The Extremely Secret Secrets of a Malfoy

Dear Diary,

Day...um...oh, whatever...who really cares?

I am fed up. Yawn, yawn, yawn. Nothing has happened today, and it's raining. Yawn...I think I will carry on lying here contemplating suicide. Not really, of course - Malfoys don't kill themselves; they decide who is to blame and kill them instead. But I've decided its muggles to blame, and I can't kill them all single-handedly. I'll have to join the DE for that, and I'm not old enough. Pity.

Will probably write more if muscles have not atrophied from lack of - well, everything. Not having a good day.

Dear diary,

Day 13. Very unlucky. But I don't care. It can't get worse than it is.

I am going for a walk. Will write what happens...

Well, the walk was - interesting. Met the mudblood. Up a tree, of all places. I went to climb trees in the little wood we have, and I got to my favourite one, it's a really massive oak tree that's impossible to climb unless you climb the neighbouring tree and jump across. I have fallen and broken bones a million times doing that. One time, the branch snapped while I was standing on it, but I was holding on to the one above, so I was alright. It meant the gap to jump was enormous, though. I still made it!

Actually, it wasn't that massive, and the two branches you have to jump from are thicker than me, and they're only ten feet up, but I was only six. Anyway, I climbed up to about twenty feet, and then a nut hit me on the head. I thought it was a squirrel. But it kept happening, and when I got to my favourite spot, in a little hollow where a really big branch meets the trunk, the mudblood was there, sniggering.

"Get lost, this is my seat," I snarled.

"Don't see your name on it," she said primly. Who does she think she is?

"Then you must be blind." I pointed to my name. Nearly every Malfoy family member had scratched his or her name on a branch; it's an exceptionally important magical tree. It's a family tree. Seriously. No sniggering.

"Oh, and this whole estate is mine, including all the trees in this wood, especially this one, its ancient, it has my great, great, great grandfathers' name scratched on it. And you're not even allowed to be here and I can easily get you kicked out of our cottage, so I'd be a bit more polite if I were you."

"You don't own all this. Its not just yours, you're too young." This stupid mudblood better move fast or I'll hex her, I thought.

"Actually, me being the heir, I do. Mum has got it for the moment, but she's easy to get round, and in three years I can have it all to myself, unless Dad escapes or gets cleared." Hope he doesn't, I thought, then felt guilty. But he doesn't really care, so why should I want him back? "Oh, and she's already said if you bother us, she'll kick you out. She doesn't want muggles on our estate really. So move, now." She scrambled off the branch onto the neighbouring one, rolling her eyes.

"Get off." I said, settling into the seat.

"Make me." She grinned.

"I'll push you off if you're not careful. Or I'll hex you." I glared (this look copied from Father).

"You can't use magic in the holidays."

"So what?" Dad's ancestors put certain dark spells around the house, so the ministry can't detect any illegal dark magic (which, naturally, is frequent, though not any more. I'm not really into practising dark magic particularly, not to mention there's no one to practice on, though some of it sounds quite fun). Luckily for me, it works with underage magic too. Not that the ministry knows, of course. I wasn't about to tell her either.

"You wouldn't dare. You'd get expelled."

"I would dare, believe me. Watch. Reducto!" I blasted a twig that was inches from her hand (with a very good aim, if I say so myself). Her face was quite amusing, but it only lasted a second before she smirked.

"You'll still have to make me." She was grinning in an evil way, obviously enjoying annoying me. And I was pretty annoyed, since I'd just glared, threatened and nearly deprived her of her hand and she still wasn't running away as fast as she could. She swung up to the branch above my head, and carried on climbing as high as was possible. The tree is massive, at least seventy feet; my great, great, great, great, great uncle planted it, six hundred and eighty-two years ago. It's the protector of the Malfoy estate; as long as it's healthy, the buildings and grounds will stand, and the money shall pour in. It's destined to die with the last of the Malfoys. Only Malfoys have ever written their names on it - though wives of Malfoys count. Mum and Dad have got a heart around their names on the highest branch. I bet Mum wrote that; it's much too soppy for Dad. Not that they were ever in love, you don't marry a Malfoy for love. Stuff like that's for Gryffindors and muggles. Marriage is all about ancestry and bloodlines, and money, of course. A nice dowry is always a good thing, Father always said. If you want anything else from a relationship, affairs are perfectly acceptable. You can be damn sure your wife will have them - builders, ministry officials, milkmen, et cetera...

"Come on then! Make me get down!" she was standing on the very highest and not-very-strong branch that she could reach, still grinning at my annoyance.

"I'll stun you, and then you'll fall and break your neck. I've had three broken legs just from falling off from this height."

"You wouldn't."

"I would. Stupefy!" I wouldn't really. There'd be too any complications, like how to get rid of the body. And I'm not actually the murderous type, however much I threaten to kill people. Not that I wouldn't if the occasion called for it.

For a second, the mudblood looked scared. Then she laughed.

"Ha! Missed!" Was she mad? Did she have a death wish? Obviously she didn't believe I would do it. I swung up a few branches, so I was nearer.

"I won't miss from here." She didn't move. I glared at her, and said quietly, "What are you playing at? I'm a Malfoy, son of a Death Eater and proud, don't you think I'd do it?" I don't like people messing with me. If she wouldn't move, I would, just to prove her wrong.

She hesitated, then swung down to my level like a gymnast. I smirked - I knew she would listen!

But she stopped on a branch facing me.

"What is your definition of a muggle?" she asked with her head on one side. She looked pensive.

"What?" I snapped. Bloody annoying stupid ugly useless mudbloods...

"What is your definition of a muggle?" I took the question as a way to insult her family, so I smirked.

"Oh, that's easy...they're on a par with talking sheep. Or, more like talking pigs. They have just enough intelligence to survive, and they are really a bit of a pest, like giant ants scurrying about the place. They are stupid and weak and generally pathetic, and I support muggle hunting. They are totally wrongly classified as 'beings', as that implies intelligence."

"Right." She didn't look annoyed that I'd just called her parents talking sheep. "How about mudbloods?"

"Well - they're - it's just - wrong. I mean, they're like mutants. It's not right. It's like sheep having a half sheep, half-human child. They're impure, mistakes, freaks of nature. And half-bloods - yuck, it's bestiality."

She didn't look bothered that I'd called her a freak of nature. But then again, why should she? It's the truth. No matter what she says. The stupid dirty little muggleborn.

"I see. And who agrees with you?"

"Everyone! Except mudbloods and people like Potter."

"And do you see a pattern in those people?"

"What?" I snapped again.

"Well, do you know anyone you like who says muggles are alright, and do you know anyone who you hate who agrees with your ideas?" she was making it sound like it was a matter of opinion, not fact. And she was looking very Ravenclaw and psychiatrist-y. "No," I said shortly. Really, I should have pushed her off then, but I wanted to know what she was driving at. She crossed her legs and grinned at me sideways.

"Right. So picture this. You've been told all through your childhood that muggles are scum, by your parents and their friends and everyone you've ever come into contact with. And you love and trust your parents, so naturally their word is truth." I snorted. Love and trust? "And when you meet new people, you check first that they don't disagree. Then if you get on, you grow to be friends with them, right?"

"Yes," I said slowly. I was getting the impression she wasn't actually driving anywhere.

"And the same is true for enemies, right? If they disagree, they are stupid, so consequently you are unpleasant to them."

"Yes, so get to the point already! Or are you just talking crap?"

"So, you get to the age where you start to realise that parents lie, and not everything they say is true. So you start to subconsciously form your own views and opinions and revise your thoughts. Yes?"

"Yes," I said impatiently. That was fairly true. Like you figure out that Dad wouldn't really feed you to the monster in the cellar because, 1) there isn't one, 2) he'd get into trouble and 3) then he'd have waste all that effort to have another heir, when he'd already spent too much time on this one.

"But when you get to the muggles are scum idea, you have no reason to doubt it, as not only do your parents and their friends agree, but all of your circle of friends do too. But you've forgotten the criteria you had for choosing them in the first place. Of course they think that, because you wouldn't have been friendly to them in the first place." This was sort of true too, I suppose, but so what if all my friends agree with me? I still would think the same. I would. Because it's true. It is. The mudblood would disagree, wouldn't she?

"And the same with enemies. You treat them badly, so they treat you badly back and you get into fights and the enmity increases, and they carry on being horrible and give you so many more reasons to hate and resent them, you forget why you were enemies in the first place. So when they start spouting stuff about muggleborns being okay, you just disregard it as rubbish, why should you trust what your enemies say? But you're only enemies with them because they said that."

"So? It doesn't make it any less true!"

"But you're biased by your upbringing! Look at the real, actual, solid evidence. I don't look any different or speak differently, you couldn't pick me out as a muggleborn from a line up, if you had a bottle of blood from both of us, it wouldn't look or smell or taste -"

"Taste? Yuck!"

"- Or feel or be different in any way. Would it? Well?"

"No...not physically."

"How about in any other way? Mentally? I got an 'O' in my Potions OWL, an 'A' in Herbology and an 'E' in Charms. Compare it to yours. What did you get?"

"Same in Potions, 'A' in Charms and 'E' in Herbology."

"So pretty much the same. I'm good at lessons, I don't behave like a talking sheep, I don't do or say things that are stupid or degraded any more than anyone else, I am not germed or polluted, so how am I different?"

"You just are." I knew it was a flat argument but it was true. That's how it works. That's the way it is. The pureblood wizards are superior and the mudbloods are lower-class citizens, that is the end of it. There isn't any arguing with it because that's the way it is.

She swung down out of the tree (she jumped from fifteen feet up without blinking, I couldn't help being impressed) and walked off.

Stupid filthy mudblood. She is wrong. Without question. Absolutely totally and utterly idiotically wrong. She is.

Dear diary,

Day fourteen of my stay in purgatory, and I'm beginning to think heaven or hell would be a nice change...

I told Mum about the girl in the tree this morning at breakfast and she nearly had a heart attack. She said she'd kick them out and she was going to put muggle repelling charms everywhere to stop it and they were nasty stupid scum (which they are). I pointed out the spells wouldn't work (I'd forgotten to tell mum she was a witch), and she absolutely categorically forbade me to see the girl at all, as she would pollute my mind with her idiotic and filthy muggle ideas. (Which is what they are, of course - idiotic ridiculous totally wrong nonsense.)

I think I might go for a swim in the lake later. Our lake isn't very big, about fifty feet long and twenty-five wide, give or take a foot as the sides aren't straight and square like a swimming pool. But it is quite deep - the sides are really steep, and its about twelve feet to the bottom from the centre.

I learned to swim before I learned to walk, I really did. Mum used to paddle me in it when I was little (there's nothing dangerous in it except weed and frogs and some grindylows), and Father taught me to swim properly in it at about age four, usually in winter. He said it was character building and strengthening and his father used to do the same. Your dad was a sadistic sod then, wasn't he? I used to think, but of course I never said that. He'd have made me sleep in the lake if I had. But I'm glad of it now; I'm totally used to the cold. I surprise mum's rich friends with my resilience, because their brats live in cotton wool (not that I don't get almost anything I want). I'm still surprised I didn't get pneumonia at that age, mind. Mum said I would once. To which Father said if I did, I was weak and a bad heir and I'd be disowned. To which I said, very resentfully, that it probably wouldn't matter, because I'd be dead, because Father was so heartless he wouldn't take me to St Mungo's. To which he cuffed me over the head and sent me to my rooms. But it was probably not that far off the truth.

Not that that punishment was too dreadful, as I have a huge bedroom with a massive en suite, a study, a big second bedroom for guests, when I have any (I only invite Crabbe and Goyle usually, but they're away 'til late August. And I don't want Pansy, I'd have to get a bolt for my bedroom door), and a sitting room which is probably the cosiest room in the house. And if I got bored I could slide down the drainpipe to the third floor below, and climb inside through the broken window in the servants' bathroom (we used to have a nanny and a valet as well as a butler). Then I'd creep down the stairs and out the door, and into the "forest" (the woods were massive to a five-year-old). The funny thing was, Father never told me off when I decided to come back (it was virtually impossible to get back to my rooms undetected). I think he was proud of my escaping ability, it was like a secret challenge to beat each other. Not that he'd let me do it twice in one night; he'd set my nanny to guard. She used to dread it - I'd scream and kick and punch and once I stuck her mouth together - that was my first magic. At four and ten months, younger than father was. He vanished his mothers feet first. She was chasing him with a cane at the time, Father said it was hilarious. She was a sadistic hag too; she used to hit me round the head with the same cane, I'd see stars. She hit me way harder than father ever does - I mean did, as he hasn't got long enough arms to reach from Azkaban. I'm glad she's dead now - I get the impression Dad may have given her a hand, under Mums' desperate encouragement. I don't blame them, the batty old bitch. She was totally dotty, I think they did her a favour.

Anyway, I think I will go for that swim...