Like Father, Like Son

I remember the first time I saw you.

You were a sickly child, thin and pale. Holding you in my arms, you seemed to be barely alive. I was half afraid you had already given up on life, that a single harsh word would destroy your will to live, send you spiraling down to darkness. Then you opened your eyes and looked at me, and I knew I was wrong. Your eyes were silver, like Lucius's, with the same cold determination he had. You were clearly a survivor.

I never once saw you cry. Perhaps you shed your tears in private, silently, in the darkest hour of the night while all else lay sleeping. Or perhaps you simply didn't cry, didn't let your emotions show. Perhaps you didn't even have emotions. You were Lucius's son, always cool and unruffled, precise, dignified. You never had trouble with the lessons I struggled with at your age. Dancing, fencing, etiquette, even magic; you accomplished all with the same fluid grace that you possessed from birth. Guile and deceit came to you naturally - you never had to spend hours learning to control your facial expressions the way I had. Everything your father was, you were. It would have been easy to believe that Lucius had found some way to create a child with his genes only, for there seemed to be nothing of me in you.

I had hoped that I could teach you how to love, to care, to feel some of the softer emotions that tore at me every day. It wasn't that I wanted you to suffer the way I did, the way I still do, watching you grow into a replica of your father. But I didn't want you to become a man of ice like Lucius was, never to experience the sheer joy of being in love, though I would spare you the heartbreak I endured. From that first time you opened your eyes, my hopes have been doomed. You never responded to gentle words or encouragements, looking at them disdainfully. You were so much like your father; even as a child, your one motivation was to gain power. Do you remember that day we held one of your father's business parties at the manor? You established yourself as the supreme ruler of the other children and persuaded them to gang up on that poor little half-blooded girl. Heaven only knows what she was doing there, but it didn't matter. By the time we stopped you, she was in hysterics. Lucius was so proud of you, but I was horrified, haunted by the sight of you laughing at her pain, her fear. Still, I tried my hardest to break through that cold exterior you presented me, mocking me with its aloof perfection, only to find your core was even more frigid, hard and unyielding, with no trace of warmth. That was when I despaired of ever showing you what it was to be truly alive, to enjoy every moment of life without calculating what it would cost you and how you could profit from it. You and your father never did understand me. You both thought happiness and love were useless things, a waste of time. You thought I was weak.

You never learned what I knew, never really believed in the things that sustained me and helped me to keep going when times were hard. You see, love is not a weakness, loving is not a sign of weakness. That willingness to put your heart in someone else's hands, to trust wholly in someone else - that is not weak. You claimed it was foolish to give someone that power over you, that it would only make you vulnerable. Trust nobody, you said to me then, trust nobody but yourself. Your father said the same words to me so many years before on our wedding night. He never understood, nor do you understand now, that loving someone takes more courage than it does to push people away, that a weak man isolates himself from the world, but a strong man embraces it. Love does hurt sometimes; it tears at you and breaks you apart inside, rending all of the most tender places of your heart until you want to die or give up. Some people do give up; some die of a broken heart, some sink into depression, and some stop loving, stop caring. I never did that, not when Lucius beat me or insulted me, not when you became furious and screamed that you hated me. Your words, his words, they blurred together so I was hardly able to tell one from the other. Yet I never stopped loving you, or your father. You said you hated me, and I smiled through my tears and told you I loved you. That confused you, just as it had confused Lucius, and you increased your taunts as your father increased his abuses. Finally, both of you left me, left me alone when you went to serve the Dark Lord. But I am still here, I will still be here waiting for you when you return, broken and hurting. And I will nurse you, bring you back to health, restore your pride and confidence. And eventually, once you return to that state, you will hate me again, and leave me. But I will still wait here, I will always wait here. Why?

Because I love you.