With a wave of his wand he removed the Disillusionment Charm from himself and once again became visible in the shadows of an abandoned fish market. His nose began to itch as soon as he had pushed through the rotten door; the smell that seemed to infest the place, no matter what charms they cast, made him wretch with disgust. It was unthinkable that he, who had been used to doing what he wanted and when he wanted, a pureblood, was reduced to skulking around the gutter with the low-lifes and filth he had worked hard to remove from decent society. This was worse than Azkaban. At least there he had a reputation.
He clenched his fists in anger as he threw down the battered copy of today's Prophet, the face of the traitorous temporary Minister grinning at him smugly, taunting. By his side, the ever-faithful and all-powerful hero, the Boy-Who-Lived, Again, stood there, claiming the glory that should have been his. White-hot fury bathed through him, boiling and burning through his veins like the purest form of Firewhiskey.
I deserve better than this, he thought as he ground his teeth, the low crunching sound barely registering in his seething mind. We, all of us, deserve better than the stinking hand those filthy Mudbloods and traitors have dealt us.
He'd devoted the majority of his life serving the whims and wishes of his Master. Yes, he'd sacrificed years, locked up and rotting away in that filthy dump. For what? It had all been for nothing.
The master was dead and she was gone.
She had been his original master. She had been his deepest, darkest fantasies come true. She had been everything. Right up until the moment that the Master came along with his promise of power.
He still remembered the moment. They were very young, perhaps fifteen at the most. It was her beauty, her ambitiousness, her solidarity and her attraction to influential people like him that had most attracted him. Among her many peers, she stood out like a beacon, unworthy of any other attention. She was incredibly smart, but in a way that was not so obvious as those snotty Ravenclaws or those contemptible Gryffindors. Their courtship was almost expected and both families agreed that they were a perfect match. Even Sev, Luc and Evan were jealous, and that was saying something. He'd never even suspected that her heart wasn't truly in it, until she had broken it to him on their wedding night.
"My love, I have something to tell you," she whispered in his ear.
He stopped what he was doing, pulling back to look in her face. She truly was the most magnificent woman in the whole world; her beauty astounded him frequently and he couldn't quite believe that she was now his.
"Mmm?"
"You remember how we talked about finally getting power and the status we deserve as purebloods?"
"Mmmhmmm," he murmured, captivated by her smile and the gleam in her midnight eyes.
"Well, I've found a solution..."
From that moment on, his life was divided. At first, he only went along with it all because it meant so much to her and he liked to see her happy. Plus, it didn't hurt his or his family's reputation; it was what was expected of a witch and wizard from two respectful pureblood families. It wasn't until things really started heating up that he started to notice that she began to look up to the Master with something more than just respect in her eyes. She looked at the Master like he was a God, like he was the only thing in the universe worth breathing for. He was losing her, day by day, as the Master tempted her from him with increasingly grand gestures of power. He fought back, of course, but how could he compete with He-Who-Could-Offer-All? He had become the butt of all derogatory jokes among his so called 'family' of followers and it didn't help that she almost forgot that he existed.
He did everything he could for her, just so that he would get to see that wonderful rapturous look directed at him for even the smallest nanosecond. It made those times where she continually chose the Master over him that little bit more bearable. At least then he could pretend that the Master had some magical hold over her, something brought about by his magical expertise and one such as himself would never hope to understand.
He grew to enjoy seeing the pure rapture on her face when he tortured a Mudblood or traitor into doing something demeaning. It served them right, the silly sods, for choosing the weaker side. He actually started to believe that the Dark Lord could be their true master, that his way was the one and only true way for freedom. However, there was still a part of him that hated the Master for taking her away from him. The Master was aware of this and used it to his full advantage, selecting her over him and deepening the rift between them, torturing him.
As trying as those years were, they had been good; they'd had so much power that they could do what they want to rid the world of the taint. Soon the Wizarding world would be decontaminated and the rightful leaders would have the respect due to them. Fear was rife and everybody was afraid to stop them. At least that was what they were given to believe. He still suspected that the Master knew exactly what was going to happen; after all, how could he have known to prepare himself with the unknown magic that saved him?
He couldn't believe how stupid they had all been. He'd had his doubts – who wouldn't after those creatures raped and pillaged through your mind twenty-four/seven for a decade or so. But they'd had each other in that time. He'd finally gone and she had come back to him, even if it was marred by her hopes that one day he would return and they would be given their deserved glory. The most painful thing throughout wasn't the lacklustre food, or the brainless fools that came to taunt him, or even that her beauty had been worn away and depleted throughout those long and lonely years, but stabbed deep upon hearing her rapturous cackle of joy at feeling the mark come alive again. The Master was back and they were being summoned to his side.
And though there was but a brief moment of hope, the shattering pain upon seeing her taken down in her true moment of glory took him to his knees in disbelief. How could this happen? That traitorous witch, defaming everything a pureblood stands for, took her down; that it was she was all the more damning. He should have disposed of her with her brothers.
He could taste blood as the pressure he exerted through his jaws became too much, an old rotten tooth – courtesy from his extended stays in Azkaban – finally giving way and snapping off. He sucked in through his nose, drawing with it the phlegm hanging around in this throat passages, and turned to the side, spitting out the bloody mucus with more force than was necessary.
There was no space for anything but one thing in his mind.
Revenge.
He would avenge her, make them feel what they had done to him. He would show them where the power truly lay.
A/N: I'm wondering if I got my Death Eater mumbo jumbo vibe right?
Just for information, I've planned this to be roughly ten chapters.