A/N – This is set before my story "To Catch a Death Eater".

Disclaimer – I don't own HP, any of the canon characters, concepts or settings. Don't sue.


Might-have-beens.


"Have you ever wondered," asked the nameless, faceless man, "what it might have been like, if you hadn't joined?"

Lucius Malfoy, his heavy-lidded eyes gazing blankly into the distance, said nothing.

"Surely you've thought of it, even if only in passing. So much would be different – you wouldn't be here, for one thing. Voldemort wouldn't have gained such a following; the Rising mightn't have developed into a war…"

He paused, but again there was no response. The anonymous man waited, exasperated; surely, by now, he should be used to such a non-reaction?

"Your son might still own you his father."

The calculated cruelty had instant effect: eyelids flickered, if only briefly, and the mouth tightened. Finally, Lucius Malfoy spoke. "It serves no purpose."

Vindicated by that response, and intrigued by it, the anonymous interrogator followed it up immediately. "Indulging in what might-have-been?"

"Wallowing in it. It leads only to heartbreak and disillusion, which are both fatal, in a place like this." An all-encompassing gesture, taking in the grey, soulless walls and the dark, dank corridors outside the small, cramped cubicle. Azkaban. With or without Dementors, the prison sucked the innocence and joy out of even the most heartless prisoners.

"You've tried it then." The unknown man pressed the point. He did not want to lose this opportunity, the first reaction he'd got from the man in almost two months.

"Who hasn't? We are all human, after all. Animals cannot – or do not – dream."

"There are some who would call you an animal," he replied, "for your actions, your cruelty."

A quiet laugh. "Animals don't kill without reason – they don't have the imagination for it. Nor do they indulge in revenge, or petty cruelty; like dreaming, those are entirely human traits."

"You don't have much faith in human nature."

"No. Or rather, I have great faith in it –" A sudden, cynical smile.

"Why did you do it?" The interrogator asked. "What could you possibly have stood to gain?"


Once upon a time, Lucius Malfoy had been society's golden child, the young, brilliant leader of House Malfoy, the son of Abraxis Malfoy, one of the heroes of the fight against Grindelwald. But in1974, the first hints emerged of Lucius' involvement with an obscure right-wing terrorist group –

The Aurors had been shocked. Abraxis had been so proud of his son, so certain that he would one day grow out of his insolent, reckless rebellion, but he had died in a squalid Muggle war in 1970, leaving sixteen-year-old Lucius alone – everything, so the official biographers said, had gone downhill after that.

It was easy to apportion blame, to point to certain acts and omissions and say 'here, if only it had been otherwise…' The apologists and the doctors had candidates enough: the Ministry, who sent Abraxis on the mission and then tried to cover up their mistakes; the Aurors, who had failed to watch over young Lucius properly, after his father's death; even the unknown agent who'd recruited him, tempting a young boy into the shadows.

But now it was 1997, and the sympathy gained by a father's death had worn thin; the Aurors, who dealt with more harsh reality than the biographers and psychiatrists would ever see, knew exactly where to place the true blame for Lucius' fall: squarely at his own feet.

Ultimately, Lucius, and no one else, was responsible for his own sins. And there had been so many of them…

The devastating 1972 campaign that had all but brought wizarding Britain to its knees.

The 1973 assassination of Evan Fitzgerald, the strong, popular Minister of Magic whose aggressive actions had rallied wizarding society, and who, had he lived, might have been able to cut the Rising in the bud.

The attempted coup in 1974, the event that had finally brought him to the attention of his father's old comrades. That had been the Death Eaters' last try at gaining power through even remotely political means: after the coup failed, they turned to indiscriminate violence. The Aurors might have been able to forgive Lucius if he'd turned away after the failure of political terrorism, but he'd continued with the Death Eaters even when they lost all chance at legitimacy.

The massacre at the Grey Kneazle in 1975, a nightclub in Diagon Alley mostly patronized by muggleborns. One hundred people, most of them in their late teens and early twenties, slaughtered in the close confines as they danced to the latest Muggle music.

A litany of violence, murder, and terror, and all in the name of…what?

Who truly knew how Lucius Malfoy thought?


"Why did I do it?" asked Lucius Malfoy, the Dark Lord's right hand, son of one of the most famous Aurors of the 20th Century. "Because I could. Because it pleased me, at the time."

"That's it? Because it pleased you?"

Malfoy tipped his head back against the chair rest, laughing softly under his breath. "Is that not enough? I was eighteen years old. Now I am forty-four – and, like all men who have grown up, I look back and shake my head."

"You regret your actions?"

"Regret? No. Regrets are as useless as might-have-beens, in the end. They do nothing but stir up things best left untouched…"