A/N: this is my first ever fanfic, so please be nice. The chapter is short, but that is because this is an introduction to the rest of the story. Hope you enjoy! DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER, J.K. ROWLING DOES.

Chapter 1

To an outsider, Number Four, Privet Drive would seem like any other average Surrey home. Even on the inside, nothing unusual would be suggested to the untrained eye: Vernon Dursley, the proud father; Petunia Dursley, the adoring mother; and Dudley Dursley, their beloved son. There were quite a few pictures of them scattered around the house, decorating the walls living room mantelpiece. Nothing at all in the household would suggest that there was, in fact, another inhabitant in this upper-middle class home in the South-West of London.

That unnoticed inhabitant was Harry Potter. Smaller and skinnier than average, he was the son of Petunia's sister, Lily Potter. He looked just like a small clone of his father, James Potter, with his unruly, pitch-black hair and pale complexion. He did not, however, share his father's eyes; no, they were his mother's, bright green and sparkling with intelligence. The reason the Dursleys were attempting to make him as invisible as possible was because he had an ability that his relatives frowned upon: magic, or, as they liked to put it, 'freakishness'. This was the reason why they had stuck him in a cupboard; this was the reason he'd had to take the brunt of their aggression. Or he was, until one fateful day when someone found out about his treatment at his so-called 'home'.