I own none of these characters.
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Icarus
by MarbleGlove

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Dear Icarus,

I know that I am one of many who have written you since your cure for lycanthropy was made public. This fact gives me courage in writing to you for I know I am not alone in my feelings or reactions. I doubt that I am the first person to tell you my thoughts, either.

I don't know whether I love you or hate you more, but you have certainly taught me the truth of the old saying: be careful what you wish for.

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Lord Voldemort was alone in this chambers laying out a tarot reading. It was one of his nightly rituals -- helping him keep track of the direction his plans were going and the possible responses of his enemies. He smiled as he laid down the card of Death. It appeared in every chart he cast. It almost always stood for himself.

The stupid members of the Death Eaters found that scary and thought he was death personified. The more intelligent found it disturbing because it showed him a chaotic force for chance. It wasn't death that he personified but his own revolution. He would rip the wizarding world apart and transform it into something different.

Lord Voldemort had made of himself a symbol. He was going to change the world and every good revolution needed, not just a leader, but an ideal that they could worship and strive to emulate. He was both.

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You have offered me my greatest wish, a cure from being a werewolf. A cure that did not involve my death. I have longed for such a cure for nigh on thirty years and now a nameless man working with the enemy of the wizarding world has offered it to me and to all those similarly afflicted.

I am in your debt. Whether I accept your offered cure or deny it, I am in your debt for what you have offered.

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As he laid down the next card he thought of Icarus.

Lord Voldemort thought with some fondness of his dear correspondent. Although Icarus was a masculine name, he had come to think of Icarus as female, using the feminine article in his own thoughts. Young and feminine but with an immense power that she did not understand. Yet.

Had she begun to realize that the sense of purpose that seemed to radiate from her letters could easily seduce followers to her command? Her discoveries would leave debtors in her wake? Few people have a real sense of purpose and they would do anything to get one. That was, after all, the secret of his own success. People would follow him because he was willing to lead. People were in debt to him because he was willing to act. His cause would win, too, because the Ministry was unable and Dumbledore unwilling to be a true leader to the masses.

Dear Icarus who had first written to him asking for him to lead her to knowledge. She wanted someone to lead her and he would do so, but she would find it increasingly difficult to find anyone else willing to guide her. Instead people would turn to her asking for guidance, would accept her decisions. Even when she hesitated, her certainty of purpose was still stronger than most when they were at their most decisive. Any doubts she had merely marred the surface of her certainty rather than be the dry rot that inflicted so many.

As she grew stronger and more confident in herself, she tied herself with ever tighter bonds to his leadership. If she wanted to be lead, it would be by him alone, and she would bring with her all who had been caught up in her sphere of influence.

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I am weak, for I have deepened my debt to you by accepting. I am no longer a werewolf. I performed the cure with the help and supervision of Professor McGonagall and Headmaster Dumbledore. Your cure worked, and I have walked under the light of the full moon as a man for the first time in my adult life.

I find myself smiling and enjoying a freedom I had thought never to have for all that I fear what this freedom shall ultimately cost me and mine. Through my fear, I smile.

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People wanted to be sheep, they wanted to be told what to do and they did not want to have to think about it.

He had gained followers without even trying. And they never questioned him, even when he did something damn foolish. He made an effort to be scary, but it wasn't fear that kept them quiet, or at least not fear of him. They wanted him to be perfect and all-powerful, and they feared that if they questioned him they might discover he was not. Every foolish thing he had ever done they explained away as him having deeper motivations than they could see or understand, but certainly never as a mistake. They wanted desperately to put their faith somewhere, to create honor for themselves in the service of something great.

A bunch of atheists yearning to act for the greater glory of God.

Voldemort giggled his high-pitch laughter, alone in his room with only his tarot cards and his thoughts to keep him company. Wizards were just as stupid as muggles, he thought, for all that they held more power. They wanted a lord and he would give them one -- Lord Voldemort, whose very name could not be spoken aloud.

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You have not only achieved a miraculous cure, but in giving it freely to the wizarding world without demanding payment in galleons, you have earned yourself payment in debts owed to you. I wish you had demanded a fortune in gold and then I could have raised the money with a clear conscience and owed my debt to the goblins of Gringotts.

Instead, I owe you a favor larger than I can imagine, and such debts between wizards are binding.

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Icarus was an exception. She was different from everyone else he had contact with. She was the ideal of his new order although she didn't know it. Certainly Lucius Malfoy with his pedigree and his beauty did not know it. But Lord Voldemort, who had been Tom Riddle, sired by an idiot muggle and left to what mercy there was in the muggle world, knew the truth of what it meant to be a pureblood. It was not about where your blood came from, but what your choices were.

Being a pureblood wizard was about forsaking the muggle world. It was a refusal to compromise. It was a refusal to make oneself smaller for the sake of the small.

Muggles had brought their morals into the wizarding world, preaching against the use of magic. And even as they burned us alive, the wizarding world accepted their morals and renounced more and more of our magic. Wizards allowed their magic to be divided into good and evil and then pushed away that part of themselves considered evil. It was a self-mutilation propagated upon the entire wizarding community. But he would fix it.

Lord Voldemort lay down the final card to complete the tarot pattern. He smiled.

Once he won this war, there would be no distinction made between good magic and evil magic. There would just be magic. And he would force each person to choose: do they live in the wizarding world or in the muggle world, are they wizard or muggle. He would no longer allow these people who divided themselves between two worlds , tainting both, weakening both.

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When you ask for that favor repaid, I will do my best to do so. However, there are things that I value higher than I do my own honor, my own soul. Although you are in league with You-Know-Who, do not ask me to betray Harry Potter or Albus Dumbledore. For them, I will deny a life debt. Please do not demand that of me.

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With the tarot reading done, Lord Voldemort settled into his bed to sleep. Everything seemed to be going to plan. All the small details taken care of. He could afford to sleep for a few hours. As he lay in bed with his red eyes lidded, he allowed himself to think about his ultimate goals.

Lord Voldemort did not hate muggles. He hated a few specific muggles, certainly, and those few specific muggles had all died in horribly painful manners with the exception of the few that had died before he got around to them. But as a race, he didn't hate muggles.

He hated mudbloods. It was those witches and wizards who bridged the society of muggles and wizards that he loathed. They were neither one nor the other, they could never fully reach their potentials and they tried their best to drag everyone else down with them. They forced their silly muggle morals upon wizarding situations.

He hated blood traitors, those purebloods who protected the muggles, who thought that muggles were mere playthings who could do no harm. Those purebloods had rewritten the history books to disguise the fact that wizards had been caught by muggles before without their wands and had been killed by the burnings. Those blood traitors sent wizarding children to live with abusive muggles because they thought muggles were harmless.

Lord Voldemort did not hate wizards and he did not hate muggles, he hated those who tried to be both, those who bridged the gap between the two cultures. When he won, there would be no moralizing, no compromising, no hesitating. He would take the worship of the wizarding world and he would force them down the path of true greatness.

Lord Voldemort had given up much, in this war, but he knew he would win, because in the end, his followers were powerful and his enemies sabotaged their own efforts because of their silly, silly morals.

With such thoughts in his head, the Dark Lord finally drifted off to sleep.

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I thank you with all my heart for what you have given me, and I curse you with all my heart for what you have made me give you.

Yours truly,

Remus Lupin

former werewolf