Chapter Text
4 August, 1969…
It was a somber mood in the Prewett household, one reflected in the overcast sky that had begun to cover the Suffolk countryside in a light mist that didn’t seem ready to graduate into proper rain just yet. Despite the early hour, thick gray clouds necessitated the light in Lawrence’s room, casting a yellow glow over his Tutshill Tornadoes bedspread and causing his sneakoscope to glint as it gave a feeble spin atop his dresser. He’d been supposed to clean his room but hadn’t had the energy.
He hadn’t had the energy to do much of anything lately.
Staring down at the pamphlet before him, he felt like the moving images were mocking him. A staple of the magical world, so commonplace that muggles and their stagnant pictures were thought of as the oddity. Why didn’t their pictures move? After all, it was so easy, wasn’t it?
A quiet and wry laugh escaped his lips at the thought, and he reached for the folded parchment (the words ‘How to cope with non-magic living.’ were emblazoned across the front in cheery orange), gripping it and crushing it into a ball. A burning wetness threatened to spill from his eyes, but he willed himself not to blink, not to let himself break down. He’d held it together so far, been strong for Mum and Dad. After all, their shame at parenting someone like him was the real tragedy, wasn’t it?
Never mind that his entire life was crumbling around him.
He heard a knock at his door and heaved a sigh. More empty platitudes from Mum or hollow assurances from Dad. Oh, they still loved him; he was still their son, no matter what happened. The mere fact that they felt the urge to remind him of the fact told him that they were the ones who needed convincing otherwise.
A voice spoke after a moment, but it was neither Mum nor Dad.
“Lawrence, it’s Albus Dumbledore. Might I come in? I wish to speak with you. You may of course tell me to buzz off, if you would prefer. I would hold no ill will against you.”
Lawrence felt the ghost of a smile at the choice of words. It would in fact be immensely gratifying in the moment to tell the headmaster of Hogwarts to buzz off. But how often did someone get the chance to actually have a conversation with Albus Dumbledore?
“Come in,” Lawrence said, appalled at how throaty his voice sounded.
The door opened, and in stepped Albus Dumbledore himself. He looked much as he did on his trading cards, like the most wizard of all wizard archetypes. Long flowing hair and a matching beard, both an almost gleaming silver color, put to mind the magicians of old. Lawrence doubted, though, that Merlin would be caught dead in the headmaster’s luridly purple and gold robes. He always dressed famously loudly, or so Lawrence heard.
Professor Dumbledore glanced around the room with the sort of idle curiosity with which one might examine a library, as though Lawrence’s shelf full of action figures or his collection of chocolate frog cards might offer some deep insight into the inner machinations of his mind. Finally, though, the headmaster turned to him.
“Good afternoon, Lawrence,” Dumbledore said, inclining his head in a greeting. “I hope you don’t mind if I sit?”
The question was apparently a formality, as he produced his wand, giving it a wave and simply conjuring a rather comfortable-looking armchair. Fixing his robes about him, Dumbledore sat and reclined with such ease that for a moment, Lawrence felt like the guest, like he had stridden in and sat across from the headmaster at his desk. With a genial smile, Dumbledore surveyed the boy, his hands clasped in his lap.
“Lawrence,” he said. “How are you?”
The simple question combined with the headmaster’s easy and warm smile was the final crack in Lawrence’s emotional dam. Maybe it was the open concern that Dumbledore radiated, maybe it was the fact that his own parents had seemed more preoccupied with the impact this whole state of affairs was having on them with their son as a mere afterthought.
It was very likely some combination of both.
Either way, the tears welled up once more and couldn’t seem to be pushed back down this time, try as he might. Warm trails wound their way down his cheeks, and he sniffled as the professor produced a handkerchief, wordlessly passing it to him.
“My dear boy, I’m so very sorry,” he said while Lawrence dabbed at his face. “It’s a cruelty I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. You must understand, however, that your life may still hold as much value, as much adventure and magic as any wizard’s.”
“Magic?” Lawrence echoed with a snort. “Magic!? Professor, I have no magic. I’m a…a squib! I don’t get to learn magic, I don’t get to go to Hogwarts. Mum and Dad said! They said I’d go! I’d be a Ravenclaw, just like them! And I’d solve the riddle, I’d get into the common room no problem! I want to go! I want to learn Charms and Potions and-and watch quidditch games and…and cheer for my team! Professor, I w-wanna go to Hogwarts! Please!”
The headmaster let Lawrence scream and sob and blubber until he was left slumped in his chair, dabbing feebly at his face with the handkerchief. Staring at his sock-clad feet, Lawrence found himself unable to look up. He’d just shouted at Albus Dumbledore, unloaded what amounted to a temper tantrum on the single most powerful wizard in an age.
But Dumbledore spoke not to chide him or rebuke him for his outburst. His words were in that same calm, warm tone.
“Lawrence,” he said, “I’m afraid you simply cannot attend Hogwarts. Without magic, you unfortunately would not even be able to see the castle. And that would make it rather difficult to attend class, I should think.”
Lawrence let a feeble laugh at the attempt at humor, sniffling and wiping his nose.
“One mustn’t chase after that which he knows is out of reach, Lawrence,” the headmaster went on. “Time spent dwelling on a broken dream is time that could be spent forming a new one. Look at how many muggles have lived full and amazing lives. They’ve brought innovation and wonder to the world in their own way. I myself have even considered purchasing a television for my office. I would need quite a powerful antenna for it, however.”
Lawrence actually managed a snicker at that, looking up to see Dumbledore smiling at him with a twinkle in his eye.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you, sir,” Lawrence said.
“Oh, it’s quite alright,” Dumbledore said. “I’ve had the privilege of being witness to a number of rather impassioned shoutings in my time. Yours was at least one of the most sympathetic ones I’ve encountered.”
“Professor, what do I do?” Lawrence beseeched him. “My whole life, I’ve just been…planning for Hogwarts. What do I do?”
“Every year, around five-hundred and sixty students attend Hogwarts,” Dumbledore said. “Give or take. Many, many more children your age do not. I would suggest you start, Lawrence, with what they do. Your parents sent you to a muggle primary school, did they not?”
“Well, yes they did,” Lawrence said.
“If I were you, I would consider staying the course,” Dumbledore said. “Secondary school has much to teach a growing child and can set you up to learn all that you’ll need to make it in the muggle world. One squib I knew several years ago went to culinary school and has since become quite an accomplished chef. Another is a librarian and has a large and happy family to go home to every evening. Both live wonderful and fulfilled lives, even without magic.”
“Bully for them,” Lawrence muttered, and Dumbledore chuckled.
“Yes, it’s rather easy for me to say, isn’t it?” he said. “You may of course wish to dwell, to…mope, as it were. But I would advise you, Lawrence, not to let one lost opportunity rob you of the motivation to take so many others that are out there. It is frightfully easy to fall into despair. To climb back out is the test of true strength.”
“You’re just full of those, aren’t you?” Lawrence asked, prompting another amiable laugh from the man.
“When one lives to as considerably many years as I have, one accumulates far too many kernels of wisdom,” he said. “I’m afraid others find them universally tiresome, though often exactly what they needed to hear.”
He stood, and Lawrence did as well, watching with a stab of resentment as Dumbledore once again produced his wand and gave it a flick that sent his chair off to…wherever it had been, he supposed.
“Thank you for visiting, sir,” Lawrence said, figuring it best to be polite.
“I always make it a point to pop in on those who are regrettably unable to join us at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore said. “However, I am also aware that an old man such as myself is at considerable risk of overstaying his welcome. It would be the height of foolishness to urge you to get back to living your life without allowing you to do so.”
He held out his hand, and Lawrence reached to shake it. While his hands were a bit cold and gnarled with age, his grip was firm as he gave Lawrence’s hand a single shake.
“Continue your schooling,” the headmaster advised him. “Marry, have a child. A life well-lived is a magic all its own, I believe you’ll find.”
“More kernels,” Lawrence pointed out, and the headmaster smiled at him.
“A loathsome habit of mine, as you can see,” he said with a shake of his head. “Farewell, Lawrence.”
He saw himself out, the door clicking shut behind him, and Lawrence was left alone but feeling oddly…content. There still burned a sense of resentment, of course, but along with it was now a blazing feeling of purpose. He would make his own magic. Dash the magical world and their smug self-satisfaction! If they didn’t want him, then he didn’t want them, either!
In fact, from that day forward, Lawrence vowed never to have anything to do with magic ever again.
…
25 Years Later…
People loved to point out to Mafalda Prewett (often to her face) how very nosy she was, which she always thought a silly thing to express. Her nose was of a perfectly average size for her face, thank you very much. When she said this, though, most of the other children simply called her barmy or mad, not that she let such things offend her. Why should she mind the opinion of someone who believed (quite falsely at that) that her nose was too large?
Mum and Dad told her to never mind the opinions of other people, but that was easy enough for them to say. Grown-ups didn’t have to be good for their teachers, because they didn’t have teachers. If someone made rude insinuations about the size of Mum’s nose, Dad could just punch them. She’d never seen it happen, but she was sure it had.
But as a child at the mercy of teachers and headmasters and (once) the constabulary, she had only words to rely on, and the issue there was that while she knew plenty of them, her classmates didn’t. So when she called them addled neanderthals, they just gave her funny looks and walked off.
It was endlessly frustrating.
Thankfully, though, it had finally been the last day of lessons before summer break, and Mafalda was free of these monkeys once again. She knew for a fact that Elise Carlisle was holidaying in France for most of the summer, meaning Mafalda wouldn’t have to put up with her ugly face for more than a week before they were shot of each other.
That meant weeks of peace and quiet with her books, perhaps perched upon her usual tree branch in the nearby park, the one that allowed her to hear all the playground politics. The first week of classes was always so much more refreshing when one could inform Robby Billingsley that Katelynn Goodwin thought his breath smelt like a tin of capers that had gone off.
In Mafalda’s opinion, if you said something about someone behind their back, you should have no issue telling them to their face. She was merely a messenger. Unfortunately, she’d yet to put together the old adage about messengers and what often happened to them.
Thunk!
“Oi! Nosy!”
Granted, it was usually something a little more dire than getting pelted with rocks, but to the average ten-year-old, that was quite dire enough.
“Hey!” Mafalda shouted, holding up her book to attempt to shield herself, as it was rather hard to scramble away from the line of fire from a tree branch. Heavy stones battered the cover, making her regret not selecting a hardback as Beaver Towers shook and was nearly knocked from her grasp when a particularly large projectile struck, unbalancing her.
“Finally found your crow’s nest, we have!” Robby Billingsley shouted up at her, holding up another stone ready to launch while his gang of hangers-on gathered up more. “I’ve got some gossip for you to nose in on! No one likes you!”
“Mafalda the Menace!”
“Nosy Nuisance!”
“Mad Mafalda!”
They struck with names as much as stones, though Mafalda had heard at least one adage in her time, the one about sticks and stones. Long numb to biting words, her more immediate concern was the continued rain of increasingly large rocks. She was rather high up, and holding her poor book up in an attempt to guard against the bulk of the damage meant that she did not have a firm grasp of the branch underneath her.
It thus wasn’t terribly surprising when she fell, though that didn’t mean she was at all prepared.
Falling from a tree was likely one of the more common fates to befall (ha, good one Mafalda) a child, owing to their general recklessness, boundless energy, and unexplainable desire to simply climb things. In many such cases, the fall was most likely debilitating in some way, though survivable. The child would earn for his or her troubles a stern talking-to by parents and the physicians at Accident and Emergency, and they would be sent home in a cool cast and be the toast of school for the first few days back. Signatures would be collected from friends and acquaintances alike as everyone wanted to share in the new Fun Thing that was happening. Mafalda had even always dreamt of sustaining a broken leg if only to obtain a pair of crutches with which to knock a few shins.
In rather more tragic (but thankfully less common) cases, the child had climbed too high or fell somewhat in the wrong way and wound up dead. It was the age-old gamble one took when tree-climbing and one Mafalda had evidently not treated gravely enough.
During the last lucid moment before panic set in, she realized that the adage had come true in reverse; she had been pelted with stones and was now being beaten with sticks, albeit ones still attached to the tree—a technicality that was no less painful. After that moment of blissful irony (the only sort of irony she ever seemed to experience), life was a blur of leaves, sticks, and her traitorous copy of Beaver Towers as all three sought to pummel her in the face and body. It was a curiously short experience—one often imagined something so cataclysmic taking longer, but only seconds after she had been unseated, she fell the last branch-free meter to the ground and landed extremely abruptly on her shoulder.
“Uh-oh,” one of Robby’s lackies muttered, no doubt unnerved by how still she was lying.
“Run,” Robby said, and a frantic chorus of footfalls faded into the distance.
Mafalda remained quite still, as she was told that was what one was supposed to do after falling. Even so, she felt surprisingly okay, save for a pain in her…well, nowhere, actually. She didn’t hurt at all, and if her school uniform wasn’t visibly torn up (Mum was going to murder her), she might think she had just woken up from the most vivid horrible dream ever.
Climbing to her feet, Mafalda took stock of herself. No pain, not even the smallest limp. Her hopes of a cool cast and crutches to weaponize were dashed, but that was hardly as heartbreaking as an untimely death. More to the point, she had just survived what should have definitely been a spectacularly deadly fall. Even looking back up at the branch she had just plummeted from gave her vertigo.
Did she have superpowers?
There was an urge to climb back up and attempt to repeat her miraculous feat, but her uniform was already quite tattered. Also, she had just fallen from a tree.
That was usually the sort of thing a child told a parent, and sharpish.
Collecting her battle-scarred book, Mafalda heaved a small sigh at its state and made to finish the walk home.
…
Mafalda and her family lived in Featheringhamshire, a quaint rural village not far from Exeter (to which Dad commuted for work) and also rather close to the beach. In fact, Mafalda was looking forward to at least one trip to Sandy Bay in the coming months, if not more.
She could be extraordinarily persuasive when the need arose.
The downside to living in a rather small rural village was, understandably, that everyone knew everyone. Word traveled quickly among gossiping wives over tea or chatty husbands over drinks at the pub. Parents were as invested in their children’s social lives as they were in office drama or the latest television show, and as such, Mafalda was something of a pariah even among the grown-ups. As she made her way down the narrow winding road that led to her house, a few unsavory mutters followed behind, wondering what sort of mischief she had gotten up to no doubt. And there was that word again, “nosy”, following her constantly, echoing in her ears in tones of accusation and exasperation.
Was it her fault that her ears tended to wander?
Perhaps.
Even so, who didn’t show at least a polite amount of concern over what was obviously a disheveled little girl?
“What have you done to your uniform!?”
Well, Mum, apparently.
As she trudged into the front door and kicked off her muddy shoes, Mum appeared from the kitchen and took in the sight of Mafalda, her ripped and tattered uniform, and her generally dirty state. Sizing her up not unlike the constable that one time she had been apprehended out in the dead of night, Edwina Prewett executed with all of her considerable parental authority The Point.
The Point was a frightful thing, not because of what it was but what it represented. A high-shouldered, fully-extended arm bore a hand (claw) rigidly formed into the sort of matriarchal gesture that merited capitalization, warranted a full chapter in some nonexistent guide on how to survive one’s childhood with her sanity in check. The Point, as it were, was a prelude to disaster, a shunting-aside until a proper punishment could be handed down from the Court of Overly-Stern and Frankly Unfair Mothers and meted out with swift and terrible finality.
“You go upstairs and clean up now, young lady,” Mum said. “I expect an explanation of what happened to your clothes.”
“Mum, I fell out of a tree,” Mafalda insisted.
“Oh, out of a tree?” Mum asked in that annoyingly mock-indulgent voice parents put on when they don’t believe a perfectly reasonable explanation. “And not a scratch on you? What have I told you about roughhousing in your school uniform, Mafalda?”
“Mum – “
“Those uniforms cost money, dear,” Mum went on. “And now I have to either try to have this one mended or buy you another one for next year.”
“But Mum – “
“Upstairs and get washed up,” Mum reiterated. “Honestly, I don’t know what to do with you sometimes.”
Mafalda held back a snort because it would only get her into further trouble; Mum never knew what to do with her and so often opted for nothing at all. Even her own parents didn’t want to spend time around their nosy daughter.
In the bathroom, she shucked her uniform and made a show of splashing around in the bath for a moment until she at least looked somewhat clean. Climbing from the tub, she pulled on a bathrobe and took to the mirror to tame her hair. Dad’s flaming red locks and Mum’s sandy blonde had combined into waves of what Mafalda thought was actually a rather lovely strawberry blonde that was almost pink. She only wished she wasn’t so freckly, but Dad insisted that it was a Prewett trait that she would be stuck with for the whole of her life.
So much for her hopes of a summer tan.
Not that that was a possibility even without her alabaster complexion; at this point, she would be lucky to swing a beach trip at all. With Mum so incensed at her (and growing increasingly weary of the letters sent home from her teacher, headmaster, and the constabulary), she would be lucky to be allowed to walk to the park again.
Summer was certainly not off to a magical start.
…
Dinners at the Prewett household were an exercise in an irony too deep for Mafalda to really comprehend at her tender age. Mum insisted that every dinner be enjoyed at the table as a family, despite the fact that each and every afternoon saw her half-frantic as she put together a meal while spending the entire time complaining about how much cleanup there would be after.
Mafalda was quite sure she would be the one delegated the task tonight; whenever she found herself on the outs with her parents (which was often as of late), she became the chore mule until she had “learned her lesson”. What lesson she was supposed to learn about ruining school uniforms from washing dishes, she couldn’t fathom. Parents were odd things.
“Mafalda, your father and I have been talking.”
Oh, no. Few phrases held more gravity, preceded more childhood doom than the dreaded “We’ve been talking.” Such news from parents only ended in disaster, in the sort of sustained long-term punishment—often disguised as a lifestyle change—that resulted in a son or daughter growing from a mildly misbehaved youth to an estranged adult that made excuses not to visit for holidays. Already making plans to pursue university in Glasgow or Edinburgh, Mafalda only nodded to show that she was listening.
“You’ve been having far too many behavioral problems lately,” Dad said, apparently having been passed the Speaking Role for the moment. “All the notes we’ve been sent home, the other parents that have complained.”
“The constable,” Mum muttered.
“The constable,” Dad echoed.
“He said there was no official report filed,” Mafalda reminded them.
“Be that as it may,” Mum said, which was her fancy way of telling Mafalda that nothing she said was about to make any sort of difference, “the fact of the matter is that your father and I are at the end our rope. We can’t keep going through this cycle. You act out, you’re punished, and you act out again a week later.”
“This has to end,” Dad said, leaving Mafalda to wonder if they had rehearsed this. Perhaps they had, but she had a feeling that parents were just naturals at this sort of thing, telling their children off in perfect tandem while steamrolling their efforts at even a second’s defense.
“We’re sending you to a special school starting next year,” Mum told her, and Mafalda felt her heart sink. A special school? What business did she have at a special school? Special schools were for brainiacs or delinquents, and she was…
Oh.
She was going to a school for delinquents. That rather made sense.
“But…”
A thousand arguments died on the tip of her tongue; there was no point. Mum and Dad made decisions, and Mafalda listened. That was how things went at the Prewett household. And that was why a silent Mafalda grumbled her way up to her room to brood in peace.
After doing the dishes, of course.
…
Summer—once the ultimate source of childhood glee at the prospect of a months-long stretch without the drudgery of school and papers and tests—was now a dreaded thing. Each day was simply another leg in the long and arduous slog toward Miss Heather’s Home for Wayward Girls. A boarding school. Mum and Dad were to send her to a boarding school where she would be locked away for months on end and taught how to behave and how to stay in line and how to stop being herself in any way shape or form.
They called it “an opportunity” when they talked about it, like it was some big good thing and not the end of her life as she knew it.
Her lesson had been considered learned after two weeks of dish duty, especially in light of her coming sentence. Mafalda had left the sink running at one point and gone to snoop on Mum and Dad talking in the sitting room and discovered that they had chosen a boarding school far away specifically to be rid of her for nine months.
Granted, that hadn’t been the exact wording used, but the sentiment had been there.
“Just think, Lawrence, soon we’ll have real peace and quiet for the first time in years.”
“And maybe a chance at daughter that’s a productive member of society.”
That was awfully telling, to her.
It was just as well she wasn’t allowed to go to the park; she was just too sad for such a thing anyway.
But one day, as they are wont to do, circumstances changed in a singularly dramatic way. As Mafalda came back from a trip to the loo, she arrived in her room to a guest waiting on her bed. There, perched expectantly atop her star-patterned bedspread, sat an owl. Having never seen one in person before (weren’t they nocturnal?), Mafalda had never realized how very large an owl was, though she supposed any creature from outside would necessarily seem bigger indoors. Standing nearly a meter in height, it was a mudded brown color with black dapple spots and a tall fringe of feathers protruding from above each of its eyes, rather like horns.
Perhaps it was a horned owl? That was a type of owl, right?
That thought danced around in Mafalda’s head for all of a second before the more rational part of her mind took over and reacted accordingly to the presence of a wild animal in her bedroom.
“MUUUUM!”
To her credit, Mum responded instantly, calling Mafalda’s name while thundering up the stairs.
“Mafalda!? What’s wrong!?”
The owl, for its part, seemed almost bored at the proceedings, if it was possible for a creature with such a minimally expressive face to do so. It gave a small ruffle of its wings almost as though it was shrugging in a “Here we go again” sort of way. Nonetheless, it waited diligently for Mum to arrive at the bedroom door, and Mafalda was gratified to hear her mother let a yelp of alarm at the sight of a large bird atop her covers.
“Oh! What on Earth—Mafalda step back.”
Mum’s hand closed around her wrist, cold and wet from doing laundry still, but as she dragged her daughter back toward the hallway, the owl gave an indignant screech. Tossing its head in an uncannily exasperated gesture, it shifted and held out one of its claw things. Talons? Mafalda was very sure they were talons. But clutched in that talon was an envelope. The owl gave the heavy yellow paper an insistent shake, and the message was clear:
“Please, take this thing so we can move this along and be done with each other.”
Well, that was what the owl was thinking, though the intricacies were lost on the two humans.
“Is that a letter?”
If an owl was capable of sighing, this one did, letting another shriek and actually tossing the letter to the floor next to Mafalda’s bed. It began pacing the length of Mafalda’s mattress, obviously intent on staying until it saw to the thing’s delivery.
“Mafalda, don’t – “
But she already had, because what could Mum do? Send her to boarding school again? Darting forward and retrieving the letter, she studied the front, which had been addressed in neat green lettering that seemed to glint in the light:
Mafalda Prewett
10 Stoat Court
Featheringhamshire, Devon
“Mum…it’s addressed to me,” she said. “It’s a letter for me.”
She never got mail. Even newsletters from school were addressed to Mum and Dad. Sure, on rare occasion, her grandparents sent her a card for her birthday, but that had been once or twice that she was able to remember.
This was a heavy, thick-looking envelope, sealed with wax and everything.
“Don’t—Mafalda!” Mum had clearly been about to tell her not to open the thing, which Mafalda felt was silly; the owl obviously wanted her to. Inside were two pieces of precisely trifold paper, both the same thick yellow parchment paper that made up the envelope. One was a letter, while the other appeared to be a list. Figuring the letter would go a long way toward explaining the odd events of the past five minutes, Mafalda read:
Dear Miss Prewett,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
And that was it. Three of the most bizarre sentences Mafalda had ever read in her life, ones that opened up far more questions than they answered.
“Mum…did you apply me to a school called Hogwarts?” Mafalda asked, glancing puzzled up at her mother, who matched her expression with a shake of her head.
“Hogwarts?” she asked with a disbelieving laugh. “Is this some sort of joke, Mafalda? Is this owl someone’s pet? You’re going to Miss Heather’s, and that’s final. Not some made-up placed called Hogwarts.”
“Hogwarts?” Dad’s voice suddenly spoke, causing them both to jump; in all the commotion, they obviously hadn’t heard him come in the front door. “Where did you hear…?”
He trailed off at the sight of the owl, his gaze moving from it to the letter in Mafalda’s hand and finally to Mafalda herself, who shrank away at the sight of his expression. From confusion, Lawrence Prewett’s face morphed into a twisted snarl of pure rage as he looked upon his daughter.
“Well, congratulations,” he said in a tone that was anything but congratulatory. “You’re magic.”
…
Mafalda was no stranger to secrets; obviously, she made it a point to be privy to as many as she was able. Knowing things others didn’t was fun, especially when those things weren’t just facts found in a book but things about people. This time, however, the secret was about herself, and Mum and Dad seemed determined to discuss it without her involved. That irritated her on a whole new level. People were perfectly within their rights to try to keep secrets about themselves from her, but this was different. This felt unfair.
Mafalda didn’t like it when things were unfair.
And so, as she lurked outside the kitchen in an attempt to listen to the aforementioned discussion, she felt quite vindicated for once in her life. This was something she felt she deserved to know.
“You mean to tell me, Lawrence, that magic is real?” Mum was half-shouting, only kept from an actual shriek by Dad’s constant urging to keep her voice down.
“Dear, you mustn’t say it so loud,” he said. “There are secrecy laws.”
“Laws?” Mum went on. “They have a whole government?”
“Their own Ministry, in fact,” Dad said.
“And your parents were magic?” Mum asked. “I’ve met your parents. They didn’t seem magic.”
“Well, they were rather good at hiding it,” Dad said. “As I said, secrecy laws.”
“You’re not magic?” Mum asked, and her voice actually sounded a bit sympathetic. “You’re a…”
“A squib,” Dad sighed. “Non-magic folk can have magical children fairly often, but the inverse can happen as well. It’s rare, but…here I am.”
Mafalda actually felt a stab of sympathy at the melancholy tone in his voice. To know about magic but not be able to use it must have been awful. And now here was Mafalda, magic and shoving it in his face.
No wonder he’d seemed so cross with her.
“What do we do about this, Lawrence?” Mum asked on a sigh. “She’s trouble enough without magic. If we send her to this school…”
“If she’s not trained in it, it’ll just happen anyway,” Dad said. “In fact, I daresay it would be worse. Magic responds strongly to emotion, and if we pack her off to a boarding school designed to make her behave herself, well…”
“Lots of emotion,” Mum said. “And magical temper tantrums.”
“And then that Ministry I mentioned will get involved, and we’ll be left holding the match,” Dad finished.
“…Magic?” Mum asked him one last time. She sounded desperate, unable to cope with the dramatic shift in her worldview. Ten minutes ago, everything had made sense, could be fit into neat little boxes. With one visit from a shockingly intelligent owl, however, she had had a whole new mess dumped over her head, one much too big for those boxes to fit.
“Would I lie about something like this, Edwina?” Dad challenged her.
“I suppose you wouldn’t,” Mum conceded. “It’s the only reason I’m taking this seriously. So, what do we do? Do you have magic family we can call?”
“…I have a cousin in the countryside,” Dad said. “Mum and Dad left instructions on how to contact them if Mafalda turned out…like this.”
“And then?”
“And then she’s their problem.”
Mafalda backed away from the kitchen door and attempted to quietly pad up the stairs as she heard Mum’s footsteps heading toward her. It was simply understood that she eavesdropped as often as she was able, but she still preferred not to be caught doing it.
Up in her room, Mafalda collapsed onto her bed, her head abuzz with the day’s news. She was magic. That went a long way toward explaining how she’d survived her catastrophic fall from the tree. There were other oddities in her past that were also quite easily written off as magical happenstance. Like Franklin Eggleston suddenly manifesting a squirrel in his pants after pushing Mafalda down on the playground for telling the teacher about him stealing pudding cups from the kitchens. Or the time Bonnie Daley had gotten mad at her for alerting the whole class she had been picking her nose (it was gross!) and gotten a hold of her hair, only for all of her own hair to mysteriously fall off.
It had grown back!
Eventually.
In fact, a number of times she had been sure a teacher or her parents had caught her snooping, only for their eyes to simply slide right over her like she hadn’t been there at all. These had been serious conversations, the kinds of things even grown-ups don’t want people to find out about. Mafalda was one of the only people who knew that Mrs. Benson’s baby wasn’t her husband’s but the headmaster’s.
That one, she hadn’t told anyone.
All that aside (and it was a lot to consider), it sounded like she would not only be missing out on Miss Heather’s, but attending Hogwarts and spending the remainder of her summer with magic relatives. And Mum and Dad would still be getting their wish. She would be out of their hair, not their problem.
Everybody won.