The Chosen One [#Wattys2016]

THE FIRST TRICK

Nearly ten years had passed since Mrs. Longbottom had stayed up the night when she learnt that her son and daughter-in-law had been killed and that she was now the sole guardian of her grandson Neville. Her husband had passed away peacefully in his sleep in Neville's sixth year with them. It seemed her grandson had inherited his grandfather's abilities to forget the tiniest bits of information, so she found that nothing really had changed inside the household. On the outside too, the house was the same. The sun rose on the same tidy lawn, her porch was still a sickly cream colour and the driveway still had no car, and probably never would.

The Ministry had spared no expense for the funeral they held for Neville's parents.

Mrs. Longbottom was never the one for sentimentalities and yet, she had photographed Neville's childhood. These photographs could be seen in the living room – on the walls, on the mantelpiece and on the chest of drawers. Most of them showed a young boy with a round face, short dark hair and prominent front teeth. The others showed an old man with bald patches in his white cotton candy hair and half-moon spectacles, a woman who shared Neville's round face and brown eyes and a man with the same hair – Neville's parents. But there was one other photograph that Mrs. Longbottom kept stuck to her cupboard door. It was special for her, a connection to the past, and that was all she had. This photograph held everyone she had ever known, except her grandson, who was fast asleep this moment. So she rapped at his bedroom door and shouted –

"Up! Get up Neville, get up now!"

Neville woke with a start. It was the summer and yet his grandmother would never let him sleep in. She screeched and rapped at his door every day without fail. The woman had long crossed seventy but her voice was steely as ever.

"I'm up! I'm up!" he shouted in panic.

"Be down in ten."

"Yes Gran!"

He scrambled out of his bed to get ready. It took him eleven minutes by the clock to reach the breakfast table, at which his grandmother barked –

"You're late!"

"Sorry Gran," he said and shoved scrambled eggs into his mouth. His grandmother pointedly looked away and went back to reading the Daily Prophet. Neville stared at the moving pictures.

He was used to seeing unusual things. The newspaper with its moving pictures, the brown owl that delivered letters, his grandmother's stuffed vulture hat and much more. His grandmother was a witch after all. It wasn't in an affronting way that he called her that. She was indeed a full grown witch, with magic powers and a wand, which is why the house got cleaned in less than ten minutes, their newspapers had moving images and they could appear anywhere they wanted to at a moment's notice.

Not appear, Neville corrected himself, Apparate.

His grandmother often had to correct him on his vocabulary. His only friend was an eleven-year-old girl who lived in the neighbourhood and was the only one brave enough to talk to him, since his grandmother scared all children. Her name was Brittany and she had long wispy dirty blonde hair and big blue eyes, a flattened nose and upturned ears. She was a Muggle, that is to say, she didn't have a drop of magic in her blood. Even then she was different than others.

Except for his Uncle Algie, no one ever visited them. If not for the daily magic feats and the fact that his grandmother had no sense of humour, Neville would have considered everything a huge practical joke. He had always had a lot of questions but his grandmother never answered. Instead, she told him he would know when he deserved to.

"Hurry up! Algie will be here soon," she said. Neville nodded with his mouth full.

His uncle's visit meant that he would have to stay at home. Ever since his grandfather had passed away almost five years ago, he had become the brunt of all of his uncle's jokes. Neville couldn't possibly think of pranking him back, possibly because he himself had never done magic, partly because he had a feeling that his grandmother could read minds. Could it be possible that with all of her magic ability, she could also be telekinetic, like Professor X in the Muggle movies that Brittany sometimes talked of?

It had often crossed his mind that maybe he was a Squib, born to wizards but having no magic.

As fast as he could, Neville ate his breakfast, stacked his dirty dishes in the sink and went out to cut the grass, which was the only thing in the house not done by magic. Except, of course, other things that you don't talk about in public.

He had almost finished pruning the bushes when a pop sounded in his living room. His uncle was here. Neville nervously flattened his hair and dawdled at the doorway, the compulsion to run away to the playground becoming more and more every passing second. Finally, he took a deep breath and entered, lest his grandmother would be angry.

There, sitting on the flower patterned sofa, was his uncle Algie, a tall, scraggly wizard, with greying black hair and black eyes that glinted with amusement.

"Ah! Neville! How is my little nephew?" he exclaimed on catching sight of Neville.

Neville shook his hand and smiled. His uncle wasn't too bad when didn't play jokes on him.

Algie patted the seat next to him for Neville to sit, while Augusta brought tea and scones on a tray head aloft with her wand. While Augusta and Algie caught up on the news, Neville allowed his mind to wander away and it came to rest on his only friend.

He was seven when he met Brittany for the first time.

It was after his grandfather's death. The neighbours had liked the old man more than they had disliked his wife, so a lot of people came to pay their respects. He had died peacefully in his sleep. Standing in the corner, behind all the people, had been a girl, whose blue eyes had still been the sharpest thing in the room, even sharper than his grandmother's voice. Before she had left, she had smiled at him.

The next time he had gone to the park alone, she had come up to him and introduced herself because she, like him, had no friends to play with.

"You shouldn't let people talk like that to you," Neville remembered telling her when the boys in the playground had called her a "loony bat". She had just smiled.

They never spoke much, just sat together near the duck pond, enjoying the quiet company that each afforded. The bare snippets of conversation were mostly initiated by Brittany, because Neville had been forbidden to talk about himself to anyone.

"So what do you say Neville? Shall we head up to the attic?" Algie's voice interrupted his train of thoughts.

"Uh?"

"Well, you see, I have to look for my old books and I think they're in your attic. Couldn't possibly give me a hand, could you, old boy?" his uncle chuckled.

He nodded and they went upstairs.

The attic was filled with dust. It coated the trunks, robes and Muggle hardware thickly. As Neville coughed his way through the trunk looking for the said books, his uncle went through the cupboard.

"Wingardium Leviosa," came a sudden voice and Neville was hoisted up.

"Put me down uncle," Neville shrieked. His uncle just laughed.

"Why don't you get down yourself?"

Neville banged his foot on a windowpane as he was lifted out through it into the open, dust flying everywhere. It found new places to settle on. Neville's shoes. Algie's hair. But most of it went up his nose and he sneezed, and in that moment, his concentration broke. The wand no longer controlled Neville and as Algie looked in horror at his nephew's flailing form, he realised that the latter was no longer falling. Instead, he was bouncing lightly to the ground, as though the air supported him.

"Augusta!" he shouted happily, as he ran down the stairs, his feet banging on the stairs.

His nephew had just done magic and there was no better news than that.

After all, they now knew that Neville Longbottom was indeed a wizard.

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