aquilus

Disclaimer: Look first chapter

Author's notes: Don't worry this is the last chapter before I actually move to Hogwarts and will see more of Snape. The content will also start reflecting the rated R rating. For those of you that want a more…expanded and bit more disturbing version of this chapter send me a e-mail. I edited out a scene that I didn't feel was appropriate to show yet. Please review, I'd like at least 5 reviews before I put out the next chapter. I do listen to my readers, if there's something you'd like me to expand on email me or leave a review and I'll look at what I can do. Oh and do the person that emailed me with who she thought had cast the spell that shut the door back in the first chapter. You're right is who you though it was. * Secret smile* Anyway for the rest of you, enjoy and review.

Jessie couldn't let them get her. Bare feet hit the floor with hard almost painful sounds that echoed through the long dark corridor. Even her breathing sounded horriblily loud in the silence.

Silence broken only by the sounds of hysterical laugher. Or hysterical crying. And sometimes they blended so perfectly she couldn't tell the difference, making her want to stop and cover her ears. Made her want to sit down and cry with the voices.

She want a chocolate frog so badly.

But she couldn't stop running, if she did they'd catch her. They'd cornered her once...and…she couldn't remember but she knew she didn't want to be caught. Her feet hurt, burned. She just want to stop running. She wanted the voices to stop talking to her.

She wanted to stop and talk to them. She wanted to scream, cry, laugh…anything but keep running. Sitting down and just staying put seemed like such a wonderfully thing. Like the best thing in the world.

But her feet kept going. Complied by one voice that had told her to run and not stop…such a long time ago.

There was a figure up ahead and Jessie stopped despite herself. The man before her smiled and held out a hand.

"Ah there you are Jessie. You're in a good deal of trouble young lady wandering off like that."

Jessie screamed.

The nightmares had started soon after her tenth birthday.

They weren't really nightmares, more a mix of old and terrible memories that such a young mind could not handle. Things she would never admit to herself had happened. It was too horrid to think that it could have.

So she lied when he came into her room after hearing her scream. Made up stories about what her nightmares were about. Nightmares that children her age should have. Told him anything that would get him out of her room. That would get him off her bed, where he would sit a little to close. Smile a little too widely. Hug her when she wanted nothing to do with him.

"Such a good girl you are Jessie." He'd tell her touching her black hair, in away she was sure was highly improper. "Not like your parents are you? No you aren't. So don't worry, you'll go to Hogwarts probably next year, and after that maybe they'll give you a nice ministry job. Wouldn't that be lovely, dear?"

And she would nod, and smile. Jessie had become awfully good a false smiles. Always wondering if people would know she practice smiling in her mirror. Or that she'd practice laughing.

Just like they didn't know about the small attic space, she'd crawl into a read muggle books. The little Princess was her favorite closely followed by Dealing with Dragons.

All she was allowed to read in this house was big books written in Latin…or horrid accounts of what the death eater had done.

She hated this house, she hated him. She hated him so much sometimes it scared her. Jessie had tired explain it to another Ministry agent once…but they'd just smiled at her and said that Agent Crampton knew what was best for her.

But she still hated him.

Jessie was quite sure she wasn't normal, that even if she managed to get into Hogwarts that the other children would look at her and just know. Know that she was different, that she was warped and twisted somehow.

She had never forgotten, how cruel her primary schoolmates were to her when they'd found out she had a baby garden snake as a pet. She loved that little snake, just as much as she did Salem. Daisy, she'd named the little green snake that would stay curled up in her pocket during classes.

Jessie had cried for weeks after one of the older boys had taken Daisy from her and killed her. Snake's were evil, they'd taunted her, so she must be evil too. Two days after that indecent, the family she'd been staying with told her she was going to go stay with 'another' nice family.

She learned to hide, that she didn't think snakes were evil. Jessie had learned to hide many things in her short life. Especial the fact that she'd learned life was black and white, like teachers and others wanted her to think. Life wasn't fair, life was hard, scary, and cruel.

Justice wasn't always meted out in the end. Sometimes, most of the time, the good guy lost. Evil could triumph over good. And even when good won, it was not a absolute victory.

Grownup didn't like hearing things like that from children. She still believed most people were good had heart, believed in good eventually winning. Even if only for a short time.

Jessie even still believe that one day, she would have a family. A mum and a da, just like her friends at school. That someone could love her. That her parents had loved her. No matter what anyone said.

But most of all she believe that if she did get into Hogwarts, that she'd be the only first year that could speak fluent Latin.

And she was sure that would come in handy somehow.