Written for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry (Challenges & Assignments)

The Squib Factory Prompt: write about a character uncovering the dark secrets of the wizarding world.

Algie eyed the boy, and frowned when he cowered away.

"Your father didn't cower away from anything!" he snapped, and the boy only cowered even more.

"I'm sorry, sir," he stuttered.

"Hmpf," Algie said. "Augusta, this grandson of your is nothing but a pansy. Let's hope he's not a squib as well."

"He's not," Augusta snapped, but he could see the worry in her eyes to match his own.

After all, they both knew what happened to squibs. Even Neville had some idea, after listening to some of the rumours his cousins like to tell him.

The boy shook with fear. "I – I'm not a squib, I'm not."

Algie would have been more convinced if the boy had had the balls to shout, or storm away, or do anything but begin to cry.

Instead, fat tears dripped down his chubby face. Algie beckoned him closer, then snapped out a scorgify to clean them off his face, that and the smudge of dirt he had on his nose.

"You're a disgrace, boy. A right ruddy disgrace to the Longbottom name!"

"I'm sorry, sir!" the boy sobbed.

Abrubtly, Algie stood. The boy tripped over himself in his rush to scramble away, and Algie sneered down at him. With a flick of Algie's wand, he levitated the boy so that he was dangling upside down from one leg. The boy shrieked and whimpered in fear.

"What ever are you doing?" Augusta asked, but Algie ignored the meddlesome bint.

"Algie!" she snapped.

"You know it'll be for the best," he snarled back, and hurled the boy out of the window.

They were three stories up.

The boy screamed as he fell. Algie waited for a splat but then – he bounced. The boy actually bounced, all the way down the hill, as if he were encased in some sort of strange bubble.

"Hmpf. Would you look at that," Algie muttered. "He's got some magic, after all."

Augusta held a hand before her mouth. Her face was pale.

"Oh, don't be like that. Better a clean death, than the torture of the…" Algie grimaced, the thought almost too disgusting to vocalise. He lowered his voice. "The squib farms. His skin would've been harvested for parchment, then regrown, again and again. Better he die, falling from a window, than that."

Augusta turned to him, tears in her eyes, and her wand in her hand. "That may well be," she said, her voice strong and steady. "But now, you will leave this house, and never return. Never. Do you hear me?"

Algie snorted. "I only did what I had to do," he said, but knew that his sister was not bluffing. "One day, you might even thank me."

He felt Augusta's gaze on him as he left, but Algie walked away with pride. He had no regrets.