Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any associated characters. This is a work of complete fiction and is not endorsed by J.K. Rowling in any way.

Summary: After the Department of Mysteries incident, everything should have gone back to semi normality, right? It didn't. All kinds of secrets have been floating about for ages, hurting everyone in their path. Now, it is time for revelations, and retribution. HP/RW, HG/GW, RL/SB Former JP/SS, SS/LM. Rated M for safety, character death, and lemons.

Deadly Secrets

Prologue

All kinds of secrets float around Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Some are much more deadly than others. If anyone knows this, it's Albus Dumbledore's adopted niece, Angelic Blaire. Angel looks down on the castle from her private, ice cold wing in the East Tower. She has been isolated all her life, but when Ronald Weasley has no one else to turn to, can she trust herself to remain unattached?

Angel looked down at the grounds with an icy smile playing on her lips. Her heart went out to the three she saw by the lake, especially the one in the middle. Her uncle had informed her that it was his destiny to save the wizarding world. He would have to die in order to do so, but such was the way of life. Her once beating heart gave a mighty heave inside her chest. She wanted so badly to aid in the war efforts, but her uncle refused to let her out of the tower. It was kept at an icy fifteen degrees year round. Her body needed the cold to keep the blood lust at bay. Fortunately, the cold kept her heart from heaving too many times in one day. Only when she saw the poor boy on the grounds would it try to beat again. Suddenly, she sees a change in the routine. The red head got up and walked back into the castle. She thinks nothing of it, not knowing how soon her life would change.

"Where did Ron go?" Harry asked.

"Back up to the castle," Hermione replied, not taking her eyes off the lake.

"Hermione, what's wrong?" Harry inquired gently.

"Ron's been... distant lately. I'm really starting to worry about him," Hermione answered.

"I'll go talk to him," Harry offered.

"No! I don't want to push him. He'll come around when he's ready," Hermione exclaimed.

Harry sighed and looked out across the lake. Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end and he snapped his head around to stare up at the East Tower, the forbidden tower. Standing at the top, inside a layer of ice on the window, was a pallid girl with black hair. Her eyes were crimson. Just as he was about to point her out to Hermione, she vanished.

"Did you see that?" Hermione asked quickly.

"The girl?"

"Yes! She looked so lonely up there."

"Why don't we check it out? We haven't got anything better to do," Harry said, and they set out for the entrance.

The duo raced up the stairs to the seventh floor, where they turned toward the east, away from the setting sun, and walked as fast as they could toward the entrance to the tower. They arrived at a very cold spot, and stared up.

"It's padlocked," Harry said dejectedly.

"Aloha-" Hermione started, but was silenced by Snape's hand clamping down tightly over her mouth.

"Miss Granger, you would do well to not finish that spell. The upper portion of the Eastern Tower is forbidden to students, you of all people must know this," Snape said, and not in his usual sneering tone either. He almost looked worried.

"But... why?" Harry interrupted.

Snape looked like he was going to start sneering again, but sighed. "There is a... creature locked up in the tower. The Headmaster seems to think that it's safer if we keep her here, and locked away," Snape answered.

Harry could've sworn he hear a muffled sob from behind the door. Before he could open his mouth, however, Snape had grabbed the back of his neck and was forcing him to Gryffindor Tower.

Angel sniffed a little when she heard Snape call her a creature. All she'd done was be born to a strange mother and a dark father. It wasn't her fault that she was a monster in a woman's body. Silently, she walked back to her bedroom. Thirty minutes later, there was a clicking noise as Snape entered with her food.

"Thanks, Snape," she said dejectedly.

"I apologize for calling you a creature earlier, but I couldn't afford to betray the Headmaster. You know how it goes," Snape said softly as he set the tray down on the table.

The unmistakable wiggle of a rabbit caught Angel's eye, and Snape left her to her feast, wondering if Professor Dumbledore would ever be able to see that she was harmless. She had learned control a long time ago, during the week that Dumbledore had left, and the cold had left the tower. The lock had been made of ice at the time, and she had been left to her own devices within the school. There were some isolated incidents of childhood pranks- walking in with a black cape on and scaring the living blowflies out of some first year Hufflepuffs, a small air force of bats being let out inside the school, some "hallucinations" of shadows moving- but no one had gotten injured, and she hadn't fed on any students. Snape considered going to the Headmaster and telling him exactly what was happening with his niece, but thought better of it. After all, he himself hadn't believed in self harming vampires until he met her.