The instant the wooden door closed, Luna Fawley’s fingertips still held the lingering sensation of the old grain in the wood.
She stood in place, her pale gray pupils shrinking slightly from nervousness.
Even her breathing softened, as if the slightest sound might disturb something sleeping inside this shop.
Her silver-white hair fell over her shoulders, and droplets of water slid down the strands, dripping onto the floor and spreading into small dark stains.
She instinctively pulled her foot back a little, afraid of dirtying the spotless-looking floor.
That cautious posture was an instinct carved into her bones over the past two years.
The young lady of the Fawley family?
The corners of Luna’s mouth lifted into an almost invisible, self-mocking smile.
That felt like something from a previous life, distant as an old newspaper washed by rain, its words blurred until only broken outlines remained.
She still remembered the day of her eleventh birthday.
The sunlight had been beautiful, passing through the branches and leaves of the century-old oak tree in the family manor, casting mottled shadows across the lawn.
She had been wearing a brand-new silk dress, sitting in the drawing room with her fingers twisting the hem of her skirt over and over, her eyes fixed unblinkingly on the window.
According to tradition, the owl from Hogwarts should have delivered her acceptance letter that day.
Her father had sat in the armchair across from her, playing with a family badge in his hand.
It was made of pure gold, engraved with the Fawley family crest.
A silver eagle with its wings spread, holding an olive branch in its beak.
Her mother, meanwhile, was trimming roses nearby, glancing at the clock on the wall from time to time, a reserved expectation on her lips.
“Luna will surely receive her letter,” her mother’s voice had still been gentle back then.
“Our Fawley family is one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
Our bloodline is pure.
How could we possibly fail to produce a wizard?”
Her father snorted, his tone filled with unquestionable arrogance.
“Naturally.
A child of the Fawley family is born to hold a wand, not to live an ordinary life like a Muggle.”
Luna had believed it too.
She had even secretly prepared her wand box in advance.
It had been left behind by her grandmother, made of ebony wood and inlaid with a small piece of moonstone.
She imagined herself wearing Hogwarts robes, sitting in the Great Hall and listening to Headmaster Dumbledore’s welcoming speech.
She imagined herself speeding across the Quidditch pitch.
She imagined… becoming a real wizard, one acknowledged by her family.
But the sun rose from the east, moved westward, and finally sank below the horizon.
Forget an owl— not even a sparrow landed on the windowsill.
That night, she could not sleep.
The next day, her father invited a magical evaluator from St.
Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries.
When the evaluator shook his head and said the word “Squib,” she saw the family badge in her father’s hand fall to the floor with a sharp crack, splitting with a visible fracture.
The gentleness on her mother’s face vanished in an instant.
She took a step back, as if she had seen something filthy, her voice shrill like a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
“A Squib?
How is that possible!
How could our Fawley family produce a Squib?”
From that day on, everything changed.
Her silk dresses were taken away and replaced with the coarse clothes worn by house-elves.
Her room was moved to a storage room in the farthest corner of the attic.
It was filled with dusty old furniture, and at night she could hear rats scurrying across the floor.
Her father never looked her in the eye again.
Every time she walked past him, he would frown and use a Cleaning Charm to disinfect his clothes.
Her mother, meanwhile, poured all her attention into Luna’s younger sister, Yona, treating Luna as if she were invisible, as if she were nothing more than air.
Yona was four years younger than her.
That year, she had just turned eight, yet she could already skillfully use magic to make her toy bear dance.
Whenever Yona showed off her magic in front of their parents, the butler would call Luna away to add firewood to the fireplace or clean Yona’s room.
It was as if they were deliberately reminding her who the true heir of the Fawley family was.
“Big Sister is a Squib,” Yona once said, deliberately swinging her wand in front of Luna.
It was a wand her father had specially asked Master Ollivander to make.
“Father said Squibs should stay in the Muggle world.
They don’t deserve to live with us.”
Luna clenched her fists, her nails digging deep into her palms, but she said nothing.
She knew that talking back would only bring harsher punishment.
Once, when she could not help replying, “I’m part of the Fawley family too,” her father used a Tongue-Tying Curse on her for three days, giving her only a small bottle of water and a piece of dry bread.
From then on, she learned to stay silent.
She learned to lower her head.
She learned to live like a shadow.
Every day before dawn, she had to get up and work alongside the house-elf, Laby.
She cleaned the drawing room, polished the silverware, watered the Mandrakes in the garden, and even washed Yona’s dirty clothes.
Sometimes, Laby would secretly slip her a baked biscuit and say in its hoarse voice, “Miss… used to be very kind to Laby…”
Each time, Luna would break the biscuit in half and share it with Laby.
In that cold family, only this little elf, who was also enslaved, was still willing to give her a tiny bit of warmth.
It was not that she had never thought of resisting—or rather, that she had never thought of changing her fate.
Once, while cleaning her father’s study, she found a crumpled flyer that had been thrown into the wastebasket.
Written across it in elegant script were the words:
“Squibs Can Have Magic Too!
Top-Tier Wizard Private Lessons, One-on-One Tutoring, Guaranteed Results, Only 50 Galleons!”
That was the first time she saw “hope.”
She secretly hid the flyer under her mattress.
In order to save up those 50 Galleons, she began secretly selling off the things she used to own.
The moonstone necklace her grandmother had given her, the pure-gold fountain pen her father had once awarded her, and even the Chocolate Frog cards she had collected for years.
The famous wizards printed on those cards had once been her idols.
She still remembered how excited she had been the first time she went to that so-called “tutoring class.”
The place was hidden in a corner of Knockturn Alley.
A piece of rag hung at the entrance, with the words “Instant Magic Training” written on it.
A hooded wizard received her, took the 20-Galleon deposit she had worked so hard to gather, and gave her a bottle of greenish potion, telling her that once she drank it, she would be able to feel magic.
In the end, after drinking that potion, she vomited for an entire day and nearly threw up bile.
Aside from a terrible stomachache, she felt nothing at all.
When she went back to find that wizard, the place had already been emptied out.