[credence's mouth is dry, his throat feels like it's closing up. he looks at his feet, his fist clenched again.]

My mother didn't have any family. She was very sick, and I--went to get us something to eat--I was only three...there was no one else.

[an immigrant witch who barely spoke english, caught in the dragonpox epidemic. an easy target. credence doesn't have more than a sense of her, but he remembers fetching the doctor from the other tenements, rummaging through her meagre cashbox to buy food at the deli. there hadn't been anybody else to do that. if there had been he might have run away, or tried.]

I am an adult. I--might not know as much as I should about magic or about being a wizard, but know what I want to do.