To whomever finds this journal, be you friend or foe, I ask only one favor: tell my children that their mother loves them. Cecily and Izara are the two creatures for whom my own heart continues to beat, identical to each other in every way. I'm afraid that I'll never get to meet the beautiful, smart, intelligent women that they will indubitably grow to become—as their mother and father did before them, not to brag. You see, reader, I'm to be condemned. And soon I'll be dead—or worse, if the rumors about the dementor's kiss turn out to be true—because I am guilty and justice prevails. My one regret is that I won't get to see my Cecily and Izara grow into the witches they're going to be. I love them nonetheless.

Depending on who you are, reader of this journal, you might have never heard of me, or you might have heard a great deal of talk—one never knows how the fads will spread themselves across the years. Either way, this journal should be recognized as the one true account of the story of Xanthiera Adeline Greengrass: my story.

Now, as I'm to be executed at age twenty-one, it's fair to say that the last few years of my teens were dense with activity, information, and discovery. After a great bit of contemplation, though, I've drawn out a list of the thirteen key events of the last six and a half years of my life, every event that would somehow lead to this moment, days before my death, me scribbling my last accounts and shoving them between the pages of a dusty old book, hidden (possibly forever) in the expansive shelves of Malfoy Manor. I write these key points here at the beginning of my tale so that should my writing become rushed and incoherent, you and I may refer back to the main structure and, as the muggles put it, get back on track.

These thirteen key events are as follows:

1. My fifteenth birthday

2. The First Incident with Fred Weasley

3. Streeler Venom

4. The Longest Summer

5. Independent Potions Laboratory

6. My Nervous Breakdown

7. The Birth of Xagspins

8. The Death of Greer Weist

9. X Potions

10. Cecily and Izara

11. My Task From the Dark Lord

12. The Massacre and my Moments with Edward Remus Lupin

13. The Final Incident With Fred Weasley

These thirteen events are the backbone of my time spent with my precious potions, the one man I've ever loved, the one man I've ever feared, and the two sets of sisters that I will never have enough time to love—my daughters, and also my own two younger sisters.

The final note that I would like to address before we truly begin is that of my Death Eater status. I never took the Dark Mark, and I never believed any of their rubbish. I ran parallel to it, I will concede. I witnessed injustice and did nothing to stop it. I murdered. But I in no way, shape, or form did the things that I did out of racial prejudice. The people that I murdered, I did so out of pure rage, hatred, revenge, desperation, I don't know. I don't know what made me do it—what made me such a fierce and violent killer. And in the end, I couldn't even complete my task anyway. I will die a failure.

This is the introduction to the first story I'm posting online. Hope y'all enjoy