Bruce Banner hears the rumors and wants to see for himself. Everyone seems to have a cousin whose neighbor's best friend saw something inexplicable but nobody has anything really solid. He asks his parents if he can go over to her house after school; they say she only deals with bad kids who make trouble. 

Okay, then, if he wants answers he has to become a bad kid who makes trouble.

This is kind of difficult; while he's been in trouble plenty of times there was never quite this much premeditation involved. And he doesn't want to actually lose any of his possessions or damage something expensive or drag a classmate into it with him, so just replicating something that already happened is out. Look at the other end, then: what sort of behavior do the rumors mention?

Bruce starts ostentatiously refusing to eat anything he thinks his parents would think he would characterize as a vegetable. Not including french fries but including all other forms of potato, because they're more likely to ask for help if they think he's gone insane.

His parents first reaction is to insist and complain and refuse to let him leave the dinner table until he cleans his plate, but they have things to do after dinner and he can sit there and daydream longer than they can sit there and lecture. They try packing him school lunches of nothing but vegetables; he brings them home uneaten and wilted (and buys food including different vegetables in the lunch line, because skipping meals sucks and this project is more important than anything else he could be spending his allowance on).

And eventually, after much fretting and a desperate phone call -

a knock comes at the Banners' front door.

Bruce answers it, mostly expecting the mail carrier, then says, "Oh, hello!"

The woman who knocked can only be described as "friend-shaped". She is shaped like a friend. She looks at Bruce and grins widely, like someone who has just encountered someone they like very much, even though to Bruce's knowledge they have never actually met.

"Hello!" she says. "I'm going to be talking to you in just a minute - but before I do, I'd like to talk to your parents, is that alright?"

She looks nice and this is generally not very much evidence for or against anything including witchcraft but it's better than looking mean. "Okay. Mom, Dad, there's a lady here to see you!"

The parents arrive, smiling a little nervously.

The lady smiles and makes small talk with the Banners. She does not look nearly as comfortable doing this as she did interacting with Bruce, and before long she clears her throat and says "When you called, you gave me a good outline of the problem; should I start in on figuring out what to do about it? I'll need to talk to Bruce alone; children are often more forthcoming when their parents aren't there to lean on."

The Banners, despite having asked for help, are very embarrassed about admitting anything is wrong out loud to her face, and are happy to flee and leave her alone with Bruce.

The second they're out of earshot, he says, "So is it true you can do magic?"

She laughs. "Let's at least get introduced first! I'm Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, and you're Bruce Banner, right? I've heard people say you might be the smartest boy in your grade."

"Yes. I mean, I'm Bruce. It's nice to meet you." Oh, he means it this time, that's fun.

"I'm glad! It's lovely to meet you too. And, since you asked and I don't want to make you wait - yes, I can do magic. Would you like to see some?"

"Yes!" He bounces, just once, then holds still and stares at her with saucer eyes. Whatever she does he is going to see every single detail of it.

She removes a loose bonbon from her purse, pops it into her mouth, and -

levitates about a foot and a half off the ground.

Bruce tentatively waves a foot under her feet and then says, "Wow! . . . Can I have one of those?"

"No, of course not, because I'm incredibly mean," she says, retrieving another bonbon and handing it over.

Nom nom "Woohoo!"

Cam he swim through the air? Can he kick off a wall and shoot across the room? Can he do a flip? (He definitely cannot do a flip when he isn't levitating.)

He can swim through the air but it's much more effective to just think himself forward. Same for kicking off the wall. He can do an incredibly ungainly flip.

"It is fun, isn't it?" asks Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, reclining in midair.

"It's awesome! I thought the other kids were making things up. Can I learn magic? Are there books about it? Why doesn't everyone know about it?"

"Well, you might be able to learn magic, depending on how smart you are and how suited you are to it. There's a few books about it but they're secret, or at least not somewhere you could get to. And everyone doesn't know about it because... well, it's hard to get people to believe things everyone's always told them weren't true. And we - the people with magic, and the people who taught us - don't want to tell everyone anyway. If someone too big and important found out about it, they might think it was a weapon. They might want to use it against people they don't like. And if we didn't let them, they might decide we were dangerous. So we just - help people. Individuals. And we stay quiet about it."