That plan had been hatched when Harry was eight. From that day on he turned his school performance around, excelling in every class. He stopped playing the idiot, the Dursleys be damned. Oh, he had got punished, but they would do that anyway, it didn't matter if he did something wrong after all, but if they overdid it, the teachers would notice and a sudden drop in his performance would be suspect. So Harry rose to the top of class. As he didn't have anything to do in his free time, Dudley had made sure that nobody wanted to be his friend, they feared his retribution too much, Harry had become a steady occupant of the school's library. All books there became his passion. He would learn all he could. He would show Dudley up the only way he could, showing how much smarter he was than his stupid cousin.
Harry learned stuff that was covered in higher years. He quickly became bored with the curriculum of his age group. So he turned to other books. Books on anything he found interesting and what would be useful for him to know. Science, history, politics, languages, social science, psychology, finances, fictional novels, classic literature and sports. When he wasn't in the library he was on the athletic field of the school, training playing football. He had read that many secondary schools gave out scholarships for gifted children that excelled at sports. As he didn't have the means for going swimming, he decided to play football. It would also be good as it was the more popular sport. Soon he was discovered for the football team, despite being the youngest player with eight and a half years – his team-mates were all ten or eleven – he soon became an integral part of the team.
His school participated in matches with other primary schools and he knew it was a great chance for him to be seen by the scouts from the secondary schools. He played in the midfield on the left side. He was fast, all the running away from Dudley and his gang finally had done something good for him, and he worked on his precision with passes to the forwards. When he was nine, the other schools knew he was a dangerous player and he was guarded closely during matches, but there his cunning came in. He had only needed one game of being totally taken out of the game by guards that outnumbered him to work on tricks to get away from them. He was smaller than them due to them being older, so he needed to trick them and outspeed them.
The next game was three weeks away, three weeks where Harry trained sprints, sharp turns and controlling the ball in certain movements. The next game even three players couldn't hold him. At the end of the school year the football club had won the primary school championships of the southeast of England and Harry, thanks to his excelling at his studies was offered to be moved up one year. He thought it was great. He knew the stuff of the year he had skipped without problem and this way he would be able to get to secondary school earlier. Sadly this needed the approval of his guardians and the Dursleys flat out refused to let Harry be in a higher class than Dudley.
The teachers didn't understand their refusal, but had to deal with it. They instead just gave Harry harder material to learn to support his educational progress. The deputy headmistress even took him under her wing and taught him to speak German fluently. Her father was a German refugee. He had fled the Nazi regime in World War II to Great Britain and had married her mother, an English nurse. So she had grown up learning both languages. Harry was very happy learning the language. For his plans in the future speaking foreign languages would be a big advantage.
Now Harry was at an age where he soon would go to secondary school. He had offers from five prestigious institutes that had offered him scholarships. Many had seen him playing football and with his excellent grades, he was a much sought out boy for the schools. He knew the schools always competed for the best students and he was the best. He had read many pamphlets of schools, trying to decide where he would gain the most benefits from attending school. He had until the end of July to decide and send his application to the school he chose. The Dursleys had been forced by his deputy headmistress to not interfere with Harry's choice of school or she would make sure the authorities looked more closely into Harry's home life. Grudgingly they had agreed that they would sign for any of the schools that offered him scholarships as they wouldn't have to pay for him there.
This morning Harry was told again to get the mail. He quickly looked over the letters. There sometimes was one for him from schools or football teams. That had been a huge argument with Vernon; he refused to think of him as his uncle, when he found out that football clubs were interested in having him playing in their junior teams. In his opinion he had cheated his way into the school football team and didn't deserve any of the praise he was given. Harry didn't intend to play for one of those teams anyway. Football was a means to his goal for him. He wanted to go to a renowned school with a strong football team where he could get the best possible education to reach his goals. He saw that there was one letter for him; one that was a bit strange. Who the hell used parchment today? He put it away to read it later. He knew the shouting from Vernon was not worth it if he saw that Harry had another letter.