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For @thethreebroomsticksficfest microfic event - A Very Harry Birthday
***
Harry is six. He hates birthdays. He hates the extra pang of loneliness that accompanies his own in contrast with the lavish gifts and extra love that’s heaped upon everyone else. When Harry lays his head down the evening before he turns seven, he hates the way he misses his faceless parents more than ever.
Harry is sixteen. He likes birthdays. He likes the warmth of Mrs. Weasley’s cooking, extra special for him. He likes picking out gifts for Ron and Hermione for their birthdays and watching their faces light up when they open them.
Harry is twenty-six. He loves birthdays. He loves going to the Burrow with the ever-expanding Weasley family and watching Molly and Arthur being surrounded by a sea of children and grandchildren as they blow out their candles. He loves making breakfast in bed for Ginny on her birthday.
Harry loves looking on in wonder as his children demolish their first birthday cakes, ones he got up extra early to make from scratch, a smile spread across his face all the while.
A not-quite-microfic written for @thethreebroomsticksficfest A Very Harry Birthday mini event! Happy birthday Harry!
Harry steps into his Year 5 classroom, tucking his too-large, dingy white shirt into his equally oversized grey trousers. His glasses slide down the bridge of his nose and he pushes them back, looking up at the colorful calendar next to the blackboard.
“Move!” Harry is knocked to the floor by Piers Polkiss, Dudley’s rat-faced friend. Harry deflates; he expected a Dudley-free classroom, as Aunt Petunia demanded her Ickle Diddykins be placed with Mrs Croft, the sought-after Cedar class teacher. Harry is in the Holly class with Miss Turner, a new teacher, who doesn’t notice one of her pupils is rubbing his scraped elbow.
Harry stands, only to be pushed against the wall by another one of Dudley’s friends, Gordon, who laughs and finds a seat next to Piers.
“Is everything all right?” asks a wispy voice. Miss Turner fiddles with her big, beaded necklace and blinks down at Harry. He peers around her, where Piers and Gordon are eyeing him threateningly.
He won’t say a word.
“Yes, Miss Turner,” Harry replies dully. “I slipped when I was looking at the . . .”
“Calendar?”
Harry nods and turns to face the grid, noticing his name printed in one of the squares.
“Why is my name here?” he asks, pointing to the square. His Year 4 teacher always put his name on the blackboard if he misbehaved; Aunt Petunia would lock him in the cupboard all night.
Miss Turner frowns. “Your birthday isn’t on the 31st?”
Harry glances at the calendar once more. He finds Piers’s name in the square reserved for 28 July. An American film about dinosaurs was released that day; Dudley and Piers went to the cinema for it. They returned to taunt Harry, saying that an animated orphan was far better than a real one.
Swallowing the memory, he counts the squares. If Miss Turner’s calendar is correct, his ninth birthday was only three days later.
“I didn’t know I had a birthday.”
“Everyone has a birthday,” Miss Turner says, confused. “Did you forget?”
Other boys and girls are watching them, falling silent. Harry feels his cheeks grow hot. He knew he had to have a birthday, but Aunt Petunia told him she didn’t know when it was, which is why he couldn’t have a birthday party or presents.
“I forgot,” he lies, as Piers and Gordon snicker at each other. Miss Turner shrugs and nudges him toward an open seat near the front.
The school bell rings only a few moments later, sparing Harry from further embarrassment. He keeps his gaze on the date shown in the grid, memorizing it so he won’t forget. 31 July 1980 is my birthday, he thinks repeatedly, wondering what that day was like for his parents. He knows they died when he was already over a year old.
Had his birthday been celebrated once, when they were alive?
“Harry Potter!”
Harry blinks up at Miss Turner. She holds out a red pencil, topped with a star-shaped eraser, wrapped with a golden ribbon. It has a card attached to it, with “Happy Birthday!” printed in big, bold letters.
“Here you are,” Miss Turner says, handing him the pencil. “We’re celebrating everyone who had birthdays in July and August.” She moves onto the next student, Gemma Rollins, whose birthday was two weeks before the start of term. Harry holds the pencil gingerly, the only birthday gift he’s received (that he knows of). He chooses not to write with it. It’s special, just for him, something Dudley can’t take away.
But Piers can take it away, and by lunch, it’s no longer in Harry’s possession. By the end of the day, Gordon snaps it in half and tears the star-shaped eraser in two. The card is in shreds, carried off by the wind.
Harry knows better than to complain. Now that he knows his birthday, he can tell Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon. He won’t get much for his birthday, if Christmas is anything to go by, but something is better than nothing.
It’s much later that day, after Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon have heard about Dudley’s marvelous first day of school, that Harry brings up his discovery. He’s done washing the dishes and finds Aunt Petunia in the garden, trimming the hydrangeas.
“Aunt Petunia?”
“Have you broken something?” she says, snipping a stem with a scowl.
“I found out when my birthday is.” He pushes his glasses up his nose, wishing they fit his face better. “The 31st of July. My teacher, Miss Turner, has a calendar with our birthdays on it.”
Aunt Petunia flinches. “It must be correct.”
“If I know my birthday now, can I get pre—”
“Only good, well-behaved boys get presents,” she snaps, twisting the head of a hydrangea clean off its stem. “Father Christmas doesn’t bring presents to naughty children. Why would naughty boys and girls get presents for their birthdays?”
Harry almost tells her he did get a birthday gift, a pencil, but Piers took it away. “Yes, Aunt Petunia,” he says miserably.
“Go to your cupboard. You’re going to get filthy if you stay out here.”
He shuffles away, avoiding Dudley’s chocolatey smirk and Uncle Vernon’s glare, and throws himself on the thin mattress in the cupboard. He feels something jabbing his side and hopes it’s not a mouse. Turning over, Harry sees the golden ribbon. The red pencil is on his bed, whole and untouched, with its star-shaped eraser and attached card.
With a grin, Harry stores the gift in an empty shoebox at the foot of his bed. He falls asleep, dreaming of flying, a gentle, tinkling laugh, and warm, hazel eyes crinkled with joy.
...
*The Land Before Time (1988) really was released on 28 July 1989 in the UK.
Much gratitude to @thethreebroomsticksficfest for their birthday celebration! And as always, to @greenhousethree for kickass beta.
Read on ao3 or above and below the cut.
He is one and he will not remember it, his chubby fist in Bathilda’s raspberry jam-filled cake, his little brow furrowing later because it’s too many kisses when they celebrate without her watching. His parents have the same wish: they don’t say it out loud. He can’t wish for anything, but then again, he doesn’t need to.
He is two and he doesn’t really know what he has or what he’s missing, doesn’t feel it through the veil in a way he understands. It isn’t a song. It isn’t a candle. But something that’s always there is somehow more there, this day.
He is three. Four. Five. Sixseveneightnineten. Every September, his birthday goes on the class chart at the bottom of a month that’s already done. He’s seen enough things that he could wish, perhaps, for some of them. But he can’t be too greedy and he can’t seem to decide.
He is eleven and the door to a cold shack falls to the ground.
He is twelve and thirteen and he still might have dreamed it all. Fourteen, hiding four cakes under the floorboards.
He is fifteen and none of it matters. Sixteen, and most of it matters even less.
He is seventeen and her kiss will be what holds him steady as he dies.
And then….
It’s impossible. But he is eighteen.
Nineteen. Twenty. Twenty one. He is older than his parents. He has a child of his own and it makes sense to him now; he knows how they loved him because he knows how he loves James.
He’s thirty and the kitchen is snowing in July because Albus didn’t mean to make the flour bag explode.
Several sweet sunlit years pass, just enough birthdays and never enough kisses; the baby who once had just a scar and a blanket wakes each morning gently baffled by the richness of his life. His children grow, the world moves on, the next generation is born without a war in it.
He is one hundred and seventy, satisfied and bone tired, remembering old words about the well-organized mind. He understands, this time, when he feels them through the veil. He makes a final wish, and soon another door falls down.
Here’s my contribution to the Very Harry Birthday fest! @thethreebroomsticksficfest
Of all the less-than-ideal aspects of being an Auror (and there were quite a few, as Harry had come to realize), stakeouts were objectively one of the worst. Boring, uncomfortable, and always a little too familiar. The protective charms, the hidden shelter, staring out into the night waiting for something to happen. This particular suspect had also chosen to hide in a cave right on the coast, because of course he had.
Harry twirled his wand through the dirt at his feet, the gentle breeze ruffling his hair as the sea lapped at the rocks below him, crashing gently in the background.
He checked his watch. 12:04. He had been 22 for a full four minutes and still had three hours of sitting out in the middle of nowhere left to do. His mind wandered, as it always did in these situations, to thoughts of Ginny, and how it would be so much better if she were here, huddled under a blanket with him, watching the stars.
a birthday microfic for harry james potter (b. july 31st 1980) ⚡
It’s true that, since the age of eleven, he’s mostly had quiet birthdays, so it seems only right that he turns twenty waking up at 12 Grimmauld Place, Monday 31st July 2000, to an absolutely ear-splitting racket downstairs in the kitchen, clashes of pots and pans and the dull throb of bass and Hermione crying ‘Ron!’ and Ron, blasé, going, ‘I only dropped one egg, Hermione, he’s not going to want to eat twelve eggs - ’
‘You know when you said this year for your birthday you wanted a bit of peace and quiet?’ Ginny, voice hungover, hoarse. Her body is warm and gloriously bare as he pulls her to him, sunlight muscling its way in through the dusty curtains. ‘Knew we should’ve just stayed at ours, Apparated over.’ She pretends to examine him through puffy eyes. ‘You know, I reckon you don’t look a day over nineteen.’
When they finally make it downstairs (‘can’t we stay in bed? There won’t be any crimes on your birthday, out of respect’), the kitchen’s hot and noisy, an absolute tip, bacon fat and baked bean dribbles on every surface, smell of burnt toast that’s apparently Seamus’ fault (‘Fucked up my one job. Don’t evict me, yeah?’) They’ve got the Muggle radio on, the presenter's husky tones talking up Robbie Williams’ new song, out that morning, something about a rock and a DJ. ‘Happy birthday!’ beams Neville, handing him a coffee and a new potted plant he fears will be dead by Christmas. Dean, munching noisily on his cereal, chucks him a postcard from Luna promising to name the first snorkack she finds after him (‘She’s such a cheapskate,’ Ron grumbles. ‘Wish I’d known I could’ve gotten you an imaginary gift.’) Hermione continues her post-war birthday tradition of bursting into tears at the sight of him. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he says fondly, slings an arm around her as he opens a card covered in crayon squiggles (‘from Teddy’) as Hermione soaks his t-shirt through.
There actually aren’t that many crimes, that day - not new ones, anyway, so he and Ron stroll through a bustling Diagon Alley then sit in the office pretending to do paperwork in the afternoon, magical sun streaming in. They’ve got the Muggle radio working, Radio 1 milking the Robbie single for all it’s worth. ‘It’s good, this,’ says Ron, approvingly, turning it up, drumming his quill on the desk to the punchy synths. ‘What does ‘pimpin’ ain’t easy’ mean, though, is that a Muggle thing?’
After work, they meet Hermione in the crowded atrium, only half-listening to her detailed recap of a day spent deciding where a comma ought to go in some draft legislation (‘it’s actually really very important - yes, fine, we did decide to keep it where it was in the end, that's not the point’). It’s gorgeous out, twenty five, that perfect London sunny, pints weather. So they walk back up through central, past the laughing crowds of students in Holborn, loud braying bankers in suits spilling out of Soho pubs, roaring double deckers, the honk of car horns, sounds of the city. Inevitably, they stop for a half at a noisy pub off Tottenham Court Road, toast to the three of them. ‘I’d say for old time’s sake,’ says Ron over the revellers, ‘but I think I prefer the new times, don’t you?’
Ginny’s already waiting for them, got their old favourite table at the back of the restaurant, round the corner, tucked away. Her hair’s down and her smile’s bright, looking impossibly fit in a new dress he’s already imagining on their bedroom floor. She’s talked the owner into letting her decorate this little corner of the restaurant they've got to themselves (‘Hermione, it’s fine, a bit of Snitch bunting won’t break the Statute of Secrecy, it barely even moves’). They order too much pasta and far too much wine, laugh too loud then shush each other when the waiters start to glare. He keeps his arm around Ginny's chair while her hand wanders to his lap, fingertips drawing little maps to nowhere on his knee.
The pub on the corner’s not heaving, it being a Monday, and they order three pints and a tap water (‘I can’t be hungover! We have to talk about that comma again tomorrow!’) A woman with a kind face tips her hat to him with a wink; a man in a cloak mutters ‘bless you’ on his way out. For the most part, though, they’re left alone to piss about together in a corner booth, reminisce about birthdays past (‘if you’ve never been poisoned on your birthday, don’t talk to me’). When the Robbie song comes on again Ron chucks the barman a couple of quid to get him to turn it up, full volume. ‘Come on, dance with me,’ he begs Hermione, and she says Ron! and we can’t! and there are people here! but goes anyway, lets him twirl her around til she’s dizzy. ‘You heard Mr Williams,’ says Ron sharply, tugging Harry to his feet after Ginny bounces up to steal a dance with Hermione. ‘It’s time to move your body!'
‘Is this the kind of peace and quiet you were after?’ Ginny shouts at him over Robbie, grinning wickedly as he scoops her up, drunk and giddy, kisses her til Ron yelps in disgust.
It’s only at closing time that Hermione shrieks at the top of her voice that they’ve forgotten to do the sodding cake. So they pile out, into the lamplit street, watched on by two owls perched on the roof across the square, a curious tabby cat who pads atop a nearby garden wall. Ron digs out the Deluminator, sends lights dancing around the leafy street as Hermione pulls a cake tin and candles from of her bag. ‘Make a wish!’ she urges him, and he’s too well-trained by now not to do as she says.
They all grow quiet as they eat, crumbs pooling in the palms of their hands. When at last they’ve dawdled out the last of the day, he hugs his best mates goodbye, watching as their hands wind together and they vanish off into the night with a soft crack. And then it’s just them, just two. He brushes loose the crumbs and pulls her close, rests his head on top of hers, listens to the dull sounds of the city in the distance. ‘They’re good, birthdays,’ he says. ‘Reckon I’d like a few more of them, what d’you reckon?’
‘Sounds good,’ she mumbles, drunk and sleepy and warm in his arms. ‘I do use all my own wishes wishing for that, so you better bloody had stick around.'
He smiles into her hair, glowing rich red in the light of the streetlamp. He lets his eyes follow the side street leading from the empty square, out to the corner of Pentonville Road, the path downhill that would take him on to the station. Can’t imagine how he ever considered it: doing it, boarding a train.
‘Not sure we managed peace and quiet, though,' she yawns, into his chest. ‘Maybe next year.’
‘No chance,’ he says. ‘Not even when we’re really, really old.’ Remembers the plan to decorate their bedroom floor with that dress, then, so takes her arm and starts to think of home, just as the tabby cat, satisfied, slips behind a garden gate, off, and out of sight.
AN: happy birthday to our golden boy. may you always have peace and never have quiet. obviously the real soundtrack to this microfic is robbie williams' masterpiece rock DJ - released, as this fic notes, on harry's 20th birthday in the year 2000. but sid sriram's do the dance hits the spot too (no i'm not ready for peace yet, deep in my soul / green light, your green eyes). thank you for @thethreebroomsticksficfest for sending our boy on his next trip around the sun in style! ⚡⚡⚡
a very happy birthday to everyone's best girl, harry james potter.
in honour of the birthday event that @thethreebroomsticksficfest are doing for you, have a little microfic...
Traditions
He’d been at the Burrow for her birthday before. But perhaps he’d been too preoccupied with the War and all that shit to notice the rituals which surrounded it - the special song and the cake and ice-cream and the specific order of the day - until this one, when Ginny turned seventeen in a world grieving and rejoicing all at once.
He squeezed her hand as she blew out the candles and slipped unobtrusively into the house. They would understand. They knew that he was still a stranger to the easy intimacy of family life.
They were too polite to ask, but Molly’s pinched lips whenever the Dursleys were mentioned told him as clearly as if she had shouted it that she knew there had been no cake and ice-cream waiting for him on his birthday. He was grateful, in a way, that nobody had ever forced him to confess it out loud: ‘well, I don’t have any birthday traditions because I’m an orphan and I was raised by people who detested me simply for existing.’
He was grateful, in a way, that nobody could entirely understand - and, therefore, that they were too nervous about upsetting him to say anything - that being an orphan is like being a palimpsest. That your life is a constant search for something - a flicker of ink beneath the layers, a single blood-cell in the bone-marrow, a ripped stitch still clinging to a hem - that ties you to your family. He wondered if his dad had liked treacle tart, or if his mum had such a distinctive facial expression that she could be recognised through Polyjuice, or if either of them talked with their hands. He wished he’d asked Sirius. He wished he had time to.
He wished he’d remembered more things about Lupin, so that when Teddy asked him the same - ‘did he talk like me, or walk like me, or think like me’ - he could say something.
He wished he’d known more orphans.
Other than the obvious one.
‘What if we’d sat down and said, “hey, having no parents is a fucking trip”? What would have happened then?’ he said aloud, lying on his back on Ginny’s rumpled sheets.
The real answer, of course, was that he’d have been murdered. But, in his fantasy world, they might have compared the faded manuscripts of their ancestry and Harry might have learned of a kindred spirit, engaged in a desperate quest to share something other than a face and a name with a father, or a strange language with a mother. A quest to know if the magpieishness or the love of monologuing ran in the blood. A quest to, quite literally, solve riddles.
There can be even fewer birthday traditions in orphanages than in the Dursleys’ square little house.
Perhaps orphans sit on narrow windowsills and watch the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, and imagine they are for them.
Harry rose and looked out from the window, across the burnished fields of high-summer barley, and tried to imagine that the molten patchwork of the landscape was gleaming just for him; that the world had decked herself in the strawberry ice-cream streak of the evening sky and the golden-snitch glitter of the countryside in order to celebrate him.
@thethreebroomsticksficfest is having a microfic celebration for Harry Potter's birthday... but as usual my fic isn't very micro. here you go anyway.
The Underside
Harry's eyes keep meeting Uncle Vernon's in the rearview mirror. It's two days before his tenth birthday. They've only been driving for forty-five minutes and Dudley's already been sick twice. Harry's pretty sure his aunt and uncle think it's his fault, somehow, but he's not the one who piled Dudley's plate with a half-dozen fried eggs this morning.
Weird things have been happening around him, though. That's the only reason they've brought him along instead of locking him up—he'd prepared himself to spend the day sipping underbrewed tea and letting his eyes glaze over at thirty years of snapshots of Mrs. Figg's dead cats, but when his aunt marched him over this morning, the old woman never answered her door. One of her cats was in the front window, switching its tail to and fro as she knocked and knocked, as if to say, time's ticking, Petunia, you're going to be late—
So, after a whispered argument in the kitchen—no, that boy's not to be trusted, we'll come home to the whole place in flames—his uncle dragged him by the arm to the backseat of the car. Dudley's brought along so many road-snacks and toy dumptrucks that Harry only has half a seat to squeeze himself into, but it's sort of nice. He doesn't get many long rides. Past the rows of houses and the repeating grids of car parks there are farms like he's seen in storybooks, rumpled over the hills, ribbed like green corduroy with cabbages in rows. Cows kneel in the shade of trees. What a life it would be, Harry thinks, to wander all day in the grass of a field, bothered only by the odd horsefly. Eating his fill. Surrounded by friends.
—
While Vernon's at the convention, Petunia takes them to the pleasure pier. Dudley tries for one of the big prizes, a stuffed gorilla that looks rather like his dad, but his strategy is to hurl the ball with as much destructive force as possible and he's swiftly banned from the Coconut Shy. He does the same at the pingpong ball and fishbowls, whipping the ball like he's trying to murder a fish, and while Petunia is arguing with the teenaged game-operator, Harry boredly tosses one of Dudley's unused pingpongs. It plops right into the centre of a fishbowl, where a longfinned red-and-gold fish circles it and issues a surprised silver bubble from its puckering mouth.
Petunia's convinced Harry cheated (and he's not entirely sure, actually, that he didn't. He's had a lot of weird luck and near-misses, lately. Last week, Dudley tried to hit him with a water balloon and it bounced off Harry's chest, hit Dudley square in the crotch, and made it look like he'd wet his trousers) so Dudley gets the fish, of course. It's in a few inches of water inside a plastic bag. He swings it around violently as they walk through the arcade.
I'm sorry, Harry thinks at the fish. I didn't mean to make things worse for you.
At the beach, while Petunia is buttering Dudley with suncream, Harry walks into the chilly water until it's up to his chest. The swells lift him off his feet, a bit, and the sand feels warm when he scrunches his toes. When he stretches out his arms and legs to float on his back, it's like the sea is cradling him, holding him up, and after a moment the sensation is uncomfortable for some reason so he curls into a ball and sinks under the surface, pinching his nose.
It burns a little when he opens his eyes, but he's instantly stricken by how peaceful it is under there and he doesn't want to close them. Above his head, there's the sparkling tumult of the waves. Below, the sand moves slow, like it's sleepy. There are the legs of other swimmers, kicking, oblivious. There's a spiky little crab with an orange pill-bottle for a shell. There's a grumpy-looking grey-green fish with rippling fins, flat and creeping along the bottom like it's trying not to be noticed. Harry wishes he could do that. He's always drawing attention to himself, blurting out a sarky thought when he ought to have just kept quiet, having some lucky thing happen that makes Dudley wail and Vernon haul him by the collar across the house and into his cupboard. If only he could stay here, in this secret world underneath the waves, where no-one on the shore even knew he was there...
A cloud of minnows, moving as one, drifts like a shadow in front of his face. They all turn sideways and seem to look at him with their iridescent eyes. He looks back, wondering if he's disturbing them, his chest starting to prickle as he runs out of air.
Before he can push off the sand and come up, all the little minnows rush at him, stroking their cool bodies along his cheeks, wriggling through his hair. He shuts his eyes, but just as quickly they're gone. He turns to see the grey ghost of them vanishing into the blue distance.
Then a hand is in his hair, yanking, and he's swallowing salt, breaking the surface and blind in the afternoon sun.
"You can't drown today, you knob, Dad's got a very exclusive dinner with a client," Dudley shouts in his face. Harry sputters, there's water stinging in his nose, and on the shore he can see Aunt Petunia waving her sunhat at the two of them, stepping along the lacy hem of the water like she's afraid to let it touch her feet.
—
"The double-augur—that's the crown jewel of the Heavy-Duty line," Vernon is telling Petunia, but in the rearview his eyes are on Harry like he thinks he's up to something. Harry's skin still smells faintly of salt. Dudley's plopped his goldfish onto the pile of plastic dumptrucks like it's just another toy. Harry picks it up and peers into the plastic bag; it's hard to tell because the car is moving, but it looks like it might already be dead.
"Cheap ruddy fish," Dudley sulks. "Didn't even last 'til dinner."
"All cheats, those game operators," Vernon huffs.
"We'll get you a better fish tomorrow, Popkin," cooes Petunia. "A couple of fighting fish, maybe, wouldn't that be fun?"
"I'd do myself in too if I had to share a room with you," Harry mutters. The back of Vernon's neck goes purple, and he nearly crashes the car shouting at Harry, and Dudley pinches his arm hard enough to leave a bruise, but Harry finds he's not bothered. He closes his eyes as the cabbage-fields are crowded out by houses. There's a world out there, huge and hidden, full of colours he's only seen in dreams, full of creatures and beautiful tricks of the light, and he'll get back to it someday—he'll take a breath, he'll dive down into deep water, and he'll open his eyes—
Happy Birthday to my favourite character! @thethreebroomsticksficfest
“Hi, Hedwig,” Harry stroked his snowy owl’s head, settled comfortably in one of the nooks of the Owlery. The view from the window was astounding; even better, perhaps, than the one from the Gryffindor common room and dorms.
Hedwig made a crooning noise, flapping her wings as she hopped up his arm. Harry knew several fellow owl owners had special gloves or arm-covering they wore for this, but he had never felt the necessity for one. Hedwig never hurt him, and besides, the digging in of her claws into his skin was comforting even as it stung sharply.
“Ron and Hermione are fighting again,” he started on the update he always gave his owl about his day-to-day life. It was nice, telling it as though he had someone who cared.
Hedwig did care, after all.
“And this time. . . I dunno, Hedwig. It feels more permanent this time. Last time was – indirectly – because of me, and the Firebolt. Oh, and the Firebolt!” Harry gushed. “It’s amazing! It’s tons better than even the advertisements, and those would make you think the broom is worth your life. We won the match with Ravenclaw using it! I mean, I’m pretty sure we would’ve won even without—” He felt a dull pang for his beloved Nimbus. “But the Firebolt was a lot of encouragement, I’m sure. I bet I could outfly even you on it, Hedwig.” He teased.
He liked to think the look Hedwig gave him now was one of extreme derision. Sometimes he genuinely thought she could understand what he was saying. Hermione would know if magical messenger owls had any more special abilities.
The thought of Hermione was enough to bring down his euphoria. He drew his knees to his chest. “I dunno, Hedwig. I just miss her. But she is in the wrong here!” He added, voicing the thoughts he hadn’t dared to since that disastrous conversation with his friend. “I mean, it does look like Crookshanks ate Scabbers, and obviously that’s natural for cats and rats—” Harry spared a grimace for the school that allowed cats, rats, owls and toads as pets (he was sure this wasn’t the first nor last incident of animals clashing), “But she should still apologize, right? I mean, I don’t know. What do you think?”
Hedwig blinked at him, nipping his ear gently.
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to let them resolve this on their own.” He decided. He hadn’t liked the thought of interfering anyway, and the resolution was a relief. “But I hope they do it soon. I miss all three of us together. The homework help, too,” he joked. Hedwig hooted admonishingly.
“Good thing I got you, huh, girl? If I had a cat too, this’d be a never-ending mess.” He mused.
Hedwig fixed him with a stare, as if to say he should have gotten her anyway. “Yeah, obviously. You’re the best. Even if I don’t have that much mail that needs delivering,” he added guiltily. Hagrid, the Weasleys and Hermione used Hedwig too, but he still felt bad about her sitting in the owlery all the time without any work. “I wish I had someone to write to. For the sake of it too, but also for you.”
Hedwig just huffed, flapping her wings in his face.
Harry grinned. “Yeah. I’m glad I have you anyway too, Hedwig.”
A microfic (499 words exactly) for Harry's birthday for @thethreebroomsticksficfest and @hinnymicrofic (Two birds, one stone, right?)
Ginny’s gaze danced over his face. “Come on, birthday boy. Get up.”
He sighed. “Didn’t you say if I was the birthday boy, I could choose what I wanted to do today?”
Her eyes lit up as she smiled. “I did.” She kissed him again.
“And I want to spend it in bed you,” he said, tugging at her hips softly but she didn’t budge.
“Get up. I am all dressed up for you.” She glanced down at her dress.
“Yes, it’s very pretty.” It looked perfect on her. “And I want to take it off you.”
“Harry!” She bit back a smile. She pushed off the bed. “I am being serious. Come downstairs.”
She hovered by the door and shook her head as he walked towards her. “Get dressed.”
And now he wasn’t even allowed to have breakfast in his underwear.
“I want to take a picture,” Ginny told him. He was about to object but she continued. “Of us together. A nice one.”
He couldn’t say no to those eyes. With a grumble he walked off to the bathroom, quickly splashing water into his face and brushing his teeth. His hair would have to be as it was. He walked back to their room and stepped into his trousers, put his wand in it and pulled on a clean shirt.
When he came down the stairs, Ginny stepped to him and softly tried tidying his hair.
He pushed her hand away. “Stop fussing.”
She chuckled and gave up. “You should go outside,” she said with bright eyes. “There may be a gift for you out there.”
Harry walked towards the door and opened it. People jumped up from every corner and there was a loud noise and —he grabbed for his wand, but it wasn’t in his back pocket anymore— Then he realised they had yelled ‘Surprise!’ and the loud noise was a small set of fireworks George had set off.
Harry’s face broke out into a smile as he touched his heart, moved by the surprise while also trying to calm his heart. Ginny moved past him, putting his wand back in his hand with an amused shake of her head.
Molly hugged him first, wishing him a happy birthday while also quickly trying to fix his hair. He assured her it was fine. Then Hermione hugged him while Ron mumbled a ‘happy birthday’. Multiple people began setting the table with the help of their wands, more chairs soaring into the garden as a birthday cake appeared out of a box and was placed on the table.
Harry silently observed the people he called family as the party unfolded in front of his eyes. People were chattering excitedly, adding gifts to the pile. Ginny walked past him to get drinks inside and he stopped her and pulled her close.
He kissed the top of her head. “Thank you.”
She beamed at him. “Aren’t you glad I insisted you got dressed?”
Hello Pub Patrons! To celebrate the upcoming birthday of our favorite slightly-reckless-but-mostly-endearing protagonist, we're hosting a microfic event running today through Tuesday, August 1st. The guidelines are very simple:
Your microfic must center around our BFF Harry.
It should be microfic (ish). There's no hard and fast rule and we won't count words, but aim for under 500.
You can share the microfic on our discord server and/or share it on Tumblr! Tag TTB and we'll be sure to reblog!
Happy microfic writing, and Happy (almost) Birthday Harry!
Hello! Is there a discord for canon or canon-ish HP fics called The Three Broomsticks? Is it possible to get an invite? I'm new to this corner of fandom but I'm finding some absolutely amazing writing and some of my favourite authors have mentioned this discord. I'd love to get in and trawl through the any fic archive :D Thank you!
Of course! Anyone is welcome to join our canon-compliant discord. 😊 Our only restriction is that it is 18+.
🌈 The TTB Pride Fest 2023 has concluded, and we want to take a minute to thank everyone who contributed to this year’s fest! We saw a total of 22 submissions that celebrated love, acceptance, and diversity within the Harry Potter fandom. You can find the masterpost right here for links to each fic.
For our final (!!) fic of Pride Fest 2023, we’re going to spend the day in New Orleans, where Remus Lupin has journeyed to following the end of the first war.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Can you believe it? We're down to the final three Pride Fest fics! Helping us wrap up this spectacular fest is a new multichapter fic by @celestemagnoliathewriter that gives us a glimpse into the lives of various witches and wizards from the Black family 👀
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
