When Worlds Collide

Prologue

A wizard father and a Muggle mother.

The best of both worlds? Yeah, I'd say so. I get to act like any other normal teenager in the summertime, but for three-quarters of the year I'm packed off to the most prestigious school of magical studies in North America - Salem Academy of Magic, in - you guessed it - Salem, Massachusetts, home of the world-famous witch trials of 1692.

I'm one of seven kids, the second-to-oldest to be exact. My older brother Isaac works at Gringotts in New York City, so he's not home all that often. The rest of we kids, save for the three youngest, go to Salem Academy. Dad's the head of the Great Plains Division of the United States Ministry of Magic, located in Oklahoma City, and I'm hoping to become an Auror when I leave school. That is, if playing Quidditch for the Dallas Strikers doesn't pan out. I'm a Chaser for my House team at school, the Drillers, with a world-class broomstick in my possession - Dad bought the second-hand Firebolt in a Muggle pawn shop little more than a year before I started at the Academy. I've held the same position ever since sixth grade; my friends Christie Dawes and Rhett Hamblin are the other two Chasers, and my sister Jessica is the Seeker for the team. I might have a Firebolt, but Jess? Her broom is a LightningStrike350, the same broomstick used by the United States national Quidditch team. She joined the team in sixth grade, same as I did. My brother Zachary couldn't stay up on a broomstick even if someone put a Balancing Charm on it first. It was funny the first couple of times he fell off my Firebolt, but pretty soon it became the family joke. He stays well away from Jess and I while we're practicing Quidditch during summer break. He reckons we scare the living hell out of him, but I know better. He's jealous of the fact that Jess and I are phenomenal at Quidditch - Dad's words, not mine - and he's about as good as playing it as Mom is at magic. No talent whatsoever. Dad always did say that Quidditch talent is born not acquired, and I think he's right on that point. My youngest siblings - Avery, Mackenzie and Zoë - will be starting at Salem when they're old enough.

I live with my family in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a neighbourhood that's for the most part all Muggles, with about ten or fifteen wizarding families. You should see all the mischief I get up to with my friends, both Muggle-born and wizard - one such incident involves my best friends Kiah Henrickson and Carey Holt, a tin of bright green interior house paint, mine and Kiah's wands, a rope-and-pulley system put together by Carey, the principal of Nathan Hale High School and a couple of well-placed levitation charms. You figure out the rest.

I should introduce myself, I guess. My name is Taylor Hanson, and I'm a wizard.