nightseer

Wishes Revisited



Looking at the small child clinging to the tree, Halfrek decided Vernon and his sister were going to die slowly and painfully and perhaps be introduced to her friend Bubba the Chaos demon before she was finished with them. The dog with the bloody muzzle was going down, too. Petunia would only be spared the bulk of her wrath because she wasn’t here for this.

Hidden in the shadows of Number six’s largest tree, Halfrek twisted her hand, freezing the world around her. It only froze the immediate area around Privet Drive, but she didn’t care how long it took her to help Harry or how late the people of Privet drive would be tomorrow. She could have slowed everything down so no one would notice, but all of these morons deserved something for ignoring how the idiots in this house treated children, although simply getting written up or fired for being late to work barely qualified as punishment in her book. She cast a glare in the direction of number eleven and snarled. She wanted to do something extra special to the cop living there, but unless Harry made a specific wish against his neighbors, she wouldn’t be able to do much beyond asking Anyanka to hang around in case his wife ever found out about his girlfriend.

But first I need to get Harry out of the tree.

Dragging a ladder from the Dursleys’ tool shed, she silently (and for the millionth time) asked the universe why this gig didn’t come with the ability to float things and people. She could teleport anywhere, breathe underwater if she needed to, assume human form, curse people who annoyed her, rewrite thousands of years of history with one tiny wish, but she couldn’t float things. Propping the ladder against the tree, climbing up, and carefully lifting the injured boy off his branch, Halfrek decided (also for the millionth time) to ask D’Hoffryn if she could be given the ability to float stuff. Her main title was the Patron Saint…Okay, Vengeance Demon of Wronged Children and a good number of her wishers called her when they were hurt; floating would come in handy when she needed to move them without hurting them further. Pain did not lead to trust, no trust led to no wishes, no wishes led to no job.

After kicking the dog away, she carried Harry over to the tool shed and sat down in the shadows, using the small building to hide the dead bulldog and two drunks still watching the tree from the kitchen window. She settled him on her lap, half facing away from her, and ripped a piece of her shirt to make a temporary tourniquet above the missing chunk of his calf—it would start bleeding again the second she unfroze him and…

Was that bone?

A small growl escaped as she ripped off another piece of her shirt and used it as a temporary bandage to cover the gapping wound—it wouldn’t do for the boy to see it and start panicking. This was an all time low for Vernon, letting his sister sic her attack dog on Harry. She was definitely calling Bubba in for this one.

Forcing her features into her human guise, she flicked her hand, unfreezing Harry, and cradled the crying boy close. She rubbed his back gently, as her normal rocking method of calming children would only aggravate his injury. “Shh…shh…It’s okay now, sweetie…They can’t hurt you anymore…I promise I won’t let them hurt you again…”

Harry’s sobs eventually slowed enough that Halfrek could tell the difference from his whimpers caused by pain and his sniffles from crying. She smiled reassuringly when he looked up at her, green eyes dark with pain. “Hurts,” he whimpered, his injured leg jerking.

“I know, sweetie, I know,” she said sadly, and wiped at his tears. “I can make the hurt go away if you want me to.”

“The hurts?” Harry asked.

Promising the Dursleys extra pain hearing at the plural, she nodded. “All of your hurts,” Halfrek said firmly, “but I need your help to do it. Can you say ‘I wish my hurts away’?” With all the trauma of tonight there was no way Harry could understand everything properly enough to put it all into one wish. She would have to guide him through it slowly with three separate wishes—one for healing, one for vengeance, and one for family.

“Wish?”

“That’s how my magic works. I need you to wish for me to help you,” Halfrek explained. “If you wish for it, I can make it happen.”

Harry’s green eyes lit up with hope despite the obvious pain he was in, and he asked, “A real family?”

“The hurts first,” Halfrek prompted, reading the lifeline threads tangled around his. Two people…no, three more people, she corrected, looking back at Harry’s flickering lifeline, were on her vengeance list for this one boy.

When a fourth lifeline appeared, hiding under a bright yellow-orange lifeline, Halfrek saw red.

...

Somewhere in Africa, Anyanka resisted the urge to cackle wildly as she felt Halfrek’s temper spike. After coaxing her latest client towards her wish, she popped away, summoned a bowl of popcorn, and sat back to watch.

...

They were at the bottom of the train station steps when the world froze.

Irvine stumbled free of his frozen aunt’s too tight grip on his shoulder, and looked around at the perfectly still people. The too perfectly still people. Fear and confusion swirling together in his stomach, the five year old boy stared at the bird flying over the street, its wings stuck mid flap. He looked at his aunt again, her mouth frozen in mid rant about his drunk father.

“Holy Hyne,” Irvine whispered, saying one of the milder swears he had heard his father use quite often.

“Hyne has nothing to do with this,” a woman said to his left, smug laughter in her voice.

Like the heroes in the horror movies he snuck downstairs to watch, Irvine slowly turned to face the woman who had just spoken.

The woman was pretty, not beautiful. Tightly curled hair framed a slightly plumb face with a cruel yet gentle smile. The young boy she was holding didn’t seem afraid, more like curious and eager, but Irvine was still wary of the woman.

“What did you do to Aunt Petty?” Irvine demanded half heartedly. He didn’t want to loose another part of his family, but he didn’t like his aunt at the moment, either. She was sending him off to Hyne only knew where and she and his uncle had sold everything of his they could, yet she was family and family meant the world to Irvine. Family was something he hadn’t had since his mother had died the year before.

The woman sneered at his aunt. “Your Aunt Petunia is just fine at the moment,” she said, looking at him and smiling once more. She walked closer, stepping around a frozen dog, wrinkling her nose as she hopped-stepped over the puddle it was making by the sign post. “I’m here because you made a wish. You did wish for a family, didn’t you?”

Irvine felt her “at the moment” addition was important somehow, but she was talking about his wish for a family and the boy with her looked like Irvine’s father in the same way Irvine looked like his mother. Aunt Petty wasn’t important anymore; the way the boy was looking at him and his fearful glances at Aunt Petty every other second was.

“What kind of family?” Irvine asked warily, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at her for all he was worth. At five, his glares were funny, not scary, but he didn’t want this strange woman to see how much he wanted any kind of family. Glaring at her was better than staring hopefully at the boy she was holding.

“A little brother,” the woman said, as she knelt on the sidewalk in front of him. She gently sat the boy down on the ground, ruffled his hair, and pulled a teddy bear from somewhere Irvine couldn’t see. She handed it to the boy, who took it and quickly took a step back, almost moving to hide behind Irvine. Then she faced Irvine again, smiling her cruel, gentle smile. “But you have to want him to be your little brother before I can make it happen, Irvine.”

Irvine stared at the boy, and the boy stared back. He looked like Irvine’s father, so much like the man who had died just three days before. The boy wasn’t family yet, but he could be.

Irvine held one hand out, and the boy instantly grabbed it with his hand that wasn’t clutching his bear to his chest. “I’m Irvine.”

The boy smiled shyly, hiding his face behind his bear’s head, and said, “‘m Harry.”

Irvine jumped when the woman clapped her hands and cheerfully said, “Now that you’ve met and Harry’s wish has been granted, I just need you to make your wish again, Irvine.”

Irvine narrowed his eyes at her, not liking the overly cheerful tone in her voice. “I thought you were granting my wish,” he muttered, tightening his grip on Harry’s hand. She couldn’t take him back now, not after they had just met.

“My magic’s a little strange, not at all like your brother’s, sweetie,” she said, tilting her head to the side and looking far too innocent. “I need you to wish for a family while I’m here so I can release the world around us.”

With the perceptive gift all young children have, something about her words didn’t ring true to Irvine. He looked at his new brother, whose expression was just as suspicious and hopeful as Irvine felt. Irvine took a deep breath to calm his fears and, turning his face so he was looking at the woman he didn’t quite trust, said, “I wish for family.”

The woman’s gentle human mask melted, revealing her scarred, unholy, demonic true self. Irvine tightened his grip on his brother’s hand and stepped in front of him, feeling like a fool for trusting someone, some thing so strange and unfamiliar.

The thing grinned at him, showing off her not human smile. “Granted.”

Irvine shook his head, shaking off the mist muddling his thoughts. Something was different. Not necessarily in a bad way, but definitely different. He scanned the crowd, looking desperately for what was off.

His brother tugged on his hand, and Irvine turned around to face him, confused as to why his brother was smiling when everything was so different.

“She told me her name was Hallie,” Harry whispered, looking up at him with big green eyes. “Are you going to unwish me?”

Irvine’s new and old memories crashed together in a jumbled heap on the floor of his mind. Irvine shook his head again, answering Harry’s question and straightening his thoughts out at the same time. The woman-thing was wrong and evil, but she had given him the gift of not being alone. Irvine wasn’t going to throw that away.

“Nah, we’re family now,” Irvine said firmly. “And family sticks together.”

Harry smiled, and Irvine smiled back.

“What are you two brats doing?” Aunt Petty shrieked from the top of the stairs, oblivious to the stares from the other people around her. “Your train leaves in ten minutes!”

Irvine stuck his tongue out at her, making Harry giggle into his bear, and the two boys started climbing up the stairs, Irvine never releasing his grip on his new brother's hand.