Chapter Text
Harry wasn’t sure what Ginny was smoking when she told him that he should make a Reddit post.
Harry stared at Ginny with wide eyes, and then he raised a singular eyebrow. “You’re joking, right?”
Ginny grinned ferally, and planted a kiss on top of Harry’s head. “No.”
“Ginny, for the love of Merlin, I am not opening a bloody Reddit account!”
Turns out, Ginny really wasn’t joking. After the hellscape of Delphi, and then Voldemort being resurrected, Ginny had tried, and failed, to get Harry into therapy. Harry Potter was fine apparently. But it was clear that Ginerva Weasley did not feel the same, and after much persuasion from Ginny, as well as from Albus and Lily for some reason— Harry knew that they should’ve just stayed at Hogwarts over the Christmas holidays to revise— he, albeit begrudgingly, opened up a Reddit account and began to type up a post. With help from Albus and Lily, of course. Ginny decided to prepare a good cup of strong coffee, because according to her, Harry looked like he needed it.
Harry sighed, finishing typing, and handed his phone over to Lily and Albus so that they could check his post.
Albus raised his eyebrows as soon as he read it, and Lily placed her head in her hands.
Harry suddenly felt extremely nervous.
“Dad, that’s not the right subreddit, why would you post something on your own account? No one will see it then!”
“Ooh, Dad should try r/AITAH. I love reading posts on there from time to time, it’s so drama-filled, but people do offer good advice!”
“Wouldn’t that break the subreddit’s rules though? I can’t really imagine that the mods will be too happy if they see it there, it might be seen as a shit post.”
“Who cares, it will be absolutely ages until the mods take it down.”
“Whatever. But if Dad’s account gets taken down, that’s on you Lily, not me!”
For some reason, Lily was hellbent on on the subreddit (Harry would never get used to muggle terminology, let alone Reddit ) ‘r/AITAH’ or ‘Am I the Asshole ’ because according to Albus, it seemed that Harry still felt guilty about things he did as a teenager, and was quote of quote ‘trauma-dumping’ at the oddest times, and needed advice from unbiased internet strangers.
“Kids, I’m fine,” Harry moved his hair from his face, and pointed at the faded lightning bolt scar in the middle of his forehead. “See? This thing hasn’t hurt for ages. And I—”
Harry’s voice faded away as Albus and Lily both stared at him.
“Dad, you literally woke up screaming the other night because you thought that Delphi came back to kill us.” Lily said quietly, avoiding Harry’s suddenly shocked expression.
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence.
Green Light. Harry, unable to reach Albus and Lily and James. Feeling their cold lifeless bodies. He couldn’t save them. Screaming for Ginny. waking up in a cold sweat. Harry hated nightmares. It wasn’t enough that he couldn't save those who he loved.
It was that he could never save them.
Albus studied Harry’s drooping face, before he whispered something into Lily’s ear, and the tension in her shoulders relaxed a little. Turning back to his father, he said: “Seriously Dad, you’ve got major trauma,” Albus joked, and Lily let out a strangled laugh.
Harry tried to smile at that, looking down at his hands. “Yeah, I guess so,” he said softly. “But isn’t this breaking the Statute of Secrecy? Hermione would…”
Albus smiled, properly this time, and grabbed Harry’s phone, before he began to re-type Harry’s post, fingers moving at incredible speed. “Who cares what Auntie Hermione thinks? I mean, if you kept half of this, then yeah, it would break the Statute, but all we have to do is edit a few things… Hey Lils, is this okay?”
Lily stood on her tiptoes to peer over her older brother’s shoulder as she quickly scanned over the post that he had written, and laughed. “Oh my god, yes! God, people are going to think that Dad is such a shit poster ahha.”
Harry looked between his two children who were standing in front of him, and raised his eyebrows. “Lily, you can't let your mother hear that kind of language,” Harry admonished fondly, as Albus gave Harry his phone back.
”Yeah Lily,” Albus snorted, “Don’t swear, it’s a bad habit.”
Lily muttered something akin to an apology to Harry, but glared at Albus. He smiled sweetly instead, and Lily rolled her eyes, before both teenagers waited breathlessly as Harry quickly read through the post, eyes widening, before he tried to stifle a laugh.
“Is it good?” Albus asked worriedly, as he took a seat next to Harry on the couch.
Harry chuckled, and ruffled Albus’ hair. “It’s amazing, kids. I’m sure Ginny will love to read it.”
Then, he clicked post. His post was now live. Oh, Merlin.
AITA for burning off my psycho teacher’s face and killing him because I found out that he was in cahoots with the guy who murdered my parents?
I (M43) am not so familiar with Reddit, so apologies if I make any mistakes; it’s my first time posting here. Also, I know this sounds bad, but I was eleven when this happened, and the livelihoods of my entire school and friends were at stake, and my wife has been driving me absolutely mad because she thinks I have ‘trauma’ from this. I didn’t want to kill him, it just kinda happened? By the way, I’m leaving out some detail because the government will be very annoyed with me if I spill every detail- these are state secrets Reddit. I’ll let you guys decide. Okay, so here’s the background:
So, when I was less than a year old, this absolutely psychotic leader of the biggest drug circle in my city, called the ‘Death Eaters,’ who I’ll call ‘Tommy Boy’ , had a power complex and thought that my parents had the key to defeating him and his drug gang.
This key was me, apparently, because babies can do so much harm. My parents were part of another gang, trying to stop the Death Eaters' influence, and had already gone up against old Tommy boy three times and survived. Needless to say, Tommy Boy was pretty pissed off at my parents, because apparently I was the guy who was going to orchestrate his defeat. Keep in mind, I was a baby. Anyway, Tommy showed up to my house, then killed my parents and then tried to kill me, but his gun backfired and the bullet repelled and shot him instead, and by the time the police showed up, he disappeared in a smoke bomb.
No one had known if he had lived or died that day, but many people thought he died and so the gang war was over. Tommy Boy always had a kink for theatrics. Since people believed that Tommy was dead, and I was sent to live with my not-so-pleasant aunt and uncle on my mother’s side, who despised my mum because she had run off the join gang warfare.
When I was eleven, I was sent to the same boarding school as my parents, and I soon found out that there was a chunk of gold that the school was guarding because there had been threats that the Death Eaters were going to steal it. Since my parents had been killed by the death eaters, I needed to make sure it was safe, so me and my two best friends, H and R decided to steal back the stone and make sure it didn’t get into the wrong hands.
So, one day, after having tailed my chemistry teacher around the school because we thought that he was going to steal the stone because he used to be a death eater, we found out that he was going to steal it. So, me and my best friends went to the forbidden corridor, past the three Bully XL guard dogs, past all the defences, lost R because he was hit by a large chess piece and he passed out (don’t worry, he was fine), so my and my friend H had to pass a wall of fire that was in front and behind of us.
(By the way, the Head teacher at my school was away on business, and even though we wanted to tell him because he was the leader of my parents gang, we couldn’t. Also, the headmaster was the one with the brilliant idea to make a tonne of defences that were surpassable by pre-teens)
We had to figure out which liquid would stop the fire so I could get into the room, and only one liquid would put out the one in front. So, I went forward and put out the fire, and then I went to face my chemistry teacher. But turns out it wasn’t my chemistry teacher. No, turns out it was my Self-Defence teacher. He was a shaky guy who was terrified, so I was surprised as fuck when he proceeded to tie me up, and was on the Death Eaters side all along, when I thought that he was on the side of my parents. Then I found that he had Tommy Boy’s face tattooed onto the back of his head, and was walkie-talking to him at the same time we were fighting.
Anyway, fighting ensued between us because I managed to find the gold (gang wars are strange) but my defence teacher grabbed some fire and tried to burn off my face, so I went and took the fire and proceeded to burn off his face, killing him. I passed out because I nearly died too, but my head teacher managed to fly back in time and saved me from dying. I woke up in the infirmary at my school, and the gold was destroyed, and I really did end up killing my teacher. I didn’t mean to, but I think I was justified.
I believe that I was the asshole because I left my friend in a room with a concussion, stalked my chemistry teacher, and proceeded to kill my defence teacher, just so I could get a bit of gold that was already guarded well. But I don’t know, you see. This was the nineties.
Reddit, AITAH?