I bend my head down when the Dark Lord starts talking. Why am I here? I don't want to be here. My life has been spent pretending. Pretending to believe in the same things that my father does, that Muggleborns are filth and that Muggles should be exterminated. Pureblood isn't all that important to me. But no, I am weak and cannot stand up to my father. I am clever enough to know that to cross the Dark Lord or my father means death but I am not clever enough to find a way out.
When he shows the body of Charity Burbage, I am forced to look but I cannot meet her eyes, another show of weakness. To the Death Eaters I am childish and almost funny, someone to mock, but my unwillingness to kill and my inability to even look victims in the eyes as I utter the curse comes not from inexperience or childish impunity but from a desire to be as far away as possible from the Dark side because I do not believe what they believe. I am weak but cunning, a true Slytherin.
I have held a mask for too many years, pretending all the time, at school and even home. I would hex and fight and insult people whom I admired or could have been friends with through a basic and simple desire to live, a fear of death. I was moulded by my parents, would pretend not only through a fear of dying but a want, a need, to please them. When I got older I realised that I would have to do a lot more than hex my school 'friends' to please them. When I realised that I would have to torture and kill people I knew that I could not, would not, believe in the massacre of innocents for the 'greater good' any longer but my fear and lack of courage forced me into continuing. My mask is slipping and each day I fear death.
I hate this life, I hate me, but what else can I do? What else is there for me? I am trapped.