"Now Iapetos took to wife the neat-ankled maid Klymene, daughter of Okeanos, and went up with her into one bed. And she bare him a stout-hearted son, Atlas; also she bare very glorious Menoitios and clever Prometheus, full of various wiles, and scatter-brained Epimetheus."
Chapter One: Atlas
If you are looking for a story about star-crossed lovers, or forbidden love, or sleeping with the enemy then I suggest you peel your eyes off this and pick up Romeo and Juliet. This story is not about happy endings or happy beginnings because happiness is a word that cannot be found in the life of Draco Malfoy, a boy who had nothing from the very start apart from his determination to make his father proud. He had never experienced love, or strife, or sadness, or loss, not even a friend. Even now that the war ended and Harry Potter was dead along with the hundreds of Muggle-borns the Dark Lord had targeted, Draco still couldn't find within himself the capacity to feel. Harry Potter was dead and the Dark Lord wanted nothing more than to rid the Wizarding World of Muggle-borns.
I apologise if this story isn't what you were looking for, but, if you stick with it, I will hope you see a Draco who is actually no different than a lot of us. He searches for the reasons behind right and wrong, just like you. It is a question he battles daily.
Draco sat slumped on a chair in the Slytherin common room confined with the company of Blaise Zabini, a dark-skinned boy with a very divine mother who had been widowed seven times. When Draco had first met Blaise, he had spoken about how rich his mother's new husband was. Five weeks later, he was dead. Two more weeks and that much wealthier, Ms. Zabini had married husband number six.
Whether Blaise was or not, he was still Draco's best friend. Through his experience with Blaise, Draco learned that it is better not to make assumptions too quickly about someone. In the end, whether Blaise or his mother had killed the wealthy wizards, didn't matter. They died either way, and making wrong assumptions would only cause more pain.
To make assumptions is to judge. Judging someone is to form an opinion or conclusion about someone or something. Say if I were to walk into a complete stranger on the street. I would look at them from head to toe and notice they had dark clothing, dark lipstick, dark hair, and dark everything, I would immediately dislike them. But what if this stranger was bubbly, and outgoing, and knew how to make me smile? Would I be a bad person for judging this stranger because of their style and colour preferences? Maybe.
If someone tested me and put me in a room with numerous people dressed similar (but had different music tastes), I would assume, because of their clothing, they liked rock music, or classic, or maybe reggae. But we don't need to assume the worst about people because we are all "worst". No matter how kind you are, or how funny you are, there's a demon inside you that has built up a lot of pessimism your entire life. It's just waiting for the right time to peer out, and because of this we can all come to the conclusion that humans are designed to feel. We are designed to hate, and love, and feel jealous even if that seems like the most horrible thing to feel. We should never feel guilty for wanting to feel loved, or wanting to be angry because that is what makes us humans. And we should never judge others for it either.
If Draco weren't human, then why was he hoping the Dark Lord would wither away soon? Why did he constantly feel anxious about adding another name to his list of dead bodies? This was not a game. This was not entertainment. He was killing people to satisfy a man who couldn't be satisfied. Draco knew he would not win anything for having the highest number of murders. Nothing except this empty feeling in his gut and the meaningless title of Voldemort's number one hunter.
Blaise was no different except he felt remorse. He actually knew how to feel guilty about what he had done. He knew exactly what it felt like to have the guilt nip repeatedly at his mind. Blaise had wanted it to stop long ago, but Draco had forced him to carry on.
Why had Draco let himself do that? Why had let himself slowly kill his best friend from the inside? Was it because he didn't want to see what he might look like if he cared? Because he was bad. In so many different ways.
"Stop that."
Draco peeped up at Blaise.
"Stop what?" he asked.
"Picking your lip." Zabini fished out a cloth from inside his coal-coloured blazer and handed it to his friend. "It's bleeding."
The hearth radiated its scorching heat onto Blaise so he strode away from it. He sunk his hands into the pockets of his trousers and peered out the window as Draco smeared the blood off his splintered lips.
The winter season wasn't doing his lips any favours either. The colder it got the more addicted he became to picking it. It distracted him from the gloominess that encompassed Hogwarts. He couldn't even remember the last time he had seen sunlight. The last time he felt heat as warm as the hearth was mid-summer when he and Blaise were instructed to hunt down Justin Finch-Fletchley who had been hiding out in Madrid, Spain.
It had been daunting enough listening to his old classmate him beg for his life, and in that brief moment when he held Justin's existence on the tips of his fingers, he had let it slip into his aunt's hands. It was like witnessing ice melting helplessly on a sweltering afternoon on the beach.
Why was he even recalling Justin's death when he had another one to plan?
Blaise sighed. He looked over his shoulder at Draco. "Who do you think we're going to kill next?" he asked from out of the blue.
"Why are you even asking me that? You never ask me that."
"Do you think it'll be that Colin Creevey?"
"I don't know Blaise, and frankly, I don't care."
Draco rose up from his seat and ambled towards the door. He'd had enough of Blaise's company for the time being. Maybe in a few hours he'd return and Blaise would be waiting for him with one of his witty and pathetic jokes about the Dark Lord.
Blaise jerked round. "Where you going now?" he asked.
And Draco replied, "To see if they've found Pansy."
And by 'they' he meant Death Eaters. It was pointless to think they would ever help look for someone as useless as Pansy Parkinson. She was practically a sack of potatoes to them; worthless. But Pansy had disappeared after the War, leaving no trace ever since, and Draco was worried that something awful had happened. He knew that nothing would be wrong though, she was a Pureblood after all. Pansy was safe. Besides, to worry was a weakness he couldn't afford.
He opened the door only to meet with the face of someone familiar and scrawny-looking. Bellatrix glared back at her nephew, her hand up in the air as if she were ready to knock. Her hair was dishevelled and all in her face. Her heavily hooded eyes had an aura of wickedness swimming in them.
A smirk arose on her skull-like face as she lowered her hand. "Hello Draco," she said roguishly. "How is my lovely little nephew?" she mocked as she pushed past him and invited herself into their common room.
Bellatrix flicked her wand at the hearth and the fire died out immediately, as if it only took a glance. Of course, with her immense magical ability, she was capable of doing something as simple as putting a fire out. To Bellatrix, it was like reciting the alphabet.
Draco shut the door and turned to face his guest, as did Blaise. "Have you got a name for us then?" he pressed.
With a devious smile she pulled out a folded parchment with mud smeared all over it. She licked her teeth with a cunning venom in her eyes that penetrated through Draco. She was looking straight into his soul, and he did not like it one bit.
Draco went to seize it but Bellatrix backed away. She sniggered and said, "Ah. Not so fast Draco." Her voice was like hissing from a python. So dangerously enchanting to listen to, yet it scratched the back of his throat like nails grazing themselves against a blackboard. "First, I want answers."
"What answers? We've been following the same orders for the past four years. We hunt them down, we kill them, and we return with their wands as a souvenir. What answers could you possibly want?"
Bellatrix giggled. She found this her source of entertainment: messing with people's minds, torturing them, confusing them, anything that made her victim angry or cry was entertainment.
She turned around and aimed her wand at Blaise. "You. Zabini," she said sharply. Her tone prickled his insides like thorns from a rose. It was awful to listen to her voice, let alone feel it. "The Dark Lord ordered you to hunt down Ginny Weasley and kill the blood-traitor. Did you or did you not release her?"
Draco wanted to say something but his lips did not separate. They were bound, sealed to hold back a secret that might save his best friend's life.
"Answer me!" Bellatrix bellowed feistily.
"I killed her. I killed Ginny –"
"Don't lie to me Zabini!" She inched closer to him, the tip of her wand kissing his Adam's apple. "Did – you – or – did – you – not – kill – Ginny – Weasley?"
"Alright, I didn't kill her!" Blaise accidentally leaked. "I let her go. I'm sorry I shouldn't have. I should've just…I don't know what I was doing…"
"Do you know what the Dark Lord will do when he finds out one of his best hunters disobeyed him?" Blaise shook his head, but he did. Blaise knew exactly what would happen to him if Voldemort ever found out. Maybe a simple cast of two words might finally end his misery of guilt, but more likely he would be tortured into insanity like Longbottom's parents.
"He's going to gouge out your sad little eyes before he kills you on this very spot. Do you understand me?"
"It wasn't his fault." Draco cursed his treacherous tongue. Why did he always have to get involved to spare Blaise's neck?
Bellatrix craned her head around at her nephew. A look of surprise drowned her repugnant-expressed face as she turned her body around with her.
"What did you say Draco?" she asked petulantly.
"I said it wasn't his fault." Draco gulped down a frog sitting in his throat. "The Weasleys would've caught us, so I snatched her wand and I apparated Blaise and I out of Belgium. So go ahead, tell Voldemort to kill me instead."
Bellatrix had a sardonic look on her face. Her thin-set eyebrows were oddly shaped and her cracked lips revealed her grotty, uncleansed teeth that used to be as white as pearls. Four years and she had not accomplished her objective: make Voldemort love her. No matter how hard she tried, there was no denying that Voldemort was incapable of feeling love. She was the epitome of damaged goods. Bellatrix Lestrange was the definition collateral damage.
"I wasn't born yesterday! Don't mistake me for an idiot just because I'm not as clever as your mother. I know that you –" she pointed to Blaise. "– have some filthy fondness for that red-headed blood-traitor. But you're family, Draco, and I swore to my sister I would protect you. But my orders are orders, so if I catch you releasing another blood-traitor again, I won't hesitate to kill you myself," she said before she looked back at her nephew with disappointment. "Even you."
She scowled at them both before she handed the parchment to Draco and exited the way she invited herself in. The door shut with a loud bang and the vibrations reverberated through the floor, through their shoes and up their veins into their flesh.
In the new silence, Draco's emptiness resonated inside him. He felt so empty all the time, sometimes almost like all of his organs and bones had dissolved, and all the blood had drained from his veins, and it was so exhausting that he felt both nothing and everything at the same time.
Have you ever felt so empty that you don't even know if you are a real person? You are probably just a ghost with a beating heart that won't stop hurting. Maybe you are a whisper lost in the absence of the wind trying to find comfort through rain. Or maybe you are the thunder that roars in the heavens because you don't know what to feel. You are merely nothing but a speck of dust in the galaxies and constellations that even Atlas cannot fathom. You are simply like me, we have the same impulses, we bleed and we cry because that is the way our bodies respond to us feeling. We are not the sun, planets do not need us to survive, but we survive on each other.
Draco was not like that. He was empty, yes, but he was not balanced. He was half empty, half full. Like a wine glass. Nobody knew if he was hurting or if he was just bored. Draco was a fiasco waiting to happen. He was just a boy.
"Draco?" Blaise nudged him in the elbow. "Open it, I want to know who is next." His tone sounded anxious about what was going to slip out of Draco's mouth. He hated seeing another name, another location, and it was not because he had to travel again. It was because he hated killing. He despised the look his victims gave him when they took their last breath and it was the guilt that overwhelmed him, that followed him, that kept him up most of the night, which hurt the most.
Draco opened it, his fingers tracing the rim of the parchment first, before they unfolded it with hesitance. He felt sick of running, and hunting, and killing. He wanted to sleep and never wake up. He wanted to plummet into a deep slumber where not even a screeching mandrake root could awaken him.
But when his eyes scanned over the words inked on the parchment, he swore he could feel his insides burning up with repugnance. There it was. Staring back at him was a cursive writing that spelled out Volgograd, Russia, Hermione Granger.
I'm so nervous about posting this because my writing skills suck and there are so many good writers out there. I hope my vyvanse will help make it better. It's the shortest chapter (I think) that I've wrote but I just wanted it done and out of the way because I had no idea how to begin it. Please review, I'd love to hear what you think, they are also my motivation to keep writing!
There will be explicit language, death, violence, and maybe sexual content (I suck at writing smut ya see). So...don't say I didn't warn ya, 'cause I did. :)
Jenna xoxo
Update: Thank you Melissa for helping me fix this chapter and betaing it, I owe it to you and I can't thank you enough! So I dedicate this story to you!