Who are you? That is the most fundamental question that a person can ask himself. If he know the answer, if he are honest about it, if he digs down deep and is not afraid of finding darkness or flaws, then there is nothing that a person cannot accomplish. Once you 'Know Thyself'(Slytherin, #2), you know your limits as well as your strengths and weaknesses. Everyone has both, this is fundamental fact about sentient beings. There is no shame in having weaknesses. The only shame comes when you fail to correct or compensate for the faults you posses. Not every person is or can be perfect at everything. It is simply impossible. Without weakness there would be no room for alliances. People would throw themselves into things they could never have handled, because they never bothered to find out that they couldn't do it in the first place. Weaknesses are very important. That may come as a surprise to you that I would say that, considering who I am and what I am known for throughout the Wizarding World. You may be surprised a great deal as you read this book. There is truth here, unaltered, unfiltered. I pull no punches and refuse to be politically correct for the sake of softer souls who may pick this up. I am an old man now and I have more than earned the right to be as annoying as I want and say whatever I please. Who are you who picks up this book? Have you come to hear dark confessions and feed the dark areas of your life that screams for nourishment? Perhaps you were attracted to my picture on the front cover. Perhaps you are a Housemate of mine and you want to see if I betray any trusts or show you in a proper light as you deserve. You must answer that question before you continue much further, otherwise there is no point in reading on. I, on the other hand, have answered that question: Who am I? I have been content with the answers I have found, through the years. In the following pages I will share that answer with you. Who am I? I am…
Draco Myrddin Malfoy. Those three little words can generate so many emotions, whether it is spoken or read. Even just the name Malfoy or Draco brings images and feelings to mind, most of them not pleasant. Good, that is how it should be, since most of my readers are Mudbloods, Half-bloods, or Blood-traitors. It means I have lived my life in such a way as to make my father proud, which was the goal of most of the exercise. It is amazing how my name has brought different meanings as I grew from child to adult. First I was Draco, the Spoiled Brat, followed closely by Draco, the Slytherin Prince. Once I finished school my name brought different terrors with it as I was Draco, the Death Eater, a title I still hold to this day, despite the fact that the Death Eaters do not exist any more and haven't for many decades.
Some people cannot let go of the past, no matter how distant it may be from their current lives. It doesn't matter to them that those years are long gone and that the world has healed from the wounds that were inflicted in those dark times. Those are the people who are reading this book, waiting for dark confessions of a Death Eater who lived through the greater of the two Reigns of Terror that the Dark Lord brought. I was his dark servant, just as my father was, and just as my Aunt Bella and Uncle Rod were. I was the shadow of death, waiting for my next victim. I was and am the unknown monster under childrens' beds. Be careful or I will get you still. Children, listen to your parents or Draco Malfoy will come and take you away forever. No matter to you that I am past my prime, with a wife, Salazar love her, children grown, and my fifth grandchild on the way. I spend my days overseeing my estates, maintaining the grounds, spoiling the women of my family and teaching the men everything I can so they will be successful in life.
I go to parties to flirt with the young girls, have a few seductions, and yes, before you go all high and moral on me, my wife knows and doesn't mind. She knows I always come back to her, that she is the one I truly love, that I need the excitement of the chase and the thrill of conquest, just as my father did. I do not plan the take over of the world, or to somehow raise the Dark Lord from the dead. He's dead, this time for good, and I see no reason to upset the good life I am leading now. However, for some reason no one believes me, not the Ministry, nor the Aurors who still come around to visit every once in a while looking for dark magic nor the parents who shield their children from me in Diagon Alley. Sometimes I am tempted to try to scare them just to see what they'll do. There is something perversely satisfying to watch the horror go through them as all the terrible rumors about me go running through their heads. The look of recognition in the eyes of the mothers is a priceless look. Manipulating people is a favored pastime and that is a very simple version of it.
It all comes down to this: They think they know me. They think that my thoughts and ideals and actions are simple enough for them to understand and to figure out. All of them, all of you, see the world in black and while, light and dark, good and evil. I am evil… that's what you say in whispers where you think I cannot hear it, and there are some of you (Gryffindors I would wager) who are brave enough to say it to my face. You tell me as if you think it never occurred to me that I am evil. What, did you think I was going to suddenly widen my eyes in surprise and exclaim that I had not known I was evil and promise to mend my ways? You live in a fantasy world if you truly think that. I have been treated so rudely by some of you that it makes me wonder about your sanity. You think me the evilest thing left alive, with no heart and no mercy. Despite that belief you still come up to me and are rude and insulting. Are you waiting for me to curse you into next year? Is that the goal? Or are you trying to get me to use an Unforgivable so I'll be sent to Azkaban? Either goal is a pointless one. I am a Malfoy and control is a favored word of ours.
How wrong you all are about me for the simple reason that I refuse to define myself in such limiting terms. I am a Slytherin, a Pureblood, and a former Death Eater, I will admit, but none of that defines me as evil. A Slytherin is many things: cunning, shrewd, determined and ambitious. We work within a world of alliances, dealings, and plottings… and we're good at it.
It is almost a natural, logical pattern to move from being Slytherin to being a Death Eater. While the Death Eaters are not an exclusive Slytherin group, the leadership is and always was Slytherin. We are the ones drawn to the promises of the Dark Lord, as he knows exactly how to sugarcoat the ideas to make them easiest to swallow. Despite whether you agree with him or not, any true Slytherin will have to agree that the Dark Lord was the greatest of us.
If you understood the most basic facts about Voldemort(yes, I did just write his name. He's dead, I have absolutely no doubt about it and if that cunning bastard Dumbledore got one thing right, it was this: "The fear of a name increases the fear of the thing itself." ). Voldemort was the greatest of us, both in terms of power he could wield and in terms of how well he understood the inner workings of the mind of a Slytherin. He was a smooth-talking charmer who knew what his housemates were capable of doing, what they wanted and what they were willing to do in exchange for getting what they wanted.
The last charge leveled at me to 'prove' I am evil is that I am a Pureblood. Not that my blood comes from pure witches or wizards, but that I hold to Pureblood superiority beliefs and behaviors. I do; I have never and will never deny it. It was the way I was raised and the way I raised my children. But how does that make me evil? Am I intolerant of non-pures? Yes. Am I certain that I am better than partial bloods? Yes. Am I an aristocrat? Certainly. However none of those things can be used to prove I am evil. You can call me arrogant or a bigot or something similar to that because I am a pureblood, but to be evil requires so much more evidence than what is usually leveled at me. As I briefly explained here, and will explain in-depth later, none of these charges-even together- would stand up in a court of law.
People, however, don't care about logical argument. Logical argument and debate seem to be as forgotten a pastime as dueling, with a blade, not a wand. Emotional outburst and illogical 'reasoning'(and it is in quotes because there is no true reasoning in such displays) are the order of the day. You have your conclusion and force data to fit the conclusion, no matter how nonsensical it sounds in a more rational moment. You need to have a face for evil, a person whom you can point a finger at so you don't have to look closer to home. That would be too uncomfortable to you. So you pester me and my family, along with the Lestranges, to provoke us into giving you an incident of anger to prove the conclusion you have already drawn.
I have heard that in some circles that I have some sympathy or pity as do my children. These rumors, it seems, are based around my father, Lucius Malfoy. He has as dark a reputation as Uncle Rodolphus and Aunt Bella, especially in terms of raising children. How can I be anything else than a cruel, evil man with a father such as Lucius Malfoy? That is the core of this. Since I was little people have believed that my father beat me and practiced the Unforgivables on me when he grew angry or I misbehaved. It makes me absolutely furious to hear these things. I grew up in a strict, but loving household- at least where my father was concerned. We won't talk about my mother now. These people have never set foot in my home or seen anything but my father's public mask and have the audacity to try to pass judgment on him. It takes every ounce of my self-control to not beat the crap our of them. None of you understand me and my life, nor my father and his life. You don't have the right to pass judgment on us. Until you have lived in my shoes, lived on our side of the fence, don't you dare talk about my father, you filthy, little, idiotic, c….
Well this will end the introduction of my memoirs. I now have no light to write with, since I melted down all the candles in the room in my fury at those people. These are memoirs. I will be honest and reveal things from my point of view. If you don't like it, go away. I have no time to waste with fools.
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Footnotes:
(Slytherin, #2)- Slytherin Directives, passed down orally from Salazar Slytherin. Rule #2- and yes, I actually have a list. I didn't just make it up.