Squib Secrets - Fic for Nokomis305!
Title: His First Friend
Receipient: Nokomis305
Author: shaychana
Pairing/characters: Filch gen.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence.
Word Count: 2054
Summary: Everyone expected the letter to come soon after his eleventh birthday, but Argus's letter never came. While other wizarding children went to school, he walked an alternative path.
Notes: The request was for dark young Filch pre-Hogwarts back-story gen. Despite appearances to the contrary, I'm actually an Austen fan. Thanks to Goldie for the beta.
Every wizarding child in England looked forward to turning eleven more eagerly than he looked forward to all his other birthdays. Being eleven meant moving one giant leap forward towards the holy grail of adulthood and independence, with the official divorce from the frivolity of childhood arriving in the form of a gilt-edged letter of acceptance into Hogwarts.
Argus's letter never came.
His eleventh birthday was like any other child's of his age and of his family's financial position. That was, his cousins were invited to a modest tea party, where an enormous home-baked cake was served. Argus was proudly presented with a copy of Bathilda Bagshot's three-inch thick opus, History and Theory of Magic: A Comprehensive Compendium.
"Our little boy's all grown up!" his mother said, beaming with tears in her eyes.
The Filches lived in a Muggle village, though their blood was as pure as the Blacks'. Generations ago, all the land for miles around, as far as the eye could see, belonged to the Filches, but poverty crept upon the family as surely as their decay caused Muggles to encroach on their borders until they found themselves living in a comfortable cottage neatly surrounded by identical homesteads within a stone's throw away.
So young Argus mostly grew up a solitary child. It wouldn't do to associate with the common Muggles in the village square, and he wasn't close enough to his cousins for casual visits by Floo. By the age of four, Argus was already spending most of his waking hours on his bed, reading with a book propped on his bent knees.
"Our little academic, eh, son? Going to work at Hogwarts, ain't you?" his father said with a teasing wink.
He read History and Theory of Magic three times, waiting for his letter to arrive.
"I'm sure it'll come soon enough. I'm sure there's absolutely no need to worry, honey," his mother said, while her hands tore a paper napkin into strips. Argus watched his father's face fall and grow grave with each passing day.
Weeks turned into months, and by the time his twelfth birthday came around, Argus could quote entire passages from memory: Squibs are people born into wizarding families but are unable to do magic. They are a fairly uncommon occurrence, with an incidence rate of approximately one in every ten thousand wizards. In 1742, the Council of Magical Law considered the petition to have Squibs put down for 'unnatural aberration', but it was deemed to conflict with Wizard Law Number 347 Clause 56: On the Ethical Treatment of Magical Animals.
His parents were not impressed. As the awful truth finally sank in, they grieved for their only child.
Denial: "They must have forgotten. It's a simple clerical error."
Anger: "Why - why us? It's not fair!"
Bargaining: "Let's write to Headmaster Dippet. He remembers me fondly. I could -"
Depression: "He was such a bright child…"
Acceptance: "We still love you, son."
It soon grew too unbearable to live in the house, having to face the heartbreak in his mother's eyes. Argus's father was no better - he didn't seem to know what to do with his child now that it was determined Argus would never learn magic, and it was as if his son was now a stranger to him. For the first time in his young life, Argus ventured into the village on his own.
More and more, Argus took to wandering through the little village, returning home only for meals and sleep. His parents no longer objected to his associating with the lower elements. He spent a month learning woodworking from Mr Peacroft, and when he took his first awkwardly carved bird home to show his parents, his father smiled and said, "very good, Argus", before he pulled his wand out, waved it around, and the blocky edges smoothed themselves out and the wooden bird flew in a circle around their heads, twittering madly the whole time.
That dampened his enthusiasm for woodcraft somewhat, and Argus spent the next week sitting on the edge of the village square, listlessly kicking a can back and forth and watching people go by. It was on the last of these days that his life took another turn for the unexpected.
The afternoon sun was far too warm, and his back was coated in sweat, his linen shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin. He'd decided to head home for a shower and a change of clothes and was ambling down a side lane when he happened on a group of boys. They all looked about eight years of age, and two of them were holding sturdy pieces of tree branch, using them as clubs to rain blows on something on the ground while the other boys lashed out with their booted feet. They were laughing.
"Hey! Scoot!" Argus called, when he saw what the boys were torturing. They scattered, dispersing down the lane like a set of bowled-over skittles, and leaving behind a mess of bloodied ginger fur and pitiful mewling. It was a cat, or at least, it was the remains of a cat after the thoughtless cruelty of young boys.
Argus's stomach gave a little flip as he watched the cat shake, struggling to right itself.
He couldn't leave it to die in the middle of the lane. Scooping up the ragged bundle as carefully as he could, Argus wondered who the cat belonged to. There was only one person he could think of to ask, and so he went to look up Mr Peacroft.
"Ho, lad! Ain't seen you in a bit," Mr Peacroft said. "What's that you got there, then?"
Wordlessly, Argus proffered the sorry ball of mangled cat.
Mr Peacroft whistled. "Cor, that's old Mrs Miggs's cat, I daresay. Poor critter. Well, come on then, we'd best get the cat back to the old lady. No doubt she'll be worried sick."
Together, they escorted Mrs Miggs's cat home. Mrs Miggs was so grateful to have 'Mr Norris' back that she hugged them both, her lamp-like eyes shining. When they left Mrs Miggs's cottage, Mr Peacroft confided, "Mad as a hatter, that one. Never been quite right since her husband died. The kids 'round here say she's a witch, you know. Can't say I blame them."
There was no way Mrs Miggs could be a witch, Argus knew, but he didn't say anything.
The next day, Argus set out after breakfast for his customary spot by the village square, but while his mind was distracted by thoughts of the mating habits of Giant Squid that he'd read about the previous night, his feet took him in entirely the wrong direction, until he snapped out of a particularly noxious fantasy about the mating call of the Giant Squid to find himself at Mrs Miggs's doorstep -
- too late for escape, for Mrs Miggs had already seen him through a window and was calling him in.
"How sweet of you to drop by," Mrs Miggs said with a pleased smile as she served Argus tea that looked like dishwater. "I expect you've come to check on Mr Norris."
It really was more accident than anything else that brought Argus here, but it didn't seem polite to say so. Luckily, Mrs Miggs seemed to think nothing of his silence, and continued, "He's a tough one, my Mr Norris. He'll be fine. Right as rain in no time at all!"
"That's good," Argus said, for want of anything better to say.
Mrs Miggs's expression took on a certain cunning. Abruptly, she said, "I know what you are. My Martin told me about your kind. He was friends with one of you."
"I - I don't know what you're talking about. I… I should get going. Thank you for the tea," said Argus, frightened and unsure why, jumping up and nearly unsettling his untouched cup.
"I know you're a wizard. There's no need to deny it. I know all about it."
"…oh."
Mrs Miggs smiled, enigmatic as a painting. "Come by again, won't you, dear?"
Argus had no intention whatsoever of returning to Mrs Miggs's house. The old lady was not a little creepy, and she had a disconcerting gleam in her eyes that sent spiders crawling along Argus's spine. Nonetheless, a combination of shiftless boredom and perverse curiosity conspired to make him visit Mrs Miggs again that very same week.
"You wouldn't think it, looking at me now, but I used to be a great reader when I was younger. Never without a book in my hand!" Mrs Miggs said with a girlish trill of laughter. "Of course, my eyes fail me now. What wouldn't I give for the heady opportunities of youth…"
"I could read to you," Argus said, surprising himself with the offer.
Unfortunately, the only book in the modest house was Pride and Prejudice, and there were only so many times Argus could read about Lizzie Bennett's misunderstandings of Mr Darcy before he wanted to rip out the pages from the book's spine, toss them into the fire, and flush the ashes down the toilet. And then flush the toilet again just to make sure.
He began smuggling books out of his father's study. Mrs Miggs quickly became one of the Muggle world's foremost experts on wizards and wizardry. Argus would read books on archaic magical history and esoteric spellwork treatises over cold cups of foul tea while Mr Norris snoozed in Mrs Miggs's lap until his throat tired, and then they sat in companionable quiet watching their shadows lengthen across the kitchen floor.
The peaceful routine thus established was rudely interrupted one fateful Thursday in February. Winter was nearly over and grass was starting to show in pockets between piles of snowdrift, but that Thursday, snow fell with grim determination in one last hurrah before yielding to spring thaw. Argus made his daily trip up the whitened lane to Mrs Migg's with a scarf wrapped high on his neck, gloved hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, and True Dragon Tales solid against his chest.
The door was standing open.
Noises were coming from the inside.
Mrs Miggs was screaming. Mr Norris was yowling. Crockery was being smashed and furniture overturned. Worst of all were the sounds of tinkling laughter.
Desperately, Argus called out, "Petrificus Totalus! Petrificus Totalus!" He hoped against hope that some stray bit of magic would obey him for once.
They didn't stop.
"Crucio!" he yelled. That only made them turn to him with bloodlust gleaming in their eyes. They fell on him. As darkness came over him, he heard one of them sing, "Ding dong, the witch is dead!"
He woke with the weight of the world pressing down on him. Argus decided that the afterlife was disappointingly unpleasant, and then it got worse. A knife pierced his flesh and he opened his eyes in shock and pain.
Mr Norris - an ear torn and blood matted in his fur, just like when Argus first met him - stared back at him.
The wretched cat really did have nine lives, Argus thought in admiration, wincing as he pushed Mr Norris off him. The little claw-punctures stung. He raised himself up, groaning as all his muscles protested against the abuse. His vision swam. When the room stopped spinning like a frenzied dog chasing its own tail, he spotted Mrs Miggs in a crumpled heap beside a splintered closet.
She looked positively skeletal. Her body seemed to have shrunk with the expiration of her last breath, and all that was left were brittle bones in a blood-spotted shroud.
Argus stumbled around the room, searching until he found his book. He clutched it to himself and collapsed by Mrs Miggs's side. He opened the book to where they'd left off the day before - only one final chapter left to go. Mrs Miggs hadn't liked last chapters. She said that she always wanted more.
Voice scratchy, Argus began to read. Mr Norris hobbled over and settled with his head on Argus's knee. When Argus reached the end of the book, he picked Mr Norris up and went home.
That night, as he lay in bed with Mr Norris purring contentedly on his belly, Argus stroked the warm fur and the tears finally came. He whispered, "Just you and me against the world. What do you say?"
Receipient: Nokomis305
Author: shaychana
Pairing/characters: Filch gen.
Rating: PG
Warnings: Violence.
Word Count: 2054
Summary: Everyone expected the letter to come soon after his eleventh birthday, but Argus's letter never came. While other wizarding children went to school, he walked an alternative path.
Notes: The request was for dark young Filch pre-Hogwarts back-story gen. Despite appearances to the contrary, I'm actually an Austen fan. Thanks to Goldie for the beta.
Every wizarding child in England looked forward to turning eleven more eagerly than he looked forward to all his other birthdays. Being eleven meant moving one giant leap forward towards the holy grail of adulthood and independence, with the official divorce from the frivolity of childhood arriving in the form of a gilt-edged letter of acceptance into Hogwarts.
Argus's letter never came.
His eleventh birthday was like any other child's of his age and of his family's financial position. That was, his cousins were invited to a modest tea party, where an enormous home-baked cake was served. Argus was proudly presented with a copy of Bathilda Bagshot's three-inch thick opus, History and Theory of Magic: A Comprehensive Compendium.
"Our little boy's all grown up!" his mother said, beaming with tears in her eyes.
The Filches lived in a Muggle village, though their blood was as pure as the Blacks'. Generations ago, all the land for miles around, as far as the eye could see, belonged to the Filches, but poverty crept upon the family as surely as their decay caused Muggles to encroach on their borders until they found themselves living in a comfortable cottage neatly surrounded by identical homesteads within a stone's throw away.
So young Argus mostly grew up a solitary child. It wouldn't do to associate with the common Muggles in the village square, and he wasn't close enough to his cousins for casual visits by Floo. By the age of four, Argus was already spending most of his waking hours on his bed, reading with a book propped on his bent knees.
"Our little academic, eh, son? Going to work at Hogwarts, ain't you?" his father said with a teasing wink.
He read History and Theory of Magic three times, waiting for his letter to arrive.
"I'm sure it'll come soon enough. I'm sure there's absolutely no need to worry, honey," his mother said, while her hands tore a paper napkin into strips. Argus watched his father's face fall and grow grave with each passing day.
Weeks turned into months, and by the time his twelfth birthday came around, Argus could quote entire passages from memory: Squibs are people born into wizarding families but are unable to do magic. They are a fairly uncommon occurrence, with an incidence rate of approximately one in every ten thousand wizards. In 1742, the Council of Magical Law considered the petition to have Squibs put down for 'unnatural aberration', but it was deemed to conflict with Wizard Law Number 347 Clause 56: On the Ethical Treatment of Magical Animals.
His parents were not impressed. As the awful truth finally sank in, they grieved for their only child.
Denial: "They must have forgotten. It's a simple clerical error."
Anger: "Why - why us? It's not fair!"
Bargaining: "Let's write to Headmaster Dippet. He remembers me fondly. I could -"
Depression: "He was such a bright child…"
Acceptance: "We still love you, son."
It soon grew too unbearable to live in the house, having to face the heartbreak in his mother's eyes. Argus's father was no better - he didn't seem to know what to do with his child now that it was determined Argus would never learn magic, and it was as if his son was now a stranger to him. For the first time in his young life, Argus ventured into the village on his own.
More and more, Argus took to wandering through the little village, returning home only for meals and sleep. His parents no longer objected to his associating with the lower elements. He spent a month learning woodworking from Mr Peacroft, and when he took his first awkwardly carved bird home to show his parents, his father smiled and said, "very good, Argus", before he pulled his wand out, waved it around, and the blocky edges smoothed themselves out and the wooden bird flew in a circle around their heads, twittering madly the whole time.
That dampened his enthusiasm for woodcraft somewhat, and Argus spent the next week sitting on the edge of the village square, listlessly kicking a can back and forth and watching people go by. It was on the last of these days that his life took another turn for the unexpected.
The afternoon sun was far too warm, and his back was coated in sweat, his linen shirt sticking uncomfortably to his skin. He'd decided to head home for a shower and a change of clothes and was ambling down a side lane when he happened on a group of boys. They all looked about eight years of age, and two of them were holding sturdy pieces of tree branch, using them as clubs to rain blows on something on the ground while the other boys lashed out with their booted feet. They were laughing.
"Hey! Scoot!" Argus called, when he saw what the boys were torturing. They scattered, dispersing down the lane like a set of bowled-over skittles, and leaving behind a mess of bloodied ginger fur and pitiful mewling. It was a cat, or at least, it was the remains of a cat after the thoughtless cruelty of young boys.
Argus's stomach gave a little flip as he watched the cat shake, struggling to right itself.
He couldn't leave it to die in the middle of the lane. Scooping up the ragged bundle as carefully as he could, Argus wondered who the cat belonged to. There was only one person he could think of to ask, and so he went to look up Mr Peacroft.
"Ho, lad! Ain't seen you in a bit," Mr Peacroft said. "What's that you got there, then?"
Wordlessly, Argus proffered the sorry ball of mangled cat.
Mr Peacroft whistled. "Cor, that's old Mrs Miggs's cat, I daresay. Poor critter. Well, come on then, we'd best get the cat back to the old lady. No doubt she'll be worried sick."
Together, they escorted Mrs Miggs's cat home. Mrs Miggs was so grateful to have 'Mr Norris' back that she hugged them both, her lamp-like eyes shining. When they left Mrs Miggs's cottage, Mr Peacroft confided, "Mad as a hatter, that one. Never been quite right since her husband died. The kids 'round here say she's a witch, you know. Can't say I blame them."
There was no way Mrs Miggs could be a witch, Argus knew, but he didn't say anything.
The next day, Argus set out after breakfast for his customary spot by the village square, but while his mind was distracted by thoughts of the mating habits of Giant Squid that he'd read about the previous night, his feet took him in entirely the wrong direction, until he snapped out of a particularly noxious fantasy about the mating call of the Giant Squid to find himself at Mrs Miggs's doorstep -
- too late for escape, for Mrs Miggs had already seen him through a window and was calling him in.
"How sweet of you to drop by," Mrs Miggs said with a pleased smile as she served Argus tea that looked like dishwater. "I expect you've come to check on Mr Norris."
It really was more accident than anything else that brought Argus here, but it didn't seem polite to say so. Luckily, Mrs Miggs seemed to think nothing of his silence, and continued, "He's a tough one, my Mr Norris. He'll be fine. Right as rain in no time at all!"
"That's good," Argus said, for want of anything better to say.
Mrs Miggs's expression took on a certain cunning. Abruptly, she said, "I know what you are. My Martin told me about your kind. He was friends with one of you."
"I - I don't know what you're talking about. I… I should get going. Thank you for the tea," said Argus, frightened and unsure why, jumping up and nearly unsettling his untouched cup.
"I know you're a wizard. There's no need to deny it. I know all about it."
"…oh."
Mrs Miggs smiled, enigmatic as a painting. "Come by again, won't you, dear?"
Argus had no intention whatsoever of returning to Mrs Miggs's house. The old lady was not a little creepy, and she had a disconcerting gleam in her eyes that sent spiders crawling along Argus's spine. Nonetheless, a combination of shiftless boredom and perverse curiosity conspired to make him visit Mrs Miggs again that very same week.
"You wouldn't think it, looking at me now, but I used to be a great reader when I was younger. Never without a book in my hand!" Mrs Miggs said with a girlish trill of laughter. "Of course, my eyes fail me now. What wouldn't I give for the heady opportunities of youth…"
"I could read to you," Argus said, surprising himself with the offer.
Unfortunately, the only book in the modest house was Pride and Prejudice, and there were only so many times Argus could read about Lizzie Bennett's misunderstandings of Mr Darcy before he wanted to rip out the pages from the book's spine, toss them into the fire, and flush the ashes down the toilet. And then flush the toilet again just to make sure.
He began smuggling books out of his father's study. Mrs Miggs quickly became one of the Muggle world's foremost experts on wizards and wizardry. Argus would read books on archaic magical history and esoteric spellwork treatises over cold cups of foul tea while Mr Norris snoozed in Mrs Miggs's lap until his throat tired, and then they sat in companionable quiet watching their shadows lengthen across the kitchen floor.
The peaceful routine thus established was rudely interrupted one fateful Thursday in February. Winter was nearly over and grass was starting to show in pockets between piles of snowdrift, but that Thursday, snow fell with grim determination in one last hurrah before yielding to spring thaw. Argus made his daily trip up the whitened lane to Mrs Migg's with a scarf wrapped high on his neck, gloved hands tucked into the pockets of his coat, and True Dragon Tales solid against his chest.
The door was standing open.
Noises were coming from the inside.
Mrs Miggs was screaming. Mr Norris was yowling. Crockery was being smashed and furniture overturned. Worst of all were the sounds of tinkling laughter.
Desperately, Argus called out, "Petrificus Totalus! Petrificus Totalus!" He hoped against hope that some stray bit of magic would obey him for once.
They didn't stop.
"Crucio!" he yelled. That only made them turn to him with bloodlust gleaming in their eyes. They fell on him. As darkness came over him, he heard one of them sing, "Ding dong, the witch is dead!"
He woke with the weight of the world pressing down on him. Argus decided that the afterlife was disappointingly unpleasant, and then it got worse. A knife pierced his flesh and he opened his eyes in shock and pain.
Mr Norris - an ear torn and blood matted in his fur, just like when Argus first met him - stared back at him.
The wretched cat really did have nine lives, Argus thought in admiration, wincing as he pushed Mr Norris off him. The little claw-punctures stung. He raised himself up, groaning as all his muscles protested against the abuse. His vision swam. When the room stopped spinning like a frenzied dog chasing its own tail, he spotted Mrs Miggs in a crumpled heap beside a splintered closet.
She looked positively skeletal. Her body seemed to have shrunk with the expiration of her last breath, and all that was left were brittle bones in a blood-spotted shroud.
Argus stumbled around the room, searching until he found his book. He clutched it to himself and collapsed by Mrs Miggs's side. He opened the book to where they'd left off the day before - only one final chapter left to go. Mrs Miggs hadn't liked last chapters. She said that she always wanted more.
Voice scratchy, Argus began to read. Mr Norris hobbled over and settled with his head on Argus's knee. When Argus reached the end of the book, he picked Mr Norris up and went home.
That night, as he lay in bed with Mr Norris purring contentedly on his belly, Argus stroked the warm fur and the tears finally came. He whispered, "Just you and me against the world. What do you say?"