For the Title Swap III Competition (title: Dark Illusions; characters: Draco Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy, Voldemort, Albus Dumbledore; prompts: darkness, death); Camp Potter (Paintball - write about either war from the POV of a Death Eater); the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition (song: 'Beauty and the Beast' by Nightwish); the If You Dare Challenge (579. One Chance) and the Song Fic Boot Camp (song: 'Beauty and the Beast' by Nightwish; 22. mother)

Large parts of this fic were inspired by the song 'Beauty and the Beast' by Nightwish, specifically the lines: Don't you know this tale / In which all I ever wanted / I'll never have / For who could ever learn to love a beast?

WARNINGS: Slight AU at the end

It was a story the he had been told ever since he had been a little child. The Dark Lord was the saviour of all purebloods and when he rose again, he would destroy anyone weak enough or impure enough to stand in his way.

He would purify their horribly infected world, and the faithful purebloods would be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. They would be the ones who would rule the new wizarding world, finally receiving the birthright that had long been denied them.

And Draco had always believed that. He had believed every last piece of all the stories his father had told him, never even stopping to think that perhaps the Dark Lord wasn't exactly all that he was cut out to be. Even when the deaths started piling up, and purebloods started dying, he couldn't imagine the idea that his father had been wrong, that he had been fooled.

Draco had believed that the world was rightfully his, and here he was, standing in the middle of the mess made by the shattering of every illusion he had once seen as reality.

He had always known how his life was going to turn out. He was going to graduate Hogwarts at the top of his class and take his position at his father's side, both in the Ministry and by the Dark Lord. Eventually, he would take his father's place altogether.

But all those dreams and expectations were gone, replaced by the stark reality of the fact that not only was the Dark Lord an insane maniac, he was also after the one thing that Draco valued over anything else – his family. The Dark Lord, the man who was supposed to be the saviour of the purebloods, was also the person who was more than happy to wipe the name of Malfoy from the list of still surviving family lines, and the only thing that Draco could do to prevent that was kill the greatest and strongest wizard alive, an impossible task.

It was strange that it was only at his weakest, most hopeless moment that the dark glasses that Draco seemed to have wearing all his life had fallen off his face. The Dark Lord wasn't the answer to the pureblood problems; he was the one that had caused them. Had he never started his petty little war so many years ago, the majority of the public might not have viewed purebloods as below them. Had that war not happened, maybe, just maybe, his father's generation wouldn't be as obsessed with bloodlines as they currently were.

Had the Dark Lord never started the war, maybe Draco wouldn't have been the monster he could now see that he was.

His mother had always, always, tried to tell him not to follow his father as blindly as he did, but he had never listened. He had taken the whispers and mutters of him being a junior Lucius Malfoy as a compliment, rather than the insults they actually were. And now the blinds were off, he could see every muggleborn he'd insulted and bullied, every arrogant act he had ever performed as though they were magical paintings that covered every inch of his brain.

His mother had tried to mould him into a better person, a better man, and he had failed her dismally. And yet, through everything that he and his father had put her through, she had loved them with all her heart. He was a monster, the creature that hid under the beds of little children, someone who no one could love – who didn't deserve to be loved – and yet his mother had never once stopped caring for him. She had never once given up on him.

Draco had never once given his mother any reason to be proud of him, to love him, but as far as he was concerned, that was all about to change. He refused to be the beast that no one could love any longer. No, he was going to change for the better. He would make sure that the Malfoy name was respectable once more.

The Dark Lord thought that holding his parents hostage would guarantee his loyalty and make sure that he tried his best to kill Dumbledore. Unfortunately for him, the Dark Lord was completely and utterly wrong.

Draco would sure that he would overcome the darkness that the Dark Lord had brought upon his life. He may have thought that Draco had absolutely no other options apart from following his orders, but not even he could see the future. Draco would do anything to make sure that his family was safe, something that he knew would never happen if the Dark Lord was in charge.

So he would bury all of his ego and his pride, and go to Potter, tail between his legs, to beg for the help of the very man he was supposed to murder.

He knew that having his name, it would be difficult for the Order of the Phoenix to accept that he was sincere, and the fact was, the way he had treated Potter over the years meant that they would be even more doubtful than had it been just the fact that he was a Malfoy. But he would persevere, and make sure that the Order could trust him in a way that the Dark Lord would never be able to.

Who knew? Maybe one day, he'd even be friends with Harry Potter.

It was not the life he had imagined for himself when he was a child, but if it meant that his parents would be safe, he couldn't really care less.

Once upon a time, he had believed that the world revolved around him. But he had grown up and seen those illusions shatter to pieces right in front of him. And yet, he was a Slytherin. There was absolutely nothing that could keep him down for long, and definitely not the broken pieces of dark illusions.

I hope you guys liked it! As always, please don't forget to drop a review on your way out :)