[Harry Potter] Chained by Fate: Voldemort's Daughter Fanfic

Chapter 1: 12 Grimmauld Place

Your POV

My morning started like it always did: with Kreacher banging a pan on my bedroom door.

I groaned and pressed my pillow against my ears. We'd been living at 12 Grimmauld Place, just the two of us, for almost a decade and somehow, he still managed to be the biggest pain in the ass. I'd begged Remus and Sirius for years to make Kreacher live somewhere else, or at least let me move out, but there were two problems with that:

One, Kreacher refused to leave. Two, no one wanted to take in the daughter of Emily Baudelaire.

"Quit it, Kreacher!" I yelled, hurling my pillow at the door. After one last passive-aggressive bang, I heard him shuffle off to one of his many holes in the walls. I sighed and pulled the duvet further over my head.

I barely got any sleep that night thanks to my Dark Mark. Every hour or so, the black snake would start writhing on my arm, and there was no sleeping through that. It turned your blood to ice, made every hair on your body stand on end, pushed you so close to the edge that you couldn't help but look over your shoulder in the dark, agonising over whether you really had remembered to charm the front door. But worse than the feeling itself, was not knowing what it meant. Before that summer, my Dark Mark had been nothing but a tattoo, a permanent black reminder of the burden that was my heritage. Yet, over the past months, it had started moving, really moving, and I couldn't help but wonder if that meant the Death Eaters were active, or worse. Voldemort.

I knew I should've told someone about it by now, but with Sirius finally free and enjoying the tropics – the last letter he sent me came with a Blue Macaw – I didn't want to worry him with what was hopefully nothing. The same went for Harry; being the Boy Who Lived was hard enough to bear without adding my paranoid ramblings into the mix.

Bagel, my albino corn snake, slithered out from beneath my pillow.

"Hungry," She told me – my stomach rumbled in response.
"For goodness sake," I muttered. I put Bagel on my shoulders and clambered out of bed – so much for a lie-in.

12 Grimmauld Place was hardly the nicest place to live – grim is quite literally in the name – with its temperamental central heating and almost non-existent hot water system, and let's not forget the mounds and mounds of mould that seemed to accumulate no matter what spell I used. The only rooms that were remotely tolerable were the kitchen, my art studio (my mother's old bedroom) and the library – purely because I fought tirelessly to keep them that way. But being there did have its perks, primarily the fact that I lived alone – Kreacher didn't count. Most Witches and Wizards, bar Arthur Weasley, were repulsed, if not terrified of muggle technology, and had I lived with other people, I doubt they would have tolerated my soft spot for muggle media. I quite liked non-moving pictures, and I've always had a soft spot for Studio Ghibli.

Not bothering to test if there was hot water in the pipes, I passed the bathroom and headed straight for the kitchen, very quickly regretting that I hadn't gone grocery shopping the day before. The kitchen was one of the only rooms in the house that hadn't been covered in darkly-coloured, gaudy-patterned wallpaper. The walls were dark mahogany with empty cupboards and endless bookshelves filled with ancient china. The centrepiece of the room was the lavishly long wooden table that I had no doubt could seat over ten people. The far end of the table was buried in parchment and books – my summer reading – with a vase of flowers in the centre; my very feeble attempt at making the place homely. The kitchen appliances themselves were the bane of my existence; the oven was ancient and gas, but almost never decided to light without the help of at least a little spell, and the fridge ran entirely on magic alone, using a charm I frequently had to renew.

After setting down Bagel with a mouse, I began to hunt for my breakfast. The cupboards were, as I expected, empty, save for the powdered leftovers of a box of crunchy nut cornflakes and a just-in-date carton of milk in the fridge – a shameful breakfast. I made a mental note to go grocery shopping when, with a rush of soot and dust, Mae flew down the chimney, a letter in her beak and a parcel in her claws.