The Inside Job
Tom Riddle.
Known by various monikers over the years, the most recent ones being 'Voldemort' for the brave or foolish, and 'He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named' for the more pragmatic individual who values their life.
I had been raised to refer to him as 'the Dark Lord'.
And I had. My entire life had been wrapped around the Dark Lord's ideals and goals. Every single thing I had ever thought or felt, or even considered thinking or feeling had been based either in whole or in part on the ideals of that fiend. That madman.
That's right, I said it and I'd say it again. Madman.
He'd have to be. I mean honestly, you'd have to be a bloody lunatic to think that you could do what that madman had done to my father and get away with it. But no, getting away with it wasn't enough for him. Not at all. It wasn't enough that he'd turned my father into little more than a bloody house-elf, he had to assign him impossible tasks, and when the entire operation went up in flames, the madman left my father – his most loyal (not to mention most sane) – to rot in Azkaban! And as if that wasn't enough, he blackmailed me into yet another hare-brained scheme using my mother's life as leverage.
And not only did he expect to get away with it, he expected me to be happy about it.
Like I said before, Voldemort is a madman – and he's not even an intelligent one at that. To be completely honest – and not the least bit conceited – I've been running circles around him for months. Indeed, by the time the Prophet had released the article detailing the whole Ministry fiasco I had already made plans to smuggle my mother off European soil. By the time Voldemort threatened my 'mother' to gain my compliance the real Narcissa Malfoy had been enjoying her new life as an A-list celebrity in southern California for eight weeks. All I had to do was put on my 'angry face' while the Dark Lord blathered on about his Pure-blood agenda and how my 'mother' would die otherwise and no one was the wiser.
I even sent the house-elf posing as her to beg Snape for an Unbreakable Vow, just to make it look more convincing.
It's bad enough that Voldemort's mad – that he's a fool makes things even worse. Despite the Muggles' assumptions otherwise, crazy people are actually very predictable, which in turn makes them easy to deal with. Idiots, on the other hand… not so much. Stupid people are prone to very unpredictable behavior, doing things that not only fail to make sense to the organized mind, but are also inapplicable to the situation to which they are applied.
Take Voldemort for example.
Here is a man that used to be absolutely brilliant. He was smart, he was good-looking, charismatic. I mean really, he had it all. And then he decided to take up the Dark Arts. Now, I dabbled in the Arts a bit myself, but that was only on a scholastic level. Knowing something is nice – using it is something else entirely. But the Dark Lord wasn't like me. He didn't 'dabble' in the Arts -- he pitched himself headlong into them and was consumed before he could establish which way was up.
That's the thing about the Arts, it's what categorizes them as 'Dark'. Not because of the intent behind them, not the moral ambiguity, not anything that a self-proclaimed fanatic would tell you to justify their obsession. The Arts are considered 'Dark' because unlike other branches of magic they are semi- sentient. Where the effects of 'Light' and 'Neutral' magic is shaped by the will of the caster alone, the effects of the Arts are shaped in part by the Arts themselves.
They are what Muggles refer to a symbiotic in nature. Constant use of and immersion in the Arts allows it to feed off of the caster like a leech, and in return you attain a temporary state of being unlike any other. Muggles have drugs that make the user feel like they're invincible. With the Arts, you are invincible, if only for a moment.
There is a saying: "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely." The same is true with the Arts. The more of it you use, the more corrupted you become. In the beginning, you might think – as I am sure Tom Riddle thought, back when he could still be called that – that using the Arts allows you to gain everything, and lose nothing.
That assumption would be incorrect.
Everything comes at a price, and the price of giving yourself over to the Arts in exchange for power is the kind of price that even a man with seemingly nothing to lose wouldn't be willing to pay. No one would pay the price of the Arts – not if they knew what that price was.
But that's the beauty of the Arts, isn't it? Their partial-sentience allows for craftiness. What you get from the Arts in the long term is hardly a fraction of what you give up. The Arts are not dependent upon its practitioners to thrive and exist. Once you pass a certain point, it's you that's dependent on the Arts. The Arts take everything from you, eventually, and what they give in the interim is virtually microscopic by comparison.
Of course, the Dark Lord hasn't figured that out yet.
Even if, by some twist of Fate he does figure out what the Arts' going rate for power is, he's so consumed by it that he'll likely deny his findings. He'd have to – he'd too far in now to quit. The Arts are like sustenance to him; he neither eats nor sleeps, nor even breathes. He doesn't need to – the Arts do it for him, in a way. If he tried to stop practicing them, he'd likely suffocate and rot and starve all at once, because the Arts are the only thing that have been keeping him going for decades.
If he weren't such a treacherous bastard I might consider feeling sorry for him.
Unfortunately for him, I can't muster up the sympathy. In fact, the only person I can muster up the sympathy for is the last person that most would expect.
Hermione Granger.
Like Hermione, I've been separated from my parents for months now, unable to send them so much as a card without risking having someone track it and blow my cover.
Like Hermione, I need to be in the thick of things.
I'd started trailing Hermione Granger at the end of the Tri-Wizard Tournament back in fourth year. I knew the moment that I'd seen Cedric Diggory's corpse that the Dark Lord was back, and that I should make preparations to go underground just in case things got ugly. We Malfoys hate Muggles, but Mother and I were determined to make it through this war, even if it meant becoming one of them.
I picked Granger because she was an easy target. Everyone knew she was Muggle-born, and finding out where she lived was a simple as placing a tracking charm on her Prefect badge. After that, it was a simple matter of a quick stake-out and a few subtle wards both inside and outside the house tied to a compact mirror and voila; Twenty-four hour surveillance of the Grangers, with no one the wiser. It was a brilliant plan with brilliant execution and after watching them for months on end I'd learned enough about Muggles to live with them if needed.
Mother and I had both hoped we wouldn't need to, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Of course, we weren't the only ones watching the Grangers – we were just the most discreet. Dumbledore had his people stop by every once in a while, and when you have seven Weasleys in a predominantly Muggle area, then it becomes quite obvious that one of the 'Golden Trio' must live somewhere nearby. Factor in that it's common knowledge that the Weasleys live in Ottery. St. Catchpole, and that the Boy-Who-Lived lives with Muggles in Surrey, and that just leaves one option: Hermione Granger.
Just because the Dark Lord is an imbecile, doesn't mean his followers are.
After much convincing, I managed to spirit Hermione and her parents away on 'vacation' for an indefinite amount of time. Hermione is with my mother in California, posing as her 'assistant'. It helps Mother blend in better, and it keeps Hermione in the thick of things without endangering her parents in the process. The good doctors are in Australia.
It was from Hermione that I'd learned of the prophecy. From there it wasn't hard to deduce that the Dark Lord was destined to fail. I'd learned about the Horcruxes from my father years before, and had read up on them extensively. Hermione and I have that in common, I suppose. Once we're introduced to a concept, we just can't let it go until we've found out everything we can about it. That's why I tipped her off about the Death Eater attack on her family, and made arrangements for them all to be elsewhere. I knew that if I told her what I knew, she could help me take that bastard down a peg or two. Or three.
The grudge I hold against Voldemort goes as far as the one that Potter holds against him. The biggest difference being that unlike Potter, I don't care who does the vile bastard in so long as it happens and some devoted fool can't bring him back again. If Potter wants to do the honors, then I won't begrudge him, so long as he's thorough about it.
Voldemort is a madman. He is also a fool. You can rule by terrorizing your followers, but only for so long. Fear in the ranks breeds contempt. Contempt for the leader breeds rebellion. Where you have contempt and rebellion, you're bound to have moles.
Like me.