prompt: What if Draco Malfoy had been the one to kill Albus Dumbledore at the end of HBP?

competition: The Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition, Round Nine

Haunted.

Everyone always said how much I looked like my father, how much I was like him. That first day I found out, and so many afterwards, I stared at the white blonde hair and dirty-ice-grey eyes that stared back at me in the mirror, and wondered if I could be a killer too.

My father took a life, and later he made one. Me. But staring at my almost translucent skin, my entire washed-out colour scheme, you could almost believe I was nothing but a ghost, only haunting the living.

There are some things you can't forget, no matter how much you may want to. It could almost be funny, how little control you can have over your own mind. But I could never see the humour in losing control. I had myself so tightly under my own grip that it was a wonder I could breathe at all.

Draco Malfoy had blood on his hands.

That's what Rose Weasley had said. Rose Weasley read too many muggle mystery novels, and I thought phrases such as that were confined to a world where to kill someone you had to get close enough to cut or stab, to watch as the life drained out of their eyes. You wouldn't know where it was going, just that you had taken it, and you'd never be able to wash your hands clean of what you'd done.

Rose Weasley was always saying how alike the two worlds, wizard and muggle, were.

I'd wake up from the burning chill of nightmares, twisted and sweating in sheets whiter than a corpse, and look down at my hands and be surprised to see them bare and white. Clean.

Surprised, but not relieved. How could I feel relief when I was burdened by this weight that felt so much like guilt, and I was still waiting to found out what is was that I'd do wrong?

I might as well have given up wondering, given myself up to the guilt, for at school they seemed even surer than I of my own wrongdoing, though to me it was a future probability, while they acted like it had already happened, to them and everyone they loved.

Kids are cruel, Rose Weasley would say, never mind the fact she was one too.

I knew this to be true, because I had been so myself.

Coming home that first summer, after I first learnt the truth, as it was slammed into me with every word and hex and shove, the weight of it pulling relentlessly at my heart, I'd acted out of that awful place of hate myself.

My father didn't miss the way I shied away from his hand. He'd only reached out to touch my hair. Draco Malfoy wasn't the affectionate sort. No, he was the killing sort.

I felt my stomach roll, I felt sick to the very core of me. I jerked away. My eyes were on my father's long sleeves, incongruous in this heat.

He gave only the slightest flinch. It was more of a blink, a twitch, but at eleven I was already adept at reading the smallest of signs. They were the only kind there were to go by in my household, not like at school, where everyone seemed to carry their hearts on their sleeves and not hesitate to shout their every thought at the top of their lungs, to look down at you and tell you, in no uncertain terms, everything you should hate about yourself.

I knew what was under that particular sleeve.

"Scorpius." My father's voice was very quiet, but not hollow. No, it was loaded with a thousand different things, and I didn't want to hear one of them.

Against my own wishes, my head whipped up like a shot at the sound of my name. My hands curled into fists at my side as I tried to hold everything inside. I couldn't bear the thought of losing any ounce of control.

"We need to talk."

In the mirror over my father's shoulder I saw what was brewing in my storm cloud eyes, and I'd felt something I couldn't name, but when I'd thought over it later, I'd known it to be fear. I shook my head and pushed through the front door, letting the weight of it swing and slam.

Outside, the air was oppressively warm, unbearably still. I broke through it in a run, just needing to feel the weight of my heart in my chest and the burn of air in my lungs and the solidness of the ground as my feet slammed against it. And I ran, because a part of me hoped I could leave everything I didn't want to be a part of me behind.

I made up my mind, that day, to be the opposite of everything my father was. Only, back at school, they were no less determined to make me their villain.

How much good would I have to do, to undo all the bad that came before me? Could I make my name my own, or when I said it would people always think of all those that had come before me, and every wrong they had ever done?

Would it be easier, though I carried in my blood a brutal and bloody past, if I didn't wear silver and green, and a snake over my heart?

In class, I never wanted the professors to turn their back, for whenever they'd turn back around they'd find something wrong, and the blame game would begin again.

Malfoy set it on fire, Professor, I saw it

I saw it too

And me

I did!

He hit me, Professor

I can't find my necklace!

They'd find it in my bag. I'd never have had seen it before that moment.

The professor would look at me, though whenever they looked at me I felt that it wasn't me they were seeing. They'd ask, did you do it? because they had to be fair.

I'd shake my head. No.

Still they must have mistaken the pain in my eyes for guilt, because that's what they wanted to see there. I spent most of the year in detention. I hated nothing more than other people's laughs. They were always aimed at me.

I tried so hard. I'm not looking for pity, I'm just telling you how it was. I did other people's homework more than I did my own. I carried books, I mended holes in clothes and bags, I worked out what was wrong with classmates' potions, I fetched peoples' pets down from the stupidest of heights.

I thought I could, not make them, but maybe convince them to like me.

Sometimes, they'd pretend they did. Somehow, that was the worse of all.

Though I never did any of the things they accused me of, enough of what they said rang true enough for me to, honestly, not blame them for despising me. I only wished they wouldn't.

Every bit of kindness I extended to the world was slapped down. It grew so bad, I began to understand.

I looked at my father, at the lines engraved in his forehead, his permanent frown.

I looked into the face of rejection, again and again.

And I almost knew how he did it.

It wasn't out of anger, he told me once, though I pretended not to listen, like I always would when he'd try to explain himself. It was fear, wearing the mask of bravery. It was desperation.

That's what I understood. I stood on top of the Astronomy Tower, my hands shaking, every part of me shaking, and I felt like I could do anything. A flock of birdsflew overhead. Not even gravity could get them down.

"Malfoy."

I turned. I stepped down from the wall. I didn't want to fall, for the last thing I ever heard to be that cursed name.

The wind blew Rose Weasley's blood red hair about her face, but she didn't make a move to push it away.

"Your hair's a pretty colour," I said, and lent back against the railing. I closed my eyes, caught my breath. I didn't look at her, didn't wait to see any reaction she may have.

You're so weird, Malfoy.

To her credit, she didn't ask what I was doing. I don't know how I would have answered her.

I stared at her tie, crimson and gold. "Gryffindor. Bravery. Courage. Standing up for what's right."

"I don't deserve it."

I only looked up because I swore I could hear the pain in her voice. It was there, shining brighter than her brown eyes. According to my principles - and that's all I had, really, my principles - I should open my mouth and tell her what she wanted to hear. But I felt like if I did try to speak it wouldn't be those kind words that would fall out. I didn't know what I'd say, but I felt the words spinning behind my eyes, words I couldn't let out. So I kept my mouth clamped firmly shut.

Her dainty fingers covered her own mouth. I wondered if she was going to be sick. I wondered if her tiny form would be picked up and tossed around by the wind that beat at our ears, ferocious and consuming. I wondered what weapon she'd choose to stamp me down.

Her usual choice was silence, noncompliance, ignoring me like she hoped it could make the problem - me - disappear.

Maybe I did deserve their hate, if this is the way that I thought, maybe my struggle to keep it all inside wasn't worth a thing. Maybe she did deserve those colours, and all the advantage she was born into, even if I hadn't seen a single sign of it.

The argument sounded feeble, even to me, but I was still trying to convince myself of the good in the world.

She still hadn't said anything. I wondered if she was as choked up inside as I was. I felt like she was struggling with something. A realisation.

I heard myself speak. My voice sounded smaller than she looked, drowning in black robes, dwarfed by the huge castle and larger world around her. "I never hurt anybody."

"I didn't-" but she broke off, like she knew her words were a lie. "I don't know what to do. I want to help."

This sounded like honesty, but I didn't want to hear it. I turned around, leant on the low stone wall and stared out over the grounds. Make them stop, is what I thought, and were also the last words I wanted to say.

She came and stood beside me. Then she held something out in her hand, I don't know where she had pulled it from. "Chocolate frog?" she asked.

Maybe this was what normal people kept hidden in their sleeves.

I shook my head.

Her eyebrows shot up. "There's nothing wrong with it!" She sounded affronted.

I frowned. "I didn't think there was."

Then she was hugging my arm, clinging to me like a life-force. She buried her head against my shoulder -I was frozen, a glacier- and she said, over and over again. "I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry."

I didn't know what to do. It all felt very surreal, that I was there, and she was too, and that someone was saying these words to me. They felt like they were blowing over my shoulder, not touching me like the strands of her hair were, tickling against my face, but I said nonetheless, "I'll have that frog, if you're still offering," and gently shrugged her off.

She smiled, a fragile, hopeful thing.

I took the chocolate, and unwrapped it carefully. I was ready for it, but still the frog managed to allude my waiting hands. It jumped, making a break for it, but Rose caught it before it could make it over the edge.

I started to smile at her, but something caught my eye. Nestled in the wrapper; the card.

Albus Dumbledore peered up at me, his eyes sharp and very blue behind half-moon glasses. He wasn't smiling.

Rose's own smile died as she looked at my shaking hands. She did that thing, again, where her hand flew to her mouth.

I thought she might start apologising again. Before I could hear those feeble words, my arm was pulling back and I threw the tiny card, the ghost from a past I never even lived, yet carried with me nonetheless, with all my might.

The irony.

It didn't disappear, like I'd hoped it would. The wind caught it, carried it in the arms it did not have. I buried my head in my hands.

"Will you sit with me, in class?" Rose asked.

I looked at her with burning, cold, eyes.

She didn't flinch.

"Are you sure you want that? Evil, it's catching."

"Stop pitying yourself." She was right up close. Her eyes burned too, but with fire, not ice. "I'm offering to help you."

"So you can feel better about yourself?" I had no right to judge her. I was speaking out of a place of hurt, but even though it felt wrong it felt good.

"Does it matter why I'm doing it?"

And that was the question, really. Does doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, make you wrong? Does doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, make you right?

But I gave her that second chance. We became friends, and I hated that when I brought her home something in me felt warm and vindictive when I saw my father's reaction to her presence.

He didn't say anything. Of course, he couldn't, and I didn't say anything to him. I didn't have anything to say to him. One day I'd leave this house, and I would leave them all behind.

Rose noticed. Rose noticed everything. I told her that she wasn't a detective, like in her books, I told her the world wasn't a puzzle and that she couldn't put it back together.

"You're a good guy, Scorpius," she said, although I was being precisely the opposite. I liked how she used my name. That one was mine, and mine alone. "Your father loves you."

"Don't," I warned.

"And at school-"

"Don't."

She fixed me a sharp look, and carried on anyway. "People are starting to like you, now that they're getting to know you."

I wanted to deny this, but I couldn't, because it was somewhat true. I was making... friends. Maybe, possibly. I still didn't feel right letting people close to me. I still felt dangerous, like it was only a matter of time. I didn't want to hurt anyone.

Rose didn't want to hear this, but I sometimes felt like she knew.

"You'll give anyone a second chance," she said. "Except him."

The unspoken lay in the air between us. I was always hurting someone. I was holding him at a distance. I was punishing him for something that couldn't be changed.

Summer. Fifth year.

I screamed at my father. I said I am nothing like you.

And he said, I know and I'm glad.

You worship your parents, until you don't.

And one day, you may even thank them.