It was time.
She decided it was enough; she could see this was starting to affect her baby boy too much. His emotions had never been so extreme, and she could feel them through their magical connection. It almost seems like they were amplified with magic. She never thought a child could have emotions this extreme.
One day, she went upstairs to his room after wiping her hands, having just finished cleaning her baby boy's cup and plate.
She waved her wand and silenced the door to his room, pushed it open, and found him sitting on the floor. She could see the side of his face from where she was standing.
He was sitting cross-legged and hunched over his G.I Joe toy, staring at it as if it owed him money.
She had only begun to call out to him to get his attention, and as she went to say his name, she caught his eyes.
She looked at them, and she stared.
Now it was she who was dumbfounded.
After a while, she closed her mouth and stepped back into the hall, and gently closed the door to his room.
She walked mechanically downstairs to the sofa and fell onto it without control as her legs gave out from under her.
After a long silence, she finally muttered, "he has my eyes."
He had the same look in his eyes she had when she first found out about magic.
She had seen that look being reflected back at her whenever she looked at a mirror in Hogwarts.
It was a look of desperation and desire.
She had the look because magic was her savior. It saved her from a life of suffering, the pain, the ever-present hunger, and possibly death.
Magic was her salvation and the means by which she changed her fate.
She had that look almost all throughout the seven years at Hogwarts, back when she thought magic was the only thing that mattered and would ever matter.
She spent day and night learning magic, while her classmates played and gossiped, she immersed herself in magic with all her body and soul.
'Why did her son have the same look?' her mind whispered.
'Why does magic matter to him so much? Where does the desperation come from?'
Her baby boy never knew what it was to starve or to sleep with insects. So where did the desperation for magic come from?
'Was he afraid of not being able to use magic?"
That hadn't made any sense to her.
'He didn't even know about magic until a couple of months ago. Where would that yearning come from in such a short amount of time?'
"Why does he pursue it so vehemently?"
She sat on the sofa, questioning whether she had ever been a bad parent to her boy. Whether she had ever given him a reason to escape his life, just like she had wanted to.
The answer to both of these questions was a resounding no, at least to her best knowledge.
She provided him with everything she could. She had made sure to always smile at his presence, even when he wasn't looking.
It wasn't hard; he was her joy and pride, after all.
After sitting and reflecting for an hour, she couldn't come up with answers to her questions; in fact, she only had more questions.
She knew that even if she asked him to stop trying, it would result in nothing.
She knew her younger self before Hogwarts wouldn't have stopped at anything if she found she could use magic.
If her baby boy were anything like her, he wouldn't stop either.
She reckoned she could tell him he was already special, that he already did magic every day when he connected to her.
But where was the proof?
No, if he were anything like her, that wouldn't quench his hunger and thirst for magic.
She thought about what she would want if it were her in his position.
The answer came immediately.
'Let me die trying.'
Yes, she definitely would have rather died than stop practicing magic.
No doubt about it.
She decided that she wouldn't stop her boy in his fervent pursuit of magic, but she would tell him everything if he ever even spoke a word to describe magic.
He was her son, and it was a parent's job to provide for their child, whether it was material things or answers to questions.
She loved him too much to tell him to stop, and she loved him too much to tell him to keep trying. She was faced with a conundrum.
She waited the next day for him to bring up the topic. She listened and watched for anything involving magic he would ask about, and she waited the day after that.
She waited through all his failures, she watched him struggle and fall, and she watched him pick himself back up and keep trying.
Her heart broke more and more as she saw the desperation and the dark emotions run across his eyes, the same as hers had been back then.
His eyes looked so much like hers that it almost felt like she was back in Hogwarts, looking at a mirror.
'You really are my son, my magic.'
December 20, 1981
She watched as her boy failed hundreds of times and tried again and again.
She still smiled whenever she was near him, but it was certainly getting harder to keep smiling in front of him.
Around the holidays, after he had just finished with his daily "hidden" routine of magic. He was seated on the sofa, leafing through a book, with his mind probably on magic.
She watched him and realized her boy would be almost five years old soon. She felt sad watching him grow up so quickly.
Given his intelligence, it felt like he grew up even quicker than other children.
So, despite his protest, she lifted him up and set him on her lap after lighting the fireplace; she would do that by hand, using kerosene to start the fire, but she was just too anxious to hold her baby boy.
So with a quick wave of her wand, she lit the fireplace and chucked her wand aside in favor of picking up her boy.
Using her wand to light up the fireplace also gave her baby boy the opportunity to ask about magic.
She grabbed the Beddle and Bard, hoping he would take this chance to ask if he could do the magic she did, so she could tell him everything.
She hoped he would ask which of the stories she had read him were muggle bednight stories and which stories were of real magic, like he had seen her do.
She paused for a little while, and when the questions never came, she opened the book.
She asked him to pick a story he liked and started reading it to him.
She was halfway through the story when she felt the dense emotions emanating from her baby boy through their connection.
She had felt it before, his desperation, fear, and despair, but this time it was even more intense than previous times.
He was close, sitting right on her lap, so she could feel his thoughts slipping into a dark place.
Soon she felt an overwhelming sense of collapse; she was now experiencing the same feelings as her baby boy.
Usually, she could only feel what it felt like he was feeling, but this time, his magic and emotions were strong enough for her to feel exactly every emotion he was feeling.
She then heard him breathe deeply, and her emotions began to settle.
Even in that intense moment, she felt proud of how quickly he got his emotions under control.
Her baby boy was truly special.
After he took a couple of breaths, she felt a little lighter; his emotions seemed to settle, but all of a sudden they came back, and it only got worse, much worse.
It felt as if her baby boy was crying out for help, and it broke her heart.
She decided she would confront him; she would tell him to stop trying so hard, that magic would come to him naturally, that he had already done magic and still did it every day.
She would tell him that he was her magic boy.
She would tell him everything without him having to ask.
Just as she was about to shake him to break him from his thoughts, she saw something moving toward them from the kitchen.
She turned her head to see a bowl flying from the kitchen toward them.
She reached for her wand and realized she had left it on the mantle, so she did the only other thing she could think of.
She held both of her baby boy's shoulders to turn them so she could bear the brunt of the force.
Before she could turn completely, the bowl stopped.
It stopped right in front of them and hovered in the air, swaying side to side.
She looked at the bowl and realized something.
She didn't do this, and her husband was at work, leaving the only other person in the house who could have done it.
She looked at her boy, with his tiny shoulders still in her hands; she shook him gently and called out his name.
After a couple of attempts, she finally got his attention, and he opened his eyes.
She would never forget what happened next.
He opened his eyes and saw the bowl floating in front of him, and he turned around to look up at her and turned back immediately as he heard the bowl drop.
He then looked down at her hands still on his shoulders, and then his gaze went to the mantle.
She watched her smart boy connect all the dots.
She leaned back on the sofa and smiled; her boy finally got to witness his own magic.
Author's Thoughts: All this time, Henry thought he was being slick with his magic practice and disguising himself as a normal baby, but Clare always knew. How could she not? She is his mother, she is with him constatly and he is a baby who needs to be looked after. I never understood those HP SI fanfics where the MC practices magic in secret, like you live in the same house and you are a baby who needs to be monitored constantly, how are you going to hide your intelligence and magic? Henry's clearly abnormal behavior is explained by his being magical and by magic helping him. Clare thinks magic is making her baby smarter, and magic is influencing any other unusual things Henry does, compared to the kids his age.
In this chapter, Clare reaches her own conclusions, unaware that Henry has lived another life.