For Enemies

For Enemies

Did it ever occur to you that I don't want your forgiveness? Did it even cross your mind that I live with my choices every day, that maybe, just maybe, I have worse sins? I don't have to explain my actions to you, Potter. I have nothing to say to you.

If you have nothing to say, why did you write me in the first place? I feel sorry for you. I bet you hate hearing that, I bet it just tears you apart. Yes, Malfoy, I pity you. You are exactly what your family made you. The perfect puppet. I know you, I know what makes you tick, and what's worse is that I easily could have been you. Were I even just an ounce weaker than I am, had I accepted your offer of friendship that day, then where would I be, Malfoy? Would I have been your crony, like Crabbe or Goyle? You wouldn't have found me that easy to control.

You never have, have you? Your entire school career, what was I to you? I was your rival, and I was better than you at everything. You were weak, and I feel sorry for you.

~Potter

You were right about one thing: I was weak. I'm not anymore. You can play the Chosen One to your heart's content, Harry Potter, but I know the truth. I know that deep down, you are nothing but that scared little boy who was locked in a broom cupboard for eleven years. Yes, I know that dirty little secret. My father used to laugh about it at the dinner table. You were a family joke, Potter. In a different way, you still are.

No, I couldn't control you, and I wouldn't have tried had you accepted my offer. You chose the blood traitor and the Mudblood instead. You humiliated me, but I won in the end. Do you understand why? I doubt it. You're hardly clever. You thought I was thick, yet I came out on top.

You couldn't do it. In the end, you couldn't commit the act. I saw it, I saw it all. How he spoke to you of mercy, how you hesitated and lowered your wand. I don't hate you for failing; I am probably the only person in the world who would show you any compassion now.

Snape made his choice; double-agent or not he will not live after what he did, that I promise you. But you, Malfoy...I will show you the same mercy Dumbledore did. Not because I am as good as he, but because someday I hope to be.

My life is built on vengeance. I have a duty and a destiny that I can't escape; I'm not trying. But I am not a murderer yet. I owe you nothing, but I am still willing to give you your life.

~Potter

How fucking noble of you. I am wanted for crimes the world doesn't even know about yet, but the Great Harry Potter will show me mercy. I am too far gone, Potter, don't waste your pity on me.

Then again, this isn't pity, is it? This is guilt. You feel responsible for not catching me sooner. I didn't kill Dumbledore with my own wand, but I tried, didn't I? Several times. And I am responsible. I nearly killed Katie Bell, I almost killed Weasley. And I don't care.

I am not redeemable. I have made my choice as well.

Were that true, then you would not continue to respond to my letters. I know they're untraceable, but they're a waste of your time if you don't care about my opinion, which I think you do.

I'm offering you a chance to live. How much longer do you think Voldemort will suffer you after you failed to do the job he assigned you? I imagine he's only begun to punish you for your incompetence. Voldemort does not suffer failure lightly; believe me, I've experienced it first hand.

I am not offering you immunity. Not anymore. Not with Dumbledore dead, hundreds missing, and Hogwarts destroyed. You made stupid choices, Malfoy, but you did it under threat of death, I heard you say so to Dumbledore, and when you thought you were alone.

It takes a brave wizard to stand up to Voldemort and say, 'I am not afraid to die.' You aren't brave, but then, you knew that.

~Potter

Potter, please...

Your offer comes too late. They murdered my mother at dawn this morning. My father will be next, and I am powerless to stop it. I don't care about anything anymore.

You were the Hogwarts Golden Boy. I had classmates who either feared me, loathed me, or accepted me because of my name, and only one professor whom I respected for his. Wealth and power were not enough to fill the gaps.

Believe it or not, even Slytherins are capable of love, and I loved my mother.

All of that's gone, so what's left to live for?

I am sorry about your mother. It sounds shallow, but it's sincere.

My offer still stands. You don't have to suffer the same fate.

~Potter

More pity. You were right; we are alike. I obsessed over beating you at something, anything. I played your shadow, determined to make a name for myself at any cost. You were right, even Snape was right: I was a child.

It cost me. And I'm still paying. You're not immune to the shadows, you know. One of these days you will know exactly what I know, and it will eat you up inside. There is nothing inside me for it to feed on, so I'm just wasting away.

You get more poetic with each letter, you pathetic little ferret. For once in your life, let something other than your blood dictate your decision. This time, I'm offering you my hand. This isn't friendship, this is something darker, fouler, and perverted, but I don't care.

Dumbledore's last act was an attempt to save you. I could not call myself his man if I didn't attempt to do the same. And you are a blood relative of Sirius's. For that alone I'd help you.

You're not my rival anymore, Malfoy. I have bigger problems than you. Let me help you and get on with my life. Or what's left of it.

~Potter

You just don't get it, Potter. Damn you, I did everything, I tried everything, but it was never good enough for you. You joined the Quidditch team, I joined the Quidditch team, and yet you beat me in every match. You were the poster boy for the Light, so I went out of my way, I suffered just to be your counterpart. When you ruined my father's plans in the Department of Mysteries, you effectively signed our death warrant. And still all I thought about was somehow beating you, proving that I was not worthless.

You can't dismiss me as if I was some old toy from your childhood, Potter. I will always be a part of what makes you tick. You don't care about me, fine, but I helped make you what you are, and no matter what you cannot deny that.

What the hell is this, some kind of perverted love letter? Clearly you don't get it, Malfoy, I don't give a damn about you! You know what shaped me? Being marked from birth, knowing I was famous only because I survived when my parents were murdered. Having friends who cared enough about me to help me face enormous dangers at age eleven. Losing the last father-figures I would ever know in this stupid, wasteful battle.

You mean absolutely nothing to me. I am not offering to save you for yourself, I am offering only because Dumbledore would have, and because apparently I have a 'saving people thing'.

Had you murdered Dumbledore yourself we would not be exchanging these letters. But you weren't strong enough, and you should thank whatever god you believe in every day for that.

You aren't evil, Malfoy, you aren't my shadow. You're a boy who got in over his head because he was threatened with death. Hundreds, maybe thousands who were in your place chose death. They didn't shame their names.

But, wait, I forgot, your name is proud, isn't it? Proud of that ugly tattoo on your arm. Only I expect that with two failures in the family, what is left of the inbred Malfoy clan wishes only to distance themselves from you.

You had a point. What is left to live for?

~Potter

Don't, don't do that, don't you dare say that. I won't let you. I won't let you just dismiss me like that. You don't have that right. You don't have the right to make me meaningless.

I am going to die any day now, it's only a matter of waiting it out. I'm sure they got to my father, and there wasn't enough left of my mother to bury, so I'm counting down the seconds. I will not let you make my life into something pathetic, I will not let you turn my parents' deaths into a cause for celebration.

I don't know where you are right now, just as you don't know where I am, and we like it that way, don't we, Potter? A chance to get things off our chests without fear of capture?

You need me. You have no one else to confess your worries, your hatred to, for fear of being seen as weak. You can't afford that, can you, Potter? Yet here I am, lower than low, so far gone that I'll probably never see you alive again (though I am considering haunting you for the rest of eternity; then again, that would probably be extremely dull), and so you have nothing to lose by writing to me.

That's the real reason for these letters, isn't it? Not some hope for my salvation, or one last promise to Dumbledore, this is because you have no other outlet, and I'm available.

You mask your fear with insults designed to hurt me because you can't hurt the one you really want. He's out of your reach, Potter, though I don't doubt that every moment you're breathing you're thinking up some desperate plan to make him pay. Meanwhile, here I am, still answering your letters, a ready target for your steaming hatred.

And so long as you need that, you turn your own words to lies.

Amazing, you're a wanted criminal and yet you still have such a high and mighty opinion of yourself. I honestly thought that for a moment up on that tower I saw something in you worth saving, but I must have been out of my mind.

For one entire year I hunted you. At every turn I tried desperately to figure out what you were up to, certain that you'd become a Death Eater, certain that you were serving Voldemort. No one believed me, not even Ron and Hermione, because no one believed you were capable of it. You were slime, you were loathsome, capable of childish taunts and repeating what you'd heard over breakfast from people stronger than you, but not capable of that.

I knew better. For six years I faced off against you at every turn, and I knew exactly what you were capable of. I knew that if you truly believed in what you were doing, then you would do whatever it took to get there. I was a perfect example of that, wasn't I?

Snape will pay, even if it takes a lifetime to track him down. You aren't a substitute for him, my hatred of him runs deeper than you could imagine, and only my hatred of Voldemort is stronger. They have an earlier claim on me, their claim stems from my parents. You're shallow, Malfoy, there is no deeper level to you. Even your evil acts are superficial. If my words hurt you, then that's just a bonus.

You think I hate you for six years of school rivalry? I wouldn't waste my spit on you. Snape and Voldemort are directly responsible for the murder of my parents, and the subsequent life I've been forced into. I am the Chosen One, Malfoy. And you do not fit into that equation anymore.

~Potter

He murdered my parents, too. Do you honestly believe I worship him for that?

No. I know you serve him out of fear. But you still serve him. What do you want me to say, Malfoy? What do you want from me?

My life is not about you. Right now, as we exchange these ultimately pointless letters, my friends are dying. People who have sworn their lives to me and my cause are disappearing by the dozens. Those who haven't the courage to fight back are lost before we even knew they were in danger.

I'm tired. No, I'm exhausted. I don't have the strength for this, but I'll keep going because it's what I have to do. No one is threatening me to make me do it, I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do. Even if I hadn't been marked by Voldemort, I would still be in the same position. I understand you, but, honestly, I don't want to pretend to know exactly what you're thinking anymore.

This is not a relationship, Malfoy. There's no trust between us, and there never can be. You think that I'm confessing my fears and weaknesses to you? You know nothing about me, really. I don't have to tell my friends about my fear or my hatred because they know me so well that they understand it without words.

I think you're scared and confused. I think you're grasping at straws, clinging to these letters as some sort of security blanket; our 'rivalry' has been the one constant in the past six years, hasn't it? Am I truly the only familiarity in your life anymore?

~Potter

Call it what you will, I don't care. It doesn't change the fact that you are still writing me, and I am writing back. That is a relationship, twisted though it may be. You can try writing me out of your life, Potter, but I'll always be the nasty voice in the back of your head, telling you when you're wrong.