Chapter Text
My name is Aurora Sinclair, and today is my eleventh birthday. The other witches and wizards my age would wake up with butterflies in their stomachs, a mixture of excitement and nerves. They would be waiting anxiously by their windows for their Hogwarts letter to arrive. But the only thing my stomach feels like it is full of is hunger.
However, I am a squib. It has been a grave disgrace to my family, Purebloods, that their eldest child will not be the next minister of magic, and will probably end up working as a receptionist (the only muggle job my parents know of). My mother, Barbara Fawley, is a pureblood witch, part of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families, and my father Kenneth Sinclair is part of an American Pureblood family as well.
I've shown next to no magical abilities so far in my life. When I was seven I was convinced I had knocked over the inkwell on my father's desk with magic, but my father was so, so angry that I had ruined his paperwork, that accused me of spilling the black ink on purpose and used magic as an excuse. Because that was all it could be, an excuse. I, Aurora Sinclair, was not magical and was nothing but a squib.
After that, I convinced myself there was no possible way I could be a witch. The fear I felt when my father's grey eyes turned to raging storms, and his disappointment in me became inevitable. He was ashamed of me, I realized at that moment, that his Pureblood daughter was worse than a muggle-born.
So you can imagine our shock when our breakfast of waffles and cream was interrupted by a tawny owl tapping impatiently on our kitchen window.
"Well, let him in then" my mother, a tall brunette witch said, breaking the tension. I was fixed to my chair, I could hardly move from fear and curiosity.
I recognized the owl immediately as one of the Hogwarts owls, I had seen them come and go over the years as my father often did work for Dumbledore.
After about five minutes of impatient tapping, my younger brother Jesse stood up and let the owl in. Jesse is two years younger than me and is everything that I am not. His golden curls and tanned skin are completely the opposite of my limp brown hair and freckled-skin. The only way you would know we were related was we are both tall and have dark green eyes. Without these traits we would hardly be recognized as distant relatives, let alone siblings.
Jesse untied the envelope from the owl's foot and it gave a small hoot of annoyance before flying off into the cool summer air. He handed it to me before giving me a small smile and leaving the kitchen, sensing this was a moment that I should share with our parents alone. God, Jesse had always been so good at reading people it could be infuriating. For what seemed like hours, I sat frozen, unable to bring myself to open the letter. The envelope was sealed with the Hogwarts crest and my heart pounded loudly in my chest, a heart rate this high was sure to have some negative effect on my health but I didn't care. Eventually, I carefully opened it, careful not to tare anything, as this was possibly the most important thing I would ever receive in my life. I read the letter slowly, over and over again in disbelief.
Could this be some sick joke that the neighborhood children had pulled? Knowing how this would mean that I, in fact, was not a squib at all and was just unfortunately misdiagnosed after being a late bloomer? But no eleven-year-old kid was that good at forgery, and no eleven-year-old kid had an owl that looked identical to a Hogwarts one. I looked up for the first time, finally daring to meet my parents' astonished eyes.
"Mum, Dad." I finally said, a smile creeping on my face. "I'm going to Hogwarts."