Prologue
On her first day back from Hogwarts, Dorcas Meadowes had gotten up early. She would much rather have slept in, but the habit of having to wake up at six to go to classes was still with her. The sun was getting higher over the meadow that Dorcas was sitting in, and everything was totally silent. The only sound she could hear was her breathing. Dorcas could not have been happier. The day before had been her last day at Hogwarts, she had graduated third in her class, and now she was back home. She flopped onto her back and fluffy seed pods escaped into the air around her.
As she walked back to her house, Dorcas hummed to herself and smiled. She couldn't wait for her life to begin! After a few days recuperating at home she would set off for France, then from there go to Spain and Portugal, and her eventual plan was to hit every country in Europe, Eastern Europe, and even parts of Northern Africa before she came home again. She would be wild and free, not apparating if she could help it, so that she could see the continent on which she lived, and actually travel the roads that went through it. Dorcas fell in love with the idea of staying at cheap inns, or under the stars, if there were no inns around. She fell in love with the idea of getting out there and seeing all that culture first hand. She fell in love with the idea of falling in love with a dark Grecian stranger, or perhaps an Italian.
As Dorcas started up the hill that her house was on the other side of, she wondered what her mother would think of her decision to travel like that, with no money, and no set plan. She imagined her mother's arguments: What if something happened to you? What would you do with no money? How can you be so irresponsible? You'll regret it when you're cold and alone on some dark street in Prague with people waiting around the corner to rob, murder, or rape you!
But Dorcas just dismissed these hypothetical arguments with a wave of her hand. It was going to be the adventure of a lifetime! She was sure of it. Of course she knew that it would be hard, and that she would have to work, and do things she probably wouldn't like, but Dorcas did not care. She wanted to do drugs with muggles in alleyways, and race broomsticks through dense forests. She would be sitting in a small café in Paris, and would suddenly look up from the book she was reading to find that the handsome stranger across the room was looking at her.
Dorcas reached the top of the hill and looked down on her house. It was a farmhouse with a barn near by that her mother had bought when Dorcas was born. The house itself had faded whitewashed walls, and the roof leaked during the rain. It was amazingly cold during the winter and sweltering during the summer. Dorcas and her mother constantly had to repair doors, windows, floorboards, and whatever else might break. The barn was several yards away from the house, and was in even worse shape. Entire planks were missing from the walls, it was rotting, and the rafters were home to several families of birds. But there was a very obvious addition to the house that wasn't there when she left about an hour earlier that Dorcas couldn't help noticing, and which shocked and scared her to her very soul.
For floating a few feet above the roof, and casting a green light almost as bright as the sun, was a skull with a snake coming out of its mouth, and which was made up of tiny stars.