"Maple wood with a dragon heartstring core. Twelve and a half inches long."

Still shackled in chains, Ollivander shakily handed me over the pointy stick. My very own wand.

As I held it in my hand, an unexpected feeling of coming home swept over me.

"Listen to everything I teach you," Snape said, "and use it wisely. It will soon become your best ally."

Snape was given his very own room in the Manor to use as a classroom. "Get comfortable," Snape warned, as he cut all sunlight out by sending the blinds crashing down with a wave of his wand. "For this will be the place you will spend most of the summer whilst I prep you for Hogwarts."

"I'm going back to Hogwarts?" I gasped, excitement mounting in my stomach. "As a real student?"

"As you should have done from the age of eleven," he replied, not quite meeting my eye, "it was a place always meant for you."

"Severus," I said, taking the seat in front of his desk, "my mother... you promised."

Sighing deeply, he sat down heavily on the chair behind the desk. And he began his story.

"I was about to attend my final year at Hogwarts when I met him. A man called Tom Riddle. He befriended me at a time when I was feeling extremely... lonely. I had no one I could call a friend at Hogwarts.

"Tom flattered me; told me I had great potential and that I was the kind of person he needed by his side. And he was popular. He had it all, good looks, charisma and charm. For the first time, I felt like a somebody.

"Tom held meetings in a local wizarding pub near where I grew up with Pandora. An elite group of us would talk about the wizarding future and how wrong it was that Muggles were slowly taking their place in our world.

"I brought Pandora along with me during one of these meetings. Our parents were having a particularly brutal argument and I didn't want to leave her there. She was just fifteen and frightened. I could see she fell for Tom instantly. And he too, fell for her. I must admit to feeling slightly jealous. He was my friend and yet he couldn't take his eyes off her. He begged me to bring her back. I was keen to please and so I did. The problem was, he had no idea that she wasn't a witch.

"Given his views upon non-magical folk, I had told Pandora to pretend that she attended Beauxbatons. He didn't question it - had no reason to. After all she wouldn't have been allowed to practice magic outside of school at her age.

"When I left for Hogwarts for my final year, I had an uneasy feeling about saying goodbye to Pandora. She had clearly fallen in love with Tom, but she was so young. And Tom was a much older, much cleverer man. I could see he used people to his advantage and I was afraid for her.

"By the time I had returned the following summer, she had gone. Left home. When I asked my parents of her location they just shrugged and told me to try looking on street corners.

"I finally got it out of them that she had run off with a man. Tom. It was at this point I wished I had never met him. I spent the next few months looking for them. It seemed Tom had gone underground and no longer held his meetings in the pub. After asking around the right people, I finally located them. By this time, Tom had gotten quite the army together. He called them his Death Eaters.

"Pandora looked the shell of her former self. She did everything Tom said. She was so desperate to please him. But he was cross she said, cross because she wasn't going 'back' to Beauxbatons to complete her education. She begged me to talk to him, begged me to make him see he didn't need her to be a witch to make him happy.

"But Tom was very much set in his ways. As soon as he discovered she had no magical powers, he went crazy with rage. I- I thought he was going to kill her. The only way I could could get him to let her walk away freely was to promise him that I would become one of his most loyal Death Eaters and serve him until the end of time. He marked me there and then, and then let her go.

"However, it turned out he wasn't just letting Pandora go - because, unbeknownst to Tom, she was carrying his child... you. I knew if he ever found out, he would take you away from her and mould you into the witch he wanted you to be. A dangerous, powerful one. Even more so than himself, perhaps.

"So, I helped her hide. She married a Muggle man and brought you up in a Muggle community. I advised her to keep it that way. That it was imperative that you grew up thinking you were a Muggle. I was afraid of attention being drawn to you otherwise. Dumbledore agreed, and with my consent, terminated your right to attend Hogwarts.

"But the worst thing was, I could no longer see Pandora. I had to cut all ties with her to keep her - and you, safe. I would sometimes watch from afar though. You seemed happy together. And then- and then she died... and I couldn't watch you anymore. I'm so sorry, Astrid. It broke my heart to look at you and see... her."

I sat silently and still. I watched as Snape wept into his hands. I did not feel anything except a strange kind of coldness that crept slowly over me.

For where his story stopped, that was where mine began.

...

Hours would go by in that room with my uncle, as he taught me how to practice magic, learning the basic spells to begin with and then quickly advancing to more complex incantations. I was surprised at how fast I picked it up.

He was a harsh teacher ("I said swish and flick!"), but determined.

And it turned out, I was a determined student.

"Merlin!" Draco cried impressively as I flicked my wand and made a rainbow arc over us across my bed one evening. "Astrid - how did you do that? You didn't even use an incantation. I've been practicing magic for years and I still struggle with nonverbal spells!"

I didn't understand how he couldn't. It was so easy.

"I can do better than that," I grinned, and with another flick of my wand I made a black cloud appear and billow threateningly above the glimmering rainbow. It released a loud deafening clap of thunder which shook the walls, and light flashed blindingly around us as an angry bolt of lightning struck the rainbow, making it disappear in a puff of smoke.

I turned to Draco grinning smugly, but soon dropped it at the look upon his face.

For he didn't look impressed like I had expected.

Behind those silver grey eyes that stared at me bewilderedly, I could see the unmistakable flash of fear.