Stranger Than Fiction
Stranger than Fiction by Pseudonymous Entity
"ADVANTAGEOUS. An adjective.
Involving or creating favourable circumstances that increase the chances of success or effectiveness.
Beneficial."
Summary: Harry receives a set of books on his birthday detailing the life of a boy with the same name. The summer he turns 11 Harry discovers not only does he share the main character's name - he IS the main character. The books tell the future! Now, what would a fairly clever 11-year-old who has lived a hard life do with this knowledge? Something responsible and mature for the greater good? Maybe not. Oh dear.
AN: Don't worry, we're getting to the good stuff.
ANx2: I really must edit the first chapters of this. Good Lord.
Pseu (Still good looking and reasonably talented)
"But they say who do you think you are? What do you think you'll be?
Why do you run around town thinking all these crazy things...
Just know your place just wasn't meant to be - Try and you'll get a good dose of reality..."
-Todrick Hall
There are a lot of things to consider when you find out your entire life has been written out in a series of books.
Such as How incredibly odd I'm the main character of my own story in any sense other than annoying faux-inspirational poster figurative. Or the brief terror when you try to figure out if that makes you a fictional character and you have your very first existential crises. The books didn't say anything about Harry getting a letter and reading it in his cupboard. It said Harry got caught, which didn't happen.
So not a fictional character.
When the narrative of your future apparently includes goblins, giant snakes, aerial sports, and the ability to transform into a specific animal shape at will…it becomes odder still. There is something to be said in favour of a perfectly ordinary life. You have ordinary expectations, ordinary problems, and ordinary choices. Such a life comes with the ability to reasonably guess the sort of obstacles life is likely to throw your way.
Not that Harry Potter the real one had ever experienced a perfectly ordinary life.
Harry glanced up from the pile of books he was studying to scan the still empty cupboard in which he sat. His Aunt Petunia and her family pretended to be ordinary people living ordinary lives. If books had taught him anything other than the revelation of his fictional character status, it was that anyone who needed to pretend to be ordinary, safe, or trustworthy was anything but.
Here, however, is where Real Harry faced a bit of a conundrum.
He didn't exactly like Fictional Harry. His real shoulders winced guiltily. It was just…Fictional Harry…some of his choices and actions genuinely upset Real Harry. There were moments where Fictional Harry was nothing like Real Harry at all. As if the moment he entered the magical world Fictional Harry was trying to be someone else. He certainly didn't seem anything like the sort of person Real Harry imagined himself to be in the future. Fictional Harry did a lot of foolish things.
Of course, he didn't have the luxury of a set of books detailing his possible life.
Still.
Even without them, Harry couldn't see himself doing the things Fictional Harry did. At least, not all of them. Real Harry thought the Harry of the books tended to do things the hard way, and often missed opportunities to make things easier. Or he ignored those opportunities because he didn't like them. Real Harry scrunched his nose in the semi-darkness. He had to have been given these books for a reason.
Perhaps his fictional future-self didn't like the way things turned out and had sent them to him in the hopes he'd make better choices? Harry leaned back against the wall of his cramped cupboard. Thinking hard. He needed to know for certain if he was stuck with the choices written in ink or if he could genuinely dramatically even do things differently. His own way.
The Real Harry way.
Would Fate conspire to configure events around him to produce similar outcomes to those in the book, making Real Harry a slave to a non-existent version of himself? Could he make any changes at all or was he fated to walk through the rest of his life knowing everything that would happen, every death, every mistake, and be unable to do anything about it? Deep thoughts for a nearly 11-year-old. But then, you have a lot of time to mature when you're scrubbing floors and laying in the dark instead of playing make-believe.
And it wasn't every day an attention-starved unwanted orphan discovered he knew the future, and might even have power over it.
There was nothing for it. Real Harry would have to be very unordinary and test the constraints, if any, of his new reality. He sat up, eyes narrowed. And he might know just how to do it. Later Harry sneaked from his seemingly ordinary house on its overwhelmingly ordinary street in which it was built and set out on a very unordinary mission.
Locate Diagon Alley.
PseudonymousEntity
2018
AN: I wonder if Harry will be able to have any effect on the story. What do you think?
ANx2: [2019] I have no idea why younger me made this chapter so short. My bad.
Ever Yours, Pseu