The Malfoy Project

𝟏𝟐 - 𝐀𝐧 𝐀𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 (*TW)

✼¹

     *TW: suicide, violence, gore 

     I never liked the Astronomy Tower. It is a place often romanticised by students, Hogwarts' own lover's lane. Its isolated location and height also provides a safe space for other dodgy doings, anything desired to be kept from the prying eyes of professors: Midnight dealings of Laughing Potions, cheating couples stealing touches and kisses. Sex.

     Tonight, it's the place I choose to do my transcriptions.

     There's a space at the back big enough to hold twenty students. The professor's desk is large, standing to the side of a wide, rectangular board that Sinistra uses to teach star charts. The recorder takes up almost a table top, leaving me just enough space to lay out the pieces of parchment as my quill writes and writes.

     Four hours, just barely, and I've managed to produce three neat stacks of scripts, one for each of the Malfoys. Draco's restrained voice bounces off the close walls and rotating globe structures; my quill dips itself into the bottle of ink as it races to keep up.

     I found myself wishing it had been me Voldemort had tried to kill, because then maybe, just maybe, my parents might have looked at me with an ounce of pride or affection. I hated Potter for being alive. Because as long as he existed, I did not.

     I pause the tape and rewind.

     Because as long as he existed, I did not.

     Something moves in me, advancing like a tidal wave. I think of the eleven-year-old Draco I remember from First Year with his combed hair and pewter eyes; a little round-cheeked devil deriding Harry for all he was worth with an animosity unbefitting a child. Crabbe and Goyle sniggering at the side, the only people who made Draco feel like he was somebody simply because they haven't brains of their own.

     I think of this same boy arriving home for the holidays to an avalanche of chastising, his snide smirk replaced by an upturned crescent, torn open and collecting salty tears as the emerald-eyed snake drank its fill.

     Some might say it is the natural order of life. Yin and Yang. Goodness must have evil; light must have darkness; a villain must have a hero.

     Monsters are not born, they are bred. And a monster Draco has been shaped to be, begotten by the same cruelty his father had by his grandfather, and his grandfather by his; so on and so forth.

     But I wasn't evil. I wasn't dark. And I wasn't a villain. Not to myself, at least. But everyone said I was, so I told myself I must be.

     Pause and rewind.

     But everyone said I was, so I told myself I must be.

     I rest my finger on the rewind button and close my eyes, playing the last line over and over, letting it sink over me, settle in my heart like an iron cast.

     There's something about this boy. Some part of his soul that remains unexplored, untapped, unseen, unheard. I want to find out what it is.

     A change in the light behind my eyelids startles me out of my trance. I open them to see Draco standing on the landing, the image of the small boy now morphed and materialised into a grown man of statuesque physique. The moon comes in from behind him, outlining his silhouette in a heavenly, somewhat angelic haze.

     We gawk at each other. His recorded voice echoes one last time in the stillness like the whispered admission of a crime.

     - everyone said I was, so I told myself I must be.