Her Other Half

Chapter One: An experiment gone horribly awry

Gliding to a gradual stop, I looked up into the clear sky as I debated my next move.

“I will make them pay.”

The words echoed loudly in the silent night. The moon glowed brightly in the dismal gray of the night’s landscape. The edges seemed to fade into the night sky, causing an odd yellow haze that gave it the appearance of subtle motion.

“Damn them.”

I skimmed the surface of the woodland floor, contemplating what sort of misery I could cause with each determined step.

“Every last one of them.”

My words rang out in the forest. After a few minutes of continual movement, I reached the tree line. I searched for the tree I had marked before the battle began. My Apparation point.

“Curse you, Harry Potter.”

With a nearly silent ‘pop’, I Apparated. My home. The castle that had belonged to my parents, lay just outside of Hogsmeade Village. My family, with all of our piles of money and overwhelming faults, was one of the oldest families in the known wizarding world. Now, I’m all that’s left of our pure-blood family.

I’m not even sure that I qualify as a pure-blood anymore. In fact, I don’t think my blood has been pure since the day after I was born. That day sealed my fate, determined my destiny, and altered the course of the stars in the heavens.

My mother, creative witch that she was, came up with the idea while my father carried out her instructions. He didn’t have a decisive bone in his body. I can remember the ceremony as if I had tumbled headfirst into a Pensieve. It felt vaguely like I was submersed in the memory, watching it play out before me at an accelerated rate.

As my day old body lay shivering on the cold marble of the dedication altar, my mother and father undertook an ancient magic that hadn’t been attempted by anyone in their lifetime – or several lifetimes before.

The sacrificial snake lay on the altar next to me, petrified by my mother’s wand. As I squirmed, my tiny fists flailing wildly, my mother began the incantation.

Within seconds, heat flared through my infant body. I remember how I screamed in agony, crying out for the pain to stop. I howled until I was hoarse and all of the air had been expelled from my lungs. I took a deep breath, filling my body with much needed oxygen, and prepared to let loose with another barrage of wailing, when the pain unexpectedly stopped. My body went numb, but this time was different. My skin was no longer chilled and my body wasn’t registering the cold properly.

My mother had finished the incantation and was standing over me. As she reached out to touch me, her eyes glittered with a sadistic sort of glee. Her finger caressed my arm tenderly. The heat from her touch burned my skin and I opened my mouth to scream again. A strange low hiss filled the air.

My mother’s eyes gleamed with perverse pleasure at the sound. She ran her finger down my other arm causing me to hiss in pain a second time. She watched closely for a reaction. Her face filled my vision, blocking everything else from my sight.

While hovering directly above my diminutive body, she tickled the soles of my feet purposefully. Rather than hiss in pain, which seemed to please her, I closed my eyes tightly and clenched every muscle in my body.

At her gasp of fear, my eyes flew open. Instinctively I knew that something had gone horribly wrong. I tried to move my arms, but I found them fused to my body. I couldn’t kick my legs, as they were fused together too. Panicking, I thrashed around franticly. I tried to scream one last time, giving it every ounce of power I had. When only a strangled hiss escaped my lips, I resigned myself then and there to a life of tortured solitude in my mother’s house. Amazingly, as my body relaxed with this acceptance, I felt my toes curl ever so slightly.