Arabella Figg was waiting. She was lying on the floor, underneath the window in the upstairs hallway and she was waiting.

“Hey, bean-pole. What are you doing under the window?” Her older sister appeared above her.

“Go away, Joanie,” Arabella snapped.

“Ah, in a mood today, are we?” Comprehension dawned on Joanie’s face. She smirked. “You wouldn’t happen to be waiting for a certain letter, would you?”

“Go jump in the Vanishing Cabinet,” Arabella said with a glare.

“Well, it’s August 22nd... if you don’t have it yet...”

“Shut up, Joanie,” she growled through clenched teeth.

“It looks like we have a-!”

“Don’t even say it!”

“A squi-!”

“JOANIE!”

“A Squib!” Joanie whispered dramatically.

“I’m not a Squib!” Arabella yelled.

Joanie cackled and took off down the hall. Arabella wretched her sandal off her foot, upsetting the fat, orange cat who had been warming them, and threw it at Joanie’s retreating figure.

Arabella was the youngest of five daughters born to Helen and Robert Figg. Belinda was the oldest, next came Gwendolyn, then Valerie, Joanie, and last was Arabella. All her sisters were already attending Hogwarts.

She silently cursed Joanie. What did she know? There were plenty of reasons to why her letter was late. The owl could have gotten intercepted or lost. It could have delivered her letter to someone else, and it was all being sorting out right now. She was a witch. She had to be a witch.

“I’m a witch, I’m a witch, I’m a witch...” she repeated aloud.

And she hoped with all her might that she was right.




Arabella stood up with a sigh. She was tired of lying on the floor and she was hungry. She had ignored her mother’s calls for lunch and didn’t budge when Belinda tried to coax her down. She stretched and made her way down to the kitchen, stopping at the swinging door.

A little boy in the painting next to the door got her attention. “I wouldn’t go in there,” he whispered. “They’re having a bit of a row.”

Arabella looked around quickly, before putting her ear to the door to listen.

“But Bob, I was speaking to Cheryl Green the other day. She told me that her cousin is a Squib,” Arabella heard her mother say. “They went down to see the Headmaster themselves! He told them that if a child doesn’t get their letter by the middle of August, they’re not going to get
one!”

“I don’t want to hear it, Helen. My daughter is not a Squib!” her father rumbled.

“It’s not really that much of a surprise though, it is, Bob? When has Arabella ever shown signs of magical ability?” Helen said softly.

Robert sighed. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it at all.”

“Neither do I, Bob. But there’s nothing we can do about it!”

“We’ll have to enroll her in a Muggle school. She’ll never go to Hogwarts...”

Arabella stumbled backwards, her eyes filled with tears... A Squib? She rubbed the tears away and ran outside in escape.




Rap-tap-tap.

Arabella drew her head out from underneath her pillow. Her face was red and blotchy, and she was not in the mood for any of her family’s sympathetic glances or Joanie’s teasing.

“Go away,” she said flatly.

“Arabella, darling,” her mother’s calm, pacifying voice came through the door. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”

Arabella didn’t respond, but she knew her mother would come in anyway. The door slowly opened and Helen Figg came in and sat down on Arabella’s bed.

Arabella wished she were sitting on Valerie’s bed, over at the other side of the room. She knew her mother was sitting so close to her to foil her plan of escape or as Helen probably hoped, to comfort her if she began to cry.

“So... I suppose you overheard your father and I talking?” Helen began.

Arabella stared back at her with round, watery eyes.

“Do you want to talk about it, darling?” Helen urged.

“No,” Arabella said bluntly.

“Are you sure? Because it would be good if we talked about it. Communication is key. I’m sure it would make you feel better.”

“No, mum. I really don’t think that it would.”

Helen wrung her hands together in her lap. She had obviously been hoping for some kind of secret confessional; she was always urging her daughters to talk to her. “Well, when you’re ready, I’m here.”

“Okay.”

“Dinner’s ready. I’ve made your favorite!” Helen said encouragingly.

“I’m not hungry,” Arabella lied. As if on cue, her stomach gave a long, low growl.

“It will be waiting when you decide to come down.” Helen got up and kissed her daughter on the head, before smoothing her robes and leaving.

Arabella bent her head to glare at her stomach. The last thing she wanted right now was Belinda’s reassuring pat on the hand, Gwendolyn’s mood lightening jokes, Valerie’s guarantee that everything will work out, and Joanie’s relentless teasing. But she had not eaten since breakfast, and her mother had made her favorite...

Running a flustered hand over her face, Arabella got up and trudged downstairs to the kitchen, where the Figg family was sitting around a large, round table.

As soon as she pushed open the door, the whole kitchen went quiet. With a nervous look around, she sat down in between her father and Gwendolyn.

“Hello, Arabella, dear,” Helen greeted. “Look, Shepard’s Pie, just like I said!”

“Why are we eating her favorite?” Joanie sneered. “She didn’t even get into Hogwarts!”

“Joanie!” Helen gasped.

“Well, it’s true! She can’t even do magic, and we’re rewarding her with Shepard’s Pie?” Joanie said loudly.

“Joanie! I don’t want to hear another word out of you!” Robert boomed.

“But-!” Joanie protested.

“One more, and you’re up to bed, with no dessert!”

Joanie cast Arabella a poisonous look and went back to her dinner.

Arabella began eating quickly and everything went quiet. Her mother was looking at her with tears in her eyes and Gwendolyn was acutely edging away from her. But, when Valerie tried to break the silence with a remark about the weather, she snapped.

“For Merlin’s sake, mum! Stop looking at me like I’m on my death bed! And, Gwen. I’m not about to jump up and attack you. You can relax!”

She stood up, knocking her chair to the ground in the process. “I am not dying, and I’m not a bloody Manticore! I am a Squib. I can’t do magic and I never will! I’m just going to have to learn to accept that, and so do you!”

Arabella strode out of the house, careful to hit Joanie in the back of the head on her way.


A caterpillar edged up the trunk of the tree. Arabella watched it with interest. I bet it’s so excited to turn into a butterfly... What if, one day, your mother told you that you will never turn into a butterfly? You’ll be a caterpillar forever, and have to watch all your sisters turn into lovely butterflies...

“Oh, wait,” Arabella realized aloud. “You’re just a grub.”

She looked sympathetically at the grub. Did it get terribly jealous when all the caterpillars turned into butterflies and got to fly, and all it got to do was get fat eating her mother’s
cabbages?

“We’re in the same boat, you and I,” she told the grub. “You don’t get to turn into a pretty butterfly and learn to drink nectar and such. I don’t get to do magic, and learn about all the things that I wanted to.”

The grub just inched along. She suspected it was headed for that big, green leaf near the top.

“But you just keep on going, don’t you? You just eat and accept the fact that you’re a grub, and that’s what you’ll always be,” Arabella said to the grub. “You accept your fate.”

Slowly, Arabella picked up the grub and placed it on the big, green leaf near the top. She smiled at it as it began eating. Then, with a sigh, she hopped down from the tree, ready to start accepting her own fate.