A.N. Many thanks to those that were kind enough to review :) I hope that you are enjoying the story enough to keep reading! You will find that this chapter is a little bit smaller than most ( but don't worry it's like that for a reason :P), and a little bit different in tone and subject. Hope you enjoy and hope you review even if you didn't.

Chapter 10: Ill Fated

If there was one thing that I had ever wanted, it had always been someone else's face. Sometimes, I feel like wearing a tag that reads "My name is Calliope Black, and I can assure you with the greatest confidence that I am indeed real." Such a sign would clear up two of the biggest misconceptions that surround my existence: No, I am not my mother and yes, my mother's daughter does exist. You could take one look at me, and you would need no father proof – if I was indeed real, then yes , I most certainly was Bellatrix's infamous mudblood daughter.

Cousin Draco needed no further proof; the House of Black was stamped across my face. It was in my heavy lidded violet eyes, my dark and shining hair, the angle of my jaw and the careless beauty so characteristic of the Blacks.

"So you're real."

"Yes, I'm real." I had answered, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice when cousin Draco commented on the validity of my existence. I don't blame him. I had been nothing but a nameless whisper among the Blacks, a hushed and fearful taboo if you held any value to your life.

Sitting in one of Draco's sumptuously comfortable sitting rooms, I began the onerous task of explaining myself.

19 years ago, the Dark Lord fell at the mercy of Harry Potter. The madness of Bellatrix Lestrange was, as the story goes, terrible to behold – there are very few who witnessed the brunt of it and lived to tell the tale. She fled the country in a broken rage, laying a trail of darkness and destruction in her wake. And then she disappeared, the trail went cold. A very faint and hushed voice in history suggests that this is where Bellatrix reached the pinnacle of her insanity. Nobody knows what happened then. Perhaps something had broken in Bellatrix as Voldemort, who's power she so craved and desired, became no more. Perhaps she did it to herself in punishment. The fact of the matter was, I was conceived. Armed with the knowledge of the mud befouling her womb, Bellatrix slit the throat of her child's father and returned to England, a new and more dangerous brand of venom in her veins.

"So then, you mean to say... she carried you then, when she tortured the Longbottoms into madness." Draco asked, hours later.

"Yes." I answered, simply.

"And then?"

"And then we were sent to Azkaban, weren't we? I was born there."

Draco Malfoy let out his breath through his teeth as he listened to the unlikely tale. Rejected and forsaken by my mother, I had been left on the cold stone of our cell to die a slow and painful death. How ironic that I was to be saved by the hooded rattling dementors themselves who could not bear to be in the presence or contact of the innocence and purity of an infant. I had been cast out to sea in the pitch of the night. But I was a witch, and the daughter of a witch with unimaginable skill. No muggle child would've survived but I stayed alive. I had been taken in by a muggle man who lived near the sea's edge. He was simple. He had lost his wife and child to the sea many years ago and believed I was a gift sent to staunch the bloody wound of his heart. It was just him and I. He raised me like his own child, with love. My earliest memory is singing prettily for him, and he laughing with joy. Calliope he would call me, for my singing voice. But as my magic began to appear all around me, the muggle man became scared. His interpretation changed and he believed I was an evil thing, sent to torture him further into the depths of his despair. He sent me to an orphanage. My beauty meant that I was chosen often by parents seeking a child, but my magic and an aura of ill-luck surrounding me meant that I always ended up back in the custody of those cold and desolate orphanages. I worked my way around; the last orphanage I belonged to was in Denmark.

"And then?" Cousin Draco asked.

"And then I gained my majority, and left the orphanage. My magic took me, finally, into the company of wizards. One or two knew my face and I began piecing together the story of my life." I answered, finishing finally.

Draco surveyed me above his wineglass. "There were whispers about you. Quiet, but loud enough for a quiet child to hear..." he smiled, somewhat smugly, "I asked Mother about it one day. Not about your father, just whether you existed."

"And what did she say?" I asked, though I suspected I knew the answer already.

"She struck me across the face. It has been the only time my mother has raised her hand to me. I was told to never ask such a question again."

I sighed. It was the answer I knew would follow. I was hated on all sides. My pure-blooded family would see me dead, rather than acknowledge the shame of my existence. Those that had no sympathy for my mother would see no shame in my half-blood heritage but would hunt me all the same for being my mother's daughter. I had thought my life had been miserable before - passed from family to family, returned, always for a thing I both despised and couldn't understand. I had thought I was just bad luck. I grew, I learned who I was and then came to understand that I was bad luck. I was about as ill-fated as was possible.

"So" Draco intoned slowly. "What is it that you have come for, Cousin."

I thought about my short life, separated into chunks. My horrific birth, a short and loving respite and then misery and cruelty for years. I thought about the weight of the world that pressed against my body when slowly, I learned of the treachery that ran in my blood. I thought about the chasm of darkness that surrounded me, my bad luck appeal. The anger, the grief, the inability to be anything other than what I am. I opened my mouth to try and put words to these thoughts. Try I did, but I found I could not.

A.N. Well there it is! Something a little bit different from what I'm used to writing in this story! Thanks again for reading and hope you return :)