Disclaimer: Don't sue me. I don't claim to own any of the characters and plots that are rightly Rowling's. It's all hers.
Most people sincerely believe that Elsie and Imogene McKinnon are twins. They are both petite, with pointed chins, cloudy black hair, and dramatically thick eyebrows. Imogene only gives away the slightest hint that she might be the elder sister with her inch of height over Elsie. She is, in fact, only a year older than her sister, though few outside of their school guess at it. Even their elementary school classmates, who knew that they were in different forms, sometimes whispered that Elsie had been held back, or Imogene moved ahead a year.
No one who knows them well, though, could mix them up. Imogene takes issue with everything about herself. From age ten onward, she begged her mother to tweeze her eyebrows, because she hated how thick they were. When she turned sixteen, she finally did it without her mother's permission, and went off to get her hair dyed and permed too, since she doesn't like her hair either, or any of her other features. Other people's opinions of her are her obsession, even the opinions of strangers. Nothing torments her more than the fear of social rejection.
Elsie has always been very different. She loves her eyebrows and thinks that they give her character. She is quite aware of what other people think of her, but doesn't care too much. As a child, she was always enchanted by the tale of how England turned from a tyrannical monarchy to a parliamentary democracy. Elsie does, however, automatically look up to her elders, and authority figures, and tends to assume that their intentions are benign. She is very close to Imogene and treats her as if she were twenty years her elder, not one.
But there has always been another thing that has set the sisters apart, which they scarcely noticed as children, but that worried their parents. Good luck abounded wherever Elsie went. When she went to the candy store and wanted a blue gumball, even if there had been only pink gumballs when she went in, she always mysteriously walked out with a blue one. The girls shared a music box that played one of three tunes when they turned the crank, one of which was a very sad, slow, boring tune. Imogene got all three tunes equally when she turned the crank, but when Elsie turned it, she never seemed to get the boring one. When Elsie played card games with her friends, she always got the best hand, even when someone else was dealing. It all made Imogene very jealous, but Elsie was always apologetic about it, and wished she could have given all her good fortune to her sister.
"Don't you ever think it's uncanny?" Mr. McKinnon would ask his wife. "You know, Elsie's luck? The way she - "
Mrs. McKinnon would interrupt with a loud snort. "Nonsense! There's no such thing as luck, dear, just skill and circumstance. Imogene does very well in school, and you never call it luck. Elsie just has a skill outside the academic, you know? Life skills. Resourcefulness. Ingenious - "
"It is neither resourceful nor ingenious that every single time Elsie stoops to pick up a penny, it comes up heads," Mr. McKinnon would insist. "You and me and Imogene and everyone else we know find pennies tails up some of the time."
"Didn't you ever study probability, Walter? It's empirically possible for that to happen. Just give it a rest." And they would give it a rest, until the next extraordinary thing happened. Elsie remained blissfully unaware. Being the child she was, the fantastical was a part of her daily life when she played at being a fairy princess with her friends, and her good luck was just another part of the life she led in her imagination.
Elsie's imaginary life ended at her doorstep as she entered her house, however, since Imogene turned twelve and decided that she was too old to pretend she was a fairy princess. There was no magic in the beige carpeted floor of the den, or the checkered linoleum in the kitchen, or the flickering light of the TV screen. Elsie was therefore disappointed to hear that her parents wanted to celebrate her eleventh birthday with a family dinner instead of a party at the local museum, where she had celebrated turning ten.
That day, Elsie's family did all her favorite activities: racing underwater at the swimming pool, swing dancing, and going to a fancy tea parlor in downtown London. When the McKinnons arrived home, Elsie and Imogene ran upstairs to draw pictures of butterflies, and their parents cooked Elsie's favorite meal, halibut with tartar sauce, with an angel's-food birthday cake for dessert. They called upstairs that dinner was ready, and Imogene and Elsie practically tripped each other running to the dining room. Mrs. McKinnon poured apple juice for her daughters, and they tucked into their fish.
Imogene noticed a shape in the window, feebly outlined against the darkness. With her mouth full, she exclaimed, "Zhair'zh an owww azh zhe window!"
"Swallow before you speak, sweetie," said Mr. McKinnon kindly.
His daughter took a mighty gulp and clarified, "There's an owl at the window!" Just then, it rapped its beak against the pane, and Elsie got to her feet in excitement.
"It wants to come in!" she squealed, and before her parents could protest or even move, she dashed to the window and opened it. Elsie loved birds and could think of no better birthday present than having an owl in her dining room.
It was a pale saw-whet owl with intense yellow eyes. It could have been any owl of its species, except for the glaring fact that saw-whet owls do not carry letters in their beaks. It dropped the letter on the table, then hooted softly. The letter had the right address, but no return address and no stamps. But what made Elsie's breath freeze in her lungs was that it was addressed to her. Not to Imogene. Not to her parents. Elsie McKinnon, she read over and over in her head with great relish. She turned to her sister and beamed. "It's probably a birthday gift from a real live fairy princess, Imogene! Isn't this the perfect way for a fairy princess to send a letter? By owl?" This was an even better birthday gift than an owl in her dining room: a birthday gift from a fairy!
"Why haven't I ever gotten a birthday gift from a fairy princess, then?" said Imogene, turning to her parents expectantly. But they were frozen like statues, speechless. Mr. McKinnon's throat worked, but no sound came out.
"Is it a bomb?" Mrs. McKinnon finally managed to croak.
With trembling hands, Mr. McKinnon picked up the letter and stared at it. "No," he said at length. "It's too thin. It couldn't hold anything but a few sheets of paper." The owl hooted again, and he blanched and let the letter drop.
"What are we going to do?" rasped Mrs. McKinnon, her voice still gravelly and horrible with fear.
"Let me open it, it's my birthday gift!" whined Elsie.
Mr. McKinnon tore the letter to pieces and threw it in the wastepaper basket. "It's not safe. Now, let's get this owl out of here and call the police." He dove for the saw-whet owl, and Elsie started to cry. Imogene's eyes were bright with anger, fear, and jealousy. Mrs. McKinnon just poured herself some wine and brought it to her lips, though it splashed everywhere from the jerking movements of her hand.
The owl would not suffer the indignity of being captured by Mr. McKinnon. Instead, it hooted and glided out the window, leaving only an emotional ruin to mark its visit. Elsie was no longer sure that the owl's visit had been the perfect birthday present.
