Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.

It was gospel in my family, that mudbloods were inferior, that Our Lord had the right idea in wishing to exterminate them. I thought I was jaded, that I could no longer be shocked. I thought I had seen too much to be appalled by a mere act of torture. I was wrong, so very wrong. He had ordered a routine mission, tormenting a pair of Aurors into submission to the Cause. There were two of us sent, I and Bellatrix Lestrange. Bellatrix was a fanatic, rabid in her devotion to the Cause, but I never thought she would stoop so low. She held them under the Cruciatus for fifteen minutes, until they were gibbering, drooling wrecks, and then she turned her wand on the child. Well, the youngest child; the Aurors could not have been older than 18 or 19; they were barely more than children themselves. But the baby was a year old, and Bellatrix put the Cruciatus on him. In my cowardice, I could not look; I turned to the side and was sick in a wastebasket. After we left, when she was making the report to Our Lord, he laughed when he heard what she had done to the child. I can not, I will not, follow this monster anymore. It is a choice between hiding for the rest of my life and receiving the Killing Curse. I choose to die; perhaps it will redeem me in my brother's eyes. And so I approach my Lord, no, not my lord anymore, and tell him that I cannot follow him in good faith any longer. "Have you any final words, Regulus Black? No? Then Avada Kedavra!" And the green light speeds towards me and I wonder if death hurts, and then I don't wonder anything at all.