For as long as the boy named Harry Potter could remember, he thought of himself as something of an oddity.
Harry was, for a lack of a better word, 'raised' in the house located at Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey of Britain. 'Raised' by a family of three who were supposedly his relatives from his mother's side and for some reason, hated him for something that he had no idea what it was, to the point of calling him 'Freak' or 'Boy' even after he went to school at the age of six and found out his real name when the teacher called out to him. Whatever information he could get about his parents, after getting a hit at the back of the head or getting thrown into his cupboard under the stairs, was not very comforting. Aunt Petunia seemed to relish telling him that his parents were dead-beat drunks who got killed in a car crash, leaving Harry as the sole survivor with only a scar in the shape of a lightning bolt on his forehead as the only indicator. On that part, Harry had some doubts, mostly because it was his aunt telling it, but also the fact he kept having dreams of a woman who would sing to him tenderly as she held him in her arms, with the scent of lilies present quite strongly. It was those dreams that helped him at night at times when his loneliness got to him, even if it left him bittersweet in the morning.
More often than not though, he would have nightmares of said woman being attacked by someone with a sinister voice and laugh, telling her to move aside to get to him before a bright flash of green would signal his return to the waking world. Harry would always wake up in the middle of the night shivering from the chill of the night and that of the laughter that rang in his ears until he fell back into an uneasy sleep.
Harry had tried to do whatever his relatives wanted him to do in hopes of gaining their favour, even if it broke his heart that they did not acknowledge his efforts or spread lies about him. It was when he came back from school with the test results of his first semester that made it clear they wanted absolutely nothing to do with him. It had devastated him and he ended up crying his heart out in the darkness of his cupboard when Vernon threw him into it as he accused the boy of cheating.
It was while Harry sat on the swing-set in the park trying to sort his thoughts when he overheard a couple of older students arguing about their own tests and grades. One of them was evidently in a similar situation as Harry with the difference that the older kid did not care about the bully's attempts to stop his work, he was going to do his best to make his sick mother proud and prove that he would succeed where the bully failed. Those words struck a chord inside Harry; why did he keep trying to gain the attention of his relatives when they would always berate him, throw him into his cupboard and blame everything that went wrong in their lives on him? Why did he had to put up with Dudley's childish tantrums and issues while Petunia and Vernon lavished all their attention on to him? Why did he had to keep his head down while they spread lies about him being a troubled child?
Why was he dealing with the Dursleys when the people he should be proving were his own parents, to prove that he was supposedly more than his 'dead-beat drunk parents'?
No more.
He had enough of their unjust punishments and lies.
He was going to do what he wanted and not have to put up with their issues any longer. Let others see their flaws and their mistakes. He would prove to them all that he was not a weakling, and he would fight his way of his home situation.
With that mindset, Harry got off the swing seat he was on and made his way to the town library where the librarian was more than happy to point him to the shelves that contained his interest. From that day onward, Harry kept making visits to that and the school library, devouring whatever information he could lay his hands on in his pursuits for knowledge. Be it simple gardening to complex mathematics, mechanics to civil laws, Harry took them all into his mind even if it was a little hard to understand for one his age. It also helped that much of the laws would help him with his home situation in case Vernon decided to take things too far.
It did not take much time for the teachers and the Dursleys to see that Harry had been making great progress in his studies and looked set to make his mark in the top twenty for the year. Vernon had shown his displeasure for his academic success by hitting him harder and starving him for longer periods, but Harry did not let that deter him. Harry had even started to store food items in the loose board of the cupboard so that he would at least have some sustenance when he had to serve his 'rightful punishments'. Dudley had whined and complained about his grades being better than his, but Harry gave them a look and stated very clearly that he would not be dragged down by someone who did not bother putting in effort in anything but eating and bullying. It did have the benefit of making them back down slightly for a time, might be the manner he delivered his words to them.