London, England, 1991.
Living up to its name, the Foggy City lay shrouded in mist, its grey sky devoid of sunlight.
Professor Filius Flitwick stood before a house, checking the address on the parchment in his hand.
As Charms Professor and Head of Ravenclaw House at Hogwarts, guiding Muggle-born children into the wizarding world was his annual routine, a task that was sometimes enjoyable, sometimes a headache.
“Will Behrens,” Professor Flitwick murmured, knocking on the door.
No answer.
He knocked three more times.
Still nothing.
Flitwick frowned, then heard a soft click from the lock.
The door opened by itself.
No one stood behind it.
“Come in,” a calm, youthful voice said from deep within the house.
Flitwick stepped across the threshold into a small but exceptionally tidy room.
The furniture, though slightly worn, was spotless.
Several framed photographs hung on the living room walls, showing a beautiful woman and a boy with a somewhat indifferent, even blank, expression.
On the coffee table lay a thick, leather-bound book, beside a dozen or so others that had clearly been read and reread.
His gaze swept over the spines, Herbal Analysis, Introduction to Potion Pharmacology, Principles of Transfiguration, and Professor Flitwick’s eyebrows rose higher with each title.
This was a promising Ravenclaw.
“Hello,” a voice called from the kitchen.
Professor Flitwick followed the sound and found its owner: a thin, pale, somewhat sickly-looking boy with neatly trimmed black hair, standing at the stove.
“Sorry, I’m cooking and can’t step away just now.
You’ll have to wait a moment.”
The boy’s eyes were a rare silver-grey, cold and oddly still.
Whatever he was cooking smelled wonderful.
Professor Flitwick caught the aroma and felt a surge of appetite.
He hadn’t eaten lunch either.
Hmm.
A fine Hufflepuff prospect, too, he thought, watching Will move efficiently around the kitchen.
“Mr.
Behrens?” Flitwick asked.
“That’s me.” The boy turned, wiping his hands on a handkerchief, his expression unusually composed for a Muggle child.
“Please, sit.
The food and tea will be ready shortly.”
Professor Flitwick sat, his mind already racing.
The file had described the boy as Muggle-born, but nothing here matched a household “completely ignorant of magic.” The books were clearly from the wizarding world, and some were advanced material at that.
Flitwick frowned.
This was a problem.
Had the child fallen in with some unruly wizard?
A few minutes later, Will emerged carrying two plates of steaming spaghetti, the smell alone making it look thoroughly appetizing.
“Child,” Flitwick said carefully, “do you have any relatives who are wizards?”
“Not that I know of.” Will set the plates down.
“Please, Professor.”
He wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either.
His mother wasn’t a witch, but he’d found an old wand hidden in the house, and he’d never met his father.
What he did or didn’t know about the man was a separate matter entirely.
Flitwick, unaware of any of this, took a bite.
“This is very good.
I can hardly believe a child made it.”
“Thank you, Professor.” Will returned to the kitchen.
“I’ve been cooking for myself a long time now.”
A pang of sympathy struck Flitwick, and he changed the subject.
“So, where did these books of yours come from?”
Will set a cup of black tea in front of him and sat down across the table.
“I bought them,” he said.
“From Diagon Alley.”
Flitwick nearly choked on his tea.
“Diagon Alley?
On your own?
How did you even…”
“I found my way there myself.
Through the Leaky Cauldron.”
Flitwick opened his mouth, then closed it, unsure where to even begin.
A Muggle-born boy, unguided, not only finding the Leaky Cauldron but wandering into Diagon Alley, and likely Knockturn Alley as well, fell well within the definition of reckless.
Flitwick decided, then and there, that this boy was destined for Gryffindor.
“How did you first learn about the wizarding world?” he asked, forcing his voice to stay even.
Will took a sip of tea.
“Two and a half years ago.
My mother was still alive then.”
“She drank,” he said.
“Sometimes she’d lock me in the storeroom.
Once I cried so hard in there that a lightbulb blew, and then every bulb in the house went, and the breaker tripped with them.”
Flitwick’s expression froze.
“After that, things kept happening,” Will continued.
“Whenever I was angry, or sad.
Then one day I noticed a pub on a London street that everyone else seemed to walk straight past.”
“The Leaky Cauldron,” Flitwick said.
“The Leaky Cauldron.” Will nodded.
“I went in.
Found some strange people.
Watched them, listened to them, and worked out that magic was real.”
Flitwick said nothing for a long moment.
Then, carefully, he asked, “And your mother?”
“She passed away two years ago,” Will said.
“The drinking caught up with her.
She ran a red light.”
He said it in a flat, even tone, and something about that flatness ached more than tears would have.
Flitwick, reading it as grief locked away too tightly to surface, decided not to press further.
He cleared his throat.
“Well.
As for enrollment, we’ll need to visit Diagon Alley for your wand, robes, cauldron, textbooks…”
“I already have a wand,” Will said.
Flitwick’s eyebrows rose again.
Will produced a dark brown wand and held it out.
“Acacia wood, phoenix feather core, twelve and a quarter inches.
Mr.
Ollivander sold it to me.”
“Ollivander sold you a wand?
Without a Hogwarts professor present?”
“He said I was ‘one of the more interesting customers’ he’d had in a while.”
Flitwick studied the thin boy across from him, a knot of conflicting feelings forming in his chest.
He’d expected today to go exactly as it always did, explaining owls and broomsticks to a family with no idea magic existed, then walking them through the rest.
Will had upended that entirely.
“And the textbooks?
The uniform?” Flitwick asked.
“Bought,” Will said.
“New copies, from Flourish and Blotts.
The uniform’s from Madam Malkin’s.
I picked it up last week.”
“The cauldron?
Scales?
Telescope?”
“All sorted.”
Flitwick realized, with something between amusement and unease, that the entire job he’d come here to do had already been done for him.
“Well, child,” he said at last, “it seems you don’t need much from me after all.”
Something flickered, faint and fleeting, in Will’s silver-grey eyes.
“There is one thing,” he said.
“Oh?”
“Professor, I have a lot of questions about spellwork.
The books only ever describe the wand movements and the incantations.
What’s the actual logic behind them?
What makes the gesture and the pronunciation work?”
For the first time in years, Professor Flitwick found himself lecturing an unenrolled eleven-year-old for an entire afternoon.
Will listened with total focus, and the longer the lesson went, the more he seemed to come alive in it.
Flitwick, caught up in his own explanations, barely noticed just how much ground the boy was covering.
[You have acquired new knowledge of Charms.
Charms Experience +1]
[You have acquired new knowledge of Charms.
Charms Experience +1]
[You have acquired new knowledge of Charms.
Charms Experience +1]
…
“Child, I’ll admit, I went from thinking Gryffindor, to Ravenclaw, to even Hufflepuff, and now I’m quite certain: Ravenclaw.” Flitwick had rarely seen such a hunger for knowledge, paired with such quick, wide-ranging thinking.
By now Will had all but memorized first-year Charms theory, and much of the second-year material besides, with practical results to match.
Flitwick judged the boy’s raw talent to be exceptional; even he, at that age, hadn’t matched it.
He was quietly relieved, too, that the child hadn’t yet been exposed to anything darker.
In his experience, children with this kind of hunger almost always came from Ravenclaw, and went on to become fine wizards.
He had no doubt Will would be the same, destined, surely, for something remarkable.
Flitwick could tell Will still had more questions, but it was time to go.
As Head of House, his afternoon was far from free.
“Child,” he said, “you can find me at Hogwarts anytime.
I’ll help however I can.”
“I will, Professor.
See you at the start of term.” Will’s reluctance to see him go was plain.
The company, at least, had been real, whatever else wasn’t.
Flitwick felt another pang of sympathy.
It was hard to sit with the thought of a child this young, living entirely alone.
His hunger for connection made perfect sense.
But Flitwick knew he couldn’t fill that gap himself.
He’d simply have to make sure Will was looked after once he reached Hogwarts.
Privately, he resolved that whichever house the boy landed in, he’d see to it the other professors kept an eye on him.
Above all, he would not let this one go astray.