Callbacks

PROLOGUE: GRUNDARFJÖÐUR

"Well, Albus. It seems you've made the most pointless decision of your career," Professor Minerva McGonagall huffed slightly. "Granted, it will require very little effort to accommodate her, but given her history I'm not certain she'll even consider coming."

Dumbledore smiled. "And if she does? The skills she can give to the students will be particularly useful in the coming years, Minerva, especially for aspiring Aurors." He glanced at her over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "I'm well aware that nerve is no substitute for recent experience. Lord Voldemort is drawing his sympathizers closer. Some of our number may be required to keep close contact with them. It has been years since they last assumed these roles." Briefly, Dumbledore's eyes lost their customary twinkle. "I would deeply regret losing any of the Order to a thoughtless mistake."

He met the Transfiguration professor's worried gaze for a few silent moments. "It would mean a great deal to the Order if we had her help."

"Albus . . ." She sighed. "I'll write her Muggle university immediately, and send an owl to her in the morning." She rose to leave, but turned back to Dumbledore. "I understand your reasoning, Albus. I am only reluctant to introduce a possible liability into the Order."

"Loyalty tends to run in families, Minerva. If not, we shall have to employ other methods." He twinkled up at her. "Goodnight. Sleep well, and dream of the next great undiscovered Gryffindor Quidditch champion."

Almost a thousand miles from the professors' conversation, the discussed was feeling, well, disgust at her own contentment.

It was the weather.

That had to be it. There was absolutely no other reason for being so completely happy and relaxed. Typically, Hazel had to consciously remind herself to let her shoulder muscles unclench and relax her jaw. But the weather was perfect, and therefore, her mood had naturally followed suit.

The August sky above Grundarfjöður was immaculate; the air was clear, untouched by smog or smoke or light pollution. Flat-topped, treeless mountains ringed the small Icelandic town on all sides, giving visitors the impression they lived inside a large, jagged cereal bowl. In the inmost point of the mountain bowl laid small houses and buildings.

Hazel Farren couldn't see the buildings at the moment. She was stretched out in a green expanse just outside of the town, Dell DJ in one hand and the strange Icelandic mountains ringing her peripheral vision. She loved Iceland. She loved being able to breathe without snot from her allergies clogging up her nose. Hazel Farren was very far from the place of her birth, and the distance was exactly what she'd intended.

She rose, brushed a few stray pieces of grass from her running shorts, and easily jogged the few minutes through the town streets to the small blue duplex that was her home during the summer months. The silver "17" on the unlocked door flashed in the sun as it swung open. Inside, the apartment walls were covered with shelves stacked high with plays and literature. For the past three years the blue duplex had served as a retreat where Hazel could prepare for the upcoming year at the Oxford School of Drama. Hazel wasn't returning to London in the fall. She'd finished all her classes and, after a year-long internship with a theater company or school, she'd complete her B.F.A. in acting and graduate with honors.

Shower time. Her morning run had worked up a reasonable amount of sweat and nastiness. Definitely cool water. The morning had been surprisingly warm for a town so far from the equator. It was still strange having the entire bathroom to herself, but Hazel took full advantage of it, stripping down and throwing her clothes into various corners of the lime-tiled floor before stepping into the small shower.

The School of Drama's academic advisor's office smelled, as always, of cheese. Behind his desk, the slight, balding advisor glanced over Hazel's transcript and her intern request form. "First choice, Royal Shakespeare Company?"

Hazel smiled. "Yes, sir."

Oh yes, yes, please yes, God yes, absolutely. She'd aspired to it for years, wanted it even at the age of fifteen. Stocky, unattractive, and with a slight lisp brought about by bad teeth in the process of correction by braces, she'd changed her diet, her exercise, and thrown herself at her homework and her theater work with an inflamed passion. She shut herself in her room for hours, reading, desperately wanting to be the Rosalind, the Beatrice, the Portia of a man who lived and died hundreds of years earlier and an ocean away from a small girl working at a small local theater in a small town in North Carolina.

Her parents . . . a sudden tapping noise startled Hazel out of her disconnected memories. She nearly gashed herself, shrieked, and dropped her razor. She turned the water off. The tapping stopped. Must have been the pipes. She turned the water on again.

Hazel's Grundarfjöður flat was as much home as her dorm at Oxford, but was sadly lacking the added amusement of her dorm mate, Audrey. Audrey was a charming, easily excited, hardworking girl of 22. Hazel had tried to convince Audrey to join her in her Icelandic flat for their final summer before the two girls split up, Hazel for her internship and Audrey for studying endangered animals off North Carolina's Outer Banks with Campbell University. Spending the summer months in Iceland? No, no, Audrey had insisted. Enjoy your time alone while you still have it. Audrey had opted to take a long vacation on the beaches of the Outer Banks with her Devonshire family, before she formally got herself to Campbell to begin work in late August.

Freshly bathed and smelling of fruit, Hazel wrapped the deep green towel tightly around herself before leaving the bathroom to open the heavy curtains on the windows of her bedroom. The sun never went down during the summer months, and it was by thick curtains alone that she managed to get a proper night's sleep. A light dose of melatonin never hurt, either, though waking from her first few nights of it were always more of a "staggering" than a "rising."

There was that tapping again. Goddamn pipes. The water wasn't even running. Why were the pipes making noise if the water wasn't on? Hazel went back into the bathroom. Funny, the noise had been louder in her bedroom. She left the bathroom and went into her bedroom again. It WAS louder.

"What the fuck . . ." she said aloud.

Suddenly, the window beside her bed shattered. Hazel swore aloud in shock.

A magnificent spotted owl flew in amongst the shards. He let out a brief, irritable hoot, unceremoniously dropped the letter it was carrying on her bed, and landed on one of the posts.

Three thousand miles from home, and her parents' world had still managed to find her.