I'd Draw You Smiling

Being a witch isn't all that terrible.

I'd tried to convince myself of that statement throughout the course of my sixteen-year life. Well, actually, not the entirety of my sixteen-year life. The last little-less-than-half of it, more like. You see, I was, well...

A Mudblood. I winced, stung by the unfairness of it all.

Dear Lord Voldemort,
I didn’t steal magic. If you want it, take it back. I'd prefer to be normal, thanks.
Sincerely,
Lacey Anne James

Needless to say, I was the only witch in my family. Before I came along, it was my mother who the family considered the "odd one". She'd been born in America, for Christ's sake. Father married her twenty years ago under much pomp and circumstance - although most of his relatives couldn't understand why he'd do such a thing; if you're marrying an American, best do it in secret. That being said, a year passed and everyone was sure that our family had overcome the oddity without dropping their smiles. An American in the family, they said, nothing could be stranger.

Well, four years after that I popped out, all orange hair and dimples, looking more like the man that delivered our post than anyone in our family. More relatives mumbled under their breath. Lucky I had my father's nose, they said. Lucky I had his eyes and brains, too. Everyone knows what an idiot the postman is, there's no way Lacey could be connected to him, they said.

For eight years, I was a decently non-descript child. I left my playthings on the floor and ate my greens to make up for it. My orange hair grew thick and wild. I began to bear more resemblance to my father and the rest of the family finally had to drop their suspicions. My mother merely rolled her eyes and shook her head and told me I was her best girl. The fact that I was her only girl didn't make any difference to me. Life in Bolton was nice. I played with dolls.

On my ninth birthday, something strange happened, although of course I didn't know it. There was a large cake iced with pink and white, nine slender white candles arranged in a perfect ring around my name, spelled out with more pink icing. Never one for tradition, my mother didn’t light the candles before she set the cake on the table before me. Never one for common sense, either, she had to return to the kitchen to retrieve the matches which had been left in the drawer. When she came back, determinedly striking a match against the flap of the book, the candles were already burning. She pondered this circumstance for weeks, though I had already carefully explained the situation to her.

"I wanted the candles lit," I had said, licking frosting off my fork, "And they lit, Mum. All by themselves."

There weren't many more happenings after that, and if there were, Mum and Dad simply explained them away with nervous looks around their eyes. The dead flowers weren't really dead after all, they said, just wilting. Though, honestly, they had both seen those geraniums in their pots, brittle and nearly black. I, of course, preferred their original pinky-red, and so, with a little squint of my eyes and a brush from my wee fingers, there they were, blooming furiously before me.

On my eleventh birthday, there was no cake or party. No candles, singing, or boxes with pretty pink bows. Well, there would have been, I'm sure, had there not been a letter.

It had been written in a brown envelope which crackled when touched. Once opened, I thought that not even my teachers at school had such elegant writing, or such shimmery, black ink. I stared at the wax seal because it reminded me of my mother's lipstick. None of us knew where it had come from, only that it had been tied to the leg of a small, tawny owl which was standing on the window sill, snapping its beak.

Mum eyed the letter and the bird warily, mumbling something about 'Hogwarts'. I thought it was a very odd time to be talking about pigs. I had a letter! My fingers itched to touch the old-looking paper, though before I could reach out and do so, my mother snatched it up and turned to my father.

"Alfred, I'm not sure what this is." She said in her strange, American way. I wrinkled my nose at the harshness of her vowels.

"Well, neither am I, but staring at it won't help." He replied, holding out his hand.

Mum handed him the envelope then chewed her nails. Neither of them looked at me while Dad read aloud,

Dear Miss James,
We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

The words 'witchcraft', 'wizardry', and 'owl' merited sounds of disgusted disbelief in my father's voice, and when he finished, he set the letter down on the kitchen cutting block and crossed his arms.

"Surely it's some sort of prank," he said calmly, his eyes scanning the discarded page again, "This school is rubbish, no doubt." His gaze traveled to the owl, still perched in the window.

"But, Alfred," My mother chimed in, nervously squeezing her hands together, "It came by owl. And the wax seal. Alfred, what about the candles? And my geraniums!"

"Monica, have you ever heard of this place? Hogwarts, bah! Rubbish."

With that, Dad crumpled the paper and envelope in his fist, then threw them into the kitchen dustbin. The owl, which had been watching the scene with a bored look in its large, gold eyes, departed. I heard its squawk as it soared above the neighbors' house and disappeared.

Only the next morning, there was another owl. This one, white with orange eyes, tapped its beak against the kitchen window impatiently until my father pushed against the wooden frame, a dazed expression on his face, and allowed it inside.

This slip of paper had the same shimmery black ink and brownish qualities of the previous one, though the handwriting was quite different; more spidery and masculine perhaps, but it didn’t matter to me then. The contents of the letter didn’t matter much either, other than the fact that it was from Albus Dumbledore and it explained – very clearly – that I was a witch.

Mum and Dad couldn’t argue with this Dumbledore. He had talked about the birthday candles and the geraniums, neither of which had been mentioned to anyone outside of our home.

Mum, after countless murmurings proclaiming that she simply couldn't believe this turn of events, finally smiled shakily and said "Well, it doesn't look like I'm the family oddity anymore, Lacey. I thank you for that."

Sitting on a long, wooden bench in the Great Hall of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with two dozen or so other students who had received more or less the same letter that I had five or so years earlier, I thought back to that moment. I imagined myself as an eleven-year-old again, thousands of my relatives flashing through my head, all muttering about me the same way they had muttered about my mother, faces plastered with fake smiles as they carefully ground all of my good qualities under the heels of their well-shined pumps and loafers.

Mum and Dad kept my letters a secret, explaining away my ten months of absence every year with lies about "special schools up north" and holidays with friends.

Sixteen years old, now, and I wasn't "up north", relatively speaking. (For all I knew, Hogwarts actually was 'up north'). Instead, I was learning the secrets of the wizarding world, conjuring spells and charms from the tip of my willow-and-demiguise-hair wand, despising my post as the new "family oddity". Another year of Hogwarts, of grudging magical education, and I wouldn't have to come back. I could live a life without magic, among the "muggles" of Britain. Sweet, sweet normalcy.

I must have looked quite sour, because two elbows jabbed my ribs, one on either side. I spilled my pumpkin juice down the front of my robes and slammed my goblet onto the table-top. Several heads belonging to my fellow Gryffindors turned my way, most with smiles on their faces. The two identical elbows became two identical arms across my shoulders, and I sighed, still angry but not really.

"Sorry there, Lacey." said Fred, reaching his hand up to tug on a lock of my hair.

"We couldn't let you get too glum." George continued, siphoning most of the juice off the front of my robes with the tip of his wand.

"Your face was quite dour, you know." Fred concluded, still pulling my hair.

I sighed again, glancing at both of them in turn. They grinned identically, though I could tell them apart by the scar on Fred's eyebrow – the result of a misfired spell in Defense Against the Dark Arts three years prior. He saw me looking at it and laughed.

"Yes, I'm the other Boy Who Lived," he said, pointing his chin at Harry Potter, who was laughing halfway down the table, a fork of mashed potatoes halfway to his mouth, "Though, You-Know-Who wasn't involved. Just George."

He lifted his arm the same time his brother did and reached for a platter of chicken legs, helping himself to several. He continued speaking, though on a different subject entirely.

"Are you coming to The Burrow with us for summer? Mum wants to see the Honorary Weasley. You'd better wear your sweater on the train. She might be disappointed if you don't." He said thoughtfully.

"Yes, well. I'll need to have it washed first. The last time I wore it, I fell in the mud around the lake. You remember, I'm sure," I said slowly.

The Twins laughed, recalling the mental image of me running to catch up with everyone as they gathered down at the lake for thesecond task in the Triwizard Tournament. Something about merpeople? Anyway, I'd stumbled over a rock lodged in the mud and gone sprawling. The dirt was still crusted stubbornly across the front of the red and gold sweater Mrs. Weasley had knitted for me a few Christmases prior.

"That was brilliant," Fred laughed heartily, "The look on your face as you fell. I don’t think I'll ever forget it." he mimicked my wide eyed stare of horror, then resumed his previous activity of tugging on strands of my hair, this time with a chicken leg in his other hand.

"Right, well. If you're quite finished making me spill things and pulling my hair, I've got arithmancy to study for." I said, pushing my plate away from me and gathering my few scattered books.

"It's a shame we're not," George said brightly, joining his brother in tugging my curls, making 'sproing' noises under his breath.

"You two are damn gits, you know?"

"Yeah," They replied in unison.

I shook my head vigorously to dislodge their fingers and made my escape, swinging my legs over the wooden bench with difficulty. Moving swiftly from the room, I made my way up the marble staircase and to the portrait of the Fat Lady, who eyed me silently, waiting for the password.

"Balderdash," I said clearly, and she swung her picture frame forward.

The common room was empty aside from Hermione Granger, who looked up from her Ancient Runes book and nodded pleasantly. I nodded back and moved to a table by the fire, dumping my load of books and beginning to study.

Being a witch isn't all that terrible, I thought half-heartedly as my eyes scanned seemingly endless pages of magical properties and formulas. It seemed a lie, though. Being a witch made me odd in the eyes of my own mother. If that wasn't enough, it meant I had to study this blasted subject. At the thought, I dropped all attempts at positivity.

Who was I kidding? Being a witch was quite nearly the most terrible thing I could think of.