A/N: The title of this piece comes from the Supertramp song "Goodbye Stranger."
Like a King Without a Castle
His hands are pale, soft, slender. Long, elegant fingers boast nary a callous or ill-trimmed nail. The skin of his wrists stretches tight over bone. His palms are lined with a thousand tiny creases, and idly he ponders the story mapped out by their seemingly-haphazard design. He can find no significance in them. Oh well, he was never much for palmistry, anyway.
Whenever he looks at these hands, he half expects to see them stained with blood. They ought to be, after all. Dumbledore's blood, Crabbe's blood, the blood of countless others whose deaths he had in some small way facilitated. He glimpses what isn't there, and the hands tremble.
Blood is everything. Before he could walk, that simple fact was drummed into his brain, an oft-heard cadence that fell around his toddler's ears. His tiny chest swelled and his eyes glowed when he thought of being a pureblood, a Malfoy, a lord among wizards. He was entitled to everything and more because of the blood that pulsed, rich and beautiful, in his veins.
Those unfortunate peasants who thought themselves equal to a Malfoy received a lashing courtesy of his scalding tongue and searing eyes. Lucius often chided him for his lack of subtlety, but by the time his turn at Hogwarts came around, he'd long since decided he needed no such thing. There was no point in joining the dance when all you had to do was stop the music and be done with it. He ruled the world, or so it seemed from within the walls of stone.
He rarely bothered himself with thoughts of Voldemort, at first. He knew his father's allegiance and cared nothing for or against it, despite the slight pressures that began as early as his fourth year. Lucius was discreet, then. Narcissa would've had a fit if she'd thought her precious boy was being recruited for such messy work, especially at fourteen. But he found solace in the hallowed halls of Hogwarts, where he reigned.
He was more concerned with that git Potter, winning the hearts of sheep-like Gryffindors in attempt to steal his crown. Just hearing the name had the potential to sour his day, so he often went out of his way for the petty revenges he'd never before had to seek. At least his Slytherins knew their rightful place, and a good number of the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, too. He mostly contented himself with them, but he was always plotting how to win back more of his rightful turf.
He thinks back on that time now and aches for it, for that time when his thoughts were filled with nothing but smug superiority and a loathing for all things Potter. He longs for the past when he fancied himself a monarch, the foolish boy who couldn't imagine bowing and scraping and walking that most precarious wire, all for the entertainment of his Lord and master.
Voldemort would not be denied, and with a flick of his wand and a single tattoo, he shattered all illusions of grandeur. Ink threaded like liquid fire through Malfoy's very veins, tainting his sacred blood, hollowing him out from the inside with its poison. His whole body screamed when the Mark burned, and he thought surely all the blood would all boil away, but it never did. He didn't deserve such freedom, anyway.
He remembers the rage that simmered beneath the surface each time he knelt, shaking and subservient. The Dark Lord felt it and was amused, for he felt also the fear that kept his subjects from revolting. Voldemort reveled in ordering him to do the impossible, delighted in the impotent fury and desperate, all-consuming terror that flooded Draco even as he kissed the devil's hand.
He shudders once, as always, and stares again at his hand. It has curled into a fist; he can feel the crescents of his nails digging into flesh, and his veins protrude in lines of blue-green. With his other index finger, he traces the outline of the now-dead tattoo. The ink no longer lives, sinister and shining, but it will not be removed. He can no longer feel the taint of it mingling with his blood, staining bones, singeing skin, but no spell he's tried can erase it. The skin is red and raw and a thin, faint scar runs round the edges of the mark, a testament to crude Muggle means that fared no better than his wizardry.
His hands may not be stained with blood, but they are stained with ink. It serves well enough, he thinks, to mock a forlorn king, erstwhile ruler of a castle of air and wearer of an imagined crown.