Becoming

Becoming.

To sum him up in one word, Draco Malfoy hated. He hated with such a force that if hatred could affect the real world, it would have flown across land and sea and sky and killed Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore and the entire Weasley family.

After all, they had taken everything from him. His father had been executed once his less politically correct associations were known (Draco wanted to point out that Fudge was a Mason, but that didn't seem quite as horrible as being a Death Eater) and his assets frozen, Draco didn't have a brass razoo to stand on. Narcissa was forced to sell the Manor, declare bankruptcy, and he and his mother were relocated to government housing in Surbiton.

Draco figured he certainly had a lot of reasons to hate. When war broke out, Draco joined up with Voldemort not thinking it was right, or just, or even that they would win. In fact, it was quite the opposite. Harry Potter wasn't just a boy, he was a myth, and myths never lose. Draco merely wished to take as many of Potter's sanctimonious little bottom wiping friends as he could down with him.

In the darkest days of the war, he thought about killing himself. A couple of well placed cuts to the wrist, and he'd be history. Or perhaps a potion. It would be easy enough to brew, and much like drifting off to sleep. He dismissed cutting, as that would disfigure him for all eternity and Draco was nothing if not vain. Hanging was rejected for the same reason. No, if Draco was going to kill himself, he had a simple duty to remain beautiful, and thereby mock those he'd left behind.

He never went through with it, of course, even as the Death Eaters lost battle after battle. Whether he thought he could lie himself to some position of power when the dust was settled, or simply because he was lazy, or frightened, Draco managed to stay alive, and like all good cowards, he managed to do so with a certain style. When the War was finally over, Draco shopped every single colleague he had left in order to wriggle out of the death penalty. To him, of course, this was nothing less than a sacred duty. These other Death Eaters, as dedicated and noble as they were, did not possess his hate. In staying alive, his very presence would prove a constant thorn in the sides of those who were good and saintly, proof that their brave new world was just as exclusionary and partisan as every other attempted paradise in human history. He was sure that he would be locked up in a cell, the key thrown away, but he would not let them forget him. Draco would remain: determined, unbowed, bitter and hating till the very end, and in being the one person they could not dissuade with their promises or persuade with their platitudes, testament that any system can only be judged by those who refuse to accept it.

When he was sentenced to life, the court expected him to break down or cry, as was the fitting behaviour for a fallen and broken foe. But instead he laughed, and held his head high as he was dragged from the courtroom. The papers called him a lunatic, but Draco had always known his vision was far greater than those of his foolish contemporaries, and humanity tended to dismiss what it could not understand. He was just another statistic in the annals of the past in that regard. Despite the prison beatings and the solitary confinement and the gang rape and the prison guards always looking the other way, Draco lived. The only purpose death served would be to those who were left behind: those would be free to shape his memory as they wished, rewrite history for their own purposes. Oh, Potter spoke of ideals and freedoms, but he was just as petty, just as cruel, just as human as anyone. He had to be.

And Draco would be the proof of that. In living, he would end up winning in the end, becoming something far greater than he had ever dreamed. It was a fitting irony.