Prologue

Russia: Moscow

"What does she look like?"

The first words out of her husband's mouth when her first, and last, baby had been born were not very comforting.

"Is she like me or you? Or something else entirely? Can that happen?"

Chanel Voronsky Aksana didn't look at the brutish looking man she called her partner for life. How much more of his whining could she take? Not much more. 'Patience, patience," she reminded herself. Only she had never been very patient, especially with her husband.

"If it's too ugly, what will we do? Not keep it, right? I mean, you can't be too attached to it already, can you?"

Chanel wanted to scream that yes, she could be that attached to her firstborn baby girl, and that she was, as a matter of fact. But she didn't. Instead, she leaned over to the night table stand and grabbed a long, slender looking stick: her wand. She hid it near her bed covers while her husband, Alexei, droned on.

"Now Chanel, if she has too friendly a look on her, we could always fix that, no need to worry. Not that I'm implying that you are worried or anything, its just that you're so quiet. What are you going to name her? Can I help? I have lots of good, Russian names in my head, you know."

'Of course you do," thought Chanel. "Only Russian names, I'd bet. Or, if you're feeling really original, you'd change them a bit and call them English. How amazing" Chanel had no intention of letting Alexei help name her daughter. She already had a name picked out of her anyways.

".Good names, like Anna, Anika, Elena, and Jelena, and others! Of course, if you wanted, I could help you name her with an English name. Like, uhhh...Anne, or Erin, or Mary, or Barbra, or Suzan, or."

Chanel gripped her wand a bit tighter. Her jaw was clenched and her eyes set. 'What horrid, common names he thinks of! No originality, whatsoever!"

"Is something bothering you, pumpkin? Because I could always help you-"

But Chanel cut him off by standing up, wooden stick in hand, her blue eyes blazing. "Yes," she said with a terrible calmness in her voice. "Yes, I do believe you could help me. First off, by shutting up. Next: don't ever, ever, ever call me pumpkin. I'm not a play thing for you- I will never be so. Also: no, you will have no say in the naming of this child, or in what happens to her."

Alexei wasn't about to take that. He many not have been as clever as his wife, but his intelligence was a bit greater than a rock. The last sentence seemed to snap him out of his stupid stupor that he was normally in. "What did you say? Are you telling me to shut up? Do you dare to tell me what to call you? I will call you whatever I feel like, and you will jump to obey me! I could have killed you anytime! You are only alive today thanks to the goodness in my heart! And furthermore, only I will have a say in this kid's life- you are out of it!" With this statement, Alexei reached into the pocket of his dark black robe and pulled out a black wand. His was shorter and thicker than his wife's. He pointed it at his wife and started to shout.

"Avada Kadavara!"

Too late. Alexei was dead before he could even utter a word. Chanel kicked her former husband out of the way. "No imagination. None at all. That's why you were always behind me." With that, she disappeared from the room.