The Protagonist Curse

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Harry had known, for as long as she could remember, that she was suffering from the Protagonist Curse.

No one had exactly…sat down and told her, but maybe there was such a thing as knowledge through osmosis.

Harry's mother, Lily, had ended her Curse but in such a way that it wasn't broken yet. So Harry inherited it. Just like Lily inherited it from her mother before her. It was a maternal thing. Nobody was sure yet who'd casted it, and where it had come from.

Some of her predecessors were lucky enough to not notice that they were suffering through the Curse. (Like Lily, the oblivious woman.)

Harry wasn't so lucky. Because Lily had gone through the Magical Genre of the Curse. It somehow made things doubly more…active.

Once, Harry had to fend off a vampire intent on biting her. Because apparently, she was his "soulmate". Harry kicked him in the balls and ran away. She was rather good at running away. She'd had to be. (Fantasy Genre)

Another time, she'd had to hammer nails down a trapdoor she was absolutely certain was not part of the house's layout. Because someone was digging underneath, trying to find salvation. (It was a Post-Apocalyptic, semi Conspiracy theory Genre.)

This time, the Curse kicked in when she was buying a dress and found a polished bronze lamp tucked inside the pocket of the dress.

Apparently, the Curse was trying to kick her in the Magical direction too. Where was their originality?

With the sigh of a person who'd had to do this before, Harry rubbed the lamp after locking her door.

"Who has woken me from my slumber?" a deep voice boomed.

It was a testament to how strange her life had gotten due to the Protagonist Curse that she wasn't at all fazed by the menacing red smoke bellowing out of the lamp. It looked like it was about to explode, so Harry sensibly grabbed a pillow.

"My name is Harry," she said practically. "Do you have a name?"

The dramatic bellowing stopped and a wisp of white smoke popped out of the lamp. It took the shape of a man with beady black eyes and curly side-burns. The sharp, angular face would be handsome, if he wasn't scowling at her.

"Call me Reborn," the genie said. "I can grant you three wishes. Except the resurrection of the dead. Or the Creation of Life."

Three wishes?

Harry wanted to sigh. She'd guessed what genre, what with the shiny bronze lamp. But like her mother, Harry was rather ingenious about things.

She'd heard that before Hogwarts, Lily had gotten into a Best Friend Trope, wherein she'd been childhood best friends with a growly, snarky man. (Harry guessed that Lily was supposed to give Snape a Redemption of Love.) Except that she'd broken from that thing and fallen in love with James Potter instead, ending the curse.

So Harry looks at the genie, looks at the man behind the smoke and sees no evil.

"My first wish," she said slowly, testing out the words carefully. "Is for you to tell me your story. Of how you became a genie. Of why you were turned into a genie."

After the first expression of shock, Reborn started to tell her in fits and spurts. All the while, he shimmered with resentment. And anger, likely due to the invasion of privacy. But he told her. Everything.

Harry wished she hadn't heard.

"We were seven," he said. "Of the most powerful sorcerers in the world. We specialized in different things, but were the strongest in our chosen fields. And then, one day, we chose a boy to be our apprentice and he grew great under our tutelage. But there was one man who'd wanted to be our apprentice for ages and ages, but whenever he asked, the kindest of us, who had the gift of premonition, told him no. Because his heart was bitter and unkind. So he learned the evilest, darkest magics in the world and cast them upon us. And we fell through time and space. And when we woke, were thus. And scattered."

It was a sad thing. Harry's pragmatic nature didn't stop her from caring. And even if she didn't like to start the Curse, this was staring her in the face. Not caring would be inhuman.

"My second wish is for you to be free and to break your curse," she tells him.

The light surrounds the astonished genie. Astonished and stamping on improbably bitter hope. The lamp dissolves into dust and there's suddenly a naked man in her room. Harry finds herself face to chest with a very real and solid genie.

Ex-genie, right.

"You freed me," he gasped. "You had one wish left! Why did you break my curse with one wish left?"

Harry shrugged. "I didn't want to take advantage of you. Why should I? I've got a bit of magic on my own. Anything you can do, I can probably do as well, only a bit slower."

Then she cottons on to the fact that there was a naked man in her room.

"Merlin dammit, you're naked!" she shrieked. "Put on some clothes!"

The ex-genie, Reborn, laughed and gestured with a hand. He was clothed within another blink, some sort of instant conjuration spell.

"Thank you!" he said, eyes bright with something that gave Harry that funny feeling of dread down her spine. "I swear to you my undying loyalty!"

Harry wanted to swear too. Infinite curses. Because she should have used her second wish to tell him to go away and leave her alone.

Now, she's likely tickling the Battle Butler trope and other things.

Merlin freaking dammit.

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This is hallen, pointing out tropes, signing out.

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