Slight AU
I met him in Austria. My father owned the inn where he stayed. He was only a few years older than me, maybe 23 to my 18. He was beautiful. He was charismatic. He was enchanting, if you'll pardon the pun. His name was Tom Marvolo Riddle, but he didn't use it often. He preferred to be called Voldemort. It was strange, very strange, but for him you overlooked it. Voldemort could do no wrong.
He took a fancy to me for some reason. It started slowly. I would be cleaning his room and he would ask me to stay and talk a bit. He told me some about when he was young, but not much. He had come from Hogwarts, the Wizarding School in England. He spoke of it highly. Not the teachers so much, but the castle itself. He would get this strange tone to his voice, like a sort of reverence. He would return there one day, he said. But even more than he talked about the castle, he talked about his ideas. He had grand, wondrous, splendid ideas. Well, that's what he would make you think. He made every death sound like a present to the victim. And the ideals of his ideas, the brand new world for wizards to reign like they ought to, they were absolutely breathtaking.
I was the only one he talked to about these things. Nobody else even knew his real name. He told me, though. Some nights, when he was lazy and languid with liquor, he would even have me call him Tom. Those were the nights he spoke about his childhood. Those nights were the only time he was truly vulnerable and you could see beneath his charm and his wit down to what lay underneath. He was even more beautiful then.
He kissed me on one of those nights, my Tom. I knew then that I loved him. I threw myself into the kiss and he responded in kind. I spent the night in his bed.
My parents were unhappy when they found us the next morning, but my Tom explained it all perfectly. He only stayed at my father's inn two more nights. I spent both with him, in his room. On the third night, he left. He ran away, really. I went with him, into the dark without a single fear.
We traveled through Europe, just the two of us. My Tom and I. They were golden days, halcyon days. I loved him and I was sure he loved me, though he never said it. True, he started to grow apart a little, the longer we traveled. His ideas grew darker. He would smile less often. He would spend more time by himself, muttering about things that I would never know. But he still held me each night, just the same as the first one, and so I believed everything would be okay.
We traveled all the way to Albania, to some dark forest far from the rest of mankind. He was very distant for days. One night he simply disappeared. When he came back the next day, he was different. He was colder than I had ever seen him before. He didn't speak all day. That night, though, in our tent, in the flickering darkness, he whispered to me his secret.
I killed a man. He said.
I split my soul in half. He said.
It's here. He said, holding out a kind of crown
I wanted to scream. I wanted to run.
My Tom had ripped himself in half.
He started explaining, though, before I could scream or run. He told me it was a horcrux. He told me that it made him near immortal. He couldn't be killed while a bit of him was in the diadem, which was what he called the crown. And he was still himself. Nothing had changed. He smiled at me, his most charming smile. I melted. He was still my Tom. He would still love me. It was okay.
I volunteered to protect the diadem. He smiled again, but it was a short smile. We started traveling back to England so he could hide the diadem somewhere safe. On the way back, he started to amass a crowd of followers that dogged our steps, straining for any bit of wisdom he could give. Tom seemed to enjoy the popularity. He encouraged them to stay with us. I hated them. But he still held me at night and that was enough.
He went back to Hogwarts. He interviewed for a job. I had dreams of him getting it and the two of us settling down, maybe having a few children. He didn't get the job. He hid his horcrux somewhere no one would find it, he said. He was safe.
We didn't buy a house and settle down, but he did create a base of operations in the English countryside. He was getting colder and darker. The hitchhikers that had followed us through Europe solidified into a group, all under my Tom. They called themselves Death Eaters. I was one of them. I, too, had warped, just the same as Tom. I was no longer horrified by the murder and torture going on around me. I engaged in it voluntarily. I was his right-hand man. I was his lover. I was his friend. I loved him more than anything else. I thought he loved me, too.
One day, he ordered me to marry one of his Death Eaters. Rodolphus Lestrange. I knew the man in passing. But that was not the point. My love wished me to marry another. I looked up at my Tom, still so beautiful, even now with his features twisted with hate.
Marry him? I asked.
Why not you? I asked.
My Tom, my fucked up beautiful flawless Tom, looked down at me and scoffed.
Me? He asked.
Marry you? He asked
I don't need a wife. He said
All I need is a faithful servant. He said
I did not cry then. I did not cry that night at home. I did not cry on my wedding day, the mockery that it was. I never cried over my Tom, mine no longer. He still called me to his room some nights, to talk and then to spend the night together. But he was not the boy I had met so many years ago, no matter how hard I wished. He wasn't and he never would be.
I passed years like that. Years upon years married to a man I did not love, waiting to consort with the man who could never love me, who wanted me only as another soldier. It drove me mad.
I never stopped, though, through all of it. I never stopped trying. He said he would never love me, but that did not mean I had to stop trying to make him. The years passed and I was always at his side. Always his most faithful servant. Always praying that one day he would look down and see the girl I had been, like I could still see the used-to-be boy in him.
He fell. I did not cry.
He rose. I rejoiced. I joined him quickly. His most faithful servant. I was wrapped up in him quickly, killing and torturing without a second thought for another moment in his presence. He was intoxicating, even then, with his human beauty stripped away. I loved him, loved the boy, the man, and the snake. I went purely mad.
The final battle came. The final victory. I thought that he would love me if I won the battle for him. I fought harder than I had ever fought, dancing around the bodies of the fallen with a crazed sort of laughter. I knew it was the end of our way of life that night. We would either rise triumphant or be crushed. I would make sure we were triumphant.
And then there was that woman. The Weasley woman. Fat, unpracticed, useless. Angry. She got lucky. I got unlucky. And the sad story of Bellatrix Lestrange ended there, on the floor of a school I didn't know, at the hand of a woman who didn't deserve it. I never saw my Tom again.