What No One Was Meant to Know

Draco stared out of the circular, grimy window at the bleary Hogwarts grounds. From his seat on the sill he could see the whole expanse of the lawns, the forest, the tiny hamlet of Hogsmeade and the mountain slopes beyond.

The sky was grey and dull; the rough undersides of the clouds reflected on the vast expanse of lakewater, giving it an ominous jagged appearance. This was enhanced by the breeze, which created uneven ripples upon the surface, giving the impression that strange and mysterious creatures lurked just beneath them. This same breeze rustled the few leaves which remained on the branches of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. Even these bare branches did not cause the forest to appear sparse, as there were so many of them. Draco still didn't know, even after his experience in first year and his curious research, exactly what kinds of creatures dwelled in the notorious forest.

He had never admitted to anyone that the forest frightened him. He wasn't scared of the creatures that lived in it, or of the infinite darkness which seemed to creep between the trees. No one else would understand the depths of Draco's instinctive fear, because no one else had grown up in the environment Draco had. His father had taught him of the Darkness from as early as Draco could recollect, and he had grown up with Lord Voldemort's name spoken as God, the ultimate, infinite, omniscient power to which all would bow. Draco had been taught to fear him. Upon fear was built respect, and upon respect was built obedience, and only through obedience could Draco honour and glorify the Malfoy name as generations had before him.

This primal, instinctive fear was what propelled Draco's life: his actions, his words, his thoughts, and his emotions, of which there were so few. This fear drove his prejudices and his beliefs, but above all, it drove his pride. For Draco was proud of where his allegiance lay; proud of his ancestry, his connections and his past. Everything Draco had done was for the good of himself and for his family. He pleased his father, he pleased Lord Voldemort, and this was his aim in life. Draco had no ulterior motive but to create the best life he could for himself, and the best environment in which to live it.

Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers. Scum. Draco agreed entirely with the Dark Lord's proposals to be rid of the lot of them. Muggles, though: there were too many to be rid of them entirely. They made good servants, slaves, even entertainment. They were more pleasing to the eye than House Elves, to say the least.

This was why, when He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had informed his mother of the task Draco was required to do, he had been proud. Not afraid or remorseful, but proud. Albus Dumbledore was the one thing, the one person, who truly stood in the way of Lord Voldemort. And Lord Voldemort's reign would cleanse the world of all who were not worthy: all those who polluted the magical community with their filthy blood and poisonous ideas.

Draco had only one downfall, a downfall which he knew would cost him his honour, his pride, and ultimately his life. His father had tried to cleanse it from his system, but had been unsuccessful in his impatience and anger. His mother had understood, for it was this which had made her decide, long ago, that she could never truly pledge her soul to the Dark Lord.

Narcissa could not kill. She had never found within herself the ability to take another human life. To her husband's despair and rage, she had passed this weakness on to her only son and Lucius' heir. Draco, too, could not kill. He could perform the highly complex and taxing Avada Kedavra curse to perfection, having practised on numerous unsuspecting and innocent animals and the odd plant in moments of boredom, and had not felt any regret or sorrow for the removal of something so sacred and priceless; life. When he had come to be tested, however, his father had ordered him to murder an old Muggle man. Although Draco knew that the man's life was nearing its end, and that he would feel no pain, only a rushing sensation and a blast of green light, he could not do it. The words could not form upon his lips, he could not twist his tongue into that most powerful phrase. It was not out of empathy, not out of any sympathy with the Muggle; Draco was simply incapable.

But now, now it was something more. He had tried so many times to strike down Muggles in the street, and Draco was more than incapable. He was unwilling. He had watched death so many times that he had become immune to it, until -

When Lucius had been taken to Azkaban, Draco had been collected from King's Cross at the end of term by their House Elf, the replacement for the traitor Dobby. As Draco arrived by the elf's strange manner of Side-Along-Apparition in his Drawing Room, he had been greeted by his mother. She was unlike Draco had ever seen her. Her robes were luxurious as always, and her hair and makeup were perfect, apart from the streaks of blackness and bloodshot eyes which made Narcissa so different from the way she had always been. Rarely had Draco's mother shown any emotion other than malicious satisfaction, yet it had been clear to Draco that she loved him.Just as she loved him,he loved her;never having seen her this way before, it surprised Draco to find thatseeing her this way, in such obvious grief, caused great pain in him. She was the only person he had ever really been close to. His father was always there, a prominent figure in his upbringing, but never had there been any affection between Lucius and his only child. He was already a ghost in Draco's memories, a figure long gone despite the fact that he was free again.

Draco loved his mother, and he hated Albus Dumbledore. These were two things he was very sure of. But the one memory he held on to, the thing that made him question everything, everything about himself, his father, his past and his future, was this one:

He had immediately run to his mother and wrapped his arms around her, unsure for the first time in his life what he should be doing. To his great surprise, she had begun to cry. No one had ever leaned on a Malfoy. And a Malfoy leaned on no one. Draco knew this, but nothing about the love between a mother and her son was wrong. This was just as evident to him, and the fact that these two facts contradicted each other so violently had not sunk in. As Narcissa cried, Draco had said, "I miss him too, mother. It's okay." She had looked up at him with a smile on her face, which Draco couldn't comprehend.

"You misunderstand me, Draco. I do not grieve for your father. He will be free soon enough."

"Then what -" Draco had looked at his mother, confused.

"I would not expect you to understand."A tone of bitterness had entered Narcissa's voice. "After all, you are a Malfoy, born and bred."

Draco had struggled to work out her meaning. "But you are a Malfoy too. I am your son."

"A Malfoy by marriage and now by name. I was born a Black and raised to feel."

"What do you mean?"

"I was born into a warm and loving family.We shared the Malfoys' views, but we were taught to love and cherish those around us, not to stand alone as you have learned."

"Are you not stronger now? It is better to stand alone than to be weak and reliant upon others."

"You have been taught most effectively." She shook her head."But I already knew that. What you fail to understand, though, my son, and what your father has forever been unable to comprehend is that strength and life are not co-dependent."

"What -" But Narcissa had not finished, and she had given her son a look. It was not unkind, but showed that she thought his interruption disrespectful.

"I may have been weaker as a Black, and I may have been naïve in many ways, but in truth I was much more happy, much more content in my innocence."

"Are you not happy with Father? You love him." The latter was a statement, not a question. Harsh as Draco's beliefs were, he had always been sure that marriage was built on love.

"Love is a fickle thing, Draco. I loved your father so much that I would have died for him."

"What do you mean, loved? Do you not love him any more?"

"Alas, my son, in time we have grown apart. I still feel great affection for Lucius, but your father is a Malfoy and I should have known from the beginning that, for all Malfoys, family honour comes before emotion, and love is a trivial thing; negotiable to the last. Do not think that your father and I are enemies. We are still close, but I would not weep for his absence."

"I don't understand. Why are you upset if not for him?"

"I told you, Draco, that I was happier before I became a Malfoy, before my feelings and emotions had to be hidden." Draco nodded, his brow furrowed. "I suppose I am wistful. I regret the loss of the comfort and affection I knew as a child. I regret the loss of those people who were dear to me; who showed me that warmth."

"Aunt Bellatrix?"

Narcissa nodded. "Yes, Bellatrix is lost to me. She, like Lucius, has lost her soul to the Dark Lord, and with her soul went her love. My other sister -"

"You have another sister?"

"Yes. I suppose you would be too young to remember her. Her name was Andromeda."

"Was? She's dead?"

"Yes. My aunt killed her years ago."

"Killed her?" Draco stared at his mother incredulously. "Why?"

"She was a blood traitor. Married a Muggle."

"Oh, I see." Draco understood the significance of this, of course, but that didn't explain why she was dead. "But killing her? Isn't that a bit extreme?"

"Extreme? Oh yes. My dear aunt was very...extreme. She killed her and left her poor husband for dead. Had enough compassion to leave their child though," she added bitterly. "May have helped that she was under Albus Dumbledore's protection at the time."

"Dumbledore?" Draco sneered. "That old fool?"

"Yes, that old fool," Narcissa sighed. "In many ways a great wizard, but he will insist on protecting Mudbloods."

"This is your niece, though!"

"Oh, yes. I never would have wanted her dead. I don't believe..." She stopped, looking thoughtful.

"Don't believe what?" Draco was intrigued now.

"I don't believe that killing Mudbloods is the best way to deal with them."

Draco took a step backwards. "Father always taught me -"

"I know. I'm not saying thathe is wrong, and I am not saying that he has taught you ill. I am perhaps too compassionate."

He nodded, frowning. "Didn't your mother - didn't she stop Andromeda's murder?"

"My mother?" Narcissa laughed coldly and another tear slipped down her already tear-stained cheek. "After my father died, she - she lost her mind. Became almost senile, like my aunt. Hated muggles, Mudbloods and blood traitorsto the point where she would do anything to kill them all. Even -" she sniffed, her voice shaking, "even Andromeda."

To Draco's dismay, he could feel tears welling up in his own eyes as he watched his mother cry and imagined her pain. He said the only thing he could think of to try and give her comfort. "There must be someone else." His mother looked back at him, her eyes red and tears still leaking out of them. "Your - your cousins? I remember you having cousins."

"My cousins," Narcissa said, and her voice was empty now, devoid of all emotion. Unlike before, no pain or sorrow could be heard. She was like a statue as she stood, only her lips moving. "Sirius and Regulus Black."

"Sirius - Sirius Black. Harry Potter's Godfather."

Narcissa nodded. "And Regulus."

"What happened to Regulus?"

"He - he was killed by the Dark Lord. The stupid boy got in to deep and wanted out, and - you can't say no to Him."

"Oh. You were close to - to Sirius?"

"In my younger days, I was. We were all very close. But he was lost to me as soon as he met James Potter, as soon as he was poisoned into his Gryffindor way of thinking." Her eyes narrowed now. Yet another reason for Draco to hate Potter. "He left our family and became one of them. And now...and now...now..." Silent tears flowed out of Narcissa's eyes and formed intricate trails down her pale cheeks, criss-crossing and intermingling as her shoulders shook and her lip trembled. "Now he's dead."

Draco could only watch as his mother's body shook with grief. She seemed so much frailer and more vulnerable than he had ever seen her. She was his strength, the one he looked up to. Draco aimed to please his father, but he admired his mother for her acceptance of him, failures or none. And now she was breaking down.

"He...he was my only hope."

"Your only -"

"My only hope. The only one I had left who could still be capable of - of feeling. The only one I could ever hope to reach out to. And now he's gone."

"Bellatrix -" Draco suddenly realised, "Bellatrix killed him."

"Yes. I have no one left now. Bellatrix has been blinded, Lucius - your father is cold. You, Draco. You're all I've got."

Clutching at straws, trying to think of anything he had been taught, any lesson he could think back to, Draco said, "You have the Dark Lord."

"The Dark Lord." Narcissa was looking straight at Draco now, her eyes boring into him, questioning without words.

"The Dark Lord. No matter what, we have love for the Dark Lord. That's what you always told me. What Father always told me," Draco pleaded silently with his mother, "r-right?"

"Draco, there is something I have failed to teach you." Narcissa looked sad.

"What's that?" Draco held his head high,reverting tothe one thing he was sure of: pride.

"Draco-" Her voice was soft now, almost comforting. "- there is a fine line between love and hate. Neither are distinct; in fact, some would say they are the same. Both are passion: a fierce, burning passion, and all passion in the end is connected. Someday, somehow, one touches the other and that which we love becomes that which we hate. That which we hate we find ourselves loving and once we are lost in passion, it is nigh onimpossible to distinguishor build on either. The one thing you must remember, Draco, is never to lose yourself. Never lose who you are. No matter who or what you love and hate, no matter where it takes you, never forget what you really feel."

"Mother -" Draco wanted to ask what she meant, what she was warning him of. He needed to know what it was that she feared.

"Enough, Draco. I have told you enough."

The sky was turning darker, the clouds looking velvety now in the dusk light. Draco gulped back the lump that had formed in his throat, and sighed. He gazed now at the infinite depths of the lake, wishing he could lose himself in it; lose himselfin its cool, suffocating blackness. Or he could run away into the mountains; find himself a cave somewhere and live forever in isolation: a recluse. He almost laughed at the idea. One thing Draco did not enjoy was his own company. Anyway, he would not survive a week after running away from a task given to him by Lord Voldemort. Regulus Black and Igor Karkaroff were proof of that.

Igor Karkaroff...how different things would have been if Draco's father had sent him to Durmstrang instead of Hogwarts. He would perhaps never have met or known Harry Potter, whose mere existence had turned his family upside-down as their hope for a better world was destroyed. He would never have been close to Professor Dumbledore, and would not now have to act as an assassin. He would not have to fail his task and lose his life, leaving his poor mother to face the world and Lord Voldemort's wrath alone.

A solitary shining tear leaked out of Draco's eye, and he pressed one pale and slender hand against the window, wishing to the ends of the earth for a way of escape, a way out. His hand slid slowly down the dust-covered windowpane, leaving a trail of clear glass beside it, the shape of his fingers a desperate plea for someone, anyone, to help him out of this mess. The world around Draco seemed, through this smear on the window, suddenly more real, more corporeal, and he knew in that instant, what his fate had in store for him.

With this realisation, Draco wept.

He had never been so alone before. He had always relied only on himself, using those around him only as lackeys or feeble distractions. Draco Malfoy had always been in control. But now he knew that he could not do this alone. He needed help, some way to escape from this tangled web and, as was inevitable, there was no one to help him.

Draco spun around as a splash from behind him jerked him out of his despairing thoughts. Then a voice said, "Who's there? I can hear you crying from halfway down the corridor, you know."

"Oh, Myrtle." Draco almost smiled at the relief the whiny voice gave him. He was just so glad no one else had walked in on him, Draco Malfoy, in tears. Trouble or no trouble, he had a reputation to uphold.

"Hello to you too," Myrtle said sniffily.

"What, you expect me to be overjoyed that you walked in on me -"

"Crying?"

"Yes, that."

Myrtle smirked. "What's wrong with you?"

Draco noticed that she looked disturbingly happy to see someone else having a hard time. A Slytherin mind if ever he saw one. Except a Slytherin wouldn't be that whingey. "None of your business."

"Oh, so that's how it is. I'll just go and ask the rest of the school why you're crying in a girls' toilet then, shall I?"

"No!" Draco shouted. "I mean -" Draco had forgotten completely that Myrtle wouldn't even know his name, and couldn't really do much damage in that respect."I, er, don't want to talk about it."

"Well, I do want to talk about it," Myrtle said defiantly, gliding past the row of peeling cubicles and broken sinks, her reflection eerie in the long grimy mirror, to hover beside Draco on the windowsill.

"Hmph." Draco couldn't think of a smart retort that wouldn't send thepetulant ghost shooting off to inform the rest of the school that Draco Malfoy was crying in a bathroom.

"So?"

"So what?"

"So why are you crying? Is it a girl?"

Draco snorted. "I wish!"

"Oh..." Myrtle looked gleeful. "It's a boy, then?"

"No!" Draco yelled. "It - it's not my love life."

"Oh." She looked put-out now. "Um...has someone died?"

"No -" Draco almost laughed. "- though that could be quite useful, too."

Myrtle looked very interested now. "Oooh, have you killed someone?"

"Nope."

"Sure?"

"Yes, sadly."

"You're very odd, you know."

"Yes, I pride myself on it." Draco rolled his eyes when Myrtle was looking the other way.

"So?"

"Haven't you given up yet?"

"No!" she said huffily. "Is it...um...well, you haven't got spots and you're not even very ugly, so you can't be crying over that..."

"Thanks a bunch," Draco muttered, and thankfully Myrtle didn't notice.

"I don't know."

"Wow, really? You surprise me," Draco snarled in his usual sarcastic tone, forgetting that he should be at least pleasant, if not nice, to Myrtle.

Myrtle's eyes filled with tears. "Why are people always so mean to me? Stupid Myrtle, Myrtle doesn't know anything! Myrtle -"

"No, I didn't mean that, honest!" Draco sighed. He supposed he couldn't really upset the bloody ghost if he didn't want the rest of the school to find out about his little breakdown.

"Yes you did, you -" Myrtle wailed again.

"No, I just meant nobody could know because it's so awful!"

That stopped Myrtle's crying. "Ooh, is it?"

"Yes." Draco nodded earnestly. "It's horrible."

"Do tell!" Myrtle said eagerly.

"Well, it's like this..." Draco contemplated what he should tell Myrtle, and decided on the truth. Or, at least, an abridged version of it. That way he wouldn't have to spend valuable time and energy making anything up.

"Yes?"

"Basically, someone wants me to kill someone but I can't. And if I don't, they're going to kill me and my family and everything will be awful."

"Oh," Myrtle said, and Draco could almost see the cogs turning in her transparent head. "That is bad."

"Yup," Draco sighed. For some reason he felt slightly better for telling Myrtle. After all, she would never know who he had been ordered to kill, or who had ordered him to do it.

"What are you going to do?"

"Do?" Draco laughed sadistically. "There's nothing I can do!"

"Isn't there?" Myrtle drifted for a secong looking puzzled, and scratching absent-mindedly at a spot on her nose.

"No." Draco felt tears welling up again. What was wrong with him today? So far he had been holding out just fine. Well, he hadn't had a mental breakdown at any rate.

"There must be something," she said, wide-eyed.

He shook his head, then thought out loud. "I don't know what it is. It feels like - like everything I've ever known was true is being questioned. I believed everything my father told me, but now I know that some of it is wrong. Look at my mother -" he broke off, but started again almost immediately. "He can't be that far wrong, though. Mudbloods are scum and the world should be rid of them, and Lord Voldemort should reign. I hate Muggles and I love the Dark side. Don't I? Of course I do. I fear Him, and fear is respect. Respect is obedience and obedience is right. The Dark is right. That's what I know, it's what I've been taught, and how can it be wrong? Albus Dumbledore is a Muggle-loving fool and I must kill him. I must do the task that has been set in front of me and do it well. My mother was just upset when she was talking about love and passion and hate and all that stuff. She's not warning me of this, she agreed. She told me what Lord Voldemort said. Yes. I'm going to do it. My mother told me I should and...yes. That's right. I must kill Albus Dumbledore."

It was lucky, perhaps, that Myrtle had zoomed off in tears whenDraco started talking about killing Muggle-borns, and hadn't heard the last of his monologue as he stared out at the oncoming darkness.

END