Aiming for Perfection

I was always the girl with no friends, no pets, no social interactions whatsoever. It was the label that turned me into what I am today.

The other children in the neighborhood didn't want to be seen around me. I was a freak to them after the "incident", as my parents kindly put it. It was more like a catastrophy, if you ask me.

Annie and I had been best friends all our lives. We were together in kindergarten, we had tea parties when we were very young, and now she was my deskmate in school. One day, she copied from me during a test. The teacher saw her and called us to her desk. She asked who was copying from whom and Annie said I was copying her paper. She didn't even blink.

Of course I got angry. She was lying, and the teacher believed her. She started shouting at me, and I lost control. I lifted my hand towards Annie, and she was lifted off the ground. She hung in midair in the front of the classroom while I glared at Mrs. Stewart. She screamed and I dropped Annie on the floor before running out the door.

The next two weeks were a nightmare. My parents, as muggles usually do, refused to believe it was my fault. They insisted that I had been cursed somehow and got five priests to bless me and one to exorcise me. I found the whole process quite boring. It was during the fourth blessing that I started seriously doubting the existence of God. By the time I had been exorcised, I was sure there was no one out there. We were alone. I wanted to know what power really is, since it was not concentrated in a superior being of some sort.

I read like crazy, almost anything I could lay my hands on. I read philosophy, novels, medieval predictions and a lot of other things average ten-year-olds wouldn't even look at, until the librarian called my parents and they told me to stop reading this sort of books.

This lasted for five months, during which I sneaked around the house with classical novels. I was so amazed at the female characters, with their dignity and poise, that I started copying them. I think it was in me all along, it came so naturally. I received my Hogwarts letter and accepted it gracefully. After all, it proved my point. God wasn't involved in the things I had done. It was unpolished magic.

I did my reading that summer. I was what they called a mudblood. The term was offensive, and I was determined to show them my true value. I bought books from Diagon Alley and read about the wizarding world, the school I would attend, the subjects I would take. I didn't just read my schoolbooks. I memorised them.

On September 1st, I left my home and went to Hogwarts. I met Harry Potter on the train, and found him less than impressive. The events of my first year made me reconsider. He wasn't special, but he had a lot of courage and a talent for improvisation that got him through a close encounter with Voldemort.

I became friends with him and Ron Weasley. Ron was inferior to Harry from every point of view, but he was also brave and a good chess player. I accepted him because it meant he had a good, solid logic and practical intelligence.

During our second year, Harry, Ron and me were again fighting Voldemort. That kid was a magnet for trouble! I spent a large part of the school year Petrified in the Infirmary, but not without having supplied the boys with the solution to the puzzle of what kind of creature they were fighting.

I sometimes wished I was a ravenclaw over the next three years. I couldn't explain to myself why I had been sorted in to Gryffindor, but the events of my sixth year made me realize I was looking in the wrong House. I should've been a Slytherin.

After such a long time of doing Gryffindors' homework, cleaning up their messes, covering up for them while they were out breaking school rules, I read Hogwarts: A History again. I matched the Slytherin student definition perfectly, except I wasn't pureblooded. There it was, the answer to my questions and woes!

I was a Gryffindor because of the unfortunate conditions of my birth into a muggle family.

It went downhill from there. I started to hate my family. I stopped answering to their letters. I also put a distance between me and the rest of Gryffindor.

I went to Draco Malfoy for guidance. He overcame his innitial repulsion towards me when he saw that I hated my heritage as much as he did, and that I was as cunning as he was. I became his apprentice in November, during my sixth year. We were in love by April, the following year.

After he received the Dark Mark, he convinced his father that I would make a great Death Eater. Voldemort himself agreed on this after testing me. I received the Dark Mark after I graduated.

It was all great for a few months. Then we were sent to missions all the time and Draco got killed during a particularly nasty one. I took over his position and, and, soon enough, I received a most appealing order.

I was told to destroy any evidence of my heritage. To kill my mother.