I was always been the sort of "king" of the Slytherin house, I guess. It's what most expected. I was popular, a complete jerk, and on top of that, completely full of shit half the time, so it's like I was the perfect Slytherin that everyone should emulate and follow.
To clarify, I was stupidly ignorant.
For awhile, I was fine with this. I had friends, Slytherin girls all over me, and a couple of idiots that followed me around and did whatever I wanted; Crabbe and Goyle. I ruled my house, Potter ruled his, and we clashed a few times, sure, but it was never all that bad of a clash. Or maybe it was. It didn't matter to me all that much after it was over.
You see, like I said, for awhile, everything was pretty smashing and "wonderful" at school. Or so I thought. Because you see, in the middle of my third year, I started having weird thoughts. They flickered in and out, but never stayed for long. I was afraid to think them, so I denied it outright and told myself I never thought them. Not at all. And I tried to ignore them when they came, push them away.
But thoughts such as these are hard to ignore. They came back, and worsened in my later years.
I had thoughts of my home, of my father, my mother. I got scared. Terrified. I remembered all the times I was yelled at, I thought of all the things I was taught about the world. Mudbloods, the Potter family, our Dark Lord. . . . And then I started thinking the most bizarre of all: maybe all of this wasn't who I wanted to be?
I had a lot of pressure to deal with. My family, and what was expected of me. It wasn't until I was told that I had to kill Dumbledore that I almost broke. I wanted to make my father proud; I loved him. I wanted him to love me. I wanted him to look at me and not see the useless brat that he thought I was. But thinking of killing was hard. I had a lot of pent up anger, a lot of aggression and sadness, but I didn't think I could actually kill a person.
What's more, I was weak and pathetic.
Deep within me, I was hurting. I'd never had a real family or real friends. I believed my mother loved me, sure, but if she'd really loved me, she would've told my father enough was enough. No more yelling, no more talk of how I wasn't good enough to be his son. She would've told him that he couldn't talk to me in such a way. I understand that she was scared, too, but I would've thought she loved me more than she was afraid of him. I would've thought that after so many years, she would've been able to learn to put some warmth into her eyes when she saw him yelling, maybe tell me that it was going to be alright and that he was wrong. Never such words. "I love you", she would say. But never any encouragement against my father or disagreement. Never.
I started to despise my life, my world, my friends, Hogwarts, my parents, everything.
And I was at this point I was laid out a decision:
Kill.
Or run.