Disclaimer: : This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Prologue

I have often watched her silently when she is asleep. I am always there, hidden in shadow. She fascinates me, and for my life I cannot say why.

She purses her lips and her eyebrows furrow when she is thinking particularly hard about something. Sometimes it's the war, sometimes it's money, I can always read her.

I can't quite remember when I developed this obsession with her, I could say it was when she was eleven and I was thirty eight, from the beginning, but I would be lying. I'm a letch certainly, but as a rule I never bed children.

I think it was when she became an assignment, I was supposed to tail her and see if I could gain information about the Potter boy. And I did, but he had broken it off months before with a tearful tale of protecting her from his enemies. She had said so in a diary she kept between her mattress and box spring. I couldn't believe that she still kept a diary, stupid girl. And as it transpired, she knew nothing. Nobody ever told her anything. A fact that still infuriates me.

I had to tail her which incensed me in itself, I was second in command. And then I had to correct myself, I was second in command until that nasty incident at the Department of Mysteries. Tailing children is a job for less trusted Death Eaters. And then to add insult to injury I had to come back and tell my master that the girl knew nothing. Looking back I think he truly knew that I would find nothing when I searched her dresser, just panties. It was just myLlord's way of sticking it to me for letting Potter shag my only son. As if I could have stopped them from jail.

I kept a pair of those panties.

I still tailed her; I told my master that it was because I thought she may have information about where Potter was hiding. But looking back I think he knew the real reason and that he just chose to ignore it, or perhaps that he did not care. It was a mark of how mad he had become.

I have watched her undress many times before. I first thought her disgustingly plain, and then one day, I knew she was plain. Freckles dusted her shoulders and breasts, and one time I caught her fondling her own nipples as she blushed fetchingly into the mirror. I was standing behind her at the time and that was how I knew I would have to make her blush for me, over and over, and I would do the things that made her catch her lower lip in the same way between her teeth.

I watched her, invisible in the corner of her hovel, when she found out that her mother died. She sank to her knees; her hair whish she had begun to wear back, hanging in her face, and she screamed. She screamed as though she would never scream again.

Then and there (horrors of horrors) I found myself wanting to comfort her, and I have never wanted such a thing before. And for the first time in my life I have come very close to feeling repentant for my actions.

She made me feel that way. She has no idea what she does to me. How could she?

And I watched when each member of her family died, one by one. After the first three she became quiet, and finally the only one left was her and one estranged brother.

Her side won the war and I returned to the ministry at the very last second, when I knew the Dark Lord was a lost cause. But what was the cost? Was it your wife and son? Was it the dead look in her eyes?

But life, I daresay, does not always turn out for the best. The Wizarding world is destitute, though not the Malfoy's, or the only remaining Malfoy anyway. Draco died some months ago; he and Potter can be together forever now. Yes Potter died too, not unlike his father.

She is hauntingly beautiful, in everything she does. She has revived feelings in me that I haven't felt for twenty years. I want to hold her. God I'm loosing my edge.

I find my self craving something that I do not know. I used to entertain the notion that it was solely her youth and plain good looks that had me captured me so. I have never been able to resist young flesh beneath my own. But she isn't beautiful, only alluring. As to the difference, I'm still unsure.

I know she is going to starve if she doesn't do something soon. However I recently discovered that she did, she's working in some dung heap muggle restaurant as a waitress and I am disgusted with her. I know she is doing it to keep food in her mouth, and I have noticed the way her clothing hangs off of her and her eyes have a hollowed look. She looks like a corpse. But I love her, in my way.

I don't know how long he has been following me. I don't even know who he is. At first I had hoped that it was Harry, that he couldn't bear to be away from me, but Harry died. And that was when the news papers reported his love affair with Draco and I still felt a presence in my room at night. So I knew it could not be him, and I knew that I had had a seven year love affair with a dream. I've never felt so stupid before or since.

My life has become hard. I don't mean that I've fallen behind in school, I'm twenty next month. My boyfriend hasn't ditched me for someone else, I haven't dated in ages. I look so old. My eyes are hung with shadows and my face looks haggard, as though I've watched every member of my family die, which I have.

I'm becoming hard. As I think the words to myself I know that they are true and that I have little or no hope of escaping them. Sometimes I lay in bed at night, in the burrow, wearing every article of clothing that I own. I am still living like a woman of war. I wake up at night panicked and grope for my wand in the dark. And I know he's there. I can smell him, and he smells wonderful.

I don't know who he is. But the war is over and he's been there since before it ended. He hasn't killed me yet, but that doesn't mean he won't. And to be completely honest with myself, I don't know that I would care if he did.

I'm working now. It's a muggle restaurant, muggles are the only ones hiring these days. I scrub floors and wait tables, it's back breaking work. I know that he watches me sweat, and on my break sometimes I sit on the back of the toilet seat and cry brokenly. That's the only place he doesn't follow me.

But he's every where else. Sometimes I know when he's there and then other times his scent catches me by surprise. I don't mind anymore that he's seen me naked; he's seen me many times before I knew he was there. The first time I knew I wasn't imagining a presence was when I touched my breasts in front of the mirror that hangs on my wall. I smelt him and knew he was behind me; I blushed and caught my lip between my teeth.

I have to do something soon. I cannot live from meal to meal, minute to minute the way I have been. My hours have been cut at work. I think they've noticed that my hair is thinner than it was when I started and my face is sunken in.

I need someone to save me but I have come to recognize that no one will. I would sell my soul for something whole and warm and tangible. I am craving something that I do not know. I've never felt so desperate, not even during the war. This is it; this is my half life that I am doomed to lead. I've never known a twenty year old that was so jaded. I'm just lucky I guess.

God I need something.