Hello, my name is... well, my name doesn't matter much... only my story. As her birthday present this year, my wife asked me to write out a short "story" of my life, remembrances, and the like. Fortunately, she told a good deal ahead of time so I would be able to think of what I should write. I finally settled on a good topic. So here it is darling...

The Puppy Speaks Out

At the age of twenty, I joined the Order of the Phoenix and started helping with the fight against the Dark Lord and his minions. Oh, I didn't start out that way. I started out as the perfect little Death Eater, the son my father always wanted. I followed in his footsteps like a puppy traipsing after his master. A spinelessly horrid little prat was I. Hated by most, feared by the rest. But, my father loved being able to mold me into his form. I was the perfect son... and I was miserable. Don't think this writing is saying I was the poor little rich boy. On the contrary, I loved it very much. Plus. I promised a good friend I wouldn't write something like that. So... let's begin at the beginning.

My firsts thought of dissension against my father's wishes were beaten out of me the moment I questioned Father's actions. I was eight at the time, and for a long while I never questioned a word that sprang from his lips, even when it was an apparent outright lie that any common muggle could recognize. That phase, as it were, lasted until I was seventeen years old.

During the summer before my seventh year, I traipsed throughout the European wizarding world. And, for the first time in my life, I interacted peaceably with a muggle-born witch named Kierstin Whitlaw. She went to a private wizarding school that I had never heard of, Pierre Baroque Academy of Witchcraft and Wizardry. A rather small school, and as I mentioned earlier, not well known. She too was on a holiday, but one sponsored by her school to introduce students of muggle decent to the ordinary workings of our world. We were staying at the same inn, and I, thinking she was a pureblood by the way she carried herself and acted towards others, became involved with her. We would spend hours together, and even when I learned that she was not pureblood, merely muggle nobility, it did not matter. To me, she was as capable a person and witch as any pureblood my father considered betrothing me to. But, unbeknownst to me, my father had me followed, to make sure I would not do anything to tarnish our great family name. He had one of his "men" look into Kierstin and the Whitlaw family. And was outraged to find out that I was cavorting around with not only muggle nobility, but disgraced ones at that. So, when I went to pick Kierstin up for the outing we had planned. I found my father there with her. Sufficed to say, I will never forget what he told me that day, "Mudbloods are no better than rats, and their women are as good as whores. I will teach you how they deserve to be treated." Her screams are permanently etched into my memory. I will not speak of the atrocities I witnessed that day, but it took a long time for me to forgive myself for her senseless death.

After that incident, I was a veritable prisoner of what I once considered my home, never going out, never seeing a soul besides my mother and our house elves, and of course, Father. He started teaching me the dark arts, preparing me to become a Death Eater like himself. And for the first time in my life, I didn't want to follow in his footsteps. I didn't want to be the puppy any more. I wanted to be my own person, not a pale molded version of my father, not a clone, not... not... well... I didn't want to be my father any more. Any admiration I had for him was long gone.

Going back to school was a breath of fresh air. I was able to forget Kierstin and our time together. I went back to being the selfish little imp I had always been, lording my name over the whole of Slytherin. Until, while I was unpacking a box I hadn't touched for a long while, I uncovered a picture of Kierstin and I together. We were sitting on a bench in a park, smiling and laughing. Her hand was tucked in mine, and every so often she would look up at me in utter adoration and I would plant a kiss on her cheek.

The picture slashed at the tenuous bonds of control I had wound around my feelings for this girl. I left the castle to stalk the grounds in a fury at my father and ran right into, well... someone I had never stopped to pay attention to other than to ridicule. I'll call her... Gina. (I'm sorry that my imagination is not up to the task of giving this lovely girl a name worthy enough.) Gina took me aside and battered my already shaky defenses until they came crashing down and I, in a very rare display of emotion, burst into tears. (Now so you will understand this, I come from an ancient pureblood family that frowns on displays of emotion. That fact was beaten into me at a very young age.)

Gina gently pried the truth from me, from my father to Kierstin to my wish to never become a Death Eater. Eventually, she was sitting under a tree, leaning back against its trunk, with my head resting in her lap. And she was still patiently listening to me blather on, tears leaking from my eyes. When I finally stopped speaking, I realized the whole time, she had been stroking my hair and willing listening to me, me, the one who had ridiculed her for years.

She looked down at me smiling, "You know... in the past thirty minutes... you have smashed every opinion of you I have ever formed."

"Thank you for listening," Everything my father had drilled into my head began to come back and I sat up suddenly. I pointed my wand at her, threatening her if she ever told anyone what I had mistakenly confessed to her. She simply looked at me and asked, "Do you really want to change or was that all a lie?"

"I... I... want to... change. I really... want something different." She reached out and lowered my wand and cupped my face in her hands. "I can help you. Just let me." I wish I could tell you that at that moment I renounced everything that I had been taught and took what she was offering, but I didn't.

I followed in my father's footsteps and joined the ranks of the Dark Lord. I made the worst mistake of my life. And one dark and rainy night, I found myself bleeding and my body wracked with pain, from one too many cruciatus curses, lying on her doorstep half dead. She took me in, nursed me back to health, and once again offered to help. But this time, I was so desperate to get out of this... this... cult I was entrenched in, I said yes. I finally excised the desperate little puppy from my being, and became my own person.

It was then that I found out my godfather had been doing this spying, the same thing that I was about to do, since before the first fall of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Together, we worked with the Order. And eventually, Harry Potter brought down the Dark Lord. That I must say was the happiest day of my life.

And now ten years later, Gina is my wife and we have three beautiful children.

"Ginny love, I know you wanted me to write this memoir for your birthday. But I don't know how to end it. I can't think of a decent finish."

Draco's wife, Ginevra Weasely-Malfoy walked over to her husband staring down at the roll of parchment in front of him. She smiled as she skimmed the neat writing. "Draco, how about...?"

She leaned down and added in her own messy feminine handwriting...

And together we live, not happily ever after, but as close as we can make it.