The deceptively fragile structure waded out against the incoming tide, testament to the ingenuity of those that wished to tame the forces of nature in the middle of the 19th century. The ambitious Victorians that had struck out into the Irish Sea could never have imagined the longevity of their creation. Of all the structures that skimmed the promenade at Blackpool the Central Pier was the most striking. That and the tower of course, but Algie wasn't about to chuck his great-nephew off the top of that. Not enough margin for error. If the boy really was a squib then he would be doomed, falling from that great height, and Algie would be facing some uncomfortable questions from Augusta if anything serious happened to the child. At least with the pier some fisherman would probably try to scoop the boy out. Salt of the earth, the fishermen, he thought optimistically.
He tempted the rather staid child along the sands with an ice cream topped with raspberry sauce and was disgusted with the way the boy lapped it up. A child of his parentage should be more discerning than this, indulging himself with a Muggle ice cream with a bit of pink stuff on top. He should have been taking his first hesitating steps towards simple charms, the odd spark of magic flying from him in a delightfully unpredictable way. But this nothingness --even a spark of dark magic would have been better than nothing.
His parents would have been mortified. Their current state was mortifying, but this child was merely adding to that indignity. If Algie stretched his mind he could see why this rather simple child had never been encouraged to find his magic. Mollycoddled into believing all was well because he had lost his magical parents and nothing else should be allowed to distress him. Allowed to hide beneath Augusta’s skirts as she pretended that nothing was wrong with young Neville. Algie was sure Augusta thought the boy would eventually go to Hogwarts and the magic of others would simply rub off on him. No one could ever compare to her son, the great Frank, and he wondered if some small part of her was glad the child wouldn’t eclipse the father.
Algie was a great believer in facing up to your demons and tackling them head-on. Problems of the kind his nephew faced would have been addressed much sooner had the boy been his son and Augusta not the driving force behind his future. Boys could always be forced to find their magic and now he had the chance to prove it. Augusta had trusted the child to him for the afternoon and he was jolly well going to see that there was no excuse for Neville to go to Hogwarts with no magic in him.
He strode out confidently across the wooden slats of the pier, paying scant attention to the rushing, foaming tide beneath him. Neville, meanwhile, was examining the gaps in the wood beneath his feet closely and with a sense of trepidation. And when he looked up, the child could see the white horses of the waves as they jumped for the shore, frightening him, calling him to his doom and at the same time rejecting him as being of another place, another realm. Neville licked his ice cream nervously and tried to pretend he was on solid ground. The wind had picked up a little, throwing sand across the old structure to prick at his eyes.
"Now then, our Neville," Algie said as they reached the end of the pier. "Your gran says that you're having a little problem with your magical abilities."
Neville blinked large watery eyes at his great-uncle, not really understanding what was being said.
"How's about you take a quick leap of the pier, prove her wrong?"
Neville licked his ice cream pointedly, not wishing to take a leap off anything, least of all this pier with its chasm of water beneath it.
–Thought as much,†Algie continued heartily. –Looks like we’re going to have to dredge the magic out of you.â€
And with that he hoisted Neville, by the seat of his trousers, above the white wrought-iron railings and pitched him, ice cream and all, into the spray beneath them. Neville yelped at first, the ice cream parting company with his hand as he plunged into the grey water. His first though was to regret the loss of the ice, but after that he needed to turn serious attention to his predicament. He wanted the magic. He wanted it so badly he didn’t even consider the possibility he could die without it, and there was a possibility he would regret the lost magic more than his lost young life. His father was a hero not just in his grandmother’s eyes, but in his. The visits to St Mungo’s, the stories of glory, the general beatification of his father was not lost on the small boy and he wanted more than anything to feel the inherited magic run through him and deliver him from all peril.
The water grew darker as he descended; thicker, deadlier. He willed the flicker of a charm to burst forth from his fingers, wished for the spark of a spell to break from his water-logged lips. A large cod swam past and cast a flat eye in his direction. Deeper, he went, and the air bubbles stopped floating from his mouth.
After a few minutes Algie realised that something had gone wrong. The boy was not surfacing. The boy was quite possibly drowning as he watched the waves cresting. He could imagine Augusta wailing beside him at the loss of the only living connection between her and her lost son. That brought him back to reality as he realised, sadly, that Neville had chosen to run away from his magical ability, chosen the pleasant pull of the salt water over magical struggle in the wizarding world. In the absence of any salt of the earth fishermen he was forced to fish the boy out himself, which resulted in a wet tweed suit and soggy shoes. Once they were safely back on the pier Algie found that he couldn’t look his great-nephew in the eye, such was his disappointment.
Neville didn’t get a replacement ice-cream. He got dry clothes and a suspicious look from his grandmother when Algie dropped him off at home. He was tucked into bed by their house-elf with no more affection than if he had walked in off the street as a stranger. It was only when he started to feel sleep approach did he think about the cod, about the grey water, about the lack of air. It was only then did he realise that he had not needed to breath under water. He had not needed to do anything but be himself and somehow things had organised themselves around him. Perhaps, he thought, that’s what magic was. Be yourself and it will come.