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Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended, although a few lines may be (very sparingly!) quoted from the original books at times. The amount of quotations should decline the further along to story goes. This disclaimer includes this chapter and all others that follow as they are all one part of a whole story. This disclaimer will be posted in the first chapter of every "book" of this "series".

The Chronicles of Harry Potter

More Commonly Known As:

Harry Potter and the Truth

Unabridged, Unvarnished & (Mostly) Uncensored

~Summary~

The Harry Potter books were intended to be a children's story. This was to (hopefully) reach children during those key development years and guide them toward the "light", teaching them the values of friendship, trust, honesty, loyalty, and decrease the chances of them becoming "Dark Lords" when they grew older. Here, for the first time, is the unabridged, unvarnished, & (mostly) uncensored tale of Harry Potter during his school years, and all that came after. Also, I listed "Ron bashing" in the story tags, but he isn't going to necessarily be "bashed". I just wanted people to realize that he won't be the "close friend" that he was in canon. I'm not going to go out of my way to make him look bad, but then you don't really have to for that.

The Chronicles of Harry Potter

More Commonly Known As:

Harry Potter and the Truth

Unabridged, Unvarnished & (Mostly) Uncensored

Preface

Important!

This AN will be a long one. However quite a bit of it will have information that will tell you what to expect from this story. If however, it is too long for you to stomach, do at least read the section marked "Foreword" after this insanely long AN. It's part of the story.

I want to start off by saying this: J. K. Rowling is an amazing storyteller. That is to say, as horrible as she is at the mechanics of writing considering her poor characterization, (especially in Deathly Hallows) her many plot holes, instant making up of entirely new magics that are suddenly commonplace when they never existed prior, not to mention her inability to effectively write her main character in a realistic way, (systematically abused children do not turn into people who trust those around them and make friends easily, not without going through long periods of time where they are anti-social and they definitely don't take betrayal by those friends easily e.g.: one Ronald Weasley) she has managed to write a wonderful story that has captured millions of readers, (something I have yet to do) successfully become a movie series, and changed her life due to the wealth she has garnered from it. I dare say that with some writing classes where she could learn the actual mechanics of writing a good story, she'd become an even better author. The ability to write can be taught, but storytellers are born. She has the gift, I just wish she'd learn to use it better. I don't claim to be a great writer or a great storyteller, but I am definitely an awesome editor. Hopefully that ability can translate to me writing a passable fan fiction of my own. I guess we'll see. And do please let me know if I am succeeding or failing.

Regarding reviews: Reviews exist for two reasons:

1: To thank an author for making an awesome story, provided it is actually awesome, of course.

2: To give constructive criticism, so that a not-so-awesome author can get better, perhaps even eventually becoming awesome.

The first everyone loves, the second, not so much. If you are going to leave criticism, please take note of what I say next.

I take criticism just fine, as long as it is both polite, and informative. If you leave a rude review, or one that only says something is bad, but not why it is bad, and/or (both would be better, but one is sufficient) a way to make it better, well, I don't take that so well.

Also, criticism and arguing specific points are very different. If you want to argue a point with me, do not get upset with an argumentative response. I tend to argue things, as if I'm, well, arguing them. It doesn't mean I'm trying to insult your intelligence or anything like that. But if you start throwing insults, be sure you can take insults as well, not just give them. Keep insults out of your argument, and I'll keep them out of mine. I am quite capable of reasoning like a civilized being.

More important things about the story:

Characters in the story will oftentimes state things as if they were factual knowledge. Do not mistake this as me the author stating things as factual knowledge. I do this because I am trying to make my characters realistic in their actions even if their reality (e.g.: dragons) isn't. How many times does someone you know say something like it's fact, only to be proven wrong 5 minutes later? An hour later? Years later? All the time. If a character says or thinks something, it is only what that particular character thinks. The only definite facts are included in any hints I may leave in my author's notes before or after story content.

Characters will be different! Draco will still be an arrogant ass, but like any pure-blood, he'll actually know how to bite his tongue and pick his battles. He has been trained in politics from the time he was old enough to make political mistakes after all. He is heir to House Malfoy, and as such is the magical equivalent of a noble. They are trained, and trained well. Crabbe and Goyle will still be his muscle, but they will be effective muscle.

Harry is going to be quite a bit different than the original. He will actually have a brain and put it to use. In the books when Harry apparated via accidental magic as a child, he actually thought the wind carried him up onto the roof. How stupid is that? And let's not mention how he completely ignored Hermione about the dangers of suddenly receiving a broom from a person with no name right after a man who (supposedly) wants to kill him has escaped from prison. Even with his initial excitement, he should have realized the danger and the logic of the situation once she spelled it out for him! We're supposed to believe that someone that stupid, was able to defeat the most-dangerous-Dark-Lord-in-history? So yeah, expect changes there.

Harry won't be a genius, but he will be as smart as I am. Do remember that smarts don't equal knowledge! Smart just shows how you use the knowledge you have. Knowledge is gained by experiences. My IQ is pretty high, just shy of genius level, so Harry will basically be smarter than practically every pure-blood wizard shown as they were in the canon, (they were idiots) but not necessarily as they will be shown to be here. He will also be smarter than most of his schoolmates.

However, Harry will still make mistakes, after all, he's very smart, and such intelligence usually brings confidence, at least in your own ideas if nothing else, and so you sometimes will accept those ideas without fully checking them, and thus make foolish mistakes. Also, we have the gift of foreknowledge, something Harry doesn't have. He hasn't read all the books like we have. So don't expect him to become Godlike right away and sweep away all his enemies in one fell stroke, undermining all their plans. He will eventually become godlike, but that's only natural. He is already legitimately a super-powered (and super rich) wizard in canon, (e.g.: able to defend from about a hundred dementors with a single patronus as a child while most adults can't even perform the spell, and the few that can have trouble with any amount greater than one) and he will have the logic of a muggle. As such, he will find ways to put magic to more practical use. However, his knowledge as a muggle is somewhat stunted due to the way he was raised, so several things that might be obvious to other muggles won't necessarily be to him, so he might not think of some things normal people would, or even get popular references.

Oh and, someone on another site claimed that Rowling said his ability to power his patronus to such strength was because of his "great love". I don't know if she really said that or not, but again, plot holes. For example: Um, you mean that Harry has more love than the love a mother/father has for their child? Really? At 14? After all he's been through? Most people who are physically and emotionally abused to the extent Harry is aren't even sure they are capable of love, if they even believe it exists. They usually doubt love, tending to need proof, and testing that proof to radical extremes before trusting it. And besides, there is other evidence for his being exceptionally powerful.

The battle in the graveyard at Voldemort's resurrection was proof of Harry's power. When the two brother wands fought, it was Harry (still a child remember, a teen, but a child nonetheless) who triumphed and performed priori incantem on Voldemort, not the other way around. People say that was due to Harry's willpower, but that is due to a common misconception about the essence of will.

Will, in and of itself, is not power. Will cannot make a man lift an elephant if he is not physically capable of it. It can however, allow a man to draw out the very peak of his physical capabilities, allowing him to use more strength than he ever has before, and then lift that elephant, as long as he is actually physically capable of the act. Will does this much like adrenaline, flight or fight reactions, simply because of the danger, need, or other emotions involved in the situation. Ergo, Harry is magically stronger than Voldemort in the graveyard. His will, and his desperation, allowed him to power his magic to his fullest at that moment.

Whether Harry being stronger was only due to Voldemort not also being in a life-threatening situation, as he was surrounded by allies and was overconfident in his ability to defeat Harry one-on-one, him being weak as he was newly resurrected, or some other factor(s) will remain to be seen in this version of the story.

Also, Harry's personality will be more realistic. After all, he has been abused his whole life, that is canon. What will change is the result of said abuse. He will not just believe everything anyone tells him, simply because he won't trust anyone, unless he has a reason to. He will be able to socialize, mostly because he got beat and punished more for standing out, so while he did learn to appear to fit in, he doesn't actually become the center of attention often. Think of him as the moody kid you knew in school who could fit in a discussion with everyone here and there, but mostly kept to himself. Even when he was a part of the group, he could go from being the center of attention to suddenly being gone and nobody realizes it for an hour, and even then, nobody knows exactly when he left. Remember that guy/girl? That's Harry.

Harry will also be very introverted from his forced isolation at home, and he will always be on the lookout for traps and betrayals from being used to getting into trouble for anything at all, and Dudley always had some way of trying to trick him into getting into trouble even more. He also likes to read. No matter how many chores the Dursleys gave him, if he kept up on everything daily, things didn't get dirty enough for him to have to take hours to clean them. That left him lots of free time during the summer and any other such breaks from school. He filled that time at the library, his only safe haven away from home. Lastly, he will be a very logical person. Most of his emotions will not be there, save anger and joy as like many who have grown up abused he knows how to take joy from things that some consider small, and always lived with his rage. Still, while that rage can be explosive, it is mostly a cold contained anger that simply feeds his desire for revenge and power. Sometimes he will be set off by something small, other times something large. Sometimes he won't even appear to react to something that everyone will expect him to explode about. He's moody, and he's also a kid. It's just how life works.

I grew up in a similar lifestyle, so I do actually know what I'm talking about. My life was not as bad as the Harry that I'll be portraying here in some ways, it was worse in others. Definitely worse than the Harry in the original story though. (For the most part. I didn't grow up in a broom closet under the stairs thankfully, though I did have the misfortune of growing up in a cult-crazy household. Mix that with other members of the family being into wicca or "witchcraft" according to the cultists and running psychic stores and you get a very colorful and tense family life.) I also know many people who grew up in similar situations and while we all reacted differently in some ways, some things were the same all around. As such I will mostly be drawing from my own experiences when displaying his character. He will eventually open up, and sometimes he will open up and then clam right back down to his angry moody self. This is normal and realistic. We are social creatures, and sometimes we can't help but open up if we have let our guard down. The difference between "normal" people and abused people is that abused people will notice that they have opened up and suddenly clam up tighter than ever because of their fear of opening themselves to weakness (interior) and thereby danger (exterior). Especially when they are trying to change and be "normal". It's hard, and it takes time.

About pairings for this story:

For those wondering about pairings, I can't say yet who Harry will end up with as I haven't decided. I can say with nearly complete certainty that it will not be Ginny. Harry has been abused all his life and is not very trusting. Once he finds out he is both rich and famous in the magical world, he will immediately see Ginny's infatuation as normal groupie behavior and be suspicious of any feelings from her from that point forward, even more so considering she had a crush on him before ever even meeting him, and therefore had a crush on "fake Harry" from the books about his "life".

Harry will be far more likely to fall for someone he can trust, someone who has not betrayed him in any major way, at least not without being able to give a reasonable and logical explanation as to why they didn't think it was a betrayal, or felt that it was absolutely necessary, and are able to show that it was intended to be in his best interests, even if the situation didn't work out to actually be that way in the end. Basically, of the canon characters (the ones he actually interacted with) that puts Hermione at the top of the list of those Harry will like. That does not however mean that this is automatically going to become a Harry+Hermione=Love story. It still leaves it open-ended as to who else could fill that role. There are many potential characters at Hogwarts to fit into that equation, especially as most of the people there had barely any mention, so I can make up personalities as I go, and I will need to as the story begins to diverge more and more from canon. He is also not going to end up married to the first girl he ever dates. Life rarely works out that way. So expect break-ups. That includes the certain cliché that I am actually going to use temporarily in the story for plot reasons. You'll know it when you see it, and trust me, it's not going to go the normal way those things go. At all.

Also, whether Hermione ends up with Harry or not, she will not end up with Ron. It's one thing to have sexual tension, but quite another to be with someone who downright disgusts you, blatantly uses you, and shows no regard for anything you say unless it involves the answers for the homework.

Yes, there are people who go for relationships where they are treated like crap all the time, (usually due to low self-esteem issues) but I don't see that in Hermione's character. Maybe at first, when she was sure she was ugly, and probably thought Ron would be the only one to ever notice her, but after having that completely refuted by Victor Krum? That's like a girl in our current day being the crush of say... Justin Bieber (considering we're talking about teens) and thinking of herself as ugly. It's just stupid. If Ron at least treated her half-way decently some of the time I could see it being UST causing their problems, but they have had issues from the start, when they were eleven, far too soon for it to be UST. A crush, maybe, but UST? I doubt it.

Even beyond UST, you have to face it, while you do need to have some things different between you and your partner, you also need to have some things the same as well, so that you aren't fighting all the time, and Hermione and Ron are polar opposites. Only Harry holds them together. No one likes a boring relationship where everything is smooth all the time, but it's even worse to be in a relationship where you never can agree, even on smallest of things! How do you relax? It seemed more to me like Rowling pushed Ron and Hermione together because she wanted Harry with Ginny to make Harry gain a loving family, and didn't want to leave Ron and Hermione without a significant other. Then, after deciding that they needed someone, it was simply easier to force the two of them together, than to have to create two new major characters for us to care about. I may be wrong, but it was definitely forced. That won't happen here.

Finally, expect this book (yes book) to go by slowly. I plan on writing it while reading the series side-by-side. Many things will change obviously due to events in this version, but the major events should stay the same (in this one). I plan on going from before the beginning of first year on up the chain. We'll see how far I go. Please review if you like or dislike the story, and say what it is you like or dislike about it. Copy and paste any specific parts into your review so I can see exactly what you're talking about if you feel really strongly about something. Reviews are what feed us authors. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the ride!