I didn't mean to do it.

"Why do you always have to make everything about you?" I yelled.

"Max, I…" she looked taken aback, and I didn't blame her, I never fought with her like this. It was always Justin.

"I hate you! I wish you weren't my sister!"

Her mouth dropped open for a fraction of a second, and anguished tears burst forward from her eyes, but only one of them hit the floor before there's nothing but smoke and empty space where she was standing.

I coughed and narrowed my eyes. "Alex?" I called out tentatively, but there was no reply, only the tiny droplet on the carpet of the single tear that had slipped from her cheek.

I ran down the stairs into the sub station two at a time, colliding with Justin at the bottom.

He grabs my shoulders frantically. "What's happening? What was that noise? Why were you yelling at…?"

His sentence was cut off but the Earth shifting beneath our feet. The whole shop began to rattle and the customers screamed and dived under the tables while Justin gathered me under his arm and pulled me to the floor, covering my body with his own. He scrambled under the counter, dragging me along with him as I was screaming for our parents and Alex. Then, just a suddenly as it had started, the earthquake ceased and all was still.

I could feel Justin trembling above me as I noticed his eyes frantically scan me for injuries. I could see his mouth forming questions, enquiring about my well-being but the ringing in my ears and the panic bubbling in my chest drowned out any concentration power I might have had. Then my father skidded in next to us, gathering Justin tightly into his arms and kissing him on the forehead, before picking me up on the ground and leading me into the kitchen where my distraught mother enclosed me the same bone-crushing hug that Dad currently had Justin in. Through all the pandemonium of subsided terror and overwhelming relief, I forced a question into the chaos that brought it to a standstill.

"Where's Alex?"

Mom tensed and pushed me away by my shoulders. "What did you say?"

"Alex. My sister. Your daughter? Is she okay?" I looked from each of my parents shocked faces coated in sorrow, to Justin who simply looked confused.

"Max, we don't have a sister," Justin frowns with concern, perhaps thinking I knocked my head while the world was partially collapsing around us.

Mom just lets out a little moan and gets to her feet, mumbling something about helping the customers and shutting the store for the rest of the day. I go to follow her, but Dad takes my arm in a tight grip.

"I don't know how you know about her, but be careful around your mother, okay? We'll talk after we get this mess cleaned up," he hisses.

I've never seen him this serious, and I've done some really bad stuff enough times to get me a lifetime's supply of disappointed/perplexed and/or frustrated looks from my father. But I had never, ever seen him this solemn. And that only made me panic more about Alex.

Frantically, I turned to Justin. "What did you mean by we don't have a sister? Why does everybody here seem to have forgotten about Alex?"

"Max, who is Alex?" Justin runs his hands across his forehead, like he's trying to smooth out the creases of mayhem in his mind. "Is she some kind of imaginary girlfriend?"

"No!" I yelled, refusing to believe that somehow I had obliviated my sister out of existence. "Alex! You know Alex!"

"No, I don't," he affirmed with a slight air of condescension, like he was getting annoyed with whatever game I was playing.

I exhaled a irritated sigh and try to think about how I could explain to my family that I had probably mistakenly removed someone who we loved very dearly from the universe, and also convince them to help me get a girl they didn't even know back into our lives.

"Justin," I groaned, reaching for the wand and spell book that were in my back pocket. "What if I told you I accidently cast a really, really horrible spell that changed the entire course of our lives and now I really, really, really need to reverse it so everything can go back to normal?"

"Well, I'd say that would be really, really impossible, seeing as you don't have any wizard powers, because I won the contest, remember?" Justin raised his eyebrows. "Dude, are you sure you're okay? Maybe I should take you to the hospital, you're displaying symptoms of a concussion…"

"I don't have a concussion!" I cried, despairing at my empty pockets. "This is all wrong! I won the contest! I had the full wizard powers, but then I messed up! Where the heck is my sister?"

"Max, what has gotten into you?" Mom was standing at the door, ready to scold me, but looking like she didn't have enough energy to even raise a patronising finger.

"Mom, please, answer me this," I take a desperate step towards her as Dad appears . "Do you remember your daughter?"

My mother's eye's cloud over at once and Dad shakes his head warningly at me. "Of course I do, sweetie."

Inexplicable hope swelled inside of me. "Thank goodness! Do you know where she is?"

Mom's hand went to her mouth. "She died."

My stomach sunk and I glanced over at Justin, who looked pale as a ghost. "Mom, what are you talking about?" he whispers.

Dad helped Mom into a chair as she gestured for us to come to her. She took our hands and squeezed them so tightly I was afraid to let go.

"It's always been too hard to talk about this, but you boys have a right to know. It was about a year and a half after Justin was born, and I was 36 weeks pregnant with a little girl. Then one day I woke up and she just wasn't moving."

The anguish on Theresa Russo's face was breaking my heart. I was losing feeling in my fingers, but I held onto Mom's hand harder than ever. I knew Justin was doing the same.

"I still had to deliver her, knowing that she wouldn't be a kicking, screaming, living baby. It's the worst feeling imaginable, to have a child, but to not have the child."

I wiped at my stinging eyes with the back of my hand. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

"It's okay, honey," she pats my hand that's dotted with tearstains. "It's in the past now. I just count myself lucky I have two wonderful sons."

"One more wonderful than the other, right Mom?" Justin joked half-heartedly. "What was her name?"

"Alexandra," I answered almost instantly.

Mom gazed up at me with shimmering eyes. "How do you know about her, Maxxie? Did you have some sort of vision during the earthquake?"

I bit my lip and nodded hesitantly. "Yeah. Yeah, I must have blacked out when Justin tackled me, but somehow I woke up feeling like I had a sister."

Dad steps towards me and squeezes my face in his hands, giving me a piercing look. "That's odd. It's unusual for the losing sibling to display phantasmagorical symptoms of distress, but the contest wasn't that long ago. Maybe not all the magic is gone from you."

My stomach curled into a tight knot. If I wasn't a wizard, not even a little bit, how was I supposed to get Alex back?

a/n: this isn't going to be a incesty thing, rather an alternate version of the movie.
oh, the mysteries of love, and the perils of wishes.
review, if you please :)