Gifted [Harry Potter]

The Letter

Chapter 1

"Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How early could I have known that I was not right? I think it has always been part of me. Can a newborn sense her parents' disappointment and feelings of frustration at not being able to change the unchangeable?"
Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

       MATILDA ALWAYS KNEW SHE WAS MEANT FOR MORE, but not in the grand sense of being president, or waiting to get her shot at fame and fortune. None of those things could ever satisfy her. Perhaps once she dreamed small, perhaps when she was 6 years old and wanted only for Ms. Honey to adopt her.

      Matilda Wormword learned the truth of the world very quickly in her life, escaping to London with her cheating and lying father, selfish mother, and idiotic brother. It was all the same to her, since she still had her powers to punish them when they did, what she believed, was morally wrong.

     It was peculiar.

      Matilda was used to weird packages arriving in the mail, ranging from stolen car parts or TVs taken from homes while their owners were out of town. Matilda was used to it. She was homeschooled for this very reason, so she could be home to sign off on those suspicious goods that made her family flee America in the first place.

      This was just a letter, marked with her address. However, she had never gotten a letter so fancy before, and she had especially never gotten one with a special wax seal. More than that, it was addressed to her. Matilda Wormwood was written smoothly on the cover, leaving the eleven year old girl rather confused since she had never gotten a letter from anyone before. Not even Ms. Honey, who she had not spoken to in nearly two years.

      This was because her parents found out about her correspondence with her old teacher and punished her for being so selfish as to keep in contact with their old lives. Her father was far more careful now with his scams, and her mother had taken a to liking London, making it obvious that hell would pay if Harry Wormwood messes it up.

      Matilda glanced around her, as if she were worried that her father would come up to scold her. No such thing happened, and slowly the irrational fear drifted away. Instead, she opened the letter, carefully preserving the beautiful paper.

      The contents were even stranger. She read it over and over again, thinking she must have missed something with each read through. She did not. The ink was written in a curious way, in hand print that was like that of a calligraphist. Matilda's eyes scanned the contents over, looking over every word. The majority was written in the stunning print of typewriter.

      Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

      Of course, it was odd. The academic in her still needed convincing, but as she walked into the kitchen, barely thinking about it before the chair of the table pulled out on its own for her to sit down, she then realized it wasn't that strange. It wasn't unheard of or shocking.