What Came After

Beginnings

It all started when I was four.

My favourite toy at that age was a black teddy bear, no bigger than a mouse. I was absentmindedly flinging it around, as was my habit, when, flying from my hand as it was, it went rather further than I could reach; behind the wardrobe.

Being four years old and no more than three feet tall on my tiptoes, I was not about to just run my arm under the thing and grab it. Oh no. I'm still not sure what possessed me to think that it was the next logical step, but something inside me clicked; I raised my arm. The wardrobe obliged, and raised a few inches from the ground – I could just see the bear underneath-

It was at this point that my father entered the room. A beaming smile spread across his face – taking out his wand, he pointed first at the bear, which flew into his free hand, then at the wardrobe, which landed with a thump on the ground.

So it was, that I showed my first signs of magic.

I come from a pure-blood family; that is, all the members of the family have possessed magical ability of varying degrees for many generations. We are not however what certain extremists would regard as wholly pure; my mother is a half-blood, and her mother was muggle-born – it has long been a mantra of my family that we must develop to survive, and so keeping incestuously within the same 28 families of totally pure wizards somewhat contravenes this.

It therefore didn't come as a surprise to my parents when I levitated my wardrobe; after all, my elder sister had shown her abilities by stopping a car crash halfway down our road – a somewhat more dramatic beginning to a life of magic; fitting considering her eventual path. But I digress.

The next seven years passed relatively normally for a wizarding child; at eight I was introduced to broomsticks by my brother; at the age of thirteen he was already a prodigious Quidditch player, and a key part of the Slytherin team that had retained the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup for two years running. I was not nearly so skilled; I crashed into the tree at the end of our garden no less than fifteen times, and my father was forced to conclude that only one of his sons had any real sporting talent.

It was at eleven that the real excitement began; I received my letter.