Chapter one: Introducing Susie
Susie lived with her ordinary Mum and her ordinary Dad in an ordinary house in an ordinary town. There was nothing about her life that was at all odd. Except, of course, Susie herself. Everyone agreed. Susie was an odd child. She was quiet and shy, studious and polite. She never made much of a fuss about anything (Susie didn't like fuss). In her classes she would just sit there listening to the teacher, reading her schoolbooks, doing her class work, answering questions she was asked and generally behaving like a model student. She never asked awkward questions, she never asked any questions. She never bullied other children, she never reacted to being bullied, she'd just look at them with her enormous eyes, stare at them unblinking and unspeaking until they felt awkward and went away.
Her exam results were always just above average for whatever class she was in. Her end of term reports were always the same and the words her teachers most frequently used to describe her were "quiet and competent". She never got into any trouble, she never excelled. Her teachers found her vaguely irritating and unsettling but could never explain exactly why. They were always glad when she moved on at the end of the year, but always felt vaguely guilty for being glad.
As a baby Susie didn't talk. She'd experimented with talking when she was alone in bed at night and she felt it might be useful at some point but she thought about it and realised she didn't really have anything to say. She could usually get her message across without talking so what was really the point? Her parents were worried about her. All their friends' children started babbling away and even using real words well before Susie did. As a toddler Susie quiet liked going to see the nice man her worried parents took her to. He had toys in his office and would try to get her to talk – it became a game she was winning and he didn't even know he was playing.
One day, when Susie had just turned 2, her Uncle Pat came to visit with his baby Jamie. She was playing in the front room with Jamie when she became aware of a smell. Jamie needed changing. He wasn't uncomfortable enough to cry yet but he was certainly smelly. She toddled up to her uncle who was sat at the dining table with her mum and dad. She pulled on his trouser leg, pointing to the front room.
"I'll come and play in a minute Susiekins", she thought for a moment. That would be nice. Uncle Pat played good games. He crawled on the floor and let her ride him like a horse. And he chased her round the room pretending to be a cuddle monster. It was fun. But that wasn't exactly what she was asking so she tried again. "I said in a minute sweetheart!"
She thought about this and frowned slightly. She opened and shut her mouth a few times. It was almost like she was debating with herself. "Jamie's nappy needs changing." At that point she became the focus of quite a bit of adult attention. She didn't like it one bit. So she shut up. Again. After a while she figured out if she spoke occasionally and stayed quiet the rest of the time, she could more or less get along without too much of a fuss. Susie never liked fuss. She didn't like making it, she didn't like causing it, she didn't like being the centre of it and she didn't even like being in the same room as it.
As Susie grew older, Uncle Pat had three more children after Jamie but Susie's Mum and Dad just had Susie. Susie didn't mind. Babies were almost always at the centre of fuss. Either they were making a fuss or they were being fussed over. Susie usually left the room when that happened.
When she was nine, her parents moved to Fowey. Susie liked Fowey. She liked the sea. On windy days she would walk down to the heart of the town and curl up on a sheltered stone bench overlooking the harbour and just sit there. Watching the sea. Susie liked the autumn best. The stormy weather would cause waves to crash against the harbour walls blowing spray up high into the air.
Summer was good too, in different ways. First there was no school. Not that she particularly disliked school but no school meant she didn't have to talk to any other children and Susie didn't really like many other children. Well it was more that they didn't really like her actually. They didn't really dislike her either they just thought she was odd. When she first realised that other children thought her odd she had quite a long think about whether this should upset her. She'd come to the conclusion that they were probably right, she was odd so why be upset about it? But the other reason that summer was good was tourists. A lot of tourists came to visit Fowey and she could sit on her stone bench and watch them. It wasn't quite as good as watching the stormy sea but it was still interesting. Some of the tourists were a little disturbed by being stared at unblinkingly by an owl-faced girl but most didn't notice her.
This particular year, Susie was eleven. It was the end of primary school and summer holidays brought a strange kind of feeling. She had been on a trip to look at the local secondary school with the rest of her classmates but she hadn't much cared for it. She hadn't expected to. It was just the same sort of place but full of older and bigger children. And with more of them.
But the first week of the school holidays something odd happened. Susie was downstairs eating breakfast with her parents when an owl flew on to the windowsill. She stared at the owl unblinking and it stared right back at her. The doorbell rang.
"Ahh, post" said Susie's Dad as he jumped up from the table. "I've been waiting for that new book from the club!" Susie's Dad loved reading and got new books posted to him every month from a mail order book club. Susie stared at the owl while she heard her Dad chatting to the postman.
"There's a letter for you popkins!" Susie jumped. "Funny thing, it was on the doormat but the postman couldn't remember having dropped it. Her you go!" He passed her a thick envelope. Susie read the letter three times. Part of her thought it was some kind of elaborate joke but in another part, the part that she kept hidden even from herself something clicked. It felt right.
"Mum, Dad, it says I have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"
Her parents stopped stock-still and looked at each other silently for a moment. Then her Dad cleared his throat. "Well, I suppose we shouldn't be too surprised."