Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
✦
chapter one; the little burgundy journal
Amaya Santoro was exiled from Spain. That was her punishment for breaking the law; that was her mother's solution to keep her out of jail—though Amaya was convinced it was just her nice way to kick her out of the house. And that meant she had no excuse not to get involved in the war.
She'd been avoiding it, instead trying to help people in her own country with the means and talents she had, knowing that there was a key to something big stored in her sock drawer, weighing on her shoulders as she pretended it didn't exist.
Now her country had kicked her out, so she couldn't pretend anymore—well, she could, but one thing she learned from her mother was that if she had the opportunity to help she should. She was ready to put that lesson into practice because she refused to stand by and watch people die again.
To be honest, she wasn't sure what exactly she had that could help in the war. Her father had left her the tiny burgundy journal after he died, with a message that said the book held the key to the end and that Albus Dumbledore, an old acquaintance it seemed, would be able to open it—because like everything else he had turned the journal into a game and no matter how many times she had tried Amaya couldn't get it to open.
She had the talent to tear down wards, and she was proficient in unlocking closed doors the muggle way and the wizarding way, yet she couldn't open the tiny blasted burgundy journal—given, her father had been the one to teach her such practices and so it made sense for him to be able to raise stronger wards than those she could destroy; she just found it unfair he didn't teach her that.
And so she'd taken to finding Dumbledore, right as she stepped off the floo in the Immigration Department of the Ministry of Magic, and had been checked for dark magic.
She was warned she was under surveillance from the Minister and should she do anything out of order she would be carted off to Azkaban to complete the sentence she'd been able to escape in turn for her exile.
She had forced a smile and said she understood what her stay in the UK meant. And she did. It meant she was alone.
Dumbledore had been a fairly easy man to find, he was Headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—something the Iberian Peninsula desperately needed and would never get.
She had managed to travel to the little village next to the school, Hogsmeade, and get a hearing with a Headmaster after she explained her situation to a teacher at the school, Minerva McGonagall, and vowed on her magic that she meant no harm—it also helped that she didn't have a wand; something that in the UK made people look at her like she was freak, and severely undermine her.
And that was how she got to the Headmaster's office, a big circular room, on a tall tower, lit in a mystical way that was only fitting within the castle, full of trinkets lying around, even a phoenix perched next to his desk. She spotted an old tattered hat she assumed was the Sorting Hat (something she knew was worth stealing, but had no idea what it was sorting people into), and every obscure title on his bookshelves—most of which she was fairly sure weren't exactly legal.
