A/N: Ficlet, ahoy ! (I didn't even know I 'shipped this pairing until tonight.)

You eventually do make it into the history books, but you're remembered for all the wrong things. As if dying young somehow made you brave. You would have hated that. Your older brother was the brave one, after all, and look where that landed him-Gryffindor house, the Potters' spare room, and (though you didn't live to see it) a cell in Azkaban.

No one ever mentions how bright you must have been, to find the horcrux all on your own. You solved that riddle before anyone, before Dumbledore, even, but that bit always gets left out. No one ever calls you handsome or patient or kind. (You were all these things, much to your own chagrin.) No one even wonders why you did it, which is odd, since you didn't have to. You had nothing to gain. You were a Death Eater. You were a Black. You were safe. (You were in love, too, but there's no way they could know that.)

Still, it could be worse. You could be remembered as a schoolteacher.

You would have almost found it worth it, to lose him to that woman, if you could have heard what they called him at his funeral, those people who thought they'd known him. They called him "brave," too (as though he'd never run from what was right). They called him "noble" (as though he'd never been a beast). They called him "teacher" (as though he'd never been naive). They called him "husband" (as though he'd never been yours).