voice like gravel,

"Erm, right 'ere." Hagrid declared before rifling through his many pockets. Harry suppressed a sigh, Hagrid seemed nice enough, though a bit airheaded.

After two solid minutes, Hagrid produced a small, golden key. Passing it to Griphook almost reverently . He then smiled down at his curious charge, Harry having asked how he was going to afford the things on his school list just before they entered after all. During the wait, Harry was left wondering if someone, likely/hopefully his parents, had left him money for his school after all.

His parents. Harry didn't quite know how he was supposed to address the mess of complicated feelings he had regarding them now. He had spent his entire life KNOWING that his mother and father had died in a drunken car crash, the same crash that gave him the vicious, lightning shaped scar on his forehead. He had grown up KNOWING that his parents were arrogant lay-abouts, with his father being a drunk to top it off. And he grew up KNOWING that even his own parents hadn't wanted him. But those 'facts' had been decimated by the arrival of the half-giant Hagrid the previous evening as they (being the Dursley's and himself) shivered in the lighthouse escaping the torrent of owls and letters.

His parents were alive! They hadn't died in a car crash but had left him with the Dursley's, after he miraculously destroyed an evil serial killer hell bent on taking over the world. Harry tried not to think about it. He wasn't ready to deal with the over load of information he had received (which included, but was not quite limited to, his apparent fame).

"I apologise." Griphook cut into his thoughts with an air of smugness, "I'm afraid that this account was closed by the account holder."

Harry's brow furrowed in confusion whilst Hagrid's eyes widened in shock,

"B-But the account 'older is righ' 'ere and he hasn't stepped foot in Gringotts before today!" Hagrid almost roared, jabbing a thumb at Harry who was confused,

"The account holder, Mr…" Griphook began,

"Hagrid. Rubeus Hargid."

"Well, Mister Hagrid. The account holder is not young Mister Potter. But his parents James and Lily Potter. Who on a visit on the 18th of September 1989, had the trust fund of one Harry James Potter closed with immediate effect." Griphook declared, reading off a sheet of parchment without a shred of amusement or smugness, "I'm sorry to say, but this key is now quite useless."

Griphook handed it back and Hagrid received it wordlessly. His mouth opening and closing like a fish as he evidently had no words. So, Harry chose to speak in his stead,

"How am I supposed to get my supplies now?" Harry inquired carefully, his heart hammering in his head as he spoke. The pace quickening as he saw the goblin smile toothily, shark-like fangs on display for the eleven-year-old to behold,

"Well, as with most muggleborns or half-bloods hailing from the muggle world, we offer a student loan. We offer competitive interest rates and you won't have to make any repayments until you finish your education." Griphook stated, he smirked monstrously despite his business-like tone.

Harry paused as a parchment leaflet was shoved towards him and he was urged to read it. Relying heavily on context cues to ascertain the meaning of some of the jargon present, but Harry was able to get the general gist of what was written.

Before, his blood had ran cold. Now it pounded in his ears and roared through his veins like fire,

"So, if I want to go to Hogwarts, I have to take out a loan with you guys. And then I'll be spending the rest of my life giving you half of whatever I earn?!" Harry growled darkly, attention being drawn to him once again. The goblin Griphook's amusement seemed to blossom further as he leaned forward onto his elbows and peered down his long nose at the boy several times his junior,

"As I said, competitive interest." Griphook replied with glee, "Other branches would have just taken everything until the debt is settled, even going so far as to charge your descendants also until the debt is repaid. Now, although we here at Gringotts London do not practice the former we do partake in the latter."

Griphook was about to gleefully ask the wizarding youth if he had any questions, but was given pause at the boys state. Not because of his confrontational stance or the glare of his bottle green eyes, but rather the oppressive aura that flowed from him like an increase to gravity itself. A vicious, vengeful pressure that made breathing more difficult, a pressure that Harry Potter stood at the epicenter of.

Harry ignored the various sentries and guards turning to him cautiously, hands on weapons in preparation for a confrontation. His attention was firmly on the goblin before him (who wasn't smiling any more) as he answered an unspoken question with,

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

Griphook gulped and pushed down the terror under his skin as best he could as he witnessed the tiles beneath the young wizard's feet crack. What he was laying witness to was unrestrained power, monstrous and primal. The guards had yet to move, most of them looking quite reluctant to do so. Thus, Griphook very much feared for his life.

"Mister Potter, I-I understand that you are distressed. But please be calm." Griphook tried, but winced as the child's eyes narrowed murderously. His blood ran cold when he saw colour in the boy's eyes change from an inviting (if somewhat piercing) green to the familiar, icy jade of the Killing Curse,

'Perhaps it would be for the best that a beast like this NOT learn magic at all.' He thought as he found it hard to draw breath under the angry weight of the boy's prepubescent magic. Griphook didn't know wizards could possess such dense and potent magic at such a young age.

"I understand that this situation may not be ideal, but if you follow me we can have a word with the loan department and come up with a more beneficial deal." Griphook said with a grimace. Flinching when the leaflet he had passed to the child was hurled into his face with a terrifying growl of,

"Screw you."

Instantly the pressure was gone, the boy marching unhindered out of the bank. Harry Potter leaving dozens of stunned onlookers, including a nervous half-giant (who quickly rushed after him) and a goblin, breathing heavily as he clocked out for a break and thanked the gods he was still alive.

"'Arry!" The booming tone of the gigantic man was peppered with heavy gasps as he strode after the rapidly retreating child, "There ain't any other wizardin' banks in the country. I know that you ain't 'appy but you need to-"

"I don't NEED to do anything other than figure out how I'm going to make the money I need to get my things." Harry growled. Silencing Hagrid with his rage and intensity, the man failing to understand how someone so small could be so angry. Harry turned his eyes to him and Hagrid flinched at their Killing Curse green, "You said the train leaves on the 5th, correct?"

Hagrid nodded mutely and Harry sighed.

"Can I have the letter and the vault key, please." He said, adding please as an after-thought in a much more subdued tone. The boys uneven breaths settling as Hagrid shakily handed over the items where Harry stuffed them all into the oversized pockets of Dudley's hand-me-downs, "Thank you for bringing me and for helping me. I'll take it from here."

And Harry stormed down the steps and, before Hagrid could even articulate his desire for the boy to stop, he disappeared into the crowd…

[Authors Note]

Hi! If you're here from my other version of the story then thanks for your patience.

I really loved writing the original and very much wanted to finish it AND 'A Wizards Life With Monster Girls', but was not pleased by my writing style and how the story was progressing.

I plan on taking things just a little slower but it will be following the same plot I planned for the last one.

I hope you enjoy reading it, peace out!