Chapter 50
I think, in the end, he loved her more. But that doesn't mean I loved her any less.
Like many things, it was too late for us. I'd made mistakes, and I'd never tried to fix them. I knew—deep down, somewhere, I knew what was going to happen. That day was darker than most, and the rain fell like never ending needles of ice, biting into my skin. Even the wind seemed to howl in protest.
Like many things, it was too late. I arrived at Godric's Hollow just in time to see her die. Her soul left her body with a gasp—her beautiful green eyes looked almost surprised. They dulled in an instant.
My Lord vanished, of course—even his body had disappeared. Lily's body was still there. And beside her—a gurgling imp, completely unaware of his mother's sacrifice. It was all I could do not to throw it out the window. This may sound. . . insensitive, I know, and rude, but anyway, I let it be because it was Lily's.
I was a different man then, as I am a different man now.
The tragedy in love is in the beginning, not in the end. You are still alive enough to feel, in the beginning, the way a man is still alive to cry out when his throat is sliced. The pain is in the beginning. In the end, you are too dead to care for very much.
That's the way it was for me then. I wanted to feel something, when she died. I waited for my heart to crumble, I waited my soul to wither.
It didn't happen, because by then, my heart had already crumbled, and my soul had already withered. I hadn't even noticed.
It was a common enough joke among us Death Eaters, that the radiation from the Avada Kedavra stopped us from feeling anything long afterwards. We often said it for laughs, but deep down, we all felt it.
Killing a human being for the first time is like making love for the first time. It loses its novelty, and soon enough, it becomes just like any other act.
Lily's death was my funeral. I'd died long ago when we'd parted—I was just a wraith existing in the shell of my body. And so it was that the old Lucius was sent to rest between the man he hated and the woman he loved, just as he had in reality.
She died and a part of me did too. It was just a small part, but then it was also the biggest part of all.
The peculiarity of it all was… when that part of me died, I was still alive.
Do you understand? It was as if I'd lost an arm, but nothing else had changed.
I still remember it, and all the events of the past, but it's as if I wasn't myself, when it happened. I see it almost as someone else's memory, someone else's dream.
It's the way you feel when you look back at those photographs of childhood, and you see the little wizard you were on your toy broom, and you cannot possibly believe you were that little, or that good-natured.
Some days, I miss that bit of me that went with her. And on some days, I'm glad it's gone. To look at the world the way she did—it was to look at the world with the innocence of a child. Everything was new. Magic was ancient and thrilling, with a smatter of secrets dusted on it for good measure. Seeing the world like that was good for some people, but for people like me it was dangerous.
I was a Malfoy first, a pureblood second, and a Death Eater last. These three names were branded into me. The first two, I hadn't chosen. And the last one, I had.
Circumstances trap you. They narrow the road down until you suffocate and need a raft to stay afloat.
Lily kept me alive, but I pushed her away.
Because a Malfoy should rely on himself.
A pureblood should stay away from mudbloods.
And a Death Eater should destroy them.
Now you understand me, when I tell you, I haven't always been the cruel beast people see me as today. Not really.
Now you understand me, when I tell you, what it is to see through the eyes of a Malfoy.
-The End-
A/N: Chapter 49 was not the end, although it's probably my fault you all thought so. Many, many apologies for such a later chapterI think you've all forgotten about the story already, and are probably shocked another chapter's come up! But this is the end. I was blocked, but today, when I sat down to write, I wrote. And I couldn't stop. And that was it. Hope you guys like it! (This is the first story I've finished in a really long timelike, in 9 years. Yes, I haven't finished a real story since I was eight and writing for class). Please, please, PLEASE review. And since summer's left a void for me, I've started writing stuff, but don't know what to write about! So, any suggestions would be welcome.
