one that I kind of want to believe in, if that makes sense. Yes, it very much does. :-) I'm not much for Death Eaters, either, except for Severus (who is really a former DE). But it seems to me that most people who do evil aren't born evil, and that Tom Riddle (who may have been one of the rare ones who was born that way) had three types of followers.
The smaller number of them were the pure-blood types who were interested solely in maintaining their primacy in the wizarding world and taking control of the rest of the world and the lesser (in their opinion) beings who inhabit it. These were the 'Nazi' equivalents, the "true believers".
Next were the people who joined up out of calculated ambition, because they thought that they, themselves, would gain power and prestige from ingratiating themselves with a group that was full of the magical elite and had a lot of sort of passive support from average magical society for the idea of witches and wizards as superior, even if that society wasn't interested in the extremes to which that could be taken.
The last, I think, was probably the largest group, the disaffected and the discards. People who were outside of mainstream society for whatever reason, and here found a purpose and a place to belong and someone who valued them. They may or may not have been "true believers" in the cause, but they were loyal to Voldemort because he chose them. It's this last group that most of us have some sympathy for, I think, because it seems that if their lives had had someone in them who was in their corner, had valued and loved them in a steady way most of us take for granted, that their lives might have had a different outcome. These are the characters which are the most interesting to me, too, in the sense that they must have had a tipping point, and there's a story behind that.
Wow - that's lot of verbiage to say that I got where you were coming from! ::facepalm:: Anyway, thank you for reading a pairing I know isn't most people's cuppa, and for taking the time to leave such a thoughtful comment.