A/N: Hi everyone. This is my first fanfiction on this site, and the first time I've tried writing any of the characters from Sleepy Hollow (this is the Tim Burton version, by the way), so if anyone is OOC, please point it out, but flames will be used to roast marshmallows.

Also, to make this more authentic, I'm going to use real spells when possible, and when I need to make up my own, I'll be sure to associate the correct colours, ingredients etc. In the first half, the spell Julia uses is a real spell for celebrating Imbolg, as is the charm for closing a pentacle (or circle, as some call it).

Prologue – Imbolg

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It was a dull and dark February evening. A monochrome pillow of clouds lurked low, as if weighed down by the rainwater they carried. The air was cold, and tension built in the wild gales dancing around the city of Boston.

In an apartment near the city centre, a Native American girl in her late teens was stood inside a pentacle chalked on the wooden floor of her bedroom, before her an altar covered in a white cloth. On it were a variety of seemingly random items – three black candles, a crown of silver stars, a selection of early greenery picked fresh that morning, including snowdrops and catkins amongst other things, a shawl, a handful of porridge oats in a bowl and a broom – but anyone who practised Wicca could tell you that these items were necessary for the Wiccan festival of Imbolg. The girl – named Julia Woodrow – took a box of matches from the pocket of her black velvet trousers and lit one, using it to light the three candles. Blowing out the match and placing it – along with the box – on the altar, she reached for the porridge oats and scattered them on the floor around her. Raising the wand of hazel, with black and white ribbons wrapped around it, she began the spell, noting the full moon just visible between the clouds outside her room.

"From darkness comes light. From night comes day. From winter and death comes spring and life." Julia enunciated clearly. Setting down the wand carefully, she reached out and grabbed the crown and the shawl, putting them on quickly, and then picking up the spring foliage.

"Girl in the moon, see off the darkness and let the light in."

Setting down then flowers, she then laid a hand on the crown on her head.

"Mother in the moon, disperse death and raise life."

Julia moved her hand down and laid it on the woollen shawl wrapped around her shoulders – a gift from her grandmother last Christmas.

"Wise grandmother in the moon, end the winter and begin the spring."

Taking the broom, she swept up the oats and placed them back in the bowl, not forgetting the final part of the spell.

"Although you are three, you also are one.

As I begin to sweep the room, so have your powers begun

To banish the winter gloom,

Welcome spring's flourish and nature's bloom."

As soon as the spell was complete, Julia felt as if she was experiencing an endorphin rush, which she figures was the work of the Fifth Essence, or possibly the God and Goddess. Smiling, she set the bowl of oats back on the altar to scatter outside the next morning as a gift for the birds and took her wand again to open the pentacle. Pointing her wand to the north, she proceeded to walk around the pentacle in an anti-clockwise direction.

"I do not break this circle but the circle is undone.

The spell that I have cast it has begun.

Mindful of the witch's rede

Now the magic has been freed

I will harm none

Yet if harm's done

It will return to me

By the power of three."

The pentacle opened, Julia was suddenly aware of the heavy beat of rain on her window, and wondered why it was she always failed to notice things around her while she was casting a spell. Giving a small gasp as thunder rumbled around her, louder than expected, the teen hurried to clear away the ingredients she had used – blowing out the candle flames so they could be used again – and then fixed herself a sandwich and a soda and sat on the large squashy sofa in her living room to await her father's return, but instead – perhaps because it was Imbolg – Julia found her mind wandering to her mother. True, it was Samhain that acknowledged the dead, but Imbolg, dealing with death and rebirth, always caused her to think of the woman who had died when she was only nine.

And so, comforted by a warm, if somewhat blurry memory of a family picnic on her eighth birthday, Julia finished her sandwich and then felt her eyes – so dark a brown they were often mistaken for black – drift closed as she fell asleep. The last thing her eyes rested on was the glass bottle on the coffee table which contained what Julia suspected was a variation on the spell in a bottle charm, intended to bring whoever it ended up with good luck. However, this one was different, not least because the parchment was extremely old – at least two hundred years – and the message seemed to have been written in actual ink, and not from a fountain pen. Also, on the other side, there was the traditional charm, almost as if whoever had written it wanted to make sure whoever received the spell heeded the call.

Katrina didn't know what to think or feel, didn't know what was going on or how she and Ichabod would deal with it – for everyone in Sleepy Hollow was indeed looking to them to deal with it – all she knew was that she was completely terrified. Not exactly because of what they had been alerted to – though that in and of itself was a cause for great concern – but because of the potential consequences of that.

Katrina and Ichabod – along with their charge, Thomas Masbeth, whom they had adopted as a son of sorts – had been in New York for nearly a year when Ichabod received a letter from the new reverend of Sleepy Hollow, Michael Crawford, who had, in his words, wished for advice from the only man to defeat the Hessian on how to deal with claims that the spirit had once again risen from the grave. Apparently, in the last two months, villagers had been muttering about a mysterious figure roaming the Western Woods. Of course, everyone had immediately assumed it to be the Horseman, but as nothing could be proved it was just idle gossip… until one man had gotten close enough to be a proper eyewitness, and had described the Hessian perfectly. Katrina knew this meant they would be going back to Sleepy Hollow – if only to satisfy Ichabod's curiosity – but the thought filled her with terror, whichs he reprimanded herself for, since the rumours were probably unfounded. After all, no heads had rolled, had they? But still, would the Hessian collect heads now his own had been returned to him? Or was he after something else?

The young blonde sighed and buried her face in her hands. Why did life have to be so complicated? Right now, she should have been making preparations to become Mrs Katrina Crane – Ichabod had proposed to her several months ago – not travelling back to a town filled with such bad memories to potentially begin again a fight they had barely won last time! Another thought entered her head – what if they didn't win this time? What if, instead, the Hessian won this macabre game? A single tear, born of the sickening turmoil inside her, rolled down Katrina's cheek, and it was this that brought her to her senses. Jumping up from where she had been sitting, Katrina strode purposefully over to the large mahogany bookshelf and ran her fingers over the spines of several volumes before finding the one she wanted. It was one she had written herself – a copy of the book of charms she had given to Ichabod and which, ultimately, had saved his life. However, there was also now a large hole through it (they had kept it, if only as a reminder) so Katrina had decided she needed a legible copy.

She found the spell she wanted with little trouble – it was one she had used many a time, though mostly when she was younger. A spell in a bottle, meant to be a way of sending magic into the world, and blessing those who had an open enough mind to receive the fortune the God and Goddess could bestow. Although this time Katrina planned on doing it slightly differently. Surely, if the spell could be used to send something out, could it not also be used to draw something – or someone – in? Could it not, potentially, be used to draw someone who could lay the Hessian to rest once and for all to Sleepy Hollow? Even in her own mind, the idea sounded slightly crazy to Katrina, and very desperate, but she ignored common sense – that was Ichabod's department anyway – and allowed herself to believe and trust in her own power. It had worked before.

After ferreting out a quill, a parchment and a pot of ink, Katrina followed the first part of the spell, drawing elaborate Celtic spirals in the corners of the parchment, and then an Egyptian ankh in the centre. After allowing that to dry so she didn't smudge the design, Katrina wrote her charm in a circle around the ankh.

Finding this charm bring great luck

But life is not an open book

Hurry, stranger, and take heed

Now this magic has been freed

It guides you to those seeking aid

Please understand the choice I made

Beneath it, Katrina wrote – after several moments' consideration – directions to Sleepy Hollow, and informing whoever received the message that the trouble was the Hessian Horseman. On the other side of the parchment, she also wrote the original spell, deciding that if it gave out good luck, and good luck was then returned to the caster by the power of three, then there was a greater chance of the right person finding the message and coming to Sleepy Hollow.

It was a long shot, she had to admit, but Katrina knew that most of the time, magic was far more powerful that faith or logic. Magic had saved her life the last time she had faced the Hessian, and she prayed it would do the same again. But now, she needed to perform the Imbolg ceremony, for a quick glance at the calendar hung in the room told her it was the second of February. Katrina purposefully slipped from the room; seeking out the ingredients she would need, along with lavender oil, purple ribbon, bottle and a cork to finish her spell.

Outside, wild winds whipped around New York, rain falling heavily, as if the clouds had been carrying their load for weeks. Howls creating by invisible dancers may well have spooked another, more fragile woman, but Katrina paid the storm no heed, not knowing how it would connect her to another.