Author's Note: I wrote this little sketch in response to a challenge that I read... somewhere. I desperately wish I could remember where, so that I might credit the originator. The challenge asked participants to write about the most significant five kisses in a character's life. I happened to glimpsed Voldemort's name and the idea stuck with me; the more I thought about it the more I wanted to try it. Here is the result; I stopped at four. Once more, I did not participate in the challenge officially and, if I could remember where I'd read the prompt I would be more than happy to credit the person whose idea this was. As it is, just know that it was not my own. Which reminds me to do the following:
Disclaimer: All of the characters and many of the plot points appearing herein belong to J.K. Rowling, the forever gifted. I have only embellished upon them; I own nothing.

And now... "Not Exactly Love"

It was difficult to see her in the half-light of the dusky attic, but Tom could tell that the girl was crying. He didn't care, of course; he told himself that she was outside of his concern. She was not like him; she was ordinary. But her tiny, rag-clad body was shaking and he wondered how she was still drawing breath, her body was so convulsed by that sobbing.

He inched nearer to her, ostensibly to examine something inside a tall oaken cabinet. She wiped her tears from her face with a tattered sleeve and sniffled. The sound annoyed him, but he shoved his irritation aside in order to indulge his curiosity. He crossed the floor and sat impassively upon a stack of old books. She looked fearfully up at him; Tom Riddle would as soon push you down on the playground as speak to you.

He laughed softly; it was a sound devoid of any real mirth. "I'm not going to hurt you, Amy," he said mockingly. "Only tell me why you're crying." She stiffened as he moved to sit cross-legged on the floor. "You don't care, you just want to make fu-u-un of me," she sobbed, looking away across the hardwood.

He put a hand on her slender arm; his flesh was cold. "Amy," he whispered. "Amy." She still trembled in fear, but when she looked to him all she knew fell away. She knew that Tom Riddle was strange. She knew that he could make eerie things happen to you. She knew that he had a cold, sarcastic voice. But when she looked at him, she must have found something, something in those eyes that made all that unimportant, for she said, "Johnny pushed me down on the playground and called me a stupid ginger. He told me I wasn't pretty."

Tom had no compassion for her; her eyes were streaked from her crying and her hair was a tangled mess. But he leaned forward anyway and experimentally touched his lips to hers. How strange, he thought: he felt nothing. Amy shuddered; his touch was icy and impassive. She wrapped her arms around her knees and did not look at him again.

Tom placed a steely hand on her shoulder, and his long fingers pushed away a lock of her offending hair. "You tell Johnny," said he, his voice dangerously soft, "that he has the right of it." With that he stood, brushing the dust and clutter of the attic from his trousers, and left her there, sobbing still.

The girl was more than a little dense; she was stupid. Not only was she inept at potions, but she also had no conception of how to speak to the professors about her work in class. Disrespect got her nowhere, though she could sometimes whore her way into passing marks. Some of the younger professors were particularly susceptible to her charms.

He would have preferred to experiment with someone more… delicate. Someone whose easiness was not so generally professed. Someone who had not slept with the greater half of Slytherin house. But she was elegant and haughty and at least pretended not to want him.

He caught her after potions one day and pulled her into an empty classroom. She feigned surprise, putting up her hands in protest, until he began with his always controlled, always brusque hands to disrobe her.

He threw her Slytherin robes unceremoniously to the tile and slowly undid the buttons of her shirt. He slid this slowly, slowly back to reveal an ample form and to trace his fingers wonderingly over the curves of her breasts. He remained in complete control, even when she shimmied out of her jeans and stood before him in her undergarments. His hands traced the lines of her body dispassionately, and he did not resist when she tugged at the hemline of his shirt. He stood still as she fumbled urgently with his belt buckle and then he stepped out of his trousers and came down to the floor, kneeling over her as she fondled him.

He was distant during sex, never making any sound. She moved with surety, first murmuring and then crying his name. "Tom!" She threw the obscene cry to the rafters as she reached her orgasm before collapsing, spent, on the floor. He withdrew. He pulled on his boxers, his pants, his tee shirt. He did not speak to her as he straightened his belt, donned his robes, and muttered an indifferent cleaning spell.

He did not turn around when she spoke his name. He stopped, though, when she stood and walked to him, still naked. It was only when she kissed him, covering his stern lips with her warm ones, passionately seeking entry with her tongue, that he pushed her away. His eyes raked over her body. Her ample breasts hung freely in the dingy light. In that gaze he possessed her more thoroughly, more completely than he had yet done. He took in everything that she was and then he pushed her away with an icy hand to the sternum. It was then that he spat at her, his voice dangerously low: "slut." It was then that he slammed the door to the derelict classroom and left her standing nakedly in the middle of the floor.

The woman lay on the cement floor, and the shadows of the prison bars ripped across her face. He looked down at her, bound there, and laughed a low laugh. "Where'd you pick this one up, Amos? She's rather," he trailed a finger down her exposed stomach, "lovely."

The Death Eater laughed, but his face turned hard as the woman whimpered, and he pointed his wand threateningly at her. She fell quiet. "Found her trying to protect," – he sneered the word – "her Muggle family. Offered to hex me all the way to Azkaban. Fiery, this one…" He leered at her, but Voldemort sent him a look that stopped him in his tracks. He backed away. "Thought I'd bring her to you, master," he finished.

Voldemort crouched beside the prone woman, taking handfuls of her hair in his stained hands. "Admirable. Defending the weak. So good of you." His voice dripped with sarcasm; it was low and harsh. "Shame you won't get anything for your pains." As he pronounced the last word, he drove a knee into her ribs, and she whimpered.

"It's almost a shame, Amos, that you had to take her. She might have put up a valiant fight. I do love women who fight," he whispered to her, his breath grazing her stomach and her nipples through the light fabric of her shirt. "And, really, Amos, she's so very…" He stopped to run a finger along her jaw, turning the left side of her face toward the light. His voice dropped in decibel. "So very pretty."

He lifted her left hand, the binding that pinned her arm to the floor falling away at his touch. Her fingers were limp in his. He lifted the hand to his mouth, and he placed his cold lips to her palm. He closed his eyes as though he were very weary. He dragged his mouth upward from there, tracing very slowly up the inside of her wrist to her elbow. Then he let her hand fall as she lay shivering on the cold cement. Amos looked up at him expectantly. "She's all yours, Amos."

"Ah, Bellatrix. You have done good work today." Her hand had been curled about his arm, but she pulled away from him at these words to bow subserviently, her obedience managing not to be a gesture of weakness. She hummed in pleasure as he patted her dark hair.

"Bellatrix, I need you to do something else for me." She looked up at him expectantly. Her hair hung damply about her expressive face; her eyes darted with dark intensity about the room. She slunk to the oaken door of the room and pulled it shut with a heavy thud. She came back to him.

He was sitting now in an easy chair before the fire, though his posture was far from relaxed. The flames flung ghastly shadows across the pallor of his face, and his voice echoed about the room with the nakedness of cold stone and drafty cellars. She knelt before him, looking up into his face and grinning with a malicious eagerness. "Anything, my Lord." She stressed the final word; her tone held a mixture of obeisance and hunger.

With one long, ghostly finger he traced a line from her temple, pushing a strand of hair dispassionately behind her ear. "You have never failed me, Bellatrix," he reminded her in a hoarse whisper. His voice thick with menace, he continued, "It would be… unwise… to begin now."

Her voice took on a hint of fire. "My Lord, you know that I would do anything… serve any way! I have sworn…" He cut her off, his voice angry and quick. "I know what you've sworn!"

She cowered before him. She did not lower her eyes, but they had loss all traces of defiance. "Of course, my lord." She waited for an answer, but not a muscle of his face moved. Then, hesitantly, she spoke. "My lord, what is it I must do? Command me do anything."

One absurdly long fingernail dragged along the soft flesh of her neck and he lifted her chin. "You must protect this. You must lock it away, and even you must not see it. It is of the greatest importance that it not come to harm."

She gaped as he lifted a shimmering gold artifact, a stately relic of some now-defunct house. He handed the gilded object to her, and as she took it the sheen of the gold plating flickered in her dangerous eyes. She cradled the object in her hands and bent her head, placing a trailing, rabid kiss across his long fingers. "My lord, I will not fail you."

She watched his face for the glimmer of response, but it did not come. She turned to go, and when she had closed the oaken door once more behind her, he remained, his face still illuminated by the garish flames in the rusting grate.

.Fin.