Love Unwanted

Everyone has a fatal flaw. Jealousy is most common, I would think. Certainly it was Potter's. He came up to me not two weeks after Christmas, upon learning that the doubts he instilled in her hadn't broken us up. He told me I better "stay the hell away from her," or I'd be sorry. I laughed and told him to go shag a quaffle.

"I know what you're doing," he breathed in my ear, violently holding me to the wall. "She's not one of your stupid whores. You're going to have to show your true colors eventually, and when you do..." He snorted in my ear, not a pleasant sensation.

I pushed him off me. "Listen Potter, because I'm going to say this once. As hard as it may be for you to believe that someone like me isn't totally evil, it's true. Now, I know it may be impossible for you to fathom that someone could actually not like you, but I don't. And it has nothing to do with your bringing down Voldemort. It's because you're a smarmy little git! Whose ass I am going to kick if you don't leave Ginny alone. What she does is none your fucking business; she's not your girlfriend anymore! Get it through your thick head." With that I left.

***

My fatal flaw wouldn't be jealousy. Nor would it be greed, unlike my father before me. My fatal flaw is fear. My life has been lived in fear. Fear of my father, fear of defying him. Fear of death. Or maybe it was fear of life.

I desperately did not want to be a Death Eater. Sacrifice my life to serve a man who was truly a coward, who sent others to do his dirty work while hiding behind a throne? That wasn't the life for me. I didn't want to live for someone else.

The Dark Lord wanted me to be his heir. There wasn't a person out there who would think me to be anything other than thrilled at the prospect, not even my own father, but in fact I dreaded it. And while I had been speaking the truth to Ginny when I said I wasn't a Death Eater, the fact of the matter was that the opportunity hadn't presented itself. Unfortunately, initiations were at the end of January, and I was expected to attend.

If I refused to become a Death Eater my father would kill me. Literally. If I became a Death Eater, Ginny would kill me. Ginny wouldn't be approved by my father, not the way she was now. She would never understand my reasons, my fear of death, my belief that even a wasted life was better than no life, and I knew she would never come around to my way of thinking. She would never bow to serve the Dark Lord. She was stronger than me. How I wished I could be that strong. I wasn't though, and in my mind that left me with only one thing to do.

I had to break it off with Ginny.