Out in the middle of nowhere, through thin forests and open plains, a man, one Leonard Henway, walked alone, a loaded burlap sack slung over his shoulder. Despite the apparent size and weight of the sack, it didn't seem to bother him at all. Nobody was around to make the observation, though.
As the day went on, he kept walking. Eventually, he stopped and looked around. He was in another forest, this one a bit denser than others he had recently walked through. "This will do." He set the burlap sack on the forest floor and opened it up. "Get out here."
His four children, two boys and two girls, ranging from 10-18 years of age, walked out of the bag. "Where are we now?" The eldest son, Bernard, asked.
"We are in a peaceful land. We will live here, away from the wretched ways of those back east."
"But there's nobody here," Catherine, the eldest daughter, pointed out.
"We are the first. There is always someone that is first, and it's us this time. Catherine, Bernard, go get us a deer for dinner."
"Yes, father," the eldest son and eldest daughter said before going out, wands in hand.
"Francis, start clearing this area and make some clean logs."
"Yes, father," Francis produced his wand and went to the nearest tree. "Diffindo!" The cut appeared at an angle, letting the tree slide and fall over.
Leonard turned to his youngest. "Dorothy, go back in the sack and organize everything."
"Yes, father." Dorothy walked back into the burlap sack and started on her task.
As the sons and daughters worked on their tasks, Leonard started on his own, smoothing the land out. Small hills were levelled and sifted, leaving pure dirt and some stone. With a few spells, he transfigured the dirt into neat stone blocks, and he began arranging them on the ground.
When he had the blocks three layers high, he looked around and saw a large stack of felled trees nearby. "Francis!" He shouted.
Another tree joined the stack before the son in question showed himself. "Father?"
"What have I told you about exceeding your tasks?"
Francid shied away a bit. "Not to."
"What are we going to do with all this wood? Did you stop for even just a moment to think about that?"
Inside the spacious sack, Dorothy was hard at work. Books went back onto shelves in their proper order, furniture was cleaned and neatly stacked, potion supplies were gathered and separated, and so much more as well. Keeping things organized was a pleasure for her, even if nobody else thanked her for it. By wand or by hand, she enjoyed the task.
While the ten year old daughter seemed like she was enjoying her task, even humming a happy little tune, a single tear, glistening in the magic candle light, betrayed her feelings to the room. "Mother. . ." She took a moment to hold a book of stories close to her.
Out in the forest, Bernard and Catherine were having no luck. "You're terrible at this," Catherine mockingly said.
"And I suppose you would have better luck, sister?" Bernard replied.
"Oh, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying you're terrible."
"And I suppose Francis cutting down trees has nothing to do with that?" The sound of yet another tree crashing to the ground punctuated his statement.
"Nope. You're just terrible at this." She looked up and saw a squirrel in a tree. "We could just turn that into a deer and bring it back."
Bernard caught onto the obvious plan. "No. I am not about to get yelled at because of one of your schemes again. We are going to do this the right way, even if it takes us three hours."
"Come on, it's not like turning water into rabbit. This is turning meat into meat."
"Dorothy may have forgiven you for that trick, but none of us have forgotten it." He kept walking forward.
She rolled her eyes and followed him.
As the sun was setting, Leonard proudly looked upon the cabin he'd made. Stone, mud, and wood made up and held the walls together. The glass windows, transfigured from grass, were shining in the lowering light. If he were back near Ilvermorny, he surely would have been mocked for using some of the muggle construction techniques he had seen in England.
If they knew of the messy magic failure he'd seen during his trip to Beauxbatons, they surely would have understood.
He turned to the pile of trees next to the house. "Francis?"
"Yes, father?" Francis was stuck in one of the nearby stumps, put in there by Leonard to keep him from cutting down even more trees.
"Have you thought about what we can do with all those trees?"
"We could. . . Build a muggle war tower with wheels?"
"Dorothy could come up with a better idea than that." Leonard waved his wand. "Get in the bag and check on her."
Francis did not delay in following the order once he was free and promptly went into the spacious sack. "Dorothy?" Hearing nothing, he walked deeper in. He found her sitting on a chair, reading an old book about a knight with a flaming sword riding a red dragon. "There you are."
Dorothy looked up from her book. "Is it supper time already?"
"No, father just sent me to check on you."
"Oh." She went back to the book.
Francis passively looked around. "Father wanted you to organize everything, right?"
"I did. That's why I'm reading."
He looked around again, not really inspecting anything. "If you say so."
They heard Leonard from outside the sack. "There you two are. What took you so long?"
"The deer kept running," Bernard said.
"Bernard kept talking," Catherine said.
"I kept talking? You were the one that started all the discussions!"
Dorothy put her book away and left the bag with her wand. She saw the deer that Bernard and Catherine had gotten, floating between their wands. "Finite Incantatem!" When she cast the counterspell at the deer, nothing happened, and she was satisfied with that.
"Dorothy, Catherine, start moving our belongings inside," Leonard ordered. "Accio table!" He pulled a table out of the bag, a set of butchering and cleaning tools already neatly arranged on it. "Bernard, Francis, start preparing the deer."
Everyone went about their tasks. Dorothy, normally very punctual about such things, stopped for a moment before she went inside. The pile of felled trees had caught her attention, and an idea started to form. Before she could ponder it for too long, she went back to work.
Everyone had somewhat settled into their new home two weeks later. Bernard, ever the fearless one, would walk and wander around the forest. Francis, as per Leonard's orders, had to figure out what to do with all the trees and was temporarily wandless. Catherine had reluctantly settled into the role of the main housekeeper.
Dorothy, meanwhile, had managed to make herself become nearly unnoticed. She stayed in her room most of the time, hiding away from her siblings, reading her books, and pondering a parchment that she'd laid out on her desk shortly after the first day. Finally, after much pondering, she knew what she wanted to put on the parchment, grabbed her quill, and began drawing.
A knock from her door didn't faze her. "Dorothy?" Francis asked. "It's time for supper." She didn't answer, so he entered. "We're having. . . What are you working on?"
"I'm thinking of-" He snatched the parchment from her. "Give it back!"
"Hmmm. . . Father will certainly give me my wand back with this!" He turned and ran out of the room.
"Hey!" Dorothy ran after him, down the short hallway, and to the dining room, just in time to see Francis give the parchment to their father.
Leonard looked between the parchment and Francis with a critical eye. "How did you come up with this?" He asked with a growl to his voice.
"It suddenly came to me," Francis said. "Dorothy let me use her parchment and ink to draw it."
Leonard looked back at the parchment and held it between them. He pointed to an out of place line on the right side of it. "What's this?"
"Well, I was so excited to get it to you, I didn't properly pick the quill up when I was finished."
"This isn't your handwriting either." He looked past Francis and saw Dorothy hiding behind a corner.
"I was rushing to-"
A hard slap to Francis's face cut him off. "DO YOU THINK I BELIEVE THAT?" Leonard roared. "YOU WERE LYING FROM THE START!"
Francis cowered. "But. . ."
"NOTHING! You will not eat tonight." Leonard left the dining room and quickly found his scared daughter. "Dorothy."
"Y-yes, father?" Dorothy carefully asked. She did not like it when he was mad, but still, she maintained eye contact.
He held out the parchment. "Did you do this for Francis?"
"No. He took it from me."
Leonard held his gaze at her for a few seconds before handing it back, content that she was telling the truth. "You can work on it after supper. Your brother has some reflecting to do."
"Thank you, father." Dorothy took the paper back to her desk, and was about to leave when she came up with another piece to the project. She quickly wrote it down on the paper before heading to dinner. It was just two words that had popped into her mind, but in that moment, they had given her a name to put to the project: Mirror Row.