Title
Chapter One: The Owl
It happened, as I hear it so often does, on my eleventh birthday, June 28th. A snowy owl was perched on top of my fish tank with a half-eaten beta fish in its beak. Wondering how it got in I quickly noticed the broken window and shattered glass.
Upon seeing me awake it gave a loud hoot, took off and flew gracefully threw the "open" window, fish in tow. Not being very upset about my fish, I picked up the letter that my parents must have left on my bedside table while still puzzling over why an owl was in my room in broad daylight (I like to sleep in).
The letter was entitled thus:
To Mr. Westley Fredrick Roberts
In the United Kingdom
Great Britain
London
Revenge Street
64228th house
Second Floor
First Bedroom
There was a strange emerald seal, which I easily broke and removed the letter inside, which was written in old style parchment.
Dear Mr. Roberts, we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We know that this may come as a bit of a shock to you, considering both of your parents are, to the best of our knowledge, muggles. But by completely random chance, you are a wizard. I'm sure you'll have a thousand questions to ask a thousand people. But we will be forced to use memory charms on anyone you tell who is not one of the following; a spouse, a sibling or honestly considered the equivalent of a sibling, a parent or honestly thought of as the equivalent of a parent, a legal guardian, or a biological or adopted child of yours. To satisfy your questions we will send a representative from our school. You will find enclosed a list of supplies, the representative will help you with those.
p.s. Sorry if the owl broke your window, he's still being trained and is having slight difficulties.
Smiling at my parent's joke, albeit surprised that they even broke a window and got a trained owl, I went downstairs. So when I got there, I pretended to ignore the one present that sat on the kitchen table and addressed my parents immediately.
"Did you know that I was a wizard?" I asked, without care for small talk.
"Had no idea," my father stated dryly, still poring over a novel that sat beside his cereal bowl. It wasn't that he didn't care about me, he just wasn't willing to immediately stop what he was doing when somebody interrupted him.
"Well this is exciting news," my mother said more enthusiastically. "Did you make the orange juice I prepared for you float from your nightstand to your mouth or something?"
"No," I replied, surprised that she had suddenly learned how to lie. "I received this letter from an owl that broke my window and ate my fish." I presented her with the letter.
Her eyes widened beyond belief, "Fred!" she said urgently.
"Hold on dear, I'm near a climax right now." My father was of the stern belief that every good book had at least three climaxes. My english teachers all hated him.
My mom snatched his book away and shoved the letter down in its place. Although disgruntled my father knew that it must be important and didn't argue. "Well this is great!" he exclaimed upon reading the first sentence or so. He got up to hug me. "Forget your birthday present, we'll need to get a cauldron, a wand, books, potion ingredients, quills, robes, a hat, maybe even a decent broom! Oh and of course I'll need to fill you in all about the wizarding world! You're going to be a busy boy this summer!"
"Okay, you can stop pretending," I said. "I know you guys wrote up the letter, hired the trained owl and smashed my window. I'm not a little kid, you don't need to patronize me."
My dad laughed while my mother just looked concerned. "Westley, magic is real. Oh I could go into why everybody will disagree but there's time to do that later. Wait. Did you say the owl smashed your window? What kind of shit owl is that?" My dad rambled for a bit. "Anyways, open your present, blow out your candles, best to wait to explain until the representative gets here."
I took his advice, hoping they'd drop it later. But throughout me opening my brand new, and awesome, laptop and blowing out my eleven birthday candles both my parents had a strange smile on their faces. And finally, just as I finished blowing out the candles, the doorbell rang. Expecting surprise relatives I answered the door myself. It was a strange man dressed in strange clothes with strange classes.
He smiled and held out his left hand upside down. I tentatively took it. "How'd I do?" he asked.
"With what?"
"Pleasantries, of course," he replied. "I always get them wrong."
"Well you're supposed to use your right hand and your's was upside down," I informed him. "Oh and you usually say hello, introduce yourself, and ask how the other person is doing."
"Well Iat least 'm improving," he said lightly. "It all just seems made-up and pointless to me."
"I know what you mean," I replied. "Personally, I never bother with pleasantries."
"I didn't know there were muggles who didn't do pleasantries," he said and I suspected his eyes were wide but his glasses were completely opaque. "However you were right about introductions. I'm Rolf Scamander, and when I'm not traveling I'm teaching Care of Magical Creatures at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. You are Mr. Westley Roberts, I presume?"
"Yes," I said. I was getting rather tired of the whole charade and was about to say so when he bent over and inspected my forehead.
"Head shock-full of nargles. But we'll soon fix that."
"Is it uncle John?" called my father.
"It's the supposed representative from the school." I replied
My dad knocked over his chair and left the knife half in the cake as he rushed to the door. "Hello Mr...?"
"Rolf Scamander," the strange man supplied.
"Scamander. I'm Westley's dad. We were very pleased and surprised to receive the letter. Please come in."
The strange man walked into our house and took a seat in the middle of the widest couch. "Before you begin I must correct your letter," my father started the conversation. "It assumed that both my wife and I are muggles, I however am a squib."
"Oh, my mistake." Mr. Scamander apologized. "So I should just give you your train ticket and leave, huh?"
"Uh no," my father answered. "We did not tell Westley about magic because we did not want him to expect to be a wizard, so he remains unconvinced that we're even telling the truth. We could use some convincing."
"Of course," he agreed. "I assume the owl broke your window. Allow me to fix that." He hurried upstairs, into my bedroom, over the hill of dirty clothing and stopped near the pile of broken glass. He pulled a long, wooden, carved stick out of his robes and pointed it at the broken window. "reparo!" he cried. The shattered glass picked itself off the floor fit itself perfectly into how it had been before it was broken. And finally all of the spider-webbed cracks faded into a perfectly clear, unbroken window.
"Here's your train ticket, all the info's on it," he handed me an average looking train ticket that claimed I was to leave from platform nine and three quarters. "Good-bye!" With that he vanished into thin air with a loud crack. The window promptly fell apart behind him.
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