The Dark Lord's Secret Love

Chapter 5: Muggles Eat Candy Too, You Know

Lord Voldemort silently appeared on the outskirts of a small town, and stood still, surveying his surroundings and waiting for his Death Eaters to arrive. Within moments, a series of popping and cracking noises resounded in the still night air, and the Dark Lord was once again surrounded by black-cloaked and hooded figures, his faithful servants.

He addressed the circle that had hastily formed around him. "Tonight we shall strike fear into the hearts of all muggles and muggle-lovers. A giant is waiting for us ahead, to assist us in our venture. We shall wreak destruction upon those who dare to oppose us, those who claim that we of pure blood are akin to the lowly muggles and mudbloods. Follow closely, and you shall receive your assignments when we join the giant."

Lord Voldemort stalked off with a long-legged stride, parting the circle as his servants jumped aside for him. The masked and hooded group followed in his wake, eager to do his will, to claim for themselves a bit of the power he radiated.

At the village center, they approached what looked like two thick, gray tree trunks. The giant towered twenty feet above the Death Eaters, waiting for the Dark Lord's command to commence its rampage.

"My loyal servants," Lord Voldemort began again, "listen closely. We shall split into groups, which will allow us to cover as much ground as possible. You are to leave no stone unturned, no house intact."

He indicated a group of Death Eaters. "You are to take the southern section of the town. You may do as you wish. If you attract the attention of the Aurors, which you most certainly will with repeated use of magic in this part of the country, you are to disapparate immediately. Do not allow yourselves to be caught, for I will not reward incompetence, and you will remain in Azkaban among the dementors."

He made a sweeping gesture at another group. "You shall take the eastern section of the village, which contains the commercial district. You are to use what little judgment you possess to cause irreparable financial harm to the unworthy muggles who own the businesses."

He turned to the last four members of the group. "Severus and Bellatrix, my most loyal Death Eaters. You are to accompany me tonight, along with Narcissa and the boy." He waved a careless hand in their general direction. "Draco, I welcome you as my servant, and I expect that you will serve me better than your incompetent father. Although this is your first experience, I will not tolerate hesitation on your part. Prove yourself to me, and I shall give you a higher honor than your father ever deserved or received."

Lord Voldemort swung his long cloak around his shoulders and stalked off into the night once more, Bellatrix, Narcissa, and Draco struggling to keep up with his pace. Severus walked effortlessly at his master's side, his longer legs serving him well.

They arrived in front of the first home in the section of the sleeping village that the Dark Lord had reserved for his personal contingent. It was a middle-class residential area, with a multitude of unimpressive and unremarkable homes spaced close together, each with a small and unkempt garden in front.

"Severus," said the Dark Lord. "You may have the honor of opening the door."

The professor raised his wand and muttered "Alohamora." A clicking sound resonated from the doorjamb, and Snape turned the knob easily, granting them entry to the house.

Stepping into the foyer, the Dark Lord indicated that Severus and Draco should retrieve the muggles from their beds. They wordlessly obeyed his command, climbing the staircase across from the door, while Voldemort and the two women retreated to the living room.

A grandfather clock stood against one wall of the disorderly room, surrounded by shelves filled with well-thumbed books and many stationary muggle pictures of two small children. Another wall featured a medium-sized television and other various electronics that went with it, and three windows took up a third wall, each covered with cheap vinyl blinds. Draco sneered as he studied the muggles' belongings, so different from the opulent artifacts of his own home. It all looked cheap and inferior to eyes so accustomed to magic and riches.

The godfather clock, incongruous with the rest of the room, and most likely an inheritance from a wealthier relative, chimed twelve times, as a scream resounded from the bedrooms above. Bellatrix's eyes shone with excitement and bloodlust, anticipating the agony she would soon inflict.

As the clock ceased its soft noise, two sets of footsteps became audible on the stairway. Seconds later, Draco Malfoy's hooded shape appeared, levitating two small and frightened children, a boy and a girl, both magically bound and gagged, in front of him. Severus followed a moment later with a woman who was apparently the children's mother, a middle-aged muggle woman in a cotton nightdress, her hair in curlers. She had been stunned.

The two released their prisoners from the levitation charms none too carefully, unceremoniously dropping them to the ground. The muggle girl's eyes were wide and disbelieving, and silent tears poured down her brother's face. The Death Eaters were unmoved by the children's emotions.

Severus pointed his wand at the unconscious woman in front of him. "Ennervate," he said. The woman twitched slightly, then opened her eyes. As her vision focused, and she recalled what had happened, being rudely awakened and taken from her bed, she resumed her screams.

Bellatrix stepped forward toward the screaming, terrified woman with a dangerous grin curving her lips. She struck out at the muggle physically, not bothering to remove her wand to cause pain, and kicked her sharply in the ribs. "Shut it," she commanded, "or do you want me to snap your brat's neck right now?" The woman fell silent, terrified into submission.

The Dark Lord surveyed the carnage, a satisfied smirk playing on his lips. The Ministry would be hard-pressed to explain away the disaster he was currently orchestrating, and the muggles in this particular house would soon be in no state to recount the events to the Aurors.

Severus stepped back from the woman, letting Bella have her fun. His absence would not be noticed for a moment, but he must act quickly to fulfill the headmaster's foolish wishes. He removed a small bag of sweets from an inside pocket of his cloak. Holding it inside his sleeve, so the Dark Lord could not see the offending object, he searched for a spot that would effectively display the sweets. Spotting a small table in front of the sofa, he set the sweets in the middle, among the various food wrappers that already littered the surface.

Quickly, Snape returned to the center of the room, where Bellatrix was gleefully taunting the sobbing woman, while she held the smallest child upside-down in front of her.

Draco's wand was trained on the older child, a girl of about eight years old. His eyes narrowed, he released the ropes that bound her arms and legs. "Crucio!" he yelled. The child shrieked in pain, spasming on the floor.

"Very good, Draco," commended the Dark Lord. "You are more powerful than I expected a sixteen-year-old wizard to be, and your hatred of muggles and mudbloods serves you well."

Bellatrix dropped the smaller child, and now stood over the woman. "Poor wittle babies," she mocked in a sing-song voice. "Wittle babies want their mummy."

On an impulse, Severus released the ropes fastening the small boy's limbs, pointed his wand, and muttered "Imperio!" The child stood up and slowly walked out of the room.

Pleased with his Death Eaters' techniques, the Dark Lord turned his back on Bellatrix and her baby-talk to look at Narcissa, who was watching silently, seemingly withdrawn, as she vaguely watched her son torturing the child that was currently twitching under his wand.

As the Dark Lord moved his head, a flash of yellow on a cluttered table caught his eye, and he froze, a wave of shock sending shivers through his body.

It couldn't be! But it was. There, on a coffee table in the home of his latest muggle victims, sat a bag of lemon drops, the very sweet he had eaten and enjoyed such a short time ago.

Suddenly, the Dark Lord's mind was flooded with pictures of the same muggles, the ones who were currently lying battered on the floor in pools of their own blood, eating the delicious sweet. He closed his eyes, trying to block out the sight of pooled bodily fluids soaking into carpeting and the sound of pain-filled shrieks as his Death Eaters enthusiastically fulfilled the tasks he had set them. He could not get rid of it --- the sight of the children's blood and the sound of their screams were imprinted on his mind.

He suddenly felt as if he had to get out of the room. So Lord Voldemort did something that he had never done before: he walked out of a muggle-torture session.

A few minutes later, an exhilarated Bellatrix Lestrange found her master sitting on the front porch of the muggle home.

"We have finished with the muggles, Master!" she announced excitedly. "They are all dead. Severus had the boy stab his mother and sister to death under the influence of the imperius curse, and then I let Narcissa cast the killing curse on him. May we continue with the next house?

For the first time in his career as a dark wizard, Lord Voldemort had the urge to say no. However, a still-rational part of his mind refused to let him. "They cannot know that I have doubts! My Death Eaters must not suspect that I am going soft!" he thought to himself. He gave Bellatrix his consent, and silently disappeared to the next destination. His Death Eaters dutifully followed him.

Severus had noticed Lord Voldemort's conspicuous absence as he had forced the small child to murder his family. Snape could not believe that the Dark Lord's sudden loss of enthusiasm could be blamed on a small bag of muggle sweets. It just seemed too absurd to be true. As a man of science (at least in whatever way magic could be scientific), he could not rely on the results of one test. Therefore, Snape resolved to repeat his previous action of leaving a bag of lemon drops out, only this time he would do so earlier in the festivities.

The greasy-haired potions master strode into an unlighted muggle kitchen in the neighboring home, along with his student, Draco, the boy's mother, and his unhinged aunt. Silently breaking away from the group, he reached into his cloak pocket and produced another bag of lemon drops. He placed them on top of some muggle contraption that had a bunch of numbers on it and a window on the front, which seemed to have collected a pile of junk that didn't belong anywhere else in the house. He figured that the bag's placement would seem natural among the nest of rubber bands, paper plates, and stale cookies. His mission for Dumbledore completed, Severus retreated back to the group to watch for any reaction from his former master.

Lord Voldemort was still uncomfortable. This was an entirely new experience for him. He had never before felt wrong about the things he did, not even as a child. He had never doubted his own abilities or reasons, he had never felt guilty about anything. Sure he had experienced anger, pain, and of course varying degrees of paranoia, but this growing feeling that he was not doing the right thing was something he had never felt before, not even as a young boy in the orphanage.

The Dark Lord reasoned that he still needed to keep up appearances. This was no time to go soft. He instructed Draco and Bellatrix to fetch the latest batch of muggles, forcing himself to think of them as animals, but not cute animals like puppies or kittens. It was best to think of muggles as slugs.

Screams of terror again pierced the night. Soon Draco returned with a paunchy, balding middle-aged man, bound and gagged, floating in front of him. His Aunt Bella roughly thrust the unfortunate man's wife onto the floor before their master.

"Please sir! We'll give you anything you want! Just please don't hurt us!" sobbed the muggle woman.

"Shut up, you filthy muggle!" Bellatrix screeched, backhanding her sharply. The woman gave one more sob before lapsing into terrified silence.

As Lord Voldemort watched the scene directly in front of him, his uncomfortable feeling increased dramatically. He wrenched his scarlet eyes away from the of the muggle woman's pleading, terrified gaze, and sought anything that would relieve the feeling of uneasiness that he felt. What he saw, however, merely intensified his discomfort.

It was another bag of lemon drops. The innocent package of sweets lied on top of some silly muggle machine, among piles of junk. The coincidence was remarkable. The Dark Lord couldn't help it; he gasped in disbelief.

"What is it, Master?" yelled a concerned Bellatrix Lestrange, dropping the muggle man, whom she had been hanging upside down in mid-air with a levitation charm, on the hard tile floor. Seeing the shocked expression on her master's face, she ran to him.

"N-nothing, Bella," the Dark Lord stammered. His discomfort was slowly becoming a mixture of disgust and panic. He suddenly realized what was wrong. He, Lord Voldemort, descendant of Salazar Slytherin and destroyer of all "impure" had something in common with the very muggles he sought to erase from the planet!

The thought was too much. Overcome with horror, and not knowing whether he was revolted more by his complicity in the torture or by his attachment to the muggles he had always hated and resented, the Dark Lord disapparated from the site of his own attack.

The attack continued in Lord Voldemort's absence, both in the muggle kitchen and the rest of the town.

Severus Snape observed Lord Voldemort's behavior from across the room in the kitchen. Behind his Death Eater's mask, he smirked.