The Healer | Part 1: The Hogwarts Years

The Triwizard Tournament

Edith

'You're joking!

It had been four very strange years adjusting from being blissfully unaware of the magical world to finding myself enrolled in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. As a witch. The only one in my family, after believing for years that witches were only found in fairytales, not tiny Scottish villages.

I had struggled at first to learn how to use a magic wand and study subjects like Herbology and Potions. Now that I was in my fifth-year at the school, I felt like I pretty much had my feet under me and there probably wasn't much that could shock me anymore. Even things that most other normal students took for granted, like owls delivering the post, ghosts moving through walls and photographs that moved seemed practically ordinary to me when I was at the school.

I presently found myself in the Great Hall for my fifth ever start-of-term feast where something called the Triwizard Tournament had just been announced. I was trying very hard to follow the Headmaster's words, though it was proving very difficult as most people who came from wizarding families already seemed to know what he was talking about and were quite excited. It was an ancient tradition apparently, though I had never heard of it before. Why would I have? I would have to get my best friend, Mia, to explain it to me later, she came from a wizarding family and would know.

I was the first witch in my own family, as far as anyone alive knew, anyway. My parents had been shocked when we all found out, though, in hindsight, there had been subtle signs throughout my childhood. I was quite relieved to find out I wasn't going mad and the unexplainable things that were happening to me were perfectly normal for a young witch. My family had mostly thought it was all a joke when the owl arrived in our sitting room one warm July morning and dropped a thick, parchment envelope in my lap. I had too, to be truthful, until a half-giant called Hagrid showed up at our door and informed me he was going to take me shopping for all my school supplies. When my parents realized it was all real, and the shock had worn off a bit, they were eventually excited for me, though I knew part of them had been disappointed too. They would never say it directly to my face, but I knew, how could they not be?

I wasn't an only child. My sister, Bonnie, who was three years older, had never shown any signs of magic nor had she received a letter inviting her to study at Hogwarts. I felt a bit guilty over it, but there didn't seem to be anything I could do about it. It seemed as if you either you had magic in you, or you didn't. I fortunately discovered that I wasn't the only one at Hogwarts with siblings that were muggles, though it wasn't very common. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason that decided whether or not you had magic if you didn't already come from a wizarding family. I even discovered that some people who came from long lines of witches and wizards were born without any magic, though that was also rare.

It always took me a couple of days to adjust to being back in the magical world after being home in the muggle world for the summer. I missed my older sister terribly, but she had been distant for the past four summers since I'd come home with a trunk full of spellbooks and trinkets from the magical world, and this one had been no different. To make matters worse, my younger sister, Sophie, had turned eleven this year and also hadn't received a letter inviting her to study at Hogwarts. Even though she had never shown signs of magic and it wasn't shocking, I was upset on her account. I could practically feel the disappointment oozing from my parents and sisters when the first of September came around and I was the only one with a ticket for the Hogwarts Express yet again.

I knew my family resented me at least a bit for being different. I also knew that they weren't doing it intentionally, and they would never address it either. For me, it didn't help that I was away for most of the year while they were carrying on with their normal lives and making new memories as a family without me. And some days I just wished we could go back to the way things were before we knew that magic was real.