Both Arms Cradle You Now

Prologue

She was a cursed child.

She was born to a family that proclaimed themselves as the 'elite' when in fact they had lost their esteemed glory and riches years ago. The only thing they have left is the name and the rich ancestry coming from Salazar Slytherin, the one, whom her relatives worship at the brink of dawn and dusk. Andromeda Gaunt didn't have a clear understanding of what her family was exactly. Her father was rarely present, for reasons unknown to her young mind, her mother was like a ghost and when she was home she was cold. They kept moving all the time – London, Paris, Hamburg. She remembers her years in Hamburg the most since at that age she could already comprehend who was the one raising her. Her brother. And then when she least expected it, her family was dead one day.

She had been eight years old, three years short of her education at Hogwarts when he killed her family. Hell, she didn't even know who she was at the time when her whole family had been slaughtered right in front of her. She had been a sister, a daughter, a friend, a Gaunt. All of those things that took on new meanings over the years. And that day, in 1970, it meant she became the last Gaunt to be left alive. The Last Serpent, the survivor. She didn't get a badge for it like some or a sterling reputation like others. At the time, he wasn't such a threat to deserve to be rewarded in such a way. Frankly, she was a girl who barely comprehended that she was fully on a being full of life and barely comprehended that her parents were just like her. They had their own histories and other family members, stories, and names. Her young mind couldn't comprehend why her family kept moving during the short time she knew them, or why the filthy muggles, as her brother called them, sometimes pointed at her when they walked the streets, or why when she woke up in their new home in... she couldn't remember where, she heard the cries of her family, her brother, calling out from deeper inside the house. Back then she woke up groggily and walked out quietly out of her room with her little feet, calling out to her brother, as she descended the stairs. What she witnessed had been enough to strike her to her core. The walls coated with a magnificent red, bits and pieces of furniture were thrown around, and barely any sight of her family that she previously heard so clearly.

What a terrible, terrible and powerful sight it was with the blood splattered everywhere and a man in the midst of it. She wasn't wrong when she thought he looked similar to her father, she wasn't wrong when she thought to run. And she did.

The young girl ran, and ran, and ran... But the man was always right behind her. He didn't send a spell flying her way like she saw him do to her family or like her parents sometimes did to punish her brother for misbehaving. No, he watched. And then when she thought she couldn't run any longer, she fell onto the ground that was slicken by rain, enveloped in mud and grime and sweat and fresh tears that didn't stop falling down her cheeks. For a child so young, she quickly understood that she would die at that moment. She would die and never learn spells or dance at magnificent balls, or marry into a good family with a decent husband. She will die and her entire existence, just like that of her family, will be erased.

What a terrible, foolish fate she is subjected to.

The man walked right up to her and crouched before her fallen front, watching as she cried and cowered away from him. Dark hair, even darker eyes and a face so alike to what her family looked like. Provided she recalled what they looked like. But thinking about it in the moment had no purpose. He studied her for a prolonged moment with no apparent emotion on his face and all she could hear were a few hisses of the wind, moving her curls and his as he observed her. He looked like he was above anything. And he was. Even when he just managed to kill the three other surviving family members of the Gaunt family. Her young mind didn't understand back then why she never saw any of her other relatives. It was only later that she realized that they must have already been dead at the hands of the man who seemed like death himself.