The Actor

It was cold. Too cold to sleep, and the silent, relentless snowfall seemed to exaggerate the few sporadic sounds that echoed through the dormitory. Vincent's pet rat was scratching frenetically at a rough spot on the stone floor. Gregory was congested and his strenuous, heavily forced breathing gave Draco the irrepressible urge to snatch up a handy pillow and smother him. Someone should put that hapless human ogre out of his misery, Draco thought.

Someone should just do away with all of us - the Goyles and the Crabbes and the Malfoys of this world. Does Dumbledore really believe that any of us are capable of breaking the cycle? Father teaches the Dark Arts to his scared, eager-to-please, impressionable young son, maybe beats him, intimidates him into obedience. His efforts to save us from ourselves, from our families, are well-intended but ultimately futile. Kind words and wisdom can never compete with the urgency and immediacy of the need to alleviate pain.

The pattern was set long before he had ever seen this school. He remembered the spells that hurt him like blows but didn't leave bruises, the spells that prevented him from telling anyone about the abuse, and when Father was in a rage, not simply disciplining him, the real beatings.

Draco was fifteen and he wanted to die. He felt old and tired and bitter. Bitter, maybe, more than anything else. Harry Potter, he said to himself. You think that you've suffered. You didn't have to see your mother hit again and again, and watch her start drinking more and more, and then fear that she'll turn on you. You never saw anyone decay like that, turn cold to shield herself from the people she should love and trust most. You think that I hate you. I don't. I hate my father. I take out my anger on you because I'm a self-serving, gutless bastard.

He was sick of so much pain. Someone had to stop it, but not him. Someone had to save them before they were Marked. We have only six years of freedom left, if you can call this freedom. His stomach tightened as he thought this. I hate myself, too. I hate that I don't have the courage even to commit suicide. I've been through worse physical pain than hara-kiri. I should at least have the honor to rid this school and this society of me. Do the people who condemn me as a servant of the Dark Lord think I have a choice?

Harry Potter. His obsession. The boy that had inadvertently allowed him to perfect his façade. Draco was an expert actor, and squaring himself against Harry honed his skills. He could play arrogant rich kid, witty Mudblood hater, cold proud Malfoy, Potter's main antagonist. Underneath all the layers, the personality he had created to please his father and the people his father had chosen as his friends and eventually his Lord, was Draco minus the Malfoy. A weak person, full of fear and disdain and unable to care about anyone else. But he was honest. The one thing Draco liked about himself was that he was never in denial. He never lied to himself. His entire life was a lie, but better to know that than not.

One day I'll have to choose, Draco mused. The rat dug at the stone in a frenzy. He watched it impassively. I'll have to make the choice between the my life and another's. What is my life worth? With what I'll have to do to be marked, will I ever redeem myself?

Death is the right choice. I should die.

But the world isn't a fair place, and no one can ever win this stupid war. Good against evil. I know what side I'm on.