Prologue
Disclaimer (applies to the entire story): I don't own anything.
Seventeen.
That age when everything seemed to fall into place. School was finished, she had received a prestigious job offer, and she was in love, in love with the boy she had dated for the past three years.
They planned to marry in a year, when they were eighteen and old enough not to need her parents' permission. They didn't want her to marry him, felt that he was nothing more than someone looking to get her money, someone wanting to use her family name to gain power.
They were right.
***
He left her two years after they were married, when she was expecting a baby. And, after he left, she couldn't remember anything for those next seven months. She was told, later, that she was found wandering the streets, crying for her lost child. He told her that.
***
She was still beautiful then, with long dark hair and skin as pale as the moon. That is why he had loved her, even though she was a Gryffindor. But when, seven months after he'd left, she started to remember things again, her beauty was fading. And now, at seventy-three, her beauty was nothing more than a memory.
Yes, it had been a long time since she was beautiful.