A/N: Thank you to all who have reviewed. I'm happy that you've enjoyed it and it's your responses that have made something that was supposed to be a drabble one-shot turn into something a little bit longer than that. Thank you again. This has officially been moved to a work-in-progress status and oh boy, does that make me nervous.

This is not a fairytale and he is no hero. He smiles at the thought and assures himself that he never wanted to be one in the first place and this is true enough. It takes a special kind of fool to want such a role and he finds it easier to live as a hunter, on the fringes and free from the trappings of glorious expectation.

We are not fated, he reminds himself, we choose our paths, and Scabior chose his side long ago, chose to make himself a feared thing, and the fact does not particularly bother him.

Usually.

But there is this girl that he cannot get off his mind, this girl who runs and casts curses behind her back and looks at him, her eyes dark with disgust.

He wonders what it would be like were she to look at him another way, with something else behind them, and doesn't bother trying to name the emotion he desires to draw from her.

Instead he tells himself that it doesn't bother him. The cares of a Mudblood were never much concern to him, what should he care?

This life is easy, this life is fun.

He is not a hero. He is not a hero and this was never a love story.

This is what he tells himself when he dreams of her, when those eyes and that mouth and the scent of her skin permeates his moments of slumber, seeps deep and dark into his bones and he wonders if there is not some magic at work here, some dreadfully dark thing that wraps around him and draws him deeper, like a horrible sirens call. Should he sink much deeper he shall surely drown. This is obsession, he knows, and it is dangerous and yet so thrilling, so shameful, that for a moment he indulges and dreams of a life different from this one.

Were he different, were she different, were they not separated by sides and age and class, were she not so clearly better than he and were he not so very much a monster willing to trade life away like chattel.

The dreams weave pretty impossible little things and he wakes ashamed, because some fantasies are even too unreal to ever be. Even if the fantasy is as simple as her giving into him without a fight and he, in return, giving into her and the night that passes is a shared thing, bent of the mutual exchange of a pleasure they both seek to give the other.

He wakes angry and annoyed rarely bothers trying to go back to sleep.

He ignores the looks of his fellows when he snaps at them, his temper short. He ignores his own exhaustion as he pushes forward, dedicating himself to hunting down every last Mudblood and Blood Traitor he can find and bring them in for a price. And when he walks through the woods he sometimes thinks he can catch the sweet scent of her perfume, brief like the memory of her fear.

What remains more permanent, scalded into the fabric of his mind, is the completeness of her disgust.

He smiles and pretends this does not bother him. There's no reason that it should. She is nothing to him and he, in return, is nothing to her.

Scabior remembers the moment when he realizes that she must still be alive, that she escaped the clutches of that mad witch and continued on to doubtlessly fight the good fight.

It is difficult to keep the robbery from a place like Gringotts a secret, even in a time like this when suppression of unfavorable news has it's most vice-like grip around the neck of the Prophet. He hears the rumors of whose vault it had been, hears the stories of the dragon and the desperate hope in peoples voices that Harry Potter was responsible for it, that Harry Potter is alive, still fighting, and all may not be lost just yet.

Because he is tired he quells their talk with a look and does not bother bringing them in for such talk, watches instead as they pale and scuttle away, like rodents fleeing the cat's claws.

The sight does not bring him as much pleasure as he feels it should.

He knows what side he is on, whom it is he serves, and he knows what side she is on, but these people who linger somewhere in the middle, too afraid to serve either cause, make his ire spike and impatience churn in his gut. But instead of thinking of them he lets his thoughts wander instead to a girl, a girl who is clever and lovely and who must have must have played such a very large part in that robbery.

She is alive and she is still fighting and suddenly his earlier fantasies of giving chase, of making her run and looking forward to the moment he is able to catch her rise up again, scrabbling for purchase, and he cannot deny the draw, the pull of whatever magic it is that has him in it's grip.

Scabior fears the Dark Lord, like any sensible person should. The power of that man, that monstrous wizard, is beyond compare. Though he has never seen him personally he imagines that Death clings to his robes like a lover, lingers by his side and reaps the souls that the Dark Lord gives to him like many endless gifts.

But where the Dark Lord is Harry Potter shall surely soon also be and where that stupid ugly boy is so too is she, loyal and lovely and brimming with strength he aches to touch.

So he follows too.

This was never a love story.