Confessions of a Marrying Murderess

by Dojh167

Carla Zabini has issues. Her husbands have more.

A/N: Originally posted on HPFF on 7/20/2010. Second place in CherryBear's Hooking First Sentence challenge.

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I did not kill my first husband.

Twenty-five years and eight husbands later you would be hard pressed to find a single person who would believe this statement of me, the notorious Carla Zabini.

But if you had known me in those days you would also know it to be quite impossible.

I was a fragile young thing: fresh out of Hogwarts, wide-eyed, and too attractive for my own good. I was full of all sorts of exciting ideas about the world without knowing the first thing about what it was capable of.

I was, in short, exactly the kind of idealistic young woman whom the gods of irony handpick to stand as a warning to all other young foolish mortals.

I met him at a ball hosted by my family in honor of my coming of age. Between my recent birthday and graduation, it seemed that my parents had decided it was about time for me to become a bride as well.

And of course, they adored Martin.

It took only a single dance for them to be by my side, gushing about what an honor it was to have such a distinguished man for their daughter, speculating on the extent of his wealth, and swearing it was a shame that my gown had such a juvenile neckline.

I was of course very caught up in the entire thing, delighted to be the subject of so much excitement, though hardly aware of what it all meant for me.

Seemingly a heartbeat later, I was a bride.

My first husband, I soon discovered, was every bit the definition a scoundrel.

But I did not kill him.

I lived through his drinking and his women and his tempers and his passions. I played the part of his dutiful wife, turning a blind eye when I should and a cheek when I must and a few tricks when I ought.

Never having met a proper scoundrel before, I hardly knew how to treat him. I know now that I should have hated his guts. Then I knew only how to obey.

But I did not kill him.

I wish I had. If I had known how, I would have done it in a blink. If I could go back now I would be the one to wrestle the last breath from his lips and watch the life leave his loathsome eyes forever. But I did not know how to kill. I did not even know how to hate.

Of course, there were plenty of others who knew how to hate, and one late August evening one of them put a dagger through my first husband's heart.

But I did not kill him.

I was, in fact, destroyed with his death. Still very young, I was caught up in a mad struggle, trying to learn how to love and hate and grieve all through one man who deserved only one of these sentiments.

I was lost and confused and scared and I did not know where to turn.

Stumbling in the dark, I turned to Nathan Hobbes.

My second husband was a breath of fresh air to my troubled spirit. Hobbes did not drink and did not beat me and did not swear and did not make me wish I knew how to hate. He was gentle and caring.

He did, of course, have a secret.

It was in a frightfully sensational and bloody scene that it came to light that Nathan Hobbes had two wives.

But I did not kill my second husband.

His first wife did the deed.

At long last I began to learn to feel hate. But more than anything, I had learned to feel hurt.

If I were the uncaring cold villain who they make me out to be, I would have been thrilled to have briefly delighted myself with two distinguishable men, each in turn doubling the size of my Gringotts account.

But I did not have the heart of a villain.

All the same, it was hard to appreciate handsome and wealthy men when all they had ever done was use me and betray me and hurt me.

For the first time in my life I was afraid – more afraid than I had ever been of my first husband's rage or my second husband's first wife's wrath. I was afraid to be hurt again.

I swore that I would never fall in love again.

But of course, I did not swear that I would never marry again.

My third husband was simply the next step in a logical progression. I had been used and hurt and abused. Now I needed to be comforted.

Aaron Sardon knew what it was to suffer. He himself had been used and hurt and abused. We had a great deal in common.

I was in a phase in my life when all I could do was pity myself, which also seemed to be all that Aaron was capable of doing. We spent long intimate hours being miserable together, and this made us quite happy for a while.

Of course, there came a time when being miserable grew tiresome for me. My third husband, however, never tired of being miserable.

But I did not kill him for it.

Just as I had sworn, I did not love him, no more did he love me. In fact, I rather think that he hated me. As much as we had in common and enjoyed being miserable together, I do believe that he hated me for draining the last of hope from life.

My third husband hung himself from the window until only my misery remained.

I had had quite enough. I had now been used and betrayed and miserable and married three times. It was high time to fall in love and wed the bloke.

And so I fell in love.

And I wed the bloke.

His name was Ethan and he adored me. He was several years my junior and seemed endlessly entranced by what he called my powerful mystique. He doted upon my every whim and he lived to serve my slightest desire.

I was certainly in love with him. It is difficult not to fall for somebody who will endlessly bend over backwards just to please you. But I certainly did not love him for it.

He was a sad little man who had no life or mind of his own. He may as well have been a house elf as a husband, and he was just about as good in bed. Of course, he did have a decent stack of gold for a man with the personality of a billywig, so I endured him.

But I could not stand him.

And so I killed him.

The notion seemed entirely reasonable. I did, after all, have three uselessly dead husbands already. Ethan was both such a conformist and so eager to please me that I really don't think that he would have minded.

And of course, nobody could suspect a thing.

Although the bodies were starting to pile up and my wardrobe consisted of nothing but wedding and funeral clothes, I was sure I could not be suspected. If I was to have killed any of my husbands it would have been one of the first three, whom I had clearly let meet their demises in their own manners. Certainly I had the least reason of all to want Ethan dead and, most convincing of all, he really was just the sort of fool to fall out a window.

I was really very proud of myself.

Of course, I had now been married four times and had yet to find happiness with any of my spouses and, given my record, I did not expect this to change any time soon.

However, I was comforted to know that, as unhappy any marriage of mine might be, it could hardly last long, given my luck!

This notorious luck seemed evident to all who knew of me for, although I had suffered tragedy after tragedy, my bank account had grown more and more robust for it.

Though it would certainly be most dreadful for anybody to assume that I was so shallow as to marry only for gain, I assured my fifth husband.

Number five was really very special, for he gave me something entirely unlike any of his predecessors had left me with.

I would have been daft to assume that I could go through so many men and remain untouched. It was my fifth husband who finally gave me a child.

I could have killed him for it.

Killing a man was one thing, but killing a baby, my own child, was quite another.

And of course, there was nothing to be done about it now.

I loved my fifth husband decently enough. He seemed to be free from all of the faults of my previous mates and would have been truly impeccable if not, of course, for the baby who was bound to be my burden for the rest of my years.

It seemed that, if I was going to have to keep any man around long term, this would be the one.

I allowed myself to picture a life of the two of us growing happily old together, no trace of murder in our hearts, as we watched our child grow into our likeness.

The entire image was so revoltingly unlike me that, almost unthinking, I slipped a poison into his drink one evening and went to bed early.

When I awoke I was once again a widow.

I did, however, remain pregnant. I may have issues of my own, but I knew a woman's duty to her child (if not her husband) and intended to stand by it.

I did not enjoy being pregnant one bit.

This was much more permanent than anything I had previously experienced and I hated how it consumed me entirely. Worst of all was the prospect of what was to come. My relationship with my child was the kind that would last a lifetime, not the kind I was used to that could be called off with a swallow or a shove when it became too dull or inconvenient.

Throughout my pregnancy and the early stages of my son's life I had little to no contact with men, very unusual considering how powerfully they had always defined my life.

I did not kill my sixth husband.

Actually, I do not believe I had a sixth husband.

Number six is rather the period of my life that was lost to the rearing of my son, a period which I struggle to comprehend without the familiar cycle of the gain and loss of a husband.

But I did not kill my nonexistent sixth husband.

Rather, I do believe that he perished when he lost himself in a forest some days' journey away.

It is, of course, rather difficult to define an inexistent husband, but he did prove useful in my testimonies to the next man I married.

My seventh husband, Walter, was unlike any other.

For one thing, he was the one man I married who was not already wealthy. I had to arrange to deposit a large portion of my savings in his possession before we wed in order to maintain my record of marrying into money. This took quite a bit of explaining to Walter, who finally agreed in resignation on the grounds that the money would end up back in my vault either way.

What was more, my seventh husband was a filthy bastard. We first met when I inquired after a rather charming piece he had written on my fifth (or was it sixth?) husband's demise.

He seemed to have all sorts of crazy ideas and hinted to the most absurd things in his article, even, God forbid, haunting accusations regarding my track record for husbands with large pocketbooks and short lifelines.

His story created quite the stir and those who were not already aware of my unique family history came to suspect the most ghastly undertakings.

Of course, I could hardly tolerate to have such ghastly rumors circulating.

And so I sought Walter out and we came to a decent arrangement. He was really quite the funny little fellow, befitting of his ludicrous accusations. He did, of course, have a very open mind that I was determined to change.

And so I married him.

And then I murdered him.

My eighth husband was a bit of something new. I had married for money and married for murder and married for (something like) love, but I hadn't committed the most common and heinous marriage crime of them all.

Yes, I married an older man.

And by older, I mean older.

I didn't want to take any risks, and so I figured that the older I picked him the less time I would have before a natural death could get him out of the way. You know, just in case.

Of course, I had hardly taken into account that, having stayed on his deathbed for so long, the rotter was hardly in a particular hurry to go anyplace. I had also failed to take into account what little joy ailing old men are to have around.

I did not kill my eighth husband.

I took him out of his misery.

I had by this point been in and out of marriage so many times that it was all very routine and rather dull. I came to feel that I was becoming too predictable. Killing husbands had been thrilling and innovative at the start – I had enjoyed being so unique. But now I came to suspect it would be more novel for me not to kill a husband.

After much debate, I set my heart to it.

Of course, now that marrying actually meant settling down and all of those horridly traditional and domestic things, I was not in any hurry to become a bride once again.

I had, after all, been married to eight men and had been unable to find much real satisfaction with any of them. How could I possibly find a man who I could like enough to, well, marry?

What happened next I was not at all prepared for – I fell in love.

It was not an Ethan sort of love where I had been foolishly flattered by his attentions and raised no objection (that is until I killed him, of course).

This time I fell body and soul head over heels. And not only was I in love, I truly loved the man like I would never have known possible.

My ninth husband was Tyron and he loved me back.

I had never thought that I had much to talk about with a man, but he proved me wrong. We talked and we laughed and we debated and we philosophized and we gossiped.

And we made love – oh, how we made love! With all of my other husbands sex had just been something to get through that served to keep them humored and me, well, bored.

Ty, however, was simply spectacular and kept me, a woman who thought she had seen it all, coming back for more.

We even went abroad, using my now not inconsiderable wealth to see the finest places and live in the most exquisite arrangements the world had to offer. We saw everything there was to see, from the romantic to the terrifying, and had adventures I would never thought possible of married people.

Tyron was also great with my son, Blaise. The boy was growing up fast and had no fixed father figure. Hell, I hardly felt like much of a mother figure half the time. My husband, however, insisted on giving the boy only the best and was not content to see him raised by the servants.

I was happier than I had ever been before and was truly in love for the first time.

I would not kill my ninth husband.

But Tyron, of course, had a secret.

As it turns out, my ninth husband was an undercover investigator sent to get to the bottom of the rumors of my suspicious marriages.

I could have killed him for it.

But of course, I did not kill my ninth husband.

I had enough reason to, but I forced myself to keep a level head. I did, after all, love Ty. And I had sworn that I would not kill him. Now who would I be to go back on my word?

And so I played along, loving him just as much and leaving him none the wiser. I suspect that I even loved him more for the thrill of it all.

Now that I knew his true purpose, I was not blinded. I saw him snakily poking around and probing me for details that I refused to surrender.

But despite it all, I do believe that he loved me.

I knew that he didn't really care about my so-called crimes or my secrets. He was really there for me.

I was married to him longer than I had ever been with any other man, and with every year that passed I came to love him more and know that he could never betray me, no more than I could kill him.

Finally, I told him.

I told him it all.

I knew that our love was something that could not be defied by anything so vulgar as a murder or two. I also knew that, once he heard what I had been through he would understand and love me all the more for it.

I told him everything and now I'm living in this cell.

He still visits me at times to tell me that they have built their case against me or that my trial will be soon or that I haven't got a chance.

I tell him that I love him.

I cannot wait to kill my ninth husband.