Prologue
July 30, 1982, London
The thunder that boomed through the night awoke her. A great summer storm had washed over London that evening, and apparently it wasn't completely done yet. Catherine Turner looked up from her bed and saw that the window of her room was slightly ajar. She decided that if another storm came during the night, the wind might knock it open or even break the glass. And then her dad and her mum would be mad. Catherine was ten, but she knew that her family had little money. They couldn't afford a new glass for the window. Besides, she didn't want the rain to pour into her room.
So she got up from her bed, throwing the light blanket aside and padded to the window. As she got near it, a white-blue lightning flashed in the distant clouds and she saw her reflection on the glass, in her pajamas, her red hair shaggy and her eyes sleepy. Then another thunder struck.
Catherine reached for the handle of the window, ready to slam it shut and then she saw the man.
The Turners lived in a flat on the second floor of a three-story house. She knew that on the other side of the street there was a pub, its neon sign glowing in the dark, coloring the wet pavement in hues of teal and orange. Their house was looking at the backside of the pub, so the sign was not visible from her room, but she had walked past it lots of times.
The man was standing there, his back almost touching the wall of the pub.
Catherine knew that men came and went from the pub all the time, well into the late hours of the night and way past her bedtime. But he looked different somehow.
She leaned forward, face almost touching the glass of her window and stared at him. He was tall, taller than her dad. Another lightning illuminated the night and for a second she saw that he had long black hair tied behind his head and had a black official-looking jacket that looked a bit like the one her dad wore at her Aunt Marlene's second wedding. He was leaning on a cane but did not look old at all, so Catherine decided that there was something wrong with his legs.
Catherine was not sure what was so strange about him, but it was as if something told her that this man was not like the regulars that visited the pub at night. Perhaps it was the way he was staring intently at the backdoor of the pub. It was as if he was waiting for something or someone.
He was standing completely motionless and Catherine, sleepiness gone, couldn't tear her eyes off him. Then she heard faint noises coming from the pub, as if people were shouting. She gulped and opened the window slightly so she could hear better.
Someone was definitely shouting inside the pub. The man on the street tensed, as if he had expected it. Then suddenly the door at the back of the pub crashed open and a man ran out. He was moving as if he was completely panicked.
He never saw the other man, the one with the cane and the black jacket. But he had seen him.
He moved forward, lifted the cane up and swung it almost like a bat, smacking the running man right in the face. He cried out in pain, tumbled into the air and fell with a splash into a puddle. The long-haired man stepped towards him and put one of his feet on the other's chest. It looked like he really had a slight limp but that had not stopped him from felling the other man with ease.
Catherine's mouth gaped open. What was happening? Was the man with the cane going to mug the one who had tried to escape from the pub? She could feel her heart beating faster and faster. What was she supposed to do? Should she go and wake her parents? Or go to bed and pretend she never saw what had happened? She had heard her mum say to dad once that their neighborhood was bad, but hadn't understood completely. Did that mean it was dangerous? That man out there sure looked dangerous. He looked like a bad guy from her dad's scary action movies that her mum forbade her to watch.
But curiosity had her in its grasp. She knew she should move and step away from the window but she couldn't force herself to do so.
She opened the window a bit more and heard the man on the ground groaning in pain. Another lightning flashed and Catherine saw blood oozing from his nose and mouth.
"Snape, you half-blood bastard!" he cried. "You broke my nose!"
Then the door of the pub crashed open again and Catherine saw a man, this one with shaggy blonde hair and a beard, and a black-skinned woman running out, moving towards the one with the cane (was he called Snape?) and his victim. She heard footsteps from the other end of the street and another man came running. Were these three going to help the man on the ground? Snape didn't seem afraid of their presence. The blonde man reached Snape first and stopped, putting his hands on his knees and panting loudly.
"Good one, boss!" he laughed. "Whacked him right over the head."
"Igor Karkaroff," Snape said to the man bleeding on the ground, "In the name of the Ministry of Magic, you are under arrest."
Catherine gasped loudly. What did he mean, the Ministry of Magic? Was there such a Ministry? Did that mean that those people could do magic? Or were they just magicians? Neither Snape nor this Igor Karkaroff had done any magic.
Then Snape, the blonde bearded man, the black woman and the one who had come running from the far end of the street all turned their heads towards her window. They had heard her. And now they saw her.
Catherine had never been as afraid as she was in that moment.
She knew she had to instantly run to her parents, but before she could even move, Snape produced a straight black stick from his sleeve and pointed it at her.
"Obliviate!" he said.
In the morning Catherine awoke. She was surprised to see that during the night the window had opened itself. It had rained again because the floor near the window was all wet. She was relieved that the glass was not broken. She didn't remember waking up during the night, so the storm must not have been that bad.
