• Even among the members of the underground magical society in Europe, but especially France, Claude Descartes was an outcast. Out of all of his living years, now at the count of nearly eleven, all had been solitary and neglected, lacking in a single friend or even an acquaintance. His muggle parents were no more interested in him than if he had been a painting hung on their wall. They just talked into their cell phones and went to business meetings and never spared a minute for their criminal offspring.

    Of course, Claude was not a deliberately delinquent individual, nor was this the primary reason for his parents’ neglect. It was merely another excuse for the world to deny him a chance. Claude was skinny boy with hair that could never really make up its mind about what color it was, as well as a lousy athlete, so school was never a comfortable place for him. It seemed almost every day that the teacher would create a reason to have him sit alone in a corner somewhere while the rest of the children lived their lives.

    For instance, on the very day that this narrative begins, which was the last day of 5th grade. As they would be 6th graders the next year, and thus no longer allowed to participate in such childish activities as recess, the students made their best efforts to enjoy their last mid-day break as much as possible. A knot of giggling pupils was beginning to thicken at the door as they tried to escape the room before the others did. By the time the teacher had realized that it was going on, it was far too late. Claude, somewhere in the middle of the mass, was only trying to stay upright as excited children whose feet were not giving him any room for his own were battering him from all sides.
    “Now, now, children, be patient. You’ll all get outside faster if you just stand still and exit the room single file,” the teacher tried desperately to organize her students, but it was completely hopeless. It was like trying to stop a stampede. Just as the knot was beginning to clear off, Claude was given a mighty shove from behind and he could save his balance no longer; he fell forwards and collided with Onri, a boy who sat next to him and who was already the best looking kid in the school. They both went tumbling out into the bright sunshine. Claude looked around him and absorbed everything he laid eyes on, because knew those moments would be the last he would spend outdoors until the end of the school day.

    “Claude, how dare you shove Onri! That’ll be your recess, young man. You come back inside this instant.” It was painfully obvious to Claude that what had occurred between Onri and himself had not been intentional in the slightest, but no one argued. Not even Claude tried to resist it. “Sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again, ma’am.” This was his answer. This was his only option. This was the story of his life, and there was nothing he could do about it as he took a seat by the window, watching coldly as his fellows played cheerfully outside. Onri, who had not suffered even a smudge of dirt on his pants from his fall, was playing tag with some of his friends, and two girls giggled as they watched the boys chase each other. As usual, he could only watch. Several years ago, this deprivation would have devastated Claude, but he had gradually stopped believing he had the slightest chance as he got older.
    The cause of this social abuse was an event that had transpired ten years ago, when Claude was only a year old. Young magical folk often release their magic without trying to; it is a natural event in a wizard’s life. Even for those born into muggle families as Claude had been, there is no way to truly prevent the undeniable expression of magic in a young wizard. One day, Claude had been sitting in a daycare with all of the other infants. His parents, who, even then, couldn’t be bothered to watch their own child, had merely dropped him (almost literally) into the arms of the employees without a word. An exchange of money took place, but nothing more. Back then, Claude was just a regular baby. He had no special abilities to speak of, and he played quite well with the other children. But one day, an older boy in the nursery, aged at about seven or eight years, had started to abuse helpless Claude. Not being able to fight back physically, his wizard’s nature to overcome obstacles with magic had shone through at the worst of times.

    The explosion was very small, the flames of which had not spread farther than a few feet, but that was far enough. The other boy was completely obliterated by it, and the screaming Claude was unharmed. Of course, this was quite unexplainable by the muggle officials, and it looked incredibly suspicious to find a baby completely unharmed in the center of a smoldering crater, so he was labeled as a dangerous individual and that was the final declaration about it. Claude was suddenly a reject from society, even though he had no control over himself or the ensuing lawsuits.

    Nothing nearly this dramatic had occurred since then, but still no one would come close to him. These days it was not so much a fear of being caught in an explosion as much as not wanting to be seen liking the boy. He had become a level of taboo that is entirely irreversible and ridiculously illogical. There was no longer any danger surrounding him, yet every human edged away from him once they learned of his name. The best term that Claude could summon forth was “cooties.” Despite the fact that there was no way for Claude to harm any of his fellows accidentally, there was still a social rule that included the avoidance of him in every way. That was about to change.

    He walked home, even though the distance between the school and his house was more than 7 miles. His parents, more often than not, forgot to retrieve him from the school, so he didn’t waste his time waiting for them anymore.

    When he got home, he was eating a snack while making a nearby pencil wiggle and roll without physically touching it. This was a talent of his; even among wizards, this was an unusual ability. He was classified as a Sans Baguette, or “without a wand.” In other words, he was a wizard who did not need a wand to perform magic, but could instead cast spells with his bare hands. He was just beginning to make the pencil levitate when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, scanning the scene outside of his window for what he had seen. When he spotted it, he squinted his eyes to see it better. It looked like a toy airplane from where he sat, but it grew larger as he watched it.

    Gradually, Claude realized that it was an owl, and it was flying directly towards him. He kept expecting it to suddenly swerve off to either side, or perhaps swoop down onto a rodent and fly away. It seemed strange to Claude, though, that an owl would be hunting at this time of day. Hadn’t he learned earlier that owls were nocturnal? To Claude’s amazement, the owl kept flying deliberately at the window, which was still shut. When he had determined that the bird was not going to change directions, Claude scurried over to the window and thrust it open, just as his first ever visitor flew in and perched itself silently on the back of his chair. There was something pale and rectangular attached to its leg, and Claude, who glanced around for fear of his parents witnessing something so bizarre, crept over to the creature.
    “Go on, little guy. The window’s open. Whatever just happened, you can leave now.” The owl glared at him indignantly. “Not to insult you, of course, Mr. Owl, I just mean that…” He trailed off, realizing that he was speaking to an animal. “Um… is that for me?” Claude said, pointing to what he realized was a folded piece of parchment. The owl held out its leg professionally, looking impatient, and Claude untied the string with shaking fingers.

    “To Claude Descartes, 98 Rue de Désespoir, Rennes, France,” the cover had clearly stated, written in very neat handwriting. No one had ever written him a letter before, and Claude’s heart skipped once. “You have been accepted to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Claude was breathing very fast as he read, not quite believing it. As he had not much to do in his free time, he spent four months reading at night learning the English language. Language was a hobby of his, and English was his fifth tongue in which he was fluent. He felt like he had never made a more strategic investment of his time.

    As he read on, his excitement mounted in a gut much deprived of excitement; he suddenly realized that Hogwarts, although rumored to have had some serious internal issues over the years, would be his one and only chance at achieving success in his life. Was it true that Lord Voldemort had once been in that castle? He glanced from the kitchen table over at his mother, who was talking animatedly on a blue-tooth earpiece. He scooted his chair back a few inches and craned his neck to get a good view up the stairs. His father was fast asleep. Would they even notice when he left for London to catch the Hogwarts express?

    The excitement turned over dramatically in his stomach, revealing it’s disparagingly tremulous underbelly. He had to be in London? On September 1st? But that was only two months away! “Do you know how I can get to London?” Claude asked in a whisper to the owl, feeling somewhat silly. The owl hooted apologetically and shrugged its wings, as though saying, “I’ve got no idea.”

    To the surprise of both Claude and the owl, another bird swooped in, carrying a small parcel. It landed right on Claude’s homework. “Does this happen often in London?” Claude whispered angrily, clutching at his rapidly beating heart. The new, second owl turned up its beak, offended, and dropped the package onto the table in front of Claude, who snatched it up immediately and unwrapped it. Inside was a small silk pouch with a note attached. On the front of the pouch was branded “Floo Powder.” Claude, who was know beginning to think that this was some kind of vivid, taunting dream, opened up the note and read.

    “Throw a pinch of this into the fireplace. Don’t be alarmed when the flame becomes tall and green. This means it is working properly. Please step into the fire and declare the name of where it is you want to go. The address is written on the backside of this note. Speak clearly, and you will arrive at the Foreign Student Arrival Center. From there, Hogwarts officials will transport you to London. The rest is being handled. Signed, Professor McGonagall, Headmistress.”

    “I’m supposed to walk right into the fire?” Claude asked incredulously as he finished reading, but both the owls had already exited through the window and were flying away. “This is ridiculous.” Claude complained exasperatedly, throwing the note onto the table and picking up the sack, which felt as though it were full of heavy flour. He opened it up, and it was instead filled with bright green powder. Claude brushed the surface of it with the tip of his finger, and it felt like soft, fine sand. The fire was crackling welcomingly from across the room. “This must be a joke,” Claude thought aloud, though he wanted to believe otherwise. “There’s no way this ‘floo powder’ can really work. Although…” The owls seemed well trained, after all. No other birds had seemed so intelligent to him before, and that’s not something that can be faked. He took a very small pinch of the powder from the pouch, wanting to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t asleep, and walked across the threshold to the stone fireplace. Cautiously, he flicked the floo powder inside of the docilely smoldering flames.

    Immediately, they morphed into monstrous, bright green tongues, lapping over the top of the mantel to lick the picture frames balanced on top. Panicking, Claude grabbed the tongs from the rack nearby and began to salvage the photographs from the wrath of the transformed fire. After a while, though, he realized that the fire was no longer providing heat, and the pictures were not damaged in the slightest. Feeling brave, he swiped through the fire with his hand. He felt no heat. He moved his hand through again, but slower. It was as though the flames wrapping around his fingers playfully weren’t even there.

    “Maybe this is real,” Claude dared to hope as stuck his hand straight into the fireplace. His hand disappeared among the dancing flames. “How bizarre.” He remembered the note he was sent. Rushing over to the kitchen table again, he snatched it up and read the address greedily. Practically sprinting back to the fireplace, he read the note aloud to himself. “The Leaky Cauldron? What kind of place is that?” He read further on the backside and it instructed him to use the floo powder on August 26, so that he would have a chance to do his school shopping and be well organized for the school year before September the 1st.

    It was very hard for Claude to fall asleep that night, because his mind kept wandering to what his life would be like at Hogwarts. No one would know who he was, and that was perfectly fine by Claude. It made it infinitely easier to get to know someone if they didn’t fear that you would explode at any second. Finally, when his mind was exhausted from fantasizing, he fell asleep and dreamt of August 26th.