I didn’t want it to end like this.
I didn’t want to become this.
I didn’t want this at all. But this was what I got.
From the very beginning, I was the enemy. It was the way I had been raised: taught that we were rivals through generation after generation, and always would be. In the epic battle between good and evil, we were always evil. Black against white. Dark versus light. Always, we were the bad guys.
But why? Maybe if I had been raised by another family, one who had no idea about the constant feud between the Malfoys and the other Wizarding families like the Weasleys. Maybe I would have been different; maybe I would have been normal. Because I don’t feel like me. I have never felt like me. I feel like what my father has wanted me to be. What the rest of my family has wanted me to be. But who knows? By now it’s too late, and we’ll never know the real Draco Malfoy.
I have been raised on the exhilarating teachings that purebloods were better. Just…better in general. That we would always win, we were always first, and we were always the best. This notion took me to my first year at Hogwarts, where I so arrogantly tried to set up a regime and rule the school my way. I was so foolish, so unbelievable stupid; it pains me to even think of it now.
I never made friends. I never understood loyalty through love instead of fear. Never understood judging people by their character, not their blood and background. And then I met Harry Potter, the famous Boy Who Lived. I had heard of him, obviously, though my father didn’t hold him in very high regard. I figured I could get him to join our cause for the Dark Lord, whose laws and ideals I had been brought up to know. I thought that with the famed Harry Potter on our side, we couldn’t lose. So I condescendingly invited him to our side. He was hanging with the blood traitor Weasley, and I could have laughed at how easy it would be. Who would chose a Weasley over a Malfoy?
But he did. He turned down my offer of power and opportunity for that poor excuse of a pureblood. I couldn’t believe it. How could this have happened? I pretended not to let it bother me, instead working hard to make my place in Slytherin. But whenever I had a bit of spare time, I would think about that. Finally, much too slowly for such a simple concept, I figured it out. It was friendship. True loyalty kept him with the Weasley and the Muggleborn Hermione Granger, though they were lower then dirt in my eyes.
I never had friends. There were the two, Crabbe and Goyle, who so loyally and stupidly followed me around. One time out of malicious spite I instructed them to stick their heads in the loo and flush. Sadly, they both did without question. Those weren’t friends; they were minions. Then there was Pansy Parkinson, but she was only interested in the same thing as me: power. No true comradeship there. Never did I have real friends, who cared for me and whom I could care about. Never did I have someone to laugh with, or cry with, or simply enjoy their company. Never did I have someone I would die for.
I began to envy the deep bond the three shared, and thus our rivalry truly began. Minor skirmishes, harsh words thrown about, simple things like that. Rarely could I work up the nerve to do anything to hurt any of them. It wasn’t that I was cowardly; it was that the deep concern they showed for each other burned me with jealousy. The pain one of them would feel wasn’t worth the pain I felt.
At the beginning, I even managed to convince myself I hated them. That they were low and stupid and worthy of every punishment I could think of. Thus I made it through a few years at Hogwarts, with us biting and spitting like two rival packs of wolves. And my pack was losing. I became known as the coward, the slimy git, the Malfoy, as if the very word was the epitome of evil. And those were the more polite names for me.
Finally, I wearily realized that I didn’t hate them. Let’s face it; I didn’t know them enough to hate them. I found I wasn’t like the rest of my family, who hated someone just based on heritage. In reality, I hated that connection between them, an almost telepathic link that bound them together and made them practically unstoppable. I found myself aching for such a bond, for such friendship. But alas, such things did not exist in the Slytherin house. It was a place of distrustful alliances and petty wars; no place to strike up a true friendship. And by this time, nobody in any of the other house could talk to me without spitting, let alone try to be my friend. As always, I was alone.
I tried. I really did. I tried to not be who I had been before: rude, arrogant, sarcastic, obnoxious. When I passed the three in the hallway I tried to wave, smile warmly, say “hello” in a friendly tone. But my hand froze by my side, my smile turned to a sneer, and my greeting turned into a crude comment that had Potter and Granger holding Weasley back from beating my head against the wall. It was completely justified, I know. Sometimes I just wanted to scream, “Hit me! Go ahead, I deserve it!” Maybe if something happened to me, they would realize they didn’t hate me, just as I realized I didn’t hate them.
But no. Finally, Hermione Granger did hit me. But they didn’t feel remorse. They felt elation. They were so proud of what they had done. It was a suffocating feeling, for I hadn’t realized until then that I had lived with the faint hope that maybe, deep down, they didn’t despise me. But I was wrong. And it hurt. Have you ever heard of the term ‘heartache?’ Well, nobody thinks of it as a physical injury, just as an expression of grief. But it really hurt. It felt like someone had roughly reached into my chest and yanked out my heart, leaving a gaping hole and a throbbing wound.
So many times, I considered apologizing. Just going up to Potter and spilling everything. Begging for mercy, and a second chance to love and be loved. But somehow, in my mangled emotional remains, I still had shreds of pride. I couldn’t bring myself to grovel at the feet of the saint Potter, or his two friends. It was hopeless.
I locked my spirit away inside me, and have never let it out since then.
Now, I look at the mark on my left forearm in the sickly pale light of the Dark Lord’s symbol lingering over a wizard’s house. I had cast it myself not too long ago. Inside were three rebels, a family that the Dark Lord had instructed me to kill. Without hesitation, I had complied.
I trace the matching skull and the snake tongue on my arm with my right finger, feeling my charred skin where the spell had set the tattoo. The Dark Mark. I was one of them now; I was who I was supposed to be. And yet, I was not happy. I had never been happy.
Why couldn’t anyone give me the chance to be happy?
Why couldn’t I give myself the chance to be happy?
Is this all that’s left?