Draco Malfoy (illfaith) wrote in rewritethreads, @ 2020-12-29 09:10:00 |
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Entry tags: | character: draco malfoy, player: sunny |
Who: Draco Malfoy
What: An existential crisis.
When: 29 December 1980, evening.
Where: Leaky Cauldron
Rating: PG-13
Status: Completed
A suitcase of clothing.
A broom.
A few books.
A collection of various WWW prank items.
A Potions travel kit.
Half a bottle of whiskey.
A wand.
It hadn't taken him very long to pack, and now what few belongings Draco had were strewn around the small room he’d rented out above the Leaky Cauldron. The last remains of a life that didn’t exist anymore. The floral comforter on the small bed was thin and fraying, but looked clean. A damp towel that had been wrapped around his hand - cold against his split knuckles after he’d (rather stupidly, in hindsight) punched a hole through the drywall of Hector Avery’s safe house - was now crumpled up on the dresser, stained with dark splotches of his own blood.
An assortment of valuables that he’d taken from his father’s collection were in a cardboard box in the corner of the room. Lucius Malfoy. A man as unrecognizable to Draco as he was to Sebastian Halpern. A man who wrote messages to his infant son in his journal. Who said “I love you” so openly, so easily. Like those words weren’t a rare prize that Draco had spent his life trying to earn.
He had tried so hard to be the person that his father wanted him to be. He’d been trying for as long as he could remember, so that it had become an inexorable part of himself - impossible to know where the trying ended and Draco himself began. Somewhere in his heart, he knew his father loved him. But dark, angry, wounded notions insidiously crept into his consciousness and once they did, he couldn’t bring himself to forget them: Maybe it was his fault. Maybe it was something he’d done, or something he said, or something he was. Maybe he hadn’t tried hard enough. Or tried too hard. Maybe he’d grown into something so disappointing, so wrong, that it had inspired this change in his father. Why else could he say “I love you” to an infant and not to a scared teenager left alone to pay his father’s debts? Why had he filled him up with lies, expectations, responsibilities, until he was more vessel than person, only to sacrifice his wife and son - whom he apparently loved so very, very much - to the Dark Lord? Maybe that wasn't fair... but Draco was beyond caring.
Maybe they would be better off with this new child. Maybe he’d grow up playing with his younger brother or sister in this life that wasn’t his own, instead of exploring the nooks and crannies of Malfoy Manor alone and trying to duel the House Elves, hiding from his mother in kitchen cabinets, racing his toy broom through the gardens. Maybe he’d love them. Maybe when his father was arrested, they were a source of comfort. Maybe they were someone else to look after, someone else’s weight on his shoulders that year during what he’d thought - at the time - was the worst year of his life. Someone else who couldn’t help him. Someone else to fail. Someone else that could be held against him as a threat, to keep him in line and in service to the Dark Lord.
Draco felt ill. Unmoored. Picking apart every moment of his life - every birthday party, every Christmas, every dinner at the dining room table, every second - and trying to reimagine it. An extra chair at the table. Another stocking on the mantle. Another person in his life - in this fucking nightmare that he wouldn’t wish on anyone. The world that he’d known as his own was gone, and that meant everything he’d done to protect it - everything - was wasted. He never should have come here. He understood that now. Ignorance would have been a gift. To be oblivious to the changes made to his own timeline instead of returning home to parents you don’t recognize, a sibling you’ve never met, and a life you never lived.
If nothing else, maybe this new sibling would be someone to comfort his mother when Draco never came back.