Disclaimer: JKR owns everything.

AN: This is the English version of Quid Timebam, which I wrote for the FinFanFun's Death Eaters are on the Road to Awe -challenge. No warnings. If little kids can watch the Lion King, they can read this, too.

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Ego Timebam

I could not even believe that it could happen. That all of a sudden he would just be gone. Dead. For good. And that it had been so easy, in the end so terribly easy. I have no idea what I ought to feel right now. Relief, perhaps, or disappointment. Nothing at all, I guess. It does not really matter to me anymore, I was not alive to see him die. And in my heart I never truly belonged to him, not like Bellatrix, not like countless of others. It was fear of death that I joined him for, fear of death that kept me by his side, but now that I am dead myself, I am free of him.

I do not think that a single Death Eater had time to be actually sad after he died. All of them realized that they had lost the very second he fell, all of them were merely seeking a way to save their own skin. Just like last time. I know for certain that I never shed a tear for him. A slave may stay by his Master's side, because he does not wish to be beaten any worse than he already has been, but does he grieve his oppressor's death? Hardly.

It is funny what fear makes people do.

For quite a long time I did not even see myself as a Death Eater. They were something so unlike me; strong, capable, fearless and absolutely loyal to their Master. I was not. Nor did I think of myself as a traitor. After all, nothing I did was too serious, at least not in the beginning. I only did what I had to do in order to survive. I did not want to betray my friends. It was never supposed to go that far.

I remember how my soul screamed, when Sirius suggested me as the Secret-Keeper for James and Lily. I wanted to confess everything. I wanted to do something, anything. I prayed that somebody would notice.

How on Earth could you all be so blind?

I had too much of that sick Gryffindor pride in me to confess what I had done, although I suppose at that point I could still have been forgiven. Sirius would probably have nailed my ears to a wall and James would have been so infinitely disappointed, just like Remus. Yet I think that in the end they would have forgiven me. But the Order and the Ministry were fighting a war they could not possibly win; I knew it better perhaps than anyone else. I had seen it. I did not want to die.

So they died in my stead.

I remember that the first time I truly realised I was his Death Eater was on that graveyard, as I watched him rise from that cauldron, reborn. I did not have to go back to him. No one forced me, and still I did. I did not even want him to rise again. My worst nightmares were from the First War and I knew that there would be a Second, too. And yet I returned to him, although I did not really want to, although I was more afraid of him than I ever was of Sirius.

And Merlin, how I was afraid of Sirius the day he cornered me on that street. I thought I had seen him angry before, but that day there was something completely different in his eyes. Sure enough I had seen the expression before, but never on the face of good-humoured and careless Sirius Black. That day resembled Bellatrix more than anyone else ever before. I wonder whether he realised it himself, whether that was why he laughed so bitterly. Did he realise that on the hour of his greatest grief he had become akin to what he had hated and avoided all his life? That despite their choices there was same blood in them, and the same fire burning inside. I suppose that Azkaban at the very latest forced him to see that.

None of us can escape ourselves.

Nor does anyone hate anything as fiercely as one's own darkness, own weakness, own mistakes. That is why I try not to remember the time I spent as a Death Eater. I prefer not to think about all those people whose lives ended in my hands. I would much rather remember the days when I could still stand up straight with my head held high. When I was not yet so terribly alone.

If it means anything to anyone, I did try, I truly did try. But I was not a born fighter like Sirius, leader like James, not even accustomed to living half in hell like Remus. They call me a coward, now, on both sides, but I know I am not. I just could not take it all anymore. Endless fear and war and death. I was not made for something like that. It surely was not my fault that you asked from me too much, entirely too much. You did not hate those who went into hiding as the first troubles crept over the horizon, those who hid away and prayed that the Darkness would take their neighbours, acquaintances, anyone but themselves. I at least tried. Does that not count for anything?

Yet it is me whom you hate, oh how fiercely, every single one of you. Why just me? Why me, when there are those who did it all because they liked it, because they wanted power, because they could. I just wanted to live. Was that so wrong?

I never even wanted anything bad to happen to anyone. So why do you hate me above all the ones whose hands have been stained with blood a thousand times more than mine, why is it my name that you curse? Because I switched sides? Rubbish. As if I were the only one.

Bellatrix, Lucius, Snape, anyone else you can at least respect. I am the one you cannot look in the eyes and I know why. I am your mirror.

I am that moment of despair when you considered giving up, because all seemed hopeless.

I am those parties after James and Lily died. I suppose especially the members of the Order realised what they were celebrating. You understood with what price your freedom was bought and you were ashamed. Ashamed, because you could not grieve the death of your friends when you were alive yourselves. After all those years, after all that had happened still so gloriously alive.

I am your hatred towards Sirius.

That blind rage you directed at me tenfold when you finally learned the truth. Because I had betrayed him, too, framed him for my own crimes.

Cowards.

Was it I who sent him to Azkaban without a trial, without anything at all? I never even dared to think that you would actually swallow my hoax. I thought I was buying myself a month or two, depending on how long it would take the headmaster to win the battle against bureaucracy. Never in my wildest dreams did I believe that you would merely turn your backs to Sirius. So was it I who abandoned him to the Dementors without a word, without a question? Was it indeed I, Dumbledore, Remus, Moody?

Is it me you hate or a mirror showing a reflection you do not want to see?

And you hate me on the other side of the coin as well.

For the same and not the same reasons.

Because the First War ended like the Second, in the fall of the Dark Lord. Because back then, it was at least partially my fault, or thanks to me, either way. And deep in your hearts you were grateful of it. Those of you who did not end up in Azkaban could breathe on your own again, for the first time in years. Yet you hated me, because I had lost you the war.

And when the Dark Lord rose again with my assistance, your hate did by no means fade away. No, you hated me even more. You had learned to value the freedom you lost the second the Mark burned your arm once again. You found out that I was alive and that I had lived as a rat out of the mercy of the old enemies for twelve years. You treated me with contempt because you did not want to admit even to yourselves that you had done exactly the same. You were all rats, just like me.

Did you then learn to appreciate anything I had done after you saw again your chance to rule under the Dark Lord? Of course not. After all I had done I was never one of you. I was a talentless coward to be looked down on. A spy who had used up his usefulness. A servant. Nobody. I suppose it is no wonder that I, frankly, do not give a damn about how the War ended. I did not belong to either side, I will not be missed by anyone.

Maybe it was better for me this way, to die instead of being imprisoned. "The traitor's reward is death"; that is carved on the bones of everyone who has seen war. I do not think they would just let me die. All self-important fools, who had no courage to say a word as the less fortunate were dragged off to Azkaban or their deaths would seek to harass me as badly as possible to prove to everyone and themselves where their loyalties lied. I suppose that is what will happen to the surviving Death Eaters. A sincere wish from a dead man: Do not let them off easy. I gave them everything I ever had and they never showed me an ounce of respect.

Beg for mercy, now, Lucius, beg on your knees for mercy from the victors. I hope you will not be sent to prison. I wish that every day of your life you will have to remember how high you once stood and how far you have fallen. Those you once deemed not worthy to live now look you proudly straight in the eyes. And every single day you get to recall how you were forced to humble yourself before them, how it for once was you who had to avert your eyes and look down.

Who now is a miserable coward? Who now is a worthless worm?

Some healers on the Janus Thickey ward might well be interested in the way I reflect on my own life through those I let down, one way or another. They would probably speculate about deep-rooted guilt and a lack of forgiveness and closure or whatever. Do I, then, feel guilty? Maybe, I do not know. Does it matter? But I do know that despite everything, the three boys in whose stead I chose life in the shadow of the Dark Lord, meant to me more than he ever did. And I would not ask for anything else in the world except certainty that I, too, meant something to them. That I was important to them in those days of youthful innocence when we in our minds still ruled the entire world, before boys grew up to become men who would expect from me more than I could ever give.

I want to believe so.

I find it somewhat amusing that after being afraid of death all my life, on the hour of my death I could not fear anymore. I always thought that I would surely become a ghost, but when my moment came, so suddenly, I guess deep down I was just relieved. Someone had chosen for me, I did not need to murder James' son, I did not need to be afraid anymore. As my own hand was strangling me because of a second of hesitation, I, by the way, did not see my life flash before my eyes or other rubbish. No, for some reason I saw the laughing sixteen-years-old Sirius Black. Not malicious or bitter, but simply amused. My old friend, who amidst his barking laughter joked that the saying "by one's own hand" just got a broader meaning.

Merlin, what a sick and twisted sense of humour that boy had.

Some things I did not dare think before the death of the Dark Lord, not even after my own. Look, how I still cannot mention the name he chose for himself, because he did not want to be known as the namesake of his muggle father. It is a little sad, in a way. He would have been so great in any case, despite the wrong blood. His sheer talent would have opened him almost every door in our world without a question. Instead he wrapped himself in a lie that became his life. He wanted to be something more. Just like me.

Can you see, how similar we were, the Dark Lord and I? Certainly I was weak and not even a fraction of him, talent-wise, but look how far we both were willing to go to avoid death. Out of all his Death Eaters, I, the weakest and the least appreciated, must have been alike him the most. I suppose it is irony, or a giant cosmic joke of a kind. Just as the fact that after all I have done, despite all the destruction, death and agony I have caused...

I never wished any evil, not to anyone.

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AN: Push the green button.