Chapter 1

The hood was lifted off her head, and she blinked rapidly to adjust to the light. She lifted her eyes to look at the black eyed, black haired woman at the other end of the table. She smiled maliciously.

"Good evening, Miss Rapunzel," she said, leaning forward.

"Good evening," Rapunzel replied. She frowned at her, and said, "I don't know your name."

The woman narrowed his eyes and stood up. "My name is something you don't need to know," she said, walking behind her and stroking Rapunzel's hair. Rapunzel shivered. The woman leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Dearie, the only thing you need to know is that you're going to be staying here for a little while."

"Here?" Rapunzel looked about the small room, covered in white wallpaper and devoid of windows. She attempted to look the woman in the eye. "I don't want to."

The woman laughed. "It's not a question of you wanting to be here, dearie," she said. She walked around to the opposite side of the table and sat down. "You see, dearie, I have something that I want, something that only your father can give me. So, we're going to make a trade. I'll give you to him if he gives me what I want."

"What do you want?" Rapunzel asked.

The woman tutted. "That's not for you to know, dearie. I don't like questions."

"But what if my father doesn't give you what you want?"

"Oh, dearie," the woman viciously smiled. "I don't think you want the answer to that question." She stood up and walked back behind Rapunzel again. She pulled on Rapuzel's hair and put a dagger to her throat. "And please, dearie, no more questions. Unless you wish to be punished."

Rapunzel had not talked for days. Her throat was dry, her stomach was empty, and her head was full of questions. What did this woman want? Would her father give it to her? When would she be free? And perhaps most importantly, when was she going to be fed? Since she had gotten here, she had not had a bite to eat or a drop to drink.

She cried often. She cried for her mom, for her dad, for her cat, for her bed, for her window overlooking the Avon River.

After many long days and many long hours, the woman finally returned. She smirked at Rapunzel, who was curled up in a corner with eyes red from crying. "Dearie, why are you crying?"

Rapunzel raised her head and gave the woman her most fierce expression she could manage. "I thought you didn't like questions."

The woman crossed the room in a flash and slapped her. "I don't like questions from bratty six-year olds," she hissed. She took a few steps back and smiled. "Dearie, I brought you some food! I am afraid I forgot to feed you, didn't I?" She took out a wand from up her sleeve and flicked it towards the door. A plate laden with bread and cheese flew in and landed at Rapunzel's bare feet. Rapunzel peered at it suspiciously, then unfolded herself from her curled position and ate voraciously.

The woman tutted, and shook her head. Rapunzel looked up, tucking a lock of her long blond hair behind her ear. "What?" she enquired. The woman kicked her and Rapunzel fell sideways.

With rapid steps, the woman walked towards the door. "No questions," she hissed, and then she closed the door with a bang. Rapunzel could hear the locks clicking on the other side.

Lifting herself back up into a sitting position, Rapunzel continued to eat. When she was finished, her appetite was barely sated. She looked wistfully at the plate, wishing that she had a wand like her parents' and could use it to conjure food, or maybe even to unlock the door and run away from that evil woman. But her mom said she wasn't old enough to have wand yet, that she'd have to wait until she was accepted to Hogwarts.

Still, Rapunzel thought, I can still use magic. There had been a few times where she had gotten really mad and magical things had happened. Like when she was really mad at her mother for cutting her hair short and made it grow back to the same length it was overnight.

Rapunzel stood up and walked over to the door. She frowned at it and thought about all the things that had happened recently: the woman slapping her, the woman kicking her, the woman calling her "dearie," the woman forgetting to feed her, and the woman not wanting her to ask questions. She closed her eyes and concentrated on these things, willing the door to open.

The building exploded.

She woke up to bright lights and bleeps and tears on her parents' faces. A muggle Healer (a nurse, her mother told her) allowed her to sit up and drink some water. After the nurse left, Rapunzel asked her father, "Why am I in a muggle hospital?"

"You were in a building in the middle of London, and the muggle police found you under the wreckage. You were… unexplainably unharmed," he explained, winking.

Rapunzel gazed down at her body in wonder. From what she could tell, she had no cuts, no bruises, or any injuries of any kind. "Then why am I in a hospital at all?"

"The muggles wanted to make sure that you were completely uninjured," her mother said.

"So when do I get to leave?" Rapunzel asked. Her parents chucked.

"Well, they said when you woke and ingested some food, you were free to go," her mother said, smiling radiantly.

As Rapunzel began to eat the soup the nurse had brought, her parents turned to each other and sighed. They both understood that this kidnapping might be a foreshadowing of catastrophes to come.

Her parents homeschooled Rapunzel, and tried to keep her from leaving the house. So, naturally, Rapunzel tried to spend as much time outside as possible. She relished the feeling of grass on her feet, and loved to climb trees and try to skip rocks across the Avon River. She drew the various birds she saw, and learned astronomy from one of her dad's books so she could look at the constellations at night. When her parents managed to force her to stay inside, Rapunzel read books without repose. At the dinner table, she badgered her parents with questions about magic and pressured her mother into letting her hold her wand. If her parents refused to answer one of her questions, she would sneak into her dad's library at night and look for the answer in one of his books. Her parents would often find her in the morning asleep on the floor with a book as a pillow.

When Clouseau, her father's rather dim owl, brought her Hogwarts acceptance letter, Rapunzel ran screaming through the house and into her father's library. "Look, look, look!" she exclaimed, shoving the paper onto her father's desk.

He closed his book and glanced at the paper. Smiling, he looked at Rapunzel and said, "I guess it is time for you to visit Diagon Alley."