Chapter Text
Rayne rose out of her bed at five in the morning. Not because she was an early riser; quite the opposite. It was five by the time she had realised she wasn’t going to get any sleep after all, and she might as well be vertical instead of horizontal. Fun change of pace, she figured.
Her black, curly hair had flung off its hairband sometime during the night, and she didn’t bother retrieving it as she rubbed the fatigue from her emerald eyes. She stood barefoot on the simple hardwood floor of her bedroom, worn smooth with age and millions of steps, and stretched her hands up to the ceiling with a yawn. The movement caused her sleep shirt, an old tie-dye number from summer camp, to lift far enough above her knees to show off the jagged hem of her old gym shorts.
She didn’t have pyjamas, in the sense that her parents had never bought her clothes specifically for sleeping. She would be fine sleeping in clothes that were either too small or too threadbare to be worn in public. But since it was so early, and nobody else was awake, she figured she could get away with wearing these clothes outside for a little while. She wanted to sit up in her favorite tree before the sun could rise and bring with it the sweltering mid-August heat.
Rayne crept through the squat house like a shadow; she’d long memorized every creaky floorboard, and eased the screen door open without so much as a wheeze from the old hinges. Her bare feet tread confidently across the grass of the front garden, making delicate footprints in the morning dew. The birds and cicadas greeted her with their morning symphony, and she inhaled the smells of summer: salt from the river water, dirt from the ground beneath her, and the stale lingering scent of grass mowed a few days ago, all suspended in the thick, humid air that was so common on the Eastern Shore of Maryland this time of year.
The cloudless sky began to tint with blue, illuminating the branches and footholds she almost didn’t need to see anymore to climb her favourite tree. It was a maple, tall and strong, with a particularly rounded Y in the upper limbs that was perfect for sitting in. And so, in the cradle of her tree, peeking through the soft, green canopy of leaves surrounding her, Rayne Day watched the sun rise on her eleventh birthday.
She knew that this birthday would be different from the rest. It was scary at first, to think of leaving home. To begin this new chapter of her life, leaving everything she knew behind, but it had to be done. Everything was packed, prepared, and safely stowed under a loose floorboard in her room. She had packed light; just the bare essentials. A change of clothes, a toothbrush, a bar of soap in a ziplock bag, a small comb, a thick plastic Gatorade bottle that she figured would last well enough for carrying water, a few cans of food smuggled from the pantry, a folded roadway map from the welcome centre off the highway, and as much money as she could save in the past year. This was truly the riskiest thing to prepare, since her father constantly complained about how little money they had. She had to be extremely careful with how much she took, making sure it wouldn’t be enough for him to notice. She had about $144, which she had rolled up in a rubber band and would be tucking inside her shoe when it was time. When it was time… to run away from home.
This hadn’t been an easy decision for her, but Rayne had come to the conclusion that she wouldn’t be safe at home much longer. Her episodes were getting closer and closer together. She kept doing… weird things. Impossible things. She knew how her parents felt about it, and she knew what the rest of the church was saying behind their backs. If a certain conclusion was reached en masse, and if her parents agreed, that would be the point at which she was no longer safe. They would do everything in their power to… get rid of her.
She knew her parents were out late with the church last night. Hunting. She knew they would probably sleep until noon. This was her window, her opportunity. She could escape right now; be out the door and on a greyhound within the hour. But then what? This was always the question that made her pause. What would she do then? She was too young to get a job, or rent an apartment, or even book a room in a shady motel. She didn’t know what kind of life she would lead once she ran away, or even how long it would last before the police found her and dragged her home. But she had to try. She was older and stronger than she was yesterday, and she had to just trust her planning and make a move.
In fact, she had just shifted to start climbing down her tree and do just that – when a loud “Hoot!” sounded from above her. And, inexplicably, a thick, wax-sealed envelope.. fell from the branches above her? And landed squarely in her lap. She froze, her brain short-circuiting as it tried to make this make sense. She looked up sharply, but aside from a large bird taking flight somewhere above her, there was no one. There wasn’t a building anywhere near her tree from which it could have fallen, and it was way too heavy to have been carried on the wind from somewhere else. Stranger than all of that, the envelope was addressed to her, in emerald-green ink similar to the shade of her eyes.
Rayne Beatrice Day
The Maple in the Garden
Marsh Cabin
Tilghman Neck Road
Maryland, USA
The part about Maple and Garden didn’t make sense in the address, unless… no, they couldn’t mean this specific maple tree that she was sitting in? Who would put that on a letter? Her hands shook as she broke the wax seal, her eyes darting to the front of her house to search for any sign at all that her parents could be awake. She had a bad feeling that this could be a horrible new version of her episodes, and if that was the case she definitely didn’t want her parents finding out. But as she pulled the first piece of parchment from the envelope, her blood ran cold in her veins and all noise faded from around her, save for a gradual ringing that was building in her ears. That “bad feeling” pooled like lead in the pit of her stomach as she read, barely daring to breathe:
Dear Miss Day, We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of-
-a violent shudder trembled through her at the next words, confirming her very worst fears since childhood:
-Witchcraft and Wizardry.