A/N: I've been neglecting fanfiction. Sorry. I know, I'm not done with my big story, but this one's ready. So I'm posting it.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

Someday, someone would find out. It wasn't like she could keep it a secret forever. But not yet, and that was good enough for her.

Someday, though, someone would find out about her. Someone would discover who her parents were, and soon afterward everyone would know.

She had run away when she was nine. She had refused to use either of her parents' last name; she had chosen her own name, one from her family history but one no one would connect with them. Black.

Two years later, she had gotten the letter. At first, she didn't want to go.

But the letter had said Sarah R. Black.

So either they didn't know, or they were willing to pretend they didn't know.

She made her way across the English countryside, reached London, and took the train from Platform 9 and ¾.

She knew that one day, someone, somewhere, would realise that Sarah Black was actually Sarah Potter-Malfoy.

I had to laugh at my nine-year-old. She was cute, thinking she could run away. We let her, of course. Figured it would be a good life lesson, figured she would come back in a few days, a week at most. But she didn't.

We kept thinking she'd come home. But she didn't.

So I helped her. On my own, pretending I had to work late, leaving food or money for her in a sneaky way. So my darling Sarah would never know that she really wasn't on her own.

She'd been sorted into Ravenclaw. A safe house. But one thing already knew about her parents: the Sorting Hat.

She hated them. All of them. Stupid, stuck-up, spoiled brats.

Except one of them.

His name was Tom, and he was her best friend. They did everything together. Classes, homework, Quidditch. They were both Chasers. They worked out their own strategies. They had different personalities and one thing in common: they had run away from the truth.

I was watching her at Hogwarts, too, and I saw what she didn't yet: she and Tom would one day fall in love.

I'd told Tom's parents that he was safe and that I was watching him, but nothing else. He was using a fake name, just like Sarah, but I knew who he was.

He would be the one to find out that Sarah was my daughter.

Second year, she had a top-notch broom, sent to her anonymously by me. Tom had a matching one, and when the team was two Chasers down, they played. The two of them, on their own, could beat a team made of the best players on the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams, even as second-years.

Third year, Tom and Sarah were at the top of their class. They were on the Quidditch team as permanent members now. They had also discovered the wonders of nighttime wanderings. Sarah had gotten the Invisibility Cloak for her birthday, delivered anonymously by me. The snuck about through the castle, hidden by the Cloak. They spent all night out together, slept in the common room– and never left each other's sides. It was cute, when they were thirteen.

Second chapter coming soon. R&R, please!

-Tamarisk