Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
A/N: I've changed some things to work with the storyline so bear with me. This is just my ideas of Draco's perspective throughout the books.
Numb
It started around the time I was 10. Young, I realize, but I believe that my father felt it was necessary to start forcing beliefs into my head at least a good year before I went to Hogwarts and had a chance to develop my own beliefs. He wanted me to associate with the right people. He wanted me to have the right idea about life. I started hanging out with Crabbe and Goyle that year. They were a year ahead of me in school, but that was perfect in my fathers eyes. They had already established these beliefs, their fathers had already forced it upon them. He felt that they would be good guidance for me , regardless of the fact that they were both idiots. It was almost thrilling bossing them around the way I could. My father held more power than either of theirs. I was brought up believing that being a Malfoy gave me the power to treat people however I wanted. Their fathers told them to protect me at Hogwarts because they wanted to please my father. They became more of servants than bodygaurds though, I guess they thought that protecting me meant they had to follow my orders.
Anyway, the year before I started Hogwarts, the home lessons my father gave me (God forbid I stepped foot into muggle school) became all about these beliefs he wanted me to share with him. I was taught not to accept anyone that was not Pureblooded. I was taught that those who were Pureblooded were above all others. I was also taught that muggle- loving bloodtraitors (he brought up the Weasley family as a prime example) were also not to be accepted. I was told that, once at school, I should only associate with the most prestigious pureblooded families (this also ruled out the Weasley family, as they were extremely poor) because they were below us. Because being a Malfoy made me better than them.
So I went off to Hogwarts, fresh out of these lessons with all these new ideas and beliefs in my head. I was a snobby little git back then, but I didn't care. I had two little cronies to boss around and in my head (or the head my father created, rather) I was better than everyone else around me.
It probably started in my fourth year that I started to think for myself a little bit.
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure of walking in your shoes
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Though my mother insisted that I was not to receive the dark mark until at least my seventeenth birthday, my father kept up on making sure that I knew where my loyalties should lie. It was a good three years away back then, but the bastard just couldn't let it go for more than five minutes. Hogwarts started becoming more of a haven to me than anything around that time, a chance to escape my fathers pressure. When I was an impressionable boy of ten…eleven…twelve…hell even thirteen, I would proudly answer that I would be initiated into the dark forces on my seventeenth birthday with honor. But when he asked me the summer before my fourth year what I planned to do when I turned seventeen, I became a bit more hesitant. When I was younger I didn't realize the things I would have to do, the lives that I would touch in such a negative way. I guess my beliefs started to falter a bit in second year, when Ginny Weasley, an innocent girl, was possesed by the Dark Lord and brought down to the chamber of secrets, almost dying. Because of my father. Because he slipped a deadly diary into the poor girls schoolbooks. But due to fear of my father, I swallowed my inhibitions and told myself that I probably would never have to do anything like that. That I would be doing much more honorable things for the Pureblood cause. It wasn't until I watched my father kill a girl my age the summer before fourth year just for being muggle born that I realized the violent tragedies everyday that would eventually be caused by me if I kept following in my fathers footsteps.
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
By fifth year I was repulsed by my father and ceased to return home from Hogwarts during Christmas Break. I told my mother that I had a project that I preferred to work on at school. She bought it, for the most part. My father questioned it but eventually accepted it. Ginny Weasley was one of the few students that stayed behind for Christmas Break that year. She was sick in the hospital wing and Madame Pomfrey had told her parents that she was very contagious and that it would be best if she didn't come home that year. It was contagious indeed, I found this out when I wound up in the bed right next to hers in the hospital wing just by walking by her when she sneezed.
She annoyed the hell out of me all week. We threw insults back and forth which satisfied me to a point, but God was that girl a handful. She kept humming to herself (I mean, who hums when they're sick?) and doing crafty little things like shaping tissues into swans (not used tissues, thankfully) and she found entertainment in telling me all about her life, like we weren't mortal enemies or anything. One day, she was particularly annoying me, blowing her nose quite loudly and frequently.
"Virginia, if you would stop your incessant…blowing…it would please me to great lengths." I snapped, sneering at her in that famous Slytherin way.
"But I can't help it Malfoy! I'm all stuffy!" She cried, her voice sounding nasily, and cracking as she whined.
"If I have to spend one more day in this place with you, it will be the death of me. Literally. I will jump out this window here, behind me."
"Aw and here I thought you quite enjoyed my company."
"You'd like that, wouldn't you, Weasley? Too bad the very thought of you repulses me. Why would I enjoy time wasted with filth like you?" I almost felt guilty as I said it. She looked hurt for half a second. Then she tilted her head to the side, looking at me with piercing eyes, and she said something that shocked me. Something I didn't expect someone like her to say to someone like me.
"Filth like me? Tell me, Malfoy. How can you call me filth when you live with a man like your father? Now, I'm sure you view me as one definition of filth, because I'm poor and I wear hand me downs and none of my books are brand new and not everything I own has that certain sparkle that all of your belongings do. But I think the real definition of filth is someone who has no compassion, no feelings. No remorse for the terrible things that they do. Such as, maybe, slipping something dangerous into an eleven year old girls schoolbooks just because her brother is friends with Harry Potter."
The rest of our time in the infirmary was spent in silence. Half because I was too shocked to talk to her (partly because she had called my father filth, partly because I'd never talked to her about the chamber of secrets…or anything for that matter, and lastly because she was entirely right) and half because she was pretty pissed at me for calling her filth.
The summer before my fifth year, the pressure was intense. My father began insisting that I sit in on meetings with his "colleagues" and read up on the Unforgivable Curses. He even went so far as to cast the Cruciatus Curse on me, to show me what it would be like if I did not choose my predestined path. I think he sensed that I was growing more hesitant, because the more hesitant I grew the more persistent he grew. It got to a point where I wanted to scream at him, tell him that forcing his views on me was wrong. Tell him that what he had done to Ginny Weasley was wrong. Tell him that he was just wrong in general. But I bit my tongue and I went along with it, after all I had two more years until I had to make a choice. But at the same time, I felt that if I didn't break free soon I would surely go insane.
Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
Every step that I take is another mistake to you
(Caught in the undertow just caught in the undertow)
And every second I waste is more than I can take
Fifth year something drastically changed. Ginny Weasley came back to school transformed. I had a run in with her on the train, where she told me to pick my jaw up off the floor before I ruined my perfect shoes with drool. I resembled Crabbe and Goyle as a babbling idiot trying to come up with a halfway decent comeback. I never did get one in before she laughed at me and stalked off all sexy-like. Pansy Parkinson saw me staring at Ginny one day and told my dad. He kindly reminded me that "the Weasley girl" was a poor filthy little bloodtraitor and that if I were to associate with her my inheritance would be taken from me, and a number of punishments so terrible I wouldn't even be able to imagine would be in order. I avoided Ginny Weasley like the plague, but I wandered around the school like a zombie because by then I had lost all feeling. Part of me wanted to disobey my father and act on my sudden interest in her so that maybe just maybe I could feel something, anything.
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
Sixth year rolled around and even though I wasn't officially a death eater, I was given a mission. I had to kill Dumbledore. I was frightened to go to school. I stalled as much as I could.
"Sorry father, Potter and his friends are always around, they make things rather difficult."
"Sorry father, every time I try to catch Dumbledore alone some stupid professor needs to discuss something with him."
"I'm sorry father, but I'm behind on my studies, I'll continue my efforts when I'm caught up again."
Every excuse I could find I pulled out. But I knew eventually I would have to betray the beliefs I had started developing on my own and be faithful to the ones he'd pushed into my head for so long. This wasn't who I wanted to be. Hadn't been for two years. But it was who I had to become.
I sought out Ginny Weasley that year. It was stupid, if Pansy or any other jealous Slytherin girl had seen and told my father I would have lost everything. But I needed to do something noble before I did something so terrible. I thought maybe if I could get her to look at me the way she'd always looked at Potter, even just once, it would be worth any future pain life might bring me.
"What do you want, Malfoy?" She asked as I cornered her in the library.
"Isn't it obvious Virginia? I want a word."
"Well, you just had eight words, can I go now?"
"Don't be foolish. I have something to say that you might have the slightest interest in hearing."
"And whats that?" She inquired, raising her eyebrows. After a few minutes of silence from my part, she got frustrated, "Come on, Malfoy. I haven't got all day. "
"I'm sorry, alright?" I suddenly shouted. Her eyes widened and she looked confused.
"Sorry? For what exactly? Cornering me? Taunting me for the last four years? Taunting my brothers and friends for even longer than that? Being an all around prick? Sorry for what, Malfoy?"
"For all of that," I said, then my voice got softer, "and…for what my father did to you."
"What?" She almost whispered, her eyes practically the size of dinner plates by now. Understandably so.
"You know. With the diary and the chamber…everything he put you through. I am truly and honestly sorry. You didn't deserve that. I just..I needed you to know that I'm not like him," I searched her eyes for some understanding of my words before continuing "I know I come across to be, but I'm not. I don't agree with what he did to you. I don't support his motives for doing so, or any of his beliefs. I'm not like him at all, Virginia."
"You know," she began after staring at me for a few more silent moments, "I shouldn't believe you. I should be thinking this is some kind of sick joke and storming off angrily. But I can't…because I do believe you."
And then it happened. I got my one hope. She looked at me the way I'd seen her look at Potter all those years. I didn't waste anytime leaning down and pressing my lips against her. I kissed her gently for a moment, then I became more desperate, and by the time I finally pulled away we were both gasping for breath.
"If things were a little different…if I didn't have to become this person he wants me to be…you could have been my Juliet."
"What if I still want to be? Even if you do become that person?"
I saw Ginny Weasley in private for the remainder of the school year. As long as nobody found out, we didn't need to worry. She tried to help me. She came up with so many ideas to help me avoid my initiation the next year. She tried to get me to tell Dumbledore I was supposed to kill him, insisted he could help. But she was just a naïve fifteen year old girl. I loved her, she made me feel alive for once, she made me genuinely happy. But she didn't realize the depths of my situation by a long shot. She didn't understand my father, didn't understand the fate I was facing if I didn't chose the way he wanted me to go. It didn't take long for Virginia to break it off with me. Two weeks before I was to kill Dumbledore, she told me she could not be with a murderer. I told her that I loved her. She told me that she loved me too, but that she didn't think I was capable of true love, being raised the way I was. She told me that if I truly loved her, I would not kill Dumbledore. So I didn't.
I had several reasonings for not killing him. My main reasoning was that I loved Ginny, and that was the only way I could show her. Another reason was that it wasn't who I wanted to be. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I was not a murderer. Deep down inside I was someone Ginny Weasley could love. My father was dissapointed, especially when he found out Ginny was partly why I didn't do it. As he said he would, he cut off my inheritance. But I didn't care. Ginny was right, Dumbledore helped me. He found me a place to stay over the summer before seventh year, and promised that I would not be on my own, even without my fathers support.
And I know
I may end up failing too
But I know
You were just like me with someone disappointed in you
Virginia, as I hoped she would, came back to me. Needless to say, I did not receive the dark mark that summer when my seventeenth birthday came around. This is because I helped to bring about the fall of Voldemort. At one point in the battle, I came face to face with my father. I got him cornered, wandless, pressed up against a tree with my own wand at his throat.
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
Become so tired so much more aware
I'm becoming this all I want to do
Is be more like me and be less like you
I didn't kill him. As much as I wanted to I couldn't bring myself to kill my own father. Even after all he had done…to both me and the woman I loved. However I handed him over to Azkaban, where he rots now. I spit in his face as they were taking him away. He deserved at least that much.
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
I've become so numb I can't feel you there
I'm tired of being what you want me to be
I spent my seventh year in blissful peace with Virginia. Potter and his little fan club weren't too happy, but eventually they accepted it and we reached some sort of silent understanding. I can't say that we're the best of friends, but we get along well enough I suppose.
My mother asked me to come home after my father was sent to Azkaban. She accepted Virginia immediately, and apologized to me for not doing something about the way my father treated me sooner. I forgave her. After all, if it weren't for my mother my father would have started pushing his beliefs on me at a much younger age.
After graduation I became an Auror. If I concentrate real hard sometimes, I can almost taste the irony.
A year later, after her graduation, Ginny Weasley became Ginny Malfoy. Someday we'll have kids. And I will be proud then, that I did not end up being like my father. I'll be proud when I share this story with them, and even prouder when I do not do the same thing to them that my father did to me.