Prologue
Prologue
***
Quinn Calloway was always content with being alone, thank you very much.
She had always been happy with the skeletal remains of a life she was given. She knew people had it worse off than her.
At least she had her aunt.
Aunt Kendra was a strange woman. She was frail and soft-spoken, but always made sure Quinn had everything she needed to succeed. She didn’t believe in spoiling children rotten, but she always gave the greatest birthday gifts. She was extremely cautious, however, and she was adamant on living off the grid.
Quinn and Aunt Kendra never stayed in a place for very long, especially when Quinn started to develop some strange growing pains.
When Quinn was five years old, Aunt Kendra relocated them to a motel in South Carolina. A week later, they moved to Florida after the neighborhood bully was found floating in the air, accusing Quinn of being the devil. That was not the only strange occurrence that Quinn was the sole witness too. Several times Aunt Kendra would find her sprawled on the floor with markers and crayons painting their walls on their own accord. They rarely got their deposit back.
After several incidents of signed eyebrows and boil outbreaks on mean kids, Aunt Kendra finally sat little Quinn down on the couch of a ratty roadside motel they were staying at. Aunt Kendra tucked a piece of her hair behind her ear and said four words Quinn would never forget.
“You are a witch.”
Although Quinn was only ten at the time, she felt that all the puzzle pieces of her life came together.
Aunt Kendra told her of a school for children like her, hidden in the mountains of New England, where she could learn to control the magic coursing through her veins: Ilvermorny School for Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Aunt Kendra made it her goal not to reveal much about the world and their past to Quinn. Quinn had no idea the names of her parents, where they were from or the fact that she descended from centuries of witches and wizards. Quinn always asked, but Aunt Kendra kept her lips sealed, often looking down sadly at a scar that wrapped around her forearm.
Quinn filled the silence with reading. She had collected library cards from every state she lived in and kept them all in a small jewelry box Aunt Kendra had given her when she turned eight Quinn read everything and anything she could get her hands on. Atlases, encyclopedias, novelas, poetry, Shakespeare, non-fiction, plays and she devoured each one at record speed. She often read in the passenger seat of her Aunt’s Ford Bronco while they traveled, sometimes vomiting out the window on windy roads, promptly wiping her mouth and turning the page.
When Quinn turned eleven, she got her acceptance letter to Ilvermorny. Her Aunt did not want to send her away but knew that Quinn had to learn how to control her powers. So Aunt Kendra escorted Quinn to an empty field 5 miles from where they were staying to a dirty pair of Converse that they held onto for dear life as it transported them to Ilvermorny.
From the minute Quinn stepped foot onto Illvermorny’s campus, she felt that she finally belonged. She was one of the only students who was chosen by each house mascot, but Quinn stepped up to the Horned Serpent because she was fascinated by their scales. Quinn loved the way the blue and cranberry uniforms brought out her eyes and the way the morning mist covered the trees outside her window. She wasn’t friendless per say, she got along well with her classmates and professors but she preferred the company of a good book.
She wrote letters to her Aunt, which detailed what she learned in her classes and a list of the books she finished each week. She was the top of most of her classes, mostly because she was so eager to learn about everything the world- magical and otherwise-had to offer. By the time she finished her second year, she had read most of the books in the library, so the Librarian sent for more.
Just as her fourth year came to a close, Quinn heard students gossiping about an incident at another wizarding school across the ocean.
“I heard one of the Hogwarts students is dead!”
“Thank Goodness our Headmaster didn’t send any of us over there.”
“My grandfather said when he went to Durmstrang they hosted the Triwizard Tournament and a professor from Beauxbatons got bitten by a werewolf!”
“Do you think He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named will come to America?”
“I heard the Death Eaters are starting to recruit American and Canadian wizards.”
“Do you think Harry Potter is as handsome in real life as he is in the paper?”
At the time, Quinn didn’t think much of the hushed whispers winding down the halls of Ilvermorny, Dark witches and wizards hadn’t been seen in North America in decades, and the tales of the Boy Who Lived and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named were equivalent to tabloid gossip of the British Royal Family; they didn’t apply to them. The same girls who idolized Princess Diana also had newspaper cutouts of Harry Potter decorating the walls of their dorm.
Quinn knew as much about Hogwarts and Voldemort as she was able to read in books and newspapers, but she naively believed it would never concern her. It was something she read in the headlines of world news but it would never make its way into her own life.
Until it did.
Quinn hated the last day of the semester.
Everyone cried and hugged their friends which made a twinge of jealousy surge through her, but the worst part was parting with her wand. Just like every year, she handed her wand to the Head Professor of the Horned Serpents and said a quiet goodbye to her classmates. She made her way to the Apparition Point, pulling her trunk behind her and with her other hand grabbed onto the soup can that doubled as a Portkey. With a burst of wind and light she was transported to Gas Station in Nevada she was set to meet her Aunt Kendra at.
When an hour went by without a word from her aunt, Quinn made her way up the deserted highway to the trailer park she and her Aunt had been living in for the past year. As she approached the top of the final hill separating her and the trailer park, Quinn suddenly felt uneasy.
Although it was early June, she felt a shiver down her spine as she took the final step to reach the summit of the hill. She dropped her trunk as soon as she saw the state of the trailer park.
Trailers were overturned, some were completely black from fire, others were still burning red and orange in the day’s dying light.
Quinn took off in a run, abandoning her trunk at the top of the hill and running past trees, the branches clawing at her bare arms as she fought tears.
Aunt Kendra, Aunt Kendra, Aunt Kendra.
This can’t be happening, please not her.
The bodies of her No-Maj neighbors littered the ground as she weaved through the remaining trailers.
She saw little George Jr. clutching his mother Abigail's hand, eyes still open, his horror still etched onto his face.
Quinn’s thoughts were going a mile a minute, wondering if anyone survived, who could have done this, why they did it, wondering if they were still lurking in the shadows, watching her. She tried to analyze the situation with a clear head, but every face she passed sent unwanted memories of her innocent neighbors barbequing, teaching their children to ride a bike, kissing their partners, doing their homework at the picnic tables, their kind smiles and waves when Quinn came home for break.
She pushed those thoughts to the deepest part in her brain as she sprinted through limp arms and legs to reach the trailer in the back east corner. She halted in front of her trailer, shocked that it was still standing upright and looking just as it did during the Christmas break.
She reached for her wand, cursing when she realized she had to leave it at school. Instead, she grabbed a metal bat that was discarded by the trailer next to her, apologizing to the small girl Sarah who laid dead before her, clutching her brother’s hand. Michael.
She approached the door with caution, suspicious that it was the only one without a scratch.
“A-Aunt Kendra?” Quinn whispered, her voice cracking, as she pushed the screen door in.
The trailer was overturned, every shelf and cupboard was riffled through, leaving broken dishes and torn books all over the floor.
“Quinn,” a soft voice spoke from the kitchen, followed with violent coughing.
Quinn turned into the small kitchen and saw her aunt sitting on the floor, her back against the cupboard, her face bruised, deep cuts oozing blood all over her body and pouring out of her mouth.
“No!” Quinn dropped the bat and fell to her knees, grabbing Kendra and trying to press down on the wounds.
“No, no, no. You’re okay, you’re okay. I’ll get the first aid kit, fuck I wish I had my wand.” Quinn reached into the cupboard under the sink to find the first aid kit. She couldn’t fight the tears anymore and they rushed down her face as she shakily grabbed some gauze and tried to place it on Kendra’s open wounds.
She felt a delicate hand cup her chin and turn her face away from the gauze. Quinn shook her head. She couldn’t lose Aunt Kendra. She was her only family she had left.
“It’s okay, Quinny,” Kendra whispered. She grabbed Quinn’s hand and placed it in her own. “Look at me.”
Quinn turned the final inch to look into her Aunt’s piercing blue eyes. Kendra’s breathing was shallow but she still managed a small smile as she tucked a hair behind Quinn’s ear.
“Please don’t leave me,” Quinn sobbed.
Kendra gave her a small smile, “It was an honor watching you grow into a young woman, Quinny.” Kendra looked deep into Quinn’s eyes, like she was trying to tell her everything she wasn’t able to. A tear fell from Quinn’s eyes onto Kendra’s cheek. Kendra’s hand fell from Quinn’s face. “You look just like your mother,” Kendra breathed and closed her eyes, her body going limp in Quinn’s arms.
Quinn let out a guttural scream and wrapped her arms around her Aunt.
Outside the kitchen window a dark cloud in the shape of a skull towered over the desolate trailer park. A snake slithered from the skull’s mouth and hissed late into the cool Nevada summer night.