This year is the hardest for me. I feel alone, I feel tormented, I feel… lost.

I wander the halls of Hogwarts not as myself, more of a waif or a shadow. Something that clings onto life by a thread while walking in solid form. I am no longer Draco Malfoy. I am not the head of the Slytherin common room. I am not the team's star Quidditch player. I am the one chosen. Not the Chosen One; no that moniker goes to someone who I loathe to the inner core of my being. No, I am chosen to do the most heinous of acts that could be asked of any person, yet my mother still calls me child. I am seen as a child doing a man's job; and not just any man - no an evil shell of a human being. I am tasked to become one of the elite, one of the vicious, one on the side of the dark. One of the Dark Lord's own Death Eaters.

I see Scarhead and his chosen cronies and desire nothing more but to be in their place. They may not be as smiling and pathetically jovial like they have been in years past, but it is still better than the place I am in currently. They have each other; I have no one. They are special in the eyes of the Headmaster and the school, so bloody special. So many people look at them as walking, talking, angels on earth. I only have my mother to support me, and she lives under constant fear so far away. I can't protect her like she has been trying to protect me this year. She has done everything in her power to keep me alive, yet all I want is peace.

My initiation may have been before the year began, but I am still not accepted into the ranks. I have a task to complete; a test to pass before I am allowed in the revered inner circle. Before I am allowed to sit at my own table, in my own home. I have the brand, but I don't have the respect. I walk on the cusp between these two worlds: childhood and manhood; soulless and having a soul; life and death. I live in constant fear of pain or death. I live in the soulless black cloud of terror that follows me everywhere I step. I feel the Dementors presence surrounding me, as if they are just beyond my reach, yet they are not. This same black is my constant uniform; the same black of the cloak I will soon enough don.

I want control over my life. I want to not be watched like a toddler learning to walk. I want to have some peace.

I never will.

The day the brand was embedded upon my skin, my life was taken from me. It was given to another. Another being, not even a man; a Lord in his own mind, yet a demon walking on the earth.

I reach the door, behind which is the bane of my existence. The damned Room of Missing Things awaits my entrance. Again. I feel like I live here. I don't belong here, though. I don't belong anywhere. I am merely existing, a corporeal spectre forced into doing another's bidding. My head falls to the heavy wooden doors in a silent prayer that I succeed and yet I fail. It is something I say every time I walk inside. I pray that I succeed to survive, yet fear the final outcome. I pray that I fail, because in failure will come the peace that only death can bring.

I brag about my standing in the Dark Lord's associates. I sit alongside my family. I am the figurehead while father remains in Azkaban. Yet, all of it is false bravado. I must maintain my impudent and pure reputation, that of being a loyal follower of the Dark Lord. But my soul craves forgiveness, it begs to be free, it desires redemption.

Staring down the cabinet, the path to saving my life while ending my existence, I know I am close - so very close - to my completion. All I want to do is run out, again. Run away. I don't care if it hurts, I need to run, run, run.

That would equal an immediate painful death to all those I love. My mother would truly become the angel she is here on earth. My angel. The one whose skin I would caress as a babe to soothe me. Her eyes that I cannot look in, if only to spare myself the pain that I know she faces, the lengths she has gone to save me.

This cabinet, will open in three days time, and my life will be for naught. It will, then, no longer be mine, but I will only creep around as a minion of the darkness. It will be then that I will have my final test, the last part of my task - kill Headmaster Dumbledore - before my soul will be torn from me and I will be lost.

I don't belong here. I want to run away. I want the darkness to engulf me. I want peace to fill my darkened soul. I grew up believing I was perfect - a perfect body and a perfect soul. Now I only see the depths that my family's depravity has dragged me. I long for the days past, I long for that perfect body and soul.

It hurts. It hurts when no one notices when I'm not around. It hurts when those so very special members of Gryffindor house see me creeping around like a weirdo. I know Scarhead is following me, it isn't my paranoia. I am not paranoid, if only not yet.

Soon, Hogwarts will not be my home. Soon, I will have done my worst. Soon, I won't belong anywhere.

House: Slytherin
Year: Head
Category: Standard
Prompt: [Song Prompt] Creep by PostModern Jukebox (cover)
Word Count: 988

Note: I just couldn't get through the cover of this song. I went by the original version by Radiohead, with all the darkness and despair in the meaning.