Draco Malfoy (purely_draco) wrote in to_be_or_not, @ 2010-06-13 22:44:00 |
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Entry tags: | *complete, character: draco malfoy, date: 1998 06 (june), loc: malfoy manor, npc: lucius malfoy |
RP: Father-son chat
Date & Time: 13 June 1998 || Late evening
Post Type: Introspection
Open To: None.
Character(s): Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy (NPC)
Location: Malfoy Manor
Summary: Draco tells Lucius something he's needed to say.
"How could I have told you?" Draco asked, his fingers locked around a squat glass tumbler. "You were in a cell, rotting away in the North Sea! I couldn't get a letter to you, couldn't make a visit. I couldn't do anything!" His voice cracked on the last word and he emptied the glass, swallowing fast to let the aged whisky burn down his throat. The Scots were mad to the last one, but they made a good drink. He considered it a shame he was too angry to savor the bottle.
Lucius watched him from behind the heavy desk, his aristocratic brow furrowed. He'd brought Draco into his private world, his personal study, for a talk, but it was only the fourth glass of whisky that had loosened Draco's tongue. Lucius had asked him about information that had come out during this first week of his hearings, asked over and over again in that slow, cool drawl. Draco felt as much on trial in front of his father as he had in front of the Wizengamot. "Why have you never told me this?" Lucius asked, arching a brow in a gesture Draco had copied and mastered by the time he was six.
Draco laughed, and for just a second, he heard the icy tones of his dead master in his own voice. He shuddered and turned away to refill his glass. The edge of the decanter clattered against the rim of the tumbler as his hands shook. "What was there to tell?" he said. "You were in prison. I was following orders. Sneaking around the castle, losing sleep, losing weight, losing my mind. I thought-- I thought--" He sighed and drank half the whisky in one swallow, wiping his chin with the back of his hand. "I thought it would be a glorious thing, you know? My grand involvement. Another generation of our family working to rid the world of those who would destroy it. Preserving our culture and our ways, saving our society. I thought we'd be rewarded for our efforts. I thought I would make our family the kings of wizardkind. How could I fail? Sixteen, and brought into the brotherhood already, the youngest since Regulus. I was special. I was chosen."
He drained the rest of the glass and poured another. "No, you know what I was? I was an idiot. I believed all of that. I believed everything I was told. And you know what the truth was?" He whipped around, face twisted with old anger. "The truth was I never had a chance at making us into kings. We were pawns. All along, we were pawns, and I got sent on a suicide mission because you couldn't handle a group of wounded children. You destroyed the damned prophecy and you pissed off your master, and then suddenly he was my master too."
Lucius stirred in his chair, his pale features tightening with every word Draco threw at him. "In point of fact, it was the Longbottom boy who--"
"I don't care!" Draco's voice echoed off the ceiling. Over the mantle, the portrait of the Malfoy men, father and son, narrowed their identical eyes. Portrait-Draco eased toward the edge of the frame. "I don't care!" Draco shouted again. "No one cares! No one cares what the truth is! No one cares why I did what I was forced to do! A madman turned me into a slave, tried to make me an assassin, and I had nowhere to go! I was alone, that whole year, and Potter was right. I was desperate. I was dying! And you weren't even there!"
He seized his glass and hurled it across the room. It smashed into the portrait, leaving a jagged tear and a dark stain across portrait-Draco's face. Portrait-Draco turned to portrait-Lucius, agony in his eyes.
Portrait-Lucius turned away.
Draco laughed, high and twisted, and gestured at the painting. "There. You see. Always. Always like this. You stood up for me when it made you look good, when it gave you some power, or let you put someone else down. But when I needed you? When I truly needed you?"
His voice shattered entirely and he staggered to the door. He glared at Lucius as he jerked it open. "You weren't there for me then. Don't even fucking try to be there for me now."