“Republican Sen. Ben Sasse said Sunday that he thinks about leaving the GOP ‘every morning.’” — CNN Politics, 9/9/18
Every morning, when I wake up, I think about what it would be like to leave the Death Eaters. To walk up to the Dark Lord and say, “I’m through. This organization is not what it used to be. We used to stand for something — a pure Wizarding race, a fully, proudly insular society, the great black hope of the magical world. But now I just don’t know anymore.”
The leadership has lost sight of the purpose of our movement. This wasn’t about separating children from their families, or sorting people into categories — this was about Us: The Purebloods, the protectors of the magical community, our bloodlines, our livelihoods. We are the descendants of Salazar Slytherin, the party of Gellert Grindelwald, guardians of purity and alliteration. We believe in the promise of a fulfilling magical life for all wizards born with three magical grandparents. And we believe we deserve to live freely, out in the open, with our superiority ablaze for all Muggles to see.
But it has become increasingly clear that the leader of this organization doesn’t care about that. He just cares about taking shots at the Order, about fulfilling some prophecy, when we’ve already won! He’s living in my house, using my wand, just talking to his snake and spending all of my gold while we hunt down his precious Harry Potter. All he talks about is killing that boy and taking over that school, stewing up there in my office, by the way.
He’s thinking small. Where is the interest in wizarding law? In the power of the Ministry? In the administration of justice by the Wizengamot? Where is the commitment to turning our convictions into action? This was never about petty grievances or random terror — the actions of my brethren at the Quidditch World Cup were an aberration, they are not what we stand for, I condemn them — this was always about having the chance to build the wizarding society we always dreamed of. This is not what I expected. This is not at all what we meant.
If I left the Death Eaters, I could tell everyone what I really think. We could build a society based on our convictions, the ones we had when we were all in school — staying up late in the Slytherin common room talking about objectivism and the superior magical race. We never meant to start a war; we never meant to engulf wizarding society in fear and suspicion. We just knew it was our birthright to lead our people, that’s all.
Tomorrow, I will serve him as if nothing has happened, as if I had never had these subversive thoughts that I have shared with the Daily Prophet. But every day I will wake up with the conviction that something is deeply, terribly wrong within the Death Eater organization. That we have strayed down a dark path and we cannot turn back. That our values have been co-opted (so easily! It is astonishing) for something so mean and loud and ugly.
But I am not a quitter. I will fight to fix the Death Eaters from within — I will fight every day, I promise you. But, very quietly, I pray that one day a hero will come and vanquish it, so that I may instead fight him, because I am far more comfortable with that.