Disclaimer (just in case): As my friend put it, I don't own a thing.
Nicholas Fletcher was just about average. He was five foot seven, with short brown hair and cool gray eyes. He wasn't fat, nor was he too thin; and he wasn't the strongest boy you'd ever seen, although he looked like he would be very fast. Altogether his appearance, along with the strange things he wore, made him seem slightly eccentric; and in a very strange way made him look almost scholarly.
Well, perhaps he was only really average to the people he knew. Anybody who didn't know him would think him completely out there, because he was a wizard. He was now in his third year at the most prestigious American wizarding school. It was, in fact, so prestigious that nobody really knew its name. But if somebody were to say "the American Wizarding School," everybody would know what school they were talking about.
Nicholas lived in the magical section of Richmond, Virginia. Since America was founded, wizarding communities had set up small strips, much like the American equivalent of Diagon Alley, outside of every state capitol, with the largest at D.C. itself. Although the wizards themselves tended to live in the rural areas, some lived within a few blocks of the magical strips, and these places were called the magical sections.
Nicholas lived on the outer edge of the section, so his family did have to be a bit cautious about what they did. But, since they owned a shop in the strip and Apparating was too loud for the time the left for work, they couldn't move much farther away; and since they were not the richest family, they weren't able to move too much closer.
Nicholas didn't mind the walks to the strip, although walking around in a robe everyday did get a bit more attention than he desired. His parents owned one car, a small one that seemingly never ran out of gas, which, of course, was true. It was enchanted, much like just about everything in the house.
Nicholas had always wanted to enchant things. His dream in life was to be able to make things that, like the kitchen brush that cleaned the plates without help and the pan that would flip things for you, used a large amount of magic to work. Since he had, three years previously, been accepted into the American Wizarding School, he felt well on his way to that dream.
Magic delighted him. Although sometimes the heavy tomes that got assigned as textbooks grew dull, he savored any minute he could spend reading them. So it was that on one September afternoon he sat on his bed, legs crossed under him, reading The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three. Somewhere in the house a door closed, and he called out, "Mom?"
"Hi, Nick! I'm just here for lunch; I'll have to go back to work soon."
Nick got up and walked through to the kitchen, marking his page and placing the book on the living room bookcase.
"How're things?" he asked.
"Not bad," his mom replied, "although it's getting really busy because of the pre-school rush. How has your day been?"
"Good," he answered, "I've been looking at this year's spell book. It's looking fun."
The stove turned on and the pan plopped itself on the burner as his mom got some hamburger meat out of the fridge. Nick sat down and looked out the window, then asked his mom about a few of the household enchantments. Both of his parents had graduated from the American Wizarding School, and she managed to remember at what year he would learn everything.
She left shortly after that, and Nick retired to his room with his spell book, and stayed there for the rest of the day.
The next day an owl arrived with his book lists, on which The Standard Book of Spells, Grade Three and Intermediate Transfiguration looked particularly appealing to Nick, considering that he had already read half of his spell book and owned the transfiguration one. The other ones weren't nearly so good; there was a potions one, which Nicholas thought unnecessary because, after all, why would one need potions to enchant objects?
That day he left the house with his deep gray and white robe on and turned toward the magic section, and set off at a brisk walk. He, of course, was oblivious that it was this day that would change the rest of his life—and determine how long the rest of his life was.