To everyone- I'm back....Actually, I never really left, I just sort of stopped writing fics for a bit. Novel [was a Sci-fi, now it's a Nazi mystery]......^_^ Ignore odd font sizes, I utterly demolished my computer a few weeks ago. And this title is lame, I know. T_T
Summary: In defense of Death Eaters and Tom Riddle. A wonderful-uh-letter written by a 14-year-old whose father got sacked for being a Death Eater to the evil Ministry. Twisted loyalties......hehheh. If you don't know the narrative by now, well then........This is for all those people who are deadly convinced that the MoM is always right. And for all those who prefer the Death Eaters. ~ salutes ~ It's called different views of freedom. They're just humans after all. We all make mistakes.
Rating: PG for disturbances and language.
To the flamers- If you're going to write a trashy review, don't bother saying 'YOU'RE WRONG!' or 'NO, THEY'RE EVIL!' I'll only laugh at your stupidity. If you think this fic is horrible and I need to go to a mental institution, please keep your gloriously pleasant comments to yourself, or at least have the guts to sign the review with your name, not some anonymous thing. I don't know what's wrong with flamers, especially flamers who sign as '.' or '`' or 'somebody' or something equally sad.
" I can't tell what is wrong and what is right, I've got to find the answer....But when I do there's no way I will ever give up.."
-Sonic, Sonic Adventure [Dreamcast]
Someone has to defend the Death Eaters sooner or later, and it might as well be me.
The angry voices coming from the room four floors below pulled me from my doze. Father and Mother. Lucius and Narcissa. They never fight unless it's about me or money. Damn, they consider their own son in the same category as money. How bloody wonderful.
I had been sitting in my room, contemplating new ways to bring nasty deaths to the main people I hated. Last summer I found this fascinating book in our stash below the drawing room believed to be owned by Tom Riddle once. It's a hit list book actually, probably made by him. Well, I didn't find it. Father gave it to me to shut me up. This book is brilliant. I write in a name and a picture of that person automatically appears. Then whenever I write down a murder theory, it acts it out. Amusing, too. The blood is disturbingly realistic, and it makes me feel odd inside. Another thing I inherited from my father. Vampirism. Nothing better. A friend in the darkness, this ability.
Now that I'm awake, I don't want to be. Or at least be ware at any rate. I slumped lower in my seat and flicked my quill across the room, no longer in the mood to study homicide. It was a lost cause when Father was mad. I couldn't make out what they were saying, not that it matter any longer...They were now silent, probably aware of the fact I was trying to listen.
Father walked in then, startling me yet again. Black robes, as always. Strange muggle army boots. Everything that sets him apart was there. Including the Dark Mark hidden by the arm of his robe. I hate him more today, though I can't place why. It's only logical that I hate him and wish him dead. Maybe it's because he actually cares about me. Something I can do without. But what the hell.
"Draco?" he glanced around the room then. MY room. He had no right to be there. He never did.
"What?" I snapped.
"I got-ah-'sacked' today."
That wasn't what he was supposed to say. He was supposed to yell at me about something. "What?" I asked blatantly.
"They got rid of me. They found our my-er- secret identity, as they called it."
"They know you're a Death Eater?" I was surprised. This was really not at all what I had imagined. "Why didn't they just throw you in jail on the spot?"
He scowled. "They didn't say outright. They just said they knew who I was and that I had better get lost and not come back until I knew 'dark from light'. Stupid bastard, Fudge is. Couldn't even bring himself to say the words 'Death Eater'. He's going to get himself killed before the year is out, acting like this."
I didn't ask who would kill him. There was somehow no need. Lord Voldemort doesn't like lower forces pushing his top Death Eaters around. He doesn't let people like that live.
Father continued then. "I have to go through the legal junk tomorrow, get my last pay and all. They want you to come."
"Why me?" I exploded. I hated the Ministry.
"Ah, they want to 'check up on you'."
"What? They think I'm a Death Eater? Damn it, I will be. Then they'll be sorry."
His eyes darted around and something in them flickered and died. Just like that. I could have missed it. "They think I'm torturing you or something. The Ministry is terrified of me, you know that. They wouldn't dare throw me in Azkaban without at least three good reasons to back their pathetic actions up." He nearly spat out the last words. I could hear the sickening mockery he made of the word 'ministry'.
"Why should they care?" I growled. "I have no business there. They barely know I exist."
"That's the way the Ministry works," he threw his hands up, exasperation, with me or with the Ministry, was clear on his face. "A bunch of damn, hypocritical muggle-haters and a load of mudbloods. They don't know what to do with Death Eaters. In short, they fear us. So they're trying to find other crimes to pin on us so word won't get to Voldemort that they're distinguishing his-ah-friends."
Then he was gone, and he left me standing in the center of my room, clutching the book as tightly as I could. I didn't even remember standing up, it just sort of happened. I glanced absently at the small book, trying to sort out my rage. No, I wasn't mad because Father lost his job. We were too rich to have money problems. The next 50 generations could go unemployed. And no, I wasn't mad that I had to go down to the Ministry. I was mad because of why they had fired him. What right did they have? Yes, he was a Death Eater, but he wasn't doing anything wrong. Besides, in the position he's in, he can't, or couldn't possibly be a spy. They didn't even know the reasoning behind a Death Eater. I don't suppose anyone does; it would make it all too difficult.
I sat down again, suddenly calm. I am rarely calm. I always act it, but what else can I do? People find me more intimidating when I'm always so quiet, and I prefer it that way. I don't need a reputation of being loud and demonstrative of my feelings. I always want to hurt someone, but that's to myself alone. But right now I just want to write. Write to the Ministry. Explain Death Eaters. I could get killed, but someone had to do it. And damn it, if it had to be me, then it would be me. I paused suddenly, my quill half a centimeter above my parchment. The thought flickered across my mind that Voldemort would kill me and my father even. It was risky, but like is nothing to me. I look forward to death. I'm such a bastard everyone hates me and it's so bitter and lonely. But I can't change now, I don't know how to. I don't know how to act around anyone either. Nobody's ever expressed any concern for me in the least, so I don't know how to give any back. I can tell my father cares, but he would never admit it, so it is useless to me. I'm scared to have anyone to care about, truth to tell. But I'm lonely, I have been my whole life. I can be surrounded by people, but the feeling never lessens. It's a part of me. Death is a friend.
I laughed then, realizing the irony of it all. How badly I wanted to be a Death eater I had never noticed before.
The only catch was that I had never met Lord Voldemort before. I have no idea how pleasant he is. But that's survivable. It's not important now.
I smirked, glad that my father, no matter how much I hated him, was so intelligent. He had spent hours after hours explaining to me what it meant to be a Death Eater, and everything behind it. What Tom Riddle was like, what his life was like, how he portrayed the world....I knew it all, knew all the pain. I understand Death eaters perfectly.
The only thing that stands in the way of my being one is that-that thing that died in my father's eyes when I said I was going to be one. That doesn't matter though. I wrote. It all came out easily. The pain and rage of every Death Eater that had ever walked the earth. A somewhat odd sense.
~
To the Minister of Magic, the Ministry, and all the fools behind it,
I am here to discuss something I know you don't give a damn about. Something you don't want to know about. Something that could tarnish your already glorious reputation. Your silver reputation, not even gold. Gold can not tarnish. You know who I am, and who I stand for. I know you know this.
The Death Eaters. They have a lot more behind them than you think. Three fourths of a lie is wanting to believe it, and if you continue to believe that the Death Eaters are evil and useless, then there you have it.
Tom Riddle, as you know, had a muggle father and a witch mother. His father abandoned him before he was born, before he ever knew him. His mother died moments after his birth. The last person on this planet that could have possibly cared about him, the only person, died on a muggle hospital bed. Of course the child would portray muggles, and the world as a whole, as evil. He had never, ever had anyone care about him, had never felt love. He did know however, that his father had a choice of leaving him. He knew his father decided that he did not want him, and left him. His mother, a witch, a pureblood.....[Don't you dare say that she wasn't one, for he considers muggle-borns as muggles, so she was a pureblood!], died before knowing him. Riddle knew his father, a muggle, chose to leave him and his mother, a witch, did not. The first person in the world to hate him and hurt him was a muggle.
And probably the last.....The haunting memory of his father still plagues him. It always will. You can not kill your father without hurting yourself, no matter how much you hate him.
Riddle spent his entire childhood in a muggle orphanage. I've heard about those, and I know that Hell is kinder. Children in general are cruel and hateful, especially kids who have never felt love. And the ones that always take in all the beatings and cruelty and the different ones. People hate differences, trust me, I know. He was hated for he was unusual. He was bullied and prodded all his life by muggles. How the hell could he obtain a good image of people who detested him? That too, is difficult.
He grew up with no love. If his father hadn't abandoned him, he could have had at least one parent. He could have had at least one person in this disgusting world that cared about him. He wouldn't have had to go to the orphanage. Shut up and think about it! Riddle was a genius! Brilliant! Some argue he was mislead, but he wasn't evil.
Allow me to pause for a moment and remind you of something. Remember that thing he said to Harry Potter so many years ago that was the most horrific thing as some say? "There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it." Did that not sound odd to you? It did to me. You see, it is obvious with these words that Voldemort did not believe he was evil. He does not believe in good and evil, he believes everything in the world is neutral. Blank. He only sees power. And his entire life, the power of his own life was in the hands of muggles. He could not control what happened to him, only muggles could. He could feel hatred though, and that was what he felt. His power to exist, to make choices, was destroyed by muggles. Mainly by his father, who took everything away from him by walking away.
He was not evil. He was not mislead either. Not quite. And before you say anything about his being cruel to Death Eaters, let me tell you that he has NEVER felt ANY love in his whole bloody life! How is he supposed to show any emotions toward people? Even people he does care about? It's impossible. If you have never experienced something, you can not teach it.
I know you see me as an insolent little prat who knows too much by this point, but bear with me, even a little longer. What I am saying is the truth and nothing but the truth. If you choose not to believe me, then fine. Don't. You're only digging your grave deeper.
It is evident that Riddle hated muggles. But honestly, in his position, he probably never met a kind muggle. He probably received pity, but never love. Never true concern. His life was utterly beyond his power the moment that muggle walked out of his life and never returned. He was alone and helpless, thrown out into an angry world where no one loved him. And he was forced to fight for himself and only himself. It became a passion. A reason for existing. It's a cold, harsh world when you are alone. Trust me.
When he moved onto school, he discovered people like himself, and not like himself. By this point in his life, he loathed the muggle blood in him and he hated himself for this very reason. He grew to hate muggle blood as well, for it was this fault in him that tormented his soul. He learned of purebloods, mudbloods, halfbloods, and squibs. Squibs and purebloods were satisfactory. They at least had the blood, their veins were free of the blood he so hated. Being a halfblood himself, he saw how twisted our world had become due to muggles. We are not a secret anymore. As the years pass, our blood gets mixed in more and more with muggles blood, and our own blood, our magic, grows weaker as the generations go on. When was the last time you met any wizard as powerful as Merlin? Even if a pureblood has trouble with magic, they at least have the knowledge inside them. Our world is foever changed, and it is only a matter of time before it dies.
Unless the muggles die first.
He saw people like him living and acting like muggles. It's an ugly world.
As he grew older, he fell into politics and how his world was run. He studied this very Ministry...He saw that quite a few people in charge, people controlling his world, were halfbloods and mudbloods. He saw that many of the purebloods working with them, deep down, loathed them. I'm talking about people like you, Fudge. Yes, your attitude is no better than my father's, and it's not as much a secret as you think. Well, Riddle realized that most muggle-haters would never, ever admit that they did hate them, and he could not understand. He saw the muggles as a whole new specie, hated by many wizards who would rather die than say so.
Can you begin to see it now? Voldemort. Mislead? Maybe. Evil? Definitely not. Have you ever had a small pet that was killed by another animal? Ever owned a rat or a mouse that was eaten by a cat? Killed? Did you not, when young, portray the cat as an enemy? Something that had the power to steal from you? This is no different. He believes, and I believe, that Lord Voldemort is doing the right thing.
Right here, right now, muggles who-damn-wizards I mean-wizards who live with muggles are creating laws and such. Even purebloods are marrying to muggles, and liking them. Bu have you not noticed the prejudice the halfbloods and mudbloods have against us? Even if they don't know any purebloods, they see us as arrogant, cruel idiots to avoid. So, of course, purebloods have stricter laws. Fair, eh?
Let's stop and think a moment. Muggles know about vampires and werewolves and other non-human magical 'creatures' as they call them. Dragons too. They know, and they fear them, though any self-respecting wizard would not. We know how to defend ourselves. So why must vampires and werewolves [especially] be locked away or kept under close tabs? So they don't interfere with muggles. I'm not stupid, that's the reason. They're not dangerous to us, only to them. So those idiot muggle-blooded fools make laws about it.
Those 'creatures' belong to our world, and they have reasons for being here. Riddle realized this before anyone else did and joined up with other people. Soon most purebloods saw as he did.
Death Eaters were born. Risen from the ashes of a crumbling wizarding world. Like a phoenix. Beautiful, too.
He followed his blood, shall we say? And what better was there to fight against the Ministry than use the feared dark magic? There is no better way. You do not reason.
We can be cruel, heartless. We can murder and laugh about it. Just like you can throw us behind bars to die and laugh about it, turning the key and realizing you are 'safe'. You're worse, if anything. We at least fight fair. We don't throw our enemies into dungeons and let some soul-sucking beast deal with them. You murder, just as we do. 'Justifying manner', give it a rest.
And now the Ministry is working to destroy all Death Eaters. Because we threaten to show what? The truth?
We have our reasons. We're no different from you.
Only our views on freedom are.
Sincerely,
Draco Malfoy
~
I paused and stared at it, tapping my quill against the desk irritably. I added a few more words.
Draco Malfoy, speaking for all the Death Eaters
Perfect now. It was horribly written, but I was a kid by their standards, so what would it matter? It would disturb them if anything. That was all I wanted.
Smiling faintly, feeling my fangs press against the inside of my mouth, and folded the letter carefully as I opened a black envelope. My specialty. People hate black-enveloped letters. Sealing it with a flourish, I slid down into my seat again, exhaustion sinking in for some reason. And the troubled dreams came like a bat in the night.
I had a simple dream first, where I walked into a darkened room. Cold and dark, reminding me faintly of my father's room, where I never entered except to steal a book. I could just make out several small beds, a table, and a lamp. An orphanage. And I could hear sobbing. I walked around, and found a small boy sitting on the floor, clutching a photo of a woman to his chest and crying. He was barely thirteen, yet his words were symbolistic of the years to come. Rocking back and forth on his heels, he sobbed the following:
"I will avenge you. Oh God, I will. If he had never left you, left us, you wouldn't have been sad. You wouldn't have died and I wouldn't be here. I hate them here. They call me loony and hurt me. Mother, I want to go home, but I don't have one. The muggle took my home away..."
It went on like so, but I turned away, not wanting to intrude any longer, though I knew the boy there was dead. And a new man, unhurt so it seemed, had arisen from his ashes. Tom Riddle to Lord Voldemort. The change had been taking place all his life.
A more advanced dream came then, a much uglier one. One I would not forget anytime soon.
No Tom Riddle. I was Tom Riddle here.
I was at the orphanage, staring up at the sky watching the planes pass. Those monstrous, ugly planes, like bullets streaking across the sky, hundreds of them. My age was unknown. A muggle stood beside me, another orphan. He laughed. "They have bombs. They're gonna kill them Nazis. This is war..."
"Bombs are muggle objects." I said absently, though I had no control. It was just a movie, replaying itself...
"What you say, loony?" The boy suddenly turned ugly. "Look, little bastard wizard boy..." He whipped around and punched me, no, Tom, full in the face. He bolted then, ignoring me as I crumpled to the ground, pushing the blood back helplessly. I hated to bleed. Tom did.
Blackness closed in, and yet more came. A vision came, a dream inside a dream. Yet I knew this was the truth, these thoughts coming were truly those of Tom Riddle.
"Alone..." was the first word I heard. "You're alone.....And your secrets..."
A city, bombed. Ruined, gone and dead. Muggle army men patrolled the city. A girl and an older man, father and daughter, stood stock still in the ruins. Cloaks, they were wizards, and they had saved themselves from the blow. The muggles stopped before them and, without thinking, calmly shot them and moved on. Dead now. "Damn loonies." One said calmly.
The inside of Azkaban. Row upon row of purebloods, for that is what it was mostly. Dementors.....You should have known...You know the laws more......They seemed to say. Tears, the muggles had ruined everything. To no avail. Their wars had destroyed it all.
The old headmaster, confronting Riddle in the hall. Telling him his father who had left him was a muggle, and he could not hold a grudge. Riddle exploding. "How can I NOT hold a grudge? They ruined me! It's all gone now! My life..."
Darkness again. A sudden voice.....
Is this what you want your world to be like!!??
I awoke then, stifling a scream. It wasn't even scary, just unnerving. And the thought that Voldemort, by some chance, wanted to show me something was there. I couldn't rid myself of it. Did he already know about the letter I wrote? I realized I didn't want to know the answer, and I bolted down the stairs, throwing myself at my father. He looked horrified. I had never touched him except to hit him before, and now I was hugging him. No wonder he was confused.
"Take me to the Ministry." I growled stiffly, slightly embarrassed myself.
He nodded dumbly, obviously still disoriented. I wondered if he thought I was mad.
Faking a smirk, I ran back into my room and constructed a quick spell, bringing my dreams onto paper. I slid them into the envelope, then paused. No. Those secrets were Tom Riddle's. He had shared them with me, and I would not let them out.
The halls of the Ministry were cold and dark, for it was night and it was getting ready to close. I was reminded of an ugly orphanage of so many years ago. Father was silent, brooding. I led him toward Fudge's office and he did not object. I glanced at him once and saw a deep sadness in his eyes, so I quickly turned away. The thought crossed my mind he believed I was turning him in.
I pushed the thought away and stopped at the door. I hated him, but I would never hurt him, I realized. Sliding the envelope out of my pocket, I shoved it deftly under the door and silently turned back to my father, who was off a-ways gazing at the announcements on the board.
"What were you doing?" he said finally. He looked tired and haggard, shadows under his eyes and stress lines clear on his forehead. He wasn't even that old, and he always looked a decade younger, but today he looked older. I felt a twinge of pity, something new to me. Something ugly.
"Setting things right." I said quietly. It wasn't me talking. It was Tom Riddle.
He smiled weakly and placed his hand on my head. I winced unintentionally. Then it hit me...why? Kids at school torment because they know he is a Death Eater, and they think he hurts me. But he doesn't, and now the Ministry thinks so. I suddenly remembered how I used to call him 'Daddy', and I remembered another young boy, so many years ago.....a boy who never knew his father.....And simply because of this, the entire world changed.
Lucius was no different from any other father. Only with different views on freedom. I was suddenly proud of him, of what he was. And of his courage to stick up for what he and a lonely orphan boy believed in.
Thank you, Tom Riddle, for helping me realize this.