Y'know, the first time I read the first HP book I was way too young to understand the whole Mirror of Erised thing, but now that I think back on it... it's really sad

I mean, who would want to be famous for having their parents murdered and surviving? Poor Harry... *sigh*

Warning: uh... nothing in this one cept dead people in a mirror

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns HP and all that jazz *pout*

One of the things Harry Potter had quickly discovered upon reaching the Wizarding World was that he was famous, so famous that everyone knew his name and story, a story which he himself hadn't even known until just a few days ago. At first he hadn't been sure what to make of it all. People walked up and congratulated him, sang his praises, wanted to shake his hands… it was weird and slightly frightening.

Now, though, he was very much certain what he thought of his fame. Staring deeply into the magical mirror which reflected his parents' faces back at him, along with the rest of his family, Harry was one-hundred percent sure what to think.

He hated his fame.

Professor Snape could snipe at him all he wanted about Harry's prat of a father, about him being stupid and an attention-seeking little brat, but Snape knew nothing. He didn't know anything about it. No one could understand, not even his friends and especially not Ron.

After all, Ron wouldn't mind being famous. He wouldn't have minded a bit. Harry would have traded lives with his redheaded friend in an instant, despite the fact that Ron was poor and the youngest of six boys. Harry wouldn't even have hesitated.

Looking up into the mirror, he reached out and ran his hands over the icy surface, wishing with all his might that he could fall through the glassy surface into the darkness beneath, where the green-eyed woman and messy-haired man stood at his shoulders and grinned at him with love and pride. But as he pulled his hand away he saw the smudges, fingerprints left on the surface of the mirror.

It isn't real, he told himself. No matter how much you wish it was, it's not real, and it's not the future. After all, my parents are dead.

He stared at the couple.

Dead

No one understood at all. How could those people come up and smile at him, congratulate him for killing a Dark Lord—something he didn't even remember, something that had happened when he was a baby—and how could people like Snape ridicule him and say that his fame had gone to his head, that the scar on his forehead somehow made him into a person who loved and basked in attention when he'd barely received a drop of it in his whole life, or at least the whole of it he could remember.

How could they say those things when the reason he was famous was because his parents were dead, because he had no family.

That's not something to congratulate someone on, is it?

It was a hard lesson for his eleven-year-old mind to comprehend, that these people looked at him and saw the Boy-Who-Lived, some person who didn't really exist at all. Who was the Boy-Who-Lived anyway? Harry didn't know him.

He didn't want to be the Boy-Who-Lived, some famous kid-hero who had saved all these people from some nameless, faceless evil man who he didn't even remember. He just wanted to be Harry, and he wanted a mother and a father who cared about him, who would pick him up from the train station and take him home for Christmas, who would give him presents and hugs and kisses like Ron got from his mother.

This mirror must show me what I want, he realized, tears pricking at his bright green eyes as he stared listlessly at it, because that's what I want… more than anything.

And he wished people would see him, and not some amazing person who was supposed to be better and smarter and braver than everyone else. Hermione was ten times the wizard he would ever be—smart and knowledgeable—and Ron was every bit as brave as he was. There was nothing special about him at all.

I hate it… I hate it, hate it, hate it. He just wished that it would go away, that time could rewind itself. Why couldn't someone else have been famous? Why did it have to be him whose parents died?

I wish someone would understand. Yes, he wished that as well. He had a lot of wishes, he suddenly realized, none of which revolved around being famous or having his picture taken or giving out autographs.

He wished to be normal. He wished that his friends could understand. He wished his teachers didn't treat him strangely because of a scar. He wished that he could walk around in public without being mobbed. He wished that the Dursleys liked him. He even wished he had never grown up with them at all. He wished that he could go back in time. He wished that things could be different. Sometimes he thought he even wished not to exist at all, especially when he was locked for days on end in his cupboard.

I must have done something pretty horrible in a past life to deserve this. Surely he was being punished. There was nothing good or fun about being famous because the only people who had ever cared a mint about him were murdered. More than that, his fame was the reason that he couldn't be happy, or rather, what had caused his fame was.

This stupid fame wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth not being normal or having friends who liked him because he was Harry, it wasn't worth suffering through ten years of living with the Dursleys.

He looked up at the image of his family one more time, noticing vaguely that it was almost dawn and he'd gotten no sleep. He would have a tough time getting through his classes that day. Snape would probably call him lazy and say that he thought everyone should do all his work for him.

But he didn't care. He could hardly tear his eyes away from those people who looked like him and smiled like him and had the same eyes or nose or mouth. My family.

Fame certainly wasn't worth losing them. It wasn't worth the loneliness.

He would give it all up if it would just bring them back.

*sniffle* Poor Harry... I'll try to be nicer in my next HP fic and not so angsty

Review if you wish to