SIYE Time:20:44 on 1st December 2024 SIYE Login: no | | |
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Be Careful What You Wish For By Dianne
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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:All
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: G
Reviews: 5
Summary: Blow out your candles, you're seventeen. Wish granted!
Hitcount: Story Total: 6269
Disclaimer: Harry Potter Publishing Rights © J.K.R. Note the opinions in this story are my own and in no way represent the owners of this site. This story subject to copyright law under transformative use. No compensation is made for this work.
Author's Notes: A one shot written a very long time ago under my old pen name at another site that I just wanted to put together with my stuff here at SIYE.
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Harry Potter had never looked forward to his birthdays. He had thought in the past, that this birthday would be the one he would celebrate. The birthday when he would at last be free from the hold of the Dursleys. As he sat on the edge of his desk that his legs no longer fit under, but had never been replaced, he wondered if his aunt and uncle had ever even noticed that he’d outgrown it.
The more he reflected upon his almost seventeen years of life, the more he came to realize that no one here in Privet Drive had ever noticed whether he’d grown or not, nor had they ever cared. His bed was too short for his now taller frame and had been for almost two years. His wardrobe did not fit a man size shirt on a hanger in width for it had been Dudley’s when Dudley had been a child.
It was like living in a horrible house of mirrors because in contrast to the stationary objects in his bedroom which were too small for him, all of his clothing was much too large, most of his wardrobe consisting of Dudley’s old hand-me-downs. Harry didn’t fit here. He never had and with just hours until his seventeenth birthday, he wondered if there was any place in the world he would fit.
Hogwarts had always been the closest thing to a home Harry had, but even there, he had either been treated too old or too young by people. Dumbledore had only been trying to protect him by not telling him of the horrible prophecy until the last possible moment when it was already too late and Sirius was dead. Harry didn’t carry the anger he had for Dumbledore’s mistakes. In a way, he knew that no one really truly knew where he belonged or what age a person had to be to be told something so horrible. But now that Dumbledore was dead, Harry realized that he always thought it would have been he who would have seen him through his quest to destroy the remaining Horcruxes and Voldemort.
Harry had two things he wanted to do before his life would take him on the quest for which he had been chosen. He promised Ron and Hermione that he would attend the wedding of Bill and Fleur and after that, he wanted to see Godric’s Hollow and visit his parent’s graves. Watching a wedding ceremony at the Burrow with Ginny there in the bridal party, was going to be one of the hardest things he’d ever have to do. He had still never figured out why she had let him go so easily when he told her that he’d have to stop seeing her. Perhaps he’d never really belonged in her heavenly embrace either. He knew from experience that if something seemed too good to be true, it probably was.
The truth was, that Harry didn’t even feel he belonged in his own skin right now. Nothing was right. Being alone didn’t feel good, but when compared to the awkwardness of being with people who didn’t know what to say to him from one minute to the next, he would choose solitude. If he hadn’t made the promise to come to the Burrow, which he now regretted, he would have headed out for Godric’s Hollow on his own, one second after the chime on the clock announced his coming of age and the end to the blood protection provided to him at Number Four Privet Drive.
Aunt Petunia called up the stairs to him at ten minutes to his birthday. Harry threw the last of his belongings into his trunk preparing to leave this house for the last time. He had no fond memories here to leave behind and no one he would miss, but it felt strange to know as he reached the top of the stairs, that he was looking down at his mother’s sister for the last time.
“Make sure you’ve packed all of your things because you won’t be coming back to get anything you’ve forgotten. Your uncle will discard anything left behind.”
“Uncle Vernon would discard me if I stayed one minute passed my birthday,” Harry said tiredly. He couldn’t muster the venom that would normally have accompanied such a loaded comment. Aunt Petunia for once didn’t go into her usual tirade about having given him clothing and shelter out of the goodness of their hearts. It seemed she couldn’t be bothered.
The clock in the hall gonged twelve times and with each gong, Harry felt his heart speed up a notch. He was going to wait until the last gong had died away and use magic to bring all his things downstairs. Here he was, leaving for the last time and all anyone had to say to him was that he’d better not be taking anything that didn’t belong to him.
Harry noticed that a few rolls of wallpaper, a can of paint and a new throw rug sat at the bottom of the stairs, no doubt to make over Harry’s room once he’d gone. A lump formed in Harry’s throat for reasons even he couldn’t fathom. He had lived in this house for sixteen years on and off and would be erased from its memory in probably less than three hours. He wondered how fast his relatives would forget him, but he could guess. Probably faster than it would take the new paint to dry.
Trunk hovering behind him, Harry turned the door handle slowly. He didn’t know why he was stalling and it annoyed him to feel the need to say goodbye to his aunt, uncle and cousin.
“Well, bye then,” Harry said tentatively.
“Mind that trunk doesn’t scuff my walls,” was the reply given by Aunt Petunia. Harry wanted to say something, but his voice was lost somewhere in his heavy chest right under where his heart felt like it was breaking. He hated himself for feeling this way. Why did he want their love?
The door of Number Four Privet Drive closed with a cold finality and that part of Harry’s life was over. He knew he should be happy but he headed to Mrs Figg’s determined not to show how he really felt. One hundred percent rejected.
Mrs Figg answered the door on the first knock. Harry didn’t feel like making small talk but he didn’t want to be rude either. He just wanted to step through the fireplace, plaster a smile on his face and get though Bill and Fleur’s wedding so he could leave for Godric’s Hollow. Part of him felt like he was running away and part of him felt like he was running to something.
Mrs Figg was not going to let him off easy as he’d hoped. Harry had always been so polite to her that she asked him to stay for tea. When she returned from the kitchen, she was singing happy birthday. When she was finished, Harry felt the edges of his mouth curl at the corners mechanically. He knew he should be grateful, but all he wanted at that moment was to be alone.
“I know you always liked my cats, dear, so look, I made you a cake in the shape of my fluffy,” Mrs Figg said with pride.
Harry could barely swallow the dry cake and he could swear there was pieces of the actual fluffy in it as he pulled a rather disgusting wad of cat fur out of his mouth when Mrs Figg wasn’t looking. The real fluffy walked up and down the coffee table beside the cake, dropping even more fur onto the lumpy white frosting as she sniffed at the little licorice nose and whiskers, meowing plaintively at getting no response to having licked the end of of it affectionately.
“Get a room,” Harry told the cat as Mrs Figg went to get more tea. Harry’s scalding himself trying to drink it quickly had been taken as a desire for more, rather than an attempt to spend as little time at Mrs Figg’s as possible. The cat looked at him reproachfully, as though it had understood what he’d said.
“Oh, alright, alright, I’m sorry,” said Harry, reaching out to stroke fluffy, who started purring automatically and curled up on his lap and went to sleep.
Mrs Figg handed Harry his second cup of tea and she announced that she had almost forgotten something important. She lit a candle and told Harry to make a wish. Harry had never made a wish in his life on his birthday. His tolerance was growing thin. He had nothing against Mrs Figg and her cats and he appreciated her efforts but her house was yet another place where he had never really belonged.
Harry didn’t know why he bothered to actually make the stupid wish. Wishes didn’t come true and he knew it.
I wish I could just be alone, Harry thought desperately in his mind.
As Harry blew out the candle, the windows of Mrs Figg’s house imploded and his scar was filled with fiery pain.
Wish granted, said the voice that had always filled Harry with a cold dread.
Harry raised himself to the broken window ledges, past the tattered curtains that billowed uselessly in the frames. Mrs Figg screamed at him to get back inside as he ran out the door screaming his aunt’s name.
Smoke billowed over the entire neighborhood as Harry ran down the block back toward Privet Drive choking on thick smoke.
He was stopped dead in his tracks when a large piece of wood came hurtling at him as he rounded the corner and what was left of the houses on Privet Drive came into view. Harry raised his arms over his head in a protective stance and blasted the piece of wood into splinters with his wand. Something hard hit him on the head and as he rubbed the forming lump he looked down to see what it was. A heavy brass door knocker with the number four and Dursley engraved upon it, lay at his feet.
Harry knew he should run back to Mrs Figg’s, but he couldn’t. Before he could even feel his feet carrying him back inside the burning house of his aunt and uncle, he could hear enraged voices.
“He’s not here! We took too long to locate the safe house.” Harry was in shock. Number Four Privet Drive had never been a safe house for him as far as he was concerned. As he listened in numb silence, hiding behind what remained of the cupboard under the stairs, he heard someone announce that someone remained alive.
Harry clamped his hand to his mouth as a jet of green light filled the hall from the kitchen.
As a burly Death Eater stalked by the cupboard under the stairs, Harry brought what was left of the ceiling down upon him. The chess piece that he’d left in the little nook for all these years, snapped under Harry’s foot, disappearing into the carpet of ashes on Aunt Petunia’s once spotless tile. He scrambled out of the cupboard, running toward the front of the house where the door would have been. The front step was gone and he teetered on the edge for a moment. As he caught himself, he just dodged a curse from another Death Eater. He put the man in a Full Body Bind Curse and turned to look at the house once more. He saw Dudley sprawled in the front hall where he must have crawled, half alive from the blast and had been finished off by the Killing Curse.
Harry’s legs felt like rubber as he ran almost blinded by the thick smoke mixed with the heavy fog that hung all over Little Whinging now that the Dementors were breeding. He felt sure he was having a bad nightmare when he stood in front of Mrs Figg’s house once more to see the Dark Mark hovering above it.
“Harry, get down!” shouted a voice he recognized as Mr Weasley’s. A curse shot above his head toward a Death Eater who had been pursuing him from the Dursleys. As Harry dropped to his knees, Mr Weasley was hit with a curse that glowed purple all around his body. He looked as though he was choking before hitting the ground without so much as putting his arms out to break his fall and lay still.
“NO!” Harry shouted sending a curse at the cloaked figure that had attacked Mr Weasley. The cloak flew off as the man hit the brick exterior of Mrs Figg’s house. White blond hair fell from the hood and Harry gazed upon the wide open eyes of Lucius Malfoy. He was dead. Harry could only guess that his neck had broken upon impact with the wall. Azkaban must have been breached for the special occasion of Harry's seventeenth birthday.
More and more voices that Harry recognized could be heard amid the screaming of sirens from Muggle emergency vehicles. He stumbled back to where Mr Weasley lay barely breathing. He stood shakily but protectively over the fallen man who had saved his life as Aurors slowly gained control over the Death Eaters.
Harry stunned two more Death Eaters who had tried to attack Mad Eye Moody and Tonks who were duelling bravely. He had forgotten to watch his own back for a moment as he was grabbed from behind and he knew that the Death Eater was preparing to take him away. He belonged to Voldemort. Mad Eye Moody sent a curse at the Death Eater, who used Harry as a shield. Moody cursed loudly as both the Death Eater and Harry screamed in agony.
Harry felt his abdomen slice open as he fell to the ground, eyes wide open in shock. He landed on his back clutching his hands to his abdomen to try to stem the flow of blood but he didn’t cry out again. One after another, Harry watched the Death Eaters step up the fight as Tonks went down right before Moody did. The Death Eater who lay next to him was making gurgling noises as blood flowed in torrents from an open gash on his neck. He grabbed Harry’s arm once more, still miraculously trying to choke him even as his own life wasted into the soil through his own wound. A flash of green light sped toward them, just as Harry mustered his remaining strength and heaved the Death Eater into its path.
There was no noise of pain. The Death Eater simply ceased to live. Harry could feel the man’s hand cold on his shoulder where he had anchored it to finish choking him. He closed his eyes, grasping the hand and pulling its clawed fingers from his shirt, tearing it as the hand let go, reluctant even in death. Harry couldn’t tell if it was a trick of his failing sight or if the man had suddenly become transparent as his grip was released. The Death Eater’s body vanished, no doubt he had planned a Side-along Apparation that had been interrupted temporarily by the Killing Curse sent by Moody. The body would arrive at its master’s feet splinched because it had vanished piece by piece, the grotesque image of the man’s face disappearing last. Still, his fate would have been the same from his master for arriving without his prize. Perhaps the Avada Kavada was a kindess bestowed upon this unworthy one after all.
Harry was passing out as he saw a cloaked figure pause, as if considering him for a moment. He was too weak to fight anymore but his head fell back to the pavement with relief as the figure walked off away from the fighting, Death Eaters falling in his discreet wake as he fled. Harry could have sworn he’d seen a lock of greasy black hair fly around in a wisp of wind from beneath the cloak and there was something about the ominous billow of it that looked sickly familiar. As Harry’s eyes closed, he felt a burning hatred rise in him.
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Harry could hear voices all around him. Someone was crying, someone was shouting orders. He tasted a bitter potion before falling into dreams as he heard someone saying that it wouldn’t be fair if he died on his birthday.
Harry’s dreams took him back to Mrs Figg’s place. He blew out the candle time and time again, each time with the same wish he had uttered earlier. ‘I just wish to be alone.’
With each blowing out of the candle, a puff of smoke took Mrs Figg and each Dursley in turn, but then the dream turned even more horrible. Each subsequent wish to be alone, killed one after another of his friends before his eyes. Ron, Hermione, Mr Weasley, Remus Lupin and the list went on. He wished he’d never made that wish as the evil, taunting voice in his unconscious mind came to him again. ‘You should be careful what you wish for, Potter, you might just get it.’
Harry struggled desperately to wake up. When he finally managed, he almost made the mistake of wishing he hadn’t because the pain was intense in his abdomen which was heavily bandaged. He opened his eyes and even without his glasses on, he could see that he was utterly alone.
“No!” Harry screamed, struggling to get up despite the pain of what felt like a thousand daggers piercing his stomach over and over again. He was at Grimmauld Place. He made it to the top of the stairs and could hear voices speaking in hushed tones in the kitchen below. He knew Mrs Figg and his relatives were dead, but hearing it spoke aloud was more terrible than he could ever have imagined. He slid down the railing hands flying to his face, forgetting the careful hold they’d had on his injured stomach.
He tried to drown out the list of casualties and make it back to his room but his energy was spent. Mr Weasley was grievously wounded but would recover in St Mungos. Tonks was here at Grimmauld Place recovering and Moody was one of the walking wounded who was downstairs still trying to work despite Madame Pomfrey’s dire warnings of hurting himself more.
As Harry listened to the grim news, his nightmares kept playing over and over again in his head. Each time he imagined the one where Ginny fell, enveloped in a green light, he would curl into a tighter ball on the dusty carpet, and it was like this that Ginny found him.
“Harry!” Ginny cried, calling downstairs for help to get Harry back to bed.
Fred reached the top of the stairs, his voice full of emotion. “Watch’a doin’ down there for? You’re supposed to be in bed for at least another two days.”
“Madame Pomfrey was supposed to use a Bed Bind Charm on him. I can’t believe she would forget about that,” George said. “Everyone knows Harry never stays put when he’s hurt.”
Madame Pomfrey came up the steps two at a time, looking exhausted. Fred and George carried Harry back to his bed. Harry writhed in pain though they were very gentle. No one had ever seen him more beside himself with anguish and they couldn’t blame him, but they didn’t fully understand all of his pain. He felt like his soul had vanished in pieces just like the body of the Death Eater who had lain beside him.
Ginny’s eyes filled with tears as Madame Pomfrey healed Harry's stomach with her wand again, warning him to stay still in order for it to heal properly. Ginny held a small glass of Calming Potion for him but Harry didn’t take it. He just stared at her as if he couldn’t believe she was really there. For in his dreams, Ginny had died with the single puff of a dying candle flame, caused by a simple wish he’d made.
“You gonna drink that mate, or are we going to have to force you,” George asked as gently as he could.
Harry drank the potion in a single gulp but it did nothing to scour the terrifying images in his head of losing his last hope for happiness. He lay there thinking, coming to the conclusion that being alone now, was worse then losing her later in death. Having Ginny alive but continuing to shun her for fear of what may or not happen, suddenly didn’t make a lot of sense to him.
Remus Lupin helped Tonks to a seat in Harry's room. This couple was a living example of what Harry had just been thinking, for together they flourished, while alone, they had withered.
Suddenly the thought struck Harry as the pain medication kicked in, that Ginny may not take him back after what he’d done to her.
Very few people had seen Harry cry and to give him some privacy, most of the people left again whispering that they would come back later.
It seemed ridiculous to ask Harry what was the matter. He’d lost the only family he’d had, not once but twice this day. Once by final rejection and once by physical death and though there was no love loss there, Harry was a decent person. Having the Dursley’s die was not what he’d wanted. He’d never been particularly close with Mrs Figg either, but the dear Squib had been doing something nice for him when no one else in the Muggle world ever had. And then there was the dream. The dream where everyone he knew died one after the other with every candle that he blew out.
Madame Pomfrey had slipped some Dreamless Sleep Potion into his Calming Potion and couldn’t figure out why sleep would not come to him. Harry felt drained and weak and would have liked to just let go and fall away, but he could not stop the evil taunt wish granted, everytime he closed his eyes and dreamed of his birthday wish. They had been too real and he had no one to tell that somehow, Voldemort knew what he’d wished for. Dumbledore would have been the only one who would have believed him anyway, and hearing about his wish to be left alone would just hurt anyone else.
“What time is it?” Harry suddenly rasped frantically. The smoke had made his throat very raw.
Ginny told Harry it was almost midnight. His horrible birthday would be over in minutes. When he started shouting slurred instructions that no one could understand through the almost irresistible pull of the Sleeping Potion, Ginny thought he was having a nervous breakdown.
“A cake! I need a birthday cake! With candles!” Harry yelled, sitting up and crying out in pain with the effort.
“Yes, of course Luv, we’ll have a nice birthday cake for you once you’re feeling better. You’re not allowed to eat yet until your stomach heals,” Ginny told him, placing her hands on his shoulders to get him to lie back down.
Harry was completely inconsolable and no one could control him without hurting him further. Remus Lupin came in and tried to calm him down to no avail.
“Remus, please. You have to understand! I hurt her just like you did to Tonks, don’t you see? I need a birthday cake!”
The potions in Harry’s body were engulfing him in confusion and making him show emotion that he normally would have pushed down where no one would be able to see it. His shoulders shook as everyone watched him fall apart, helpless to do anything for him but hope that he would cry himself to sleep. It was agonizing.
“Please, Ron!” Harry sobbed to Ron as Remus prevented him from getting up. “If I don't make a wish, she won’t send me cards anymore that sing, his eyes are as green as a fresh pickled toad!"
Harry’s eyes fluttered and he felt the edges of dreams pulling him and watched with his half closed eyes as the candle on that damned cake was relit in his mind to doom someone else he cared for.
Ron’s eyes were glassy with tears as Hermione stood shaking beside him. He’d witnessed some of Harry’s worst nightmares, but this was much, much worse and Ron hoped that it was just the injuries that were tormenting his best friend so much and that with time and rest, he would heal physically and mentally. It was hard to watch and Ron had had enough.
Harry’s last hope to get through to someone who had known him perhaps better than anyone else save only one, left the room. Harry slumped back down onto the pillows unable to tell anyone why he needed this cake. He couldn’t think of the words and even if he did, he would be told it was just a dream.
Harry kept asking the time and Ginny indulged him by telling him, praying that he’d just go to sleep. She promised she would make him a singing card, but it did little to settle him down. He held onto her hand as the last five minutes of his birthday ticked by. It was going to be a long night and most everyone had come back into his room to sit it out with him.
Fleur was in the kitchen preparing to start work on her wedding cake once she was finished doing the dishes. She had really been pulling her weight during these dark times and decorating the lovely cake was an escape from reality for her. Ron walked into the kitchen and headed toward the cake, but Fleur cut him off shaply.
“You must be careful Ronald you will ruin ze masterpiece,” Fleur warned.
Bloody hell, it’s like trying to get past a Veela guarding a treasure, Ron thought, mesmerized by her beauty, as he reminded himself that Fleur was part Veela.
Once again proving that one cannot judge a book by its cover, Fleur obligingly gave the top layer of the wedding cake to Ron when he explained what bad shape Harry was in.
“The man wanted a cake and bloody hell, he’s getting one,” announced Ron, striding in with what was unmistakably the top of Bill and Fleur’s wedding cake that he’d swept the bride and groom off of and replaced with Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans to form the words Happy Birthday Harry on it instead.
Harry was dancing on the edge of consciousness and was losing, but he managed to look into Ron’s face and though Ron didn’t know why Harry wanted this cake, it was his, no questions asked. Ron lit the candles, which were huge tapers he’d stolen from brackets along the walls as he ran back to Harry’s room. Anything if it would just get Harry to rest so that he could heal.
Remus helped Harry raise himself enough to blow the candles out as he looked at Ron with gratitude and love of a dear brother.
“Make a wish, luv,” Ginny whispered through her tears.
“I don’t want to be alone, Ginny. I wish not to be left all alone,” Harry said, as his sides hurt from the heaving sobs that he could not stop.
“Wish granted, Harry,” said Ginny, as she placed her lips on his, tasting the bitter salt from his tears. He was squeezing her hands so tightly now that she knew he’d never let her go again.
Harry looked into Ginny’s eyes and she smiled at him and told him that she wasn’t going anywhere. Ron and Hermione sat down on either side of the bed as Ginny sat on the mattress beside Harry. Harry’s hands left Ginny’s for only a brief moment as he reached out to take Ron and Hermione’s hands for a minute.
Harry’s eyes strayed to Ron as they were closing and Ron smiled through his own tears.“You’re welcome, mate,” Ron told Harry sincerely, though he still didn’t know why Harry had to have a cake right then.
The clock chimed its midnight greeting of a new day. The worst Birthday of Harry’s life was over, but he’d gotten his wish, and as Ginny hummed the tune from the fresh picked toad Valentine she’d sent Harry years earlier despite the many people in the room, she knew she’d gotten her wish too.
Harry looked around the room as Madame Pomfrey finally managed to get to him to take another dose of Calming Potion. No one was leaving. Everyone made themselves comfortable right there in Sirius’ old room. The pain ebbed as Ginny intertwined her fingers in his and lay next to him. From now on, he would be more careful what he wished for, and with that sobering thought, he allowed himself some much needed rest. He would never isolate himself again as his quest for the Horcruxes began anew.
For love is the most powerful weapon of all.
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