Title: Fool in Love
Summary: Can you really blame her when she loves him?
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
"It's a fool that looks for logic in the chambers of the human heart." - Joel Coen, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?
It's at the tender age of sixteen when she first meets him.
It's at one of those stupid pure-blood meetings her father always insists on having. While she fully supports her family's pure-blood policies (seriously, she was so sick of all those mudblood idiots clogging up wizarding establishments), she hates how her family is full of cowards.
They just whine like bitches, chanting over and over blood supremacy but when it comes to actually doing something, they run and whimper like beaten dogs with their tails between their legs. It's revolting when she sees her family reduced to grovelling for no good reason.
But then, there's him. The Dark Lord.
Those words are like a prayer to her. How could they not be? How could he not be her Master?
Even if at first she's disgusted by his animalistic features, she soon forgets it and sees the power in him. She falls for every one of his promises said in that smooth, velvety, powerful voice. She falls for him because finally someone is using his power, his influence, his heritage to gain what is rightfully his.
How could she not fall for the embodiment of her dreams?
He gives her the chance to be powerful. No, he makes her powerful. He's the one who shows her the adrenaline and the thrill of letting power flow through her veins. He gives her her first kill and then she's hooked on the power high.
She isn't a particularly vicious or violent person. At least not before him. But after he shows her that power - after she's addicted to it, addicted to him - she follows his every command, no matter how much it might disgust her.
No task is too much if it means he'll give her his praise.
And who knows? If she follows his every word and does anything and everything he asks of her...maybe, just maybe, she'll be worthy of his love.
She nearly goes insane when he tells her to seduce Lestrange and get him and his brother onto their crusade. Can't he see she keeps herself pure for him?
But she does it. She hates it, but she does it because she can't risk to lose his favor. She doubles her efforts in her tasks, still pining for some loving word or caress.
The worst part is how successful she is because of it. She's given one of the best titles she can hope for, the honor of being his most loyal follower. She's his right hand man, the one he turns to, the one he can always count on to get a job done. She revels in the spotlight even as she hates that her title doesn't include any love from him.
When she finally pays her dues and is chucked into Azkaban, she doesn't particularly care. Azkaban may be the worst kind of hell, but her world is nothing without her master. She's nothing if her love is gone.
So she pines in Azkaban, wishing with every fiber of her being that her love will waltz through the prison and free her. It's her obsession and the one thing that keeps the Dementors from driving her insane.
Ironically though, that obsession is what eventually causes her to scream and shriek, claw at walls until her nails are bloodied and rip her matted hair from her skull. Every day of wishing and praying, every day her love stays missing and her beautiful mark (the mark that shows her devotion and love to him) slowly fades, drives her insane.
Because without her Master, what is she?
She shrieks for joy when her Master's mark burns. She raises her arm high and kisses her blackened skin, whispering desperate oaths to the snake and skull, hoping it reaches him. She huddles in a corner, nuzzling her mark and watches it every day while she waits. Her love is back, and soon he will come for her. She is his most loyal follower and her Master never forgets.
When she is free, she finally gets her praise. She trembles in the feeling of her love finally acknowledging everything she's done for him. She actually gets what that idiot Dumbledore has been preaching about love all this time. It's euphoric power.
She throws herself into the new war with a vengeance, desperate to hear his loving words once more. But they never come.
It drives her further into insanity, to be deprived of those sweet, sweet loving words from her Master. She's an idiot for wanting something that would never come again, but she can't help it. She wants it so badly and she doesn't care what she has to do for it.
Can you really blame her for everything she's done?
After all, she's just a fool in love.