phoenix ashes
enfer et reviens (beat two)

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When I first strayed down the path of a Death Eater, I had been a boy. A mere child--still confined to a childs world of schoolbooks and classrooms. In fact, most of us had been children. Master Lucius Malfoy, one of our Saviour's first eager recruits, was in my own year. Avery and MacNair were a year behind us; Bellatrix and Rodolphe, a year ahead. We had barely finished our NEWTS testing when we began our training. The process was gut wrenching and intense. There was little time to eat or sleep. We never even found time to realize exactly what we were fighting for.

Justice? Purity? Revolution? These are abstract concepts to an eighteen year old boy who has never watched a corpse rot in the sun or witnessed the sickening way the body convulses as it chokes and dies. By the time I reached my nineteenth birthday, I had seen both. I witnessed death countless times, and oftentimes inflicted it on those unlucky enough to combat me. My adolescent innocence, already sundering from my unspeakable boyhood, was now completely shattered. All for the sake of revolution.

Among my peers, I was a superior. My gratuitous knowledge of hexes, poisons, and the like proved more than beneficial to me. I once slaughtered half a dozen Mudbloods with a single curse from behind the black fabric of a mask. I didnt mind. In fact, for a time I rather enjoyed it. It's an empowering feeling, taking a life, and dreadfully easy to do if one is adequately prepared. The sight of someone groveling beneath you in pure degradation, begging for you to spare them was intoxicating to my power-drunken mind. Over time, I developed a taste for sadism and a hunger for killing that far surpassed the likes of Lucius Malfoy, and oftentimes even the Dark Lord himself. My bloodlust was insatiable.

I had become something different from myself, something more powerful. For the first time in my life, I didnt feel the need to cower in a corner at balls or social gatherings. I was important. I was contributing to the most majestic cause the wizarding world had ever been stricken with. I chattered absently about things which had no relevance or meaning to me, waving the flag of self-righteousness with utter enthusiasm. When night fell, I slipped on the mask of death and went out to rape, torture, and murder for my Master. And I'll be damned if I wasn't good at it.

I found little time for relationships or personal amusements. I had ravaged enough innocent women to forever sate my sexual desires. To my newfound self, the notion of love was an idiotic trifle, one that only fools indulge themselves in. And Severus Snape was no fool. Oh no, he was a brilliant mind and an ingenious fighter. He was an asset to His worthy cause of purification and insurrection. He was a bloodthirsty death machine.

That is, until he found himself face to face with Albus Dumbledore...

Beat Three