Prologue

Penelope Johnston sat in her kitchen at Ardnagrask Cottage on the north coast of Scotland, just north of Caithness where she had grown up. It was a beautiful evening, as the sun began to set and cast a warm orange glow across the sky, turning it slowly crimson in colour. The rays of light streamed in through the stained glass in the windows, creating rainbow patterns onto the white tablecloth, on which were hundreds of books left open or closed with bits of parchment inside with notes scribbled all over. Potion ingredients were all over the place, covering hundreds of miles worth of maps with more notes, diagrams and drawings on them. She'd been pouring over them for hours in search of answers, and would continue to do so for days, even weeks; but there were no answers to be found. Not this time.

Penny was an incredibly accomplished witch; her skills within the Ministry were almost legendry as one of the most astounding aurors of the age. From the moment she had stepped through the doors of Hogwarts, Penny had wanted to be an auror and at the age of seventeen, she became the youngest auror to ever have been employed by the Ministry. Her magical mother had been overjoyed when she'd told her she'd been accepted as an auror, although her muggle father didn't really understand what any of this meant, he was still proud of his youngest child. At the time of joining the Ministry to begin her training, her older sister had just left the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to pursue a teaching career at Hogwarts. In the years that followed, after they had graduated from Hogwarts, their brother Robert went to work within the Ministry as an intern for a year, and Malcolm began working for the Daily Prophet as a sports reporter.

Like her younger sister, Minerva was also an extremely accomplished witch and highly talented, but the Ministry just hadn't been for her. Despite their different choices in career path, the two sisters had remained close. As the eldest of four children, Minerva had always taken good care of her younger siblings, something that Penny had never forgotten. Minerva had proudly watched her sister graduate as an auror after training for three years, a year after which she married fellow auror Allan Johnston, a courageous muggle-born wizard five years Penny's senior, and it wasn't too long after that that Penny gave birth to their only child - Cali. The McGonagall family rejoiced the birth of Cali, and soon both Robert and Malcolm followed suit with their families, delivering nieces and nephews for Minerva to cherish and teach at Hogwarts.

But now, just twenty-four years after leaving Hogwarts and nearly twenty since she'd graduated as an auror, Penny was using every ounce of magical knowledge she had to try and deal with the worst thing she had ever been through, and nothing anyone could say or do was going to help her. The pain was unbearable, and she could feel it slicing through her chest; her heart felt to break a little more with each beat it made. She was in so much emotional pain that she never noticed her physical injuries.

Her hands and face were badly cut. She had a large, deep gash above her left eyebrow and her eye was beginning to bruise, her brown eye barely visible through the swollen slit she'd been left with. She could taste the iron of her blood from her cut lip and her inability to take a deep breath indicated that she'd cracked a few ribs, possibly even broken one or two. Her long red hair was clotted with blood from a large cut to the back of her head, and her body was beginning to shake from exhaustion and shock. She nearly leapt out of her skin when Minerva had arrived with a loud pop as she apparated into the kitchen.

'I'm sorry I took so long,' Minerva whispered gravely, not really knowing what to say to her beloved sister, who looked so distraught and forlorn.

'It's fine. I suppose it couldn't be helped,' Penny replied emotionlessly. 'Although perhaps you shouldn't have come. You might be in grave danger just being here, they might come back.'

'Do you really think that they will?' Minerva asked with shock, her eyebrows furrowed together tightly.

'I…I don't know…maybe…' Penny stammered tearfully. She wasn't usually a woman who was easily flustered, but this evening everything had changed and now everything felt too damn much for her to deal with.

'What happened?' Minerva whispered, not sure if she was ready to hear it.

'What do you think happened? They found us didn't they. They almost destroyed the living room and upstairs. Allan tried to fight them off but…they stunned me unconscious in the fight, maybe they thought they'd killed me I don't…they took Cali and Allan – Minerva they tortured her, they tortured my baby and they…they…' but it was too much for her to continue, and too much for Minerva to bear. She tried to nurse her sister the best she could, and they sat for hours in painful silence as Minerva cleaned and dressed Penny's wounds.

As soon as Penny had sound the alarm, the Order had immediately sprung to hers and Allan's defence. Dumbledore himself, along with Auror Kingsley Shacklebolt, went in search of the Death Eaters who had taken her husband and daughter, and the thoughts of the unspeakable things that they would do to them tortured Penny inside. However, there was no relief for either Penny or Minerva.

For days, they waited for news, the Ministry was heavily involved into the investigation of Allan and Cali's disappearance, but the Ministry were more concerned about their own security. Although she didn't know anything about it, Penny knew that Allan had been dealing with something massive within the Ministry and held a lot of secret information. She knew that this was the reason Voldemort wanted him, but why he had taken Cali she didn't know. She was barely out of Hogwarts and only eighteen, she had nothing to do with the Ministry or the Order and certainly knew nothing about what they were planning. However, this was of no consolation to her almost a week after they disappeared and Harold Minchum, the Minister of Magic himself, arrived on her doorstep with the sad and tragic news.

'I am sorry to have to tell you this Penny. Allan was a good Auror, one of our best…it's just that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was better on this occasion. Allan and Calli's bodies were delivered to the Ministry this morning,' he explained with grave pain, unsure of how to break the news to her.

Minerva had stayed with her sister every day leading up to this moment, and now she held Penny tightly as she screamed painfully into the world. Her entire life had just been destroyed in one simple blow, and she'd continued to scream and cry long into the night and after Minchum had left. She felt utterly destroyed by her loss, but now she had to remain strong; for upstairs came the cries of someone else, someone far more feeble and pitiful than Penny. On hearing the cries Penny made her way upstairs, where she found her granddaughter nestled in her cot. She was only a couple of weeks old and would have no memories at all of her grandfather and mother, or of the awful events into which she was born, but she was all that Penny and Minerva had left of Cali. Her name was Aurora, and she had no idea how special she was and how loved and cherished she was either. But as she fixed her beautiful sapphire blue eyes onto her grandmother, she didn't need to know all of these things yet, all she needed to know was that she was safe and loved and would go on to have the most magical childhood.