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Petty, pathetic Draco
You get close to the Dark Lord with slow, hesitant steps, forcing your expression to appear fierce and deluding yourself that it’ll be enough to hide the fear that’s clenching your stomach.
You’ve still got plenty to learn from your mother – even at your eyes she appear stoic, proud, impassible.
Yet, you very well know how terrified she is by what he’s demanding of you.
In this instant, though, it’s not the pain you fear, nor – unlike your mother – the fate that awaits you.
The unnatural red eyes, the nose flat as a snake, the deadly pale skin, the mellifluous voice and the cold laugh of the Dark Lord – that’s what freezes the blood in your veins.
You have to swallow to be able to talk.
While – with a trembling voice – you pledge to serve him and be loyal at the cost of your own life, only one thought keeps you going.
My father will be proud.
It’s Bellatrix, enthusiastic and triumphant, to spell the scorching Mark on your forearm.
While your flesh sizzles and burns, you hear yourself screaming at the top of your lungs.
For a split second, even your mother forgets to stay impassible.
My father will be proud.
You keep telling yourself that, but deep down you know what’s the real reason you’re there – you’ve probably always knew.
If I don’t do it, he’ll kill them.
Your mother looks impassible again.
**
“No?” you ask, arrogant. “Perhaps this will make you more confident.”
You sneer, showing to Mr. Borgin your Dark Mark, vividly engraved on your skin.
Horror it’s what you read on his face, while he stares at it with widened eyes.
On the contrary, you don’t dare to lower your gaze – you already know how terrifying it is.
“Tell anyone,” you say, keeping that sneer printed on your mouth, “and there will be retribution. You know Fenrir Greyback? He’s a family friend. He’ll be dropping in from time to time to make sure you’re giving the problem your full attention.”
Family friend is a strong word, Draco – unless you’re counting that one time he visited the Manor, when you were just a kid.
You had nightmares for two nights because of his tales. Because of his face.
**
Your murder attempts almost killed another innocent, today.
Oddly, the fact it was Weasley makes the issue even harder to digest, because, from time to time, you really happened to wish him death.
You look at him while he rests in the infirmary, the moonlight brightening his pillow.
You count his breaths, relaxed, full, alive, and relief washes upon you.
In that moment, you choose to let go all the pointless alternatives to your original plan.
It’ll work, you convince yourself.
But your relief only lasts the length of a dragon blaze, because you know that, if it won’t work, your parents will become nothing but corpses.
**
Tears.
You watch them bewildered when they suddenly start running upon you cheek.
You’ve glimpsed them in your reflection before actually feeling them, before tasting their salty flavor moistening your lips.
They’re pouring out mingled with the sobs you can’t hold, making your effort to wipe them away utterly useless.
It won’t work.
Your plan is fragile as a house of cards, Draco – it’s delicate as a sugar feather, but not as sweet.
You look at the Mark that stands out neatly on your skin, black as pitch.
Imprinted with fire to punish a father, it’s now the symbol of the failures of a son.
He’ll kill them.
It’s all you can think about while you keep shedding shameful tears.
It’s up to me the ungrateful task to rectify you – ‘he’ll kill us’ seems way more fitting.
Or perhaps not. Perhaps you already know that you’ll die too… but it’s for them that you’re suffering the most.
But event I couldn’t predict it.
That Moaning Myrtle would comfort you, inspire you.
Don’t you see the irony in it?
No, well, how could you…
You don’t know and she doesn’t know that you share way more than cries… but I find extremely fitting that both your lives were ruined by the same man.
By the same monster.
**
It works.
Joy overwhelms you.
He won’t kill them.
Only the toughest part is missing.
The one you haven’t dared to think about yet.
**
“I don’t think you will kill me, Draco. Killing is not nearly as easy as the innocent believe…”
You stare at Dumbledore, your wand pointed against him.
Your heart is beating so fast, so strong, that you fear it’s going to explode.
Only then you get it.
Only then you understand you’ll never have the courage to say those words, to summon that deadly green light.
Not against the wizard that, despite everything, is still trying to save you.
Not against innocents whose only guilt is to be a mudblood or to befriend them.
You keep talking while your certainties are crumbling, carried away by the summer breeze.
You let him talk too – he looks so old under the greenish glow of the Dark Mark that shines above the tower… above you. Yet again, witness of your failures.
He doesn’t get it, does he, that you have no alternatives. That the Dark Lord will kill them, will kill you – this time the difference it isn’t lost on you at all – if you won’t fulfill your plan. His plan.
There won’t be Order nor prison able to protect you, if you’ll fail.
Yet time goes by, words flow and your determination fades away.
Suddenly, you see the blatant truth.
I’m a coward.
Not even for them, not even for yourself you’d be able to kill.
And to think you believed you could do it for the glory.
Petty, pathetic Draco, your mind whispers insidiously with Bella’s voice.
{Thankfully there’s Snape watching out for you.
Always.}
**
Your eyes keep glancing at her, as a needle that has to get back North.
Her, the next innocent victim you’ll have to watch dying.
Her, whose face will visit your dreams along Dumbledore’s, imprinted forever in your mind.
When he revives her, you lower your gaze – you don’t want to cross her terrified eyes.
Mostly, though, you don’t want to become the last person the woman looked at right before exhaling her last breath.
And you feel ashamed for that childish concern, for closing your eyes when he kills her in cold blood, for being the only one falling from your chair when Charity Burbage’s corpse crashes with clangor on the table.
You can’t help gagging when Nagini plants her fangs in her flesh.
Petty, pathetic Draco, the voice in your head is chanting.
**
“Well, Draco? Is it? Is it Harry Potter?”
“I can’t—I can’t be sure.”
A sudden dread rushes through you.
You don’t dare to get closer – you want to stay away from Greyback.
Petty, pathetic Draco.
You want to stay away from him.
Because even from afar you can tell, can’t you?
You know he really is Harry Potter.
It doesn’t matter how swollen and deformed his face is – you’d know him anywhere, the Undesirable Number One.
Your father, excited as you’ve never seen him, pushes you further, drives you closer.
He points at his scar, which stands out on his bloated face.
“I don’t know,” you insist.
A coward as always, when it’s time to condemn to death the umpteenth innocent.
The umpteenth innocents.
You don’t want their gazes to disrupt your sleep as well.
**
“If you haven’t got the guts to finish them, then leave them in the courtyard for me.”
Oh, your aunt knows you well, petty, pathetic Draco.
While you levitate the men outside you’re almost tempted to wake them up, to shake them, to yell at them to run away, as fast and quite as possible.
But you don’t know these innocents, after all, and they’re not even that innocent – they’re bloody Snatchers, aren’t they?
That’s what you keep telling yourself like a mantra, while you turn your back on them, sentencing them to die.
Petty, pathetic Draco.
Defeated, you’re about to go back inside when the inhuman shriek of the Muggleborn freezes the blood in you veins – again and again.
And you can’t tell if what scares you the most is her agonizing pain or the knowledge that Bella must be thrilled to be the one to inflict it.
Once everything seems to be over you finally find the gut to get back, fighting back tears.
**
Eventually, though, you understood.
When you grabbed onto him for dear life while racing on that broom – your only hope in a sea of flames.
When you saw him finishing You-Know-Who with a Disarming Charm.
When your Mark died out, and you became a free man yet again.
It isn’t coward who refuses to kill – it’s brave who choses not to.