Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, and most of these tropes are so overused, good luck trying to trace who came up with them.

Introduction

Wish Fulfilment is what happens after you read one too many cliche, formulaic Super!Harry fics. It was supposed to be a parody of all the ridiculous Super!Harry tropes, but it wound up being incredibly meta and unwieldy, and it never really worked. I eventually found The Rise and Fall of Harry J Potter by Muffliato, which does it far better than I ever could, even though it's unfortunately unfinished.

The idea here is that there are Harry Potter storybooks in-story, like there are in so many fanfics, but these books tell an over-the-top Super!Harry story that's so ridiculous and obviously wrong that no one could possibly believe them. Harry starts reading them, and he and his friends mostly just point out all the absurd tropes.

Then there was also this meta-narrative where the books were secretly written by Auror Dawlish and filled with thinly-veiled references to the current Ministry as evil characters and traditionalist purebloods as good characters. This might sound like a silly and overcomplicated addition, but the point I was trying to make was that Super!Harry tropes like abusive muggles, family magic, noble houses actually promote the pureblood ideals that canon opposes, so a pureblood sympathiser would be the kind of person who would write something like that. As you can probably see, it was completely unworkable, and I gave it up pretty quickly.

This is the only chapter I have for this story, and that's probably for the best.

Wish Fulfilment: Chapter 1

Staying at the Burrow was the best month of Harry Potter's young life, especially after being locked in his room and fed through a cat flap by his horrid relatives. Without having school work to worry about—well, not as much; he hadn't been able to start his summer reading before he'd got here—it was probably the most carefree month he'd ever had.

He really enjoyed hanging out with Ron all day, and Fred and George were great, too. Mrs. Weasley was a bit overzealous, but he liked her, not least because of the great food that he didn't have to cook. Mr. Weasley was a nice bloke, though he could get a bit tiresome with all his questions about the muggle world. And Percy was Percy.

The one Weasley he didn't have a good handle on was Ginny. Ron's little sister always seemed to freeze up around him and lose the ability to speak. It was pretty awkward, actually. Even with his limited social experience, he could tell she had a massive crush on him, and he could guess it was because of his fame. He wanted to make the effort to get to know her, but it was hard when she kept running away and peeking at him from behind a corner.

One morning, rising early, as usual, Harry went downstairs and was surprised to see Ginny was also up, curled up in a chair, and reading a book. He decided to try to approach her. He still hadn't succeeded in actually talking to her, but he kept trying. He sat down in the chair next to her and said, "Hi, Ginny, what're you reading?"

"Eep!" she squeaked, looking up at him. "Ha-Ha-Ha-Harry, hi," she said in an unnaturally high voice. "This is—this is nothing—just a…silly little kids book. Bit of rubbish, really…" She tried to scoot away from Harry and hide the cover of the book from him, but he leaned in, and his keen eyes picked out the title.

"Harry Potter: Heir to the Founders…by Johann Dahlerus."

"It's not what it looks like! It's just…crazy stories they tell about what could happen while you're at Hogwarts."

"Er, people are writing about me? At Hogwarts?"

Ginny was trembling with nervousness. "I-i-it's not really about you, exactly," she said. "There's not any real people in the story. E-e-ven Dumbledore's replaced by a woman named Mildred Baggett, and she's a bad person."

"Seriously? That's weird. We'd really be doomed with an evil Dumbledore."

"Oh no, you win in the end. She just tries to manipulate you into sacrificing yourself to the Dark Lord Bartholomew Cromwell so she can take the credit for killing him, but you defeat both of them with this amazing elemental magic…" She trailed off as she saw Harry staring at her with an utterly bewildered look on his face. "Er…sorry…" she said, somehow managing to blush even harder. "I told you it's just crazy, silly stuff."

"Actually, that sounds kind of interesting," Harry replied. "Could I read it when you're done?"

"What? B-b-b-but…okay." Ginny hesitated a moment, then handed him the book. "Here. I've read it all before," she said.

"Wow, thanks, Ginny."

She nodded wordlessly and then stood up and bolted from the room. Harry shook his head as he watched her go. She was a strange one alright, but nice. He leaned back in the chair, opened the book and started to read. Within a few minutes, though, he said something he never expected to say: "Oh my God, I didn't know how good I had it!"

Half an hour later, Harry was shocked by what he had read. It was like a train wreck. He couldn't look away. He had to keep reading until the oppressed boy, "Harry Potter, Heir to the Founders" was rescued by his parents' long-lost friends, Alvin Runkle and Corvinus Yeager, who had been kept away from him by the machinations of the wicked Headmistress of Hogwarts, Mildred Baggett, who wanted him to grow up downtrodden and perfectly malleable by her.

Harry was used to people in the magical world treating him oddly by now, but he had never encountered anything this weird, and it worried him. What if some people actually believed it? It was that thought that led Harry to seek out Ginny again. He found her in the garden, complaining to her brothers about not letting her in on the Quidditch game they were organising.

"Hey, Harry! We're going out to the paddock," Ron called. "You wanna come?"

"Maybe in a minute," Harry called back. He turned to see Ginny getting to make a run for it again, so he said, "Ginny, wait."

She froze and stared at him, wide-eyed.

"I wanted to talk to you about the book," he said, holding it up for her to see.

"Wh-wh-what about it?" she stammered. "I t-told you it's just silly stuff."

"Yeah, I know, but…well, honestly, Ginny, your parents actually let you read this book? People don't actually believe this, do they?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know I live with my aunt and uncle, and they're pretty awful, but I've never been anywhere like that nightmare orphanage in the book."

"Oh, that," she replied. "Sure, everyone knows you went to live with your relatives. That's what Dumbledore said from the start. The book is sort of like, what if it all went wrong?"

"Oh, okay. I was just wondering because this stuff is crazy. I thought my aunt and uncle were horrible, but I'd take being locked in my bedroom again over the maniacs in this book any day."

"Really?" Ginny squeaked in surprise, remembering the state Harry was in when her brothers brought him in.

"Well, sure. In the book, I was sent to a muggle orphanage that's like out of Oliver Twist or something. Supposedly, I was regularly beaten, starved and made to sleep on the floor. My relatives are awful, but they'd never do anything like that. I mean, sure, they weren't giving me much to eat last week, and Aunt Petunia's whacked me with a frying pan a few times over the years, but I'd be dead if I lived like the Harry in the book."

"Your aunt hit you with a frying pan?" Ginny said, as if that were the important thing. Well, actually, Harry realised, it probably was the important thing, since it was real life, but still, his point was that it wasn't nearly as bad as the story.

"It was never that hard," Harry defended—Wow, that was weird; he was actually defending his relatives. "I think she was mostly trying to scare me. Still, this thing is way worse."

"What are we talking about?" a cheerful voice said. They turned to see Mr. Weasley coming out to the garden.

"Hi, Mr. Weasley," Harry replied. "I was just reading this Harry Potter book Ginny had."

Mr. Weasley's face fell. "Oh, no," he said, "Ginny, you actually showed Harry those things?"

Ginny turned bright red with shame, so Harry jumped in, saying, "I asked her if I could read it, Mr. Weasley. I just wondered what people wrote about me."

"Ah. Well. That's a good thing to know about. But I should warn you a lot of the things in those books are pretty absurd."

"I could tell. Do wizards actually believe this stuff, Mr. Weasley? About how I'm treated like dirt in an orphanage and stuff?"

"No, of course not. It's well-known that you live with your mother's family, Harry, even if they don't know the…unfortunate details. That stuff's just there to make you look more heroic."

"That's good. I wouldn't want people thinking like this Johann Dahlerus person. He must think muggles are absolute animals."

"I know," Mr. Weasley said in annoyance. "I've never been comfortable with that part of it. I only bought it because you were so keen on wanting all of the Harry Potter books, Ginny. That's why I bought you all those other books where muggles are nice people."

"I know they are, Dad," Ginny said. "All the muggles we've met have been nice."

"That's right. They're not so different from us, except they can figure out eckeltricity and aeroplanes."

Harry had to suppress a laugh at that point.

"Well, Harry, I don't mind if you keep reading those books if Ginny doesn't," Mr. Weasley told him. "Just don't be surprised to find a whole lot of other ridiculous things in there."

"Thanks, Mr. Weasley. I understand."

Ginny's book only seemed to get more bizarre as he kept reading. It was clearly written by someone who hated muggles and who wanted to make Harry out to be some kind of super-powerful saviour. He honestly didn't think it was that well-written, but he figured his name on the cover alone probably carried it well enough.

After being rescued, Book-Harry then underwent some tests to find out more about him, and he learnt that he was heir to two of the founders of Hogwarts: Gryffindor on his father's side, and Ravenclaw through a long line of squibs on his mother's side. Wouldn't that be nice, he thought. But things only got stranger as the tests continued and he was given all sorts of obscure titles and abilities. But Harry's criticisms were quickly forgotten when he got to the next chapter, pushed aside by more pragmatic interest. "Hey, this could actually be useful," he said. "Why didn't I ever think of that before?"

Later, when they went to Diagon Alley, Harry was ready to try his idea. To pass the time as he waited, he queried Mr. Weasely again: "Mr. Weasley, what is elemental magic?"

"Elemental magic? Well, it's actually two kinds of things. One is that any spell that manipulates one of the four elements—water, earth, fire, or air—is called an elemental spell. But there's also elemental magic in legends and folktales. The story goes that some rare people, like wizards are to muggles, are so powerful that they can control one of the elements without a wand. Sort of like what muggles call pixie tales."

"Fairy tales," Harry corrected.

"Right, fairy tales. Why do you ask?"

"Well, in that book, it says I'm some kind of elemental mage or something, and I'm going to beat the bad wizards with fireballs."

"Oh…" Mr. Weasley grew hard-faced again. "I wouldn't put much stock in anything that book says, Harry," he warned. "Magically speaking, it's about as factual as The Tales of Beedle the Bard."

"Who?"

"Beedle the Bard? Wizard 'fairy tales'? No?"

Harry shook his head.

"Oh. Well, the point is, a lot of the magic in there isn't real."

"I understand Mr. Weasley," Harry answered. But it wasn't the magic I was thinking about.

Their first stop was Gringotts, where Harry and the Weasleys both needed to visit their vaults. While Hermione and her parents were changing money, a goblin was called to lead the rest of them to the carts.

"Greetings, noble goblin," Harry told him. "May your gold always flow."

All of the Weasleys and the goblin gave Harry a strange and confused look, and he blushed and lowered his head. That didn't go off so well.

"What was that about?" Ron whispered.

"I was trying to be polite," Harry said.

Percy shook his head: "Goblins are practical beings, Mr. Potter. Excessive politeness annoys them more often than not."

That was a surprise to Harry. That greeting had come from Ginny's book. He knew a lot of it wasn't accurate, but he had thought they would get basic facts about the magical world right.

Sufficiently chastised, he played it more cautiously with what he really wanted to ask. The Harry in the book had got a lot of help here, but now, he wasn't so sure. When the cart came to a halt, he said, "Um, excuse me, Mr…?"

"Gornuk," the goblin grunted.

"Mr. Gornuk, I was wondering if…Gringotts has any legal services."

Gornuk looked at Harry like he was stupid. "And why would you ask that Mr. Potter?" he demanded.

"Well, it's just that my muggle relatives are really awful, and I'm pretty some of the stuff they've done to me is illegal, and I was wondering—"

"No, Mr. Potter, I meant why would you ask that of us? I would think you would want to take something like that up with your Department of Magical Law Enforcement."

Harry wasn't sure what to say to that. He really hadn't expected a flat-out dismissal. "I, uh, was just wondering if there was anything you could do—"

"And why on earth would you wonder that?"

"Um…If you had any special legal services for your customers—"

"Mr. Potter," the goblin said in an aggravated tone, "we run a bank. We handle money. We are goblins, not wizards. Even if we were in the business of law enforcement, which we are not, and even if we took any interest at all in the private affairs of wizards, which we don't, we wouldn't have the jurisdiction to punish offences committed in the muggle world, now, would we?"

Harry was speechless. His entire view of goblins from the book was turned on its head. The Harry in the book had had the goblins go after the brutal owners of the orphanage for him straightaway and sentence them to a life of hard labour in their gold mines, and here, Gornuk was just looking at him like he was from Mars. But he was right: why would the goblins get involved in something like that? And why would wizards let them? "I…didn't really think of that, Mr. Gornuk," he said awkwardly.

"Ugh. Wizards," Gornuk griped. "Just where did you get these wild ideas, Mr. Potter?"

"Well, there was this book—" Harry started, but Gornuk immediately started growling.

"A bit of free advice, wizard—and listen well because that is something extremely rare in Gringotts. Most wizards know nothing of how goblins operate. They make no effort to learn our culture, and they would rather concoct their own fantasies from whole cloth than actually talk to us. You should be cautious in trusting an actual history book about goblins, let alone an admitted fiction."

Harry was taken aback. He didn't realise that even a wizard who wrote fiction would be so sloppy about something like that. "Oh…Sorry," he said sheepishly. "I'm kind of new to the magical world."

"Hmpf," Gornuk said. "I will not begrudge you, Mr. Potter, this time, because you are young, inexperienced, and muggle-raised, and you have been misled by an absurd book. However, I warn you that you are only the latest in a long line of wizards who think that if they spout off some supposed secret goblin greeting or because their great-grandfather was nice to us once, that we'll suddenly fall all over ourselves to be their friends. In the real world, that's a good way to 'accidentally' get redirected to the wrong department, or worse."

"Oh…" Harry said nervously. Considering that some of the 'departments' had dragons in them, that didn't sound like a very good thing. Although wizards surely wouldn't have much tolerance for goblins actually hurting wizards in the bank. Right? Well, he decided it wasn't worth the risk to find out.

However, when they got to his vault, he realised he did have one more question. More carefully than last time, he said, "Mr. Gornuk, do you know if I have any…other vaults here?"

"Other vaults?" the goblin said suspiciously. "Are you a business owner, Mr. Potter?"

"No."

"Then almost certainly not. And I can't imagine why you would need them."

"Well, there's only gold in here. I was wondering what happened to my parents' stuff."

"I would suspect it's in storage with your Ministry, wizard. What you see is what you have."

"Oh. And if I had any distant relatives who, er, died in the war or something?" Harry said carefully.

"Ministry records. In the unlikely event that you find something, bring us notarised documentation, and we'll release it to you."

"Alright. Thanks, Mr. Gornuk."

Gornuk rolled his eyes at the courtesy, but that one really was just Harry trying to be polite. Maybe he would take up his questions with the Ministry, like Gornuk said, he thought. Deciding he would ask Mr. Weasley about whom he could write a letter when he got the chance, he successfully got out of Gringotts without annoying any more goblins, and he and the Weasleys rejoined with Hermione's family to do their shopping.