Gwendolyn Penny McDowell peered out of the window of her room as the rain beat relentlessly upon the house. Her brow furrowed as an angry tear slid hopelessly down her sallow cheek. She had forgotten to breathe and gasped as she felt herself getting dizzy. She heard the faint chatter of acquaintances and family friends in the downstairs living room, talking lively of the past and of their memories of Micheal McDowell.
Her eyes became heavy as she pressed her head softly against the cold window looking out to the pond that was just close enough to see the ripples in the water. As Gwendolyn removed herself from her current situation, she began to think of her father and how deeply she had loved him. Micheal McDowell was a good man and a devoted father. Gwendolyn remembered how he had taught her how to swim in the pond she was now vaguely staring into. How he had taught her how to fly her first broom, and how he tried, no matter how hopeless it was, to teach her how to play Quidditch. For some reason Gwendolyn was a gifted flyer, but once she tried to catch something, her ineptness on the ground was clear even in the air.
The grieving child remembered how her father would take her along to Diagon Alley when they went shopping for her brother, Grady. How she missed the long days she had him all to herself, when Grady was at Hogwarts and her Muggle mother was at her job in the city. She remembered the sadness in his eyes when he had to go to work and leave her with the nanny. Gwendolyn recalled the days she was allowed to go to work with her father. He was a very important man in the Ministry, but Gwendolyn never fully understood exactly what her father did there.
She only knew that all who passed them knew her father's name, and in turn, knew hers. She would sit in his office, spinning in his chair and entertaining herself with her own little magic. On one particular day, Gwendolyn was left alone in her father's office and was particularly pleased with herself when, upon her father's return, he could not find her. She remembered giggling silently as she watched her father look frantically under the desk and papers, but she was on the highest shelf of the bookcase in his office. He laughed; relieved she was not hurt, he gently levitated her down, and proceeded to tickle her mercilessly.
She then recalled more recent times with her father, the day Gwendolyn accidentally broke the vase her mother loved and her father defended her, the time her father bought Gwendolyn her owl, Dawn, and the night he was murdered… She could not help but recall that memory. It was seared into her mind.
December twenty-first, Gwendolyn's tenth birthday. Gwendolyn and her father had just left Diagon Alley out of the Leaky Cauldron and decided to walk a little before Apparating back to Ireland. It had been snowing lightly and there was a soft crunch of snow as they walked side-by-side out into the crisp night air. Gwendolyn's father had given her a music box for her birthday and she listened to its gentle melody as the statuette of the little witch performed magic for Gwendolyn's entertainment.
"Daddy," Gwendolyn started in her subtle Irish accent, "how come I can't go to Hogwarts next year if I'm going to be eleven anyways?"
Her father chuckled, "You're smart enough to answer that one on your own, my little love."
Gwendolyn purposely over exaggerated her facial expressions as she thought of the answer. Her father let out a loud laugh as he looked down at his dark-haired, blue-eyed daughter. He had always encouraged her to think of the answers to her questions because it was only on rare occasions that Gwendolyn didn't know the answer already.
"But why do I have to wait another whole year until I can go? I am going to be so much older than my classmates!" Gwendolyn mock-whined.
"Come now, my little love." Gwendolyn tried to hold her pout as she was swept into her father's arms, but it was of no use. She giggled as her father swung her from side to side. He set her back on the ground and knelt in the snow before his daughter, "Just think of the children who turn eleven only weeks after the start of the school year! They will be much older than you."
Gwendolyn smiled and took her father's hand, but the happiness vanished out of the air as soon as it had appeared. Her eyes unfocused, her body stood rigid, and she held her breath. A flash of memory had just gone before her eyes, but it was not a memory in which she could recall having. Three men. One man was holding another man, while the other man beat the man that was being held. A glare of light and a terrible scream had brought Gwendolyn back into her father's arms. She gasped for breath, but was still rigid and unfocused.
"Little love? Penny? Gwendolyn!" Gwendolyn's father clutched her in his arms as she stood unmoving in her father's arms. "What is it you saw this time, little love? You have to remember what you saw!" Gwendolyn's father was whispering urgently now, but she was still unfocused.
Her father took her into his arms and Apparated back to Ireland. They appeared on the front of their porch steps and Micheal McDowell quickly entered the house with his daughter now lying limply, and slightly conscious, in his arms. After he had locked the door behind him, Gwendolyn's father turned to face the living room and almost dropped his daughter at the sight of the men before him. As he took a step inside, one of the two men grabbed Micheal McDowell's wand from his grip and stepped back beside the other thug.
"What are you doing here? Get out!" Micheal bellowed at the intruders. Gwendolyn stirred and her father gripped her closer to his body.
"McDowell… You didn't think Mr. Malfoy was actually going to let you get away with humiliating him last week at the Ministry, did you?" One of the thugs laughed deeply as he stepped closer to Micheal McDowell.
"Abraxas sent you? Please, let me put my daughter upstairs and we can settle this outside." Gwendolyn's father took a step towards the stairs, but the enormous men aimed their wands at Micheal McDowell's throat.
"Mr. Malfoy said you were weak," the other brute snarled.
"You won't get away with this. The Ministry will find you and you will lead to Abraxas. You will not win," Micheal McDowell said forcefully.
"That is why we are not going to use our wands," the lead thug said with a smile. "With no magic, those Ministry fools will think is was a simple robbery. Now, we will settle this!" The two thugs ripped Gwendolyn's limp body from her father's grasp and Gwendolyn was thrown against the fireplace. A splintering of wood was heard and Gwendolyn felt a sharp pain, but whether it was in her back or her heart, she could not tell which.
Gwendolyn awoke fully and gasped for air. She looked down and saw her beautiful music box, shattered across the floor. Her father screamed and tried to go to her, but the two men were now holding Micheal and beating him unconscious. Micheal managed to free himself for a moment and ran for his wand, but one of the brutes grabbed onto Micheal's ankle. Gwendolyn spotted her Muggle mother coming down the stairs behind the men, but once her mother realized what exactly was going on she ran back upstairs. Gwendolyn suddenly recalled the vision she had earlier that night of the three men and the glare of light.
She now knew what it meant, but as she stood from behind the couch to tell her father of her vision, Abraxas's men had her father held and a knife at his throat. Gwendolyn's heart squeezed itself into a knotted clump in her own throat as she tried to scream for her father, but as she opened her mouth, nothing came.
"Pity to leave such a lovely little girl without a father," the main thug laughed menacingly as his gaze hovered on Gwendolyn peering from behind the couch, her mouth slightly ajar.
"Leave my daughter out of this," Micheal McDowell growled threateningly. He turned to look into the eyes of his daughter and saw every trace of fear and pain in her innocent face.
"That's not a tone you should take with us, Mr. McDowell," the second man tutted as he shoved the knife deeper into Micheal's throat.
Gwendolyn stared at her father, her mouth becoming dry and her eyes swelling with tears. Behind the blood and gashes smeared on her father's face, Gwendolyn saw the regret and the pain as she stared into his eyes. Gwendolyn's throat tightened even more and she felt as if she couldn't breathe. The man holding Micheal McDowell raised the knife that would be plunged into the innocent father he was holding, and in the seconds before he was killed Gwendolyn read the expression on her father's face as he mouthed the words, "My little love."
Gwendolyn reached up to her neck and felt the raised scar that reached from the beginning of her neck to her left earlobe. This scar had made it even harder for her to forget the night of her father's death.
She pressed her face further against the cold window in her room on which her forehead rested, listening as someone made their way up the stairs. They knocked on her door and opened it slightly. Gwendolyn ignored the trespasser, but awkwardly slid her small hand across her pale face to dry her fallen tears. She smoothed her simple black dress and shakily brushed her black hair off of her face.
"Penn?" Only two people in the world called her by her middle name, her brother and her father. When she heard that name she felt safe and loved. Grady entered the clean, blue room, maneuvering around the many half-closed boxes of Gwendolyn's belongings, and sat across from her on the window seat. /p
"It's only been a month and she's making us move to London with Aunt Kaitlyn and those two garden gnomes she calls daughters." Gwendolyn clenched her jaw as she pictured herself having to live with her Muggle relatives.
"That's what I came to talk to you about, Penny. See, I'm not moving with you and mum. I'm going with me band and we're gonna go travelin'. I'm not even goin' back to Hogwarts," Grady sighed as he waited for a response from his little sister.
A tense silence filled the room as Gwendolyn processed what her brother said. She unfocused and touched her brother's hand; a flash flew across her eyes and it was gone. It seemed a whole year had passed for Gwendolyn, but it was only a moment. "You're going to do well," Gwendolyn said apathetically.
Grady understood what she meant and took his little sister into his arms. "I'm sorry lil' Penn. I don't want to leave you with them, but you need to go to school. You're the special one in our family and you need to go to Hogwarts. Once I get settled somewhere I'll try and take you for the summers, but until then, you need to handle her." Grady stood from the window seat and knelt in front of Gwendolyn, holding her by the shoulders.
Gwendolyn gave no reaction as her older brother tried to comfort her. Grady was so much like their father. They shared the same heavy, Irish accent, then same warmth in their eyes, their extreme intelligence, their Hogwarts House of Ravenclaw and their shared enthusiasm for Quidditch. The only noticeable exception was Grady's restlessness. Grady could never stay in one place for more than a second, but Gwendolyn loved him just the same. She sat there as Grady pulled his little sister closer to him, mutely grieving for the father she had lost and the brother who was leaving her. After the death of her father, Gwendolyn's only connection to the Wizarding World was her brother, and now he was leaving her to travel around the world. She would be cut off from the world that she loved for two years.
Grady was leaving his little sister with four Muggles that couldn't be farther from the world she was used to. She spent the rest of the memorial service in her room, thumbing through the pages of Beedle the Bard, the book her father had read to her every night since she could remember.
Gwendolyn was only ten years old and she had already experienced something people should never experience first hand. She had witnessed death in its most brutal forms and as she began to pace in front of her window, she saw the thestrals flying low above the trees of the nearby forest. Gwendolyn stared somberly at the oddly beautiful creatures and began to walk through her packed belongings. As she passed through the many boxes, she began to open one of them. What she found inside was the broken music box her father had given her the night of her birthday… the night of his death.