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01: Of You
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Adonis had tried to prepare Raphie for the worst when it came to his first meeting with the Dark Lord. It had been several years since Adonis himself had received his Dark Mark—he got it when Voldemort returned. Despite Harry Potter escaping, the Dark Lord considered Adonis to be a proper Death Eater and put him through rigorous training before he could get it tattooed on his forearm. Adonis's fingers often twitch and spasm when he thinks too much about those tireless weeks of "training" (he would call it anything but) and grew resentful very quickly. Chloe, on the other hand, became a Death Eater shortly after—given the fact that Evangelina was now dead, she had to be quick to usurp her sister's position.
Chloe didn't like to speak about her training, either. She had been unlucky enough to receive training from Bellatrix Lestrange, Draco's aunt whose dark magic had caused her to retreat into herself and go insane. That is what black magic would do to you. Sometimes, when Raphie thought about Evangelina, he was grateful she had died before the dark magic overtook her brain and made it mush. Bellatrix was living proof that dark magic, mixed with a claustrophobic imprisonment in Azkaban for years, would result in black magic being absorbed to the bone, to the soul. Raphie was fearful he might end up like her.
Chloe, as much as she did not speak about it, made it clear that her training was terrifyingly painful. For the greater part of it, Bellatrix would crucio her until she was unconscious, often leaving her with gaping wounds that would absorb whatever power had been casted upon her. One time, Bellatrix took a goblin-wrought weapon impregnated with basilisk venom and carved runes into her back. It took weeks of recovery, with top-of-the-line healers that Adonis had imported from other European countries to heal her. The wounds, despite being old, sometimes would reopen as if they were fresh. No healer in St. Mungos was capable of curing them. The healers had her consume potions Raphie had never even heard of before. It was horrifying.
The most taxing part of all Death Eaters training was, naturally, the legilimency test. Any talented, well-willed legilimen would make recipients uncomfortable, but the Dark Lord was sloppy and vicious. As much as his movements were calculated, when he tore through memories, he was unforgiving, as he was in everything else. More often then not, the victim of his legilimency would be left a sopping mess on the ground before him, unconscious for several hours before they awoke. It was a horrible process, but it was necessary. The Dark Lord wanted to ensure that everyone he was enlisting was one hundred percent devoted to him.
Raphie was nowhere near skilled in occlumency, but him and Draco had both worked immensely hard to ensure that they could keep potentially compromising memories in far corners of their brains, with wards around them so the Dark Lord could not see their weaknesses. Draco was a natural occlumist, and excelled in it. Raphie was envious of his natural talent, and reaped it for himself, but he was only mildly able to conceal certain memories. Draco would get angry with him, because when they would practice legilimency on each other, Raphie would have concealed certain memories that left noticeable gaps in his mind.
