Author's Notes and Warnings:

This story began with my disappointment of all the abused-Snape childhood stories out there. There was only one story where I could find that Severus Snape was not abused by his parents/legal guardians, but he turned out gay. This clashed with my mental image of an asexual Severus Snape who viewed sex as nothing more than a sticky annoyance meant to proliferate and assure the next generation of idiots - er, humans.

I began writing A Gutter Rat's Tale in early March, 2002, and finished it in the middle of April of that same year. The idea was so potent that I could easily write 5,000 words in a single sitting (well, easily in so far as we ignore how sore my back was and how I could not longer feel my butt...). I finished the story at 90 pages and roughly 70,000 words. Three times I came back for revisions, the last being a massive overhaul.

One of the most popular questions my readers asked was, "Well, what did Voldemort do to James?" Truthfully, I had no idea. Whoops. When my best friend asked me herself, I sat down at 10 PM, June 8th of 2002 to write the simple little side story. I finished at 1:33 AM, June 9th. That Which James Witnessed mutated though, and I'm not sure how! Now that Severus had had his fill, James Potter demanded equal treatment. In the end, TWJW is 42 pages and 30,000 words long and is one of the most emotionally powerful pieces I have ever written.

I like to think I'm finished with this entire thing, but that remains to be seen.

Now, three points to bear in mind to ease the story's readability:

1) The time line. A person could have read this with a grain of salt in 2002. However, it is made obsolete with the publication of OotP, so Snape and James can be seen as horribly out-of-character, not to mention the very idea of Snape's relationship with James is completely unfeasible. (How was I supposed to know that James was actually an arrogant prick?!) AGRT is meant to be read as sort of a sequel to GoF, bearing in mind that everything in OotP never happened.

2) The rating. This is a very dark story pertaining to some very dark issues. Snape doesn't so much as address the issues, like rape and child neglect and molestation, as he shuffles them under the carpet and pointedly ignores them. Other issues include torture, extremely graphic violence, and cannabalism. If you don't think you can maturely handle such scenes or material, please do not read this story. There may be no sex, but the story worked very hard to earn that M rating. And that's not even delving into the conundrum that is a Machiavellian Voldemort. (Although you must admit, you surely wondered how Voldemort came up with "death eater".)

3) Snape switches tenses sometimes - this is a styalistic matter, rather than a writer's mistake. Snape is writing a story of the past so he uses past tense, but sometimes he brings in details of the present so he writes those in present tense, and details from the past and the present will clash and jumble together, especially when Voldemort is involved. I've had some readers complain about the confusion, but the warning still stands even after my polishing.

In which Snape swallowed his pride, chokes past the lump, and forces himself to start.

Harry Potter, I am not certain of where to begin this tale; I certainly shall not sugar-coat my words lest they offend your delicate sensibilities, but all stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. But for me, a beginning requires knowing where events are put into motion, or are first recognized as being set forth. As our lives are strings of many a coincidence and choices made without thought, the beginning is never the true beginning. And I'm quite sure that you have absolutely no desire to know anything about your horrid Potions professor, lest you realize that the monster is actually human (I have no desire for you to realize that I am human – I would much rather live being the monster who dwells in the dungeons, but I know that living is now beyond my reach).

So perhaps the best place to begin would be the world as I first understood it.

Those who live on the streets, sheltered by overhangs, doorways, cardboard boxes, and heaps of garbage, are often thought to be the dredges of life. When someone says "street urchin," the term commonly brings to mind a ragged and thin child, dressed in torn, dirty clothing not fit to wipe clean a pigsty. "Beggars" are those who sit on a street corner, wearing rags and their faces caked with dirt, their skin drawn tight over protruding bones or sagging and fragile. There are, too, "gangs" of hooligans who vandalize property, mug, murder, and deal in drugs.

Such people of the street are thought to be the filth of mankind for they cannot cope in the real world, cannot allow society to accept them, because life, although hard, is very simple; perfect for such lazy bastards who refuse to accept the responsibilities of home, jobs, and social lives – of being moral and righteous. These people of the streets are selfish and stubborn, but their harsh fate was wrought through their own fault. They made the choice to exist in these conditions.

In large cities, there are societies within societies. Everything has an order and rules. The common worker has the union; the rich and the elite their cliques. Children of schools soon realize that their world is contained within this single area, for school is their social, cultural, and educational worlds.

Even the streets have their own societies, much like a school. In a single run-down block, you will find separate gangs of hooligans, packs of street urchins and gutter rats, street whores and hookers of both sexes who sell their bodies and molest children to gain whatever perverted pleasure they find, and those individual beggars who refuse to take part in a group. All of these groups function by themselves, yet they are a part of a society in and of themselves. There is Structure; there are Rules.

I imagine you would not understand the vast complexity of such a place. After all, you, with your comfortable home, friends, and family, would not understand how precious and beautiful a single nook against a wall behind a pair of trashcans would be. How can such a silly thing be so beautiful? Because it is a shelter from the chill wind and drizzling moisture; it is all the difference in the world when the only protection one otherwise has from the weather are the thin rags upon one's back.

Oh yes, often there are those who blame us for living in the streets like vermin! After all, we as humans chose our fates and thus we have only ourselves to blame for our pitiful existence human trash existing with disposable trash. In essence, we are the society of the slums, and even the society beyond the slums understood this on some subconscious level. It may not have been much, but it belonged to us. It was all we understood, so therefore we welcomed it. But we do not welcome with open arms, beckoning our fates close so we may hold them to our breast like a viper.

Not all of the children you see scuttling along in the poor, run-down areas of the huge metropolitan cities of the world, their eyes trained on the ground lest they catch the gaze of someone with an attitude, are runaways. Not all of the beggars who live on the street are those who no longer wish to pay their taxes or live their mundane lives within offices or broken homes. Not all the gang members are rebellious teenagers. Not all hookers and whores are those people who are broke or bankrupt or drug addicts.

The slums are not an escape.

Believe me, the slums are the harshest places to live in the world. Once trapped, there is no escape. You can take the gutter rat from the slums, but you cannot take the slums from the gutter rat.

My earliest memory is that of standing outside a restaurant's front glass window with its name scrawled across the top before the green background of half-drapes. I was bunched side by side with by three other children, all of whom were older than I, as we stared into the window at the wondrous banquet beyond our starving reach. I cannot say what I thought of at the time. I do remember seeing tall stacks of golden hot cakes, drowning in rich syrup and melting pads of butter.

When I look back on those days, I feel only a simple loss. It is not as if I actually liked being on the outside, staring in and thinking that, just once, I would have liked to eat hot cakes not rescued from the garbage amongst muck and gore. But if anyone ever took pity upon the four hungry faces that gazed longingly at their food, I never knew.

That is from where the feeling of loss comes. Does anyone ever think what a blessing that barely-touched plate of food one could have finished eating but did not because one was on a diet would have been to starving gutter rats going days and days without the slightest nourishment?

I did not ask for the street life, and yet there I was, staring into the restaurant's window with my three companions. For all the spells and all the potions I have tried throughout the years, I can recover not a single memory older than that.

I do not know how I came to live on the streets.

I know nothing of my blood family - of who sired me, and whose womb had kept me safe for nine months.

I suspect I am a child borne of rape to some female gang member and was abandoned or orphaned. Actually, I do suspect my life began as an unwanted bastard to someone too fearful of the pain and possible death that comes hand in hand with a back-alley abortion; I was brought into the world covered in blood just as I shall leave it soon.

On the other hand, I could be a wizard's child, left in the care of some gutter rat or beggar in fear of my bloodlines. Perhaps that is merely wishful thinking on my part.

Still and all, I do regret not knowing. It is not as if I want to find out if I was abandoned out of maliciousness or spitefulness, but there will always be those questions of what if? and why? A strange thing, curiosity. It is both a virtue and a vice; it causes nightmares and headaches and heartaches – which is why I do not encourage it in people who are irresponsible. (This is a pointed jab at you, Potter, oh yes indeed.)

I must admit that, from the beginning, I was not like the other gutter rats. I was far too ambitious to remain one for the rest of my life. The gutter rats are the lowest of low in the society of the slums. The street urchins are the packrats and cutpurses, often rising to becoming gang members and/or drug dealers if they survive. We gutter rats never grow out of what we are, providing we actually live long enough to grow. We are the timid runts, too scared of the upper classes to steal from them, too cowed by the gangs and their ugly violence, and too apprehensive to beg for food. Some would sell our bodies to the whores and hookers, allowing hands to roam where they should not be welcomed, subjected to perverted and dirty sexual acts for badly-needed food or money.

There are also those of us who are forced into said acts against their will, accepting their very lives as payment.

Rape is a common enough circumstance, even to children as young as four and five years.

If you have ever seen a child rutting through garbage, hungrily gulping down anything edible, be it rotten or contaminated from other trash? The gutter rats are the only ones who ever stoop to such a level. The gangs share with its members — grudgingly, with those who are lower on the pecking order — and the street urchins buy cheap foods from corner groceries with their stolen money.

We are the scruffy, skinny, and dirty children who hover at the edges of churches for the free charity dinners and potlucks. We are the ones who disappear with a single word of warning. We know more about hiding spots and escape routes than any of the other groupies of the slums' society. We render ourselves invisible amongst crowds of any sizes by exuding the sense of being unimportant and worthless, for that is what gutter rats truly believe of themselves.

One would never know we existed, if one's conscience did not give one's self a swift kick in the shin to force one's attention on those poor souls who, for no other reason than being born helpless in a world full of cruel and selfish persons, are trapped. Because of this result of birth, we are stuck within a ruthless world where hope forever remains something that does not exist.

We never amount to much, we gutter rats. None can read or write and are lucky to count to ten without mixing numbers up in between. Harsh weather, diseases, lack of food, and the misfortune of being caught in one of the many gang wars for turf - all of these are, I assure you, very good population controllers. Those gutter rats that manage to reach their teens are considered the elders and often teach the younger generation of gutter rats the ways of survival.

Sooner or later though, a gang member would catch sight of a teenaged gutter rat and force that gutter rat to take sides. It was a death warrant, for if one chose one gang for allies, one makes enemies of more than a dozen others.

I was ambitious to be greater than just a street urchin. I had no desire to exist in the streets forever, ducking and dodging stronger forces than myself, rutting for scraps of food unfit for human consumption. This isolated me from my fellow gutter rats; and the slums are already a very lonely existence.

I remember the words "Knowledge is power," though I do not know from whence I first heard them. My earliest memories echo that philosophy though. I was filled with the burning need to become powerful. I wanted to become too strong for anyone to ever push me around. I would not be hated, judged and condemned for living how I did. I would not have others take things from me.

I really hate it when what is mine is stolen from me; privacy did not exist on the streets anymore than one owning a single thing. One does not even have rights to the clothes upon one's back for even someone larger or stronger could strip away even that little bit of comfort.

Do you have any idea what it is like to be stripped naked by a leering bully, pawing clumsily at the entire time, then thrust upon the street corner in full view of everyone else as some cruel joke?

No, obviously not.

And it is because of these memories of never having anything, of the idea of being trapped forever in a world such as this, did I aspire to become greater than my fellow wretches. The key to getting out of the slums' society is through education, though, and education required a home of some sort; schools were not given to allowing strangers in off the streets. So how may one learn to read, write, and count without learned guidance?

I would be vain if I said I did everything myself. I proudly admit having help along the way. But had I had been like those others on the streets, I would have been too blind to see the help and grasp at it like a lifeline, and I would not be where I am today.

I can see your thoughts now: more's the pity.

And that is the irony of the situation. Harry Potter, I owe your lineage more than just the debt of my life from being saved by your father. That is not why I helped you those times throughout the years, and you better not dare to presume otherwise. James only saved me from being killed after his friends nearly led me to my death while, at the same time, nearly creating a murderer out of another innocent. The idea I would help you because of such a debt is ridiculous. They owe me on that!

I help because it is my duty and for the unpaid debt I owe the Potter family. It was through your great-grandmother I was rescued from the slums, out of the grasp of death itself.

Through her I know a great deal of the Potter family and because I know so much do I tell you now. I am the last of the Snapes; together, you and I are the last of the Potters. I know, I know. I taste the same bitterness in my mouth as I write just as surely as you do as you read. However, a tale to be told must be started from the beginning, and my beginning shaped the events that led me to her and ties me so closely to you.

An uncommonly shrewd teenaged gutter rat led the little clan of gutter rats that my daily existence revolved around; one who knew that hiding and invisibility was essential to surviving on the streets. I still remember that rat's name. Everyone called him Phillip after someone from the British Royals. We of the slums rarely kept up with the worldly events since our world, the slums, rarely changed because of them (not including bombs dropping on our heads, but that, thankfully, hadn't happened in the past few decades). Phillip had taken the name for his own and he was the only one in our clan with a name. He was a lean little fellow, barely taller than the rest of us so he easily passed off as a child.

Phillip taught us that to look directly at anyone was to initiate a challenge. The confidence and power it would have taken to hold one's head up in the slums, as if one mattered or was important, was a direct challenge to the meaner, more brutal people of our society. He taught us how to blend into the shadows of the streets, to appear nonchalant and unimportant. Indeed, everything he taught us all lent emphasis on the thing he believed would keep us alive the longest.

Never attract attention.

Drilled into me further back than I can possibly remember was the notion that a person who never gained notice would live the longest years. To this day, even when I know there are times a person must attract attention and must look another directly in the eye, I despise attention-seekers. I utterly loathe anyone who marvels, revels, or basks in the glow of the perpetual spotlight. From my years of the street I saw this most often in the cocky and vain, those who were all talk and show with little to truly account for. If one was truly great, one did something and did it because it had to be done. There is no need to brag or deliberately attract the notice of others because of it - like a pompous windbag. That is just begging for someone to come along and stab the windbag in the back within some dark alley.

Anyone who draws deliberate attention — whether it be through silly antics, a display of intelligence, or some significant physical feat, for the deliberate reason of coaxing an already-bloated ego — should be hung from the Whomping Willow's treetop by his or her toes, and left there to rot for all of time.

Such would have been Lockhart's lot in life if, alas, discretion wasn't the better part of valour.

If being taught never attracting attention was the single most important thing I ever learned from the slums, then the second most important thing I learned was never trust kindness, generosity, or favours. There can be no reliance placed in any of these, especially from one of the slums' own. There is a price to pay for accepting such, and it is almost always too high to pay.

I often say the world is completely filled with morons, imbeciles, and selfish or ruthless persons. I would not lie and say the slums have none of that. The slums are, indeed, some of the best places in the world for prime examples of human wickedness. We show no kindness, for there is none to give. Gifts are traps meant to choke their victims to death. Favours are broken and promises never kept. I used to think if one ever gave someone else anything — affection, kindness, favours, or gifts — it was because one expected something back.

I still believe this.

Pandora Potter did the same as everyone else, giving one something and, naturally, expecting a generous return. Her selfishness was a class unto its own, however. She would give one generosity and affection and, though she claimed she never expected anything from it, one could clearly see that she fully expected a repayment in kind – the later passing of gifts in generosity and affection to another in equal need. Albus Dumbledore has the exact philosophy, and I often wonder which one of them got it from whom.

Whenever someone either gave Phillip attention or a gift or a favour, he would immediately pack up his tiny clan of gutter rats and haul us off to some unnamed area of London, usually an unknown alley that had neither name nor unique features. If we moved and it was not for any reason of a gift or favour, it was because of a threat. Really, there is no distinguishing between the three. It was through this moving did we come across Outer Diagon Alley, that area which surrounded Diagon Alley itself. It was not, however, known as Outer Diagon Alley to those of us of the slums. It was known as the Area of Supernatural; the title being droll, boring, unoriginal, and absolutely Muggle-like.

The rumours of a dark man and his gang of persons with hooded faces had entered our last area. A few years earlier the man had first appeared. He was dreadful and deadly, so the rumours said, because he killed with flashes of green wherever he was seen. No one understood how such a thing was possible, but the dark man had a terrible reputation for being a killer and such a reputation could not be ignored. No one knew his name then, but you and I both recognize this person as Voldemort.

No one ever hung around Outer Diagon Alley. The dark man refused to come near it so it made sense that it was the safest place for Phillip to take his little clan. However, it was too strange, too odd, because things none could explain happened, such as people disappearing, voices coming from out of nowhere, objects moving when they should not. We were the only ones to occupy the area and others believed us foolish.

I, personally, thought the place to be simply fascinating, though it terrified everyone else. They may all be stupid Muggles but their life is hard enough with harsh reality without reality itself changing. Magic warps reality, and the more magic there is in any given area, the more reality is warped and distorted, and Outer Diagon Alley leaked like a sieve.

But I was always the strange one of the group, and even referred to as such. None of us had any names, only a distinct "You!" to tell us apart from one another or some horrid nickname gained only through a malicious prank or tease.

I begged, borrowed, and stole anything to learn how to read, for I felt that by reading I would escape the slums. Many of the beggars, poor souls who were usually mentally unstable through genetics or drugs, were educated to some degree. They were the ones who chose their street lives, but it's not a choice made easily, I assure you. Sometimes, these things just happen. My first reading lessons were from a man who complained constantly about the voices he heard telling him of the end of the world.

Because of my ambition to escape the world I grew up in my little clan believed me to be strange. After all, what would I find out there in the great big world? Who would welcome scum like me? What was the use of learning when it only made one yearn for more? Such greedy behaviour; it was dangerous, and learning often attracted drug dealers interested in a slum citizen who could possibly become a business contract.

Drug dealers meant gangs, gangs meant trouble, and trouble meant abrupt ends to gutter rats like myself.

Phillip did not try to discourage me. He looked at me with oddly wise eyes and said, "Ambition's a fuckin' bitch. It'll kill ye iffen ye go t' fer. Jus' be keen t' danger."

I think there was a bit of wizard in that gutter rat. It would explain his uncanny ability of disappearing in any way and at any place with more than half a dozen children on tow. He kept us clothed, fed, and generally safe. He was also not frightened of Outer Diagon Alley. At least not as much as others. If he was, he never showed the fear for our safety was always his first priority.

Having reached a temporary safe coven we scattered. We were off to scrounge for food, paired up one with another. I wanted to explore the area further, to learn why such odd phenomena happened. My partner, a boy with a long face missing half his teeth, refused.

I sent him off to join another pair and began my search of the Area of Supernatural. I fell in love with the place almost instantly. The way things shifted constantly as if they had a life of their own, the alleys sometimes warping shapes and even twisting about, voices that spoke of things ripe with wonder and information, all appealed to me.

I felt as if I truly belonged. This area begged to be explored and, if not reasoned with, understood.

Everything else was drab and ugly in comparison of the Area of Supernatural. The other streets, filled with sinister people and nightmares of cruel weather and wild animals were simply places I could not bring myself to ever go back; not after the wonderful world I had found. I knew, by the end of that first day of exploring, I had found an area I could use as a stepping-stone out of the slums.

But the Area of Supernatural was more than just that. I was filled with the need to know and to realize why these things happened, what made this place so wonderful. It was like a single piece of music that floats just beyond the reach, a tantalizing hint of a melody so sweet and so beautiful no one may fully comprehend its wonder.

Phillip must have understood how I was drawn to the area, hypnotized by its mystery if you would. Perhaps not why, but only that I was. He would shush the other children as they complained about my wandering off or never being about to help them look for food. He often gave me his share, knowing I was too caught up in the Area of Supernatural to find my own.

On the fifth day of our stay, I saw something that, above all other things, changed my life. Had I not been there to witness a pair of young witches opening the wall to the inside of Diagon Alley, had my mind not burned the image of their sequence of taps, I probably would have remained in Outer Diagon Alley, pining away to my death for the answers I so desperately sought.

And yet I was there. A nagging buzz in my mind drew me to the spot, a faint tug that held a promise I could not guess at. So it was that I saw the two women, one in her early adulthood with dark chestnut hair and the other about as young with her hair a light blonde. They chattered cheerfully, speaking of something called "Quidditch" and how Canada had a very promising team that would likely as not make it to the World Cup.

They did not notice me, tucked away in the shadows and projecting an aura of insignificance. I saw the one with light blonde hair tap out a complex sequence on the bricks and, before my quite stunned eyes, the bricks rearranged themselves into a doorway. The women slipped through the door and the bricks rearranged back into their right place. The sequence since has changed, as it no longer needs to be complicated. The surge of slums people though had caused the sequence to be changed and the only reason for such a surge was our frightened escape from Voldemort.

In the moment they had stepped over to the other side of the wall, I saw a whole different world awaiting. It was filled with a bustling crowd of people, cheerful and buoyant, dressed in all sorts of different colours and styles. The noise — the wonderful, magnificent noise of voices calling out the words that had attracted me from the very beginning — was almost drowned out by the bursting melody I had been so desperately searching.

I did not move, too surprised and stunned to react in any other way but stare. After several long moments I crawled away from my corner and stood up. My legs were weak and my head was light, but I was too giddy with delight to notice. The sight and the noise only fuelled my desire and need to know and understand what was going on.

I knew the answer to the Area of Supernatural lay beyond the wall. I did not dare try to open the wall for that concept frightened me. What if I did it wrong? What if it only answered to those two women? Instead, I silently piled junk against the wall; boxes and broken crates and bricks and garbage cans and anything else sturdy enough to hold my undernourished weight. It took me almost an entire day and none of my clan asked me why I was dragging a heavy wooden crate or rolling a barrel, only rolled their eyes and grumbled about how I was being stranger than usual.

There was nothing on the other side of the wall but more alleys, much like the one in which I stood. My foul disappointment was bitter and sharp. Used to it I might have been, I hated such a feeling all the more. This is why hope is discouraged. One must abandon it in order to remain sane while living in the slums. I jumped down from my pile of rubbish and sat forlornly in its shadow. I wondered briefly if it was all just a worthless hoax.

But I refused to give up. One little setback was not enough to destroy me and force me to my knees where other gutter rats existed with their nonexistent self-esteem. As I was trying to think of retaliation to this situation, I heard footsteps. Remembering the two women from earlier, I shrank back into the shade of the rubble, out of direct view of any entering the area.

It was another pair of persons, but this time it was an older woman with a young boy. She was dressed in dark blue robes with a straw hat tied beneath her chin. Her hair, which had been black at one time, was iron grey then. Her hands were slightly twisted with age though her face was still smooth from wrinkles but for the fine lines around the corners of her mouth and eyes. Her body seemed compact still, shoulders not bent from time and life's burdens and her steps were springy. She carried herself well, and that was what alarmed me.

Phillip's number one warning, first and foremost in importance, was do not attract attention. Ways to succeed included not looking directly into another's eyes or carry one's self with confidence. This woman carried herself not only with confidence, but also with a strength that made me immediately envious; she could have been the Queen of England for all her regal bearing. She exuded such a raw power that I felt surely no one would ever challenge her.

The young boy whose hand she grasped was somewhat taller than me. I would have said he was close to my age, but I never knew my true age, nor could I keep track of the years I spent on the streets. Suffice to say he looked seven years old. His frame was lean, yet well nourished. His hair was as black as mine, and he wore a pair of wire-frame glasses. He was dressed in the same sort of robes as the woman's, but his were open to reveal trousers with patched knees. He carried himself well, but not with the dignity or strength the woman possessed.

The resemblance between the two was sharp enough that a stranger could make the assumption they were related to one another. It was the slant of the head, the curve of the jaw, and the line in which hair grew. As they drew close, the woman spoke. Her voice was brash and rough, as if she was used to being blunt and would soften for no audience.

"I'll not say this again, James," she said sharply. "I want you to actually learn how to open the door here. You can't always use Floo Powder, and there are times when Apparating is out of the question."

"Yes, Grandmother," James replied in quiet humility, which even I could see was slightly feigned. I leaned back as the woman came to a halt before the doorway.

"You tap here," thump "and here," thump, "here, here, and here," thump thump thump. "It doesn't matter how slow or how quick you knock those bricks, but you need to keep a steady amount of time between them or they won't open. The timing must be deliberately even."

"Yes, Grandmother."

I heard the rumbling as the bricks shifted and knew the doorway had opened. Again I heard that wonderful noise of voices beckoning me to join them. In that moment, my heart stopped. It was not a hoax! I could do just that as well! They shuffled forth and were swallowed up into the wonders before the bricks slid back into place once more.

I jumped out of my hiding place and ran to stand before the bricks. I stared at them with both a mix of apprehension and wonder. In my mind, I again saw the young woman with light blonde hair raise her hand and knock several areas on the wall. I eyed the spots. If I stood on a box or a crate I could surely reach them. I hurried over to my pile of rubble and began to tug a crate free, then stopped. Did I dare enter that mysterious and magical world, for such was what it had to be? I was only a gutter rat, never to become much nor worth anything to anyone, expect perhaps Phillip, but even then he too may perhaps forget me in a single week.

But I knew I had to enter. I knew I would sooner die than leave without knowing. With that resolve in mind, I pushed the crate over to the wall, stood on it, and stared at the bricks. I took a deep breath to still my shaking hands. I tapped on the bricks, but I hesitated on two, messing up the deliberate timing the woman claimed was needed. The second time I hit the wrong brick. But they say the third time's a charmer, and so it was the third time that I succeeded.

I jumped from my crate and eagerly pushed it out of the way before hurrying into this wondrous world.