The feeling in his legs have been gone for a while now, but James didn't move. His gaze is fixed on the far end of the hill, where the owls always came, until today. His hands clench. The letter has to come, it just has to, no questions asked.
He doesn't even move when the front door of the house creaks open and slams with a snap. Footsteps follow it, soft, his mother's. She sits down beside him, leaning back against the railing. "James," she says, it is almost a question. James's neck is almost too stiff to move, but he looks at his mother. She is a frail woman with blond-grey hair that reached just below her shoulders. Dark rings found a home under her eyes that she doesn't even try to cover up and her mouth is thin and chapped. Her hands fold and unfold in her lap, as they do when she's worried.
"James," she says again, and this time James looks away. "The letter will never get here if you keep on waiting for it."
"What if it doesn't come? What if I'm a Squib?" His voice broke a little.
His mother almost laughed, "I've seen what you can do," she smiles broadly, "You're not a Squib. Remember that one time you 'accidentally' found yourself on the roof? Or that one time you jumped into the deep end of the pool and found yourself breathing underwater?" She is laughing by then, patting her son's shoulder.
"When will it come then?"
"Later," she says, "Now, c'mon, I made lunch."
James follows her in after a minute, lifting his sleeping legs slowly. The front door shut with a bang.
James - despite his mother's protests - spent the rest of the day glancing out of the window, but even as the day turned gold and pink and finally dark blue, no owl found its way across the hill. And finally, James lost all hope.
"I'm going to bed," he says in a voice that is not breaking but already broken. His chest feels hallow and his eyes heavy. He dreams of Hogwarts as he walked up the stairs. He thinks of his new friends as he goes down the long hallway.
He wishes of looking into the Great Hall for the first time as he crosses the room to open his window. He wonders what it would feel like to be one of them as the wind hits his face and stings his eyes and that's when he breaks down.
Turning away from the window, James falls against his bed and covers himself in the sheets without changing his clothes or taking off his shoes.
Hogwarts was going to be his one chance. James has no siblings and is home schooled. His only friend was a dog named Snitch, who is now barking at something out back. The barking, loud and harsh, doesn't stop for another ten minutes - it is the one thing keeping James from falling asleep.
With his face hot and his body shaking, he flipped the covers off and got out of bed. He cranes his head out of the window and narrows his eyes against the dark to find the dog. Snitch is growling at the sky, at nothing.
"Dumb dog," James says to himself but doesn't mean it. He shakes his head and looks to the sky and that's when he sees it: a dark shape against the trees, wings flapping in the wind. James's heart pounds and his face lights up. His stomach leaps into his throat and his eyes don't dare move away from the owl.
The owl, tawny with white flecks, swoops into the room and lands on the end of his bed, looking bored. James has to stop himself from ripping the letter right off the owl's leg and sticks to gently pulling it off. Once the letter is free, the owl takes off once again, almost hitting James in the face with his wing.
"Mom! Mom!" James shouts between a smile. "It came! It came!"