Dear Miss P. Evans,

I was delighted in receiving your letter, and sincerely appreciate your interest in the magical school of Hogwarts. I find not many non-magic folk with the knowledge of the wizarding world have a great deal of interest in details or education in magic. It is well a quality you should be proud of.

However, it is with deepest regret that I must decline your request of enrolling at the school. It is quite impossible for a Hogwarts student to be non-magic, and one needs to be born with the ability to perform magic; it cannot be directly taught. We do teach students to improve their skill; alas we don’t teach them to have it.

Yet you should know that magic is not merely found in witches and wizards and their intricate wand-waving and potion-brewing. It is found in everyone, in different mannerisms and hidden forms; in music, imagination and invention, to name a few.

With that, I must conclude – partly due to the fact that my fingers have been pecked to the bone by the post owl – and wish you the best of luck.

Albus Dumbledore signed at the end of the letter, rolled up the parchment, and tied it to the owl’s leg with a golden ribbon.

He had written quite a few difficult letters before; ones explaining a student’s unlucky injury or mischievous affairs to their parents, ones advising the Minister of Magic on a departmental issue, but never had he written back to an expectant eleven-year old girl with the realisation that magic indeed existed still fresh on her mind, to reject all her hopes and dreams so blatantly.

Albus Dumbledore had mulled over his words carefully, added the right amount of understanding and optimism, not wanting to upset the girl, but as the owl took flight out of the window into the cheerful summer sky, and Dumbledore turned around in his chair to watch it glide away, he wondered if it would have been wiser not to write back.

*

Among the other painful things she’d tried to wipe from her mind and failed, that letter stood out. Petunia Dursley remembered that day as clearly as if it stood next to her all her life, heckling repeatedly at her thoughts.

She remembered staring at the name penned in thin, curly handwriting at the bottom of the parchment, her mind blank and numb. Her mother had just entered her bedroom with some clean laundry, chattering away about some teacup Lily had just turned into a daisy.

‘...Dear, are you alright?’

She’d nodded fervently, still staring at the letter.

‘Well, breakfast is almost ready,’ her mother had said, placing the fresh clothes on Petunia’s dresser and leaving.

A minute had passed before Petunia finally jolted out of her blank daze as her sister’s voice rushed through the bedroom window.

‘Tuney! Come here, I want to show you something!’ Her voice had had a rhythm to it; she must have been dancing or jumping around.

Jumping off her bed, Petunia had stuck her head out of the window and looked below. Lily stood a few feet away from the front door, holding what looked like a purple toad in her palm.

‘Leave me alone!’ Petunia remembered yelling shrilly. ‘Why don’t you go show it to that Snape boy!’

She’d shut the window tight, bolted the bedroom door, her eyes suddenly very watery, and had spent the rest of the day locked up in her room.

The image of the letter swam back into Petunia Dursley’s thoughts. She had never felt so expectant and ecstatic, as her fingers had stretched out to meet the owl standing on her window sill, holding in its claws a response, almost a sure promise of being as Lily was; special, noticed, magical—

It’s not like Lily hadn’t always been the one to stand out – her vivid hair and her bright eyes opposed Petunia’s matte, ordinary features, and she’d always been the more confident one around neighbours and guests – Petunia was used to it, but the thought of Lily going to a great magical school, learning magic, meeting witches and wizards, having all that to herself – it had all seemed a bit too much to Petunia, and she’d resented it.

And now, standing outside her house on a Sunday morning, empty milk bottles in shards on the floor, her one-year old nephew snoozing peacefully in a bundle of blankets on the doorstep, Petunia realised... she really was gone.

She held a hand to her mouth to muffle the scream now escaping her. Her knees buckled and she knelt down. A letter was jutting out of the now waking boy’s blankets, the thin, curly writing on it familiar. It was addressed to her.

‘Petunia?’ her husband’s voice was calling from the kitchen. ‘Is everything all right there?’

Shutting her eyes tight, Petunia pocketed the letter and heaved a deep, shuddering sigh. She opened her eyes again and winced at the suddenly intense blur of sunlit sky and neatly-trimmed hedges, picking up the boy with shaking hands, his cheeks now wet with tears.