Story written for: D-ead Lovers

Story guidelines as follows:

Prompt chosen: 2. "But, in the end, what is morals?" (You don't have to include this sentence in your fic. You can do it or not, I don't mind)

Pairings/characters: Feel free to include whoever you wish to. (see dislikes for the exception)

Likes: Character insight, lyrical description, angst, drama, psychological disorders, passion, suspense etc...

Dislikes: Tomione or Tom/ginny (Yeah, as a Bellamort/Belladolphus shipper, you know), Entirely OOC stories. edit: No "Death Eater-whore Bellatrix" or "abused wife Bellatrix" either.

Disclaimer: we own nothing.

I'm going to die in Azkaban. There's no point denying it.

The Dark Lord is dead. My brother is dead. Bella is dead. The Lestrange line is as good as ended.

No one gives a damn about any of us in here anymore.

This is the fourth time I've been in Azkaban, and there's only so many times one can escape from here. I was fourteen when I came for the first time. Somebody pulled a prank involving some fake Dark Marks at Hogwarts—we never found out who—and Crouch threw us in there the moment he saw our arms. It took four months for the thing to fade away, and I was a mess by then.

Barty Junior turned out to be the best friend I ever had, though. We met because he came to Azkaban to apologize for his father's actions. We were in the same year, but we didn't know each other that well until then. Barty was a Hufflepuff, you see. Don't believe that rubbish about him being a Slytherin. It's just duffer propaganda.

There wasn't even a trial when I was imprisoned. Remember how mad people were a few years ago, when Potter revealed that Sirius Black never had a trial? The only reason Rod, Bella, Barty and I got a trial is because I never got one the first time around, and Rod got paranoid and kept an attorney on retainer.

They—the Ministry, I mean—were pretty well-known for putting people away for being Death Eaters without any actual evidence, you see. They didn't give me much more than an 'oh, god damn, we're very sorry' when they turned me loose the first time.

It's funny how Crouch still never lost much of his popularity until his son attacked a Light family, though, isn't it?

Anyway…

That second time I was imprisoned was when the Dark Lord fell. We needed to know the Prophecy so we could figure out where to go from there, so we went after the Longbottoms; we knew they'd know it.

I don't regret it. The only thing I regret is letting Bella get out of control before we had what we came for. You do what you have to.

When I was in Azkaban the second time, I picked up some disease or other. Most people do. I know Bella got some kind of brain worm she was taking potions for after she escaped, but they didn't help much, obviously.

This disease, which has been slowly eating my liver for the last twenty years or so—painfully slow, very painful indeed—is probably going to be what kills me. It's curable, ironically, if you take enough potions for enough time.

Oh, you think I should ask for a potion?

Let me tell you something.

Azkaban's worse this time around than it ever was. That fourteen-year sentence meant I got to know some of the human guards, and they were nice enough to smuggle in some potions for me when I became ill. It happened a lot back then with potions and Muggle medicines.

Prisoners technically aren't allowed medical care in Azkaban, you see. You either live or you die. That's it.

And I'm not sure if Potter's aware of that. He always was very ignorant, or so I hear. Or maybe he just hates us.

Either way, as the youngest ever head of the Auror Department—twenty-seven; my god, Dolohov was thirty-six when he started his stint—he's cracked down on the import of contraband to prisoners in Azkaban.

So, as I said, I'm going to die in here.

Not that I mind. It's better than being trapped in my head every second with my worst memories.

My worst memory?

Watching Rodolphus die. Someone set him on fire at Hogwarts in '97. Some Order fuck who thought he'd avenge his friends Frank and Alice Longbottom.

Yeah, I killed the guy.

Then I killed Rod.

They would have thrown him in Azkaban without even healing the burns. He would have taken a few agonizing weeks to die.

Let it not be said that we Death Eaters are not merciful.

Actually, I like to think we're more humane than the other side. You should see some of the things they've done to us.

Like Wilkes.

They always accused us of murdering people in their beds, but I can't think of an instance where we actually literally did that.

In 1980, Potter—James Potter, to clarify—killed my friend Wilkes in his bed.

I have no idea what happened, specifically, but they falsified all kinds of records to make it look like he had a bunch of Muggle women tied up in there and went down firing Entrail-Expelling Curses, and all kinds of bogus crap.

Which, of course, is impossible because Wilkes:

1. rarely used anything but the Unforgivables for combat, and

2. was the gayest man I've ever met.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy…

Yaxley is… was… a great man. He dug up the real records after we took over. It just says Potter killed him with a Cutting Curse to the neck and he was found face-down in his bed, unarmed. Lots of ham-fisted statements to the effect that this should not leave so-and-so's desk, blah, blah, blah.

Too bad we never got a chance to make it public.

You should have seen what they did to Nott after the Department of Mysteries, too. The man got his head caved in by the falling shelves, and they chucked him right back in his cell with some of his brains dribbling out. It took him quite a while to expire. Or so I hear.

Not that I doubt what I hear.

I often wonder what happened to his kid after he died. There's a rumor floating around that he got involved with a Mudblood, but there's also one saying that he was murdered during his sixth year holidays by some ex-Gryffindor who thought he'd be heroic and kill a future Death Eater.

That second one I can believe.

Gryffindors.

The Department of Mysteries was interesting. It was the ultimate in Gryffindorish idiocy. Potter was incredibly stupid, incredibly lucky, and incredibly annoying. Though I spent most of it in a Body Bind, I did enjoy watching Crabbe have his head shrunk over and over again by Evan Rosier's bell jar.

They actually gave me—and the others—a trial for breaking into the Ministry. I think that's absolutely hilarious. They obviously just wanted a reason to parade their catch in front of the photographers.

Scrimgeour…

Speaking of him, did you know that Stan Shunpike actually was a Death Eater?

Imperius Curse, my ass.

He got himself blown up about a year after the war ended: he tried to abduct some witch he was obsessed with from her home and she hit him with a Confrigo.

At any rate, I got out of Azkaban pretty fast after the DoM fuckup. Only one year, this time.

Azkaban was a lot nicer, by the way, the third time I was there. It had a new warden. I can't remember his name, but it wasn't Mary MacDonald, who was the warden for ten years of my Longbottoms sentence. That woman was out of her mind. She'd send Dementors to camp right outside your cell if you even looked at her wrong. Still, I suppose I got off easy; she had a grudge against Mulciber and Avery in particular… kind of like how Snape supposedly hated Potter, except MacDonald would sit in front of their cells and try and talk them into killing themselves.

Mulciber's still around, and I expect he'll be alive for a lot longer. He might even find some way to get out. There's very little that really bothers him, I think, so the Dementors don't affect him. He was in the cell across from Rod's for a while, and then mine, so we both got to watch him turn MacDonald inside out.

Figuratively speaking. Unfortunately.

Now, Avery's a different story. She was a wreck when we got out and was never anywhere near sociable afterwards.

She's dead now. They had her Kissed.

Apparently, she killed a little sixth-year Gryffindor called Creevey during the Battle.

Potter was the one who gave the order, about a year ago. I said hello to him when he came to accompany her to the chair. Avery cried the whole way out.

Ah, Dumbledore… if only you could look down and see what your pride and joy has done now… How proud you would be…

Ridding the world of darkness.

One sobbing, terrified human soul at a time.

I have to wonder, Potter, how your soul is going to fare when your time has come.

At least I don't have to worry about my afterlife. I don't believe in one.

And because of that, I don't feel the need to justify my torture, murder, looting, pillaging, and… well, I never raped anybody, but you get the point… by saying it's for the greater good, or in the name of love, or to protect people, or anything like that.

I'm in Azkaban because I'm an evil, evil man.

And I had a good run of it.

Oh, by the way—this is a bit of a backtrack, but it's rather important: did you know that Avery couldn't counter Potter's order to have her Kissed because she's a Mudblood?

I take back what I said about him earlier. He does know what he's doing.

Using Lucius's laws to have Death Eaters Kissed…

It's almost as ironic as the fact that Lucius is sitting three cells down from me, twiddling his thumbs as he dies of stomach cancer, since there's nothing else to do in Azkaban when you're sick and screaming your head off from the pain.

Now, I happen to know that Auror Weasley likes to look in on him and say things like 'Not so high and mighty now, are you, Malfoy?' and other insipidly Gryffindorish phrases of that nature.

Weasley and Potter… Well, they're great Aurors. I'll give you that.

They catch Dark Wizards, all right.

They caught my half-brother Lester and his wife Miles and arrested them for being Death Eaters about five years after the Dark Lord's death.

The only problem is this: in the years after they were both Kissed for killing various people during the Last Battle, other people confessed to all of those crimes under Veritaserum.

Do you remember what I said about Crouch?

Here's to hoping one of their children tortures Longbottom into madness. I'd put my money on Potter's daughter. She's a Slytherin. He doesn't seem to like her much.

For all his 'we're all equal' crap—he actually defends Slytherin House in general to Weasley when they're on guard duty together—I've never actually seen a shred of evidence that Potter does consider Slytherins equal to him. I don't think he really considers Snape a Slytherin, with the way he talks about him.

There's also the fact that his daughter sounds like a budding sociopath. Warms my heart, really; I remember hearing Bella described the same way by so many people. Maybe she'll murder him in his bed.

'Man-Who-Conquered Killed by Girl-Who-_' Insert past-tense verb.

Maybe she'll get a cell near mine and I can wheedle some Potter family secrets out of her.

Not that I really need to. They talk about all kinds of things around my cell. They seem to be under the impression that I'm going to be in it forever. Which is probably true, if 'forever' means until I'm dead.

I do hope, for their sake, though, that they've kept their mouths shut around Mulciber's cell…

Anyway, I've learned a lot of nifty things. Weasley, for example, is a man I could almost identify with if he wasn't so completely unlike me. He made the mistake of marrying young, and now he's bored with his wife but doesn't want to admit it to her. At one point, I had the pleasure of listening to a three-month plan of his to get Evan's niece—that'd be Xenophilius's daughter to all of you—to have an affair with him, and it seemed to be going along smashingly until she figured out what he was up to and hexed his testicles off.

Rule number one of having an affair, Weasley: don't get married, and you won't need one.

Hence my singularity.

Now, on a related note, you may be wondering: Why don't any of the loyal Death Eaters have kids?

I'm going to tell you why. Right now.

It's because we're all either dead or in Azkaban, you dumb fucks.

Oh, we had children. I didn't, but we in general did. I'm not going to talk about what happened to them. Not because it's too horrible to describe, but because I'd run out of room talking about the hilarious irony of the random, unsolved murders, and the murders that were solved and never prosecuted, and the orphanages, and the foster homes, and the Ministry fundraisers that never trickled down to their level (the very bottom), and the beatings, and the abuse, and the torture, and the brothels, and the rape, and the eventual slow death in the cold realization that nothing is fair, nothing ever will be, and there's no point living because everyone hates you for being born the way you are.

Does that sound familiar?

It should.

We murdered people. I don't feel bad about it. We killed innocents, women, children. I don't regret it. But we gave them dignified deaths. We gave them the Avada Kedavra. We didn't let them rot in Azkaban.

Oh, we did?

Did you really think we could have held every single Mudblood in the world in Azkaban?

Did you really think we could have used this god-forsaken place to imprison them forever?

Were you really that naive?

We would have killed them eventually. We were evil. We still are.

But we wouldn't have kept them under Dementors night and day, year after year. Not when we'd known it ourselves, night and day, year after year.

Let it not be said that Death Eaters are not merciful.

Most importantly, we didn't have corrupt Ministry officials sending Mudbloods to Mundungus Fletcher so he could ship them off to brothels. Yaxley made sure things like that didn't pop up; even Death Eaters don't condone that perverse sort of activity. But the Ministry does. They make a nice profit off it. Bribes, kickbacks, whatever—I'm not a politician. I don't actually know how it works, to be honest, other than that it works.

I think by this point you probably understand the state of things at the moment. They're worse than they ever were under the Dark Lord, and they're only going to get worse as time passes. Many would undoubtedly hear my words and dismiss them because they came from a dying, isolated Death Eater in Azkaban.

For all of you, things are better than ever.

Unless, of course, you're a filthy, worthless 'blood purist', or a Death Eater's child. Then you're spat upon in the streets, treated as dirt, stepped upon by the Mudbloods and blood traitors, and everyone turns a blind eye to the atrocities they carry out daily. And meanwhile, I will rot away in here and watch Harry Potter burn the world one little brick at a time; watch as he spouts what he believes to be morality.

Because, in the end, what are morals?

They're what the winner says they are.