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Chapter 4

It was too late, after all; he'd made his mind up. To avoid other consequences, Draco began to explain what led him to this state.

He leaned his body forwards so as not to appear too comfortable with his coming speech. His throat dry with emotion, he began: "Ever since I was little, I'd… I'd do anything to please my father. When I was little, he gave me a lot of things, he'd always just push all these great toys on me. I grew up in a fucking mansion!" He looked up and saw the stricken look on Hagrid's face at the mentioning of a swear word. Draco made a brief shrug with his shoulders, hoping it made up in apology in some way. " But - - as he bought me over with false affection, he taught me."

" Taught you… what?" Hermione asked, softly.

Draco's eyes grew wild with pain. He cited, in a voice that proved that the words he spoke were pushed into him mechanically through a slow process of brain-washing: " There is no evil. There is no good. There is only power – and those who are strong enough to seek it. We, Malfoys, are strong, we will seek power. Power is with the Dark Lord, our Lord."

A shiver ran down Hermione's spine.

" He told me that every day. It became a bit of a song between my father and me. He'd oftentimes coo it to me over my crib when I was little, even. I still remember his voice." Draco looked down at the crisp white bandages wrapping airily around his hand.

Echoes of Lucius's voice, slimy and cold, filled with a masked hatred like the croak of a caged vulture, seemed to float through the minds of all three people present in Hagrid's hut. Draco let out a shuddering sigh and whispered: " I believed his words when he spoke to me… but soon, I could hear his voice even when I was alone…"

Alone I can hear
Hear our song
Playing for me again

" Everything I've ever said and done was based on what he taught me. From my hatred of Mudbloods – usually the weakest ones, they don't want to join the Dark Lord – to the hatred towards Muggles – they don't even know who the Dark Lord is! – it all stemmed from my father." Malfoy let out a dry laugh. " Can you imagine me when I went to day care with a few five-year-olds my age? While they spoke of their father's jobs or exclaimed about what they want to be when they grow up, I sat in the corner of the room sketching the Dark Mark on my palm, waiting for the day I could kill someone for the Dark Lord."

Hermione's breath came in and out of her breast quicker now, almost as if she were suffocating. She had often read about the way the Dark Lord's supporters raised their children's morals solely based on misinterpreted quotes of power and good and evil, yet hearing it first-source was beyond her comprehension.

" … And I did." Draco's voice broke and he looked ready to sob. " I did kill someone."

Hagrid cleared his throat uncomfortably. " 'Ere's no sense to that. When? There wasn't any report in the news 'bout any killin' goin' on!"

" Having the high position in the Ministry as he has, my Father erased all track of it. I can still remember it like it was yesterday – late in the summer of the fourth year, he finally took me to a meeting of the Death Eaters. There, they had an official initiation for the members. I had the Dark Mark burned into my skin then." Draco paused only to lower the shoulder of his robe. Glistening high upon his arm was the Dark Mark. Hagrid closed his eyes in fright and Hermione had to look away. The Dark Mark was a cursed mark, any man who bore it was doomed if he were caught with it amongst wizards like Dumbledore.

" There was a betrayer amongst us, and my father pointed him out. Aerus Smits, a skinny and fumbling man about twenty… he was leaking information out slowly about the members of the Death Eaters. My father was never ready to release any news of the Dark Lord's uprisings and our long, jagged, bitter past." Draco spoke of Death Eaters as 'us', always referring to himself as part of them. He was one now, then, after all.

Get away for a while
Here I amount on my own again
Won't blame it on myself
I'll blame it on the weatherman

How can I tell them? How can I possibly tell them what I did? Draco's hands shook before he could continue, releasing a heavy breath that shook his body. " I - - I was the one that my father instructed to execute Smits. I did the Avada Kedavra on him. I know how to use it – it's a must-know spell in a Death Eater's book, after all."

Hermione could now understand why Draco didn't kill himself with Avada Kedavra. Psychologically, Draco would choose a painful death unlike the one he inflicted upon the man he killed. Not that the spell wasn't painful, but it was definitely a quicker death.

" I'm afraid." Draco whispered all of a sudden. A cold cloud of breath appeared before his mouth. " I'm afraid." He rocked back and forth, his fingers clenching and unclenching. " They'll find out I told you. My father will kill me. He told me if I ever, ever betray our family, he'll dispose of me. I'd rather kill myself then blemish the Malfoy name." He turned wildly, suddenly grasping his knife again.

Hermione and Hagrid shot up to their feet, crying out in unison: " Don't do it!" Then, they sat down again when they saw that Draco simply wanted to hold the blade, a last vestige of comfort and protection from the outside world.

" They'll kill you, too, if they find out you know." Draco's nostrils flared. Then, he continued his story: " … I realized soon enough that I didn't really feel the same way my father did about things. He was on a high when he killed, almost as if he derived pleasure from it. I grieved for days after I killed Smits." He stopped to wipe a tear from his left eye for it had finally fallen. Then, he added: " I pretended to love it, but I didn't embrace it any longer. Pretty soon, I was just living a lie."

Hermione nodded, trying to show understanding.

" I couldn't tell my father that I didn't support his ideas. That would be like a son renouncing his family name; it was the Malfoy way of life!" Draco finally added, in a low and frightening voice: " I decided that if I were to live a lie, I should die a lie." He motioned with his chin at the knife in his hand. " It was an easy death, Hermione, a low and easy death that, in a simple spell, could be made to look like an accident… animal mauling, even… anything!"

Hermione's chin quivered. " I'm so sorry for you." She looked ready to cry.

" Don't cry for me, I'm already dead." Draco replied, eerily, his luminescent blue eyes catching the bleak light from outside as he looked up.

Only clouds will see
Tears are in my eyes
Empty like my heart
Why do ya say goodbye

~*~

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