Harry Potter Adventures

A 'choose your own story through reviews' game-story, NOT a 'flip to this chapter to make this choice' interactive. You don't have to actually have to make choices or review if you don't want to, and I may or may not take your suggestions particularly if they are Mary-Sueish. And if you want to do an actual review where you put what you think of the actual story, or state what events you think should be covered in future (I don't have a photographic memory or a perfect ability to calculate the chaos from hitting a butterfly brings) that's good too.

Harry Potter, nine year old nobody. He gazed in annoyance at the bull dog, Aunt Marge's Ripper, that had just chased him up a tree. It was Dudley Dursley's tenth birthday. He had stepped on Ripper's tail on accident. What would he do next?

He thought carefully. Marge and the Dursleys looked torn between being pissed off at him and laughing at his misfortune. He mentally added up the different choices he could make.

a-} Wait until the bulldog goes away.

b-} Yell for help.

c-} Slip down and face it.

d-} Throw sticks at it from the safe vantage point of the tree.

z-} Something else.

Waiting until the bulldog went away was what he usually did when Dudley chased him up a tree, traditional if not very brave, and affective in that the cautious choice had never ended up too badly for him. He could yell for help, maybe the Dursley family or one of the neighbors would take pity on him. Someone certainly would hear him eventually who cared, right? He'd learned his lesson about carefulness, having him stay up all day wouldn't be fair. Then there was throwing sticks and things. Dogs liked to chase moving objects, or at the very least didn't like getting hit by flying projectiles. Maybe he could distract it and make a get-away- smart and painless if it worked. Then there was, well, facing it head on.

He knew if he did that, he'd certainly get into trouble. But he was getting into trouble all the time, no matter what he did. Maybe this time he should at least deserve it. And maybe it would go differently from the way things usually did. Maybe the pay off would be worth the risks. Facing the dog would be both brave and ambitious of him.

It didn't occur to Harry to think that the little choices he made every day would shape who he was and how he saw himself. He was too distracted by Ripper's barking for anything deep or philosophical, though one had to admit being on the tree was very very boring. Harry also just wasn't capable of that kind of thinking yet. He was only nine, for bloody goodness' sake, and not exactly in an intellectually or emotionally nurturing environment. The Dursley family wasn't even that religious, so it would never occur to him to pray for help either. Besides, hoping someone would come and rescue him or that his parents would come back from that car crash (perhaps after secretly being in a coma for eight years) never accomplished anything. Real life had stamped out that kind of naive idealism from him even at his young easily impressionable age. It hadn't been totally abusive, more like hideously neglectful as evidenced by the current situation where no one could be bothered to do anything but laugh at him, but it hadn't exactly been sunshine and rainbows either.

Time was ticking. Really, really agonizingly slowly ticking.