Written for the Hunger Games Competition, with the prompts: tragedy, grief, Draco, "run away and never come back," and Malfoy Manor. I don't own the characters.
The day his father is taken to Azkaban is the happiest Draco feels for more than three hundred and sixty-five days, and that day he feels like shit.
A new man moves in to Malfoy Manor within a week, but at least he isn't fucking his mother. The new man reserves that privilege for Draco's aunt. He wishes he couldn't hear them. Even their sex sounds sadistic.
The Dark Lord is out for their family, and now Draco is certain of it. His father has made some mistake and all the Malfoys must pay. Lucius should have known better - always telling Draco to mind who is in power and give them their dues.
Draco's dues are his status as a Death Eater and an impossible assignment. Both are given to him on his sixteenth birthday.
He receives the Dark Mark in a secret ceremony. His mother does not attend. Long fingernails against his wand, massaging it into Draco's flesh. It burns like nothing he had ever felt and he wants to cry. He wants to murder his father for upsetting the Dark Lord. He wants to kill himself, too. But he knows he can't die without taking his mother with him; he just isn't sure if it would be her own grief or the Dark Lord that would kill her first. So instead he remains silent, tries to keep his face as unfeeling as possible as he experiences what pain means. It's worse than Crucio; it's so calculated, the etching of skull and snake. The Dark Lord smiles.
The tattoo is finished, red in color and bleeding too. "You are dismissed," comes the high, cool voice of the Dark Lord. Draco begins to leave. Aunt Bellatrix does not, her eyes full of a twisted pleasure at her nephew's pain. "Draco, come back. You and I are not quite done. Bellatrix, you are not needed."
Draco turns and comes to face the Dark Lord. They are nearly equal in height, but in nothing else. Draco is shaking.
"You are a Death Eater now, and you have an assignment."
He bows his head in respect, but protests, "Sir, I must be in school, or people will ask questions. When I am done, or after this year-"
"You misunderstand me. You are a Death Eater because you are still in school. Your task requires it."
"Yes, my Lord."
"Kill Albus Dumbledore." Draco has to stop himself from retching. He hates the man, certainly, a mad, eccentric fellow not fit to run a school, but to kill him? He does not feel up to the task. He does not dare say so.
It is hours after running to his mother's room and telling her that he wonders if he made a mistake. Maybe she shouldn't know. Maybe she will try to do something about it. She walks into his room hours later, sits down lightly on his duvet, her face unmoving. "Run away," she says with no beginning formalities. "Run away and never come back."
"But-"
"It's the only way, Draco. It's the only thing I can think of to keep you safe."
"He would kill you, Mum, if I don't kill Dumbledore. I would rather kill him than you," he mumbles.
She wraps an arm around him and pulls him close like the child he wishes he still was. "I'm going to find a way to protect you," she whispers, and he regrets letting her know at all.
He's had too many failed attempts, he knows, and he hopes the cabinets work, nearly a year later. He's been broken and wounded and ready to die for months when the Death Eaters - the other Death Eaters, his coworkers - show up.
"Run away and never come back," Dumbledore says. But still Draco refuses.
Draco Malfoy does not kill Albus Dumbledore.
But Albus Dumbledore still dies.
The Dark Lord is sure to know he failed, and though he stands unharmed, Draco feels himself falling off the tower with the old man he was supposed to murder and wishes it was himself crumbled lifeless in the dark.