They are the unsung, the forgotten. They will never be a Boy Who Lived. Yet their victories, unnoticed and uncelebrated, mean the difference between victory and defeat.
Silent Soldiers: Blaise Zabini
Just Live
Every day I fight a war.
It isn't a loud war, or an obvious one. I don't expect to be praised for my victories, or even acknowledged for them, really. My war isn't important enough for that – yet, in some ways, it's the most important war of all.
Some people just don't see it. They don't see me.
Really, though, how could they? My battles are silent, lengthy, and internal.
Internal. Eternal. Funny how much the words sound alike, isn't it?
Ha ha.
My internal, eternal battle will never be noticed; I'll make sure of it. There are too many who would love to learn about them and make my troubles – external.
No one could ever guess. They've put us in a box; "my kind" is all about power and ambition, and we don't care whom we trample in order to get it.
They're right, of course. But too many of them assume we're stupid as well. We aren't. Not all of us.
No one would ever guess that deep within the web of secrets, lies and deception that define the Slytherin house, people like me exist. We are just as deeply embroiled in the intrigue as anyone else is, but we have decidedly more at risk.
See, I may enjoy insulting a Gryffindor first-year, or join in with the singling out of a target to torture within my house, but there is one thing I will never do. I will never become a Death Eater.
Slytherins are ambitious, as everyone knows. We want power and we want to keep it. I am certainly no exception to that rule. So why, you ask, do I refuse to join the Dark Lord? It's a simple enough reason – I know he will lose. There are too many people like Harry Potter who would rather die than give into Voldemort, and they present a powerful force. Under the leadership of Albus Dumbledore, they will surely triumph. Not without losses, of course. The losses will be grievous and hard, but the quality that leads them to resist Voldemort will sustain them. They will fight until there is nothing left, and then still continue fighting. That is why they will win.
That is one problem with recruiting from the Slytherin ranks. While we are generally powerful and cunning, we are far more interested in saving our own skins than advancing a cause. Even the powerful families like the Malfoys, who profess the superiority of pure blood as a bedtime prayer, will turn against the Dark Lord if he looks like he might fail. The minute Voldemort seems weak, they will run like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
It's simple logic, really. By ratios, you have three "good" houses versus the one "evil" Slytherin. Three to one. Not exactly fair odds, is it? Never mind the fact that there are plenty of Death Eaters from Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor. Never mind that some Slytherins are as far from becoming Death Eaters as Dumbledore himself.
However, many in Slytherin are too concerned with appearances to consider this logic. Slytherins are hard, calculating and cruel. If one of us ever displays any other, less desirable character traits, the older students are only too happy to correct them. Their lessons are excruciatingly painful.
They are right to be concerned about appearances. Appearance is everything. The trick is not to let the appearance become the reality. As long as I appear to be a young Death Eater in training, everyone will leave me more or less alone.
Of course, it has occurred to me to simply become a Death Eater, then turn against them when the time is right. Just as so many other recruits will be doing. In fact, that would be safer, because how better to convince the likes of Malfoy that I am loyal then to have the Dark Mark branded on my person?
However, my innate Slytherin nature chafes at the idea. I want to gain power, not share it with an entire House. Especially when I know that the power presented will be so fleeting. Why should I allow myself to be drawn by promises of the world when I know that they are mere fantasy?
The Gryffindors don't understand. None of them do. None of them see the young men and women, so arrogant by day, wake up sweating in the night with nightmares of their initiation. They have never seen the Dark Mark freshly pressed into a young person's flesh, with the skin around it shiny and scarred from the brand. It is in the first few weeks that it is the most painful, and I have seen it in all stages.
It is not sympathy I feel for my housemates, precisely. I am a Slytherin, after all. All I know is that when, late at night, I hear another person in my dormitory wake up gasping with pain and clutching at their left arm, I want to scream with rage. How can they be drawn in? How can they be so stupid?
Yet they are safe. Every day the older students eye me strangely, and lately they have gotten more insistent, aggressive. They need to be sure I am not a threat; they want proof of where my loyalties lie. Of course, they will never receive it. My loyalties do not lie with their Lord; I will be my own master. Still, every day it becomes a bit more difficult to convince the real fledgling Death Eaters that I sympathize with and support their efforts. Each day requires me to be a bit colder, a bit more condescending, a bit crueler to the Muggle-borns. And I don't mind saying that sometimes I enjoy it. There is something very satisfying about a good round of insults and hexes – if I win, that is. Which I do, naturally.
The older students are right in thinking I am a threat. I never plan to openly oppose them, of course; I want to live past my teen years. However, my mere existence is what they most fear – because I will not give in. I will not bow to their authority, and I will not join them. I just – survive. I am one pocket of the Slytherin House that they will never touch.
I am not alone. I look around and see other students just like me. Sometimes I catch someone's eye, and a look of understanding passes between us. We understand that we are beyond the Death Eater's reach. We understand that the mere fact that we exist is the greatest threat to the Death Eater's power – for if they cannot reach us, we who should be most vulnerable to the promises of dark power, then whom can they really control?
I don't want to be a hero; heroes too often die too early. I don't plan to lead a rebellion from inside the Dark Lord's ranks, as some of the stupid, headstrong Gryffindors would expect. I'm just going to live. I will be a silent, passive resistance from what should be the base of Voldemort's army.
I'm going to live.
That's really all any of us can do.