45. Truth and Fact

Composing the letter to his mother was more difficult than he had expected. Usually, he shredded most of the day's work to tiny pieces because, upon proofreading, he always got the impression that he had been merely rambling. Nothing he wrote struck him as compelling enough to get his point across.

He kept the rare passages that seemed to be better than the rest assembled in a folder. Every morning he read them over so he would have a guideline for writing. The topmost page in the folder contained two questions: What is The Truth to begin with? Is there such a thing as ultimate truth or will truth always be a matter of perspective?

A matter of perspective – bending rules and distorting facts, plotting and scheming, deceiving and lying were all approved Slytherin qualities. He mused about the possible implications and their consequences quite often these days. The outcome was always the same, and he had written it in the second page, If I wish to be in control of my life, I will need to stop deceiving myself.

The third page said, Is truth the same as honesty? How do I know whether something is true or whether the speaker only believes so? Not even Veritaserum could solve that problem.

The questions outnumbered the conclusions by far; they still did after all these months. Therefore, his drafts for the letter invariably started with,

Mother,

I turn to you with a plea for help – help, not just advice. Please help me to find answers to my questions because without answers I am doomed to fight yet another losing battle.

By mid-February, the drafts consisted almost entirely of questions.

Maybe asking was a better approach than explaining. This way, his mother would see more clearly what bothered him.

He copied the long list of questions in his best handwriting on three immaculate sheets of paper and stored them next to the banknotes.

All he had to do now was wait for Lissy to make an appearance.

...

Several weeks elapsed, and the days were uneventful. He went jogging again and also for long walks. However, the more he improved physically, the more the mental unease crept back. Spring was in the air, but he couldn't really enjoy it.

It had been that time of the year when Greyback and his gang of Snatchers had dragged the Golden Trio of Gryffindor into the drawing room...

Draco had not known what to do. Of course, there had been no mistaking Potter. But giving him away would have been the end of everything, and lying had seemed a very bad idea as well. So, he had seen his only option in playing for time, hoping that time was all Potter needed.

He hadn't believed the Trio had shown up by accident. At any rate, Potter using Greyback as a means of getting into the manor had made more sense to Draco than a gang of Snatchers chasing truants during school holidays. Draco had suspected the Stinging Jinx that disguised Potter and the obviously borrowed wand to be part of a crude, Gryffindor-style ruse. Yes, he had been convinced that Potter was up to something.

What exactly Potter's goal had been, Draco couldn't even tell in retrospect. Whether the purpose had been freeing the captives or tricking information out of Aunt Bellatrix by presenting the fake sword – Potter had been successful even though Granger had paid a high price for it.

The bloody git always won. The more hazardous the endeavour, the more likely was Potter to succeed. Draco's main talent was the other extreme – the more an undertaking looked like a sure thing, the more likely he was to mess up. Potter would always come out on top, and once Draco had hated him for that with all his heart.

...

Hard as he tried, Draco couldn't fend off the memory of what had happened after Dobby had Apparated Potter and the others away. The monster's fury had surpassed everything Draco had witnessed or suffered before.

The day after he had failed to kill Dumbledore had been terrible, but it still looked like a birthday party by comparison. The monster had punished him in cold blood and in careful calculation of how much pain a teenager could endure without sustaining permanent damage. Back then Draco had still been considered a moderately useful pawn, standing ready to be sent on the next suicide mission.

After Potter's escape, the monster had been beside itself with rage. Yes, monster and it were the words that applied. If there had ever lived a soul in that hideous body, it had long since been replaced with the completely irrational obsession to destroy Potter. Every other motive, pure-blood supremacy included, put forth to the public had in truth only served as a means to reach the goal of vanquishing a half-grown Gryffindor boy. The monster hadn't minded its followers scheming and plotting in pursuits of their own only as long as their activities contributed to its purpose, and the required minimum of contribution had been to scare Potter's sympathisers out of their wits.

That night, after Potter's escape, Draco had seen the creature in a clearer light than ever before. It was bereft of any human feeling. It inflicted terror and pain without showing the slightest trace of emotion. It knew neither pity nor satisfaction, neither sorrow nor pleasure. The creature calling itself a lord was a shell – a shell, dehumanised and filled with everything that was vile. A shell, a thing, nothing human – Draco had clung to that thought. That night, during torture, he had held on fast to the thought of the snake, the bloody, big snake and the malicious creature that inhabited a human body actually mating. Whence that sick idea had sprung from he couldn't tell till today, but focussing on it had kept him sane. The outrageous depravity of the mental picture had helped him withstand the infinitely worse perversion taking place before his eyes.

Draco knew he had screamed and, at first, not even from pain. He had screamed for his aunt to stop. He hadn't got out more than one half of a sentence, though. A Silencing Charm had hit him, followed up by a Tripping Hex. Doom had towered over him.

"Do you wish to take your father's place?" the monster had asked.

He wasn't sure whether he had nodded.

"There's a good puppy," the monster had continued with a note of fake appreciation in its voice before the cold rage had returned. "He is useless. He is the most pathetic excuse for a wizard I had ever the displeasure to meet. And you are his worthy spawn. You will wait until it is your turn, my reluctant young servant. Oh, did you think I have not noticed your petty doubts? You are sadly mistaken – Lord Voldemort knows exactly who serves him with unqualified devotion and who does not. Does this surprise you?"

The monster had lifted the Silencio, but Draco had been too terrified to utter a single syllable. The pause following the question had been filled with his father's groans and his mother's anxious pleading before the monster had announced in a slow, cruel whisper, "And now, pampered little pure-blood, you will watch."

It had been a subtly modified Stunning Spell. Draco's eyes had remained open, and he had been unable to avert them.

So, he had been forced to look to where his aunt had stood, pointing a wand at his father. She hadn't just used Cruciatus Curses; she had thrown everything that was humiliating and painful at her helpless brother-in-law, nearly torturing him to death. Draco had seen her face, contorted simultaneously with malice and a revolting sort of pleasure. She hadn't slowed down until her master had assigned her the next victim: her own sister.

And again, Draco been forced to watch – to watch how his aunt had tortured his mother. Maybe Bellatrix Lestrange had been a tad less enthusiastic than with his father, but the cold, sneering voice had egged her on, and she had been all too willing to comply.

When it finally had been Draco's turn, the relief of not having to watch anymore had made the pain almost bearable. Or perhaps Bellatrix Lestrange had been a bit tired by then.

Afterwards, he had lain amidst the scattered shards of the chandelier. Although he had barely been able to move, he had reached out to touch his mother's wrist. There had been a pulse, but she had not stirred. Whether his father was still alive, he had not known.

Through the reddish mist surrounding him, he had witnessed how Lestrange's adored master had made her cast a Cruciatus Curse on herself.

...

46. Lost

He suddenly found himself standing on the edge of a wooden landing stage. Having been lost in thought, he had lost his way as well.

The water splashed gently against the hulls of small sailing boats. The weather was calm and sunny. Birds sang.

He wished he could forget.

He wished he could forget at least this one memory: His parents and he hadn't been punished for letting Potter escape; they had been punished for existing.

That night, as Bellatrix Lestrange's ear-splitting screams had filled the drawing room of Malfoy Manor, Draco had decided that he wouldn't mind at all if Potter won once more. And he had hoped the Gryffindor git could be bothered to win soon...

The way his parents had acted after the horrendous ordeal was over had stunned Draco to no end. His mother – she was well versed in healing magic; her skills matched that of a professional healer – had tended to his father's injuries, pretending she didn't know who or what had caused them.

Later she had sealed the many little wounds Draco had sustained wherever the glass shards had found bare skin. She had done a marvellous job on it, but throughout the more than two hours it had taken her to mend every single slash and nick in a way that prevented scars, she hadn't said a word about the horror that had taken place. When he had tried to bring the topic up, she had shushed him.

In the morning, Tribbs had been sent to clean up the drawing room, and that had been that. His mother had simply resumed her everyday routine. Apparently encouraged by her sister's attitude, Bellatrix Lestrange had had the nerve to act as if nothing had ever happened, and his mother hadn't made the slightest effort to rebuke her.

So, Draco had tried to talk to his father.

No doubt, his father had suffered worst. He had barely been able to get up for meals. His face had been less recognisable than Potter's had been the previous night. But despite having escaped death only by a hair's breadth, Lucius Malfoy had not been inclined to see reason.

Draco had not got beyond, Please, Father, we need to find a way out of this mess because his father had right away launched into a stern speech about doing better next time. He had stubbornly maintained that it wasn't yet too late to capture Potter and hand him over so the 'Dark Lord' would forgive them.

Instead of voicing his concerns, Draco had fled to his grandfather's study, thinking what a shame it was that his father should have no more wits than Crabbe or Goyle.

Should he blame himself for not arguing back? Had there been a chance to convince his father if he had tried harder? He doubted it. At any rate, he hadn't seen a chance back then. Frantic and confused, he had yearned for consolation. A row with his father would have made him feel even more miserable.

He had sat in his favourite spot – the corner right behind the door – so that anyone doing only a quick check without actually coming in wouldn't notice him. He had sat on the plush, Persian carpet, hugging his knees to his body, and had waited for the tears to come. But they hadn't. He had not cried once ever since.

...

He strolled back from the jetty and navigated around all sorts of obstacles – huts and cars that were virtually the same size, stacks of construction material, huge reels of fat plastic ropes, iron chests, and boats in not-so-good repair. He finally found a way out of the area, but he was fairly sure it wasn't the one he had come. Walking back to the pedestrian precinct took him nearly an hour.

Once he was there, he sat down on the first unoccupied bench and pulled sketchpad and crayons out of his parka. Lately, he had taken to sketching again. He usually started out with things that were really there – boats and birds, trees in blossom or the potted plants in the library. Sometimes he could keep to such motifs, sometimes the crayons disobeyed and produced images of blood-dripping talons, chandeliers in free-fall, a pair of broomsticks propped up against ramparts, or, time and again, roaring flames with hideous heads.

Needless to say, such pictures represented memories, ones he would prefer not to have. He wasn't sure whether the memories brought the pictures about or the pictures evoked the memories. Both were there, and he had to deal with them on a daily basis.

While he was sketching, he could resist the urge to run. Sketching helped him to focus. He was able to dwell on a topic with enough mental calm to examine it.

Had there been a chance to stop things from happening?

If yes, when? Where? How?

He searched for points in time when he might have had another option. Not having seen any options while he had struggled through the events in question did not prove that alternatives had never existed. He might simply have been too blind or too scared to glimpse them.

He had succumbed to acting on mere instinct whenever fear or shame had reached a magnitude that left no room for straight thinking. He had allowed instinct to take over on occasions when rational consideration had suddenly felt off-key.

He slowly filled sheet after sheet with images of glass shards surrounding a dropped wand. While he strove to capture the glittering effect caused by candle light reflecting off broken prisms, his thoughts slipped once more back to the events one year ago.

...

He had not only avoided his aunt at all cost but he had also tiptoed around his father. He had even been reluctant to interact with his mother. Intuition had told him that his parents were in the same dangerous emotional state as he was: frightened, distraught, and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. His aunt had been kind of mad before, but losing her wand to Potter had unhinged her completely. She had maniacally searched the manor for the blackthorn wand that Greyback had believed to be Potter's. She had known for sure it had still been there after Potter's escape because she had cast the Cruciatus Curses with it. Not finding it anywhere had sent her into tantrums.

Draco did have a theory regarding that wand.

He had watched it drop from her hand after she had cursed herself. It had rolled away and vanished into the red haze that had clouded his vision. He hadn't cared, but later, when he had prepared for his return to Hogwarts, the scene had come back to him. His mother had insisted that he took her wand with him. Although he had known what to expect if word got round in school about him being unarmed, he had hesitated because accepting would have meant to leave her defenceless. However, she had been very firm in the matter. Do not be concerned about me, Draco. I took precautions. He had not asked about those precautions. He had thought he knew: His mother had ordered Tribbs to hide the blackthorn wand and to reveal its whereabouts to nobody except to herself on explicit request. This way, she had both secured a weapon for herself to use in an emergency and prevented Bellatrix Lestrange effectively from getting hold of it. House-elves were bound to choose a side in cases of inner-family conflict, and with Tribbs, his mother's orders would always have overruled everyone else's, including that of his father or him. Aunt Bellatrix had clearly been further down in command, and without a wand she couldn't have done much to threaten or hurt an elf anyway.

A year ago, he had been in too much of a frenzy to find this observation intriguing. Considering the magic that house-elves could do without a wand, it was downright scary to imagine what they might be able to do with one.

Kicking up that stupid house-elf liberation movement – P.U.K.E. or whatever it had been called – showed nicely Granger's limited grasp of the wizarding world. She probably had no idea what she was bargaining for. Had it ever occurred to her that there might be a reason why house-elves were forbidden to wield wands?

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to be continued

...

Author's notes:

(1) Thanks go to Nooka and Kevyn for beta reading.

(2) I'm sorry for keeping you waiting for so long. Work and other obligations got in the way of writing fan fiction.