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Lucius is nineteen when he falls in love with with a Muggle girl he meets in a coffee shop in Paris. She's older, beautiful, with straight dark hair that falls down her back. She's Israeli-born, British-educated, an Orthodox Jew who wears long flowing skirts and does not touch him publicly. Although he doesn't understand her faith, he admires it, even envies it. He has the Mark, but she has a star at the base of her throat, her father's number from Bergen-Belsen tattooed on her arm. He has the Death Eaters; she meets privately, at all hours, with earnest, grim young men with beards and braids.
He never sees her unclothed. He makes love to her in the dark, and her body is eager for him, but she never makes a sound. She brings him off with her hand sometimes, but she never kisses him, never puts her mouth on him. He never sees her pray, either, but he knows that sometimes she ties a scarf over her hair before she disappears. His father's God was a vengeful one, and hers is no kinder, if more just.
She's different than almost anyone he's ever met, and he thinks that's part of why he loves her. Everyone else he knows is lost, wavering. Even the other Death Eaters aren't fighting for anything but themselves. Lucius wants so badly to believe in something bigger, to have it all mean something. He's inherited his battle, his cause, but he hasn't made it his own. Not the way she has.
When she's killed, he's devastated but not surprised. He doesn't know the specifics of the game she was playing, but he knows the risks. He knows it was only a matter of time before whatever it was she was hunting caught up with her, and he knows she chose death over prison. He knows that some day he might face the same choice, and he knows he wants to live.
It's years before Lucius grows up enough to understand the difference between idealism and fanaticism. It's years before he realizes that the person Miriam most reminded him of is Bellatrix Black. It's years before he realizes how blind belief can make you.