Before Evil Came Along

Chapter Five:

Later that day, I received an owl from Tom. He'd written me a four page letter explaining what he'd really intended to say.

It was a very confusing letter, telling me why he thought he'd changed. It was just as the conversation. Everything he seemed to say looked positive, but it had this bitter twist. I could not make anything up out of it.

He said he hadn't meant to insult me. He said it was nice to know that at least one of us had been able to preserve a childlike innocence -which I found pretty insulting nonetheless. He wrote that, as an Auror, he'd seen too many stomach-turning cases to let him believe in things such as love and friendship. He said he'd finally figured out what really was important in life: obtaining power and respect. To him that felt like a complete liberation, he wrote. As if he'd worn eye-caps his entire life and they'd finally fallen off. As if he'd been searching for something and he didn't even know what, but now that had become crystal clear and he would never rest, for nothing or no one until he got it.

And he asked me to help him find it. He said I could be the key and that he didn't want to do it alone.

I didn't know what to answer. He'd been right, he had changed. And he'd started to become something I was forced to hate... Voldemort.

It's true what they say about love, it's blind. I had fallen in love with this image of this boy long ago, an image I myself had created and no matter what he did or said, I refused to give up that image, in a way I still refuse to.

So I thought we were alike, you know. That's what possessed me to say yes. He was looking for respect and power and I was looking for my image, and neither of us would rest until we were satisfied. I didn't understand that what he meant by acquiring power and respect was to turn into what he's eventually become. I was too busy with convincing myself he was the perfect man.

But I knew he had that in him, I knew he had a tendency to be evil. He wasn't like other boys, he wasn't ordinary. He lived off extremes. Either he was deliriously happy (although I don't recall him being that so very often) or he was disgustingly mad.

I should have been smart and should've said my goodbye then and there, but I didn't. I was young and had some of my own ideals to live up to. And one of those was to prove to myself that love could cure everything and everyone.

I had to prove it to myself and I had to bring the old Tom back, so I could say I hadn't wasted my life on him. And that's basically what made me say 'Yes, I'll help you.'

I had no idea that finding whatever he wanted would be so time-consuming.

We moved back to England, so he could work as an Auror there. I didn't really mind, it gave me a chance to see my family more often.

But everything started to change. Everything we did was for Tom. Whatever he wanted, he would just say it and it would be done. Mostly he wanted me out of the way, which I -I must say- didn't really mind after a few months. I rarely saw him. He would be looking stuff up, going to meetings or playing Auror with his Auror-buddies.

Now, I know all three things were a synonym for gathering followers and killing people. I really feel stupid. I should've seen it all, but that's easy to say now it's over, right? It's a very pathetic excuse, but I was young and I believed the man I loved. And he took no shame in misleading me in this awful manner.

The relationship we had was... weird, I think is the only way to say it. I think everyone knew we were a couple, but when we were together we never were couply, if we were together at all.

I'd really started to lose all hope of getting my Tom back, until one day he just owled me to Apparate to the ministry at once. Two hours later I arrived back home as a married woman with a husband eager to start a family.

It was a very businesslike wedding. No witnesses, only me and Tom, no fancy dresses, no pretty flowers... Only one document and two signatures.

Nonetheless, I thought I'd won. I always believed marriage was not for me and Tom. He hadn't spent much time with me, hadn't shown me any affection and then suddenly he came up with this matrimony-thing. That had to mean something, I thought. It had to mean he loved me. Later I found out that Tom was under suspicion of some horrible things -and those were mainly things he'd actually done- and what better way to come off as innocent than to play the loving husband and caring father?

Of course back then, I was too stupid to realise what he was doing and I knew too little of his plans... But when I think about it now it was so obvious. I was just a cover, just a wonderful alibi. And that was all I'd ever been.

Yet I wanted to believe so badly I had taught him how to love again, that maybe he could ignore his stupid hunger for respect and power and that I could make him stay with me. I prayed everyday he would realise that all he really needed was me.

I wasn't at all what he needed... I was just something he coincidentally bumped into which he could use. Which he used gratefully.

As I said, I was just a wonderful excuse. A fantastic veil and even a way for him to procure followers, because how could a caring father and husband be evil?

But that was just a role he played for the outside world. When we were alone, he was mortifying. It was only then I got to see the real Tom.

When we were at Hogwarts and we'd get into this fight or we'd talk about his loathing for Muggles, he'd get this odd gleam in his eyes. An entranced kind of look, I don't really know how to describe it. He would just be radiant with an extremely negative energy... Do I make any sense? I don't know how to put it, but I remember the feeling he gave me: cold shivers running up my spine, a scared kind of feeling, an awful sense of foreboding, if you will...

That was all over him now. Not only when he was mad, but all the time. He'd walk into the house and every bit of warmth would just vanish instantly. It had become him. And when I'd fully felt what he truly was like, it finally started to dawn on me.

He did everything in his power to hurt me, just for the kick of it. He used the most subtlest of ways to do so, but those were the most painful ways. He hurt me and deceived me in every possible manner. And sometimes, when he was extremely mad, he'd throw things at me and call me names I don't even dare to repeat.

And when I got the courage to ask why he stayed with me, if that was what he felt, he'd just automatically say he loved me. Loved me, can you believe that? I don't think there's every been anyone who could make the word love sound so repulsive and evil... So dead. He never understood what love was. He was never told... or he never wanted to hear, I deem both possible.

I so wondered where the Tom had gone that made me giggle, or who kept me from sleeping at night because the thought of him made me restless. It is sheer agony, not to know where he's gone, or to know whether he really existed at all. For all I know, it could have been a part he played all along. I chose not to believe that though, I need to believe that he once thought he loved me, otherwise I'd go mad. But it hurts so bad to realise you failed to do what you wanted to do most in the entire world... Make somebody love you as much as you love him.