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The Family Challenge: The Blacks: Regulus. Prompt - Rebel

The Easter Egg Challenge: RegBarty

TV Quote - #21 - I've been in love. It's pointless, painful and overrated.

Favourite Characters: RegBarty

Unusual Pairing: RegBarty

School Of Prompt: Crescent, Fade, Together.

200 Prompts, 100 Stories: Barty Crouch Jr, Morsmordre.

Word Count Without AN - 860

Destroyed

I've been in love. It's pointless, painful and overrated. It makes you feel foreign things that you've never before dared to feel. It makes you want to be a better person. It makes you want to do things to make the other person happy. And it leaves you feeling crushed and hopeless when it all inevitably falls to pieces.

Love is the best, or worst, weapon in a person's arsenal. They can 'Crucio' you to the ends of the earth and back, but it would never hurt as much as a broken heart. Regulus used it against me, and it destroyed the person I was, made me into a monster, an insane man who would torture a happy couple rather than allow them to prove their love and protect each other.

Regulus was my entire world. He was my sun, my moon, my stars and anything else you can think of. He was my first thought in the morning, my last thought at night. He was my first kiss, too. He took my virginity with tenderness and care, whispering sweet nothings in my ear to help me forget the pain of the first intrusion.

He was the one who convinced me to rebel against my Father's vision of perfection, to be the man I wanted to be rather than the one I was forced to be. He stood by my side as we each took the mark, and he held my hand as I almost bit off my tongue holding in the cry of pain I wanted to let out. He comforted me after my first kill, told me that I was doing what was right, what was necessary to protect our world, and to protect our relationship.

I never wanted to be a murderer. I didn't want any part in the war. I did it for him. Everything was for him.

In public, Regulus was reserved, the perfect pureblood, the perfect Black. When we were alone, just the two of us, he was so alive with spirit. He was funny and caring and everything I could ever want in a partner. He was mine and I was his. We were together, and we were inseparable, and we would fight forever to stay that way.

Of course, he proved to me that I was naive. It didn't take long after we took the mark for him to get distant. He'd avoid me like I had a disgusting disease, spend hours away from me and never answer when I asked where he'd been. Emotionally, my Regulus was gone, and then, out of nowhere, the physical part of him followed.

I searched for him for months, pleading with the other Death Eaters to tell me anything they knew. I got the courage to ask the Dark Lord, and was tortured for the trouble, but still Regulus was nowhere to be found.

He left me and I was devastated. Heartbroken. Hopeless. Abandoned.

.O.O.O.O.

I didn't notice when the rational part of me started to fade away. I didn't track my progress into madness until it was far too late. I didn't realise what was happening to me, until it happened.

I recognised it as soon as I saw it. The looks they shared, the way he tried to shield her with his body, even as she had her wand aimed under his arm, ready to fire on his command. I saw it in the way they begged for each others lives, saw it in the tears she cried.

Frank and Alice Longbottom were in love. They had what had been snatched away from me. They didn't deserve it.

The torture curse ran through me even as it left my wand, a strand of light connecting us as I spent all of my hatred for Regulus, the man who'd forced me to love him only to leave me, on Frank Longbottom as his wife cried. I revelled in the sound of her anguish, laughed in her face as she fought against the ropes Bellatrix had her bound in.

By the time I lifted the curse, magically exhausted but more satisfied than I'd been in months, Frank Longbottom was a gibbering mess. He'd never love again. He'd never even remember what love was. I waited, leant against the wall, for Bellatrix to finish her fun with the woman, and then led the way from the house.

Pausing to look up at the crescent moon hanging over the house, I lifted my wand, and with the final bit of magic left in me, I shouted, "Morsmordre!"

.O.O.O.O.

Sitting in a tiny cell in Azkaban Prison, the Dementors feasting on the emotions of those surrounding me, I'm forced to relive every moment I ever spent with Regulus Black. Those that were once my best memories have been turned into the most tormenting in my mind. They reminded me of the person I was, the person I'd become and they showed me that love was my mistake.

Love ruins. Love destroys. Love hurts.