"Incomplete Picture": A prologue

He hated the sky.

He hated the sky because the sky tormented him, always unleashing the weather that he didn't want.

He hated the sky, because it was oppressive and uncaring.

He hated the sky, but indoors was no better. Indoors he was unwelcome and unwanted. He knew this and had known it for years.

His parents didn't love him. There was no overt hostility, but the disgust was so thick that it passed for much the same thing.

His younger sister didn't love him either. She was contemptuous and that was much, much worse than what he knew his parents felt.

He had grown up knowing these facts. The time was fast approaching when he could leave, and he looked forward to it with absolute yearning. Even the house didn't want him around.

Squibs were unwelcome and unwanted. In Darker families they simply disappeared; his was not that Dark, but they were still Pure Blood and to be Pure Blood meant your family didn't have such flaws as his kind. If such errant failures appeared, they disappeared.

His parents had not made him disappear, but they had never acknowledged him and the time was fast approaching when he would vanish. Exile into the Muggle world; absolutely permanent unless one day he spawned a proven Magical child. Even then, he would not be welcome back, but the child might. The odds were slim, but not zero. Though they were definitely slim since he had a sister and since his sister was Magical, her children (when she was old enough to have them) would be Magical born from Magical, not Magical sired by Squib.

He knew the date of his imminent exile: March 27, 1977. His seventeenth birthday.

It was less than a year from now. Less than a year until he was of age and vanished.

Until then, he would spend his free hours on the expansive lawn behind the manor, staring up at the sky and hating it with everything in his heart.