A/N: For the Duct Tape competition.
Prompt: Spiders.
Life wasn't fair. It was a maxim that Argus Filch had lived by since the broken, heart-shattering moment he had discovered, at eleven years old, once and for all, he had no magic. He'd held out hope until then-even his parents had. Perhaps he was a late bloomer. Perhaps he was simply delayed, or his magic didn't like to work like everyone else's.
But when he held the envelope from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in trembling hands, he discovered that perhaps it was kinder to be truthful, it was kinder not to press the lie. He didn't have magic. There wasn't a drop of magic in his sweating, gangly, eleven-year-old body, not even in the twisted little toe that had a mark like the crescent moon stamped on it in red and purple.
He was a Squib.
His parents tried to comfort him, but he turned away, turned into himself. How could they know what it was like, anyway? They had magic. They didn't know what it was like to watch all of their classmates and friends traipse off to a magical boarding school in bloody Scotland, to know that they were being left behind. A relic of a childish time, a broken toy to be put aside into the rubbish bin when September first rolled around. He was different, and he was wrong, and children were cruel, weren't they? So very, very cruel.
It had been one thing, before he turned eleven. He'd never displayed accidental magic, but hell, he wasn't the only one! Tobias Prewett down the street didn't either, not for ages. But he got his letter, now didn't he? Argus knew, because Tobias Prewett had pelted down the street only a week before he himself turned eleven, waving the parchment above his head and squalling at the top of his lungs that he'd been accepted. He'd ran so fast, he gave himself an asthma attack and had to sit against the oak tree at the school yard for nearly twenty minutes until his breathing calmed down.
So it was one thing, Argus knew, to not display accidental magic. It was quite another to have proof, in acid-green ink, that there wasn't a magical bone in his body, that despite his magical parents, his whole bloody magical heritage...he was a Squib.
The word thundered in his ears, echoed around like the ticking of a clock, or the rapid beating of his own heart. Squib-squib-SQUIB-squib.
When September first dawned, his parents stayed home. He wished they hadn't. He didn't want them to bear witness to his silent and enduring shame, the indignity of his face pressed silently to the kitchen window, watching his former classmates march down to the common Apparition point in the alley next to the primary school. All so common, so Muggle, save for the owl in its cage there, the tip of a wand peeking out from a girl's sleeve here. He drank in the sight with more intensity than he'd ever displayed, his hands clenched so tightly on the windowsill his knuckles shone white, and when the last person was gone, Tobias Prewett with his hair combed over and the stupidest smile Argus had ever seen stamped on his freckled face, he ended up hiding in a closet for two hours. His parents mouthed inanities at each other about giving him space, letting time take its toll, that he'd "understand when he was older," and he wanted to scream at them. Understand? Understand what? The fact that they'd given him a precious, heart-wrenching glimpse into a world he could never be a part of? Understand that due to some baffling glitch, some broken part deep inside, he wasn't whole? How could anyone understand that, and yet, as Argus Filch grew up, he discovered more and more that he did.
Life wasn't fair. It was the only comfort he'd ever sought, the only motto he'd ever found solace in, and the only thing that made life even remotely bearable sometimes. It wasn't fair. But maybe-someday-it would be.