The Life of a Death-Eater Child

Author Explanation: I always wondered what the life of a Death Eater child would be like if said child chose not to follow the Dark Lord. So this story is written from the perspective of such a child. I know that some people would say that a 13 year-old wouldn't speak like this, but I work with abused children and some of them really have crazy ideas like the ones I describe in this story. I also know a 14 year-old girl that speaks about her life like this, so it is from my own experiences that I write this stuff. Intelligent, abused children are often very introverted and they muse a lot about their lives. Intelligence can sometimes be a burden. When you find a way to their hearts, they will tell you about it and you will be surprised. So please don't flame me about this. Just try to trust me.

This story is totally different from my other one, but I hope you like it nevertheless. Please let me know!

This will be an adoption fic, but the adoption will not happen for a while. A few chapters will just be about her past, so please be patient.

I also had to change a few things from the Harry Potter world for my story. For example:

- New characters

- Each house has two Prefects for every year except the first year

- Harry will defeat Voldemort in his second year

- Professor Snape is married and will adopt the main character later

Beside these changes, there is also the mention of child abuse, so if you are offended, please don't read!

Thanks a lot to my beta-reader, saiyanwizardgurl, for correcting my mistakes!

Chapter 1 - My name is Sara Drake

What irony. The Dark Lord has been dead now for almost half a year, and my life is still misery. And when you think it cannot get any worse, life always belies you. Everyone is so glad that Harry defeated the Dark Lord. He is one year above me (which means he is a fourth year). Ginny, my best friend, still has a crush on him. Yeah, he is okay. Not arrogant about his hero status. Quiet the opposite. He is more of an outsider. Now that the Daily Prophet has told the whole wizard community about his life - especially about the abuse he received from his relatives - he is even more secluded. He mostly spends his time with Ron and Hermione, avoiding the attention of the others. I can understand him. Who wants to speak about things you only want to forget? It must be horrible to have your privacy displayed on the front page. I do not think I could stand it.

People think that they know what it really means to be the child of Death Eaters like my parents were. They did not even consider that I had a different conviction than my parents. Not that I ever made that known. I guess that is the difference between Harry and I: he is a true Gryffindor.

But before I confuse you any further, I first have to tell you a little bit about myself. I am Sara Drake, the daughter of Francis and Amanda Drake, who were one of the highest among the ranks of the Dark Lord. Right now, they are already dead. Not that I regret it a bit. Like I mentioned before, I am normally a private person. I do not want people to know too much about me. Any information someone has about you can be used against you, so if you do not want to be hurt, you should be careful about how much you give away of yourself. Believe me; I have learned this the hard way.

In my family, I was only the bastard child, the child that should have been gifted with great intelligence, power, and an enormous will. A dark ritual was held at my birth by the Dark Lord so that I might gain these abilities. Something must have gone wrong because I think that I am just average in intelligence. The part that was supposed to give me an enormous will must have worked, though. Not as the Dark Lord intended, but I definitely have a strong will: the will to not be like my damn parents and their Death Eater friends. That, unfortunately, caused my childhood to be miserable.

Realizing his mistake, the Dark Lord tried to force me to his side by breaking my will. That meant a lot of pain and humiliation for me. With time, I started to make a game out of it, just to stay sane. When they hit me, I asked them if that was all they could do. I never cried in front of them, and I worked hard not to scream or moan in pain. When the Dark Lord threw a Cruciatus Curse on me, I tried to stand it as long as possible. I tried hard not to give him the satisfaction of seeing me scream or cry, but I must admit that that did not work too well. I know that it is abnormal to do this, but I am sure that this is the reason I am still sane. I could not change my parents or the Dark Lord; I only could make the best out of the situation.

Making a game of fighting them was my logical conclusion. I could have spared myself a lot of pain by just keeping my mouth closed and taking what they gave me. I would never have given in or turn to their side. I would have killed myself before doing this.

Do not laugh or smirk about this. I know that I am just a child, but believe me when I say that I would have done it. You cannot imagine the treatment I received from my parents and the Dark Lord; it could change a person, even a child.

I did not even know Albus Dumbledore when I first told my parents that he was the only one I would choose as my master. I just wanted to piss them off by telling them so because I knew that he was the person that they hated most. All that brought me was three broken ribs, a bad conclusion, and five broken fingers. It probably would have amounted to much more if I had not passed out while they slowly broke the fifth finger. Albus Dumbledore and the Light became my mantra. I did not even know much about either at all, but that did not stop me from telling my friends about them. I wanted to make sure that they would not follow the Dark Lord just because their parents did. I wanted them to decide for themselves. They should know both sides. As the years went by, I learned more about Albus Dumbledore and his Order of the Phoenix. About his fight against the Dark Lord. I spoke with prisoners in the dungeons of my parents' mansion. They told me about Hogwarts and its Headmaster and about the former Death Eater who turned to become a spy for Dumbledore. I wanted to know these two men and the man that all Death Eaters feared - the Auror known as Mad-Eye Moody, the "Death-Eater Eater." I was engrossed in those stories, and, in time, I was convinced that the Light would win and that one day everything will be much better. I even believed that my life would be better. How stupid I was to believe such a thing.

Dumbledore, Harry, and the Order of the Phoenix destroyed the Dark Lord and his followers, but my life is still shit. I now live with my relatives that hate me for being a Death Eater's child. They believe that the devil is inside me, waiting to be freed and become the new Dark Lord.

Isn't that funny?

I was beaten my whole childhood for not wanting to become a Death Eater, and now I get beaten because people think I will become a Death Eater. My relatives think that beating me will keep me down. Learning that my place in this community is at the bottom, that I'm not worthy to stand with everyone else. They say that the Dark Lord has placed a dark seed inside me that has already sprouted and that it has to be stopped.

Shall I tell you something that really scares me? I have started to believe it myself. What if the Dark Lord really did place a dark seed in me during the ritual at my birth? What if it really sprouts and will push out all the light that I have collected all these years with the stories I heard about Dumbledore, Snape, and Moody?

In the past two and a half years at Hogwarts, I really felt that I am good. I absorbed all the light I could get like a dry sponge. Every single word the Headmaster spoke to me, I examined to find more than one meaning in it. He once told me that it does not matter what other people think about us or what they want us to become; only what we think about ourselves and what we want to become is important. The choices we make are important. That day, I left his office so happy. I could feel the light flowing through my veins. I even thought that if someone would look close at me, they would see the light starting to escape my body because there was so much of it.

It was then that I realized was that light was: HOPE. Hope that the greatest wizard of this world had placed in me. This was not the only situation in which I completely lost the dark and heavy feeling inside me. It also happened when Professor McGonagall gave me ten points for transfiguring a needle into a ring at the first try. When she proudly looked at me, I could feel the darkness in me being suppressed by the light. And this happened a lot of times while I was at Hogwarts. When I had to go back home, the hope was still there. But the longer I was home, the more I could feel the darkness come back. Now with my relatives, it is the same. Sometimes when they beat me or treat me like scum, I really start to feel the darkness creep up. Sometimes I wish I could hurt them as well. Is this the dark plant sprouting in me? Oh my, I have already told you too much. What did I tell you about not letting people know too much about your life? And now, I sit here and tell you my darkest thoughts and greatest fears. So this has to stop. Instead, I will tell you of my first year at Hogwarts.