Another Turning Point

How It Started

(Draco's POV)

There are moments in your life when the decisions you make will affect your entire future. Turning points. Usually people will know the year or even the month. I pin-pointed mine to the hour and had I been in a situation whereby I was aware of, or in fact cared about the time I'd be able to say to the nearest 30 seconds. You could call it an epiphany.

It had started one morning sitting eating breakfast in the great hall. Well technically it had started years and years before, with the first rising of the dark lord. But this was the morning that it all blew up again.

When Voldemort came back to power I knew that was it. This time he'd be the death of my parents, and of me. We had a choice of course, would we be killed fighting for evil, or against it, but that choice wasn't mine. It was my father's, the lives of me and my mother were entirely in his hands. When I had left for school last September he'd started behaving oddly, but it was only the beginning. As the weeks and months passed by I received an increasing number of letters from my mother, she was bored, he was becoming more and more withdrawn. That meant time was running out -soon my fate would be decided.

Then on that morning I got the letter:

My dearest child, He went out last night, its not the first time, but he left about 11 and isn't back yet, I think this is it. He will have decided now, and there's nothing more for us to do, I am in doubt as to whether he'll even return. Our futures are set and I understand that we are living on borrowed time, make the most of what we have left, remember I love you and I'm proud of you. Trust no-one. Forever, Mum x

So that was it. Midnight disappearances could only mean one thing, -he'd chosen the dark side, inevitably the losing side. I've seen the muggle films, (though if anyone found out it would ruin my reputation...) and the bad guys are always infinitely cooler, but they always lose. This was no spaghetti western, or James Bond thriller though. Instead, it was my life.

I got wrong in Transfiguration first lesson. Not, as per usual, for talking and messing around, quite the opposite in fact, I wasn't listening. It all seemed so futile though. Why would I need to know how the turn a tennis ball into a gerbil (why would anyone ever want to know that ?!) when soon I would die horribly at the hands of the dark lord himself, it was very likely because he was into ritual slaughtering and self, or self's family as the case may be, sacrifice.

I never thought about whether I wanted to be a Death Eater, it's one of those things people expected me to have pondered greatly, but it wasn't my decision, if father said I was to be one I would be one, if he didn't I wouldn't. It was out of my hands so there was no point in worrying my pretty little head about it. When I did have to think about it I neither despised the idea nor loved it, it would just be another thing I had to do for the family name. Like spying on the neighbours while out playing or pretending not to notice when my father had artefacts of dark magic in the house. I could see that McGonagall wanted to ask if I was OK but I left the lesson before she had a chance.

I couldn't face Care of Magical Creatures, all those smug Gryffindors going out of their way to make me feel two inches tall, and Potter taunting me, perfect Potter with his perfect life, except it wasn't perfect. It crossed my mind briefly that maybe he had it tougher than me, but that thought floated away again and I forgot about it for the time being. I had a headache so I headed for the hospital wing with the intention of getting some painkillers and retiring to my dormitory for some rest. However, when I arrived a scene of pandemonium met me. A group of second years were being treated for various curses after some kind of fight, but that end of the ward was turning into a riot as they clearly hadn't resolved the issues. I could tell I'd be waiting for a while. I turned to leave feeling the noise wasn't going to help my headache, when I saw Hermione Granger sitting on one of the beds crying, and I mean really crying. Sobbing so loud you would think the world was ending type crying. I noted the absence of dumb and dumber, and under normal circumstances I would have made some scathing remark about love triangles always ending in tears. But the sheer intensity of her crying coupled with my melancholy mood stopped me and instead I found myself asking her what was wrong.

She tried to speak a few times but it was all drowned out by her persistent sobbing so I gently tried to remove the piece of parchment from her hand that she was clutching in a desperate manner but she snatched it back. The action did however, bring her to her senses and she was able to compose herself somewhat. She explained that the letter was from the Ministry, her parents were missing and were suspected to be among the first hostages of the Death Eaters. She would have broken down crying again if it hadn't been for the look of pure horror on my face, the colour must've drained right from it and I felt dizzy and faint, and vaguely sick. But from the bottom of my stomach grew a rising heat, anger. The night my father sneaks out and doesn't return two muggles with a witch for a daughter went missing, and I Draco Malfoy was responsible. The number of times I had complained to my father about her was infinite.

I saw red.