Imitations of Immortality

"Stand aside, you silly girl!" I bellowed, rushing forward at Lily Potter, shoving her out of the way.

"I will die before I give him to you!" she shrieked, eyes ablaze.

"You do not understand! He is coming to kill him - he will kill you, as well! Stand aside!"

"NEVER!" she cried, launching herself at me, bowling me over with the sheer force of her attack. Though small, adrenaline had transformed her into a tiger. I was not prepared for such an attack; I was thrown back, and my head cracked the drywall.

Shakily I stood, my eyes burning holes in her face, in her perfect little family, in my goddamn debt to her husband - my life debt.

"Fine. Fine! Stay here, then - stay and die. Die with James and Harry. You were never worth anything greater," I spat, the taste of bile and failure on my tongue.

Then I Disapparated, leaving behind her screams. Whether they were directed towards me, or towards a cloaked figure that I knew had entered the room shortly thereafter, it is uncertain.

But I thought that after that night, I would have been rid of it. I thought that I had paid my debt. I arrived after James had died, but I made a valiant effort to save those who had been dear to him. Lily would never have given me her child, I know that now. I had never given her a reason to trust me. This is inconvenient, when debts come into play, for neither good nor evil factor into the payment of a life debt. Sides do not matter and arguments are of no importance. It is life that must be paid; one life for one life. And I thought that my efforts had finally balanced the ledgers.

But as I sat in a back corner of an anonymous Muggle pub that night, I knew that it had not been enough. The constant plague of the debt had not left me. It felt as though weights had settled in all my veins, in my throat, in my heart. It weighed me down, it directed my movements. I was trapped inside it - everything I did or thought would either add to the weight or remove some. I could not escape. I wore long cloaks to hide the signs of it, for the Dark Lord would not be pleased that one of his close few owed a debt to the father of Harry Potter.

Oh, yes. I knew of the boy. I knew of his importance. For it was I who was the spy in the Hog's Head that day. It was that cursed day that my debt became more real than anything I had ever known. When those words, spoken hollowly, found their way to my ears, the debt that had lain dormant sprang into cognizance. It wrapped itself around my lungs, refusing me even breath unless I submitted to its power. I was its slave. It was my other master, unknown to the first. It turned my own body against me, and there was nothing I could do to fight it. But after that day in the Hog's Head, I knew exactly what I had to do to repay the curse. It was no matter that I would likely be killed, if found there, that night, in Godoric's Hollow. Justice is justly repaid.

But although this debt, this curse was not my immediate downfall, it is surely to be my eventual one.

I could have escaped from my debt; verily, at any time I could have ended it. But that is weakness, that is frailty, and I am neither weak nor frail. I swore to myself that I would overcome this imprisonment, just as I will overcome the other, whose mark is upon my left forearm. If overcoming it could only be accomplished by paying it, so be it. I would not let it claim my life.

I did not die that night, though perhaps I should have. The Dark Lord did not die that night either, but no one knows why. No one, save me. My place among the Death Eaters was that of Potions Master, the best among all servants. I was in the inner circle of the Dark. I was confidant and spy for my Lord, for the strongest potions are not made of monksfoot and root of asphodel (DKJFKDLJ); instead, they are steeped with secrets, lies, and blood. This was my esteemed place, and it suited me for a time.

Power was promised to us all. It was granted to the strongest and the most cunning, but I began to see a fallacy in the Dark Lord's promises. Power can not be distributed; it is held by one person and one alone. Anything else is a lie or a failure. I would never achieve what was promised to me; I began to doubt my Lord.

Doubt among the higher ranks of the most powerful Dark Wizard is not something to be tolerated. Again, I should have been killed; however, I imagine that my skills as Potions Master outweighed the doubts that must have been obvious to my master. I was the sole person who could brew such potions to lengthen my Lord's life indefinitely, and he was desperate for such potions.

Thus, it came to pass on that day that he should have fallen. His soul should have been ripped from his body and cast into oblivion, but it was not so. His life was continued, because of me.

I am the reason that I was still imprisoned twofold. When I looked at the mark in that dingy Muggle pub, though it was hardly visible, I still felt its power over me. And with great regret and anger, I still felt the weight in my limbs and constriction of my lungs and almost constant nausea of the cursed life debt. This downfall of the Dark Lord had changed nothing for me. Indeed, neither had my years of servitude. I was still slave to Him and to fate. I could not even remember a time when the decisions I made were my own.

I needed to escape this imprisonment; I wanted to live, and to live freely.

And as another wave of nausea threatened to overtake me, I decided to pay a visit to one of the very few men that might be able to help me: Albus Dumbledore.

I have never groveled as I groveled on that day.

Even when I first kissed the hems of the robes of the Dark Lord upon my Initiation did I grovel less than on that day. In those times, almost five years ago now, the naïveté of youth still clung to me. I believed in my Lord's promises, and I believed in my own superiority under such degradation. I believed that I could overcome my enslavement, that I could turn it to suit my own purposes, that my thirst for knowledge could be slaked and that I could walk away from him, unscathed. I felt power in this position of prostration. These illusions would soon be torn from my body.

In my later years as a Death Eater, my groveling was nothing more than a mechanical motion. My worthlessness need not have been accentuated by this motion, for it always plagued me deeply, revoltingly. I was not moved by this display of humiliation, for my soul knew it more piercingly than my body. My Lord had led me down this path, knowing me, knowing exactly how I would react to his lies. He knew that I would try to find victory in subservience, and knew exactly how to break me, how to use me. And I had followed, and had believed myself victorious.

The brutality of the night during which I realised the truth, realised the power of the Dark Lord, and realised the cruelty of my own contemptible existence will not be recorded here. I have spent too long erasing it from my memory.

But the groveling I did that day at the feet of Albus Dumbledore surpassed all that I had done. To the Dark Lord, it was always a language of lies. To Albus, it was necessarily the pure, unadulterated truth. I was compelled to tell everything, everything I knew was true. I spread out my life and dreams on the floor before his feet, waiting for him to tread upon them. I spoke to save my life.

I sat in a too-plush armchair across his desk, and yet I felt as if my face were pressed to the floor at his feet. I could not meet his eye, yet I felt them on me like ice, seeing through my flesh into my mind and heart, cold, calculating.

I suspect that that twinkle in them is a lie.

Afterwards, finally looking at his eyes across his desk, I felt exposed. Naked. More than naked - I felt as if my skin had been peeled off, leaving my soul stinging at the sudden contact to air, left free for Albus to poke around, lifting bits of bleeding, hanging soul to get at other bits not yet exposed.

This was my punishment, this was mine to endure. I suppressed the nausea and waited for his prying fingers to be finished with me.

When he was satisfied, the ice within his eyes melted, and he released me with a smile of sunshine and lemon drops and a paper-thin mask of innocence.

It was then that I knew: I had welcomed into my life a third Master.