A/N: Written for the 'Mirror of Erised' Competition. This is my Quirrell piece, as well as the first time I've tried writing in first person for a HP fic. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I shall forever bow down to JKR for creating this wondrous sandbox and allowing us to build our own, more childish castles beside her gorgeously intricate design.

Thanks times a million, as always, to my terrific beta, Dragons. SLASH warning for ye who do not like such things. Though it's not explicit.

)O(

Love is like a brick – you can build a house or you can sink a dead body.

I was beautiful and feather light once – so free – and then I fell in love. Ever since that fateful day it's been pulling me down, a thick weight in my stomach. And I know that this love will never help me build a home, never help me with anything really, so all that's left is the sinking of the body.

I never really aspired to be dead.

I had a job. I taught children I cared about and had colleagues I could talk to and everything was going all right –

But then, of course, I bungled it all up. Maybe my mum was right about me – then again, perhaps I shouldn't trust words of wisdom from a drunk.

Either way, she was right in that I fell so far.

It all started in the second term of my last year as – well, the year before I went to Albania. The last year my life was my own.

A few days past Christmas I was patrolling after-hours in the hopes that it would deter students from sneaking out of bed. Filch's furious rants are tedious to say the least and so it seemed logical to lend myself to the cause. Of course, the students often managed to get around me – and be caught – no matter what I did, but at least I could say I had tried.

That night was especially chilly, and I was wearing my thickest robes, all black wool and heavy socks. I had just reached the fourth corridor when I heard a sound, a sort of scratching noise that set my teeth on edge. Looking back I'm sure it was only that damned cat – but I couldn't have known that then, could I?

So I followed it into a room. And froze. There was a mirror in the corner, and I was in that mirror.

Kissing another man.

Now, I'd come to terms with my sexuality years ago – not that it was a large problem in our society. One good thing I can say for wizards and open-mindedness, I suppose, when there's so little else. Perhaps pureblood mania leaves no room for other prejudices.

The sight of my… desire – and yes, I'd seen the inscription on the mirror; as defense teacher I was perfectly aware of what it was – well, that wasn't what shocked me.

There, perfectly framed against the Mirror of Erised, was a scene in which I kissed the Dark Lord.

I'm no fool. After working for years under the man who still believed him a threat, I knew who it was. Tall and pale with thick dark hair – the description fits so many, but only one man could give off the aura of power that even mirror-Riddle did. He turned his head then to look straight at me, and I was entranced by the pearly sheen of that fine-boned face. I knew, of course, that Tom Riddle was a halfblooded hypocrite, but his face was that of an aristocrat's: delicate and ethereal and stunningly, horrifyingly beautiful.

And suddenly I understood why all of those purebloods with power and influence and wealth had been coerced into following this little half-blood orphan.

Because he was.

There's no adjective fit to describe Tom Riddle, and there never will be. No word to sum up the scope of his… self. It's just him. The fact that he exists; the fact that a muggle and a witch came together to create a baby from apathy and muddled blood and a sickening hurt that warped into hate.

He was beautiful and flawless – like a china doll or an ice sculpture – and so ridiculously untouchable. Add that to the waves of power rolling from even this bogus portrait?

Unattainable.

And you know purebloods always want what they cannot have.

It so happens that I'm a pureblood too.

And – even being who I was, even knowing who he was, and knowing exactly what he had done – even then, I fell deeply and completely in love with Tom Riddle. Or, perhaps, realized that I had fallen long ago.

I thought that by calling him by his given name, I could separate the man from the monster. They were one and the same, of course, but I wanted to trick myself a bit longer; after all, I did have morals.

Once.

Days passed while I tried to forget the horrifying image I'd seen mirrored from my soul. The fact that I wanted… that… was repulsive and appalling and every other adjective that should never be pulled into use.

I couldn't want him. I wasn't evil.

Only a small part of me knew that I did, and so I was and that part turned black as night.

It's so easy to mar light with a stain. But the thing is, you can wash it and scrub it for hours but the darkness never fully disappears – it's there forever. And that held true.

I could feel the harsh longing as it morphed into something else, something more dangerous; could feel the growing canker on my heart as the darkness seeped out into my bloodstream.

This love – or sick imitation of it – was beautiful and terrifying and haunting all at once.

Just like Him.

The passage of a week found me back in the same room, staring longingly once more at the object of my fascination. I was ridiculously – murderously – envious of that alternate self, the one privileged enough to kiss that beautiful boy.

Boy. He was no more than a boy – years older than me, of course, but still so young.

Tom Riddle looked as if He had been frozen in time.

Weeks passed, and then months, as my fascination grew. I began to notice little things about mirror-Tom; the lustre of His hair and the long fingers, so elegant as to be a tad too feminine. I noticed the hard-as-stone grey eyes and the curl of His eyelashes and the way His mouth curved into a perfect bow when it was pressed onto mine.

And with every small detail I took in my love grew that much stronger, and that alien something inside of me seeped a bit more of its darkness into what had once been red, clean blood.

Sometimes I imagined that I could feel that pure liquid being fouled – spewed with pollution and waste until it was grey and thick like the sludge on the banks of the Thames.

I was being contaminated by this strange obsession, but unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to care.

I was deeply ensnared in my tangled web of feelings for months, until even Sybil asked me, one day, why she'd sensed such a befuddled aura about me. As she was leaving she sniffed once – it was as if she thought I was drunk, of all the unlikely things.

That night, though, when I stumbled into the mirror's hiding spot with love and lust urging me along, I had a heart-breaking shock.

The mirror was gone.

And the stretch of empty wall was, in my opinion, akin to a slap in the face; somebody wanted to keep me from my Tom. Somebody wanted to keep us apart.

And oh, that somebody would pay.

So I spent weeks delving deep into the Hogwarts library – a place I'd never found much use for before. I specialized in the art of survival and open fights and absolute necessities, not useless and trivial facts, but times had changed.

Oh yes, they had changed.

And by the end of that year I was a different man. So well versed in the arts of darkness, and informed about every aspect of Tom Riddle's life. I'd researched Him until I knew His quirks and His goals and His talents and His flaws.

So deep was my infatuation that I didn't bat an eyelash at His most well-known flaw: Lord Voldemort couldn't love.

Because He would be able to love me – or at least, pretend to love me – when He saw how useful I could be. I was so certain of that fact.

And black poison encircled my heart.

I left for the forests of Albania under the guise of a study on vampires, and returned as a shadow of myself.

And so I – a man who'd had goals and hopes and dreams and plans – was transformed into nothing but an empty shell, carrier for the beautiful monster I loved, far too willing a participant in a parasitical relationship that brought nothing but… well, death. Drowning.

All because I'd fallen in love with that boy I saw in Erised.

Mirrors should think longer before they reflect.

)O(