A/N- I assume that if your reading this story you have some idea of both story lines of these books. I'm not going to spend time rewritten other authors work. If I change a fact I will write it into the story line. The only fact I'm changing at this point is that both sets of books happen at about the same time ending about in the year 2009.

Gift Or Torture?

Prologue

Ginny's Point of View

I sat looking out the window of the plane; yes, airplane! A Muggle form of transportation. I'm flying across the Atlantic Ocean and I'm going to live in a city called Edmonton. I will be there for several months and a friend is taking me. Until a couple of weeks back, I never would have called him a friend. He was not even someone I ever trusted; Severus Snape.

Two weeks back, everything changed for me. I had gone to tell my boyfriend some news. I was happy and I thought we were going to be together forever.

"Draco, I have something to tell you," I said. We were sitting in the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade.

"What's that?" he replied coolly.

His cold demeanor didn't bother me. I was used to it; it was part of who he was. "I just found out yesterday that I'm pregnant."

His face remained still as he asked, "And who's the lucky father?"

I thought he was joking. "You, of course," I replied with a chuckle.

He raised an eyebrow. "Me? So let me guess, Ginny; you thought I would jump at the chance to marry you and we would live happily ever after." He paused for a second. "I couldn't marry you even if I wanted to. You're nothing but a pathetic blood traitor! Take some advice, because that's all you're going to get from me; get rid of this problem!" He then rose and walked out, leaving me with the bill.

I was in shock. I thought that Draco and I were the modern day Romeo and Juliet. I didn't even realize I was crying until a sob escaped, then there was a handkerchief being handed to me.

Professor Snape took the seat Draco had vacated moments before. He didn't give me a minute to compose myself. "You made a mistake," he stated.

"Thanks for pointing that out," I replied. I was finished with school, so Snape had no power over me. "I don't need your criticism. I got enough of that in school!" I snapped.

"I didn't mean to offend you." He looked at me for a long moment before continuing, "What are you going to do?"

I was shocked by the question. I think that's why I started talking to him. "I don't know; no one even knew we were seeing each other. I'm not ready to have a baby by myself."

"You still have time to decide what you want to do, but here are a few things to keep in mind. Members of Draco's family have, in the past, tried to kill you simply for looking at things differently than them. You now are expecting a Malfoy, who by all rights could lay claim to everything they have. As long as you are carrying that child, you both are at risk. Now that Draco knows, I'm relatively sure he won't want to tell Lucius, so you need to decide if you want to keep the baby, or get rid of it. The sooner, the better!"

"I could never kill it!" I said, horrified.

"Then you're going to keep it?" He asked.

"I'm - I don't - I'm not ready to be a single parent!" I realized.

"You could give it away," he offered.

"Who would want a child whose father's whole family were Death Eaters?"

Snape smiled; he literally had a gleam in his eye as he spoke, "A Muggle family who has no idea of the past war. It's also the perfect revenge on him."

Snape was right! Over the next week, he and I talked. I wasn't ready to tell my family yet. Merlin, I wasn't sure if I would ever be ready, so Snape offered me an out. He had explained that over the years he knew Voldemort would return and that he wanted other choices than the two we all knew of. He had purchased an apartment in Canada and had things set up to start a life there. He now was planning on going there to take some time away from our world and figure out what he wanted to do. He was willing to let me come with him and live there until I had the baby and was ready to return.

I took him up on his offer. I told my family I was going to live as a Muggle for a year to have a better understanding of them. Dad was proud of me, Mum was concerned for me, and my brothers? Well, they all have lives of their own.

A couple of weeks of planning took place. I was going to take some courses in human behavior at the university, giving my parents my claim of trying to understand Muggles better. There was some truth in that.

Snape claimed that there were a couple of programs in place for this type of thing, and it was true. Those of us who would have to deal with Muggles needed stuff like this, so I packed up my stuff and now I sit on this plane.

Gift or Torture?

Chapter One

Four Months Later

Ginny's Point of View

I sat in a back stairwell at the university, crying, I had finally found a good family to adopt the baby, but I had just found out that Mary, the wife, was killed on a ski trip she and her husband Paul had taken. Paul no longer wanted to adopt my baby. I was back to square one in finding a family to love my child! I was mad! Why couldn't things just work out the way I wanted them to?

I thought I heard the door open a couple of floors up from where I was sitting, however there was no sound on the stairs. After a second, I heard a voice, "Ma'am? Are you all right?"

I looked up and saw a man looking down at me. He towered over me. He had a look of concern on his face, and looking up at him, I truly believed he cared. He was incredibly handsome! His hair was a warm honey blond and his caring eyes were topaz. However, there were dark shadows under his eyes; it reminded me of how I looked without a couple of beauty charms during a lot of the time my first year at Hogwarts.

"Um, yes, I just got some bad news," I replied.

He looked at me for what seemed like forever.

Jasper's Point of View

I had felt someone's sadness, and it was one of the strongest things I have ever felt, including the fear a human would feel once they realized I was about to kill them. As I walked toward the staircase, it was like it grew stronger and more intense. When I found the source of the feelings, I tried to understand why she would be feeling as she was.

"Ma'am, are you all right?" I asked. She looked up at me and I was surprised at how pretty she was. Her hair was the color of blood; there was no other way to describe it. Her eyes were a soft, warm brown, and it looked as if cinnamon had been dusted over her nose. She was very petite. As I was taking in her appearance, I also noted a second heart beat. She was expecting.

"Um, yes, I just got some bad news."

"Is there someone I can call for you?" I asked. I wanted to help.

She shook her head. "Thank you, but no, there's no one."

"Are you sure?" I asked. I then felt pride radiating off of her as she slowly rose.

"Yes, I'm sure. I just had a moment of weakness. No biggie; it kind of goes with the territory." She pointed to her stomach. "Thank you for your concern." She then reached down and grabbed her bag. I don't know why, but I didn't want her to go; not yet. "Do you want somebody to talk to?"

She shook her head. "I learned at a young age that talking about my feelings to attractive men was very bad for my health." She then walked away.

Where did her last comment come from? I quickly reviewed our interaction and the feelings I picked up from her; at first, she was upset, then embarrassed, then a little self pity, then pride, and finally shame. She didn't give off any fear of me, like I was used to from humans. This was a puzzle.

I didn't see her again until after the semester break. She was registered in one of my classes. I felt her emotions before I even smelled her. I normally could feel another vampire's emotions more clearly without trying in a room full of people. It was almost like she was calling me.

I admit I wanted to sit next to her. However, I instead chose to sit on the other side of the room. I did watch her the whole class, though. She was very interested in the subject matter, but she looked uncomfortable. I guessed it was because she was expecting. My sister was the only pregnant human I have ever been around, and her pregnancy was far from normal.

We were taking Psychology, and I wondered who would be the first in the class to believe that there was something wrong with them. As the professor finished up his remarks, something he said caught my attention. "For your final paper, I'm trying something different. I'm assigning each of you a subject, one of your classmates. You will write a paper about their psychology, and they about yours. How you make your observations is up to you. I'm not forcing you to become friends. You may decide to do your whole paper based only on what you see here in class. Each of you will be given a name, and it's up to you to find out who that person is. However, you are paired up, meaning you will be writing about the person writing about you."

Lovely! This would be a real acting job on my part. Someone watching me closely; great! Well, hopefully a human natural fear would kick in and they would decide to analyze me from afar. If not, I could just send them some extra fear. Not draining them was fine, spending time in class or even working in a group was something I could deal with, but why run the risk by spending time alone with them?

I still don't understand how my brother Edward did it with Bella; not that Bella isn't perfectly nice or anything. I love her as a sister now. I, more than anyone, knew how her blood had called to him. The amount of want he had for it was almost unbearable. I, myself, have had enough pain in my life I didn't need to inflict it upon myself.

At the end of class, we were each handed a piece of paper with our subject's name on it. I looked down at the paper;

Ginevra Weasley

Great, a girl! A guy would have been easier for me. Over half the girls in the class came over asking me if I was the person they had. I could feel the lust, hope, and fear dripping off of them.

I, however, watched her. I still didn't know her name, but I was receiving a mixture of emotions from her as she had received her piece of paper.

Ginny's POV

Jasper Hale was the name I received. I looked up at the class and wondered who it was. I was able to eliminate a few people whom I already knew. I decided I would let this person find me; I wouldn't seek them out. In spite of myself, I scanned my classmates once more and was surprised to see the god from over a month ago in the stairwell.

For a second, our eyes met. There was a look that could best be described as confusion on his beautiful face. Something told me to run from him or at the very least grab my wand, but something else in me wanted to go to him.

I looked him up and down, and something about him screamed money. I guess it was the clothing; it looked expensive. That made me think of Draco.

I was over Draco. The only thing I felt now was shame. Shame for my own stupidity. I should have known better than to trust him or to believe in him. Looking back now, I know I was only something he USED, something to entertain himself with. I knew that of all the notches on his bed post, I was the greatest, but that was all I was. I mean, for him to have had me was a huge one-up on Harry and that for him to use me as he had was his way of reinforcing the idea that he was better than us Weasleys. I knew that I was the one thing that would always put a smug smile on his face.

The whole way back to the apartment I shared with Professor Snape, I thought about Draco to the point that I almost missed my subway stop. However, once off the subway, I thought about the final assignment.

How do I let someone get close enough to analyze me and not have them begin to wonder about me? I'm sure I wouldn't be called normal. Just being a witch; never mind being pregnant, or having been possessed by the Dark Lord, or now living with her former professor. And the worst was I was beginning to like Severus as a human being! That alone most likely meant I should be locked up! Harry and Ron would tell me that in a second.

The next day I arrived a couple of minutes early to class. The only other student there was the stairwell god. I did give him a small smile and he smiled in return. After a couple of seconds he spoke, "I was surprised to find you taking this course."

"Why is that?" I asked warily. I was expecting to hear how I wasn't the type to take courses like this.

"I guessed you to just be one of those random people you never see more than once," he replied.

"Oh!" I was surprised.

"I'm Jasper."

Was he my partner? I wondered. "Ginny," I offered.

"Would that by chance be short for Ginevra?" he asked.

I was shocked! It's almost never pronounced correctly. "I guess we found our assignments." I smiled at him. Then others started gathering in the hall with us. A few more girls came up and asked hopefully if he was theirs. Once we were let in to the classroom, I found my seat from the day before. I was still trying to decide how I wanted to do this assignment.

J.P.O.V.

I spent the class watching her. She was quite pretty, but her emotions held me spellbound. I can get overwhelmed by others' emotions at times. Some human once described me as looking as if I was in constant pain. I was, but not because of my lust for blood however. It's because of the number of emotions hitting me all the time. While her emotions were stronger than average to me, they were almost like a breath of fresh air. This confused me. By the end of the class I decided to speak with her again.

I made my way to her. "Ginny?"

She smiled warmly at me. "Jasper."

"I was thinking we should at least talk a bit about the assignment. Do you want to go for-" I tried to remember what young people drank these days. I never paid much attention before. I did of course know that alcohol was out.

She gave a soft laugh. "Men! You can cross the ocean and you're all the same. I could go for a herbal tea."

I didn't realize that I knew so little about today's young people til this moment. A small part of me thought that maybe, just maybe, I should spend a little time with the 'dog' and pick up a few more human things. "Sounds good. I just know that someone in your condition can be quite picky about what you put in your body."

Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in a tea house she claimed was not far from her apartment. We decided to talk about our backgrounds.

"I come from a big family; I'm the youngest of seven, all the rest are overprotective boys. So I guess there's the 'baby of the family' stuff."

"Six brothers! That must be hard on the father of your baby," I mused.

"He's not in the picture; in fact, I haven't told my family. I'm here to find a family for my baby, have it, and give it up for adoption."

I could feel the regret coming off of her. I wanted to make it better for her. "You don't want to give up the child?"

"A little, I guess. I mean, I did play a role in getting like this, but I'm not ready to be a parent. A single parent! I worry the baby will be hurt by my actions," she admitted.

"Don't be. My twin sister and I were adopted. What is important is that the baby feels loved."

"Really?" She was surprised. "They adopted both of you?"

"Well, it's not like you're thinking. We were adopted by our mother's sister and her husband after our parents were killed in a fire."

"That's horrible! How old were you?" she asked.

"Fifteen."

"They were good to you then? The parents of one of my friends were murdered and he was raised by an aunt and uncle who were horrible to him!"

"No, Esme and Carlisle were, are, very good to us. Esme is unable to have children of her own." I related the old lie that had been used so many times over the years.

I found her quite easy to talk with, even if I got the feeling she wasn't telling me a number of things! But there were things I wasn't telling her. Her emotions were so fascinating to me that I found I wasn't thinking about killing her. I already knew I was going to speak with the others about the effect she was having on me.

For the first time in my life I found that not only did I not think about draining her, but I was disappointed at the idea of her leaving.

"Well Jasper Hale, it has been lovely talking with you, but this chair is bloody murder on my back! I need to head home and lie down," she explained in that lovely, sexy, British accent she had as she rubbed her lower back.

"Yes, of course." I rose with her, timing myself to match her, pulled out my wallet and tossed a twenty dollar bill on the table, and then led her out. This action caused a new emotion to come to the surface: frustrated resignation. It left me a little baffled.

"Well, thank you for the tea. I guess I'll see you in class," she said coolly.

She had been warm and friendly up to now. I wanted to know the reason for the sudden change in her mood. "If you want someone to study with, let me know."

She gave a weak smile. "Sure."

She turned to go left. "Ginny, how are you getting home?" I asked, concerned.

"My building is just down the road a couple of blocks. I'll be fine."

During daylight hours, this area of the city was perfectly safe, but after the normal 9-5 business hours it wasn't the best part of town for a lady to be alone in. "I would feel better driving you or walking with you, even."

"Jasper, I grew up with six older brothers; seven if you count Harry. I assure you I'm more than capable of taking care of myself. Trust me, if you had the smallest clue about me or my life you wouldn't be concerned." Her voice was now laced with malice.

For how quickly her mood had changed, I would have guessed she was PMSing if I didn't have evidence to the contrary. I only nodded and then watched as she walked away.

Later that evening, I went to Carlisle's study. "Can I talk to you?" I never received anything from him that made me feel as though he cared less about me or Alice than any of the the others.

"Of course," he said and closed the book he was holding.

"For my Psychology class, we're going to have to analyze another classmate, and this assignment is meant as our final assignment for the term. We were assigned partners, so today I had tea with mine. Things that were unexpected happened," I paused. "I ran into her before we were in this class, about a month back. I was surprised at how strongly I felt her emotions, but at the time I put it off thinking that maybe it had to do with the fact that she is expecting. Today at tea I didn't think once about drinking her; it was like her emotions were controlling me."

His hands were folded as he listened to me. "And this concerns you?"

"I don't understand it. She is expecting, yet still very attractive, and her hair is the color of blood! At one point she made a comment about her chair being 'bloody murder' and I didn't even flinch. I thought more about making love to her than killing her."

"Perhaps you reached a plateau," he offered.

I shook my head. "I don't think so. The very next human I saw caused my throat to burn like always. I was even looking for a reason to spend more time with her," I admitted.

"Jasper, your gift is extraordinary. I don't know what to say, other than don't get too comfortable with this lack of want you had with her. Maybe there's something there that put you off to her, like her smell or something you're not aware of. Don't expect it to be the same each time you see her. I think it could be very bad if you were caught off guard."