A/N This is a short two-chapter story about Filch. I thought he deserved something, and figured he was more that a grouch old man. This is a version of what I think happened in his life.
Disclamer: I wish, I wish that I was JK Rowling... but then again, don't we all? This is all hers.
We were young once; I remember it well; sometimes as if it were yesterday, sometimes as if it were someone else's fond memory that I was intruding on. We were young for a rather short period of time, and that time elapsed much quicker than either of us would have liked. I will admit that after the time we were truly young we had some moments of pure youthful energy, love, and passion. They passed quickly. But we were young once; I remember it well. When did it stop? We were mere children; her, eleven as of the thirteenth of that month. I, eleven the fourteenth of the next. I had never believed that one day could change a life as it did in the Tales of Beetle The Bard, but I figured out the truth to those fairy tales on that particular day.
It was July the twenty-first, and I had positioned myself as close to the open window as I could get, sitting in a straight-backed chair, the back slightly cracked, paint peeling, that was shaking slightly thanks to my fists pounding quickly on the kitchen table and my scrawny body bouncing up and down with un-controllable excitement. I heard a slight whooshing sound and turned to see a plate piled high with eggs, bacon and potatoes that my mom was conducting towards me with her oak and unicorn tail hair wand. It landed smoothly with only a slight sliding noise as it came to a halt right in front of me.
"Eat up! Today's a big day!" I grinned at my mum and turned to my plate, not noticing the slight hint of worry in my mother's eyes. Quite frankly, I was too excited to eat, but I obeyed my mum and began to gobble down my eggs as fast as I could, all the while stealing excited glances at the window every few seconds. I was just devouring my last potato, when my front door banged open and before I could guess who it was I saw a blur of a blue and yellow dress and before I could greet her she plopped down in the chair across from me positively glowing. I realized again that she was beautiful, with her cheeks rosy, and her brown curls bouncing around her shoulders. I smiled hugely at her and we both looked out the window at the same time.
"Yours come?" I asked biting my lip in anticipation for her answer.
"Nope, yours?" I shook my head.
"But my mum said that they usually come from ten to two, and it's-" She looked over at the clock, "Exactly noon, so in less than two hours we'll be official Hogwarts students!" I whooped with joy, it was what I had dreamed of-we had dreamed of actually-for our whole lives. We were silent for a minute, just staring out the window, waiting for the tawny owls we had heard so much about that would undoubtedly be making their way to my window at any moment. She lived right next door, and we would see her owl at her window through my window.
"Gryffindor right?" I asked, already knowing the answer, simply trying to cover the nerves spreading around my body as I stared at the owless open window.
"Of course!" She answered like there was no other choice in the world. "And you?" She said grinning.
"Gryffindor all the way. Daring, nerve and chivalry set Gryffindors apart." She smiled and nodded and we both turned our attention to the open window once again. We lapsed into silence and waited. The second hand on the clock seemed to be ticking faster and louder than normal. The minutes ticked by. Time went faster. My mind began to wonder why no letter was falling into my arms. We waited more. We occasionally exchanged glances; at the beginning the looks were gleeful and excited, as the day progressed, the glances were wrought with worry. One o'clock came and went. The hour between that and two o'clock seemed to pass at the speed of light and before we knew it, it was a quarter past three and we remained letterless. I did not realize it, but for most of the time we had been waiting, my mother had been standing, a little ways outside of the kitchen anxiously waiting herself, and at three thirty she came into the kitchen with a resigned look on her face. She walked up to the table and sighed loudly to get our attention. We both jumped in our seats, turning our attention from the window to her. She looked sadly at us.
"Mum, where are our letters? Irma's mum said they would be here ages ago." I looked at my mum with that expression that almost all children under the age of twelve had. The, there's-a-problem-tell-us-the-answer expression. Today would be the first time that expression failed me; the first of many more to come. My mum looked away for a second and then back at me.
"Look, Argus, Irma, you're both very mature and I think you can handle this." We looked at her questioningly, then at each other with the same expression and back at my mother. "I probably should have told you this when I first suspected it, but me and Irma's mother," she looked at Irma and then back at me, "have suspected it for a rather long period of time. It seems that while many other of your friends will be getting their letters today and already have, you will not."
"Why? Why mum?"
"Well, it does seem rather odd that there would be two of you in such close proximity... Next door neighbors even, but," my mother seemed to be having some sort of internal war with herself, and was looking away from us again, mumbling incoherent words that were certainly worrying me and my companion more than was probably necessary.
"What is it, Ma?" My mum looked up again and answered me in a rush.
"Well, dears, it seems that you are both what the wizarding world calls, Squibs." I stared at her, having no idea what she was talking about, but Irma clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped, looking more horrified than I had ever seen her look in my life. She looked at me, tears already forming in her eyes.
"What's a Squib?" My mum bit her lip, but answered immediately.
"A Squib, to put it bluntly, is a man or a woman, born to two parents with magical abilities who possesses no magical talents themselves." I was still a bit confused; until that moment, I did not know that was possible. Irma had been silent for a very long time, but she spoke now in a slightly hysterical tone.
"But, no! We can't be! We just can't! All our friends aren't! What are we going to do with our lives? We have nothing, we," but I cut her off, still not quite understanding.
"So, what you're saying is that we're like... like the opposite of muggle born. Instead of a witch or a wizard born to muggles, we're muggles born to witches and wizards. We have NO magical abilities?" I looked at my mother.
"I'm afraid so, dear." I felt like I was being pushed down under water and no one would let me come back up for air. I couldn't breathe right, or think straight. I was half expecting my mother and Irma to suddenly start laughing and pull out our Hogwarts acceptance letters. This had to be some sick joke, I thought. As I sat there, and thought over our lives thus far, I realized it wasn't
I thought about how over the past few years, me and Irma's other friends had started to developed magical powers that they couldn't control. Like the time when we were nine that Martin Perkins had come to my doorstep with Artemisia Lufkin, having both accidentally magicked themselves into my clothing. We had laughed for a good twenty minutes and they had made me promise that if I ever did something like that, I would be sure to tell them immediately. I never did. Or the time when we were seven, and I had been reading in my bedroom and heard a loud crash on my lawn, only to run out and find that Laura Pettigrew had somehow ended up on my roof and then fallen off, but remained unscathed. We, again, laughed for a good while and she promised that if I ever did something like that, I would tell her so we could compare experiences. Nothing of the sort had ever occurred for me. Indeed, there were countless instances in which our friends had done magic before. Our parents had always told us we were just late bloomers, our time would come sooner or later. It apparently would not. I was suddenly angry.
"How could you!" I yelled, glaring at my mother. "All this time, you knew we were, we were Squibs and you never told us!" My mother opened her mouth to defend herself, but Irma beat her to it.
"Don't blame your mother, Argus. It's not her fault, she was just trying to protect us, and now," But suddenly she burst into tears. I sat there, stunned for a moment; Irma never cried. Luckily, my gentlemanly instincts kicked in almost immediately and I got up, walked around to the other side of the table and pulled her into my arms. We stayed in this position for a long time, my blue button-down shirt getting steadily wetter with her tears and my mind forming more and more dreadful possibilities of what could happen to us as Squibs. What if we had to get muggle jobs, marry muggles, go to muggle school? What if the world we had grown up in and belonged in shunned us? Did we belong in this world? If we were not wizards and witches, did we belong in their world? What if we were meant to be muggles? What if that's what we were supposed to be? Muggles. Irma seemed to read my mind; she always did, and stopped crying. She looked at me, straight into me with her perfect blue eyes.
"We can't let this stop us Ar, we really can't. We still belong here, don't you think?" I stared at her. Why was it that she always knew what to say and think? Whenever I had a problem, she always had the answer I was looking for. In truth, I wasn't so sure that we did belong there, but when she said we did, I was more convinced. I smiled weakly at her.
"Yeah! Of course! I mean, just because we can't do magic doesn't mean we can't be around it, right?" She grinned.
"Exactly!" I smiled back thinking, if only for a moment, that things might just turn out okay.
A/N: REVEIW! It's my first story of hopefully many more to come... I'd like some motivation. :)