Chapter One: In Which We Meet Our Heroine

A dream …

The girl stumbled over a tree root. She was running, running as fast as she could through the forest. Something was chasing her. What? What? She couldn't tell. Needle-like leaves whipped her face, and thorns stung her legs. She tripped over a large stone, and landed heavily on her front. She turned over on her elbows to face whatever was following her. Just as it was about to come into view …

She woke up.

Amaryllis turned on her right side and curled up, taking deep, shuddering breaths. That had been so close – she had been so sure that it was going to get her. And just because it was a dream didn't mean it couldn't hurt her. After she felt calmer, she sat up, taking care not to hit her head on the table above her. The sun was just about to rise – that meant that it was time to wake up and start her chores.

Amaryllis was a young girl of diminutive stature and nearly seventeen years. Her hair was long and dark, with just a little bit of a wave. She normally wore it tied back in a long braid under a rough, square scarf, but she'd have preferred to have it tied in a half-ponytail and the rest free. Her outfit was rough, worn and dirty: a brown skirt, a grey shirt, and a green bodice, laced with a leather cord. She had a strikingly pretty face; with merry grey eyes, a pert nose, and a cupid's-bow mouth; but her features were clouded with dirt and sorrow, making it difficult to tell.

She began her chores with feeding the hens behind the inn, where she lived, and then went to filling the horse's trough with water, which she had to carry from the pump in the middle of the yard to the barn in two buckets. After that, the cows had to be driven to the pasture half a mile away. Amaryllis walked back after she had shut the gate on them, her eyes fixed on the ground so as to keep her from falling as she engaged her mind in dreaming of a life utterly unlike her own, one where she slept on a soft bed with a heavy coverlet and ate good food off real plates and wore clean clothes that fit the way they were supposed to. Then it was time to fetch the eggs.

She got back to the inn before breakfast was supposed to start. She knew that the cook, Mrs. Burns, should be making the food for the guests, but there were no sounds coming out from the kitchen. Amaryllis went into the kitchen to see if Cook hadn't gotten there yet – if she hadn't, Amaryllis would have to begin the cooking – and found the woman lying on the floor.

"Mrs. Burns!" she said, setting down the eggs and rushing over to lift the cook's head and place it on her lap. "Oh. Mrs. Burns, are you all right?"

The woman wheezed and opened her eyes a little. "It's my heart, girl," she replied. "It's given out on me. I won't make it – don't bother to get me to the Healer, there's nothing she can do. My mother died like this, and her mother as well."

"But –"

"Quiet, now. I've something to tell you. You know that you're Porter's niece?"

Amaryllis nodded. The innkeeper, his wife, and their son and daughter were her only family.

"It's not true. You're as related to them as I am."

"Are – are you my aunt, then?"

"Don't be daft. You've got family, and lots of it. Some fancy nobs brought you here when you were just a baby, paid him, said you'd not go to Hogwarts, they'd take care of it, and you were to be told that you were an orphan and a Squib. I was there, and Porter threatened me, said he'd kill me if I ever told. Well," she laughed creakily, "it's too late for him to do anything now."

"But –"

"Now," Mrs. Burns gasped, "you find your family, Amaryllis Black." She gasped a few more times, then went still. Amaryllis found her eyes welling up with tears as the only one who had ever been able to spare her a kind word lay, expired, in her lap. She leaned over and kissed the old woman's forehead, smoothing her hair as she did so.

Amaryllis suddenly heard heavy, clumping footsteps and looked up as Porter and Missus entered the kitchen. Porter glowered as his wife looked down her nose at the girl and the corpse. "Get the old biddy out of here," he grunted at his wife. As Missus levitated the body up and out of the door, Porter reached down and hauled Amaryllis to her feet. "You get on cooking the breakfast." As she stood, unmoving and silent, he casually backhanded her, sending her to the floor. "Get to it, girl." He turned and went out to greet the first crowd of people who were coming down for breakfast.