"I want to hold you close
Soft breath, beating heart
As I whisper in your ear
I want to fucking tear you apart" (She Wants Revenge)

He was obsessed with her.

The sweet, perfumed tendrils of her hair, the ethereal, delicate face. The dark grey eyes, snapping with disdain. She was beautiful. Brilliant. All he could have ever wanted.

And he was obsessed with her.

She wanted nothing to do with him, of course. He expected that. A maiden, locked away in her tower, so to speak. Free to wander among the rest of the students, but how could a daughter of one of the school's Founders achieve true freedom of expression?

She rebuffed all of his advances, but that was okay. She told him that she wanted nothing to do with him, but he merely smiled and brushed it off. He could wait. She'd change her mind.

When she left Hogwarts, he was devastated. He tried to follow, but he couldn't find her. Not this time. Nor the times after that. He returned time and again, heart-sore and lost, with not so much as a whisper of her whereabouts on his lips. Rowena acted as though all was well, but he knew better. He could see the strain around her eyes, the way her mouth tightened with regrets.

Finally, Rowena called him to her. Go after her, she told him, weak, her breath shallow and rasping. Find her. Find my daughter.

Your wish is my command, he stated with a flourished bow. Inside, his heart leaped for the first moment in weeks. Now. He even had her mother's blessing. Surely, she couldn't scorn him now.

He followed her trace, faint and broken as it was. Albania. A wretched country. There, in the midst of the gloomiest forest it had ever been his misfortune to step into, she stood. Beautiful. Radiant.

"Come back with me," he entreated. She was his. She must say yes. He held his breath, certain of the answer from the pale radiance before him. She tossed back her hair and looked at him, eyes limpid.

"No," she said, and the world went red.

She would be his. No matter what anyone else said.

Even her.