UPDATED: 9/30/2009: Fixed formatting, language inconsistencies (American/UK English used in dialogue), removed unnecessary author notes. This story ends with Chapter Seventeen (Ch #19 according to ff.n) and will be continued in a sequel coming soon. Constructive criticism, as well as reader feedback, is always welcome. Thanks to those who made formatting/language authenticity suggestions, and who caught my minor typographical errors!

SETTING: In the years following the graduation from Hogwarts of the Marauders.

ALTERATIONS: History has been stretched and squeezed a bit for timing, but events remain similar in respect to Voldemort’s actions and eventual downfall through Harry Potter. For this story, Mr. LeStrange has already been killed, while Bellatrix remains at large.

WARNING: This story contains flashbacks of violence to/in front of a young child. It is no more graphic than it needs to be, and is necessary to the storyline, but some people may be disturbed by it.

Prologue: Bellatrix’s Belly

When Bellatrix LeStrange learned she was with child, she knew her late husband was not the father. In fact, she knew exactly whose child it would be, and whose image it would be raised in.

“You are the child of the Dark Lord,” she would croon to her slowly rounding belly, her expression manic. “You will be raised to love him as I do; you will be a servant of his from the very beginning, and you will be an honour to your mother, to the Dark Lord; to the wizarding race.”

Of course, the very idea that Bellatrix had had intercourse with the Dark Lord was absurd, and even Bella did not believe this to be the truth; rather, she did not care to acknowledge who had physically fathered the child, but she knew that she had conceived with the Dark Lord’s glory in her mind, and knew that her child was to be born as a lifelong servant to do his bidding; a greater glory she could not imagine.

In the year since her husband had been killed by blood traitors, Bellatrix had carried on brief affairs with several of her fellow Death Eaters, and any of a number of them could have fathered her child, but Bellatrix did not care which one it was, although she eventually had a strong idea who it was when the child grew older. She alone knew what was best for this child, she thought, and so she alone would present the child to the Dark Lord as a humble servant from the day of its birth.

o-o-o-o-o

Bellatrix gave birth to a tiny, skinny-limbed girl in the dead of winter. Its skin was pale, its mouth a small, thin-lipped pout. Its eyes were as dark and fathomless as the bottom of a well, and the feathery hair atop its head was jet-black. The name on her birth certificate was Calista Lestrange, but Bella called her simply “Daughter”.

Bellatrix thought her child was beautiful; she bore enough of a resemblance to her mother, and in the child’s dark, dark eyes Bella imagined she could already see a devotion to the Dark Lord and his deeds.

Although Bellatrix had triumphantly told Lord Voldemort of her child, and of her intended purpose for the child, the Dark Lord had shown only minimal interest. Bellatrix was wounded and insulted when the Dark Lord insisted that a child must be sixteen to be accepted into the circle of Death Eaters.

Although she insisted that the child could be raised in the Dark Lord’s image, as no other had been, and would someday prove his most loyal servant, the Dark Lord took no interest in infants.

As the first few years of the child’s life passed, Bellatrix ensured that she was raised as a lifelong servant to the Dark Lord must be raised; Bellatrix amused the child with tales of the exploits of the Death Eaters and the glory they would one day bring their kind; as the baby grew into a toddler, Bellatrix occasionally brought her daughter along when she terrorized Muggles and Muggle-borns.

Although Bellatrix would laugh maniacally at her own antics, the child did not seem to laugh or smile at all; instead she watched the world with those dark, unreadable eyes and a solemn expression.

When the girl was three, Bella began taking her along when she went Muggle-hunting. She thought the child should begin learning about the pride she should have in her heritage as young as possible, and thus it was that Bella’s daughter, as a toddler, was witness to the torture and murder of dozens of Muggles.

She was four the first time that Bellatrix placed the wand into her hand and encouraged her to try it as well. The girl had not yet shown any real signs of magical ability, but Bellatrix wanted to encourage her, in the hopes that it would help her tap into her magical potential.

When the girl would seem to make no attempt to use the wand, Bellatrix would punish her, by depriving her of dinner, or, more often, by lecturing her about the pride she should be taking in such activities.

Bellatrix was not above using curses such as the Cruciatus Curse and the Imperius Curse on her own daughter, and she grew increasingly frustrated when even under the influence of the Imperius Curse, the child would not be able to use the wand.

Plagued by fears that her own flesh and blood might be a Squib, Bella began pushing the child ever harder, and punishing her more severely and more often when she did not meet her mother’s standards.

As a result, the child all but refused to speak, and her eyes would glitter with malice and resentment when they would show any emotion at all. Other times, her dark eyes were blank and bottomless, a result that, in the young face, was perhaps even more frightening than cold anger.

Sometime in the child’s fifth year, members of the hateful Order of the Phoenix arrived in the midst of a Muggle hunt, and Bellatrix found herself caught up in a duel with her cousin, Sirius Black. Caught off guard, Bellatrix was disarmed, and her wand landed at the child’s feet.

“Give me my wand!” Bellatrix called to her daughter, holding out her hand, the long white fingers pointing to the child. “Give Mama the wand, now!”

The girl looked at her mother, who was crouched on the ground a good eight feet away from her wand, and kicked the wand, sending it rolling away from herself and her mother.

Bellatrix howled with rage and lunged for the wand, and though Sirius attempted to intercept her, she was able to snatch it up. Immediately, she turned her wand on the child, her eyes blazing with anger.

“Idiot girl!” she screeched, “Crucio!”

The girl’s world turned black and red with indescribable pain, and she fell to the grass, writhing. Bellatrix kept the wand trained on the child, shaking it to punctuate her words now and then.

“You will learn to do as you’re told! You will make your Mama proud! You will follow the Dark Lor—,” In her rage, Bella had forgotten about Sirius, who tackled her bodily, sending her sprawling and her wand to the ground again.

“Evil bitch,” Sirius growled, now pointing his own wand at the nape of her neck as he pinned her to the ground. “It is only for the sake of the child that I don’t kill you right now. Evidently she’s been exposed to enough trauma just by living with you -- I won’t make her witness your death.”

Placing a curse on Bella to temporarily rend her immobile, Sirius stood and reached a hand towards the little girl, who was shakily getting up from the ground herself.

“Come here, girl,” Sirius said, his wand still pointed at the woman on the ground. “I’ll bring you somewhere safer than this. You shouldn’t be here.”

The child made no move either towards him or away from him, and Sirius briefly found himself wondering if Bellatrix had managed to damage the child’s wits, for she only stared blankly.

“Come on,” he repeated urgently, the sounds of battle all around them, “This is no place for children.”

When the girl still didn’t move, he reached forward and grabbed her wrist, pulling her along with him hurriedly.

Later, Sirius sat at a medium-sized round wooden table, the girl next to him. At another place was Remus Lupin, and Lily and James Potter, side by side. The rest of the seats were empty.

The adults were engaged in a soft, urgent conversation, and though many glances were shot at the dark-haired, pale-skinned child, she herself didn’t speak at all.

“I couldn’t leave her with Bellatrix,” Sirius was saying, his tone registering disgust at his cousin’s name. “She was torturing her own child. That girl shouldn’t even have been there.”

James nodded uneasily, and glanced at the child before murmuring to Sirius.

“But we can’t keep her here; Bellatrix is going to come looking for her. It’s not going to be easy to hide her child from her, she could have tracking spells on her or something. It’s far too risky, it could lead Death Eaters straight to us… She shouldn’t be here any more than she should’ve been at that battle scene…”

Sirius ran his hand through his black hair in frustration.

“I know, I know! But what was I supposed to do? She was using unforgivable curses on her own child! And if she’s Bellatrix’s daughter,” he nodded towards the small girl, “Then she’s related to me, too. I should take care of her.”

Lily watched the conversation, her eyes darting in between each man as he spoke, and reached her hand out to stroke the little girl’s hair gently.

“Are you allright?” she asked the child softly, “Are you hungry?”

The little girl didn’t answer, though she looked at Lily with dark, unreadable eyes.

Lily, conscious of the baby growing in her own belly, felt her heart break at the sight of those strange, alien eyes. A child should not wear so bleak an expression, and Lily thought she could die before she would let her own child look so miserable.

Disheartened, she looked back at the men, listening to their discussion about the child.

“No offense meant, Sirius,” James said hesitantly, “but now that she’s here… Well, how do you know she isn’t going to report to her mother the things she’s seen here? It might make finding us a lot easier.”

Sirius rolled his eyes.

“Come on, she’s only a child. And I don’t think Mum is her favorite person just now…”

He glanced at the child for confirmation, but she stared blankly at the table as though she had not even heard him speak.

“Something’s wrong with her,” Lily said softly, reaching her hand out to touch the girl’s forehead gently. “I think she might be ill, or something. Children aren’t this quiet.”

Remus furrowed his brow and nodded a bit, as if he had been thinking the same thing, James looked uncomfortable, and Sirius just shrugged.

“I wouldn’t exactly be the life of the party either, after living with Bellatrix.”

Despite his words, Lily was still uneasy. Perhaps it was a mother-to-be’s intuition, but she just knew that something wasn’t right.

In the end, it was decided that the little girl would stay at the Order Headquarters, at least for now. After all, its location was untraceable without being betrayed by the Secret-Keeper, whatever spells Bellatrix may or may not have put on her daughter, and removing the girl from headquarters and possibly allowing her whereabouts to be traced was far more dangerous than simply leaving her where she was. Long-term, it really wasn’t the place for a child to grow, but in the meantime, it was decided to be the best option.

Ironically, in time it was Remus Lupin who became the closest thing to the child’s guardian, partly because of his lycanthropy, which confined him to headquarters in the days following and preceding his transformations.

Sirius became increasingly wrapped up in the tasks of his position in the Order, and so it was Remus that often sat with the girl and read to her, or simply talked to her.

Lily, too, spent more and more time with the child as her own pregnancy continued and she refrained from the riskier Order business.

Neither of them could coax a word out of the child, and gradually the adults simply accepted that, for reasons unknown to them, she seemed to be mute. Over time, as the child became accustomed to them, she would reply with a slight nod, or the ghost of a smile, but she would not speak a word.

Time passed. Lily gave birth to a beautiful boy, and she and James were blissfully happy bonding with their son, Harry.

With the war between the Order and the Death Eaters nearing its climax, no one had much time for the silent child of Bellatrix LeStrange, but Remus made sure he found the time to read to her, if only for a few minutes, each night.

Although she never spoke, the girl became absorbed in each of the tales he read to her, and some of the bleakness seemed to recede from her features when she was entranced by a story.

Of course, as the whole world knows, when Harry was just over a year old, tragedy struck: Peter Pettigrew betrayed the Potters to Voldemort, and Sirius Black took the fall.

With Voldemort’s fall from power, the Order no longer needed to keep a Headquarters, and it was impossible for Remus to take the child with him to his home, given his condition.

In the end, the child was brought to an orphanage that specialized in finding placement for children orphaned by the war. Technically, its purpose was to serve the families that had been killed by Death Eaters, but Dumbledore and Remus decided that the child was enough of a victim of the war to qualify, and she was placed in the home under a false name.

o-o-o-o-o

THREE MONTHS LATER

“The war is over, and I have more than proved my loyalty,” Severus Snape said silkily, as he stood across Dumbledore’s desk from the wizened old man. “Now I must ask you for some information, information that I was not privy to as a double agent. It has to do with the business of the Order.”

“There are some things in which I am completely bound to secrecy, Severus, but I will help you if I can. You have certainly earned that.”

Dumbledore flicked his light blue eyes up to the sallow-skinned man, wondering what he wanted to know.

“Two years ago, Bellatrix LeStrange’s daughter was kidnapped, supposedly by Sirius Black. I want to know what happened to that girl. Bellatrix enlisted the Dark Lord’s assistance to find her, and Death Eaters searched for months before giving up. Bellatrix said the girl was tracked, so I know the only place she could have been held alive was the Order Headquarters. I want to know what happened to her.”

“Surely your loyalties to Ms. Lestrange don’t stretch so far that you are still enlisted to learn about this girl well after she herself is already in Azkaban?” Dumbledore queried, his voice even and calm.

“I see no need to disclose my personal reasons for wanting this information. Either you will disclose it to me or you won’t.”

“Of course. Pardon an old man’s curiosity—,”

Snape cut him off.

“The only reason you need to know why I’m interested in the information is if you question my motives, which is to question my loyalty. I’m certain that isn’t what you’re intending,” he said testily; Dumbledore noted that the younger man was much more agitated and less composed than usual, and thus forgave his attitude, and smiled blithely.

“Well,” Dumbledore said jauntily, “I guess you’ve made your point. The girl is still alive, and to my knowledge, was never harmed. She is presently at the Francis Orphanage, the one run by St. Mungo’s for children displaced by the war, unless she’s had the fortune of being adopted since I saw her there three months ago.”

The newly-appointed Potions professor (thwarted the first of many times from obtaining the Defence Against the Dark Aets post) nodded curtly and left the office.

The orphanage was better than some, but it was still crowded and full of dismay. No amount of brightly colored toys and cheery staff could replace the families these children had lost, and the overall atmosphere of the place was bleak enough to remind Severus of his own childhood.

He looked around at the children in the common area for one that might be the girl he was looking for, but there wasn’t a black-haired child among them; Severus had only seen a brief glimpse of the child, once, but he knew that her hair was as pitch-dark as her mother’s.

“Welcome! Welcome to Francis House!” a staff member with an American accent greeted him far too brightly, “I’m Elisa. Do you have an appointment?”

“No,” Severus said quietly, glancing at the woman. She was a tall, wiry blond with a lot of freckles and an expansive mass of frizzy curls. “Actually, I’m looking for a specific child that I was told is here. The… child of a… lost friend.”

“Visitations are generally done by appointment,” Elisa told him, “But I can make an exception. What’s the name of the child you’re looking for?”

“Chloe Smith,” he said, using the false name Dumbledore had told him the child had been left at the orphanage with.

“Oh… You’re here to visit Chloe?” the woman seemed strangely caught off-guard, and attempted to cover it with a falsely bright smile. “Uhm… that’s great! Right this way, she’s probably in her room.”

Severus followed the woman out of the common room and down a few narrow hallways. Doors lined both sides of every hall, and led to small, dim rooms that held six bunks each. Finally, at the very rear of the building, the staff person tapped twice on the closed door in front of them, and walked in without waiting for a reply.

The room was empty but for two girls, Severus saw. One was fair-haired and the other had dingy mouse-brown hair, and both were bent over something in the far corner of the room, between a set of bunks and the wall. They giggled, and he thought he heard something distinctively sinister about the laughter.

“Jessica, Allison,” the wiry, curly-topped lady said admonishingly, “I hope you’re playing nice. Some kids find it hard to adjust to the way of life here at Francis House.”

Severus could tell that her words were more for him than the two little girls, who both looked up furtively and stifled further giggles. It was only when the lighter-haired of the two girls stood up, did he notice the fistful of dark hair she held onto, and quickly dropped as she met Elisa’s gaze, and he slowly realized that there was another child in the room.

In the corner, where the girls had been hunched over, was a smaller, slighter form whose face was obscured by masses of tangled, lank-looking black hair.

The mousy-haired girl aimed a swift, small kick at the dark-haired girl before the two girls scurried around Elisa and out of the room, both with hands pressed to their mouths to stem a tide of sinister giggles.

Elisa sent a frustrated look after the pair, but entered the room, beckoning Severus to follow.

“Chloe!” she said with false brightness, and Severus could tell that Elisa was not overly fond of the little dark-haired ‘Chloe’.

“Someone’s here to see you. His name is…” she looked at him expectantly, but Severus ignored the curly-haired woman and instead looked down at the child.

She was small and thin, and her skin was so pale it appeared to have an almost yellowish tint to it. He couldn’t see her face, because it was obscured beneath a mass of tangled, greasy hair. Clearly, this girl wasn’t the picture of perfect hygiene, and Elisa seemed to notice this as well.

“We only require weekly bathing,” she explained in cheery tones, “Other than that, we let the children decide on their own rhythm… it can be difficult getting in to the washroom to gussy up with so many little girls all vying for a space in front of the mirror!”.

Her voice was so artificially saccharine that Severus felt slightly ill.

The sound of Elisa’s high-pitched voice elicited a different response from the child; she lifted her face, and glared at Elisa with an expression that was nothing short of scathing. Perhaps it was this expression that made the impression of the girl jolt Severus’ brain the way it did, or perhaps he had known all along what he would see in the child’s face; after all, he had been wondering for six long years something that Bellatrix would refuse to discuss.

Severus had carried on an affair with Bellatrix (for a simple diversion more than anything else, as in truth, he detested the overzealous, half-crazed woman) for months, and it had ended abruptly with the announcement of Bellatrix’s pregnancy. Of course, Bellatrix had never been exactly faithful to her husband, and so there were probably several possibilities as to who could have fathered her child.

Now, looking at the girl before him, he knew exactly why Bellatrix had refused to let him or anyone else in the Dark Lord’s inner circle set eyes on the child. Anyone would have known, had they looked at her eyes…

The girl’s face was thin and angular, her cheekbones jutting outwards in much the same way her mother’s did. Her nose was narrow, and a little too long for her face. Her mouth was a thin-lipped scowl, and her hair hung lankly.

She was by no means pretty, but she was striking; it was the eyes. They were so dark that they didn’t have a discernible color, and they glittered distantly with malice, while they were mainly hidden by a vast bleakness that made her strange features more of a mask than anything else.

Her eyes, dark and bottomless, and so full of emptiness, were a mirror of his own cold, midnight eyes.

Severus only looked at them for a few seconds, before the girl leapt up, the book she had been huddled in the corner with falling to the floor with a loud thud. She glared at Elisa icily, but didn’t say anything.

Elisa scowled nearly as nastily at the wretched-looking child before continuing in her treacle-sweet voice.

“Well, I’ll just let you two visit. You’ll have twenty minutes. If you want longer, I’m afraid you’ll need to book an appointm--,”

“The visit won’t be necessary after all,” Severus said, his words clipped as he looked at the curly-haired woman, whom he decided he didn’t care for at all. “I want to adopt this child.”

“Oh!” Elisa’s expression of surprise was quickly covered with a wide smile and more sugary words. “That’s lovely, however I’m afraid that our adoption process requires a twelve-week parenting course, and of course extensive background checks, and--,”

“What if the child in question is a blood relation to the adoptive parent?” Severus cut her off smoothly.

“Unless the person or persons wishing to adopt are the godparents, then the process is still the same, I’m afraid.”

Elisa really did look as if she wished it would be simpler to get the child off her hands.

“I’ll go you one better,” Severus said drily, “I am this child’s father. Run whatever tests you need to run to prove it, but I am taking her home with me, today.”

Elisa didn’t even bother to cover her shocked expression with sugary professionalism; Instead, she bounded towards the front of her building for her manager.

After both wizarding and Muggle paternity tests alike had proven that Severus Snape was indeed the father of “Chloe Smith”, he did take the girl home that day, true to his word, and immediately had her name legally changed.

Since she was only in the orphanage records as Chloe, there was no need to fix any records regarding her first name, but he’d be damned if he would leave Bellatrix’s name tailing the child like a curse.

From that day on, Calista Lestrange became Calista Snape, and she had a permanent home at last, with someone who was possibly as miserable as she herself was.