We Are

We are

She told me we were the ones deciding our fate. She was wrong. It's luck, love, hate, blood or a combination of these that makes us act the way we do.

She never lived enough to learn this. She died when she was only twenty-two. I never got over losing her. I woke up every morning for the last eight years thinking she will be right next to me. This is ridiculous, considering she was my wife for just two years.

We had a son and a daughter. Perfect twins, with our beauty combined with innocence. They had blue eyes, like her brothers'. Her eyes were fiery, a clear contrast from my icy ones. Our children died a week before she did. She couldn't take the pain.

I remember her standing in the rain, with strands of wine-colored hair clinging to her neck, waiting for me to arrive and tell her if her family had survived the battles. They hadn't, but she didn't cry. Instead, she made me promise I would never leave her. I never left her, not even her memory after she died.

She said we weren't responsible for the chaos that ensued after we left the war. Well, we were: each side accused the other of stealing one of its most reliable fighters. This is exactly why we left: we were on different sides. It never mattered to us, but it did to others. We were responsible for the final battle and for the pointless death of 13 Aurors.

Talamasca contacted me shortly after her death. They wanted me to study the lives of my Romanian relatives, who were thought to be vampires. I politely declined, but not before adding a little threat: the Malfoys are not to be toyed with. We are an ancient family that lives by its own rules and we do not welcome strangers or intrusions into our private matters. Undead Malfoys are a very private matter.

How strange that I defended the family I hate so much. I changed my name to Abstrus before I married Ginevra. Family pride is not something that can be erased so easily, so I am referred to as Draco Abstrus of Malfoy. Malfoy is linked to the worst parts of the war, so the "of Malfoy" part is something I kept as a reminder that my blood is that of darkness, Malfoy and Black, and that I was not designed to be good.

I am thirty-one years old now and I have no point in living. I don't feel alive. I cannot love anyone because she is not with me. My three angels are gone and I hate myself for surviving the war. I was meant to die with the rest of my family, not live in shame.

Too bad I can't talk to the Terrible Trio! They all died during the war, just after we became friends. They loved Ginny almost as much as I loved her; she loved them back, so I had to get along with them too. Hermione died first, then Ron in the "Weasley Massacre", and Harry followed suit a month later.

None of these things matter now. What matters is that the world is nothing like I had imagined growing up, there is no power to be obtained, money means nothing, and muggles hate us more than we hate them. I don't hate them any more. Ginny taught me how to love without being loved back. She taught me a lot of things.

She taught me that an angel can fall and rise again, that the line between good and evil exists only in our mind, and that love is giving everything, including yourself. She cured me of my selfishness, but she could never take the ice out of my heart and she could never make me readable. I kept my sharp cynicism and it cut at her very heart on innumerable occasions. She always turned the other cheek and that made me regret everything. She deserved much better than me.

She said we're not responsible, but we are. We are.