From Luna5862: Hello everyone. First off I just want to say thank you for reading my first fanfiction. Secondly, I want to remind you to read, comment, review, and share with your friends. I'll only post Author's Notes when I really need to inform you of anything, so make sure and read them! Enjoy Chapter 1 and let me know what you think!

Chapter 1

There are several things that Xenophilius Lovegood regretted. He regretted teaching Luna to believe in nonexistent creatures and always stare at people when she talked with them. The child was sweet and loving, everything like his beloved Jade. Xenophilius knew Luna was tortured by her peers at school because of the way he had taught her to act. How could he not know when she spent almost every night she was at home crying into her pillows? It broke his heart to see such a sweet and innocent girl tortured so, but it was unavoidable; necessary just as everything else he had done over the last sixteen years had been.

Xenophilius shook his head to get rid of the distracting thoughts as he slowly made his way down the hallways of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. With the fate of the Wizarding World hanging in the balance, the battle surrounding the school was in full swing. No one had noticed him sneak away from the front lines of Harry Potter's side, a feat of vital importance for his final act of service in the war. He still could not believe that he had agreed to kill one of his closest friend's son, but he was one of the few trusted members of the Order left and the only one who could be spared for any length of time to finish the act.

Wandering the halls in his hooded robes, Xenophilius was reminded of hi s own school days when his best friend and himself would go out searching for students out after hours to torture. Seeing shadows ahead of him in the corridor, Xenophilius ducked sideways into one of the school's many hidden passageways and crept along the outermost wall of the school. Pausing on the edge of the hidden gap between two stained glass windows, Xenophilius quickly pulled the left arm of his robes up to reveal his blank forearm. He smiled as he performed a series of complicated wand movements and whispered a string of ancient magic words, reveling in the darkening mark that was hidden there. He could easily remember his seventh year when he and Tom had snuck out and walked deep into the Forbidden Forest to perform the ancient magic that would bind them together for eternity. All that was required of him was to pay witness to Tom's first murder and swear on the blood of the small first year girl to carry a piece of Tom's soul with him until the hour of his own death.

The moon was hidden behind storm bringing clouds, but that didn't stop the two hooded figures from racing out of the castle's large oak doors and into the darkest parts of the Forbidden Forest. Xenophilius had tried only once to convince Tom to wait for another night to perform the ancient bit of magic, but the menace in his best friend's eyes had stopped his words in their tracks. There was something about Tom when he got that look in his eyes that told Xenophilius not to cross him. The look was full of anger and revenge, but most of all it sparked with the pure evil that was slowly growing inside of Tom. Xenophilius had been friends with Tom Riddle since they first met on the Hogwarts Express six and a half years ago. He had been looking for a place to sit and found himself locked inside the luggage compartment in near total darkness by a group of seventh year Slytherins. He was terrified of dark places and had found himself wondering to the far end of the compartment to try and find a window or something to shine a little light on him. What he had found was Tom sitting on a pile of trunks speaking in a strange language to a covered cage above him.

"What are you doing?" he had timidly asked the strange boy.

"I'm talking to Salazar." The boy had replied calmly, turning his dark eyes to the newcomer. "What are you doing?"

"A bunch of seventh years locked me in here after I asked them if they'd seen any Crumple Horned Snorcacks running around the train."

"Crumple Horner Snorcacks you say?" the boy had asked, sliding down from the pile of trunks and coiling himself beside Xenophilius, remarkably resembling a snake. "What are Crumple Horned Snorcacks?"

From that moment on, Xenophilius and Tom were near inseparable. It wasn't uncommon for the two of them to end up in the Headmaster's office for roaming the halls late at night after long periods of time in the library searching for information about older and darker magic than they were taught in their lessons. Of course, none of the staff knew what the boys were researching. For all they knew the boys were actually having late night rendezvous with their female classmates in the Restricted Section, and since the boys were really quite popular with the ladies, the story lead to the perfect cover-up, as long as they didn't push their luck to far and do their late research too often. Xenophilius did whatever Tom asked of him, because Tom was his only friend. Tom had been the one to arrange the tour of the magical world to search for Xenophilius's rare creatures and offered to accompany him. It had been Tom who had introduced Xenophilius to his wife, Jade Black. So it only seemed natural to Xenophilius that he did the things Tom asked him to do, which is what put him into the position he was in today: working as a double-agent for Lord Voldemort.

Xenophilius Lovegood didn't regret much about the choices he'd made in his forty-plus years, but certain aspects of being a Death Eater had always plagued him. He had never had the heart to watch people suffer, and so he had never been one to torture unnecessarily like most of his brothers and sisters. Yes, he had killed; men, women, young boys and girls. They weren't the things he was most proud of, but it had been necessary. Tom would never ask him to do something that wasn't for the greater good; or at least that's what he'd been telling himself since he had taken the Malfoys' daughter.

Hearing noises in the corridor behind him, Xenophilius removed his wand from the depths of his robes. It would be one thing for someone in the Order of the Phoenix to find him hiding in a hidden corridor; it was another for someone in the Order of the Phoenix to find him with a Dark Mark on his arm. After several minutes, the noise drifted farther down the corridor before blending once again with the roars and cries from the grounds on the other side of the stone walls. Xenophilius waited a few moments more before using his wand to conceal his Dark Mark and stowing it back inside his robes. It wasn't as if Xenophilius had any kind of personal vendetta with Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, it was just imperative to Tom's plans that the Malfoys be a part of the Death Eaters. Even though the sheer size of Lord Voldemort's ranks could have been enough to overthrow the Ministry of Magic, the Dark Lord still felt as if he needed one more thing: money. With money he could bribe members of the Ministry and buy his way into the heart of the giant and werewolf clans hidden deep within the wild of Great Britain. Voldemort tried everything to lure the Malfoys into his ranks, but the family stood firm in the Light. The Malfoys were not Mudblood lovers by any means, but the fear of the family name being destroyed after generations of building it up overshadowed their fears of being killed by the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had then approached his dearest and oldest friend, Xenophilius Lovegood to help him solve this problem. After conferences with Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband, Xenophilius devised a way to lure the Malfoys into the Dark Lord's ranks: taking their daughter, the first Malfoy daughter in generations, and forcing their hand.

Everything had worked perfectly to plan, until the Dark Lord's defeat. Upon news of Potter's triumph and with the Ministry of Magic rushing to question known Death Eaters, Xenophilius had apparated to Malfoy Manor with every intention of killing the entire Malfoy family. He had blasted through the doors and stormed through the house, leaving a path of disaster in his wake. He had found the family in their small son's room lying on the giant four poster bed, asleep. Xenophilius had raised his wand and begun uttering the curse, when little Draco had opened his eyes and stared at him. Big grey, blue eyes had watched him with a wisdom far beyond his years; eyes that reminded him of the little girl that he and Jade had come to fall in love with. Xenophilius had lowered his wand and smiled at the small boy, waiting until he had fallen back asleep to rethink his plans.

Finally, with Ministry officials swarming the manor, Xenophilius had cast a very powerful, ancient memory charm, erasing any traces of the Malfoy daughter from the manor and the minds of its inhabitants. Xenophilius then apparated from the manor just as Ministry officials burst into the Malfoy heir's room and took the Malfoys in for questioning. As far as anyone in the Wizarding World was concerned, the Malfoys had convinced the Wizengamot that they had been held under the Imperious Curse and were in no way responsible for the many dastardly things they had done. Upon inspection of their memories, the Wizengamot found nothing to disprove these claims, which was exactly as Xenophilius had needed things to be. If word had gotten out about the Malfoy daughter being used to ensure her family's loyalties to the Dark Lord, Xenophilius himself would have been locked away in Azkaban and have been of no use to his Lord and friend.

Xenophilius did not regret the things he had done to get to this moment in his life, but he was not proud of them either. He had often wondered how his life might have turned out. Would Jade still be alive? Would he have a son or daughter of his own?

An explosion shook the castle to its very foundations, causing Xenophilius to backtrack back into the main corridor of the school. Lifting the hood of his cloak to cover his face, he began to make his way down the corridor to complete his task. Rounding a corner, Xenophilius stumbled upon a group of students battling with several Death Eaters. One by one the students began to fall or desert their comrades, all but two girls fighting side by side. One a Weasley, the other a Mudblood. Xenophilius crept up behind them, pulling his wand from his robes as he went.

"Avada Keda…"

"Bombarda!" a voice called from his left.

Xenophilius had just enough time to see a flaming ball of light rush towards him before he was thrown to his right through a stained glass window. He remembered this window, showing two people standing on the edge of a lake holding hands watching a sunset, from his school days. It was the window where he had first asked Jade to Hogsmeade and the window where he and Tom had first created the name Lord Voldemort all those many years ago. As the shattered glass fell around him, and he watched his vision go black, Xenophilius saw a pair of large grey, blue eyes staring at him filled with anger, sorrow, and wisdom far beyond the blonde haired girl's years.

From Luna5862: Well, that's Chapter 1. I hope you all enjoyed it and are favorite-ing this story as we speak. Chapter 2 will hopefully be up sometime in the next week or so (at the latest!). Please review and tell me what you think.