Worthy

Worthy

So this is grief.

It doesn't feel like he thought it would; but then, he had never really thought about what it would feel like. Loss was something that happened to other people. Not to him.

He closes the door behind him, but hesitates before crossing the room. He isn't sure if he wants to, anymore. He had screamed and menaced, offered bribes and made threats, in order to get into this room. He wants it to be worth it. But now that he's here, he isn't sure if it will be.

But he can't back out now.

He takes a breath, and steels himself to approach the coffin that is standing coldly in the centre of the room. He is glad that he is alone, so that there's no one to see his weakness, and his doubt. Or the way his hands are trembling. He clenches them, walks over to the coffin, and peers down at the body inside.

He recoils in shock. The carcass in there looks barely human; its features are distorted and its limbs are warped. Its face bares a look of unbearable pain, and its eyes stare accusingly upwards at nothingness. It doesn't look like his father.

But it is. He knows it is. He would recognise that face anywhere. It's the face that haunts his nightmares, that seems to follow him wherever he goes. It's the face that knows his every action, the face that punishes him and the face that can make him scream for mercy. The only face in the world that he knows is stronger than he is. The only face in the world that can make him plead.

But that face is dead. It lies before him, and he can see in it all the suffering that has been inflicted on him over the years. And yet, he feels nothing. No regret, no anger. Only a numbness, a detachment from the body lying before him.

He thinks that he hated his father, when he was alive. He certainly never loved him. But they were both Malfoys, both of the same blood, and the same heritage. He could never owe his father love, but he owes him for that, at least. His father made him the man he is today.

He can remember all the lessons he was taught as a child, and considers how much of that he now knows to be wrong. He is not all-powerful because of his pure blood; he is not infallible; he is not invincible. But he is a Malfoy.

He has learnt so much since he last saw his father alive. He can remember that final conversation so clearly. It was the Christmas holidays of his fifth year, as he was leaving to go back to school, and his father's last words to him will remain forever burnt into his memory: The name that you bear is not enough. You must make yourself worthy.

He was being berated, once again, for not reaching his father's impossible standards for him. He can remember working so hard that year, believing - or perhaps hoping - that this year his father would be proud; that he would show to him that his son was worth something. He can remember his disappointment at his own failure, and wonders now how he had never seen that is was not due to him, but to the standards that no one could reach.

He cannot remember his father's other words, or much of the conversation preceding this statement, except that, at that time, he was not worthy. But now he is. Now, when his father is no longer able to see it, he is.

Two years have passed since then. Two years of war, two years of fear, two years of hiding your allegiances and who you really are. Two years of learning how to fight a battle to win, how to torture and kill, and how to change the world to one of your making. Two years of life without his father, in which he has grown stronger than he ever believed that he could be. He has shown them that he is not weak. Shown them all, except for this carcass lying in front of him.

It had taken two years for his father to break, and to give in and die. It was on the eve of his execution. Instead of allowing them the satisfaction of his public demise, he had been even stronger in his death than he had ever been in life. He had taken one last step towards the shadows: to slit his wrists and summon up a darkness to end his life. Having no wand with him to give himself a quick and painless death, his father had called on the darkest spirits there were to drain the blood from his body. And left this warped, sickening mess.

He hates the sight of his father's corpse, but he cannot bring himself to look away. This is what they had left of the man that he had once feared. His memories of a proud, powerful man have gone. All he has left is the image of these wild, tortured eyes.

He turns away from that twisted, misshapen face, and walks towards the door and his escape from the shadow that has overcast him for the entirety of his life. He lifts his wand to unlock the door, but stops, and instead he picks up the box of his father's belongings, which the undertakers have left for him to collect. In it are his father's pitiful possessions: his wedding ring, his timepiece, his rags of clothing, and his wand. This last item he draws from the box, and the rest he drops to the floor, along with his own wand. Then he once more confronts the corpse that was his father, gives it one last, long look, and then turns and walks back through the door.

Maybe a forgotten shadow is a greater weakness than an overcastting one.

He is worthy.