Christian Jewell

"Merry Christmas," Mrs. Cole greeted them anxiously from the doorway of her office. "Come in and sit down."

"Nelson, Tom." After they sat down, she looked at them with sincerity. "I'm sorry. I never expected something like that to happen last night..."

"You don't need to apologize, ma'am." Nelson looked earnestly at Mrs. Cole across the desk. "It's all right. We were the ones who failed to consider everyone's feelings. We should have come to apologize to you sooner."

Mrs. Cole said nothing, only staring directly into Nelson's eyes. She saw the sunlight streaming through the narrow window fall across his face, making his smile seem even warmer. For a moment, she was dazed. The hair on the sunlit side of Nelson's head shone a golden color, while the side hidden from the light gleamed silver in the shadows, as though that were his true hair color.

"Christian has had it very hard. Even in a place like an orphanage, she's still a pitiful girl..." She blinked her dry eyes. Nelson sat up straight before her, his whole body entering the sunlight and becoming a figure of gold. She defended Christian weakly. "Actually, she's a kind, good child."

"I don't think anyone who's met her would say that," Tom said darkly from the side. Leaning back in his chair, he was entirely hidden in the shadow divided by the sunlight, his expression impossible to make out. "Kind children don't steal. That's what you taught us, wasn't it?"

"I'll make her return what she stole and apologize to you. It's just... she's only a child..." She leaned back and closed her eyes, burying her head in the back of the chair. The weather suddenly seemed cold, and she wrapped her coat tighter around herself without saying another word.

"Mrs. Cole, we came to help her," Nelson said earnestly. "Our Professor Dumbledore—you've met him—knows a great deal about adolescent psychology. We all hope the children of West City Orphanage can grow up healthy..."

"All right." Mrs. Cole seemed to feel a little warmer. Whether it was because she trusted Dumbledore or because she trusted Nelson, she forced a smile and stood up. "That child is rather sensitive. I'll take you to her."

"There's no need."

Just like when Dumbledore had come for Tom, the office door opened to reveal a figure in a Newsboy Cap standing outside. She raised her coal-smudged little face, wrinkled her nose, and fearlessly lifted her chin to glare fiercely at Nelson, who stood at the front. She was like a wounded little beast guarding the last of her territory.

Nelson lowered his head and met Christian's gaze. He wanted to put on the warm, smiling expression Dumbledore had worn when he came for him, but he couldn't do it. All he could do was look at her quietly and openly, studying her face carefully. Christian looked as though she had just crawled out of a chimney or boiler room. Coal dust smeared her wrinkled nose and cheeks, and weathering had left rough cracks across her face. Beneath the black grime, a trace of a child's healthy flush showed through, almost too faint to notice. Her jet-black hair was clean and bright, but the ragged-looking Newsboy Cap had pressed it into a mess, leaving her looking rather unkempt—children this age were naturally lively, relying entirely on their mothers to follow after them and keep them presentable. And sadly, every child here had lost their mother.

In her black eyes, Nelson saw a whole tangle of emotions: suspicion, fear, strength, stubbornness, contempt. It made the cold girl seem far more alive. Her malnourished, pale face looked just like Tom's had long ago. He, too, had once stared coldly at Nelson with those same suspicious, stubborn eyes.

"Oh, Christian..." After who knew how long—perhaps a few minutes, perhaps only a second—Mrs. Cole took out a handkerchief and reached toward Christian's face.

Christian seemed deeply resistant to the touch. She ducked her head and avoided it, leaving Mrs. Cole's hand frozen in midair.

"I'll pay back your money!" She was the first to break eye contact with Nelson. Throwing a wallet into his arms, she turned and ran down the corridor toward the stairwell.

"It's all right. We'll help her." Tom clasped Mrs. Cole's hand, still hanging stiffly in the air, then went out to follow Nelson as he chased Christian upstairs. "Trust Nal."

When Tom reached the upper floor, he saw the two confronting each other outside the room that had once belonged to Nelson.

"Did you come to settle the score with me?" Christian shot Tom a glance, then folded her arms and blocked the doorway. She neither came out nor allowed the two of them in.

Tom looked at her and stood beside Nelson without speaking.

"I told you, I'll pay back the money." She tried hard to put on a superior air, but her lack of height made it seem a little ridiculous—and a little pitiful. "Don't you two grown men feel ashamed, blocking me in here?"

"My name is Nelson. Nelson Williams." Nelson extended his right hand.

"Williams, yes, you're quite the big shot in West End..." Christian's emotions grew agitated. "Fine, I stole your things. I admit it. I'll return your money. Isn't that enough for you?"

"I came to help you, Christian." Nelson did not withdraw his hand, doing his best to appear approachable. "You can't keep going on like this."

"Can't keep going on like what? I think I'm doing just fine! You can stand smugly on dry land and watch people like us drown in the water." She did not shake his hand. Instead, she forced out an ugly, low hiss through her throat, one word at a time. "Why do you have to meddle in my business?!"

"Christian..." Nelson remembered the issue of The Times his uncle had read at breakfast. The front-page headline had been "Police Capture Child Trafficking Ring After Ten Years on the Run." Thinking of what Mrs. Cole had said about the police station sending over several children, he felt he could already guess the girl's origins. Even in the modern society he knew, such hateful crimes persisted despite repeated bans. A wallet casually bought from the street and a few Pound Sterling in loose change meant nothing to a Wizard. The girl's eyes, on the other hand, stirred far greater pity.

"Don't look at me with those disgusting eyes, like those disgusting priests in church! I'm a thief!" She was growing hysterical, unable to control her emotions any longer. She slapped Nelson's hand away and shouted at him without holding back her voice. "The way you look at me is as disgusting as a john staring at a prostitute in the red-light district!"

The light bulb overhead, left unpowered because there was no money to run it, swayed slightly. The shadows on the floor grew and shrank. From the girl's words, Tom sensed how different she was from the other children in the orphanage. She seemed to know many things. She truly lived, or had once lived, in the sunless gutter beneath the polished splendor and false peace of the dying British Empire.

"Why should you help me? Why do you get to look at me like that? Why do you get to wear clean clothes and sit beside the fireplace reading books? Why can you help me just because you say you will?" The tears she had endured for so long burst from her eyes. She wept silently, her face filled with grief, tears pouring down like a breached riverbank and covering her entire face in an instant. The coal dust on her cheeks mixed with her tears, smearing streaks of grotesque paint across her face. There was no telling how long she had held those tears back—perhaps all morning, perhaps for years.

The children in the surrounding rooms heard the shouting in the corridor and cautiously cracked open their doors to peek outside. The moment they saw the scene before them, they shrank back inside in fright.

"Why do you get to? Do you think I don't want to be like you? Do you think I want to be a thief? How could people born with silver spoons in their mouths understand a sewer roach like me? Can you imagine that if a seven-year-old girl failed to steal three wallets in a day, she would be sold to become a child prostitute? Can you imagine someone who isn't just a thief by trade, but a freak too?" She raised her arm. An unimaginably violent boom echoed through the corridor, shaking dust from the light overhead. The air in the hallway began to grow unbearable. "Williams, you have a family, so they envy you. Riddle, they fear you! But what do I have? I can only steal money to buy candy and curry favor with them, and then when they see me cornered in the hallway by two people, they're so scared they hide! Have you ever stolen anything? Once someone has stolen something, they can never be clean again. Do you understand?!"

Christian cried and laughed, no longer able to control her turbulent emotions. The plaster on the corridor wall beside her cracked in layers under the distortion of some immense pressure, then began to peel away.

"Get out! Get the hell out! Don't come any closer!" Christian's eyes widened. Her voice suddenly dropped, becoming mournful and shrill as she cried out helplessly, "Run! I can't control it anymore..."

Nelson drew his Wand, preparing to stun the girl before him, when Tom, who had remained silent all along, suddenly stepped forward and stood in his way.

"Not an Obscurial. She's just emotionally agitated." Tom walked calmly up to Christian and looked down at her. Without a trace of emotion in his voice, he said, "I've stolen things."

Christian glanced at him, then lowered her red-rimmed eyes and took a step back. The pressure in the corridor eased slightly. Nelson slipped his Wand back into his pocket, stepped back, and left the space to the two of them.

"You're not a freak either."

Tom flicked his arm, gripping his Yew Wood Wand neatly in his hand. He took another step forward, and Christian took another step back.

"We didn't come here over some worthless wallet. You and I are the same kind of person." Tom raised his Wand and skillfully traced an arc through the air. A brand-new Newsboy Cap, identical to the one on the girl's head, appeared in his left hand. He took another step forward. "You have magical talent, Christian Jewell. You're a Wizard."

Christian did not retreat again. She raised her tear-streaked face to look at Tom, her eyes now holding hope—and even greater fear. Tom tapped the top of her head with his Wand. The tattered Newsboy Cap turned into a cloud of black smoke, quickly rising and dispersing. He placed the new cap in his hand on the girl's head, then frowned and straightened it. Slipping past her into the room, he skillfully pulled a chair out from beneath the table.

Christian turned to look at Tom, who acted as though he had entered his own home. The strange disturbance in the corridor had completely subsided, and the poor plaster no longer needed to worry about being torn from its home.

"Won't you invite us in?" Tom finally spoke, his frown still in place.