Disclaimer: Nope, not mine.
"Maggie"
By WitchyWays13
1938
He never said a word to me.
The other orphans were very chatty, starved for affection, like puppies. Their bright eyes always cheerful. It was a peculiar thing, to be raised in a place like Wool's - bleak and gray. But then I suppose they made the best of it.
Not Tom, though. He was as aloof and unfriendly as they come.
Black eyes would peer at me from around corners. Black eyes and black hair, pale skin. He never smiled. Sometimes I could tell he was watching me, but I'd turn around to find no one there.
Mrs. Cole was short with him, I think she was scared of him.
I know the other orphans were. He never stayed in the playroom where the little ones gathered. Lucy, the other girl I worked with, tried to get all the children together; she loved to sing and play games. Tom would take a book from the bookshelf in the playroom (though he must have read them all, many times over - there weren't that many, you see) and go back to his room. Lucy would tell Mrs. Cole, and the woman would sigh and walk away.
More than once she confided in me she wanted to have the boy looked at. Her cousin was a doctor - a head shrinker, she said. I'd never heard of such a thing. "For people whose brains are addled," she whispered.
Strange things seemed to happen when Tom was around. Books flew off shelves. Toys that were whole and sound suddenly broke when Tom looked at them; or so it seemed. Some of the children complained Tom had hurt them, but had never laid a hand upon them. Mrs. Cole simply shook her head at these claims.
Then came poor Billy's pet rabbit. He had found the creature on one of our summer outings, it's leg broken. He nursed it back to health, and it became a sort of mascot for the children. Tom and Billy got into a row about something - what it was we never found out, for Billy never spoke of it and wouldn't be left alone in the same room with Tom afterwards. His rabbit was found the next morning hanging from the rafters of Billy's room. I was the one who got to it first, cut the poor thing down and took it out back for the cook to bury. All the while Tom stood in the doorway, staring without emotion as the other orphans wept around him.
He was never accused of the crime, but the other children avoided him even more. Even Lucy became wary of him. Lucy, the sweetest person I knew.
One day Mrs. Cole seemed genuinely confused. She had usually hit up the gin bottle by mid-morning, so it was hard to tell sometimes. But she said she'd recieved a letter written in purple ink from a man with a funny last name. He was coming to see Tom.
I opened the door to this man, dressed strangely in an old-fashioned suit of purple velvet. He stayed a short while, and spoke only to Mrs. Cole and the boy.
At supper that evening, Tom seemed unusually excited. His black eyes glittered with joy and he fidgeted in his seat. I dared myself to ask what it was he and the man had spoken about, but I kept my mouth shut instead.
It was Mrs. Cole who told me the man had come from a special school. Tom was accepted there, and would be leaving us on September first. I felt a flood of relief, and trepidation. What kind of school would want children like Tom, unless it was to keep them separate from society? Would he be back for the summer? I felt uneasy at the level of excitement the strange boy had shown.
In what felt like only a few short months, it was summer again. Tom was once more among us, and it felt like nothing had changed. He was still anti-social, aloof and unfriendly. But he seemed more worldly now, like he was hiding some great secret that made him better than the rest of us.
I went in to clean his room one morning, as I had been doing while he was at school. He was eating toast in the dining hall at the time. I came across a pile of books while I was sweeping the floor under the bed. They had the strangest titles: "The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection," "The Standard Book of Spells" and "Magical Draughts and Potions." I went to touch one when I heard a shout from the doorway.
Tom grabbed me by the wrist and stared at me. Those dark eyes bored into me, and I was scared. He was strong for twelve, and I knew him capable of awful punishments.
A brief glimpse of that dead rabbit in my hands flashed in my head.
Tom's grip around my wrist tightened and I struggled to get out of his grasp. He let go, only to knock me down on the dusty floor. I felt a sharp kick to my side, and another to the back of my head. I lay on the floor, expecting to see him standing over me. Instead, he was on the other side of the room. Impossible, I thought to myself. Another sharp pain hit my head, and I saw stars. He had hit me - without moving an inch!
More terrified than ever I half-crawled, half-ran towards the door. The only two words the boy ever spoke to me were at that moment. "Stay out."
Mrs. Cole looked pale when I told her I was quitting. I never told anyone what had happened. Who would have believed me?
End.
Author's Notes: If you haven't figured it out, Maggie is the "scruffy girl" who opens the door for Dumbledore and beckons for Mrs. Cole. She's not really an original character, but I don't see how else I could have categorized her. I like looking at the perspective of the lesser-known, even unnamed, characters in this saga. More to come...