There are some stories worth telling. Stories that defy belief, that inspire children to believe, if only for a moment, that good will always triumph over evil. Of course, those stories fade away as reality strips back the dream, tarnishes the fantasy and leaves nothing but a sour taste in the mouth and an overwhelming sense of tiredness.
If Draco Malfoy was kind to himself, which he rarely was, he would say that his story was something out of his control. It wasn't, of course, he simply lacked the ability to free himself from the prison of his own creation. Years of living under the roof of Lucius Malfoy told him he owed it to his family. To his name, their legacy. The seeds he would leave behind had to flourish in the image of what came before, even if that image is one he loathed.
Family.
The reality was there was little care for the Malfoy name after Lord Voldemort fell. The only reason he still breathed fresh air was because of Harry Potter. Even the thought of it made him feel sick, he hadn't even been able to save his own skin, or his mother's. They were both free to receive public humiliation and continued disgust because of what Potter had said.
Malfoy can't be held accountable for his father's actions. Yes, his father. Rotting away in Azkaban. Draco firmly hoped he would never leave that place, even if on his worse days he often suspected that Azkaban was too good for him. But the thought of family never left him, it drove him to his home, saw him breaking furniture, cursing inanimate objects, wrecking the place that had never felt like home.
He hated being trapped in his own story. The villain. The petty boy who had hung onto every one of his father's words hoping that one day he might actually gain the praise he was desperately longed for. He would have done anything for that. Well, almost anything. Hadn't that been the problem? Dumbledore, Potter, what did they have in common? They could both have died at his hand, yet, when the moment to finally earn his father's pride had faced him, Draco had failed.
He had failed his family and failed the world around him.
The Malfoy name was ruined. He was either a coward or a disgusting blood supremacist. As if muggleborns and half-bloods were so superior? As if anyone was. He'd spent his life being spoon fed the idea that he was better. He deserved better. He'd become the kind of person who spoke of fate, of moral justice, who believed that blood really mattered.
Family.
The word kept coming back to him, so instead of destroying his home, in brief moments of clarity and bereft of the almost endless anger that burned inside of him, he found himself in the rooms he'd never been permitted to enter. He discovered books beneath layers of dust, mostly reciting dark magic and the various ways it could be used for the betterment of wizard kind, but there was one small journal that changed his world entirely.
The Diary of Charlotte Cassiopeia Andromeda Malfoy.
The first few pages had been nothing but teenage drivel, the story of a girl unable to fit in with the cruelty around her. She bemoaned dark magic, insisted that when she became Lady Malfoy that things would be different. She shared tales of defiance, of loss, of grief, of heartache. All the things Draco himself had been unable to do were written in her cursive, neat script. Had she used muggle ink, he supposed the words would've been smudged with tears. Yet, the diary's pages remained as fresh as the day they were crafted.
And then, on the 14th of October 1834, there it was. After a large gap, a few weeks, the very last entry.
I write this entry scarcely able to believe it myself. Had I not bore witness to the events myself, I dare say they would be too fantastical and outrageous to believe. Yet, witness them I have and I have returned only to document what I have discovered. It is my hope that whoever finds this diary may share that which I have found and perhaps, if my life has been repeated, you may find solace as I have. I will not make any apology for leaving, nor will I be foolish enough to expect that I am missed. This world shall remain spinning on its axis, whether I reside here or not.
But there is another world that I cannot bear to be without.
There is good and evil, true enough, monsters of the kind I confess I never believed possible. But there is light in this darkness, a light I myself have carried for so very long now. I cannot return here knowing that, despite the risks to my own personal safety, this world carries on without me.
Here, I am unable to enact the change I so desperately seek. Here, I am nothing but the pathetic Malfoy brat, the throwaway daughter I know they will discard as soon as father is able to create another offspring with which to mould in his image. I am not blind, I see how many women he brings into this house in the hopes of siring another child. Mother knows it too, yet she will not come with me. I wonder why, for it cannot be love.
So, I leave it to you. Perhaps another missing Malfoy or maybe another who does not fit. Like a jigsaw piece with all the wrong edges. At the edge of Malfoy Manor's boundaries lies a well. I call it the Well of Worlds, for that is how I found my home. At midnight, when the clouds pour down rain around you and moonlight bathes you, say my name. The well will know it has found another traveller, desperate for a life that might actually feel worth living.
The decision was one which Draco believed took weeks to come to. He read and re-read the entry, searched the library for references to other worlds and found nothing. He tried to convince himself that he had a life to lose, that his mother would miss him, that there was so much waiting for him if he could only see it. But there wasn't. His life had been taken from him before it had even begun, not by his father, but by his own cowardice.
Maybe, just maybe, he could find a world where, for once, he wasn't the villain after all.