Chapter 1.

Rodolphus once asked me what I was like as a teenager. He said he was curious about my past. After all, he hadn't met me until I was twenty-four and by then I'd had enough life experience to know when to keep my mouth shut. I answered him with a smile, which was not unlike me, and said, "I don't really remember."

But really, I remembered all of it.

I remembered that I had been bored and vacant through my schoolgirl years, always waiting for something bigger.

I remembered having friends and hating them, wishing we shared more similar interests.

And I remembered feeling all of those things up until the day I met Tom. I had just taken all my NEWTs and was completely ambivalent toward the results. After all, it had already been decided that I would bide my time, attend parties, and wait to be wooed. Then I would fulfill my ever-so-exciting life calling of being the wife to some powerful Pureblood.

But I was sick of the small town and the big mansion and the rich kid parties. Sick of being stuck in a tiny bubble of safety when I wanted to go on adventures.

I shouldn't have wanted for more. But I did.

When my parents introduced us, they said he would only be staying with us a little while. He assured my sisters and me with a smile that it would be of absolutely no inconvenience to us.

But I wanted inconvenience. Just once, I wanted something that wasn't perfect, wasn't orderly, wasn't safe.

The boys I'd known in school were nothing like him. Maybe it was the age difference and maybe it was that I hadn't been attending school with him for seven years like all the other boys I knew. Maybe it was just that I saw through that charming exterior and saw a dangerous mind and a lecherous smile, and was excited by it.

But above all my teenaged memories, I remembered what it was like with Tom; waking up next to him, always getting up for breakfast and never knowing if I was hungry; my stomach twisting constantly those days with something that could have been anything from infatuation to a stomach flu.

And I remember I wanted it. For Tom was something I had longed for all my life. He was more.