I started posting this story a long time ago, but then I got super insecure about it and my beta was traveling and couldn't give me the support I needed at the time, then I started school and things have been hectic. I'm ready to start reposting it again (after some slight changes to the plot-line) so please let me know what you think about it! The chapter names are all based off of Avenged Sevenfold songs, but it isn't necessary to listen to the songs or anything while reading the chapters, I just really like them. Thanks to Nina for rocking, and to KomeKozzy425 for naming this for me (as usual)!

Prologue

Clairvoyant Disease

"Don't acknowledge right, just dwell on wrong. This spot in hell's where I belong. I've come so far, it's been so long. Don't know why it started or where it came from. But in my life, I wanted more, I needed more, I taste more."

– Avenged Sevenfold, Clairvoyant Disease.

July 13, 1996

"Show some respect," his father hissed up at him from a bowed position on the floor.

He was scared, confused, and incredibly repulsed by what was taking place in his life at that moment. He didn't need this. He didn't want this. He tried to take a calming breath and still his shaking hands.

"You don't want to be marked, Mr. Malfoy? You don't believe in my cause?"

Draco didn't know what to say but he looking up through his fringe, he could see Voldemort fingering his wand with his long, pale fingers. His reddened, snake-like eyes were boring a hole in Draco, never moving away from his face.

"I broke your father out of prison mere weeks ago but he has yet to atone for his sins. He's offered you up to the cause, you see, in order to lessen his own punishment." Draco shuddered despite himself, a strange hollow feeling had started to spread in his stomach. "How loving," Voldemort added softly and mockingly, moving across the room slowly. His overlarge robes were whispering across the stone floor, causing the fine hairs on the back of Draco's neck to stand on end.

Everything seemed too loud to Draco, he could hear his father's ragged breathing as he got to his feet laboriously, his long, unkempt hair was straggly and uncared for, pieces had fallen over his face and were clinging to his two-day beard. He could hear his father's cane tapping the floor almost imperceptibly, probably itching to swing it at his son. Draco's hands were shaking slightly, despite his efforts to stop them, and he was ashamed that his father had led him into this trap without him even realizing what was going on.

"I want to speak to you in private, for a moment," he had said, leading Draco into the basement. The fact that they were going to the dungeons should have been his first clue.

"Bow to your master, Draco Malfoy," Voldemort said in a near whisper, watching the boy before him with a devious, frightening smirk on his face. "Bow to Lord Voldemort."

Draco was frozen with fear and wouldn't have been able to move an inch even if he had wanted to. Was he even breathing? It was hard to tell.

"I said bow," Voldemort yelled suddenly, his wand arcing through the air. Draco had no choice and felt his spine curving, forcing him to bow to the man in front of him. His wand felt slippery in his shaking hand as a cold sweat broke out. He didn't want this. He wasn't a killer and he didn't want to be punished for his father's sins and failures.

Voldemort eyed the wand in Draco's hand for a moment, a calculating look on his face before he turned to Lucius Malfoy and gave an almost imperceptible nod.

"Your father is going to show you what happens to those who disobey me," he said, and Lucius spun on the spot, pulling his wand from within the depths of his cane.

"Crucio."

Draco didn't even have time to consider his own wand before he distantly felt his knee crack on the stone floor, but the pain of that was nothing compared to the tremors rocking his body from the force behind his father's curse. Despite the pain he was in, the brutal, unadulterated pain causing his limbs to twitch and his muscles to seize, he didn't cry out. He wouldn't give them the satisfaction.

It wasn't as though he had never been crucioed by his father before.

The curse was lifted suddenly and Draco took in a huge, gasping breath of air as he lay supine on the cold dungeon floor. It took him a few moments before he shook out his extremities, trying to get the proper blood flow back into them while ignoring the tingling pain.

"Oh, and one other thing, which will surely help you realize how important it is to join us," Voldemort said coldly.

Draco looked up at the man from beneath his fringe as anger started to take hold of him. Now he was being blackmailed, on top of everything else? His anger was sudden and obvious, his grey eyes stormy and challenging, daring him to do his worst.

"Narcissa," was all the man said, and Draco felt the world turn on its axis for a split second. Lucius didn't seem surprised nor phased by the words the Dark Lord spoke and Draco felt a fury unlike anything he'd ever experienced before well up from deep inside him. Fury, but fear as well.

"What about her?" he asked in his deep, rumbling voice, the first words he'd spoken since entering the dungeon behind his father.

"Let's just say that things won't end up so well for your dear mother if you don't do as I ask. At this very moment she's not here, she's probably in a very compromising position, actually, and the men who have her are awaiting my command. If you continue to defy me, all I have to do is tell those men to bring her to me. You will watch, Draco Malfoy, as things so awful you have probably never even imagined them happen to your dear mother, and you will both die, slowly and painfully."

The air rushed from Draco's lungs as he dropped his head. His father's loud, cruel laughter was reverberating around the room. Lucius had never been a good father or husband, striking or hurting Narcissa if she tried to stop Draco's numerous punishments. He'd terrorized his wife and son ever since Draco could remember but he never ever expected it to get this far. He never expected for his father to allow Draco's and his mother's death if Draco didn't follow in his footsteps, to cast his wife and son aside as though they were nothing to him, nothing in the wake of the Dark Lord.

Hatred was the only thing that Draco could feel toward his father. He'd never loved the man, had been more afraid of him than anything. That was probably why he'd started the relationship he was in, out of spite – in the beginning, anyway. Once they'd spent a lot more time together Draco knew that he'd fight against his father for the witch at some point, especially considering the things that had been done to her in order to try and break her. There were things in the world that Draco didn't, couldn't condone and what they'd done to her was very high on that list. Draco had turned his back on everything he'd once believed in because of the actions of his father and his 'business associates' and now he was trapped in the one place he didn't want to be.

She was going to be extremely pissed off about his current circumstances, he knew – served him right for following his father down the stairs with blind trust. Draco had always harbored a small hope, though, that his father would find something to be proud of in him, no matter how much he would deny it if asked. Until now, that is. Now he would turn his back for good.

"Come here," Voldemort hissed. "Come here or I'll send word to my men."

Draco dropped his head and moved forward, feeling like a young boy again when he'd accidentally broken something or did something that inadvertently angered his father. He realized that if he didn't agree then his mother's life was forfeit along with his own; she was one of the few people he'd had in his life who actually loved him and the only one who had tried to protect him against his father's wrath. He would do the same for her, regardless of the circumstances. He flinched when he felt the cold, bony grip around his wrist and held in a gasp of pain as the branding spell started.

"Morsmordre," Voldemort hissed, the light being thrown from the spell burning into Draco's skin and lighting up the Dark Lord's eyes as well as Lucius', making them both look even more uncultured and crazed.

The pain was unbearable and Draco couldn't fight the groans escaping his lips after a few moments, even though he was trying to stifle them as he'd done while under the Cruciatus Curse. The cold sweat he had been feeling before intensified and his silver eyes were rolling in their sockets as he dipped to his knees, unable to hold up his own weight any longer.

The pain was overwhelming and Draco rolled to his side, pulling his knees up to his chin as he fought the tears that dampened his lashes; before any could fall, the pain stopped. Draco's groans, however, did not, and he rolled onto his knees and vomited on the floor between his hands, his left arm shaking roughly from the excruciating pain. Through the recesses of the dark fog overwhelming his being he thought he heard his father scoff in disappointment as Voldemort whispered a menacing "Welcome."

Before anything else could take place the darkness pressed in on him and Draco Malfoy knew no more