A/N: Written for the Young Adult Quotes Competition, with the following quotes: 1. I love you. No matter what. 15. Declarations of love amuse me. Especially when unrequited. and 17. As long as I remember what it was like to love you, I'll always feel like I'm alive.

Forget about Love

There is no-one who can honestly say they know no love, but a woman could certainly try.

Bellatrix doesn't care to try though; she does things, and not by halves. That's turned her into a liar – a liar to others, and to herself as well. It bothers her, deep inside, but she's hid it well. Too well; she can't really feel the poison eroding her heart inside its cavity because she's buried that as well. But she's gorgeous. She's attractive. Men can't help but fall on their feet at the sight of her only to be shot down. Bellatrix doesn't care to try; she doesn't care to fall in love.

Maybe it amuses her, watching men thinking they love her, declaring it, when love is a foreign thing she doesn't care to touch. She likes what she has after all: the empty echoes wherein electricity spreads and fires down every nerve of her body. Why does she need a man for that? Why does she need anyone?

She doesn't think anything different of little Regulus Black. He's just her baby cousin that follows her around and think he's in love. It was a ridiculous notion in itself; she was engaged by then, an engagement arranged by her parents to further their associations – not that she really cared. Rodolphus was tolerable as far as men went; at least he didn't try and give her disgusting flowers or so-called romantic poetry. He spoke of interesting enough things: of how the Muggle in the alleyway had screamed so wonderfully under the Cruciatus curse. Not like most men who cringed away from such things.

But Regulus was one of the few who she saw often, and he was persistent.

.

Regulus couldn't help falling in love. It was just another thing in the long list of why he was second born and not the true heir. It wouldn't have mattered nearly as much if Sirius was the proper heir he was born to be – except he wasn't. He'd defected, and left weak little Regulus to pick up the slack.

Regulus wished he was as strong as his brother, but he wasn't. He wasn't brave, or strong. He wasn't even worthy of marrying, even if his parents put it off as being unable to find a woman of suitable character and pedigree. And they adored his cousins; they adored Bellatrix, even before she'd been engaged. They'd talked about making a contract with Sirius.

But Regulus was the one who'd fallen in love. Even if Bellatrix was a frightening woman: a woman who scorned at love and revelled in senseless torture. Because he couldn't help it, and he couldn't help spilling his feelings to her only for her to laugh at it.

She didn't respect them, nor him; he knew it, but he'd said it anyway. He'd had to; it wasn't a thing he could keep festering on his chest.

It wasn't a thing he could accept either: her rejection – but he had to. What else could he do?

But it wasn't enough to just hold on to that one-sided love and watch her cut through the world.

.

Bellatrix eventually realised something. A lot of somethings. She did know love after all; it wasn't something she could just pretend to not know. She did love Rodolphus, and it hurt whenever he brought another woman home, assuming she didn't care. But she kept that assumption going; she pretended, kept on pretending, that she didn't care.

She'd only really admitted it once she saw her cousin's dead body, remembered the words he'd said to her, over and over again. Regulus had been weak, she told herself, but he had died instead of watched her in love, to keep his own love for her pure. He'd loved her enough for that.

She hadn't, and still, Regulus was a cousin and nothing more. But it didn't amuse her now; the way he'd thrown his heart to her, the way she'd flicked it aside. Maybe it had hit her, what love really was, what she'd tried to deny.

But she'd lost what chance she'd had to win over the man she did love: the man she'd married, but married with no strings attached. They were both free to love whoever they wanted, they'd said, and she'd laughed because she thought she'd never find a man to love.

The truth was, she just hadn't admitted to herself the one she loved was him: Rodolphus. And now she had to admit it, and admit every time she saw him playing with another woman, that he would never love her back.

She'd lost her one chance at love. And the ones she had laughed at, once like Regulus, had managed to hold on to theirs.