Part I.
If there's one thing that can be said for me, it's this - Draco Malfoy was never a wishful thinker.
I'm not the sort of person who believes in miracles. I assume a childhood of being pressed under the thumb of my fanatical father and adolescence of serving an even more insane - not to mention abusive - dark overlord can do that to you.
There are days when I still wake up screaming, the sheets tangled around my ankles. I'm sweaty, and I'm trying to get up and run from whatever's been chasing me.
It's not easy. My Dark Mark has faded, but it hasn't disappeared. Just like the past.
I still have scars which willnever fade, no matter how much I wish they could. In the end, I reckon everyone took away their own fair share of scars from the War, no matter what side they fought on.
These scars are personal. They aren't for our War-time loyalties. They might be becauseof them, but not for them.
In the end, everyone pays penance. Everyone has to deal with them.
Alone.
It's funny, because when I imagined myself seven years down the line from Hogwarts, this wasn't what I had in mind. For one, I assumed my mother would still be alive.
She isn't.
There was some sort of fanatical group, about 5 years ago. It had been only 2 years since the end of the War and the downfall of the Dark Lord. The main player was dead, gone - and everything was fine and dandy about that. But what of his kiss-arse followers?
In the courtroom trials immediately after the War, all the remaining Death Eaters were rounded up and made to stand. Some were locked away within a day of proceedings. Too many heinous crimes to name. The reading of the offences took hours, for some. The reading of the sentence only a minute.
My father was one of those people.
Don't get me wrong. When I imagined my future after I knew the Dark Lord had been overthrown, it didn't include my father. I knew what was in store for him. And I welcomed it.
But he was the only one from the Malfoy clan sentenced to the Kiss. Or even sentenced at all, it may seem. Mother and I were largely rescued from any sort of punishment. A year of probation at Malfoy Manor hardly counts as much after our scale of inclusion in the War.
This was largely because of Harry Potter.
He spoke up in my mother's - and my own - defence at the trial. And who are the Wizengamot to lock up a pair that the Saviour of the fucking Wizarding World deems innocent?
Sometimes I wish they had.
Maybe then I could wipe away this stench of guilt from my skin.
But of course, not everyone was happy with the outcome. Some of the public's views were largely resolute on the fact that Mother and I were equally to blame and should get at least 5 years in Azkaban each, if not more. We weren't the only families garnering this sort of response. The Goyles were in a similar position. So were the Notts and the Parkinsons.
They rose in the first year after our probation ended. They called themselves the Hand of Justice - though who their actions were serving is yet to be seen. That isn't to say they didn't have people who sympathized with their goal very, shall we say, vocally.
They took it upon themselves to rid the wizarding society of all the remaining Death Eater clans, regardless of whether the kin were involved or not involved, guilty or not guilty.
And they came after Mother first.
They weren't any better than the force they were (so-called) fighting against. They ambushed her in Knockturn Alley. And it makes me angry, because I'd toldMother not to venture too far out. The attacks had increased, and there's only so much you can expect the Ministry to do when a third of them support the actions.
They tried to rape her before putting their wands to her throat. The final humiliation before death.
Narcissa Malfoy had too much pride for that. Her wand was out and pointed towards her own temple before they could even hear the two words she uttered that would end her life.
I wish I could say I knew when my mother snubbed out her own life. I wish I could claim that some sort of magical wave washed over me, indicating that the one woman that truly cared for me all through my pathetic existence was not breathing anymore.
The sad fact of the matter is that the exact second my mother had died, I was in the lavatory in of a dingy bar in the underbelly of Marseille, getting my brains sucked out through my cock by a Frenchman whose name I still don't know.
And just like that, Mother was dead.
Her funeral was the first time I cried over any one of my family. And it will be the last.
Another thing I didn't see coming was how numb serving under the Dark Lord would make me. While under him, I often thought the things I'd seen would guarantee me a lifetime at the Mental Maladies ward at St. Mungo's if I ever got out of this alive. But now I just take it in my stride.
You get used to being tortured by the one you call your Master just because he feels like it. But there's always a reason hidden behind that. I know because I've had first-hand experience.
This, once again, was largely because of Harry Potter.
He was the star of my first wet dream. You'd imagine the first time a bloke dreams about sexually stimulating situations would be much before the age of seventeen. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have the leisure or the peace of mind for such. My subconscious never had the comfort of veering towards carnal pleasures in my sleep because the situation I'd gotten myself in was, quite frankly, shite.
The first time I dreamt about Harry Potter was the night after when his swollen face was shoved into my own at my house, people around me demanding for me to confirm his identity. And I didn't.
But I dreamt about him that night.
He is kneeling in front of me, the red head of my cock grasped firmly between his lips. He is smirking at me, that bastard of a tease. My hands are grasping the wood of one of the desks in the Charms classroom tightly behind me. My knuckles are white.
He hums around the tip of my shaft, and it's too much for me to take. I can't stop myself from thrusting blindly into his mouth, begging him with my body to enclose more of me in that slick, hot chamber of his that feels so fucking good. But he merely pulls away as much as I thrust, refusing to take in more than the glistening head of my cock.
I realize the most undignified sounds are emerging from my dry mouth, but I can't help them. I do a quick circuit of my lips with my tongue, wetting them. Potter's eyes flick upwards and follow the path hungrily. His eyes then flick to mine and stay there.
His glasses lie forgotten in a corner. Without them to dull his gaze, the heat of his vision rips through me unadulterated. Usually, his emerald eyes are molten metal and green fire both, swirling together.
Now, however, they've been reduced to green rims around black pools of lust.
His tongue goes round and round the tip of my erection, dipping into the slit and licking away my bitter pre-cum. My knees shudder and I moan out loud, one of my hands fastening in his messy black locks to jam him there.
He makes a 'tutting' sound around my cock and holds my hips firmly in place with one hand. The other extends a finger along the underside of my shaft and follows a ridge there. I shudder again, desperate for him to just allow me to come.
So close, yet so far. This is the best kind of torture I've had to endure.
Suddenly, he withdraws. His hands still hold my bare hips firmly in place, both of them placed there now. He looks up at me and his eyes turn earnest, sincere.
"You have a choice to make, Draco. You can't keep living like this."
What the fuck does he mean? I don't care about any fucking choices. I just want his mouth around my cock again.
But he's fading. He's becoming translucent, and suddenly I'm falling into blackness.
I remember waking up that morning with the sheets around me sticky and in a mess. The sensations of the dream were still swimming in my head, and it felt so many fucking times better than any amount of wanks I may have subjected myself to in the shower. If I had had any doubts about how bent I was before that, they were all washed away that night.
That was also the day the Dark Lord used Legilimency on me for the first time. He ridiculed me. And tortured me under the Cruciatus Curse in phases for the better part of the day.
By the time I was Levitated back to my room, I was unconscious with pain.
Now, the only times I allow myself to be frightened by the horrors of my past are in my dreams, where I have no control over what I see. The rest of my life passes in a blur of numb. I don't want to feel. It's too much work.
I also didn't see myself working at the Ministry as a Goblin liason. Admittedly, I took the job because there had been no other choices at the time. I couldn't keep wallowing in sorrow over my mother's death. The opportunity came up at a convenient time. And surprisingly enough, the Ministry was perfectly fine with me working there.
I can't think of changing tracks now. I'm settled as I am.
But I have no friends anymore. Not really. Pansy's moved to Bulgaria after she hooked up with that Quidditch star Krum. She doesn't want to return to England. I don't think there's any reason for her to.
Greg's parents were killed by the Hand of Justice. Last I heard of him, he was fucking Bulstrode and they'd eloped.
I still see Blaise and Theo around sometimes. Theo's working as an Unspeakable, so his personal affiliations are limited. Blaise owns his own brothel in Germany. We don't see each other that much, though. Maybe once in two months for a drink.
No, when I think back, this isn't what I'd imagined my life would be like. I never was a wishful thinker, but I'd like to think I still had a bit of that naïve teenage optimism. That's gone too, now.
Good day, pleased to introduce to you Draco Malfoy, 24, friendless, hollow, broken shell of a man. How do you do?
At least now I can consider this my atonement for my sins. I'm far more broken than anything they could've expected after a couple of years at Azkaban.
But I still can't wash away that stench of guilt from my skin.
I scrub at it with my nails in the shower sometimes, when the smell gets too bad. I feel it enveloping me, choking me, squeezing my soul. I still don't know what it is that I feel guilty for, all I know is that I do. I'm choking on the dust of my retreat.
I break blood more often than not. And afterwards, when I lie in my huge bed in that desolate Manor, and I stare up at the ceiling, still sopping wet and bleeding over my sheets, I'd deny even under Veritaserum the tears that make their way silently down the sides of my face, over my temple and into my hair.