Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Coward
He just couldn't take all of the staring anymore.
The glaring.
The pointing.
Whispering. Muttering. Snarling. Accusing. Yelling. Screaming. It was all too much.
None of his contacts would speak to him anymore. Something about being associated with a Malfoy not being good for business anymore. He knew what they really meant. It was what everyone thought when they looked at him now.
Killer. Murderer. Rapist. Liar. Thief. Scum. Monster. Coward.
It didn't matter how many of the words were true and how many weren't, as everyone believed them all the same. The last one hurt the worst. He didn't want to be a part of it anymore. He never did. Why didn't they understand. He was raised like this. It wasn't his fault.
He didn't want to be a Death Eater in the first place.
It was just so easy to let his father tell him what to do. Tell him to not be pathetic. To be proud. Malfoys were not allowed to show weakness. To be a Malfoy meant being strong and powerful, and to bow to no one.
Except his father didn't follow that last rule did he? In the end, neither did he. He had plenty of chances to run. But his father was still there. He didn't want to disappoint his father did he? It was safer to stay anyway. By the end at least.
With his father dead though, what was he supposed to do?
He didn't have enough money to not work, but no one wanted to hire a Death Eater. He didn't have a place to live after his house was seized. Since his mother ran off, he didn't even have any relatives to take him in. Where was he supposed to go?
What a joke. The Dark Lord. Death Eaters. Almost all ended up dying so quickly. So much for immortality.
Only a few even made it out. More than half were dead. Most of the others went to prison. Some were executed. Some, like him, got through unscathed. Well, relatively unscathed. Most of them vanished though. Less then a year after the war. Everyone knew what happened. He figured that he wouldn't be taken. It had been too long. Shame, that. Dying would have been preferable to this.
Why couldn't he die? He tried attacking Aurors once. Figured that would be a good way to go. All they did was stun him. Violently attacked by a known Death Eater and fought back non-lethally. Released him back into his father's custody too. He assumed that someone let him go. There was no way the Malfoy name would get him released from prison now. He hadn't dared to try it after his father died though.
Other ways never seemed to be that effective either. He tried to fall off of a roof. Someone caught him. He never saw who, but he could never bring himself to try that way again.
Nothing ever seemed to work. His spells were blocked by his father. His wand taken from him. His new one seemed to be incapable of harming him, although that could have just been him. Muggle ways didn't work either, although he likely just didn't use the gun correctly.
There was one way he hadn't tried yet. He wasn't sure how he would manage to mess this way up. Maybe that was why he hadn't tried it yet. He always had been a bit cowardly. It was the one of the only things that people usually got right about him.
He knew where he would cut. It didn't matter where he cut on his right arm. It would just be a cut after all. The left arm though. That one was important. It held the tattoo, that damn tattoo. It never went away, not really. Just sitting there on his arm, the reason everyone still hated him. He needed to make that cut special. Slice right down the middle. Cut the stupid skull and snake in half. Maybe then he'd finally be able to mar that foul stain stuck to his arm.
It was funny though, the one thing that he actually got out of his muggle-hating terrorist group was the want for more tattoos. Since wizards didn't seem to see the appeal in permanently staining their bodies unnecessarily, he inevitably went to muggles for this endeavor.
He started off simple. A dragon on his thigh. A snake on his calf. He was still a Malfoy after all, and he did have a reputation to keep. Then they got deeper. His friends' names stretched across his chest. It took multiple levels to cover them all. His victim's names on his back. It took him a long time to track down the names of some of the muggles.
Before long, he ended up covered with the things. Nothing too visible of course. It wouldn't do to let anyone know that a Malfoy was corrupted by such a muggle thing like tattoos anyway. Most of them wouldn't understand anyway. It would just be another thing to mock him for. Not like they needed any more reasons.
He wondered though, if anyone would truly notice. Or if they did, how many would actually care.
It wasn't like visiting people to check would work too well. Most of his friends were dead. And the Ministry would sooner throw him in the jail than let him visit people in it. He tried some of his so-called "enemies."
He tried Weasley. He got called a Death Eater and a curse thrown at his head.
Granger just sneered at him, and asked if he was there to call her a mudblood again.
Potter didn't make any sense, as usual. All Potter did was stare at him with those bright, but too-blank green eyes. Potter didn't say a word. He stared at Potter for hours, until someone walked in.
It was pathetic that he didn't even have any closer friends or worse enemies than them, but it certainly answered his question.
All he could think was that his father would be so ashamed of him. He wasn't being strong at all. Was he even fit to call himself a Malfoy anymore?
His father wouldn't think so.
He knew that his father didn't think so.
Why shouldn't he do what was unexpected for once. He was sure that it was expected for the Malfoy line to end with him, but he could make it end suddenly. He wouldn't let anything else make the decision for him.
It wasn't weak.
He was strong.
Right?
No one could stop him this time.
He just didn't want to be scared anymore.
Maybe he really was a coward after all.
A/N: This is my first published fanfiction, so I apologize if the formatting is a little bit off. Reviewing would be super cool, but if someone is reading this then they probably read the writing before it so woohoo! It can be implied that this is canon compliant, but obviously not epilogue compliant at all.