Children of Evil

Chapter 1

The garden was always beautiful, but in the summer, it was especially glorious. There were fountains of roses everywhere, creating curtains of deep reds, pale yellows, delicate pinks, pure whites, and rich purples. In the far corner of this lovely rose garden, there was an enormous old willow tree. A white wicker bench was nestled in the shade beneath this tree, and a small, dark-haired girl was perched on this bench. Lillian Rosier was not an ordinary eleven year old girl, not even an ordinary witch who was going to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Lillian Rosier was the daughter of two death eaters, Evan and Malise Rosier. Her father was killed by an auror before she was born, and her mother had taken in the son of William Nott, another widowed death eater who had had the bad luck of getting caught. William Nott was currently in Azkaban under a life sentence. His son, Theodore, was a year older than Lillian. Theodore was the main reason Lillian was out in the garden; he was just like his father and her mother: nasty and mean. Well, what could one expect from death eaters? Lillian had endured her mother her whole life, obeying her without arguing and trying to ignore her mother's hateful streak. Theodore certainly did not help make her life any better. He teased her, jinxed her dolls (with her mother's wand) so they grew slug-like tentacles sprouting out of their limp cloth bodies, and hid behind doors in the dark rooms of the Rosier house and jumped out to scare her because he knew she was very high-strung.

The Rosier house was a very old, Tudor style house at the end of a shady country lane. Malise Rosier had inherited it from her husband when she died. It was in a dreadful state of disrepair because no one cared for it anymore. The only reason the rose garden was so lovely still was that, since Lillian spent most of her free time outside avoiding Theodore, she had tended the garden until it was as beautiful as it now was.

Lillian surveyed her work happily in the bright sunshine of the August afternoon the day before her birthday. Her bright blue eyes swept over the creamy yellow roses, her favorite ones. She pushed back a strand of her thick black hair that was already straying from her braid. She was very excited, not only because her birthday was tomorrow, but in two weeks time she would be on the Hogwarts Express, headed for her first year at the most famous wizarding school in England.

"Lillian, I would like a word with you! Come back in here! I don't want to have to go outside to talk to you! It's far too hot!" a voice hollered from the dining room window. Lillian sighed and strolled back inside the dark, stuffy house. She found her mother sitting in the carved wooden chair in the dim corner of the dining room. Her mother was preparing a list of things Lillian had to bring to school. Malise Rosier was a very small, woman with the same thick black hair as Lillian. Her hair was pulled into a twist with curls (created by a curling iron every morning) hanging down the back. She wore very expensive mauve robes.

"Now, Lillian, you absolutely must be sorted into Slytherin! I don't care where the hat wants to put you, you tell it to put you in Slytherin! The only people at that school with any sense make sure to be sorted into Slytherin. Look at Theodore, for example! A perfect boy, and in Slytherin. I've been worrying quite a bit that you might get stuck in a simply dreadful house like Hufflepuff or Ravenclaw because you're so bookish and rather cowardly. Now will you promise me that you will make sure that you are put in Slytherin?" Lillian often thought of her mother speaking in italics. That was the only way you could explain the way she stressed words when she really meant something. She also would always go on about Theodore being a perfect little boy, and that Lillian should strive to be just like him. Lillian had no intention of ever being anything at all like Theodore, or like her mother, but she went on pretending that she was perfectly content living in a house full of dark magic and with a family, some alive and some dead or gone, that had all been Slytherins and had been users of dark magic. Lillian was just far too nice to bring harm onto anything. She could never be a Death Eater. That was a bit of a weakness with her actually. She could not stand to do anything that would hurt another person's or animal's feelings. That was actually the main reason she had never spoken out against her mother. She did not want to hurt her feelings (whether she had any or not, considering she was a Death Eater).

"Mother, you know I will try my very hardest to be put in Slytherin. I know how very much it means to you. I have to uphold the family honor," Lillian told her mother in her sweet, quiet voice.

"You certainly have to uphold the family honor! But doesn't it mean anything to you to be put into Slytherin? It's all very well that you want to be in Slytherin to please me, but with an attitude like that you'll wind up in Hufflepuff!" Malise cried.

"Of course I want to be in Slytherin!" said Lillian, internally wincing at her lie. She knew very well that she wanted to be in Ravenclaw, with other people who were just as interested in learning as she was. But Lillian was a subdued, agreeable almost-eleven-year-old girl, so she tried to be the way her mother wanted her to be.


That night, Lillian murmured sleepily to herself in her bedroom as the moon shone through the tall, open window onto her bed, "I hope I have fun at Hogwarts, and I hope I make friends… I have a weird feeling…" and with that, she fell asleep, and she had forgotten her slight feelings of foreboding by the time she woke up bright and cheery early in the morning on her eleventh birthday.

A/N: Do you like it? I have great plans for this story, it should crosses fingers be long! Yay! Anyway, please review! Thanks!