An aunt on my mother's side gave this to me when I was a child... I never wrote in it, of course, diaries were (and are) such silly, impractical things. It's so easy to write everything in a diary, making it that much easier for one's own words to be used as a weapon against you. That, actually, was what I thought... and now that I look back it seems such a silly thing for a six-year-old to think about. Paranoid, morbid... well, I'm not writing in this thing to throw barbs at myself. I have other people who do that as a major form of entertainment. In fact, I don't know why I'm writing in this thing. It could be that I'm just seizing the first activity that comes to hand. Or I could really be bitter, about everything, and am using the little time remaining to me to finally, once and for all, establish things in my own mind.
Now that I read what I've written, it looks very egotistical and pompous. As if someone's going to read this. As if anyone cares. Well... if I'll be remembered for anything, at least I'll be remembered for those two traits, along with others less... appealing, shall we say.
I'll not name names nor point fingers. I don't think I could if I tried, the paranoia is too deeply ingrained. Give no information, one of the cardinal rules of my life. Well. If I'm to lay my soul bare in this silly little volume, I may as well begin. I suppose I could blame everything on my parents. Others before me have tried that and gotten away with it. I don't think I will, though. Certainly they have had influence, though... so why don't we start with my mother?
Mother was not a complex person. She had breeding and good looks, and that was all. She deferred always to my father and taught me very early on that I should do the same, which seemed to me very right and proper. My mother often lost herself in staring out a window or sweeping through the house like a mad person. She was not strong, often sick, given to strange moods where she would speak to no one and eat nothing for days on end, then snap out in a heartbeat and act perfectly normally. She died before I finished school; she drank poison one morning. Or possibly Father gave it to her, I don't know. I don't want to know.
I did not love my mother. I didn't even particularly like her, which should come as no great shock to anyone. She was too inconstant, too confusing. At one time when I was very small I remember loving my mother, I think... but it was hard to love someone who never seemed to be the same person for more than five minutes at a stretch. And that's my mother in a nutshell. Shall we move on to my father?
Somehow, I knew you'd have no objections.
My father... what can I say on this topic that someone else hasn't already said? I didn't love him either. I feared him, respected him, obeyed him, but that was all. I could never bring myself to hate him with the passion I saw others display... even after I knew, even after... I couldn't do it. It's a shocking feeling to realize you've been trained almost since birth to be a weapon of sorts... something to be used as leverage.
My father was very definite about everything, and transferred that to me. He was incapable of holding a weak opinion about anything, and neutrality was out of the question, so he had very strong feelings about everything. I have thought about this in the time I've been alone, which believe me has been quite some time, and have come to the conclusion that my father would either hate something or love it. I can only say with certainty that he loved two or three things in his lifetime. Which means he hated everything and everyone else.
Not a happy thought to accompany one on a walk. But now we've discussed my parents.
As I've said, I could blame everything on them. I think I have grounds. But I don't think I will, because of one person who keeps intruding in my thoughts... the anti-me, so to speak... and I will discuss him later. It's my turn.
Ah, myself... what can I say about me? I'm a cold-hearted, arrogant, sadistic, evil man. I've delved farther into the Dark Arts than my father before me and concocted even worse threats than he dreamed of. I've built a laboratory and written my own books for a hidden library underneath the family manor. I've set myself against everything the wizarding world holds to be good and true. Mine is an evil surpassed only by the Dark Lord and possibly the Muggle postal service.
As far as you know, that is.
I don't know what kink in my personality has led me to this point, but it seems to me that I am one person to the world and someone completely different to myself... and those two show up in the other's world with growing frequency nowadays. I suppose I simply do not have the energy to play to my reputation anymore.
The other is the one writing this. The one you don't know, since really the one you do would as soon kill something as write in this.
Before I continue talking about me, I suppose I should give space to quite possibly the most important person in my life, ever. Him, I hated. I truly did, like white-hot fire. Every time I saw his face or heard his voice, anger such as I have never felt any other time just exploded out of me. I hated him since first I saw him and continued to hate him throughout my life. The hate changed over time... becoming a twisted sort of adoration. Love, even. The strongest feeling I ever had about anyone, I had about him.
Harry Potter.
We were rivals in all things, complete opposites. Opposite Houses, opposite values, opposite friends. Even opposite physically. He had black hair and green eyes, gave off an impression of being all life and color, where I was and still am pale and cold, giving off a colorless impression like a statue or a charcoal drawing. And yet... and yet... we had our similarities within our opposition. We were both Seekers on our House Quidditch teams, neither of us had any grand magical talent....
It's strange to me now how fondly I remember you, my dear enemy. And bringing your memory into my mind has at least decided one thing for me. I'll send this to you and convince myself that you'll read it. That way... if no one else ever reads it, why, it doesn't matter. The only person I regard with something akin to love will have read it.
I used to be only one person, you know. The one you know, the one you hate. I don't know why there are two now, or even this illusion of two. I started noticing it while I was still in school, can pin its beginnings to one summer between fifth and sixth year. But I did used to be just one person.
It was one of Father's many trips to London. I, of course, accompanied him as ordered, although I made as much a pest of myself as I could as I didn't want to go. One such day, I was curtly ordered to leave wherever we were (astonishing the things one forgets!) and return in precisely two hours.
As I was obedient to Father's will, I left. I wasn't quite sure where I was supposed to go, but I knew Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley like the pattern of the throw rug in the entrance hall of the manor. It amazed me how quickly I managed to get myself turned around, completely lost, and wandering along a Muggle street. After I located the Leaky cauldron (which was a trick!) I decided to pick a random shop and stay there until it was time to go back... I'd not yet seen why I was required to hate Muggles so much. Although I did hate them, I usually require a reason to hate.
The shop I walked into happened to be a used books store. Next to Muggles, anything used was anathema to my father. And me, of course, but I was little more than an extension of his will. But I'd decided to stay wherever I ended up, and so I did. The only rules I never break are the ones I set for myself.
So I stayed. And what else was there to do in a bookstore but look at books? They were shelved helter-skelter, in no particular order, so it was necessary to look each and every one over separately. One couldn't merely skip a shelf for fear of missing something. It was boring at first, but after perhaps three-quarters of an hour it became bearable. Half an hour after that I was beginning to enjoy looking. By the time my two hours were up I was sorry to leave.
I returned to that little shop a few times during the summer, but never bought anything as that would have brought punishment. And I avoided my father's punishment like the Black Plague. But when I was in there... it was so very strange. I talked with the shopkeeper sometimes, for all the world as though it was normal for me to hold a conversation with someone without insulting them in some way. Other times, I read or just looked. I enjoyed that time... possibly one of the very few times I can say I was truly happy.
On the subject of Muggles, I also discovered Muggle music via radio station at home, which I have to say has redeemed them to a point in my eyes. It has been a great comfort to me over the years and I have grown quite fond of all types of music.
But at any rate, I think this other person, the one I usually keep to myself, was born in that little bookshop... I wonder if it's even still there?
... I read through what I've written thus far. Even to me they make very little sense, especially as to why I'm writing this in the first place. I've said once I've very little time left, and that sounds bizarre, especially from a thirty-year-old man. I should be in the prime of life, certainly not prone to sudden death.
Sadly... or not so sadly... such is not the case. As with the Dark Lord Voldemort, my forays into Dark magic have done things to my mind and body. I mentioned how I have what appears to be two personalities? That's not precisely the case. I have, I believe, three.
Two are, of course, merely separate facets of myself. The third... the third... I don't know anything about the third. There are holes in my memory, gaping spots where I've lost minutes or hours or days. Owl posts come from people and places I've never heard of, then disappear during those blackout times. Things will be rearranged sometimes, or I'll black out in one room and end up in another.
Since I'm trying my hardest to be honest in this book, this scares me. I'm very afraid of these blackout times and whatever moves me around during them. They're getting longer, you see. I believe that eventually I will simply black out and not return if this continues.
I can think of only one thing which would account for this effect. In case you haven't thought of it yet, I ask that you remember a diary during school and a very large snake with a particularly piercing gaze.
You will not believe me, but I have no more wish to see him rise to power again than anyone else does. In fact... I've already found a solution. Quite literally a solution, as it's sitting in front of me now. It has been for some time. I've been watching it, building up the nerve to use it.
Everything's taken care of. I've taken care of all the loose ends, tied up whatever needed tying. Now there's just this little rant left, this and the solution. I've addressed the envelope to you, Potter, and my owl is waiting for me to finish, so I'll close now.
I would like to say something to you, Potter, something off this record, but unfortunately this is the option I have. I wish I could say that I understood you better, or (God forbid) I was sorry for the trouble I've caused you. I'm not. Not really. I would be tempted to say that we two are opposite polarities, but opposites attract. Maybe we're the same, as those repel, which would make us brothers, in a sick, philosophical way. I don't know. I love you and I hate you, both at the same time. I want to see you suffer, but I'll die first. I don't understand that.
So here's what I want to say. If things were different, I wish I could have been your friend. As things are, I remember you as my dearest enemy. Please do the same for me if you can.
Goodbye, my hated brother. Draco Malfoy
PS: As I have a page or two left, I have written in the lyrics to one song, which you may find interesting.
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Harry shut the book and dropped it on the table, staring at it as though it were a poisonous viper. It had come a day after the death, along with a letter from Ron at the Ministry of Magic, saying that Harry had, for whatever reason, been a major beneficiary of Malfoy's will. On the sole condition that he attend the funeral, which was to be held as soon as the verdict of suicide was settled at the Ministry. Ron also offered, only half-jokingly it seemed, to throw a party celebrating the event.
The obituary, as well as the letter from Ron, rested on the table near the 'diary'. It read that Draco Malfoy, age thirty, had been found dead in his manor. Apparent cause of death was suicide by poison, but no note had been found. No living relatives. Very short and to the point.
Harry tried not to let tears well up in his eyes. He kept telling himself that an enemy was dead... but if Malfoy hadn't been completely insane and writing gibberish in that little book, he'd taken Voldemort with him somehow. Not permanently, of course... with Voldemort it was never permanent. And that just wasn't something an enemy did.
"A dear enemy...." Harry whispered. "Maybe." He picked up the book again, flipped to the last pages of the slim book, and read the song. Brother, my brother Tell me what are we fighting for? We've got to end this war We should love one another Can't we just pretend this war never began? We can try.... Brother, my brother
We face each other from different sides The anger burns, can't remember why It's kind of crazy to cause such pain Our foolish pride makes us hate this way
We watch our world fall apart Tell me, what good is winning When you lose your heart?
Brother, my brother Tell me what are we fighting for? Isn't life worth so much more? We should love one another Can't we just pretend this war never began? Tell me why.... Brother, my brother We can try.... Brother, my brother
Let's take a moment and look deep inside And say we're willing to give love a try We're not as different as we seem to be There's so much more to me than what you see
Don't have to be this way Think about the consequences Turn around and walk away
Brother, my brother Tell me what are we fighting for? Isn't life worth so much more? We should love one another Can't we just pretend this war never began? Isn't life worth so much more? Tell me why.... Brother, my brother
Brother, my brother....