Disclaimer: I don't own any Harry Potter characters. All characters belong to J. K. Rowling.

A loud banging wrenched Harry away from his deep sleep. Gripping the covers in one hand and throwing them back, he groaned wearily.

"Up! Get up! Now!" a shrill voice shouted.

"I'm up, I'm up!" he mumbled. Harry blindly rolled out of a thin bear sheet and off his tiny old rickety bed, the mattress hard beneath his back. He rubbed his tired emerald eyes with his knuckles and blindly set his feet on the ground as he felt around in the darkness. He winced as he stood on a plastic toy soldier while searching for his glasses.

"Well get a move on," the voice screamed again, "I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn! I want everything to be perfect on my Duddy's special day."

After Harry found the light switch, he finally opened his eyes and found himself in his bedroom – if that's what you could call it. It was really just a small, dust filled, spider inhabited area – his cupboard of a room, under the stairs. He'd lived in there for ten years and he'd recognise the angle of the stairs and the dust in the corner of the uncovered light bulb anywhere. Looking down, his hands looked much smaller than he had remembered; additionally, his right hand no longer bore a significant scar. A sudden compulsion brought him to fumble for a small mirror in the corner of the tiny shack. Bringing the mirror in front of him, he was shocked to find his eleven year old self staring back at him.

'What?' Harry thought, thoroughly confused, 'I'm eleven again? But how?' Fragmented recollections of a battle raced across his mind, in which a deathly pale Snape had told him something, something about… a potion – a potion that sent him back in time. All the events came rushing back to the young boy, resulting in a minor headache that pounded in his temples.

"I-I can't believe it! It worked!" Harry gasped as he checked his appearance once more.

His short, stick-thin legs and knobby knees stuck out of Dudley's hand-me-down trousers. The blisters he got from riding his Firebolt too dangerously during Quidditch matches were gone as well.

As Harry exited the little closet, memories came back to him in a violent wave of recollection. Through his tiny frame manoeuvred through the hallways of the Dursley's home – the home he had known for many years – his mind was elsewhere, even as he began to fix breakfast…

X-X-X

Harry, Hermione and Ron had left during the summer before the seventh year to search for and destroy Horcruxes. Somewhere along the way, a major drift between the three caused Ron to leave the group completely, leaving Hermione and Harry to search for the remaining horcruxes. Without him, things had become more difficult to deal with, even though Hermione did her best to support Harry.

Harry and Hermione had searched the school for the supposed last horcrux and in a last ditch effort, Harry suggested searching the Shrieking shack. Since it was well protected by the Whomping Willow, only an insane fool would think to look there… but what they found shocked them.

"Look. At. Me," Professor Snape said; each word was accentuated by a laboured breath, each gasp signifying a step closer to death. A quivering, bloody hand grasped at Harry's collar, pulling the boy in closely so that their noses nearly touched. Harry could smell the iron scent of blood and death upon the man before him, who lay dying on the cold floor.

"Potion... in robe," he tried to explain coherently, "Drink to go back. Don't… fail me." Though the cryptic words befuddled him, Harry nodded. As if satisfied by the boy's reply, Snape slowly closed his eyes. There was a brief expression of peaceful resignation on the professor's face before the venom from Nagini's bite finally claimed his life.

Silence momentarily engulfed them, and Harry felt as though time had stopped completely. Crouched over the dead body of perhaps the greatest mentor he had never known, Harry could not tell if hours or mere seconds had passed. He couldn't bring himself to take action.

"Harry," Hermione's voice shattered the silence, "He's dead," she paused before continuing, "It's too late,"

Piercing screams could be heard in the distance, the battle still raging up at the castle. Harry took a moment to comprehend the loss of Snape, and it didn't hurt like it did with Sirius, or Moody. Back then, Harry could only watch on in hopeless dread as the ones he loved most died before him, died protecting him. Somehow, throughout the years he had acquired a newfound strength he knew not he possessed before. Perhaps it had come from Snape's influence. Snape was with him all along, helping him… protecting him. Harry knew he had a job to do, a duty to protect everyone else, much like how Snape had sacrificed himself for Harry. He would continue Snape's legacy even if it killed him. But first, a promise had to be fulfilled…

Remembering that Hermione still stood beside him, Harry told her to go ahead and help the others while he pulled a vial filled with golden liquid from Professor Snape's robe with shaking hands. He gazed down at the dead spy one more time.

"Wish me luck," Harry whispered to himself.

He downed the potion with one gulp. A wave of dizziness overcame him, followed by a wrench in his gut.

'I hope it wasn't poison,' Harry suddenly thought before an incredible wave of nausea knocked him out…

X-X-X

"I want bacon and eggs NOW!" Dudley wailed while banging his fat, ham like fists on the table, the sound bringing Harry's thoughts to the present world, much to his chagrin.

"Hurry up with the breakfast, boy!" Vernon bellowed at his nephew, even though he could plainly see that Harry was simultaneously frying the eggs and bacon, as well as preparing the coffee.

It was going to be one of those mornings.

X-X-X

"I have thirty…thirty..." Dudley screwed up his face and began trying to count his presents after breakfast. He had insurmountable trouble doing so, unable to number each gift in the mountain they'd created, which were all wrapped in brightly coloured paper and arranged in the living room.

"Thirty six sweetums," Petunia's sickeningly sweet voice told her son.

"But that's two less than last year!" Dudley exclaimed in anguish, balling his hands into fists and slamming them down. "It's not fair!"

Harry sighed dejectedly at the scene, not missing this chaos. It had always been the same tantrum for many years, he remembered.

As Harry washed the dirty dishes at the kitchen sink, the fated phone call came. He knew the outcome before Aunt Petunia put down the phone, a scowl on her horse-like face. "Vernon, Mrs. Figg broke her leg last week," she said in disbelief, "She can't take in the boy." The last phrase was uttered in clear disgust.

Although Mr. Dursley tried to put up nonchalance, his panic at having to deal with the boy was starting to show. "What about your friend…umm, Yvonne?" he suggested.

"She's on vacation in Majorca. What about Marge?"

Harry felt his stomach drop. 'Oh please not Aunt Marge,' Harry internally pleaded, 'She's probably going to torture me with Ripper or something,'

Suddenly, he was struck with a highly-improbable, but still-possible epiphany.

"Err, A-Aunt Petunia, I could spend the day outside?" Harry suggested in a small voice.

Her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned, pursed and ready to reprimand him.

Dudley, seeing his chance of getting rid of him wailed at his mother, "I don't want him ruining my birthday!"

"No, Duddy-poo," she said, turning to her son, her voice softened as if Dudley was two instead of eleven. "He won't ruin it," Petunia crooned at her son, ruffling his blonde hair. Petunia looked up at Vernon, her head tilted as if to say 'that's not a bad idea, just lock him out.'

It took Vernon a second to grasp his wife's meaning, but when he did he turned from his wife and son to face his nephew.

"Fine," he spat at his nephew, "But you are not to come within ten feet of the house till we come home! I don't want you blowing up our home, got it?"

Harry immediately assured his uncle that he would not be at home.

As the family began preparing for their outing, Aunt Petunia pulled Harry over to the side. She shoved a few bills into his hand and immediately left.

'Wow, Aunt Petunia does have a heart,' Harry thought sardonically. 'Why didn't I see this before? But then again, I never knew magic existed,' Harry thought, laughing internally.

Harry's musings were interrupted when his uncle shouted from the door. "And what do you find so funny, boy?" he asked menacingly. "I swear, if I find one thing out of line…" his uncle rambled on and on, but Harry tuned him out. He was only too used to it.

Harry nodded solemnly and smiled inside, 'Diagon Alley, here I come!'