Alfie Wyn Owen

There had been hints of Alfie’s gift almost from the moment of his birth. But these instances had been subtle or fleeting, and as they were observed only by muggles who didn’t believe in magic, they were dismissed as natural occurrences or an optical illusion, or possibly just misremembering or fancy. “You ought to have seen the faces you pulled when you were upset!" his mother told him. "It was like you were a different baby entirely.”

There was also a confusion over his hair color in his first year, when the sparse wisps of baby hair had seemed to change from day to day. “But that was only because there were so few hairs, you see,” his mother explained. “Once there were enough of them I knew you’d be dark like your father.” Though his full head of black curls had seemed to appear all at once, his grandmother pointed out, as if they had grown rapidly overnight. “That just happens sometimes with babies,” they both concluded without suspicion. There was nothing peculiar about it.

His eyes had also been a subject of controversy. Were they blue? Were they grey? Were they hazel? All perfectly natural colors, but everyone seemed to remember something different, until, in the midst of a Sunday dinner table debate, his grandfather had insisted they all go into the garden to get a good look at Alfie’s eyes where the light was better. He’d wanted to prove, once and for all, that he had the right to it. Alfie’s eyes were green, like his. Only they hadn’t been. After they had all squinted and squinted again, Alfie’s eyes were determined to be blue, or possibly a blueish-greyish-greenish hazel. In the end, it was declared that Alfie's eyes were just peculiar. They had an odd sort of quality that made them look differently depending on the light. This was also quite normal, they insisted to each other. They believed it too.

It was not until Alfie’s first instance of real magic (see above) that the situation took an unexpected turn. The household was visited by a person who called himself a muggle liaison officer, but only Alfie’s grandmother had been there to receive him. After surprisingly little convincing that magic was real, she was made aware of Alfie’s unique gift and possible special talent. She passed along the information later to her husband and daughter, filtered through her own background and vocabulary until it sounded more like the ancient stories from Welsh mythology, something that virtually no one believed anymore. It was taken as a massive and elaborate delusion by her less imaginative family.

The consensus belief, which was confirmed by a muggle doctor, was that Mrs. Owen was suffering from dementia, or as Mr. Owen expressed it, she was “gancyn yn brin o'r cant” (a penny short of a hundred). This diagnosis was sad, but not unsurprising at her age, and because she seemed capable otherwise, and was no danger to herself or Alfie, they were able to politely nod and smile any time she apprised them of further visits from ‘the man in the fireplace’, or explained what she had learned about Alfie and his gifts. Of course, Alfie would have to be told of his grandmother’s affliction before she got to him, or he might have started believing his grandmother’s stories. Alfie’s relationship with the truth was already suspect. (He was a frequent liar) It would be a disaster if he actually believed his grandmother’s tales and started introducing himself as one of y tylwyth teg (the fair family). It would be like the time he told his year one classmates that his father was a famous rugby player. He was still living down that lie, a claim to faerie magic would brand him for life.

“You’ve got to understand that your nain is getting on in years,” his mother had confided to him, in uncharacteristically gentle tones. “I know you love her and her stories, but they are just that. Stories. Your nain knows that too, deep down. She just gets confused. She doesn’t mean to, but she can’t help it. So, if she tells you, for instance, about magical men popping out of the fireplace, or that she is descended from selkies, or that faerie magic is in your blood, or anything crazy like that, well you mustn’t mind it.”

She’d concluded by telling him to let her know if Nain got ‘too bad’ so she could do something about it. But Alfie remembered stories of some of his mother’s patients, who had been put away by their families, too far away for his mother to go on treating them. He didn't want the same thing to happen to his own grandmother so he resolved to keep her eccentricities to himself.

In the end, his nain didn't change all that much. If anything, he thought her stories just became better, especially the ones about himself. Alfie could only wish that they were actually real. But everything else about his drab existence in a depressing little town told him that fantastic things don’t really happen to people. He was not to find out otherwise for a number of years.

Of course, there were a few other peculiar happenings in the intervening years. They mostly happened in moments of stress or heightened emotion. Alfie occasionally thought he was losing his grasp on reality, a bit like his grandmother had done. But unnatural things just don’t happen, or so he was constantly told. The glitches, as he started to think of them, almost never happened with witnesses, or if they did, he might notice a cocked head or a strange look before the person shook their head or rubbed their eyes, before muttering to themselves, or declaring that it was nothing. Similarly, on the rare instances when Alfie caught a strange face looking back at him from a mirror, the ‘illusion’ was fleeting and he was left only slightly disquieted before laughing at his own credulity.

The long awaited paradigm shift came not long after Alfie’s grandmother died. Her illness began in December of Alfie’s tenth year. She was dead and buried before the new year. The family’s grief was immense, with each of them struggling in some way. In March, his grandfather declared that the best way to process their grief was to pack away her things and ‘move on with it.’ Alfie found this sentiment callous as if he were expected to forget her too soon. So, when his grandfather stepped out for a smoke, Alfie snuck into his grandparents’ bedroom to look at her things for one last time. His grandfather’s return came sooner than expected and Alfie was caught red-faced and ashamed, both because of the privacy violation and because he knew his grandfather was also grieving. His grandfather was angry, but worse he shouted, “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” Alfie was unaware that his face was not just red, but that it had changed just enough as to be unrecognizable. Alfie tried to stammer out some excuse, but whatever he said was incomprehensible to his grandfather who eventually calmed enough to decide that the trespassing boy was one of Alfie’s friends. “This is not a good time. Come back tomorrow,” he told him, ushering him out the door. “I’ll tell Alfie you were here.” And there had been nothing Alfie could say to get his grandfather to see him for who he was.

Alfie’s emotions continued to spiral in the hours that followed. He didn’t know what to do. He could only suppose that his grandfather was suffering from the same dementia that took his grandmother. Later however, when both the clerk at Realm of Nerds and the manager of the Top G Store had failed to know him, Alfie was forced to accept that it wasn’t dementia, unless dementia was something you could catch when you were ten.

He returned home as the sky darkened and waited on the stoop for his mother’s return from work. The street lights had come on before she finally arrived. Alfie stood expectantly when she approached the front door. “Can I help you?” she asked, looking at him blankly. Alfie began to cry, and when his confused mother gave him an awkward pat and offered to call his mum for him, Alfie ran away. Later, he returned but found himself locked out. He was forced to spend the night shivering in the garden shed. The next day everyone knew him again, but it left Alfie with a creepy disassociated feeling. This feeling only increased when, within the same week, the Owens were visited by strangers who called themselves muggle liaisons.

To make a long story short, and to dispense with several unsuccessful attempts to convince them, Alfie and his family were eventually forced to accept the following hard truths:

• Magic was real.
• Alfie was a wizard.
• Alfie was also something called a metamorphmagus, which meant that all the glitches in his appearance was something he was doing, though inexpertly and possibly even illegally.
• That if he didn’t get his talent under control, he would be in a lot of trouble.
• That the only thing for it was proper training at a proper wizard school
• They even had some scheme to help them pay for it. So no excuses.
• Also, that it was mad that they didn’t know all this already.

The confusion about that last bit was cleared up eventually. Alfie’s mother was Ms. C. Owen, and not the Mrs. G. Owen who had been talking to a previous liaison. Mrs. G. Owen was Alfie’s grandmother who apparently wasn’t a nutter after all. Even the crazy story his nain’s family had passed down about being descended from a seal woman apparently contained a grain of truth. The liaisons thought it was completely possible to have a witch of some kind way back in Alfie’s mother’s family.

"Your son’s gift is hereditary and only presents in magical bloodlines. The maternal gene may be weak, given how long you say it’s been since anyone in the family has presented as magical. The boy’s father is almost certainly the greater influence. We would expect a full wizard, if not a metamorphmagus himself. It would be helpful if we could identify him. Are you certain you can't tell us anything more? He would undoubtedly be registered with the Spanish Ministry, but without a surname—”

In the end, it was decided that tracking down Alfie’s father wasn’t necessary. He would receive magical guidance for his meta issues soon enough at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.