A/N: Ooooh. So, I hope you guys liked that first chapter. I spent all of five minutes on it. Lol. Actually, a LITTLE more than five… maybe ten…. Maybe fifteen… maybe three hundred…

Disclaimer: John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitz, that's my name too! Whenever I go out, the people always shout: There goes John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmitz! (na na na na na na) whisper John Jacob…

I rushed Nessa to St. Mungo's.

It was too late.

She was dead.

Aurors came and interrogated me, but I might have twisted the story so that I killed in self-defense.

Instead of revenge.

That funeral was possibly the most awful day of my life.

Including today.

I remember that I was wearing my best black robes, standing over her grave. Tears falling down my face. There was a enormous puddle laying beneath my feet by the end of the service.

I don't remember what the priest said, or what what anyone said.

I remember what I said. I said that true love only comes once in a lifetime, and I had found it in Nessa. I told them that I had just asked her to marry me. And that she said yes. We were engaged for a few, short hours. It felt like both nothing and eternity. I cried my way off the podium.

I don't remember who was invited. The faces of distant relatives. The names of great-grandchildren I could never hope to remember.

I do remember that Sirius showed up. I don't know why. Perhaps he knew Nessa. Perhaps he had met her somehow, maybe through work. Perhaps he knew how special she was to me. Perhaps he came to laugh at my pain.

Mother and Father cursed him to oblivion for coming. Her funeral soon became a mass of battling Aurors and purebloods.

My cousin Bellatrix turned up on my doorstep the next day and invited herself in.

She looked older, somehow. I had gone her graduation ceremony only a month earlier, and then she had been smiling, beautiful, happy, and carefree. Now, Bellatrix had shadows under her eyes, hair that look as if it had remained unwashed for weeks, and a sarcastic sort of grimace on her face.

"What are you doing here?" I asked, none too politely.

She turned up her left sleeve so I could see a newly burned Dark Mark, black against the white of her skin.

I gaped in shock. Litte Bella? She had only just graduated. And here she was, sitting in the chair across from me with the Mark clear on her arm, coercing me into becoming a Death-Eater.

"Come on, Reggie," she cooed, using the family nickname for me that I though had died off ten, fifteen years ago, "It'll be fun."

I glared at her. "I'm not really in the mood for fun. Now get out, before I call the Ministry on you-"

Suddenly she was alive with anger, "You stupid boy," she hissed, leaning forward in her chair and digging her nails into the arms. "You killed that Muggle didn't you? Think about the power, the glory, the gold you could amass, and the revenge."

My head throbbed. I should have known Bella'd try this tactic. "I've had my revenge. No need to kill innocents."

"Innocents? INNOCENTS? How many of our kind have they killed? How many children have they mercilessly slaughtered? How many Nessas' lives have been cut short by a mere, filthy M uggle?" She sneered contemptuously.

"I won't."

"Oh, no. You will. You felt it when you slew that old man. You felt it, that fire that wells up inside you when you've had your first killing. From the first taste you become addicted, and time is short until you kill again."
Deep inside, I knew Bella was right. I felt it every time I saw someone with an ounce of Muggle blood in them. I could feel my own, pulsing through my veins, willing me to reach out, squeeze their throat, snap their neck.

But I didn't.

"Nessa- Nessa wouldn't want me to. She loved Muggles."

My cousin laughed sardonically, "And look at where that got her!"

That was just too far. "Fununculus!" I cried out, pointing my wand at her.

Fungus and who-knows-what-else popped up on her face. She shrieked in rage, and reached for her wand.

"EXPELLIARMUS!" Bella's wand flew out of her hand, and into mine. I broke into seven pieces and slowly, to her horror, ground each into dust beneath my foot.

"Get. Out. Now."

She got out.

But things were still boiling inside me, feelings that she had raised from the chasms of my mind and thoughts it seemed she had created herself.

The hours passed as I sat in my chair, in each coming closer and closer to the truth.

I was going to become a Death Eater.