Purpose

purpose

I.

"Draco, whatever you may think, I am not a coward." Outside it was gloomy gray. Or perhaps it was just the grimy windows. No one had washed them for weeks now. I was disgusted. When had a Malfoy ever lived in such filth? I was sulking when my father's face loomed in front of me.

"Are you listening?" he asked. Ah, the clipped curt tone. He was getting irritated with me once again. I could no longer please him.

"Yes father," I said blandly, draping my arms across the chair before thinking better of it. I dragged a finger across the back of it--dust. How horrendous.

"Have a little more respect, will you? I am trying to tell you something rather important," Lucius said slowly, his teeth grating against each other in frustration. His hand at patience was not working. I would rather he did not go through the pretense of it. I decided that I had better get it over with. The sooner he was done reproaching me, the sooner I could retreat to my outrageously dirty room and stay there. Pouting. It was all there was to do nowadays. This war was a farce.

I straightened my back and made my eyes wide. Perhaps then I would look attentive enough for him.

"Yes. I'm listening." A strange expression washed over my father's face. Next, he looked disheartened. Weak, almost. In an instant he was crouched and no longer towering over me. I felt immediate disappointment. A kind of twinge in my chest area. Was my father growing old? The lines on his face were now more pronounced. But the clouds were always moving, the sun always shifting. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. These things happened. He was Lucius Malfoy.

He said, "You're not a child any longer." I pondered this. Back then I didn't have the foresight to feel a curving sadness for this parting moment.

"No," I admitted slowly. I wondered briefly if he was going to give me a lecture about upholding the family honor again. After all, so far my life as a Malfoy had not turned out any great accomplishments. I was a bit of a disappointment, I supposed. An anomaly.

"Father? You were saying?"

"I am not a coward." Yes, he was definitely feeling restless. He was feeling claustrophobic in the midst of his ballroom-sized study.

"Yes, I know. What of it?"

"No. Damn it all. It's not what I wanted to say."

I raised an eyebrow. "Then what did you want to say?"

"I...I'm tired. I wanted to explain that I was tired."

"Then go to bed." Why were things so complicated with him these days?

"It's a different kind--a kind you don't yet understand. My bones are tired."

"Then perhaps you should see a healer."

"My son." I stared back at him petulantly. Lucius' face briefly contorted in what appeared to be wistfulness, and then it was cold as stone. With each movement, there appeared sparks of anger. He was glowing with it. What had I ever done to make him so furious? "My son, you are blind."

Inwardly, I laughed. No--laughter is something reserved for amusement. I scoffed.

"It's this smoke," I said in a falsely cheery voice (secretly disgusted), pointing to the cloud of black rising through the trees outside. "No one can see anything."

II.

My father really was tired. I asked what was wrong. "Age," he replied. "The wrong is that we were made mortal." And he dared to sneer bitterly.

III.

In those muffled dusty waiting days my father spoke more to me than he had ever in any other time of our lives. He was making up for lost time, though I didn't feel there had been any time lost at all. Wasn't this what fathers and sons did? I watched him and respected him. What more did a father have to say to his son, save 'obey my will?' The options of conversation were limited between us. He thought he had a right to make me speak to him now, after nearly twenty-two years of silence, and only because he was in the twilight of his life. Getting old was something I knew and understood. His failing health was a stage of a cycle. It was seeing my own future before it happened. But did side effects of old age include increased tenderness and nostalgic outbursts? I didn't know why he was so desperate to tell me something I already knew.

IV.

"I am not a coward." I ignored him. He was senile. It was all he ever said anymore. Narcissa did not even enter his bedchamber any longer.

"You don't understand me. I'm not evil." I flinched at the juvenile word.

"I never thought you were."

"But you thought I killed men?"

"Yes, I knew. You're still my father."

"You're still my son. But it's not enough."

"Then what more do you want?" I snapped. "Remorse will do you no good now. I don't wish for you to feel regret. For what are you feeling regret, anyway? You've never doubted your convictions. I thought it was the Malfoy way." I had never been so rude to him in my life.

"I still have those convictions," he replied in a steely voice.

"Then why are you acting as if you've got to defend yourself in front of me, father?"

"Because you don't know anything about us. Because you're too stupid. A dense idiot is what you've become, and who's to blame but me? I shouldn't have expected you to figure it all out. I should have shown you."

I didn't answer as he continued to bemoan his failed parenting. I looked around for a place to sit--nowhere but the dusty chair. Damn it all. My buttocks would be covered in specks of white. I didn't care--there was no one to see me like this anyway; smudged cheeks and greasy hair. Dying father. We were all holed up like--like...like cowards. Yes, exactly like that. Too afraid to make our last stand. Too cautious. I was too careful. A selfish, comfortable bastard. How much longer could my name and money buy me ignorance?

V.

Lucius Malfoy's handwriting was distinct. I'll tell you an ancient Malfoy secret:

Family has always been the purpose.

When I read it, it was already too late. Or perhaps it wasn't late at all--perhaps it was exactly the right time. Though it wasn't fair. Revelations weren't supposed to come all at once. But here, here it was shoved inside through my mouth, my nose. I couldn't breathe.

VI.

Draco the Death Eater. A nice ring. Why did people act surprised? What other course of action was there? Choice wasn't a choice. I didn't mind terribly. I wasn't given any real responsibility; occasionally, I gave food to prisoners. A female prisoner smiled at me and her eyes spilled liquid substance: tears.

"I'm going insane here," she whispered to me conspiratorially. "I never thought I could go crazy."

"Loony is as loony does," I quipped.

"What do you mean?"

"Should I know? No one ever knows what they mean anymore."

"Yes. This war. Someone should have told me that it was also a war of our minds, our souls. My thoughts don't know which side they're on. Light or dark."

"Or gray."

She looked straight at me. Her brown eyes were very lifeless. I was disturbed.

"Yes. So many shades of those."

VII.

"Will you kiss me? Sometimes when I feel dirty, I want to feel as dirty as I can before getting clean. It makes the cleaning part worth it. Don't you think?"

"My, you truly are crazy." She giggled and let out a frustrated yell. My heart beat faster to the animalistic sound that came out of her mouth. It must have come from deep within her chest. Somewhere in the pits of that soul she kept speaking of. These were the little secrets of life. The fact that her screaming made me feel like I was more alive. Feeling--that was the key to it all. It roused my passion. It drove me mad. I was a complex being now.

"Alright," I said and I did kiss her. And a thought came to me. Perhaps we were more in our minds than we had ever been. Impulse--maybe that was sanity. Maybe we had been searching for the wrong thing after all.

"I'm so fucked up," she screamed/laughed/slumped over to the unwashed cement floors.

"People urinate on the floor," I said. She blinked up at me. And laughed. Genuinely. Soft and careful.

"Was that funny?"

"You sounded just like your old self. As if filthy floors mattered still. But I suppose it's important to keep that kind of spirit up. You've still got your family, haven't you?"

"Only my mother."

"Yes. You lucky son of a bitch."

VII.

The next time I visited my prisoner girl, she was cold and stark. This is what that dreaded and wonderful idea called hope did to a person.

"Right," I said when she spat at me. "I suppose you do want to go without food for a while?"

"Is that what you'll do if I don't entertain you? Starve me?"

No. Answer.

"I'm not scared." She leaned her face close to mine. For the first time, I noticed that her hair was red. "The light side has broken through your defense. We're winning."

This time, it was I who laughed.

"Think it's hilarious, do you?"

"No. You sounded just like your old self. As if we were still keeping score." Too bad there was a small tremor, undoing all of my bravado.

She smiled a slick smile. "Oh, but we are keeping score. A point for each one of your garbage dead. A point for each shred of hope."

I was angry. The anger rose in me as if a sudden gust of wind had picked up--it coursed hotly through my veins. I grabbed her roughly and smashed my mouth against hers. Hoping for something in return for that brief passion. The word 'rekindle' came to mind. A reprise. Hoping for what? For her to be a liar? For everything to remain status quo? For me to never really pick sides? Being in a pseudo-limbo was better than being too much of one thing. Loyalty was a joke anyway. What would happen to us, to me, if she was right? If I was standing on the losing land? Oh, yes--fear was a scary thing. It reduced men to animals.

"Malfoy," she said. Then she spat the name. She gave it poison. "Malfoy. The name suits you. Your mother will probably die soon. Will you even mourn her?"

"Avada Kedavra!" I was scared (maybe sort of) when the girl fell limply to the ground. "A point for me, " I said. I considered crying. But didn't.

IX.

That stupid Weasley girl was right. Our side was beginning to grow weak and thin in number. Betrayal was the new faith.

"This is silly," I said in my snotty little voice. "Why don't we just hold up our arms and surrender? We've lost anyway. At least then we won't all die out. We could plead insanity." Most of them looked at me as if I were Dumbledore himself. Dancing in a yellow tutu.

"Shut the hell up," Bellatrix Black snarled. "You stupid fucking child."

X.

"Malfoy," he acknowledged with some degree of wariness.

"Potter," I replied. "No need to look so scared. Are things suddenly different between us?"

"Of course it is," he said quickly.

"Why? Because we've all learned bigger and better spells? I don't believe so," I said quietly, in stark contrast to his echoing syllables.

"It's different because I'm going to kill you."

"That's stupid. This is stupid. What are you fighting for, Potter?"

"What are you fighting for?"

"For what's right," I replied easily. Potter looked triumphantly infuriated.

"Who are you to decide that?"

"Who are you?"

XI.

Potter has won. 500 billion points for him, there's no way I can catch up. (There's no time to be bitter either). I still don't know if that gives him license to sport an ego so big or a sense of righteousness so large, but the manor I called home sits as little more than rubble and even the heat that consumed it as it burned is gone.

XII.

Getting sent to Azkaban might perhaps make a person despair. Am I despairing? Maybe. I feel that these situations are rather unfortunate. But they aren't simply throwing around words when they call us ambitious.

Draco, as a child, would have hated the sight of blood. A-Month-Ago-Draco would have detested it. The color doesn't suit him, and really--the trouble of killing someone has never been appealing. Why, when I can simply sit in the lap of luxury, protected by the brick walls of my house? Everything I needed was contained. But those distant memories of living in a sheltered world are gone. I have returned to the days of my parents, the way it had been. My childhood was the glory days, which has been stolen from me. Perhaps this sort of anger fuels a person's vindicating actions.

When I stalked through the night, the moonlight casting barred shadows upon my skin, it was easy. This was unexpected to them. They should have remembered; humans don't know when to give up. As my friends and accomplices gathered around me, wands at the ready, their bodies fell so effortlessly. It was a sight.

The only guilt that I felt branched from the fact that I didn't even look at the faces of those I murdered. In my mind there were only visions of my mother, rotting in cell number 18. In my roaring heart there were only the sounds of my old home, burning in a field of black. Anger empowered me. Anger dissipated my cowardice. My father's words embedded themselves in my brain. And this drove me, not to kill, but to do what was necessary. For the sake of survival. Because centuries of warring would not end, because we love too much, too instinctively. Too blindly.

XIII.

And because we are made immortal by our families, the passing of our blood. I want to live forever.