Disclaimer: If I were J.K. Rowling this wouldn't be fanfiction, now would it?

Her eyes are mine, but her hair is all the mother's. Her facial features are a mixture of the two of us, but if her current height is any indication, she's going to be tall like me.

I watch her from a distance.

During the war, one Summer, her mother was captured.

I didn't stick around to listen to my father's news report that day or the next, maybe if I had I would've given the mother the escape I so desperately wanted. Would I have?

I go back and forth on the issue constantly, but am never reprieved. The boy I was then and the man I was after are not the same person. I am not the same person. I can only guess at what that boy's reaction would have been, and pray for both our sakes that at the very least- he wouldn't have been happy. I pray; now there's something to laugh about…

She's shy; my heart breaks. She's like both of us here. Both of us wore snobbish and indifferent to hide how lonely we were. The daughter of muggles and the son of death eaters…both of us 'only child's who stood out from the crowd before even entering.

If I'd known then that one day the son of death eaters would be sent to rape the daughter of muggles would it have changed anything?

She was all wide-eyed walking down the train's aisle, I can tell, because a few of the older children are grinning down at her maliciously, and a few of the children in the same boat are sneaking glances her way wondering, "will she be in the same house as me?"

I wish with all my heart that Salazar Slytherin had been born penniless. I met him once, and I'm sad to say, he looked just like me.

She enters the great hall silently, with my shifty eyes being put to use glancing in every corner. Is she looking for someone? Does she know I'm looking out for her? Or perchance, did her stepfather tell her to watch out for me? I uselessly hold my breath when her eyes linger on the Slytherin table for a second too long, but her expression is unreadable. I wish with all my heart that Salazar Slytherin had been born penniless, but of course she can't read thoughts…least of all the thoughts of a random stranger like mine are.

I remember her mother's thoughts though. I remember sitting where she's looking and wanting to drink them into oblivion.

I remember praying with her mother, each of us silent and not knowing what the other was thinking, each of us wishing that she would not come into existence.

I remember too, that I kissed the tears running from her mother's eyes even as my own fell upon her face. I remember hearing the clock strike and burying my head within a bushel of hair.

Did she pretend it wasn't me whispering the beautiful lies into her ears?

I remember hearing the sound of the guards making their long trek down and biting down as hard as possible upon where the mother's neck met her shoulder as proof that it had been violent…and if I am truthful, as a means to force her not to forget me when she inevitably returned to Weasley.

I remember the soon-to-be mother's frantic look back when the guards took her away; I remember how her face paled and her eyes filled when she noticed the sheet.

So similar to how her daughter looks now hearing her name called. When they took the girl's mother away I said 'no worries' in my head, and willed her to hear it. I do it now too for the daughter, though I know this time will be no different.

She takes the steps carefully, as if missing one will take her fate away from her. She has all the choice in the world, and I'm sure Potter told her the secret: that it isn't what the hat wants that decides your house, but what you want.

She sits there for a while smiling, and I wonder if the blasted hat mentions me. Probably, I decide, but not in a way where she'll realize it.

All of a sudden said hat shouts 'Ravenclaw' but I'm the only one that doesn't look surprised. I meant 'no worries' when I said it, so long as she doesn't choose Slytherin I'm happy, and no matter what he might say to the contrary, Ron doesn't really care so long as his loved one is happy.

I get to stay only long enough to see Potter's 'secret' girlfriend smirk his way where she sits with the Ravenclaw first years, oblivious or uncaring to the fact that she's the first Head of House to not sit up at the top of the room with the Headmaster, her future husband - and then I have to go.

Twelve years ago I knew a pair of guards wouldn't wait for me unless I told them to. Twelve years ago I spit blood that was in my mouth from a shoulder wound I'd inflicted onto the sheet beneath me, knowing sick as it was- my father would most likely let her go then, thinking it'd be worse for her to return to her friends and fiancé traumatized and ruined, than it would be to kill her.

I didn't know it then, but Weasley had also been captured, and it saved him too. The death eaters didn't know what love was- they might imagine rape alone was not enough to break off an engagement, but if they thought the couple had been waiting…

My father always did enjoy psychological torture a little more than a two-second killing curse…when he didn't have time to inflict too much of the physical kind, that is.

And because of 'spit' blood I was allowed into purgatory when ten months later Weasley led an ambush on my house and Pothead killed me and Hermione both when she ran in front of me, trying to tell him to stop.

I haven't seen her since- I was too busy haunting Hogwarts for eleven years as punishment for my sins, and she no doubt has been with Weaslette waiting in heaven for Weasley.

Still, I wonder if she's heard me when her daughter couldn't. I sure hope so.

A/N: This idea came from a report I had to do on William Wallace (the dude Mel Gibson is in Braveheart during his pre- Passion of the Christ days). There was acertain law supposedly implented on the Scottish by the English called "jus primae noctis" in the movie that causes Wallace's wife to be killed in revenge for not going along with itthat did not actually occur in the time or the place the movie is set in, but is debated to have possibly occured in other places. This phrase literally translated means "the right/law of first night" and it supposedly gives a lord the 'right of first night' to all the girls who live off his manor. With this is combined the Biblical idea that a young bride's virginity is proven to the husband's (and the wife's) family by the revealing their marriage sheet. Lev. 20:10; Dt. 22:21 Please don't be too grossed out to take it for what it is and/or review! Constructive critisism only helps me to make mywriting better because a story I posted on another screen name doesn't even seem logical or sensical to me in retrospect. Please review!