Jacob Osenberg was a man who never really cared for traditional ideas of manliness. Still, at his core, he was a man. When he was a boy, he was shoved into the ghettos with his family. When he was a teenager, he and his sister were sent to Buchenwald. When he was a man, he was the only one in his family to escape.

He didn't escape because he was a great man. He didn't escape because of a great man's mercy. He escaped because it was the only thing left to do. Because he had seen his sister's eyes glaze over and knew he failed, had seen his connections leave him behind. Because there was nothing left for him in Buchenwald except vengeance.

He didn't escape immediately, he waited. He memorized faces, names, families, each of the guards, each of their crimes. He kept careful notes, and concealed his growing number of journals in the rotting wood of their dormitories.

He planned and he plotted. He considered picking off the guards one by one, but knew that they would only punish the other planned and plotted and ultimately did nothing. And his journals rotted in the wood too, the red ink in the ledgers bleeding out.

This lasted until 1941. It was nighttime, and the coughing in their dormitories was louder than during the day. The bunk to his right held an older man, a political prisoner, and a young woman, battered and bruised. To his left a couple who usually kept to themselves. And beneath Jacob was Henry. A beautiful man, and just as ill as the rest.

Jacob was a man who never really fit into the traditional trappings of manliness. Buchenwald was a place not just for Jews, for enemies of the state, or for races deemed inferior, it was also for the homosexuals, the deviants, anyone who could be othered. And Jacob was certainly able to be othered, and so was Henry.

It was nighttime and the coughing was interrupted by harsh German, they barged in and they started grabbing them.

Panic set in for Jacob, he knew, they all knew what was coming. He looked at Henry but before he could try to hide him, impeccably shined Nazi boots were stamping down the aisle at him. And impeccably maintained Nazi unfiroms were dragging Henry away.

Jacob felt panic set in, he felt rage, he felt fury, he felt magic. He felt the room jolt sideways, he felt the impeccably maintained Nazi unfiroms constrict and twist, and he felt magic build up within him ready to just squeeze. He saw Henry yank his head around, fear and love in his eyes. And he felt a sharp impact on the back of his head and he felt nothing.

When Jacob awoke it was daytime. He was on a train, the sunlight pouring in. The car was crowded and humid, but Jacob felt cold. And in his heart, Jacob knew Henry was dead and that he would never see his body.

If Buchenwald was hell, Auschwitz was worse. A million Jews, murdered. More experimented on, twisted by Mengele, kids, women, men, elderly, infirm, anyone at all who was unfortunate enough to be worse than an other, to be curious, was funneled into his lab.

And Jacob was curious to them. Jacob didn't conform to the traditional image of manliness. He was small, chronically malnourished, by all accounts he should've been weak. But he was strong like they thought men should be, tough like they thought men needed to be, and he was clever.

He would disappear from impossible places into a different impossible place, leading to manhunts. He would evade the guards in ways that fascinated Mengele's team of scientists, ways that kept him alive. They kept him in a game of sorts, how far could this strange man get before German efficiency overtook him? They would've admired his mind if they didn't hate it so very much. But as it is, he was interesting to study, and you don't throw away an interesting thing.

And yet, Jacob was clever. He held himself back. He could've escaped, he knew he could. But every second the scientists spent trying to pry him apart was a life he was saving. He was clever and he could do this. He wouldn't fight.

By 1944, he could feel their impatience. They weren't just testing him, they were dissecting him alive. They would take something and he would have to fix it, or die. He couldn't do charms anymore, he couldn't use magic on anything but himself. But he was tough, like they thought a man should be, and strong like they thought men needed to be.

And it was all an act, like it was for every other man. Because Jacob cried every night, and missed Henry when he saw his favorite constellation in the sky. He would watch the scorpion chase Orion for three years in Auschwitz, and he felt just as lonely as any other man, just as afraid, but somehow not broken. He didn't know how, but he remained together until they started mentioning his name. Grindelwald was coming.

He thought about escape again, but by this point, he couldn't bring himself to care enough. A doctor would say he was depressed, but it was the doctors who were torturing him. And, suddenly, the day had arrived.

It is 1945. He opened his cell and stepped right inside. Henry didn't see them unlock his door, and he immediately knew that Grindlewald was like him. He knew because the doctors in Auschwitz were not scared, but they were cautious around him. Grindelwald was not cautious.

Jacob Osenberg did not believe in the traditional ideas of manliness, but Grindlewald did. He believed his manliness was might, and might was a tool to inspire faith and fear. He saw Jacob's toughness as that of a man, rather than a beast. He saw his strength as that of a man. He saw it as proof that magic alone is not freedom. He saw the fact that Jacob remained, that he wasted his toughness, that he wasted his strength. He saw his sacrifice as something that made Jacob less of a man. Grindelwald saw and understood sacrifice, and rejected it.

"Might is might, Mr. Osenberg. What is right, however, is decided by those who remain. Would you like to remain?"

And he left, and that night so did Jacob, with shame in his belly. He was done. He was ashamed, but he was tired, and he was done.

And Jacob thought about Grindlewald's words when he saw Jewish soldiers slaughtering Palestinians in an attempt to make a new Jewish homeland.. He thought about Grindlewald's words when he saw the self-fulfilling horror in those soldiers' eyes as they tried to bury their self-hatred next to children, women, and men no different from them.

He thought about Grindlewald's words when he got married to a woman he loved in every way except romantically, and smiled in America by his white picket fence. He thought about them until he couldn't stand to think anymore and turned to drink. If he was still a man, he would've drunk himself to death.

He thought about Grindlewald's words when his son was born, and kept thinking about them while he tried to forget Henry's eyes.

Because for however much he had loved Henry, in Jacob's mind, Henry was human and Jacob wasn't. Henry got sick like a man, and died like a man. Jacob didn't talk about Auschwitz, but his family knew. His wife knew. His son knew. They thought he was lucky, blessed, to escape. Perhaps they even thought he was strong, to do so and remain whole, remain loving. But Jacob knew that the moment he first felt his magic, he stopped being a man at all. Jacob knew that in any other world he would've died beside Henry, a man, and everything would be all right. He thought about might, and he thought about how people waste it, how Grindelwald wasted it, how he wastes his. Jacob thought about those words until the day his grandson, Harry Osenberg, was born.

When his own son was born, Jacob was too drunk to be nervous. He just sat next to them in the hospital, sloshed beyond belief, staring at his son until his wife finally nudged him into holding him. Sarah quickly slumped down in exhaustion. It was obvious he was drunk, but she was too exhausted to be furious. She'd remember, though. He was born in 1965, and they named him Benjamin, after Sarah's oldest brother.

Sarah met Jacob soon after the war, but she didn't marry him until 1952. During the war she had been an auto worker in Chicago. The war caused such a shortage of manpower that they hired women for all the jobs they thought they were too weak to do before. She had done as good of a job as anyone, but the end of the war meant the end of that little experiment, and she was expected to have her replacement trained by August of 45. Instead she quit, and immediately started to count her savings.

Career opportunities for a woman were few and far between at that time, even after they had been so plentiful all throughout the war, but Jacob was hiring. He was one of many displaced Jews looking to start something new, and Chicago was one of the two American cities he remembered the name of, so they sent him here. The fact that a man with nothing somehow had enough money to buy a bakery never occurred to anybody as odd.

Sarah found baking to be an enjoyable, if exhausting, way of living. She would wake at 4am to start the bread, start the ovens, get rolls ready, brew coffee, and so on until Jacob would get up and join her. He'd serve the front, so as to assure people that yes, this Jewish bakery is actually owned by a Jew. Meanwhile Sarah, who was Catholic, blessed all of their loaves with her touch. But bread was bread, challah was challah, and babka was babka. And as long as it was good, and a good price, people would buy them.

It was 1950 by the time Sarah asked Jacob out on a date, and 1952 when she asked him to marry her. That was what he liked most about her, that she wasn't afraid to ask. And so when she asked him if he was a wizard, he showed her what he could do. In the end, she shrugged and asked why he wasn't using that so they could make more bread.

They didn't have a fairy tale love, and it wasn't a great romance, but it was enough for now.

From Ben's first birthday until his 10th, Jacob watched for any sign of magic. Some days he hoped it would come, somedays he hoped his son would only ever be normal. And in the end, Ben was normal. He had a normal life, a normal wife, and in 1997, a son, Harry Osenberg.