Hampstead Garden Suburb in the North London borough of Barnet was filled with distinctive undivided houses which enjoyed individual gardens, separated by hedges.
Eighty years ago, the planners had intended a reduced housing density and there were numerous landscaped garden squares and communal parks while the roads were wide and tree-lined. Contrary to local planning laws, it required an exception extended by the local authorities. The entire suburb had few shops and services and made no attempt to be self-contained. The inhabitants relied mostly on the adjacent Temple Fortune shopping district and the parade at Market Place.
Heathgate street was on a four point cross of roads with Meadway and shaped like a crucifix with houses along each side of the road. At the top of the street was St Jude On-The-Hill Anglican Parish Church that did not have a ringing bell as it was deemed too disruptive for a quiet neighbourhood.
At Number 7, Heathgate, the Wilson couple along with their adopted child Tom moved in during the autumn of 1988. Tom had a strained relationship with his foster parents and resented that the announcement had came out of the blue with little warning. He had thought himself capable of anticipating all their decisions and actions so it came as a surprise.
His "parents" had showed no signs of wanting to move, had not spoken to him about the decision. They had been happy with their inner city home and he had never visited the new neighbourhood before. In fact, he had once heard them expressing relief of never having to do gardening.
Tom's logical train of thought naturally led him back to the influence of magic and actors behind it. He had a hunch it might have something to do with how he had gotten into trouble with Dr. Browning, although he could never prove it of course.
But ultimately, he couldn't complain about the move. He enjoyed the new neighbourhood and its green spaces. The walks in nature calmed him and made him reflect about things and the wide open areas afforded him much privacy to practice and experiment with his magic away from prying eyes.
Another muggle hobby that he surprisingly enjoyed and appreciated his "parents" for were the piano lessons. He had gotten to be quite good and banging the keys helped him with focus and in suppressing his temper. As a distraction, Tom played when he had the free time and he couldn't do any magic with his parents around. Using magic, he was even able to make the piano play itself.
He attended the local public Garden Suburb junior school which was completely ordinary and in line with his previous school. He mostly kept to himself and saw no worth in engaging with the other children and their foolishness. When he did interact with them, it was mostly to manipulate them.
One Sunday, he was in the neighbouring public library. He had been doing research on various muggle conceptions of magic and the occult to better glean an idea on what the magical world might be like and how he could find them.
However, the book he wanted to check out had been taken and he saw a girl from his class take it out at the counter. Since she never spoke, except to answer questions so frequently the teachers had stopped addressing her, he vaguely remembered her name. It was a strange one comparatively. Hermione.
Next Monday, he was back in class again. During break, when no one was in the cloakroom, he first used his magic to surreptitiously break the surveillance camera and then fished through the girl's backpack which was stuffed with heavy books surprisingly and retrieved a pink notebook which was presumably her stupid diary.
Kicking open the girl's bathroom when he knew was empty he tossed it in the closest waste basket and went to find the girl herself.
"Hello, Hermione, right?" The girl was startled and turned around as she was buried behind a book sitting underneath a vine tree. Tom realised she never played with the other children either.
"I was just inside the cloakroom and someone tossed your stuff all over the floor and I saw a girl throw something of yours into the girl's lavatory."
Once Hermione had retrieved her diary, she desperately tried to find one of her missing books but to no avail.
Tom hadn't found what he was looking for unfortunately. The girl hadn't brought the book on the history of occults to school, but she had brought a bunch of other library books she had borrowed. One of them had caught his eye, Jane Eyre, because it was unusually thick and far longer than the rest.
The girl was pretty clearly quite smart and that rankled him because he always considered himself by far the smartest out of the other idiotic children. So he had taken it and decided to give the girl's book a read for amusement. In any case, losing a library book would get the girl in trouble and would gain him leverage in the situation.
It was riveting. Three days later, when Tom read the book any free time he had and dearly wished he could read it at school (but no doubt Hermione would realise he was the thief), he finished it.
Some of it, he did find baffling but he had to constantly remind himself that it was only a story about a girl. He hadn't known books could be like this and it amazed him to his core. Clearly, he had been complacent to think that the cr*p he was instructed to read in class was the extent of fiction that was worth reading.
The next day, he came clean and returned the book to Hermione.
"I took this from your bag that other day," he admitted. "It was just lying around. I'm sorry if it made you worry but I just started reading and couldn't stop. But I was going to return it to you, and here it is."
He made to reveal the book and then suddenly pulled it out of reach. Hermione's heart and mind leapt from a state of relief to panic as she reached for it dumbly.
"I want us to make a trade. Put it simply, I want that book on the occult I saw you take out from the library."
She suddenly connected the dots and things made sense. "It was you! You went through my things!"
The boy, Tom, smirked and continued to dangle the book just out of her reach. She leapt at him but he was taller and quicker and jumped backwards and managed to dodge her.
"You're making me tempted to just throw this thing down the toilet," he threatened wagging a finger at her. "Then you'll get banned from the library; they won't allow you to take out books again."
This was just Hermione's worst fear. She already felt unwelcome in most places, including at school, and the public library was her most important refuge. She had never lost a book before and didn't know how her parents and the library would react and it slipped past her usually logically organised brain that this infuriating boy was merely teasing her.
She felt more scared than angry at the moment at what he had said and the familiar piercing feeling of shame and embarrassment coursed through her and unlocked something she knew she had.
A sudden spark from an electric charge stung his hands and Tom was forced to drop Jane Eyre with a yelp to the floor as Hermione dived to retrieve it, while he made no effort to do the same.
Hermione was suddenly aware that Tom was strangely interested in what she had just done as she got back to her feet. She had been expecting him to recoil from her or at least be dumbfounded. But in fact, it was just the opposite.
"You're… a witch," he mouthed at her wide-eyed. He was staring at her like a specimen as if he was just seeing her for the first time. "You can do magic." He looked positively delighted with her.
"I… I'm not sure what you mean," she stuttered in response still in a daze of shock.
"That's why you borrowed that book on the history of the occult! Hah! I wondered why a nice girl like yourself would be interested in such nonsense! But I know now that you know what you are! Tell you what, if you want more information and I can give you a lot more, meet me at the Little Wood after school."