Fallen in grace

Third year

Summer was indeed a hell. My father was furious about the failing of his plan. I heard him talking in the library many times with different voices I couldn't recognize about the failed plan and the role Potter had played in it. Apparently Potter and Dumbledore had also found out my father's involvement in the story. 

This made him also a little afraid, though he would not admit that to anyone. I also had to spend my summer pretending how horrible it was that no mudbloods had been killed by the basilisk.

Officially, I still didn't know anything about my father's involvement. Over summer I had become quiet good at sneaking around the house to listen in on the secret conversations that were being held in our library. I pretended to spend most of my time in my room studying in my new books.

We had a new house elf to replace Dobby who seemed to like me, Dury. I had convinced myself that I could profit from being nice to the house elf so I restrained myself from barking him around the house. I noticed he had lied a few times for me to my father which I knew was a horrible thing for a house elf to do. 

Sometimes my father would ask him where I was and he would say I was in my room while he knew I was in fact listening in to my father's conversation. Afterwards I often saw him smashing his head against the wall. Throughout the years I had learned that house elves would punish themselves when they were disobeying or betraying their masters. I saw Dobby do it quite a few times as well.

The big event in the wizarding world that summer was the escape of Sirius Black. According to the daily prophet he was a notorious killer and loyal follower of the You-Know-Who. Some rumours also said that he had betrayed the Potters which lead to their deaths. However as I had learned from my eavesdropping he wasn't a Death Eater. I heard my father discussing the manner with a man whose voice I thought to recognize as Crabbe's father that Black had never been on the side of You-Know-Who. 

As it turned out, he was one of his most persevering opposers during the war along with Potter's parents. I also learned I was related to him, apparently he was my mother's cousin. I figured that because of the shame he had brought to the family my parents had never mentioned him to me. My father was mocking my mother for being related to him during an argument they were having.

I was however most relieved that I hadn't heard of any new plans that involved killing people at my school.

When school started it was once again the great Harry Potter show. It seemed that killing the basilisk last year had made him even more a celebrity. He seemed a little down about the escape of Sirius Black but other than that he still didn't mind the excessive amount of attention he received from everyone around me.

We once again had a new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher who, unlike the previous two we had, actually knew what he was doing. I could however not admit that I liked him. My father had written to me that it was a shame they let him teach at our school. Apparently there was something wrong with him, though my father didn't tell me what exactly. He was also a former best friend of Potter's father and Black and a Gryffindor.

This all meant, in my father's eyes, that he was a horrible person and not fit to teach us. Most of my fellow Slytherins seemed to share that opinion. It wasn't clear however if they really believed that or had also been told by their parents to hate him. I could see some of them enjoying his classes, Blaise Zabini didn't even try to hide his excitement about Lupin's classes. I wish I could do the same, but as a Malfoy I had some status in Slytherin and I had to live up to that.

There was another change of staff that I didn't appreciate. Hagrid had now been named teacher of Care of Magical Creatures. As much as Lupin seemed to know what he was doing, Hagrid seemed to be completely oblivious. The first lesson he brought a hippogriff. Potter rode the hippogriff, annoyed of the attention he was receiving I figured it couldn't be that hard and approached the horrendous animal as well. 

I ended up lying in the hospital wing with a deep cut in my arm. I wrote to my father about the incident and he promised to make sure such a thing wouldn't happen again. For once, I was happy with the influence my father had.

During that year there were many sightings of Black which sent the whole school in a state of panic. One time he had even managed to enter the castle, according to the Fat Lady who guarded the access to Gryffindor's chambers. Rumour was that he was trying to sneak into Hogwarts to kill Potter. I knew that this was all bullshit since I knew that he wasn't a Death Eater and much more likely to try and save Potter than kill him.

The whole Black story was the only one worth telling from third year since no other exciting things happened. My father had convinced the minister about the dangerous hippogriff and the stupid animal would be executed. Knowing Potter and his followers liked Hagrid I decided to tease them a little about the killing of the animal. I regretted that decision very soon for Granger decided to slap me. I made myself a promise to teach her a lesson for that very soon, annoying know-it-all mudblood!

At the end of the year there had been a confrontation between the golden trio as Potter, Granger and the inevitable Weasley were called, aided by Lupin and Snape and Black. As far as the official story goes, Black managed to escape. However since I knew the truth about Black, I knew this wasn't the real story. I didn't know what exactly what went down, but I figured Potter had helped Black escape, possibly with the help of Lupin. I couldn't quite figure out what Snape's role had been during this.

I was relieved I could go home during summer for some time away from the great Harry Potter story. There was also a big event to look forward to this summer: the Quidditch World Cup. Above all, my father hadn't attempted to murder anyone this year so maybe he would be less hateful this summer. Maybe he had realized that killing wasn't the right solution to succeed in whatever mission he was. The Dark Lord was dead, I hoped my father would realize that trying to kill people could bring him great problems with the ministry...