#voldemorts generals
One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret not to be told.
Eight for heaven, nine for hell,
And ten for the devil’s own sel’.- Augurer’s traditional rhyme
In the beginning there is only one man with dreams of immortality. Lord Voldemort he calls himself, and bids his friends call him by this new name. They say the name solemnly.
And when he turns away, they laugh up their sleeves.
Then one of them has an idea. We are respectable young men, he says, fine upstanding citizens of this land.
Why do we not use this unknown with pretensions to greatness to meet our own ends?
The four consider his proposition. One joins for wealth. One joins for power. One joins for the rest. The last joins because it is the first who proposed it.
Five for silver and a bright future.
Then comes six, a family friend of the first, from a different land where dark and light magic are all the same. He will bring them magic and magicians from this land, where knowledge that is secret here is traded openly and loudly debated in the conference rooms of their Ministry.
Seven is a sad crow indeed, a young man in ragged clothes, snarling and raging at the world - met with a tragic accident not a few years ago and in a moment went from a bright young thing to nobody in particular, outcast and tramp.
Seven brings eight with him. Snarling and raging, ready to do the bidding of the others as long as they have blood, blood and more blood.
Nine joins out of fear, to save his children from the coming darkness.
Ten joins because if he is to be a butcher, then he would make such a butchery that it would go down in song and story.
Ten crows for the devil himself.
While The One, their noble leader is gone - finding magic that the world has long since forgotten, marked only in old stories crones tell children to scare them into behaving, for himself - they gather in silence and slowly build. An empire, a fully fledged war machine to set in motion when The One returns.
And as they gather in silence, wizarding Britain continues, oblivious, blissfully happy, not knowing that in a few years their world will be plunged into a war the like of which they have never seen.
For now, all is well, as the crows simply gather and watch.
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Voldemort’s Generals: Fenrir Greyback, Angry Young Man.
Bitten with the bug, anger - not a bug, not a disease, anger - at fifteen.
Turned weapon at seventeen.
It could be tragic, but it isn’t, not quite. After all, tragedies are the province of princes and kings. Rich men with places to go. Tragic, all the things he could have been. Poor boys have nowhere to go. Poor boys made poorer have nothing left to lose.
Or for that matter, win.
Sometimes, sometimes he wonders why he serves when clearly, he is powerful in a way that none of them are - ponces, prancing about in their silk and tweed robes, princes. Princes who will command armies, when he, with all his power, with all the fear he wields, will only ever be a weapon. When with a bite he could take all of their princely realm away. Make them a tragedy.
Perhaps that is what makes him content. With one swift stroke he writes tragedies. That is a rare talent. A poor boy’s only talent.
So he takes his anger instead and turns it into a weapon. They call him bloodthirsty? He shows them how bloodthirsty he is. A monster? They do not know how monstrous he can be.
Tragic. He turns them all into tragic figures because he cannot be one.
Revenge is sweet, but for now, blood is sweeter. One day, one day he will remind these princes of the power he bears.
Till then, he contents himself with snarling at their patronizing outstretched arms - good boy, go kill, kill, kill.
(Princes never worry about their weapons turning on them. Pity. Some weapons have wills.)
Some weapons are virtuous.
Some weapons are smart.
And he is all of these.
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