Disclaimer: For the love of cheese! I don't own it! I am also aware that the title of this chapter is the title of a rather sad book. Didn't mean for that to happen...

Chapter Eight: Anna's Story Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden

T.S Elliot, 'Burnt Norton'

Memories are hunting horns

Whose sound dies on the wind

- Guillaume Apollinaire 'Cors de Chasse'

Sirius looked on anxiously as Anna opened her sleepy eyes, drifting out of slumber. Her skin was pale, her eyes large and her hair mussed from sleep. She murmured softly under her breath.

"Hey, sleepy head," he smiled.

Anna smiled weakly in return. "Hey. What happened? I feel like someone's been using my head as a bludger."

"I don't rightly know. Malfoy hit you and you banged your head on the table. It's alright," he added, noting her worrisome look. "I owled Dumbledore. Remus has already been to pick him up, memory modified, confunded and all. They're going to pump him up with Firewhiskey and send him home. His wife will probably think he's just had too much to drink and forgot what he was doing. But Dumbledore still wants you and I to leave soon, reckons it's only a matter of time before they find you again now that the Dark Lord's back, although I don't exactly understand why he wants you in the first place. Anyway, we're leaving for London in a few days. Back to my old childhood home, how exciting," he said dryly. "But you, missy, have some explaining to do. What exactly was Malfoy on about?"

Anna sighed. "It's a long story, Sirius. I hope you're the patient type who doesn't interrupt. I'll tell you, but it's a lot to digest at once and you certainly aren't going to like what you hear. It's not a happy story. Can I trust you?"

"Yes."

"Okay." Anna propped herself up onto the pillows of her bed. "Right. Well. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just going to come out and say it. I'm Lord Voldemort's daughter."

It took a second for the absurdity of the statement to sink in.

"WHAT?" Sirius spluttered. "What – how is that – what?"

"Shhh. Yes, I'm Voldemort's illegitimate love child." She noticed Sirius' incredulous expression. "Okay, okay, maybe it wasn't the time to make jokes. I was just trying to lighten things up a bit. Over 100 years ago a prophecy was made by a great Seer, claiming that the only way Dark would ever overcome Light was if a child of evil and empathy was born and bent to the will of Dark. Voldemort discovered this prophecy in the early years of his rise and he took it to mean that if he had a child with an Empath then he would win the war. So that's what he did. He searched for an Empath for years and eventually found my mother. She was only fifteen when she was taken. You might remember her; she would've been a few years above you at Hogwarts. Jennifer Langley."

Sirius remembered her well. She had been a beautiful, vivacious girl, with bouncing red curls and a dazzling smile. She had been in Gryffindor a few years above Sirius. Sirius had been in his second year when she was taken. Her family searched for her for almost a year, but they gave up eventually, believing her to be dead. He nodded solemnly.

"Well, he raped her, used a conception charm to make sure she fell pregnant, locked her up and nine months later, I was born. We were kept there in a house in the mountains for eight years. My mother was kept alive, if only to be tortured, but she was allowed to take care of me. We were under constat guard and if my mother even whispered of defying the Dark Lord we were beaten. They tried to turn me to them, tried to get me to torture people or animals, but my mother's magic combined with Voldemorts made me strong. The stopped trying to make me do things after a while."

Anna fidgeted nervously in her bed. "About three years before Voldemort's downfall, a new Death Eater came. He was young, so they gave him the lowly job of guarding us. By that time my mother was so defeated, she had given up any hope of escape, they only assigned only one guard to us. But he was young. He didn't understand what he had gotten himself into. He fell in love with my mother. The Dark Lord never knew.

"One day, he was told that they were going to kill my mum. He panicked. He went to Dumbledore and confessed everything. Albus believed him. They organised a raid on where we were kept and at midnight they came. It was horrible, so much fighting."

Tears appeared in Anna's eyes and silently crawled down her cheeks. Sirius found her hand on the bed and took it in his own.

"We were almost out when my mother was killed. We had been running down the hallway when stray curse hit her. It must have come from the fighting, I never looked." She wiped the tears from her eyes. "We left her there, got to Hogwarts. The Death Eater swore his allegiance to Dumbledore, and joined the Order of the Phoenix. He became a spy against Voldemort."

"What about you?"

Anna glanced up at Sirius. "The safest place for me was Hogwarts. It became my home, they became my family. He took care of me. Three years later, Voldemort disappeared. That was the same year that I started at Hogwarts. Severus got a job there as Potions Master, to be closer to me – "

Sirius had to do a double take to make sure he had heard properly. "Severus? Severus Snape? Snape was the Death Eater?"

Anna nodded.

"Dumbledore trusted Snape, of all people, to take care of an eight year old girl? Snape?"

"My mother trusted him. I trusted him. For six months he was the only person I would let come within three feet of me without lashing out at them with wandless magic. He loved my mother and he loves me like a sister, or a daughter. I can understand why some people have a problem with him; he can be a grouchy git when he wants to be. But behind closed doors he's just a sad, lonely man that loved my mother deeply and still does. He loved her so much he risked his life bringing up her daughter and turning a spy for Dumbledore. He's a good man, Sirius. He may have been a Death Eater but he made his choice and he chose the good. Doesn't everyone deserve a second chance, Sirius?"

She spoke with a touch of finality so that Sirius knew the discussion was finished. "So what happened then?"

"A year after Hogwarts Severus and Albus came to me, telling me that Voldemort was alive and had infiltrated Hogwarts. Apparently he had tried to steal the Philosophers Stone."

Sirius nodded, knowing the story well.

"Anyway, they both thought it would be better if I moved away and went into hiding. We bought this cottage and here I am." She gestured around her.

"What about the prophecy?"

"Ah. Well, what Voldemort doesn't know is that another prophecy was made a few years later, saying that the same child would be given a choice. A moment would come where she would choose between the Light and Dark and that her heart would decide for her. Don't really know what that means...So. That's my story."

Sirius gave Anna's hand a squeeze. There was an awkward pause. "What now?"

In answer, Anna tugged on his hand until he was sitting beside her on the bed. She drew him down to lay beside her and curled into his body. "Now I want to sleep," she said quietly.

Sirius lay silent beside her until he drifted into a peaceful slumber.

A/N: Ugghhh.... Really don't like this chapter. But its extremely late at night, I'm sick, I'm tired, and I have a gazillion assessments to do, so please forgive the crapiness. As always, review! Thanks for reading...