Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

A Squib's Tale
By Silver Sailor Ganymede

I am cursed. Not in the way that a normal member of the Wizarding World would be cursed, but I am cursed. I was the second son of a pureblood family: yes, I was born to pureblood parents. They hated me for being unable to be normal, for being unable to perform any magic whatsoever be it accidental or purposefully used.

My mother was distraught when she realised that I was a Squib. She blamed herself for my inability to perform magic. My Father didn't blame himself: he blamed me. He thought that I was an idiot, an embarrassment to the family name.

He sometimes used the Cruciatus curse and the like on me in order to get me to display some form of magical ability. I remember my mother crying, howling at him not to do it. He told my mother to be silent and when she wasn't he hit her. He always beat her, always: he hated her, but she still loved him, monster that he was. I felt so helpless: if only I could have done magic, I might have been able to stop him.

Father never hurt my elder brother, Panoptes – or Pan as he was usually called - and that confused me. Pan told me that that was because he was not an imbecile: he could do magic.

I don't think it was until my eleventh birthday had been and gone with no sign of a Hogwarts letter that I realised that I really was a Squib, that I had about as much magic as a common muggle, if that. I cried because of this, only to end up tortured once more. Father told me that I deserved: I was weak and useless. I believed him.

He continued like this, drinking his wits away and abusing mother and I as though we were animals or worse, until he finally lost it. I saw him kill my mother: just one curse and the only person who had ever loved me was gone. He then realised what he had done and turned his wand upon himself: both my parents were dead in seconds.

I was found, hysterical and on the verge of insanity, by ministry officials a few hours later, holding the hand of my mother's corpse and pleading with her to wake up.

I was then sent to an orphanage: it was quite good there, compared to my home, even though it too would be described by most as 'Hell on Earth'. I was beaten many times, yes, and for no reason at all, but compared to what I had been through at my own Father's hand, it didn't even hurt. However, after about four months, it just got out of hand. I lost all will to live… I tried to overdose. It didn't work.

It was then that I met Dumbledore. He had come to visit me, to see the brother whom he had once heard Pan mention. He did not sneer when I told him I was a Squib, nor did he tell me that it was my own fault, that I was not magical because I was so weak and foolish. He simply smiled and took me away from that orphanage; gave me a place to stay, at Hogwarts.

Dumbledore later gave me a job: a truly kind man, he is; truly kind and completely honest. People like him are rare. Dumbledore, you see, did not – and still does not discriminate against people because of magical ability, race or purity of blood. He was – and still is a truly kind man, not a bad bone in him.

But still, as I have become older, I know that I have become embittered by my childhood, that I hate the students because they have something that I could never have: magic. All my life I wished to be magical, but I could never have it. And I never will be able to have it, because I, Argus Filch, am a Squib.

(AN: Thanks to Artemis Moonsong for pointing out a slight mistake I made whenI first submitted this)