A/N: Chapter re-written as of July 5, 2005
Chapter One: Abduction
"Where is it?" a frustrated Michaela Woodburn said. She was looking for her copy of "Angela's Ashes." "Why did you have to put it off for so long?" she said aloud to herself with a groan.
School was due to start in two weeks and she hadn't started the required summer reading for her British literature class yet.
Maybe it's under the bed, she thought. She went down on her knees and pulled away the flowery lavender sheets and matching comforter to look under her bed. Michaela pushed back her short, dirty blond hair out of her eyes. She was just under average height for her age, five foot three, and had striking green eyes.
Moving with some caution (she was a normal seventeen year old with everything from twelve year old teddy bears to old candy wrappers to who knows else what could be under the bed), she stared into the darkness, her eyes slowly adjusting.
"So that's where my coat went!" she said, as she pulled the plaid blue coat out. It was coated with a thin layer of dust and Michaela tossed it into her clothes hamper, thinking, Michaela, you really need to clean down here more often; I guess Mom was right.
Turning back to the task at hand, Michaela pulled out a number of things including a notebook ("U.S. History is the devil y'alls!" on the cover), an old case of blush ("Peach"), and a library book that hadn't been returned in four weeks ("Shopaholic" by Sophie Kinsella). "Shopaholic" was kind of British book, Michaela thought. It was written by a British author after all; couldn't that count as her summer reading?
Resigning herself that her teacher would not take very kindly to a book about a woman with a shopping addiction, British or no, she continued her search. A few minutes later: "Aha! Here you are, you master of hiding book you!" Michaela held up the book to the light for closer inspection and started to groan.
It was well over three-hundred pages that she'd have to read and take pages of notes on. If it had been another book like "Shopaholic," it would be no problem (she burned through books like that), but school books were another story. Michaela remembered the horrors of the previous year when her American literature class read "The Scarlet Letter." Less than two-hundred pages long and yet it took her two months to get through—along with some major help of SparkNotes on the internet.
Might as well get started; I really don't have anything better to do. Her best friend, Alice, was in New York until three days before school started and having done all that she could possibly do to put off reading the book, Michaela resigned herself to reading it. She flopped on her bed and started to read.
"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and married and where I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four, my brother Malachy, three, the twins, Oliver and Eugene, barely one, and my sister Margaret, dead and gone…"
As she started to read, she became entranced by the book. It was about the poverty of a young Irish-American boy living during the Depression. Not the ordinary school book and as Michaela read on, she shut off the world, losing herself in the book. This was how most good books kept her and there were few things that could snap her out of it. Screams were one of them.
"AHHH!"
Michaela snapped her head up. That wasn't her imagination; it was her mom! She tumbled out of the bed and onto her feet, her heart pounding. There were very few things that could make her mom scream like that. Running out the door and into the hallway, about to run down the wooden stairs, she stopped.
Nothing ordinary could have made her mother scream like that because Michaela's mom wasn't ordinary. In reality, her mother and father were wizards, although they lived in a Muggle neighborhood for Michaela's sake. Michaela was born a Squib, a non-magical person, which meant that while she had to live the life of a Muggle, her parents didn't.
So Michaela knew that Muggle things didn't easily frighten her mother, even possible intruders like burglars. No, what could frighten her mother this badly had to be something from the Wizarding world, in which Michaela had no powers.
With these thoughts, she moved with trepidation down the stairs, slowly and with care not to step on the squeaky ones. As she moved down, she heard voices in the kitchen.
"-won't get away with this!"
"Oh no? You seem to be quite trapped, if I do say so myself." The nasal voice laughed and continued: "Nevertheless, the Dark Lord will break that independent will of yours. I daresay he'll extract useful information from you regarding your dear wife's brother, Dumbledore."
Michaela's anxiety turned into horror. A Death Eater, here? Oh shit, oh shit, what am I going to do!
"We'll never-"
"Silence! Crucio!"
The air was suddenly full of screams and shrieks of Michaela's father.
"DAD!" Michaela ran to the kitchen, her terror temporarily held back. She stopped at the doorway, taking in the scene. Her dad was lying on the ground, writhing with pain, and the Death Eater was standing over him, laughing. The Death Eater was wearing crimson red robes and had wavy black hair that fell to his shoulders, but Michaela couldn't see his face.
Her mother was on the floor, ropes tightly bound around her. Angela Woodburn couldn't even cry out for her husband or to the Death Eater because her mouth was gagged tightly. Tears streamed down her face as she watched her husband thrash around in agony.
She suddenly noticed Michaela standing in the doorway and with her eyes, she pleaded Michaela to run away. Resolve came over Michaela instead, and started to run to the Death Eater. Maybe I could jump on his back, distract him or something while Dad—abruptly Michaela's body stiffened together and her body fell over, just as if she was a straight stick.
The body bind curse! Michaela recognized the curse as she found that she could not move any part of her body—only her eyes. But how did it happen? Her mother was bound together and her father was still lying on the ground in pain.
Luckily for Michaela, the Death Eater was too preoccupied torturing her father to hear her body crash to the ground just behind him.
She could only watch as her father got up again to fight when the Death Eater shouted, "Enough!" and snapped his fingers which caused ropes to shoot out and wrap themselves around Howard Woodburn like his wife's. Then, as Michaela watched with (literally) frozen fear, there was a loud crack and the Death Eater and her parents disappeared.
If Michaela could have cried right then, she would have. Her parents gone, taken by a Death Eater! Of course her parents had warned her about these types of dangers, especially since Voldemort's return to power this past June, but the whole thing had seemed a bit unreal.
Though her parents worked at Wizarding jobs (both of them at the Ministry of Magic in San Diego), on the whole, they lived in the Muggle world. Michaela had Muggle friends and whenever they came to visit, her mom did a charm that transformed anything magical into something Muggle-like.
If it wasn't for the fact that her parents often talked and complained about their jobs and the Wizarding world, Michaela could have cared less about the magical community—she couldn't perform magic and though she used to dwell sadly on that fact a few years ago, Michaela had moved on and accepted her role as a Squib.
She had thought vaguely a few times that she might one day serve to help other wizards and witches understand Muggles better, but she was increasingly more and more distant with the magical community as college and her adult life loomed near. Her parents were a bit disappointed, of course, but Michaela didn't see any point in trying to live in the Wizarding community when she had no magical abilities within her.
Even though it was useless, Michaela concentrated all her energy into moving one of her limbs, but of course she couldn't. She couldn't even open her mouth to call for help and the only thing she could move, her eyes, had a limited view.
She lay there on the floor trying to think of what she could do (with no luck) when she heard another loud crack and another wizard, clad in purple robes appeared.
Body still completely paralyzed, her mind raced with new fear. Had another Death Eater come to take her away? If it was, there was nothing she could do about it. With this unfortunate, but stark truth, she forced her mind to become calmer so that she could think more clearly.
"Angela, Howard, where are you?"
Some relief washed over Michaela's mind. He was here to help! As he turned around, each person got their first full look at each other and Michaela immediately recognized him. It was Uncle Albus Dumbledore.
