Fire & Ice - A Draco Malfoy fanfiction

Chapter 43 - Such words are a disgrace to your ancestors

She is untamed. She is the wild. She will come to you like a storm and wash you of your fears. And then when she leaves, you will wonder how you ever hated the rain.

- Ariana Dancu

"Eleanor, come here for a second", my mother called for me. I walked into the kitchen sleepily, not yet ready for the day.

"Draco arrived last night", she said. "Narcissa will be here in the afternoon."

"Oh, okay", I said, needing to keep the act up as she didn't know about our late night adventure. "Anything you need me to do?"

"Not particularly."

It was almost noon, but since we stayed up until five in the morning, my late start of the morning was justified.

"Is it true, what Narcissa said?" my mother asked as I was about to leave again. "Are you and Draco an item?"

Were we? I wasn't quite sure. We had never really made any of it official, so I think we were still in the figuring-out-what-this-is phase, but it did feel like we were ... together. It didn't matter anyway. In a couple of days it would all be over again.

"Something like that", I sighed, not wanting to get too deep into it. I didn't want to think about it. I preferred living in the moment recently, as the future wasn't particularly bright.

"It's good", my mother said. "You know what's going to happen to him, do you?"

I nodded. There was no use in denying it. I had expected it during the time that he was gone, but it had never really settled until he told me yesterday. Draco was going to become a Death Eater.

"Maybe the Dark Lord will make you one too when he finds out. That'd be good, you could help your father, he needs our help."

"When he finds out?" I asked. "I don't want it out, mother. I don't want to be one of them."

"Excuse me?" she huffed. "Being among them is a great honour. There are very few chosen to be so close to the Dark Lord. You should be ashamed of yourself."

"I'm not even sixteen, mother! How can you expect that from me?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. She wanted me to become one of them, to put my life on the line.

"Draco is two months older, what is the difference?" There was no difference, that was the problem. Why did they want a sixteen-year-old to join them? It wasn't right. He was too young to be doing such things. "Your father would be so disappointed in you, Eleanor. Such words are a disgrace to your ancestors."

I turned my head away. I hated her. I positively hated her. She didn't care about my well being or how I felt. All she cared about was climbing up in the ranks. And I was a disappointment.

"I'm just not strong enough", I said softly. "I can't do what they do."

"Clearly", she said, walking away. "Then you better stay away from Draco, because you will only drag him down."

I brushed off the comments. I could have expected this. I had changed over the past year and not in the way they wanted me to. I didn't mind the change, but I knew that it was dangerous in the current climate. It could get me killed.

I needed to portray the Selwyn beliefs, even if I disagreed with some. I needed show support to the Dark Lord, even though he frightened me. I could fake that, I had been trained for it my whole life, but a dark mark didn't lie.

I couldn't ever become a Death Eater, because the skin repels the Dark Mark if the owner doesn't fully support the ideas. I could change the way others thought about me, but I couldn't change my own thoughts. I had to keep up the act and that meant steering clear from the mark as long as I could.