Note: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters or any of the plot that comes from J. K. Rowling's books.
I knew he was coming. I felt it in my blood, in a far-off corner of my mind—in the very darkest reaches of my now-worthless soul.
And yet I did nothing to stop him. I could not… not even for her.
My wife was asleep beside me, peacefully ignorant of the horrors looming ever nearer. I remember the last night in a blur—her last kiss… her sleeping, angelic face… and then him.
He burst in like an unexpected searing pain—sharp, intense, and pulsing—never to be forgotten. His eyes were full of the fire of a twisted, almost orgasmic, pleasure as his deathly white fingers raised a jet black wand.
"You," he said, his voice low and smooth as a snake gliding over a stone. "If you don't, she will die." He indicated the woman beside me.
There was only one choice. My love for her nearly consumed me as I stood before him. "Take me," I growled.
He laughed.
The pain of a thousand knives ripped into me, forcing me to the door. Contorted in pain and fury, I had one last look at him as he crawled into my bed and reached for her.
Thus I was locked into the service of Lord Voldemort. From then on, I was bound to him. I served him out of fear of death or pain… I served him out of obligation by the thrice-cursed mark on my arm. My heart was gripped by a fire of anger fueled by the pure hate, hate, hate that boiled in my mind. It controlled me. For weeks there was only it. I was not the boy I had been. I was not yet the man I was to become. I was a being that existed out of lack of anything better to do. I was possessed by the Dark Lord day and night and no thought of mine was truly my own.
Slowly, then, I began to rebel. Something of what I was—of what I would be –woke within me and began to shape the rage as a potter molds the clay. It twisted and settled into a black pattern that drove me to commit the terrors that I did. It became my pride in the murder of others, my joy in their pain… and a perverted passion for a new woman.
Bellatrix Lestrange was no doubt the most beautiful woman I had met… but it was not the pure beauty of the wife I could not forget… It was the stained beauty of the sort that drove Eve to eat the apple. Her black hair was radiant with a dark light and her eyes shone with an evil that I found appealing to no end. It was this that drove me to do what I did.
We did none of this loving, gentle nonsense that some would call "lovemaking". No… I threw myself into her, breaking her, getting pleasure not so much from the act as from the satisfaction of seeing her nearly destroyed by my will.
And it went on.
There was still pain. I knew a psychological pain that no one could possibly imagine… that no one would dare to imagine. I still loved her… but I no longer recognized this feeling for my wife as love. It was hunger. It was jealousy. It was almost anger.
I saw her once with another man and it was as if everything evaporated but her.
I killed the other man. In an eruption of crazed envy, I did what I would never have believed possible of myself. The Muggles said he died of a heart attack. As if the heart could ever do that to a man…
But then the destruction—the annihilation—of other people's lives became a release sweeter than anything Bella ever gave me. It was like a narcotic that I despised even as I loved it.
And then, like the opium addict that is suddenly deprived of his drug, I found that I could not stop. Lord Voldemort found me slaughtering those he wanted alive. He beat me with spells, nearly breaking me, but that fierce power always won in the end. I threw him back. I forced him out of me, ripping apart my own arm that I might be rid of his mark.
I killed whoever I saw. If I met someone on the street, they would fall over dead. Some part of me must have recognized the monster I had become, for I went out only by night. Like a vampire I became, feeding off of others' lives.
But then it happened. Lost in a nightmarish hell, I was killing whoever I met, preferring to look at them only after they were cold with death. I struck her down with a curse so familiar that I did not have to think about it anymore. And when I turned, expecting the usual twisted satisfaction, I saw my life evaporate before my eyes. The woman, the beautiful witch that had been the only true love of mine, was dead, unmarked and cold in the gutter, my ears ringing with her last whispered word—"Severus…"
It sent me into an emotional coma deeper than the unfeeling, destructive man I had been. I struggled to understand what I'd done. Disgusted with myself and fighting to grasp the last scraps of my tattered soul, I fled to the only one who was untainted by the Darkness enough to save me.
Albus Dumbledore listened to my tortured story. I found with him something from what must have been a past life… for no one had trusted me since I was little more than I boy.
I put up a good act but I cannot fool myself. Deep inside I still lust for other people's death and pain. I still want a woman who is dead by my own hand… and I still feel a sick desire for a woman for whom I have no respect.