That evening, I went to see Snape in his office. He sat behind his desk, gazing over steepled fingers to where I stood before him.

At long last he said, "So you are the first-year boy who wants to learn magic?"

"Yes!"

He hesitated. I am fairly sure he had a speech prepared, a whole bitter litany of discouragement and all the reasons I should never attempt to make a serious study of magic. If I'd been from any House but his, he probably would've gone through with it. He probably would've with most students from his own house too, come to think of it.

I think he was struck by the absurdity of the situation: a teacher encouraging a student not to learn. And he did try to be a teacher.

Instead, he told me, "Then I will teach you."

So while you were practicing to be the star of the Gryffindor Quiditch team, I was taking private lessons with the teacher most loathed and feared of any of the long-term staff, learning the real fundamentals of magic that you never bothered to learn and that Hogwarts never bothered to teach.

Do you think Snape spared me any of his bitterness? He didn't. He parsed out the speech he refrained from giving me that first evening over the course of an entire year, possibly more, in snide comments and insinuations. That first year, there were days when he would teach me, and days when he would try to break my spirit.

But I was strong in certain ways, ways no eleven-year-old should've been. I had a bone-deep stubbornness and no expectation of or dependence on any kindness or encouragement. If I hadn't, I'd have broken down, and Snape would've hated me for it.

Those first years, I made it a habit to ask myself, are we having an adventure yet? Big old castle, mysterious mentor figures, bloody magic, you'd have thought there would have been classic adventure stories lurking around every corner. And there were for you, weren't there?

Only, if I had an adventure, what part would I play? You were the hero, obviously, but I didn't want to be the villain, and I didn't want to be one of the million unimportant townsfolk, living lives of little significance to anyone. And those were really the only roles I could think of, then.

Were we having an adventure yet? No.

My father, no longer the invisible figure he'd been before I'd met him, found his way into my life at school. From time to time, he would conspire to send my packages, often through a third party I had never met, and to make sizeable deposits in addition to the small but reasonable sum that Griffith and Melissa had made available to me in a Gringotts account.

There were times, I admit, when I began to indulge in the fantasy that Augustus Rookwood was only in Azkaban because he had some purpose there, and might one day appear in all his terrible might at my door and take me under his wing like the good son that I really was. But my father could play the system masterfully, not control it. And he wasn't the sort to care for a child.

But all kids really love their parents. All kids want to be loved by their parents.

One time, when Snape came late for our regularly scheduled contest of wills, I saw he was limping.

"Are you alright?" I asked. "Sir?"

He glared at me contemptuously, so I felt the need to clarify.

"I know first aid," I offered.

They had taught us once, as a special extension of the Wednesday afternoon group. It was a means of empowerment, of coping with the fear that something could go horribly wrong at any moment: if something did go horribly wrong, we would know of something constructive to do, something to minimize the damage.

Of course, Snape didn't know what first aid was, so I explained, badly, reciting everything we'd been taught. He listened impatiently, telling me curtly, "It's been taken care of," at the first break in my rambling.

Being told that everything is fine like that when you're worried about someone really only makes you worry more. So while Snape tried to get on with things, I was distracted, fidgeting constantly. At last, he noticed my inability and guessed why it was.

"There is magical healing, Rookwood. It is incredibly powerful, but it takes time." His tone was unchanged, but the words were an act of mercy.

"Will you teach me that?" I asked.

"If you can manage to learn the most basic fundamentals of magic, yes. Now," and he launched into a caustic explanation of Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration and its five Principal Exceptions.

After that night, Snape still tried to discourage me from learning magic, but it was a token effort. To him, I had proved myself damaged enough to be past his ability to harm, so he could trust himself with me.

He was wrong, of course. What I had really demonstrated was that most affected by his pain. Had he realize that, he would have known that I would pay for it if he let me get any closer. I don't regret it, but he would have.

The year's end was uneventful for me, as it wasn't for you. Sometimes, wonder if your annual adventures did you some real harm: all that heroism and powerful magic. Maybe you forgot the value of the ordinary, the day-to-day. I wouldn't be surprised if you thought you could solve any problem with a climactic confrontation.

Toward the end of the year, I'd noticed that in my lessons with Snape, there was math. Ordinary, Muggle math. Not just in Arithmancy, it was everywhere. Adjusting spells for certain weather conditions or seasons, working out the amounts for potion ingredients, and I don't even know how Astronomy was even taught to the rest of the school, I stopped paying any attention after about second year, it got so helplessly garbled. And it wasn't handled very well anywhere. There's nothing quite like reading some old warlock go on about a long-winded explanation of a fairly basic polynomial expression.

You know, before that I hadn't noticed much, that most wizarding families don't really provide their children with much education. The entire school system is one seven-year program. We don't learn reading, writing, art, logic, or math or any kind. We only learn the history of magic, not the history of everything else, and at Hogwarts, it's taught by a ghost. Can ghosts really even think? Binns never gave any sign of it, that's for sure.

I didn't want my hard-won study to be hampered by some old wizard not knowing how to work a simple calculation, but I knew it wouldn't be long before the calculations were out of my depth. So I decided to get some basic math textbooks and learn on my own.

Textbooks aren't cheap, though, especially Muggle textbooks, since mostly they're not sold to students. I didn't want to ask Griffith and Melissa to pay for more than what was required by the school. But, as I've mentioned, my father had seen to it that I had funds to buy all the things befitting a young gentleman. I was not that young gentleman, so by the end of the first year, I hadn't found much to do with the money. Paying for a textbook or two shouldn't have been a problem.

Only it turns out that Gringotts doesn't keep Muggle money around, so you can exchange Muggle money for wizard gold, but not the other way round. I was handed off from teller to manager, until finally an aged goblin who was probably in charge of a sizeable chunk of the bank's operations told me that they don't trust paper money, and there isn't a big enough demand for it, so the bank finds ways to get rid of it as soon as they can.

"Most wizards don't want Muggle things," he said, giving me a keen look over his wire-rimmed glasses. "Wouldn't have a use for them."

I was about to give up, frustrated, when on my way out I met Hermione Granger and her parents, obvious outsiders. What must they have thought of me, frantically and adamantly trying to buy the money they intended to exchange, offering twice as much as the bank would give them? And Hermione, who I'd hardly said a word to all year, what did she think?

Mr. and Mrs. Granger wanted to know what I was up to, of course, so I told them.

"There's things, see, like math, that wizards aren't good at. It turns up in magic, but they're not good at it."

The Grangers shared a look as I stood there, biting my lip and trying not to fidget. I think it was the start of something, a seed of doubt watered where it might have shriveled and died. Mr. Granger smiled and patted me on the shoulder in that vaguely concerned way parents have with other people's kids.

"How about you stick with us, and later on we can all go to a bookshop together? It sounds like Hermione could use some extra books as well."

And that's how, when you and the Weasleys met up with the Grangers, I was hanging just outside their little familial cluster. And why, as you and your friends hurried about Diagon Alley getting your school things, I tagged along, an outsider told to join the group by adults.

You remember that day, don't you? Back when the cracks in our world were only just barely visible to you, the Dark Lord an amorphous threat to be fought with adventure and bravery. But it was never that to me. To those of us who were the children of war criminals, to Finny and I, that half-forgotten conflict, never really spoken of to children, was a swath of destruction that cut through every landscape. The cracks in your world were barely visible. My world was already broken.

"A while ago, you see, there was a man, a wizard. He wanted, well… he tried to take over Wizarding Britain. A lot of people died."

The atrocities of men are born in the dreams of children.

If my father, then why not me? It didn't matter that I had hardly met the man, or that I didn't know why my father did what he did, or that I didn't even know what the war was about.

All children really love their parents. All children want to be loved by their parents.