Rondo

Spring was cruelest, trees bursting mercilessly into emerald blooms, flowers daring to show their flaming colors after months underground. He had always preferred winter, the sharp gray skies reflecting the color of his eyes, the pale earth a relentless reminder of his heritage. As nature unfolded new life Malfoy Manor grew darker, ivy unkempt twisting over the walls, rains dampening the air in the stone fortress. Ten years had passed since that final day of their seventh year at Hogwarts, and all it took was one movement in the shadows or a flicker of a candle to bring him back to that dungeon, to the rage and loss. Harry Potter, dead, checkmated in the dangerous multigenerational game of human chess. Lucius Malfoy, the grand master, hiding his war tactics until the lethal end.

The end of our game passed as a necklace of blood and bone strung with Harry's screams. Days my father tortured us both, raping Harry while I watched under the influence of the Imperius Curse. Nights we sat in darkness, barely speaking. Father would splinter Harry's bones just to heal and break them again, cut Harry and kiss him with Harry's blood on his lips. I stifled my cries as the whip came down but could not keep from yelling as my father touched me with the tip of a white-hot wand, frosted satisfaction in his halcyon eyes. Our sommelier of brutality and pain pushed us to the deepest fear, that of being uncertain of what would come. I prayed not for my own survival but for Harry's, knowing the worst punishment my father could give was to make me live my life as he had lived his, without my competitor.

I refused food, though Harry pleaded with me to eat. Harry wept and shrieked while he slept, and I sat in the chilled quiet I had cultivated through years of carrying the Malfoy name. Sleeping only when I had to and staying just below the brink of awareness, I dreamed of storms and serpents, of running from monsters toward a horizon I couldn't reach. The night before Harry's death, I dreamt of red roses scattered across a pool of mercury, deadly vapors curling into the air off the liquid surface. Upon waking, every muscle in my back was tight with premonition, and when Father carried one of those same roses into the dungeon and knelt in front of Harry I nearly suffocated on my horror.

"Do you remember the roses, James? The thorns tearing our backs, the scent of the petals as we crushed them in our passion?" He caressed Harry with the rose and I fought my shackles like an animal. "Loyalty. Fidelity. Your acceptance of what we meant to each other. I laughed at the thought of what Lily must have said when you told her the roses that appeared at your door were for her, knowing I had made a move against you," he said with a heartless laugh. "I gave you my soul, James, loved you in a way Black and Lupin never could, and for what? You chose to fight everything I was, could not fully comprehend that I was your life and your very being. This is a game of power versus bravery, the elements of who we are, and it will kill you because you cannot understand that your life was never yours to live. I was the only one you could trust, because only I knew what controlled your path. Of course, you should have known better than to trust the one who wanted to win. Long live the king."

The fragrance of the rose came sweet and foreign through the air of fear. My father laid the rose and his wand on the floor, placing one hand under Harry's chin and the other behind his head almost lovingly. All the burns and lashes I had endured freshened on my skin as Father twisted Harry's head upward and snapped his neck with speed unlike any human's, the sound of life leaving Harry's body resonating through the stone and tranquility.

Disbelief crept into my brain and clawed my heart as I watched my father place Harry on the ground as though he were a prized possession. I was sure I'd be the next casualty of the game and braced myself for death, even wished for it, as he turned to me. I looked into the eyes of a man who lived at the wild ends of life's spectrum like fire burning in a crystal ball of ice, and knew that he would not be content to kill me. Instead, his loss and pain would now be my cross to bear. Without a word, he released me from my chains and left the dungeon. He never returned.

In ten years I have not been back to that room, ordering the house-elves to take Harry's body and bury it in the earth beside the front steps. I do not allow roses to grow anywhere near the Manor, and I welcome the winter, when nothing is green. The wizarding world presumes both of us dead, and really that's not far from the truth. What is death besides the absence of a life worth living? I am still controlled by all of them: my father, Harry, the ones that came before us, and I will die incomplete, as did my father. Generations of our families breathed manipulation laced with complicated love, and my father's victory was the rope with which we all were strangled.

Victory or none, I know who truly lost in the end.

Check. And Mate.