hackthis_archive (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hackthis_archive) wrote2002-11-11 05:55 pm
hackthis_archive) wrote2002-11-11 05:55 pm
potter drabble.
The Gift
Notes: I was re-reading GoF the other night and they mentioned Harry’s broken watch and I’m like *what* watch?
On Harry’s tenth birthday he received a present from the Dursleys: a broken watch. The plastic face was scratched and the black band worn ragged, but amazingly enough it worked. The watch was the best gift he had ever received from them.
Harry wasn't sure what he did to deserve it.
The watch was shiny, and Harry could pretend that it fit. It took him a whole year to grow into it, but even then it slid around his wrist like a bracelet. Like a cuff.
Around his twelfth birthday he bought himself a digital watch, but it felt wrong. It was too new, and he kept the Dursleys' watch in his trunk with the rest of his things. It still worked; there was no reason to toss it out. Just because it wasn’t new and improved was no reason to dismiss it.
Not all change is welcome.
Harry’s digital watch stopped working four days before Harry’s fourteenth birthday. During the Triwizard Tournament, he took the newer watch off and never put it back on. When he went back to Privet Drive, he finally tossed the digital watch and put the old watch back on. It was safe. It reminded him of life before.
For his sixteenth birthday Harry received another watch. This time it was silver with etchings on the back and a dragon-hide wristband. Harry smashed the face with his broom handle and rubbed the band in the dirt. Once it was worn and abused, then it was all right. When he took off the Dursleys' watch and replaced it with the new one, he took care to place the old one someplace close by. He knew the new one wouldn’t last long.
It was only a matter of time.
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I love the idea that Harry can't quite cope with being given new, shiny things. Not exactly canon but I can totally imagine him being uncomfortable with expensive gifts, I can imagine his obsessive use of the broomstick cleaning kit being part of that. He feels he has to use it all the time to prove he was worthy of owning it. He had to make the watch less new because otherwise he didn't deserve it since he already had a working watch. The invisibility cloak and Firebolt don't count as he sees the first as not a gift but an inheritance and in his heart he feels it's till his father's and not his, the brooms he sees as gifts to the Quidditch team and his house so that he can win the cup for them, not actually gifts for him.
Am I trying too hard? Reaching too much?
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