✓ blood runs pure | p.jm

xiv.

For all its glitz and  glamour, America was boring. You came to that realization by your second  week in Brownville, Nebraska, a small town that was home to about 500  muggles. Your mother and you had settled in the same large farmhouse  that your father had rented out for his new wife and your half-siblings.  But even the tension between the two great loves of your father's life,  past and present, did not provide enough diversion from the boring  mundaneness that encompassed life at Brownville.

There had been several  rules that your parents had both implemented once you had joined them.  Amongst them were absolutely no speaking of magic or life in England, no  performing of magic, and no use of magical objects. Your pet owl had  been moved to live in the barn that took up the back of the property  your father had rented, and you were only allowed to visit her with  treats in the dark of the night. As it was, you thought your pet was  already diverting back to her more undomesticated side as she was  preferring the small rodents, she could hunt on the property, to the owl  treats you placed out for her.

You were grateful that  the adults had given you the large open structure of the attic to be  your room, where you would often stay up for most of the day, only  coming down for meals, avoiding everyone else in the house. Your  half-siblings, who were much younger than you were confused and  resentful of the move to Nebraska and blamed you for it although they  did not know the details as to why. Your father had never felt the need  to tell his Muggle family that once upon a time he had fallen in love  with a witch and, with her, had had a daughter who was also a witch.  After all, being a Muggle himself, the chances of one of his newer  children being able to perform magic were minimal to zero.

As April came to an end  and May began, you had resigned yourself to fully living a life as a  Muggle and had even considered the benefits of such a lifestyle. For  one, the Muggles had increasingly advanced as a society and had come up  with inventions that were, in your opinion, just as magical as the  things that witches, and wizards could come up with. In fact, you were  highly impressed by televisions and telephones. One evening, in between  looking through catalogs for different tutoring services you could pay  for to acquire a GED, you were trying to set up the black box television  set your parents had surprised you with in your attic bedroom. You were  struggling with the antenna when you felt a burning sensation the size  of a Galleon against your chest. The DA coin you had attached to a  chain, to dangle from your neck, was warm to the touch, lightly heating  your skin with its summons. Jeon Jungkook, the de facto leader of the  group since Kim Namjoon, Jung Hoseok, and Kim Seokjin, the three members  of the Golden Trio, had gone on the run, was using it to summon members  of Dumbledore's Army to fight.

Immediately jumping up,  you grabbed your wand where it was hidden, tucked inside one of your  many pillowcases. Before you could get too excited, you noticed that you  were still in your pajamas with a robe hanging off your frame  haphazardly and mismatched socks covering your feet. As you hurriedly  threw off your clothes to pull a pair of jeans over your legs and a  sweater over your pajama shirt, you searched the top of your messy desk  to find a scrap of paper you could write on, to let your mother where  you had gone. Knowing that there was a chance that your note would fall  into the hands of your half-siblings, you were careful to be vague. You  wrote quickly with your pen running across the page, blotching the sheet  with spots of ink. You wrote: Mother, I had to do it. I had to leave  to show the strength and perseverance of Godric's friends. I've gone to  meet Hogwarts to do what has to be done. It is my time now to do what  you had done 20 years ago. I love you Mother, never forget that.

Blinking back tears, you  prepared yourself to Apparate straight into the Hog's Head pub, as you  tried to resign yourself to the idea that there was a chance that you  would not be coming out on the other side, alive. But you had lived the  entire year as a shade. In all honestly you were a little embarrassed of  yourself. Proud, brave Gryffindors did not act like this. It was time  for you to stand up for what was right. It was time for you to defend  all the Muggleborns and everyone who had been persecuted and treated  like vermin as He-Who-Must, no, Voldemort forced his will upon everyone throughout all of Britain.