A Machiavellian Apology

I am sorry to admit that my father does not beat me. Nor, I'm afraid, does he molest or torture me in any way, shape, or form, magical or otherwise.

Don't think I haven't heard the mutterings. Even in my own Common Room. Sometimes I'll catch Pansy or some other stupid little girl giving me these looks so full of pity that I just want to scream at them, lash out, make them hate me instead.

But I mustn't do that. Malfoys do not put on such emotional displays.

Perhaps we would be healthier creatures if we did. Maybe if Mother felt herself able to rant and rave at my father for spending his nights away from home or me for tracking mud in the house after practicing Quidditch in the rain, she wouldn't have to look at the world through empty highball glasses. Father might even be able to laugh some times. Really laugh, I mean, not those dignified little chuckles that he will utter on particularly ironic occasions.

And me... maybe I could...

No. The other thing that Malfoys do not do is permit themselves silly fantasies in lieu of the harsh realities that we must face.

At least that's what Father used to tell me the few times he tried to amuse me as a child. I suppose it couldn't have been healthy for him to tell his four-year-old son that pretending he was a brave knight trying to save his good lady from the evil dragon in the gardens with a toy sword was a useless pastime.

Sometimes I wonder what he felt like, in Azkaban. That was something else for them to pity me for. A criminal for a father. As if they didn't already know. Azkaban was merely a confirmation of a long-recognized truth.

When I was a very little boy, when my mother would still take me in her arms and hold me close in her softness, I loved my father. Playing Knights and Dragons in the garden with my nurse, I always envisioned the knight as brave Sir Malfoy, the very image of my father in every way. Courteous and beautiful and so important that he sacrificed time away from his beloved son to personally advise the Ministry.

In the dark nights, tucked away in silk and eiderdown, I almost believed it.

Sometimes I still try, even now, as I lay under my musty Slytherin quilt in my dormitory, I try to love my father.

Now when I look in the mirror and see a shadow of my father staring curiously at me, I wonder how that makes me feel. That sounds stupid -- I don't know how I feel. I don't even know if I feel.

Not entirely true. I do feel, sometimes. Despite what my father says, despite the blankness in my mother's eyes when she kisses me in greeting when I come home for holidays. Those times, though, it is best not to.

I know that there are others in school, though. Ones that do not pity me for an imagined, cruel upbringing. They think, I am sure, that I am an overindulged, self-absorbed child. No one has ever said this to my face, naturally, but I can see it in their eyes. That half-sullen glare Weasley gives me, looking down over his nose at me. I can all but hear it in his stance. Even Potter will look at me like that on occasion. Poor, hapless, potty Potter who thinks that my father deliberately bought me a position on the Slytherin Quidditch team to this day, I'm sure.

Any correlation between the sudden appearance of brand-new Nimbuses in the overgrown paws of my fellow teammates my second year and my appointment as Seeker has, of course, not been made known to me.

I like to think that it was a coincidence. That my father did not feel as if I was inferior enough to require such a gross incentive to be placed on a House team. Perhaps one day I will feel brave enough to ask him about it. Doubtful, however. I do not know if the not knowing is worse than potentially confirming my deepest suspicions, but I rather think it may not be.

Although I am not a failure. Prefect, decent enough Seeker, and sufficient scores to stay near the top of my form. Nothing notable to complain of. I am a credit to my House, as I'm sure my father tells his business associates.

I don't even cheat on my papers like Millicent Bulstrode or sneak into old Snape's office after his hidden bottle of Firewhisky like Blaise Zabini. Other than a nasty tendency to be involved in incidents concerning the Golden Gryffindor Boy and his two sidekicks, I'd say that I'm as well adjusted as a Malfoy can be. Perhaps even with that tendency.

But I hate Harry Potter. Him and his stupid scar and his damned way of making everybody feel. Oh, I've heard the rumors. That his childhood was as hellish as everyone suspects mine was. Dark cupboards and live-in bullies. Every word only makes me hate him more. Hate his smile and his joy and the fact that even if he did live like that, he can still laugh and I can only smirk. Every year I come to King's Cross Station to board the train, I hope that he's not there. I hope that I don't have to be reminded that there are people in the world that are brave. There are sons on this Earth that Lucius Malfoy might have loved if they weren't me.

And yet...

And yet I find myself subscribing to the myth. To the aura of damnable goodness surrounding stupid Potter. I love him. I love him in the same way that I love my old storybooks sitting on the shelves at home, bindings crumbling with love. The same way I love the times my mother recalls that I am her son and gives me tight, perfumed embraces. A fierce love that teeters on that horrible line. The love that drove me to rip pages out of my books when I learned that life isn't like those stories I came to believe. Hateful, wretched love.

I wish sometimes that I could be like old Snape and hate Potter unequivocally. That look in Snape's eyes whenever Potter crosses his line of sight is not mistakable -- he despises Potter as much as anything. Possibly as much as he hates himself. Snape looks at me only rarely and for that I am grateful. I do not think I could bear what I might see in his eyes. False praise for my father's sake or active dislike for the same reason -- each would be equally intolerable. Snape would like to be an honest man, I think, and I do not want to drive him to lies.

There are times, though, times when I start to believe that old Snape might want to let me into whatever complicated game he plays. Times when he might be able to look at me and not see Lucius Malfoy smirking back at him.

Sullen office visits and detentions after I've been taunting Potter or brawling in the Slytherin Common Room, Snape will pause in his work and watch me wash out a cauldron or scrub down the floor. He will study my newest black eye or cut cheek and he will look as if he's about to speak.

But the moment always passes and Snape never talks to me. I try not to wonder what he would say if he did ever manage to begin.

Maybe he would ask about my father. Or how I feel about my father. Or even the Slytherin unmentionable, the Dark Lord. There are a few dark mutterings in the shadows of sleeping dormitories, of course. But other than that, all talk of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is quashed with a single scowl from our surly Housemaster.

"Are you going to take the Dark Mark, Draco?"

How could I answer to such a thing?

Of course, it might be something more mundane. Something along the lines of, "Why do you not have any friends, Draco?" Or, "Why can I set my watch by your fights with Blaise Zabini?"

Simpler questions. Answerable questions. "I don't like any of the people around me, Professor." And, "Because he persists in casting aspersions on my sexual proclivities, Professor."

I doubt that Snape has mentioned my fights to Father -- they would be the sorts of emotional displays that would spark a rather lengthy series of lectures come the holidays in which he would attempt to re-impress upon me exactly what being a Malfoy entails. I also doubt that the source of the tension between my classmates and myself is common knowledge.

After all, it is widely known among the student population at Hogwarts that Draco Malfoy is a fairy. He must be, you see. Look at that long blond hair, perfectly styled. And he's so small. And pretty. Boys that pretty must be gay, they say. If the teachers join in the whispers, it does not travel to my ears.

Widely neglected, then, is the fact that I've never actually had a sexual encounter of any sort. So sorry to disappoint.

I ran across a couple in the hallways a couple years ago on night rounds. A Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor, both older than me. I can't even remember their names. He had his hand under her shirt. And I watched them. Watched them for a good ten minutes at least before taking points and sending them back to their dormitories. I watched a bead of sweat travel from his forehead to his chin and I shuddered when she licked it off.

How... animalistic.

I tried to imagine someone doing that to me. I tried to imagine myself doing that to someone else.

To think, Father must have done that to Mother at least once -- or something very much like it -- else I would not be here today. Even if I wanted to conceive of it, the image of Lucius Malfoy in the throes of passion is inexplicable and somehow incongruous. Lust is entirely too close to actual emotion, you see.

Which, of course, begs the question of where Malfoys actually come from, given that we are such passionless creatures. Perhaps we spring fully-formed from some eternal source, some bastion of Malfoy strength. I cannot recall my own birth, after all. I may well have come into existence in such a surreal fashion, and my father before me, and his before him, and so forth. A chain of motherless Malfoys, united in their glacial features and equally icy demeanors.

It is laughable -- you are smiling at the image even now. But as ludicrous as it may be, it is somehow preferable to the alternative. Lucius Malfoy in lust is improbable; Lucius Malfoy in love is downright impossible. I would like to think that my mother might have been spared that hurt. The hurt of realizing your lover is not capable of your deepest desire, of actual love.

I fear, then, that with my father's countenance has come my father's temperament as well -- that I may not be capable of that sort of love either. Perhaps I will simply refrain from inflicting myself upon anyone, man or woman. It is, after all, a bit early in my life to be making such declarations, so I only leave it at perhaps.

And most of all, I try to put such things out of my mind. It is far simpler to apologize for the untruths circulating than to attempt to face the actual truths.

So I will leave it at that. Let stupid Potter be the force of good in the world, effecting change and leaving a trail of love in his wake. I may be sorry for the way things are, but I have no interest in what things might become.

I am, after all, only a Malfoy and Malfoys do not indulge in such foolish fantasy.

FINIS