Chapter 1 ~ Fourteen Years Later.

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The bright early morning sunshine shone into the eyes of Maxine Lestrange as she blinked blindly in the light. Dammit. She'd forgotten to close those skylight blinds again.

Sitting up in bed, she blinked again, focus gradually returning. Once her eyesight was back to normal, there came the routine glance around her room. Yes, everything was as it should be, nothing was missing, nothing out of place.Sometimes James would get into her room and snoop around, so she'd taken to locking the door. Though he'd managed to get through that, too. He knew it bugged her. Maxine was fond of privacy.

The walls were painted a light, kingfisher blue, the floor of rough wooden boards glinting in the golden beams that flooded in from the skylights. She loved the attic, it was peaceful and quiet, away from the world. Most of her time was spent hidden away up here.

It was a large room, long and a little narrow, with a sloping roof that had four skylights in it. Bookcases spread along the walls, a desk, shelves, a pile of pillows in one corner where she and Lily practiced stunning and other duelling spells. A little built in wardrobe, a chest of draws. There were other items in the room that didn't belong to her, on other shelves along the back wall, torn photographs, golden cufflinks, even an old record titled upon it's worn sleeves 'The very best of Motown Music - For Sirius, love Peggy' - all that was left of the once personal treasures of the Black Family. One photograph she had moved round to face the wall. Despite the Potter's being brilliant parents on the whole, they hadn't realised it disturbed her to have the arrogant, sunken face of her grandmother watching her every move from the photograph.

Maxine pushed back her hair to reveal an oval-shaped, pointy face with a refined jaw and pale, clear complexion. She retained little of her grandmother's looks; the dark, waving hair that fell to just below her shoulders remained the only traces of Bellatrix Lestrange's . Her best feature, apparently, were her eyes, which were are a dark blue-green with flecks of lighter grey. They were large and solemn under sharp, distinct eyebrows. Her face wasn't exactly pretty, more interesting. When you looked at Maxine Lestrange you wanted to keep staring.

Her facial features weren't the only reason people stared at her - just mentioning her history most people would either look extremely uncomfortable or very interested. Maxine hated the staring., the whispering. Yes, her grandmother ha been Bellatrix Lestrange, loyal follower of Lord Voldemort himself, but what did she have to do with it? She wasn't anything like her grandmother, she hated her grandmother - if you could hate a memory. And you can, especially a memory that shadows you for your entire life.

The Potters were a good family, she loved them with all her heart. She loved Harry and Ginny Potter, strong and famous. She treated them as her own Mother and Father, the Mother and Father she had never known. She loved Lily, her bouncy little sister to whom Maxine had taught as many spells as possible. She loved Albus, her shy, quiet little brother who told her all his stories from school and made her laugh. She even loved James, her twin in age, despite his feelings towards her, which had always been a little biased by James' school friends.

Because of her family ties, Maxine had never liked associating with other witches and wizards much. She'd play with the Weasleys and Scamanders and Macmillans, but apart from the little web surrounding the Potters, she didn't like people outside that little circle. She'd always felt unaccepted, unwelcome. And she was, the bias of her surname's history seemed to effect everyone. 

That was one of the reasons she'd decided to be home schooled, to learn at home, and her foster parents had accepted that reason. But there was another cause behind her decision, a darker feeling that she longed to forget for the rest of the days, the reason that she tried to steer clear of the muggle world.

It had first happened when Maxine was ten. There she was, walking down a London street, on the way to The Leaky Cauldron, when she'd seen one of those homeless Muggles who sleep on the streets and beg. She'd been staring at him, she'd felt sorry for him, when all of a sudden his face changed. His whole head had morphed into that of an animalistic monster with tusks and ears and features like that of a boar. He'd noticed her, too, and looked horrified before scuttling away, glancing behind himself in a terrified manner.

She'd been wise enough to keep her mouth shut, she didn't want to end up in the long-term ward at St. Mungo's. But the image had still swam around her head, flooding into her mind whenever she thought she'd managed to banish it from there. 

She'd seen the same thing more times, and that's when she began to feel desperately alone. She couldn't tell anyone, they'd think she was mad or joking. So she kept quiet, and gradually began to retreat into a condition of quiet wondering. She stopped going out as much, staying up her attic, making the room her world. Her parents had then accepted her homeschooling idea and she'd began to teach herself, to practice her own spells with a grant from the ministry, to visit portioners who taught her to brew, and other tutors who helped with her studies. She read a lot, the walls of her attic soon becoming covered with bookcases. Soon her world shrank down to include those four walls of her attic. She go around the house, yes, she'd visit her tutors. But mainly she'd be locked up in her attack, peaceful and quiet. Harry and Ginny Potter were busy people, they didn't notice her absence much. Maxine looked after the house whilst they were out, she'd looked after Albus before he'd gone off to Hogwarts and she still looked after Lily, though not for very much longer, as she was also going to go off to Hogwarts in a weeks time.

Yes, Maxine had her own little world, a comfortable, quiet world. And she remained hidden in that world for five years, reaching her fifteenth birthday hardly anyone knew she was alive. Maxine Lestrange was forgotten.

And that was the way she liked it to be.