Chapter Text
Margaret Oliver was a squib—everyone knew that. She knew it before she could spell her own name. She knew it meant she was bad, knew it made her a naughty girl, an embarrassment, a stain upon her pureblood family’s name. She knew also that she should have been grateful that she wasn’t sent away to live at an orphanage, as her mother often reminded her, but sometimes she wished she was. If she were to go somewhere where other unloved wretches were sent, she wouldn’t be quite so alone. But, she feared, perhaps even the wretches of the world would see the defect inside of her and detest her as the rest of the world would if they knew. Meg, as she christened herself, had no way of knowing—her world was only as large as her household. Meg’s father, Algernon Oliver, was a foreign ambassador at the Ministry of Magic, and spent most of his time in China, though even when he was home, he spoke little, and offered even less information about the world he had seen. Meg’s governess, Mrs. Pratt, had been with the Olivers since she was a child and was, if it was possible, even more defensive of the blood line’s purity, though her own was far from it. Still, Meg feared her governess far less than she feared her mother. Blanche Oliver had no children—at least, that was her answer when asked, except for a step daughter, Emmeline, who had met a gentleman in France when she was traveling with her father, and moved there to marry him. It was a good match, one Blanche was quite proud of, though it had happened entirely without her influence. Emmeline’s husband was from a long line of pureblood wizards with no stains upon their name—unlike the Olivers.
The happiest times in Meg’s life were when Emmeline came to stay. Though Emmeline had no children of her own, she was fiercely maternal, and considered herself an aunt to her half sister. When Emmeline visited, Blanche ceased her endless criticisms of Meg’s intellect, magical inability, posture, complexion, and general existence. Instead, Meg was invited to sit at the supper table, which was filled with so much food it made her eyes practically bulge out of her head to take it all in. One single platter held as much food as she was given in a week. She ate like a child half-starved. Once, Emmeline commented on it quietly after supper, when Meg was nodding off happily in an armchair beside the fire.
“Margaret’s growing to be ever such a small child. I should wonder if she ate at all if I hadn’t just seen it with my own eyes. And what an appetite! She had more than the both of us combined, I should think.”
“Yes, it would seem her defect has physical repercussions.” Blanche responded airily. “It’s a shame she’s such a gangly thing. You should see the expenses I go to, keeping up with her appetite.”
“She may plump up yet. As for her… defect, is there truly no sign? My mother was a late bloomer in that regard.”
“None. You know, I could perform consistent magic even before I received my wand.”
And so the conversation shifted to other matters and Meg’s mind once again wandered, though her eyelids drooped, she was not fully asleep. She knew her mother had lied to Emmeline. Meg was never given enough to eat, and she carried her hunger with her as other children clung incessantly to dolls or blankets. She had neither. But, in that moment, Meg couldn’t dwell on such unhappy things as lies or hunger. In that moment, her stomach was full and her feet warm. Though she knew when Emmeline departed the next morning, she would return to eating her meager meals in the cold kitchen storeroom, and she would again be forbidden from entering the pristine drawing room her mother entertained guests in, she fell asleep and dreamt that things would always be as lovely as they had been that day.
Hidden from society, Meg’s only friends were her studies. Mrs. Pratt taught her French, English, history, piano forte, drawing and painting, embroidery, literature, tapestry, poetry, and dance. Meg threw herself into her studies every day without fail, dreaming that one day, if she became accomplished enough, she could become a respectable woman of society despite her lack of magical ability.
Beyond her studies, Meg had one friend, one her mother and Mrs. Pratt were ignorant of. He was a boy around Meg’s age, who she met when she went out to play one spring evening, relieved of her studies, and found a stranger in the crook of her favorite climbing tree. When he saw her, he jumped down, rolling to soften his fall, and took off running without a second glance. Meg raced after him, but it was a hopeless pursuit. Without other children to play with, her thin, untrained legs couldn’t keep up. The boy was gone. For many days, Meg watched the tree from the window, waiting for the boy to come back. When he finally did, she crept into the yard, and placed herself directly below the boy, stopping him from performing the escape maneuver as he had before.
“What do you want?” He asked, wiping his nose on his sleeve in a gesture of juvenile toughness.
“To know why you’re in my climbing tree.”
“I didn’t know it was yours. Did you tack your name on it?”
“No. I didn’t know I was supposed to.”
“Now you do. In my neighborhood, if you don’t want to share a tree, you have to tack your name on it.”
Meg couldn’t tell if he was telling the truth, but if he was from another neighborhood, that meant he had seen significantly more of the outside world than she had, which made her inclined to believe him. “I don’t mind sharing my tree. I simply wanted to know why you were in it.”
The boy shrugged. “I felt like climbing it. It looked like a good climber.”
“It is.”
“How would you know?”
“Because it’s my climbing tree.”
Now it was the boy’s turn to look at Meg dubiously. “I don’t know any girls that climb trees.”
“Now you do.”
“Prove it.”
Usually, Meg was more cautious when climbing, anxious to keep her dress neat and clean, but in her eagerness to prove her ability, she scurried up in seconds, settling herself on the bow just above where the boy sat. “See?”
“You’re awfully fast, tree girl.”
“My name is Margaret.”
“Benedict.”
“What’s your family name?”
“My what?”
“Your surname.”
“Burton.”
“Hm.” Margaret wracked her brain, going through the list of guests who frequented her mother’s parlor. “Are your family purebloods?”
“Are they what?” Benedict wiped his nose again, feeling the need to maintain some toughness in the face of an unknown term.
“Purebloods. You know, not muggle born.”
“What’s a muggle born?”
“You don’t know? Don’t you know about… magical blood?”
“My ma tells me stories sometimes about magical folk. But I don’t believe in that.”
“Oh.” Realization dawned on Meg. Benedict was a muggle—which meant he didn’t know about squibs. Therefore, he wouldn’t know there was anything odd about Meg. “I don’t either.” It was the first lie Meg could remember telling.
“Are you allowed to come play? I could show you my climbing tree.”
Meg glanced back to her house. She was most definitely not allowed to go play with strange muggle boys. “I think so.”
Benedict climbed down and kicked at a pebble until Meg had stepped down and readjusted her skirts. “Oh, and about the tacking your name on a tree thing… I was only teasing.”
During the summers, Meg snuck away as many evenings as she could to play with him and learn the streets which surrounded her house. They became fast friends. She learned Benedict came from a large family who worked as cobblers out of their home, the first floor of which served as the shop for their wares. The first time Meg saw Benedict’s house, all she could do was stare. She had never imagined houses could be so tiny.
On some evenings, Meg spent time with Benedict’s family. Like him, they were a little rough around the edges; they laughed loud and long, which startled Meg at first, but she learned to love their easy joy, and missed it in the solemn silence of her own house. During the winters, she missed the sounds of his family the most. It was too cold and too far for Benedict to walk to visit her in the snow, and Meg worried that if she left to see Benedict, her mother would notice the prints in the snow and she would lose the one thing she had that was her own.
Thus was her life until she was sixteen. The change started after a dream. The dream itself was unremarkable. Since she could remember, Meg had dreamt of possessing magical ability. In those dreams, she innately knew how to wield it, and could feel it coursing through her veins. They felt so real that every time she woke up from one, she would spring out of bed and focus her attention on an object across her bedroom, willing it to do anything—a wobble, a flicker, anything to prove she wasn’t barren inside.
That morning was no different. She sat up, instantly awake, but she had learned not to be fooled by her dreams—it hurt too much to be disappointed. Lazily, she glanced over to the hairbrush on her vanity and willed it to move. It did. Meg blinked. Move, she silently commanded it, paying close attention, sure she had imagined it. Again, the hairbrush moved, inching to the left. Rise. The hairbrush rose into the air.
“Sweet Merlin.” Meg breathed, staring at the brush a moment longer, before leaping out of bed and tearing down the hallway, excitement taking precedence over every ounce of decorum she had been taught. “Mother? Mother!”
Blanche met her in the hallway outside of the parlor, where she was expecting guests shortly. She paled as she took in Meg, her unruly golden curls flying in all directions, dressed in nothing but her fleece nightgown. “Whatever are you doing? Margaret, return to your room at once and compose yourself—”
“I’m not a squib, mother!” Meg cried, ignoring her mother’s demands. “I’m not!”
“I am not interested in playing this game with you again. I thought you had outgrown your childish need for attention seeking.”
“It’s not a game, it’s real. I dreamt that I had magic, and when I awoke—”
“Return to your room and compose yourself. I will not tell you again.”
Meg bit the inside of her cheek and turned on the spot, running back up the stairs. She threw on her dress from the day before, not stopping to brush or smooth it. She twisted her hair into a knot and dashed down to the parlor, every fiber of her being practically vibrating with astonishment.
“So, as I was saying, Mother—” Meg rounded the corner to the parlor and stopped instinctively. She knew she wasn’t allowed inside.
“Off! Get off!” Her mother shrieked, pointing at her feet.
Meg looked down to see that the tip of her stockinged toe had landed on the robins-egg oriental rug that stretched the length of the room—almost as large as her mother’s pride of it. “I am sorry. I only came to tell you that—”
“Don’t tell me you’re still stuck on this silly fantasy.”
“It’s not a fantasy, it’s real!”
Blanche pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “I do not have time for this. Mrs. Gordon is coming for tea, and I cannot have her see you in such a state.” She straightened the tea tray on the table and began swiping at invisible crumbs, a far from subtle dismissal.
Meg set her jaw and focused her attention on the tea cup beside her mother’s pinky finger. As obediently as the hairbrush had, it followed her silent command, rising to hover three inches from the tray.
Blanche froze, raising her eyes slowly to the tea cup. Her mouth formed an O, the corner twitching with the words that didn’t make it past her throat. Before she could find her voice, the tea cup exploded, sending tiny shards of porcelain in every direction, including Blanche’s face. She lifted her hand in time to shield her eyes, but a few shards still met the spotless white of her face. Three small trails of blood ran from Blanche’s forehead. Meg could only stare, shocked at the cup’s (or perhaps her mind’s) betrayal, and the proof that her mother was not made of cold granite, but of flesh and blood, just as she was.
Blanche lifted a trembling finger to wipe away the blood. She stared at the dot of crimson on her fingertip with a rage Meg had rarely seen. Not only did Meg have the nerve to disgrace the Oliver name, but to spill her mother’s pure blood. She spoke only two words. “Get. Out.”
Three weeks later—three weeks of strange, silent upheaval, the order of the house destroyed—Meg stood alone on a quiet cobblestone street in London. She checked her pocket watch. She was still early. She replaced her watch and felt the wand in the pocket of her skirt; in all of her dreams of magic, Meg had not once held a wand. This wand was only a loan. The letter from Mr. Olivander had said she should choose her own in Hogsmeade, that the wand chooses the wizard. It was almost as if the wand was a creature, rather than an object. Indeed, though she was alone on the street, she felt as if there was a stranger there with her. It made her nervous.
Still, she felt no animosity towards the strange item—or creature, whatever it was. This wand was her ticket, her companion. This wand freed her at last from her mother’s house. Meg was going, not to an orphanage, not to a place for the unwanted and unloved, but to what she was sure was the greatest place on earth: Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.