My mum was seventeen when I was born.

Seventeen.

The age I am now.

The age I am today.

Can you imagine having a child at seventeen? Because I can't. It's not that I don't ever want to be a mother, I want to have children one day; it's just that seventeen is way too young. I have enough trouble finding socks that match and sometimes I have to be reminded to eat. There is no way I could raise a child.

But my mum did. And since I'm still alive, I think she did a pretty good job.

I sometimes wonder if she wishes she hadn't. If she wishes she'd been more careful, or told my father no, or even if she should have made the decision to not have me. She'd not had the chance to live, not had the chance to be more than just my mum. And from all the stories I've been told, she had so much in front of her, so much talent and potential. She had the world at her feet, she could have been anything she wanted to be. But she gave it all up for me. She chose to be a mother, she chose me.

And every time I asked her about it, she would kiss the top of my head and tell me she wouldn't change a thing. Not one tantrum; not one sleepless night; not one cold or fever; not one anxious or panicked moment; not one single second.

She was just three months shy of her eighteenth birthday when she welcomed me into the world. And if you do the maths on that, you'll realise exactly what she got up to on her seventeenth birthday - a feat, might I add, that on my seventeenth birthday I have no intentions of replicating.

Don't get me wrong, I love my mum; I love her more than anything. She's my entire world, and despite the fact that I was surrounded my entire life with people who have protected me and would die for me, she's really the only family I had.

She wasn't promiscuous or slutty, she didn't sleep around, if that's what you're thinking. She was only ever with one person, that person being my father. The father I never knew, the father who never knew about me. And I'm not embarrassed or ashamed that I exist, or that she was so very young when I was born, (and neither is she) but I watched her struggle, watched her work so hard to provide for me and to make sure I had everything I needed, that sometimes she forgot about herself.

When I think back on it, I don't know how she did it, but she did. But I also know that I never want to have to go through what she went through. Besides, it was never going to happen; my Uncles wouldn't let any boys come near me!

And then there were my grandparents. They were shocked, to say the least when mum came home from school that Christmas and told them she wasn't going back. She didn't know how to tell them, she thought they would be disappointed in her, or angry, or that they would disown her, so she simply blurted it out – told them that she was pregnant and that she was keeping the baby. They were shocked, to say the least, and she said it was the first time she'd seen my grandpa have a drink before noon. But they knew their daughter and were supportive of her decision to keep me.

Of course, it wasn't all joy and delight, they had questions; who my father was, and did he know, and what was he going to do to help. And then they got angry when she refused to tell them anything other than that fact that he didn't know, and she wasn't able to tell him. My grandpa threatened to go to her school and make noise about how they let this happen, but mum scared the crap out of him, explaining the seriousness of the situation and telling him if he did that he'd never see either of us ever again, because we'd most likely be dead.

But it wasn't just him she wouldn't tell. She refused tell anyone who he was. No matter how many times everyone asked, no matter how many times they begged her to tell them, she simply refused. Only one other person knew the truth, and mum had sworn them to secrecy, but since they knew the seriousness of the situation, they never broke her trust.

Of course everything changed the minute I was born. I think she was hoping that I would look like her, but I looked so much like my father they all began to understand why she had refused to tell them. And they were shocked. Completely and utterly shocked. There was no way that she would have...not with him.

It was only then that they all realised why she hadn't told them and they all became so very protective of me. And as I came to learn as I got older, it was for a good reason. My father's family wasn't known for being tolerant, they were purists, through and through, and the fact that mum was muggle-born, which made me a half-blood, meant she or I would never be accepted by them.

She never told me exactly who they were, never told me their names, only that they were very rich and very powerful, and that we would be best to stay away from them. And truthfully, I really didn't care. I wasn't interested in them if they were intolerant snobs. She never actually said that they were snobs, in fact she never said anything truly awful or negative about them. I guess she didn't want to sour my opinion towards them if I ever met them. She was good like that, my mum. But I always thought that if they were as intolerant as everyone else said they were, I wasn't sure if I did want to know who they were.

The war happened when I was still a baby, but I'd grown up hearing all the stories and I knew about the blood purists. And I knew that a part of me stemmed from that. Thinking back now, it should have been obvious. They were as well known as mum and my uncles, but they were on the wrong side. Mum always said that they had no choice, that they were forced. But like I said, she wouldn't say anything bad about them to me, however I think that if they didn't want to be on that side, they wouldn't have been.

My grandparents wanted us to stay with them, but mum told them we couldn't. The war had started, and it wasn't safe for any of us. We had to stay hidden – especially me - and the safest place for us was with The Order. So she used magic on them, wiping their memories, and sent them across to the other side of the world and we moved into Uncle Sirius's house where The Order could protect us.

As I said, I was only a baby and don't remember any of it, but I know that she was a hero. She refused to stay away from the war. She hated the thought of the purists winning, of me growing up in a world that would never allow me to exist, so she made the decision to fight alongside my uncles. She went to find them, to help them, leaving me with The Order. She tells me all the time that she hated doing it, hated leaving me and was scared everyday that she would never see me again, but I know that had she not gone she would never have forgiven herself.

That's how she got her scar. The nasty word on her arm, put there by a crazy woman who never knew who she was actually harming. But from all accounts, she probably wouldn't have cared. In fact, if she had known, mum's scar would have been the least of her worries, she would have been made to endure much more pain than it had caused. And they would no doubt have come after me.

And when she finally came home to me, she didn't let me out of her sight for weeks. Mum doesn't talk about what happened. She never has. All I know about that night was that she got her scar and that my uncles and a house elf saved her life.

And of course in all of this there is me. With her abilities and all that I'd heard of my father, mum knew there was no way I wouldn't get a letter from their school. For all his bad points, my father had been a brilliant student, excelling at potions. He was second only to my mum in everything else, which apparently he hated. Well, at least outwardly. I'm sure it was all for show, since he was supposed to hate her. But she always told me that she knew that he did love her at the time, and he wasn't truly bothered at all that she was the top student in their class.

And much to mum's surprise, it was the one thing I loved the most - Potions. Mixing and brewing, cutting ingredients correctly, learning which potions did what fascinated me, and it still does. And she tells me all the time that she is sorry that I didn't get to meet Professor Snape. She says he would have been hard on me, but only because I was so good at it.

When my letter did finally arrive, mum kind of went mental. Not mental in a psychotic way, just mental in that crazy mum way that meant she knew the day had finally arrived where she would have to answer questions and have to tell the truth, (not that she lied about me, not to anyone around us in any case), and she would have to tell people who I was, how I came into being (not the actual how, eewww that's way too gross, but how in the sense that she and my father were never have meant to be together).

That was the biggest problem my mum faced. As I got older, it became harder to hide my existence from him – from anyone outside of our circle in any case. I attended a regular primary school, but I knew all about the magical community. We avoided any magical establishments and stuck to the muggle world because she knew, even after the events of the war, my father would be less likely to see me if we stayed away from those places he might be. But she knew she would have to tell him. There was no way he wouldn't find out, not when I would be attending the same magical school that he did. She just didn't know how to tell him. But, as it turned out, she didn't really have to.

I told you I look like him, right? Well, that's how he found out about me, that and he's not stupid. I have my mum's curls but everything else is him. I have his blonde hair and grey eyes; his pointed chin, high cheekbones and his pale skin. Apparently it's unmistakable.

Five years ago he found us. Well, actually he ran into us – almost literally - and as soon as he saw me, he knew. That first time, I was eleven years old and a quick calculation told him I was his. And that day, the day I first met him, I finally learned what everyone was talking about. And I finally realised just how hard it must have been for her. I had been a daily reminder for her, a daily reminder for everyone, of just who my father was.

And what made everything harder was that I knew that she had loved him. She had loved him even though she shouldn't have, and I can only assume her loved her back. And even after everything that happened - the war, the purists, the scars – I know that she still loved him. I know that it killed her that she couldn't be with him, that he couldn't be with us.

I'd heard so many different stories about him, so many different versions, that I wanted to know from her just who he was. I wanted to know the real him, the person she had fallen in love with all those years ago. I wanted to know everything about him, everything she knew.

And even though I'd asked her, it still took her a long time to tell me about him.