It's October 31st, 1981. Lord Voldemort enters a protected home in Godric's Hollow and murders a mother and a father. He point his wand to a young baby's forehead, smiling coldly at the toddler, before he utters the Killing Curse.

His intentions are for it to kill the boy. The boy's mother had planned for her sacrifice to protect him.

Neither of those things happen, as magic works in strange ways.

The curse takes hold of their souls, tearing off a small piece of each and replacing it with the other's.

And that's the story of how Lord Voldemort bound himself to a young boy barely aged one.

Harry Potter grows up with the Dursleys treating him like a slave.

*
Harry Potter receives his Hogwarts letter at 11, and it's handed to him by a big man with a big heart.

Harry Potter befriends a soft boy on the Hogwarts Express, somehow making space for him in a group that doesn't even exist yet.

Throughout his first year at Hogwarts Harry learns to love, to accept, to befriend, and to trust. He doesn't realize it then, but that matters far more than than the other things he learns.

At the end of the year, Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom face the Dark Lord plastered to the back of their Professor's head, and when the Boy-Who-Lived locks eyes with Lord Voldemort, sparks fly through the air.

Harry doesn't make a move before Neville yells at him to do something, and later he has regrets. He hates himself for it, but there was something about Voldemort that set his hairs on end.

During his second year, Harry faces a basilisk, saves a person's life, and stabs a diary.

During his third year, Harry gets a new godfather, loses him, gets him anew, and then loses him once more.

During his fourth year, things start to become interesting. Harry does his best to survive, outflies a dragon, swims to the bottom of a bottomless lake, and races against witches and wizards far older than him – but he fails at what most would say is the most important.

He cannot control his own instincts.

When Cedric Diggory and he is portkeyed to the graveyard, Cedric is killed. When Harry then is met by Voldemort in his broken and shattered body, he is hit by such a powerful wave of protectiveness, anger, guilt, need and utter, complete hopelessness that he falls to his knees and proclaims he'll do anything to help.

On his mind is a hundred thoughts, most of them screaming at him in shock, but he is not in full control of his actions, and through the daze that has become his mind he only knows that this creature is important and it is in pain.

And so there are some last-minute alterations to the ritual. It has some unpleasant side-effects, like Voldemort's Horcruxes being destroyed and his and Harry's bond completing itself, but none of them realize that right then and there.

When Harry is sent back to the Quidditch Pitch, he's screaming, tears streaming down his cheeks.

The school year ends with a bang.

a/n: to all the peeps saying it's rushed YEAH NO SHIT, dchu think i have the time to write out a full 11 years of something the books and movies,,, you know,,,, cOVER? look genius if you don't got anything better to do than comment "rushed" or "bruh what" then maybe... don't comment. and read the next chapter? get a life yo