The Malfoy Project

𝟏𝟎𝟕 - 𝐂𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐀𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐮𝐧

༻⚜️༺

The rain outside had not let up for hours. I knew it was raining by the way the ocean was crashing with a vengeance against the wet icy wall that separated me from it.

I was used to being on my own, in my childhood safely cloistered away from "those half-blood runts", as Father liked to call them. And there had been that long period of self-imposed isolation in Sixth and Seventh Year, when I abandoned the world because I thought it had abandoned me. 

But those times were nothing compared to this. Here, there was not a single soul to set my eyes upon, no bodies attached to the voices that reverberated against the walls in one long, non-stop note, harmonising with the the same monotonous crashing waves. 

My heart was rubbed sore from the memories of things I missed: Ainsley, Dobby, my secret garden, the Hufflepuff Common Room, the Quidditch pitch — everything seemed so distant now. I was on a boat in the ocean, and they were an island I kept drifting further and further away from.

The darkness was suffocating, taunting. I turned my face further into my pillow and squeezed my eyes close. I feared that if I opened them, I would see things in the inky black space — old ghosts and monsters wearing faces I recognised, who lived in my memories.

How was it possible to be afraid of something I'd been surrounded by my whole life?

There it was. A terrible truth I'd spent most of my life avoiding.

I was afraid of the dark.

The only people I saw were the Auror guards, who came like shadows every morning at six and every evening at seven to give me food — or at least that's what they call it. A bowl of plain porridge for breakfast and for dinner, gray bits of unknown meat with cold potatoes. I had no appetite, and ate only one of the meals each day. 

The only visitor I was allowed was Selwyn, who came a few hours ago to prepare me for the trial. He painstakingly ran me through my straw wall defence: Yes, I had fired the spell, but I'd only been defending Ainsley from her abusive boyfriend. Yes, I had been involved in a romantic relationship with her while she was with Montague, but that was not a crime. Yes, I bore the Mark on my arm, but I have since made reparations for my behaviour by educating myself and changing the company I surrounded myself with. Our witnesses would testify for it. 

All of this could be easily refuted, Selwyn had reminded me. Montague had an unbeatable record on paper: full marks for almost all of his homework and a bulletproof reputation as the Slytherin boy who liked everyone and was well-liked back. Not to mention his consistent wins for the Slytherin Quidditch team. He had witnesses too, said Selwyn, and not only would they testify — they would go to war for him. 

Moreover, the outcome would also depend largely on how the council received our side of the story, and how they viewed Ainsley and me. He had told me all of this with an odd, heavy look in his eyes, and I understood what he was saying: Don't count on it. There is little hope of success, so be prepared for what is to come when we fail.

I did not remember him leaving, or much of anything else after that. The world had collapsed around me, becoming one with the dull grey thuds that roared outside.

Murder.

The word tumbled in my mind for hours, perhaps days. Time had no weight or form here in the depths of Azkaban, every millisecond crushed into oblivion by the cold wetness and reverberating sounds of anguish.

Murder. That was my judgement, though the word was not entirely foreign to my identity.

I had been called a murderer before, the three syllables hopping between my schoolmates' tongues after the incident with Dumbledore in the Astronomy Tower. The word followed me into the trial that proceeded the War, in which Father and Selwyn fought tooth and nail to secure our pardon. Even then, it clung to me, to the walls of our house, settling into the rotting stone and decaying carpets, eventually becoming its name too.

But now the word had taken on a new meaning. Because as I had stared Dumbledore in the face that night and gazed upon the fiery destruction those fiends wrought upon my school — I had never felt the way I did when I had my wand pointed at Montague's throat.

I remember vividly the black rage that had swept through my veins, rushing to fill every corner of my soul. It had shrouded my vision for too long a second, momentarily obliterating the rest of the world. Were it not for that distant light of Ainsley's presence in the room, that blackness would have plunged me into an abyss I'd never have resurfaced from. 

This was what Selwyn and Ainsley did not know. They did not know that if it really came down to it, I could easily speak two pithy words and snuff someone's life out as easily as pinching a candle. 

I wondered if my being in Azkaban would be for the better — safer — where I could do no more harm. Sometimes, it felt like my pain began centuries ago, eons, when I had been nothing but dust on a distant star. There has always been something melancholic about the stars, something infinitely lonely. Maybe my pain began there. And maybe there it would end.

Another memory flitted through my mind's eye: Ainsley and I side by side on the garden swing, gently rocking in the fuzzy afternoon light. Can I sit next to you? 

No one had asked to sit next to me for as long as I could remember. I recalled, as clearly as my rage, how the warmth from her body next to mine permeated my skin. The echo of the tinkling fairies, the leaf-scented breeze sighing faintly in our ears. Something had unfurled within me that day, something that had been asleep for as long as I could remember. It was like pushing the curtains away to let in the morning sun.

And the sun had come, hadn't it? Blinding and startling. It came in the form of a blonde girl with a winking smile and frothy giggle, her skirt always several inches too short, her voice several decibels too loud. And it came in the form of a lanky Scottish boy who could not duel or catch a Quaffle to save his life, but who spoke as if he had lived a thousand different lives.

The sun was there in the smiles from Hufflepuffs I'd never spoken to before, when the sound of my name was no longer followed by a request or demand as it'd been at home or with Voldemort, but a cheery acknowledgement of my existence. It was there on Jasmin Hussain's face when the delivery of cheese for her knafeh arrived; and when the girls in our room began to include my name in their goodnight sound-off before bed, and in the deep, peaceful sleeps that followed.

It is, at times, still unbelievable to me that such a period had occured in my life, lasting a little too long to be a fluke. It was a demonstration of what my life could be — not in another dimension or plane of existence, but in the here and now, in this infinitely sad and miserable world. People still loved and cared without wanting. I remembered that I, too, was capable of other kind of emotions besides anger, and hate, and hurt.

I thought of what Ainsley had said just before we entered the boiler room of my house: They are only shadows.

She had the proceeded to walk right in, curling up on the ice-cold floor. And what was it she'd said after that, when we were leaving the kitchens?

If you were to ever find yourself in such a position again, you could easily create an explosion that would bring down these very walls.

Behind those words she had hidden other truths about me, ones I'd always known but never believed:

I am scared, but I am not coward. I have hurt people, but I am not my father. I was a Death Eater, but I am not a murderer.

I am Draco Lucius Malfoy, and I am a human being. 

People could see that — people I once presumed were only silly, bird-headed Hufflepuffs. Next week, some of those silly, bird-headed Hufflepuffs would stand before a jury and swear to it. 

That meant that Selwyn was wrong. There was hope for me still. It meant that one day, in my world of cold and aimless midnight, the sun will rise again.

And I promised myself that this time, I will be there to greet it with open arms.