A/N:- Ok then, hi all, now, before you lynch me for the wait for an update, in my defence, I had my first child, little girl, and have been running around like a headless chicken for the past god knows how long since i last updated this. I read through this out of sheer boredom the other day and decided that it needs rewriting. So this is the Rewite of chapter 1, please excuse it being posted as chapter 16, it was the only way i could think of to get the system to send out an alert. This is the first chapter, i'll see what you all think before I look at chapter 2.

As always, read, review, tell me what you think, good or bad, I'm always open to constructive criticism.

Prologue

Dumbledore never knew the mistake he was making when he dropped the saviour of the Wizarding world off on the door step of Number 4 Privet Drive. He really should have listened to his Deputy Headteacher when she said that they were the worst sort of Muggle's imaginable. He thought she was just over reacting and underestimating the goodness of a family.

Oh how wrong he was.

In truth, he underestimated just how much hatred the Dursley's harboured for anything magical. From as far back as Harry could remember, the Dursley's had beaten and abused him, mentally, emotionally and physically. Turning him into a cold and violent person, the perfect image of the little delinquent the Dursley's told anybody who would take half a minute to listen.

It was Harry that was the one people where afraid of at school, and though his cousin Dudley had the weight behind him to make an imposing figure, he simply didn't have the pure presence that Harry did. He made a name for himself when someone was laughing at the hand me down clothes he was wearing, next thing the boy in question knew, he woke up about 5 minutes later due to Harry hitting him over the head with a stick that was laying in the play ground. He got hell for that one from both his uncle and the school, but he didn't care, he had stood up for himself, and that was all that mattered.

After that, people started to avoid him, not in the way people would avoid a freak or something like that, though that wasn't due to Dudley not trying. One casual nudge down the stairs solved that problem, Dudley know who had done it, so did everyone other student, they couldn't prove anything, so the school said that Dudley must have slipped, so Harry didn't get punished.

Because of the image that Harry had created around himself, he didn't have any friends, which worked out quite well, as he didn't have to justify the harsher things he did to anyone. This all changed when Harry had been walking along one of the corridors at his Primary School, when he heard laughing and jeering coming from a group of kids, he walked over, interested at what was going on. The gathered kids parted like the Red Sea before Moses. In the centre of the circle stood three people, two boys and a girl with bushy brown hair and quite large front teeth. You could tell from looking at her that she wasn't like the other girls who where running around giggling all the time. No from the look of her, she was an outcast, a different kind than Harry himself, but and outcast the same. Seeing the boys laughing at her and tormenting her reminded him of himself, and in a quite uncharacteristic flash of empathy, he decided to intervene.

As you would expect from a girl that was a bit different, she held a book protectively against her chest, her arms wrapped around it. The black leather and the gold leaf that made the cover glistened in the florescent light that lit the corridor. One of the boys, who on closer inspection turned out to be Dudley's little, rat like, friend Pierce, ripped the book out of her grip and held it over her head. With an alarmed cry she tried jumping for it, but Pierce simply pulled it out of her reach. He was laughing and shouting abuse at the girl, while the other boy, who was, surprisingly, Dudley, shouted encouragement and suggestions to pierce and similar abuse at the girl, who by had tears starting to flow down her face.

Harry walked further into the circle, behind Pierce and without warning or provocation, he punched the him hard in the kidney making a point to carrying on the momentum of the punch as far into the other boys side as he could which him cry out in pain and drop the book, which slid across the floor. Harry then grabbed Pierce's hair and yanked his entire head back, just as he swiped at his feet with his legs, making him crash to the ground in a heap, just for good measure, he cocked his foot back and slammed it down on his stomach, making Pierce gasp and struggle for breath.

It happened so fast that Dudley was in shock, he didn't want to fight his cousin, especially after how easily he had dealt with Pierce. Harry turned to him, pure rage filling up his entire being, and growled, "If you don't want to end up the same way, I would suggest you apologise, take this sorry lump of shit, and fuck off." He nudged Pierce with his foot as he was still rolling around on the floor in agony.

Dudley quickly stammered an apology to the girl and dragged off his groaning comrade, glaring at Harry the entire time, Harry smiled and wiggled his fingers at the retreating pair then turned to the gathered kids and growled out, "As for the rest of you, anyone touches her or anything of her things or says anything that they wouldn't say to there own mother to her, I will personally take that person apart bit by bit."

After that threat was made and understood by the gathered kids, they quickly dispersed, leaving Harry and the girl. Harry stooped down and picked up the book, he was going to open it but saw the word 'Diary' written in gold on the cover, he stopped himself and handed the diary back to the girl and said, "Sorry about that, my name's Harry Potter."

The girl looked at the outstretched hand holding her diary, she looked at the boy that was holding it. She had over heard that this Harry Potter was a person to be feared, and if the reactions of the other kids meant anything, the cold look in his eyes as he dealt with the boys that were tormenting her only reinforced the notion, and made her feel the Fight or Flight instinct kick and tell her that the best idea would be to run away. The look was still in his eyes now, she could see something behind it, something that drew her in like a moth to a flame and sparked a curiosity that very few had. Snapping her brown eyes away from his green, she took in the ratty looking clothes that hung off his body, and decided not to mention them.

Making up her mind with a nod to herself, she took back the diary with a smile and said, "Hermione Granger."

From that day forward the pair were inseparable, and true to his word, Harry got back at everyone that tried to make fun of Hermione, if it was a boy that was causing trouble , he waited for them after school and played football with various parts of there bodies, but if it was a girl that was the problem, well, no boy can hit a girl, it was a rule, so he had to think outside the box, with Hermione's help. He would take note of the gossip doing the rounds of the school at any given time, so he was in the know about who liked who, who fell out with who and for what reason. With that information, it was quite a simple task to feed information into the rumour mill, and let nature take its course, with a few pokes and prods along the way if it wasn't doing the job good enough. Soon enough, most people had picked up on the message, leave Harry Potter and Hermione Granger alone.

With them being left to there own devices so much, they spent most of there free time sat under the old tree that stood at the bottom of the playground, they just sat, talking, swapping views on things and throwing hypothetical situations at each other. Harry's favourite one was, if you were driving along a road, and a dog ran out in front of you, you have a bus stop full of school children on your left, and an articulated lorry heading towards you on the right and the cars brakes aren't good enough to stop in time to save the dog, what would you do? The only logical thing to do would be to carry on in a straight line and run the dog over, because if you swerve left, you've got ten, maybe fifteen, dead school kids on your hands, and if you swerve left, its game over, due to being turned to mush by 50 or 60 tonne of metal. Harry like this situation because it showed that you have to do what you have to do to not be killed and save lives. In the end, they rubbed off on each other, Harry became much more cunning, while Hermione became, well, like Harry.

While this was happening at school things were improving dramatically at Number 4, Harry had, after Hermione and he had concocted and researched the plan, threatened the Dursley's with the Social Services, he would always remember the scene. He had come home a while after school like he usually did, before he had even closed the front door behind him, his Uncle Vernon was shouting at him from his almost permanent position in front of the TV, "Boy! The list with your chores on it is on the fridge, do them before it gets dark or you'll go without food, and I'll beat seven bells of shit out of you!"

Harry took a second, to compose himself, "No, do them yourself." He didn't say in angrily, snidely or rebelliously. More like he was just stating a fact. There was a creaking sound as Vernon hauled his considerable girth up from the leather sofa and he appeared in the hallway, veins almost popping out of his head.

"What did you just say to me, Boy?" he said, a dangerous tone in his voice. Harry smiled in response.

"Well, I found an interesting leaflet in the school library. It was about, what were they called again? Oh right, the Social Services!" Vernon went from almost apocalyptic to pasty white that Harry thought he might just feint.

"R . . . Really?" he coughed and looked around nervously, after all it wouldn't do his public image any good if his name was dragged through a child abuse court case.

"Oh yeah, it was really good reading, apparently, most children my age don't have to do all the house work, keep the garden maintained and cook all the meals, that they were jobs for the grown ups, that it wasn't normal for a child to never go out and it was illegal for a child to sleep under the stairs." Harry said in a pleasant tone of voice, almost as if he were talking about some inane topic like the weather. The effects on Vernon were almost spectacular, he went from white to a grey ashy colour and Harry was almost positive that he was going to throw up on him. Instead he took a deep, shuddering breath that made his fat rolls bounce, and said.

"OK, Boy, clean out Dudley's second bedroom and you can have it, no more chores after that, and you can come and go as you please, but don't you dare talk to the Social Services, or I'll make sure that it will be the last thing that you do!" he said the last bit with a snarl and stormed off back to the living room, thinking how he was going to explain this to his Petunia and Dudley.

After that time past quickly, Harry and Hermione had grown closure, as you would expect of a pair that spent almost all there time together. Everything was good in their world until Harry received a letter from a place called 'Hogwarts'. The Dursley's reaction was comical, Dudley had been oblivious, Petunia had gasped and almost fell over while Vernon actually burst a blood vessel and had to be rushed to the hospital. They had tried to keep him from reading the letter but after he dropped a few words about Social Workers coming into the school, they grudgingly allowed him to read it. Harry was shocked to say the least, not because he was a wizard, no, how in hell's name would he tell Hermione?

Thankfully, after many hours of trying to figure out how to break the news to Hermione, it was all for naught, as she came up to him and told him that she had received a letter. After that the problem was none existent, they were both over joyed at the fact that they didn't have to be separate from each other.

After replying to their letter jointly, and getting a reply back with the location of Diagon Ally and how to get to it, Hermione asked her parents if they could take them to London, which they agreed to.

They were, unimpressed, with the Magical shopping centre, it looked like it was stuck in the middle ages, almost as if someone had just pressed a button and they had just stopped progressing. Hermione made a comment about this being a prefect opportunity of studying how people lived in the Dark Ages, which got a laugh out of Harry. The first stop was a place called Gringotts, a bank that was run by Goblins, Harry took a liking to the fierce looking race of midgets. When they walked out of the Bank, Harry was both over the moon and raging at the same time, he was happy because he was, well, minted, angry because he could have been living at any one of the many houses he owned. He set it to one side in his mind, vowing to find out more about the subject later.

After finding out just how much money Harry had, it was quite easy to convince Hermione's parents to let them stay at the Inn. Hermione's parents weren't to pleased, but with a promise not to get in any trouble and them having a private word with the Inn Keeper, which Harry and Hermione guessed was to ask Tom to keep an eye on them while they stayed there, they reluctantly agreed, but they said they expected nothing but the top marks from both of them on all there exams in exchange.

The first thing that they did, after getting there room arranged with Tom, was get a new wardrobe each, after all it would not do to be walking around dressed in rags when they could blend in and not be noticed, after all, there was plenty of time later on to stand out and be noticed. After all they needed to blend in for what they were going to be going and doing.

After that they went to Olivanders for wands, unsurprisingly, Harry and Hermione got twin wands, the only difference was the grip design, but what was surprising was the fact that both their wands were related to Voldemort's, who harry made a mental note to look up. It turned out that while Harry's and Hermione's wand were virtually identical, making them 'twin' wands, the only thing that Voldemort's had in common with theirs is the fact that it shared a feather from the same phoenix.

Next came the book shopping, they searched high and low, from one end of Diagon Ally to the other looking for books. After that they stood at the entrance to Knockturn Ally, each had a determined look on there faces as they set off down they Ally. They needed as many weapons in there arsenal as they could possible have to have an edge, and if that meant going on the wring side of the law, well, it was only wrong if they got caught, and who would expect two eleven year old's to be delving into the Dark Arts. It took enough money to grease the shop keepers palms to sell them the books, they weren't going to make stupid mistakes and be caught with them. After all all it took was the cover of a normal charms book, or something similarly inane, a sharp knife and some super glue, and all everyone would see was a student studying, nothing suspicious there, right?

After that they had settled down to get as far ahead as possible. Hermione found an interesting fact in one the Magical theory books, a little fact that in area's that were highly permeated with magic, it was very difficult to identify who was casting, it was because of this that most of the Voldemort's Death Eaters could get away with what they did, as it was virtually impossible to prove what they cast. The spell to revel what a wand had caste last could easily be fooled by casting some harmless household charms, over riding the presence of any other spell.

That little gem gave them practical experience, and in the time it took for the 1st of September to arrive, they were already a third of the way through their first year work, and had learnt quite a few spells that could be used to fight off any body that got in there way.

On the 1st of September, a very different Harry Potter and Hermione Granger walked through the barrier to Platform 9 ¾. Both of them grinned at the sight of the scarlet engine that stood in front of them.