A small boy, no older than three, was happily making his way down the streets of the brand new place he was busy discovering, quite contented with himself. He hadn't the faintest idea how he had gotten to this place, or what he should do, but that was all right. He didn't particularly mind not knowing.
Small as he was, the boy didn't go very far before two very large legs stood in front of him, blocking his path. The boy craned his neck upwards to look at the face of a man with a metal ring in his nose and hair that had rainbows. The boy's eyes widened, and he grinned toothily.
"Boo'ful hair!" he shouted in excitement.
The man was taken aback slightly, but coughed to hide it.
"Er- right- oi, kid, where's your mum at?"
The boy didn't reply immediately, but it wasn't a hard question. He knew the answer.
"Dead," he informed the man solemnly. "My mum was dead for years ago." He reached for the man's shoes and pulled on the strings that were there. He was quite taken aback, but nonetheless delighted, when the marvelous bow came apart in his hands, but the man knelt down and took the strings away from him.
"Kid," he said, his voice more urgent now, "Where's your dad? Is someone taking care of you?"
The boy looked at the man's metal nose circle in fascination. How had it gotten in there?
"Oi, kid," the man pressed, "what's your name?"
The boy did have to think for this question. A name came into his head, but it wasn't a name anyone had ever called him. His name had been something else… before. Still, the name sounded right. It sounded like him, and like what he would answer to, so it had to be okay.
"Leon!"
"Leon?" the man clarified.
"I'm Leon Russell," Leon declared, pride swelling his chest.
"Leon Russell," the man repeated. "I'm Brett. Do you know where your home is?"
Home… Leon had a home?
Leon frowned.
Being home was… so long ago that Leon wasn't even sure if it was real. Mostly what he remembered was being somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn't home. A place where he couldn't get home…
Leon's memories of that place, and of what home was, were falling away from him too quickly. He struggled to recall what had happened in that place, the place without any color or heat or coldness at all…
His eyes fell to the ground and his fists clenched.
"…Leon?" the man repeated again.
Leon fists relaxed. He smiled, brightly.
"I came here to go home, one more time."
The man blinked at the sentence, spoken with far too much clarity. Leon, in return, reached up to the man's face, intent on pulling the metal circle from his nose and claiming it as his own.
It was only a month after the strange boy named Leon Russell had popped out of nowhere, completely alone, on the streets of Amesbury, that another child appeared, also alone and with no apparent origin, wandering the streets of Oxford. She identified herself as Rosalyn Jackson, and, also like the boy, she soon found herself in the care of the foster system. It was only another month after that that a third child turned up, in Andover, calling himself Jason Caesar. It was perhaps very fortunate that this child wound up being adopted fairly quickly, and as a result became known instead as Jason Davis. Finally, a fourth child made an appearance, answering to the name Helen Black, and the fourth did not end up either adopted or in the care of a foster family. Helen inadvertently strayed into a coven of vampires, residing in Knockturn Alley (through which she had been wandering somewhat aimlessly). As their pet cat had recently died, it was decided that having a baby around the house would help fill the hole in their lives, and she was allowed to stay, and live.
The four children grew up, haunted by strange visions of another life, the occasional vivid dream of places, and names and people that had long since ceased to be, and, of course, the disturbingly common impossible happenings that any young witch or wizard with extraordinary power is bound to experience.
Eight years later, in the year 1992, early in the month of July, each of the four children received a letter.
It was two months after that, on September the first, when they finally met.