𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐝

- 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗶𝗿𝘁𝗵𝗱𝗮𝘆 -

{ BOOK TWO: CHAMBER OF SECRETS }

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number seven, Magnolia Crescent. Mr Jack Lewis had been woken in the early hours of the morning by a loud, hooting noise from his niece Lucia's room.

"Third time this week!" he roared across the table. "If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!"

Lucia tried, yet again, to explain.

"She's bored", Lucia said. "She's used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night..."

"Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Jack, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy moustache. "I know what'll happen if that owl's let out".

He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Emily.

Lucia tried to argue back but her words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Lewis's son, Ryan.

"I want more bacon".

"There's more in the frying pan, sweetums", said Aunt Emily, turning misty eyes on her massive son. "We must feed you up while we've got the chance... I don't like the sound of that school food..."

"Nonsense, Emily, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings", said Uncle Jack heartily. "Ryan gets enough, don't you, son?"

Ryan, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, grinned and turned to Lucia.

"Pass the frying pan".

"You've forgotten the magic word", said Lucia irritably.

The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Ryan gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen, Mrs Lewis gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth, Mr Lewis jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples.

"I meant 'please'!" said Lucia quickly. "I didn't mean —"

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU", thundered her uncle, spraying spit over the table, "ABOUT SAYING THE M WORD IN OUR HOUSE?"

"But I —"

"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN RYAN!" roared Uncle Jack, pounding the table with his fist.

"I just —"

"I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!"

Lucia stared from her purple faced uncle to her pale aunt, who was trying to heave Ryan to his feet.

"All right", said Lucia, "all right".

Uncle Jack sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Lucia closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes.

Ever since Lucia had come home for the summer holidays, Uncle Jack had been treating her like a bomb that might go off at any moment, because Lucia wasn't a normal girl. As a matter of fact, she was as not normal as it is possible to be.

Lucia Riddle was a witch — a witch fresh from her first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Lewis's were unhappy to have her back for the holidays, it was nothing to how Lucia felt.

She missed Hogwarts so much it was like having a constant stomach ache. She missed the castle, with its secret passageways and ghosts, her lessons (though perhaps not Snape, the Potions master), the post arriving by owl, eating banquets in the Great Hall, sleeping in her four poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting the gamekeeper, Hagrid, in his cabin in the grounds next to the Forbidden Forest and, especially, Quidditch, the most popular sport in the wizarding world (six tall goalposts, four flying balls and fourteen players on broomsticks).