I don't remember much from before I was five, but the cupboard is the first thing that stays in my mind. It was dark and small, with spiderwebs tucked into the corners. I learned to sleep with my knees tucked right up to my chest because there wasn't enough room to stretch out. I learned to be very quiet, too, because if I made any noise, Uncle Vernon would bang on the door and shout at me.
I remember being hungry more than anything else. That's something I remember very well.
Strange things always happened when I was upset. Things broke when I was angry, and things flew through the air when I was scared. My aunt cut my hair with the kitchen scissors once because she wanted to make it look normal, but it grew back to the same length overnight. She screamed when she saw it, and Uncle Vernon talked about sending me away, though he never actually did.
I learned very early on that I was a freak. That was the word they always used for me. I was a freak when the plates spun on the table without anyone touching them, or when my hair grew back, or when I ended up on the roof of the school kitchen and couldn't explain how I got there.
Dudley learned the word from them, and he used it even more often. Sometimes he hit me when he said it, and sometimes he just said it, and that was enough to make me feel small. He hit me when he was bored or angry, or when he wanted the food I was eating.
I learned how to curl up and cover my head with my arms to make myself a smaller target. Sometimes it worked, but sometimes it didn't. I didn't know I was magic then. I just thought I was broken.
I don't remember my parents at all. I only know their names because Aunt Petunia told me once when I asked, though she said they died in a car crash. Her face looked strange when she told me, all tight and hard, like she was holding something back. I didn't ask her about them again after that.
Instead, I used to dream about a bright green light that was everywhere, and a woman screaming. It wasn't me screaming, but I was there. I don't know how I know that, but I just do.
At school, I was the weird boy who had no friends and teachers who looked at me like I was a problem they couldn't solve. At home, I slept in a cupboard and tried to be small and quiet and invisible. I was very good at being invisible. That was my life.
Everything changed on a Thursday. When Dudley and I got home, the house was full of strangers. Aunt Petunia said they were family from France, but she didn't explain anything else. She just told us to go outside and play, so we went to the garden.
Dudley had a football and kept kicking it at me. I had to dodge it or get hit, because that was the game he liked to play. He kicked it much harder this time, and it hit me right in the shoulder. I stepped back and waited for the next one, but then a girl walked up and took the ball. She didn't even ask him. She just took it.
She was small, even smaller than me, and her hair was black and white. It wasn't the colour of a rainy sky, but a bright white, like the foam on top of a wave or the milk at the bottom of a bowl when the cereal is gone. A silver streak ran from her temple all the way down through the dark parts. She wore a dark green and charcoal trousers, and she walked like she owned the whole place.
Her eyes were green, but they weren't like mine. They weren't the pale green of grass or the dark green of my aunt's good dress. They were a bright green that didn't seem to belong in a garden in Surrey. It was a colour I knew I had seen before, even if I couldn't remember where.
She looked at Dudley, and he actually stopped kicking. She took the ball right out of his hands, and he didn't even try to stop her. Then she looked at me.
"Kick it back to me," she said. Her voice had a tiny, sharp sound to it, as if the words were shaped a little differently in her mouth.
I kicked the ball, but it wobbled and went wide. She fetched it and kicked it back to me, making it soft and easy to catch. We played like that for an hour. Once, Dudley tried to shove me, but she got right between us. He shoved her instead, but she didn't move an inch. When he tried to do it again, she grabbed his wrist. Her fingers were small, but his arm stopped moving instantly.
"You are bigger than him," she said, her eyes flashing. "It isn't a fair fight. Stop."
He actually stopped. I didn't know what to do with my hands after that, so I just put them in my pockets.
Later, the adults talked inside. I sat on the stairs and listened to words I didn't understand, like custody and stipend and wards. There was one name that made my aunt's voice go sharp and scary: Dumbledore.
The girl sat on the step beside me and didn't say anything at first. She just sat there with her hands folded in her lap.
She pulled a biscuit from her pocket that was wrapped in a napkin and slightly crushed, then handed it to me. I ate it, and it was the sweetest thing I had ever tasted.
"We will see you tomorrow," she said. Then she stood up and walked back to where the adults were.
That night, Aunt Petunia came to my cupboard. She stood in the doorway and looked at me. "Your mother," she said, "didn't die in a car crash."
I sat up fast.
"There was a war," she went on, her voice sounding strange and shaking. "It was a war between people like her. People who can do... things. Magic. She was killed, and your father was killed because someone betrayed them."
She told me that the people who came today, Jane and her family, were Evanses. They were our family from France, but they didn't know we existed because the families had lost contact a long time ago.
"There's money now, a stipend," she said. "They are going to help. You will stay with them for part of each month and learn about where you come from." She turned her head and looked me in the eye. "The things that happen around you when you are upset or scared aren't because you are a freak. It's because you have magic, just like your mother."
She said the word like it hurt her mouth.
Magic.
I had spent my whole life thinking I was broken or wrong, like something that needed to be fixed or beaten out of me. But it was just magic.
"What about Dudley?" I asked.
"He has it too, like me, but our magic is sleeping. Yours isn't."
Aunt Petunia stood there for a while longer, then told me we were going to buy new clothes tomorrow before seeing the doctor. When she left, I lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster looked different now, almost smaller, as if the house wasn't pressing down on me quite as hard as it used to.
I thought about the girl, Nimue. She had taken the ball from Dudley without being scared, and she had stood between us without flinching. No one had ever stood between me and Dudley before.
Something small and warm spread in my chest. I didn't have a name for it, but I thought it might be hope. I hadn't felt that in a long time.
The next day, we went to a shop and bought cheap clothes that were still a bit too big. The trousers were too long and the jumper was thin and a weird shade of blue. The trainers were stiff and rubbed my heels when I walked, but they were new. They didn't have Dudley's initials written on the tags in permanent marker. They were mine.
Aunt Petunia paid without looking at me, and we walked home in silence while I carried the bag.
Then she took me to a doctor. I had never been to one before. The waiting room was warm and had a fish tank bubbling in the corner with soft music playing. Nimue gave the doctor a pouch of biscuits she had made herself, and the doctor smiled and thanked her.
They asked me lots of questions and I answered them all. They weighed me and measured me in centimetres, then shone bright lights in my eyes. The doctor was kind, with grey hair and glasses on a long chain, and she didn't flinch when she saw how thin I was. She just wrote things on her clipboard.
"You have been hungry," she said. It wasn't a question. I didn't answer her.
She said I was malnourished, and my aunt's face went very red. I got a needle in my arm, which hurt, but I didn't cry because I was used to hiding the hurt. She gave me supplements in big bottles that rattled and said I needed to go outside and run and climb things. She told Jane that my body had been saving energy because it didn't know when the next meal would come, but that with proper care, I would catch up.
On the way out, Jane pat my shoulder again. "One week," she said. "Zen you come wiz us."
I nodded.
Nimue raised her hand. I raised mine back, and then they left. I stood and watched their car disappear around the corner. Aunt Petunia took my hand, and for once, I didn't pull away.
"Come on," she said. "We need to prepare your things."
I didn't have many things to pack. Just the new clothes, a pillow, and a blanket that had been mine since I was a baby, even though the edges were frayed and the pattern had faded away. Aunt Petunia gave me a photograph of my parents, too. She didn't say anything when she handed it over; she just put it on the bed and walked out.
I looked at it for a long time. My father and mother leaned into each other, laughing, their smiles bright. Her eyes were green, exactly like mine and exactly like Nimue's and Jane's. I put the photograph in my bag, which was just Dudley's old school bag with a broken strap that had been tied back together.
I sat on the bed and waited.
One week.
Seven days.
I could count them on my fingers, and I did it four times just to be sure. I thought about Nimue and the way she had looked at me—not with pity or disgust, but just like I was a person. I thought about Jane's hand on my shoulder, which had been light and brief, as if she was afraid I might break.
Most of all, I thought about magic. It wasn't the kind that made toys fly when I was angry or made my aunt's hands shake. It was the kind that meant I wasn't a freak. It meant I was just like my mother. I didn't know what that meant yet, but I really wanted to find out.
One week.
I started counting again.