Disclaimer: None of it is mine except the plot.
It wasn't that I didn't know from the start, I did, it was just that when she was with me it didn't matter. It didn't matter that it wasn't me she was thinking of, that she would dream of him every night. All that ever mattered was that, if only physically, she was with me.
She's so beautiful. It was the first thing I really noticed about her. I was in my sixth year, going through hell trying to save my family and kill Dumbledore, and yet I saw her beauty shining through the dark. That entire year was a blur of death and pain and grief and fear but through all of that I could see her beauty.
Weeks later, I was still staring at her in the Great Hall whenever I could. I'd noticed how she somehow lit up the room every time she smiled. She had a smile that was so beautiful and bright. I spent hours wishing she would smile at me and brighten up my day, wasted so much time longing for something I could never have.
I saw her with that half-blood, Dean Thomas. Never thought I would be jealous of a half-blood. When they fought, as they often did, I wanted to go comfort her but I knew she would never accept comfort from a Death Eater. Because that's what I was, a Death Eater. No matter how much I wished and longed for something else, I would always be a Death Eater.
And then it happened. Potter finally noticed what had been in front of him all that time. And he won. If I had thought that it had been bad seeing her with Dean, it was noting compared to seeing her with him, the perfect Boy-Who-Lived who could do no wrong. He had everything I had ever wanted and I had nothing, not even hope.
I even managed to fail at being evil. The one thing I supposedly could be that he could never be. I couldn't kill Dumbledore. I'm just not a killer. And then I had to run and eventually I ended up here, under the protection of the Order.
The irony of my situation does not escape me. Locked up, under the protection of a foundation set up by the man I was supposed to kill, with her. I had not choice in my fate. It was here or death. I was glad, at first, for the opportunity to see her again. Now I almost see her as part of the punishment.
It is all due, of course, to the fact that that idiot left her. Left her to go off on some secret, dangerous mission (I'm certainly not privy to the details) and hurt her. So she decided to hurt him back. Her weapon of choice: me.
Our affair, if that is what it's called, began a month after Dumbledore's funeral. Her family had moved to HQ after Bill Weasley and Fleur Delacour's wedding. One Monday night I hadn't been able to sleep and had wandered downstairs on a quest for a hot cup of cocoa, a great weakness of mine. She had been there, in the kitchen, crying over Potter. Hesitantly, I had approached her and taken her into my arms to whisper soft words of comfort into her ear. And then she had kissed me and my comfort turned into a different sort of comfort.
It still continues in this vein. Every other night she seeks comfort in my embrace and every other night I let her in. Every other night she seeks to break his heart and every other night she breaks mine. I am not sure which nights are worse, the ones where she is there or the ones where she isn't.
I am not a fool and if I am I am only her fool. I know she does not love me as I love her. I know that just as my heart belongs to her, hers belongs to him. She smiles sometimes in her sleep and pulls me closer and I know she is dreaming of him. She even cries out his name sometimes when we make love. I don't say anything, I have no right to expect different. Why would she love me? What is there to love? All I want is for her to be happy and if she is happy pretending I am him then I can never object. I will merely kiss her lips and thank whatever being out there made it possible for me to have even so few brief moments with her.
I know it is impossible but I still hope that one day she will love me in return.