Serverus and the Mirror
It was a giant mirror - long enough to fit the top of Hagrid's bushy hair but only half as wide. Serverus didn't need the room.
His reflection was a small boy in new, pressed clothes with a long-faced woman with curled hair and makeup standing at the side of a towering man in business clothes and a hooked nose. Both were smiling down at the boy.
Serverus saw the woman cooking, the man coming home and kissing her before that wretched little boy barrels into his leg, waving a paper around. He saw a boy on a broom, laughing with his friends as a quaflle was passed around under the English sun. He saw textbooks for studying, a smile of straight, perfect teeth that were flashed at everyone the boy passed. The boy was tall, attractive, bright-eyed and hopeful. At the Yule Ball, a redheaded girl danced with him in a green dress that matched her eyes and the color of the boy's tie. Then, the torment of wedding bells silently chiming as he carried a faceless woman clad in beautiful white into a quaint little house on a quaint little hill, the small gate at the front reading Spinner's Cottage in sickeningly crisp letters.
The only thing Serverus could do was stand there, fist clenching and unclenching with each passing moment. He couldn't look away, couldn't stop watching a life that could have - no, should have been his play like a twisted, torturous performance.
What was worse: to be miserable in every universe, or only be miserable in your own?