Destinies Collide

Key Choices

August 11th, 1988

"Run!" Harry yelled at his companion, pulling her by the wrist and into the cave, crouching behind a rock and barely escaping the dragonfire now scorching the ground they'd previously stood on.

"What do we do now?" Ivy asked, wide eyes darting around the darkened cave.

"We need to-

Knock Knock Knock

"Hm?" Harry stops bouncing his legs on the edge of the bed and looks up from the book he'd been reading to see Mr Wright through the crack of his slightly open door.

"We're going out in thirty minutes" Harry nodded at the reminder and looked back down at the book as he heard the leaving footsteps get quieter outside the door.

There were books about him, he repeated in his mind, still not understanding it even after reading the past editions. Some were kids' books like the ones he'd read when he was little, with barely a phrase per page, but some like the one he was looking down at were full-on storybooks that made him seem like some sort of superhero like... like spider-man or something. But he was eight, and the most heroic thing he'd ever done was tell Dudley to stop when he went to beat up some other kid during recess, and even then he'd only done it once because Dudley went to beat him up instead until he hurt his head really bad, and had Harry tell the school nurse it was because he fell from the swing when it was too high. He didn't want Dudley to beat anyone up, but he didn't want to get beat up either. Not very heroic of him.

Sighing and putting the book face-down on the bed after he read the same line three times and didn't get it into his brain, Harry twisted and turned on the bed until his back was to the headboard, knees pulled up to his chest, suddenly feeling like he needed to take up less space.

He'd been so confused and jumpy the first few days, and then everything felt like a dream, like he wasn't really awake because it was so different that it couldn't really be happening. Then he learned about magic and his parents and maybe it was a nightmare for a bit, but at least he wasn't a freak anymore, he was a Wizard. There were thousands of people like him out there, and a whole school he'd get to go to once he was eleven... and they'd all know him. Or know of him, more like it.

Harry didn't like people knowing of him, because before it meant the Dursleys talked to them, and they'd look at him like he wasn't supposed to be there and wanted him gone, or look so disappointed when he had no idea what to do to stop them from looking at him like that, especially the teachers or neighbours, and the lady in the public library who'd looked so angry at the torn-up books - all Dudley's fault - and called him a brat and said not to come back again. So he really didn't want people knowing of him, even if it was a bit different with these people.

These were people that read about his parents being heroes in their history books, who maybe read their kid a bedtime story about Harry Potter, who decided it was a good idea to write about an eight-year-old kid swimming with merpeople and fighting dragons and being all these things Harry couldn't hope to be and piling up all these expectations he couldn't possibly live up to. He wasn't sure he could walk around this wizarding world, his parents' world, and deal with the number of people he would disappoint by being just Harry.

It made him a bit angry at Mr Wright, knowing he was the reason Harry now had so many things running through his head and making him nervous about the future, but then he got angry at himself because Mr Wright had done nothing but be incredibly nice since the moment they met. Mr Wright got him away from the Dursleys, and gave him a bedroom and clothes and new glasses and toys and books, he answered all the questions and let Harry sit on his lap to read like Dudley used to do with Aunt Petunia before he got too big, and he gave him a birthday party and gifts and even told Harry he didn't have to say thanks because that's what he should have had all along, but he didn't feel like that most of the time so he only nodded and pretended he didn't feel like every second since he stepped out of Privet Drive was like one of his dreams coming true. Of course, it wasn't his parents that came for him, or the long-haired man or the beardy ones from his dreams, but someone had come. And being angry because this someone told him the truth would be unfair, and he didn't like unfairness.