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Feb. 9th, 2006 03:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leia131I FINISHED IT! OMG!
So here's the deal: Over a year ago, I began working on a fanfic that was about Draco being engaged. Some of you (Hannah, Jean) may remember this. The ending to said story, however, had been eluding my up until a few days ago, when the perfect way to end the story just hopped into my head as I was innocently trying to fall asleep.
Then last night, at approximately 1 am, I realized how to fully write the ending. And so I did.
It's not perfect, I mean it can certainly be tweaked and improved and edited and such, (stories always can) but the PLOT is done, and won't be plauging me anymore. HA!
So anywho, here it is. I humbly entreat all those of you who read my journal to read this, because I'm quite proud of most of it.
I would also like to thank two wonderful girls who betaed this story ages ago,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tea_and_snark and abie_baby
Note: this story was inspired by two things:
1. A plot bunny that bit me and was like, "You have to write a story about Draco marrying a girl who's somehow related to Harry Potter" and when I tried to protest that I didn't like Draco, it said "Oh yes, you do now WRITE!" and so I did.
2. My quest to invent a character who was not a Mary-Sue, which I think I succeeded in, but since I don't read very many fics with original characters, I can't be sure. Reassurance here would be nice.
Last but not least, since most of this was written a year ago, it does not take into account the events and characterizations presented in HBP. So I guess it's slightly AU in that sense. But it wasn't meant to be so... meh.
ETA: Here's a little key for those of you who don't read Harry Potter but who I'd like to read the story anyways. *coughERINcough*
Harry Potter Terms
Harry Potter: boy wizard who defeated Voldemort, in this story twice.
Draco Malfoy: Bully and sort of obnoxious peer of Harry's at school. Rich, spoiled, and blonde. He and Harry do not get along. At all.
Lucius Malfoy: Draco's father. Was a Death Eater, a follower of Voldemort.
Narcissa Malfoy: Draco's mother.
Anita-Marie Potter: I made her up for this story.
Voldemort: THE bad guy. Also called The Dark Lord. Wanted to take over the world, get rid of all the half-bloods and such. Evil and cruel and bad in every way.
Pureblood: A witch or wizard who's parents were both magic, and their parents were all magic, etc. All the pureblood rules and customs and such, I invented for the story.
Halfblood: A witch or wizard having one non-magical parent.
The War: Voldemort tried to take over once, he was defeated when his killing curse reflected off Harry onto himself, but returned and tried to take over again. I decided that he lost. The conflict = the war.
Azkaban: The prison where they send bad wizards.
Dementors: Former guards of Azkaban, they such the happiness out of people.
Aurors: Bad wizard catchers. The good guys.
Seeker + Snitch: Things from the wizard sport Quidditch. I'm not going to go into this, it's waaaaaay too complicated, so just forget the similie and keep reading.
Fic Terms:
Mary Sue: A generally good character with few or no flaws, who is everything the hero wants/needs. Extremely annoying.
AU: Alternate Universe. A story that does not fit in with canon, which in this case are books 1-6 of the Harry Potter series.
HBP: Stands for Half Blood Prince, the title of the sixth Harry Potter book.
Feel free to comment with anything else you didn't understand, and I'll be happy to explain.
Here's the fic!
“A Potter?” Draco could not believe his ears. Had his mother finally lost it? “She’s a Potter?”
“Yes,” came the icy reply. “There is much you do not know, boy, and even more you do not understand.”
That’s for sure, Draco thought. Ever since the second fall of Voldemort, Draco had been unsure about everything. Stunned early on by that lout Weasley; Draco had not participated in the epic fight that had interrupted what was meant to be his Death Eater initiation. He had been rudely awoken by the Aurors after the battle was done, and brought to trial with the rest of the fallen Dark Lord’s followers. He had escaped imprisonment in the now Dementor-less Azkaban due to the undeniable facts that he hadn’t actually done anything illegal, and he had still been an underage 16 year old.
That had been a year ago. Now it was his 17th birthday, the end of his self-imposed house arrest, the beginning of his adulthood, and the night of a time honored pureblood tradition. Tonight was the night Draco would meet the woman he had been bound to marry since age eleven.
It was the custom in the pureblood world that when children reached school age their marriages were arranged. Draco had been intended for this girl for six years; intended for a girl he would know nothing about until he turned 17. A girl who was three months his senior and therefore already knew who her future husband was. A girl he would spend forever with. A girl he had never questioned.
Before the second rise and fall of Voldemort, Draco had been sure that arranged marriages, because they were always done, were right. He had also been sure, however, that the Dark Lord would win. He had been sure his father was right about the world. His father…that was too painful. Draco shook his head slightly, trying to clear it away. It came regardless. His world had been his father.
“Oh, Draco, you look so much like your father!”
“Look at him! Just like a little Lucius!”
“You do take after your father so.”
“Just like me, you are.”
Draco shook his head harder at the last voice, his father’s voice, to make it stop. Hi father was gone now. Forever...His mother had noticed his head shake.
“Do not shake your head at me. You know nothing about this.”
“Yes, Mother,” Draco replied.
“You will be in the drawing room in ten minutes.” An order. Always orders with her now. His mother had not been the same since the initiation night. She had become colder and more distant, something many had not thought possible. She was all formality and propriety. Stiffness. Forced. As though if she showed flexibility on the outside, her inner resolve would crumble and she would be laid open and weak.
Draco knew that she too had escaped incarceration in Azkaban because she too had done nothing illegal. Lucius had done it all; he had kept her out of it. The trophy wife was not to be involved. Draco wondered if she felt guilty. Wondered if she should feel guilty.
She turned to leave, and he watched her walk out with the stiffness apparent in every step. One thing Draco was sure of was that she had not been quite sane since...he did not finish the thought.
Ten minutes to fix his hair and make sure he looked presentable for the uniting party was about nine more than he needed. His clothes and hair had been ready for a good quarter hour. The girl was fashionably late. She was supposed to be. It was traditional. Tradition.
These were the two most disturbing thoughts Draco had, next to his father…the girl and tradition. His mother had come upstairs to tell Draco the name of his betrothed, so that he could greet her properly. It was Potter. Anita-Marie Potter. She was half French and half Potter. Draco did not understand, just as his mother had said. He had thought they hated the entire Potter clan, and now he was supposed to marry one? Draco sighed.
He added Anita-Marie Potter to his mental and ever growing list of Questions Without Answers. On the top of the list was Why...but he pushed that aside. The most persistent and hardest question on the list, the question that would effectively answer all the others if he could just answer it, was “had Voldemort been wrong all along?” Because if he had, if all his ideas and concepts of the world had been false, as it now appeared, then Draco had to radically readjust his view of the world. He had to change his views on right and wrong and blood and school and politics and Dumbledore and his father.
Ultimately, he always returned to Lucius. And ultimately he always shoved those thoughts away. Maybe that was why he had spent a year brooding in his room and thinking about this non-stop, without reaching anything that even vaguely resembled a conclusion.
Draco sighed again. It was time to venture downstairs and meet his future bride. Though this marriage had become another Question, he didn’t have many other options now. Disobeying his mother and breaking with tradition almost certainly meant being disowned and thrown out, which meant losing the support of the pureblood community. He needed that support.
It was not for emotional reasons, not anymore, but once again because of his father. The name Malfoy, once so respected and feared, was now reviled and sneered at. Outside the pureblood community, Draco was sure he would starve within a week. No one in the normal wizarding world would have anything to do with a Malfoy if it was at all avoidable, which it was.
This was another question. Stigmas, like those he had formerly put on half bloods, didn’t seem quite as right now that he was on the other side of them. It all kept coming back to that. What was right?
I didn’t used to be like this, Draco thought. It all used to be so clear and solid. We were right, they were wrong. Dumbledore was an old fool. Voldemort had the right idea. Father had the right idea.
He stopped there. He needed to go downstairs now, and finally lay eyes on Anita-Marie Potter. He had to stop dwelling on all this morality crap. He had to start living again. But even as he thought it, Draco knew that he would never live again unless he resolved the morality crap, instead of merely pushing it aside. Maybe Anita-Marie Potter could help him. Merlin knew no one else had.
So with the thought that maybe things would get better, Draco ventured down the spiral stairs.
Anita-Marie Potter was beautiful. She had a slender frame that still contained lovely curves, and she was feminine in every way. Her face was perfectly made up, like a China doll, and framed by jet-black hair. Her hair was crinkly in such a way that it might have stood up at odd angles if it had not been so long. It hung all the way down to her waist, and shone in the dim light of the drawing room. She was wearing an elegant and tight evening gown of dark blue velvet, and diamond jewelry. It was only when he looked up from kissing her hand in greeting that Draco noticed her eyes. They were a cool, icy blue with no warmth at all beind them. Draco had never seen eyes quite like that. He was struck by what he saw in them.
“Good evening, Draco.” The voice was nearly as cold and formal as his mother’s, and he could feel the appraisal in her as she looked him up and down. The slight smile she granted him told Draco that she approved... of his looks anyways. He smirked in spite of himself; it was no small thing to be found physically acceptable by this beautiful creature. If his brooding had left any part of his old self unaffected it was his pride. Perhaps, Draco thought, arranged marriages are one tradition I can approve of.
Five hours later Draco wondered how he could ever have thought that involving himself forever with a person he had never met before could possibly be a good idea. Anita-Marie Potter was defined by her unaffected scorn for anything and everything. When they were alone in the garden she wasted no time telling Draco that as soon as she could she intended to correct all the faults of his house and his character. He learned that she looked down on everything except her mother, whom she idolized, and had no qualms about sharing her views. She was cold and contemptuous and cruel and put on an entirely different persona in the presence of adults.
She was everything Draco had used to be. He saw this, and wondered how much of that part of him was left after all his contemplation. He added this Question to his List. And in some part of his mind that he did his best not to listen to, he thought that maybe Harry had had a right to hate him after all. Because he certainly did not like Anita-Marie. The only difference was that Draco was going to have to spend the rest of his life with her, and Harry would probably never see him again.
It was when he lost track of Anita-Marie Potter, and then discovered her poking around his bedroom, that things came to a head.
“What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“Looking at the trash you call possessions.” She picked up a picture out of a drawer. It was a family portrait of the Malfoys. Draco had thrown it into the drawer when he noticed that the image of his father had faded slightly and he did not want to see that.
“Maybe I’ll take this back to my room to remember you by. A nice picture of the Malfoy clan, and their disgraced and inept leader.” Draco could not believe she had just said that. No pureblood, no matter what they thought about Lucius Malfoy after the incident, had ever dared insult him in front of his son or wife.
“You have no right to talk about him like that,” Draco said, his voice low and dangerous. “My father was a great man.” Whether he had been right about the world or not, Lucius had been Draco’s father. He had been a father who had taken pride in his son, protected his son, done everything for his son, joined the Dark Lord to make the world ripe for his son to lord over, and loved his son though he had never said it. Draco knew all this, and he was not going to let anyone, ever, say that his father had not been a great man. Not a good one maybe, but a great one certainly.
“I’ll say whatever I please about him,” Anita-Marie said, with her air of superiority, not upset by Draco’s tone at all. “It’s not as though he’ll ever find out. He’s dead.” There. There it was. The two words Draco had not dared string together in thought or voice for a year now. He’s dead. It had been spoken so easily, like it didn’t matter. Laid out in the open in an undeniable form. Draco could not think of anything to say to that, so Anita-Marie continued. “He’s dead and he wasn’t such a great man.” Draco could see something glinting in her mismatched eyes. She was enjoying this, and she was beginning to grin like a Seeker who has just spotted the Snitch. Whatever was coming next was even better for her because it was going to be worse for her opponent. “He wasn’t great enough that a well placed spell from a half-blood couldn’t take him down. Killed by a werewolf! Not even a real wizard! Imagine the shame!”
And then she laughed. If the words had not been enough to make Draco snap, the laugh certainly was. It was a cold laugh, but behind it was real mirth. She thought it funny to insult his father and make him red with anger.
Draco was suddenly seized by something he could neither explain nor control. He wanted in that instant to take Anita-Marie Potter down off her pedestal and show her that she was no better than him or his family. He wanted to put her in her place. And so he reacted with the first impulse that came to him. Draco shoved Anita-Marie over onto his bed and followed her down, holding her wrists. He didn’t know quite what he was going to do, but he wasn’t really thinking logically. He was following a blind hate coupled with an instinct to subdue this proud and insolent beauty. As he leaned down to kiss her, Draco saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.
But when his lips met hers she bit him so savagely that he started up and released her wrists. She kicked him once, calculatingly, in the stomach, and got up as he reeled away. From a bent position, Draco saw her straighten her skirt and fix an errant bit of hair. She then sniffed dismissively at him and walked calmly out the door as though nothing had happened.
When he could breathe properly again, Draco shut his door and lay down to think, as he had done every night since his father had…he still could not form the thought. Even after what had just happened, he could not admit it. But he was finally sure of two things. The first was that arranged marriages were not a good idea. The second was that what he had just been about to do, now that he was lucid and could recognize it, was wrong. He could see, quite clearly, right and wrong in this situation. He wondered what his father would have done, and then forced himself to pick up a book and read it until he slept. He was nowhere near ready to deal with Anita-Marie’s comments, and if he stayed awake much longer he would have to.
* * *
Draco awoke the next morning, groggy and still tired. He rolled over and groaned as the events of the previous night came flooding back to him.
Draco swore aloud. He knew that he had been wrong, but that was not really what bothered him. In fact, knowing that was somewhat of a relief. The trouble was that if Anita-Marie told anyone he had been rough with her there might be problems. And it was weighing heavily on him that since he had been wrong he should definitely go apologize.
Draco had only apologized to two people personally and sincerely in his entire life, and they had been his mother and father. His father. That part of the evening returned to him as well, but it made him angry rather than remorseful. She had no right, absolutely no right, to insult his father or even to talk about him. No right to say that he was…well, anything. No right.
True, said the part of his mind he usually managed to ignore, but you had no right to attack her either. Maybe if you apologize she will too. Draco did not think this was likely, but he knew that some hand of friendship, or at least mutual tolerance, had to be extended. He and Anita-Marie were going to have to live with each other for a very long time, and he did not care to do it in open hostility.
So Draco began to dress, with the enthusiasm of a man who has an afternoon appointment with Dementors. It was as he was tring to put his hair into some semblance of order that he noticed his lip. Somehow, in all the pain and turmoil in his mind, he had missed the pain in his mouth. But now that he could see how swollen it was, he could also feel it.
“Bloody hell.” If anyone saw that, there’d be trouble. Draco was not possessed of enough knowledge of healing charms to attempt one on himself, but he was pretty good at glamours. He withdrew his wand and pointed it carefully at his lip. He muttered the spell to make things appear normal. The pain lingered, but his lip looked as it always did. He then spoke aloud to make sure that he could do it without sounding funny.
“Good morning Anita-Marie. Like the taste of blood do you, you delightful little vampire harpy?” He hoped his apology would not sound like that, although that was what he would like to say to her. In any case, he could talk just fine, no self-incriminating lisp. He replaced his wand and started off slowly for Anita-Marie’s room.
It was customary for the betrothed girl to spend the time between the Announcement and the Marriage staying in the boy’s house. This was presumably to allow the two to bond, but if things between Draco and Anit-Marie continued in their current way one of them would be either dead or maimed before the wedding. This thought was the only thing that kept Draco on his slow course to the guest room that had become Anita-Marie’s.
When he finally got to the huge oak doors, Draco knocked before he had too much time to think about what he was doing.
“Yes?” inquired a sweet voice.
“Anita? It’s Draco. I...” The voice, now angry and mean, cut him off.
“Go away. I do not wish to speak with you.” She hadn’t been this offended last night when she had taken the time to let him see how unruffled she was before she walked out. Well, it’s not like she can go anywhere, Draco thought, so he plunged on. It would be easier to apologize to the door anyway.
“Look, I’m sorry I...er...” Attacked seemed too strong a word, but as he searched for a better one the door opened.
“On second thought, perhaps I would like to hear this. To my face,” said Anita-Marie in a voice that barely contained her vicious pleasure. Perfect, Draco thought. She’s going to make this horrible for me, and enjoy every second of it. Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? And as he walked into Anita-Marie’s room, Draco thought that just maybe running away and starving in the unforgiving wizarding world wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
Draco sat warily in the chair Anita-Marie motioned at, half expecting it to explode when he did so. He relaxed just the slightest bit when it didn’t.
“You were saying?” Anita-Marie prompted, after sitting on the edge of her perfectly made and pristinely white bed.
“I was saying that I’m sorry I er...overreacted last night. I realize that it was wrong.” She smirked a smirk that looked all too familiar.
“Well now, that’s awfully nice of you. Of course now you’ll have to do whatever I say or I’ll tell my father you attacked me and he’ll take me away and bring even more shame down on your pitiful household.”
“Absolutely not,” Draco shot back, his anger boiling up again.
“Then I’ll just be going to have a chat with Daddy...” and she started towards the door. Draco got in her way with a speed he had not known he possessed.
“No. We need to have this out. You and me. We are going to be together for a very, very long time, and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life fighting with you! Why do you want to terrorize me? What did I ever do to you? Or are you just a bitch? Because if that’s the case I’d rather be shamed and unmarried than married to you.”
“Fine,” she said. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Sit down.” She indicated the chair again. Draco sat. Anita-Marie remained standing. “Let me tell you a story. When I was a little girl, my mother was killed. After the investigation into her death, my father lost his job at the ministry and was unable to get work anywhere else. It got so bad that we had to leave England. We went to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, but after a few years in those places the same thing happened. Finally we went to France.” Her voice became low and dangerous. “And do you know why we could never stay anywhere? Why my mother didn’t live past her 25th birthday? Because of your pathetic father.” Draco simply stared at her.
“Oh not just him, but he was one of them. Right after the original fall of the Dark Lord, a group of his…less faithful followers felt the need to prove their fealty to the ministry by capturing some of those still loyal to the Dark Lord. A group of former Death Eaters, who knew damn well that my mother would remain loyal, burst into my house one night. Daddy and I were out; Mother was there all alone. They told the ministry they killed her in self-defense. Daddy was never proven a Death Eater. I don’t even know whether he was or not, but he lost his job regardless. And then you father…and his…minions,” she spat the word, “turned on us because we were distantly related to the Potters that had caused the Dark Lord’s downfall. It was the same everywhere. No matter where we went, respectable people hated us, and the pureblood community eventually found out who we were and shunned us. They seemed to think we personally had ruined their chance for a pureblood dominated world.” She stopped.
“So you decided to what?” Draco asked, regaining his ability to speak, “Transfer your hate for my father to me?”
“Exactly. This marriage is a very sweet revenge. A nice neat poetic justice. I almost wonder if Daddy planned this union just so I could make you miserable.”
“Do you really want to devote the rest of your life to hating me?”
“Yes,” she answered simply. “Now leave. I won’t tell Daddy about you. I want to marry you.” And she grinned evilly and opened the door for him.
Draco left, slightly stunned. What now? He didn’t think he could go on like this for the rest of his life. But neither could he refuse the match.
Something occurred to him; he could ask his mother about this whole situation. Maybe, and he clung to the thought, if his mother explained why he was supposed to marry this girl who hated him with such a passion, he could find a way to deal with it. Or better yet, a way out of it. With hope in his mind, Draco started down the stairs to find his mother. True, recently they had been mostly ignoring each other, but she had always been there for him in the past.
* * *
Narcissa Malfoy was sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea out of a china cup. Draco was suddenly reminded, watching her, of a cracked china cup. His mother reminded him of such a cup. Still mostly functional, and appearing whole, but cracked below the surface and containing a dangerous liquid that would damage both its container and things around it if it found the crack and leaked out. One had to go very gently with such an object.
Draco wondered if, like a fractured cup, he would find his mother somewhere shattered and sobbing someday. Somehow, he doubted it. She was more likely to shatter him, especially if he botched something as monumental as his marriage.
Draco had never been as close to his mother as to his father, but he still loved her. She had been the one to dote on him, but rather less involved in his life than Lucius. Thinking about them both in the same senetnce, Draco was struck with the sudden question of whether his parents had really loved each other. It had never occurred to him before that the answer could be no, but then again he had never experienced meeting your future spouse at the age of 17 before either. In fact, there were a lot of things he hadn’t considered before quite recently.
A sharp voice pulled Draco out of his reviere.
“Do you want something?” The tone of this question strongly implied that if he did not he should leave. He wondered how long she had noticed he’d been staring at her.
“Yes.” He walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table aross from her. “You said yesterday that there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. I’d like to understand a few more of them.” His mother looked at him coolly, waiting for him to go on. He was distracted by how perfect everyting about her was, as if she was trying to make up for the shame of her family by always being perfect, even when no one could see her. She cleared her thorat.
“Anita-Marie... told me... well... that father...”
His mother held up a perfect pale hand. “Stop your babbling. She told you about her mother, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to know what? If it’s true? Of course it’s true. You’re smart enough to see that.”
Draco became suddenly irritated at his mother’s casualness. It was so like Anita-Marie’s and he wanted so badly to break that composure. His next words came out loud and angry.
“Well if we have such a nasty bit of family history, then why the bloody hell am I going to marry her?”
“Language.” Draco had never before in his life wanted to hit someone as badly as he did in that moment. He wondered if his mother saw that in his eyes, because without any more prompting she continued.
“Your father did what he did concering Anita-Marie’s mother for one reason only, and that was to keep his family name in good standing. The favor of whoever was in power needed to be held, no matter if they were near-sighted fools. Your father was willing to go to any lengths to ensure the susained propriety of his name, and the well being of his family.
“However,” she went on, seeing that he’d been about to interrupt, “he knew that he had gone too far this time. He’d never meant for Anita-Marie’s mother to be killed, and he knew that it had been wrong to let things get so out of hand. Then, in order to keep face with the purebloods, he had to shun the very man he had wronged. And Lucius knew that that was wrong too.
“At first he thought there was nothing he could do about it, and it pained him, because if there was one thing your father never left alone, it was an unpaid debt. He owed Geoffrey Potter, and he owed him a great deal. That is why you are going to marry Anita-Marie Potter. Because in arranging this marriage Lucius not only gave Geoffrey Potter the guarntee of a perpetuation of his pure bloodline and security for his daughter’s future, he also sacrificed his most precious posession. He gave his only son, who could at that point have been matched with any pureblood woman in the world, to Geoffrey Potter’s only daughter. A life for a life, in a sense.
“Do you understand now?” Draco nodded numbly. There was too much information in that story to take it in all at once. His mother continued. “Now, take this,” she produced a small velvet ring box from somewhere, “go upstairs, and give it to Anita-Marie. It’s only proper for a girl to have an engagement ring. Your father gave it to me and I accepted it, to seal out commitment to each other, and you will now do the same. Go.” And she turned her back on him as though he had already left. Draco rose and walked slowly out of the kitchen.
* * *
As he left, replaying all he’d just heard in his head, and clutching the ring box, realization struck Draco as hard as if his mother had slapped him. His father had been wrong. She’d said it, and she’d said that Lucius had known it. Suddenly, all the circular thoughts of the past year arranged themselves into a clear straight line, as though all they had needed to right themselves was the acknowledgment of that simple fact. His father had been wrong.
The seed of doubt that had been planted in Draco’s mind when they’d lost the war had been stubbornly trying to grow ever since then, but he’d been constantly either stomping on it or watering it keeping it at the same height. Now though, it burst into a form as tall, unmistakable, and solid as a tree. We were wrong. If his father could be wrong, than Voldemort certainly could be. It seemed that the necessary readjustment of Draco’s worldview had just instantaneously taken place.
At once, he felt that this was the conclusion he had been meant to arrive at all along, hindered only by his naive and dogmatic belief in the inerrancy of his father. He knew in that moment, with absolute certainty, that his father had had the wrong idea.
However, Draco also felt something else, something dissimilar but connected. As he continued up the stairs, he realized what it was. It was duty. This was a part of Draco’s character, as well as his father’s, and he could not change it. When someone hurt him, he sought revenge, and when he owed someone something, he paid it back. And now he felt the sense of duty replacing the sense of doubt in his mind as something to weigh on him.
At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked towards Anita-Marie’s door. He knew to whom his duty lay. His father had owed her father, had promised him something, and now that his father was dead-- He stopped. That was the thought that he had not been able to formulate in his mind for a full year, the reality he had not been able to face, and yet there it was, neatly laid out in a string of logic. My father is dead. It wasn’t that it didn’t still hurt, it was simply that he couldn't run from it any more. My father was wrong, and now he is dead. And I have to fulfill his promise. That was the full weight of the duty, he could feel that as well. He not only owed Anita-Marie the debt of his family, but he also felt obligated to carry out the last wishes his father had for him. All right then. There was a course of action at last. There were all the questions answered. Lucius had been wrong. They had all been wrong, they had lost the war, they were the bad guys, and his father was dead. His father was dead because he had been wrong and he had picked the wrong side. The end.
Draco however, was alive. He had to go on being alive, and in order to do that and retain his sanity, he had to carry out his duty to his father, to Anita-Marie, and to himself. He could finally see the right, straight, clear, path, and it was neither easy nor pleasant. Life with Anita-Marie was going to be difficult and most likely miserable, and he didn’t want to do it, but it was the only way. His father was dead, and he had left just this one thing unfinished, left only one thing for Draco to do, and he had to do it.
His decision made, Draco took a deep breath, and, ring box held firmly in his hand, knocked on Anita-Marie’s door. One last thing for you Father, to honor your word, and after this I start living by my own rules.
Please forgive me if there's anything lacking in italics or parargraph breaks. I'm not an expert at this HTML stuff yet.
Comments and Critiques welcome and appreciated.
So here's the deal: Over a year ago, I began working on a fanfic that was about Draco being engaged. Some of you (Hannah, Jean) may remember this. The ending to said story, however, had been eluding my up until a few days ago, when the perfect way to end the story just hopped into my head as I was innocently trying to fall asleep.
Then last night, at approximately 1 am, I realized how to fully write the ending. And so I did.
It's not perfect, I mean it can certainly be tweaked and improved and edited and such, (stories always can) but the PLOT is done, and won't be plauging me anymore. HA!
So anywho, here it is. I humbly entreat all those of you who read my journal to read this, because I'm quite proud of most of it.
I would also like to thank two wonderful girls who betaed this story ages ago,
tea_and_snark and abie_babyNote: this story was inspired by two things:
1. A plot bunny that bit me and was like, "You have to write a story about Draco marrying a girl who's somehow related to Harry Potter" and when I tried to protest that I didn't like Draco, it said "Oh yes, you do now WRITE!" and so I did.
2. My quest to invent a character who was not a Mary-Sue, which I think I succeeded in, but since I don't read very many fics with original characters, I can't be sure. Reassurance here would be nice.
Last but not least, since most of this was written a year ago, it does not take into account the events and characterizations presented in HBP. So I guess it's slightly AU in that sense. But it wasn't meant to be so... meh.
ETA: Here's a little key for those of you who don't read Harry Potter but who I'd like to read the story anyways. *coughERINcough*
Harry Potter Terms
Harry Potter: boy wizard who defeated Voldemort, in this story twice.
Draco Malfoy: Bully and sort of obnoxious peer of Harry's at school. Rich, spoiled, and blonde. He and Harry do not get along. At all.
Lucius Malfoy: Draco's father. Was a Death Eater, a follower of Voldemort.
Narcissa Malfoy: Draco's mother.
Anita-Marie Potter: I made her up for this story.
Voldemort: THE bad guy. Also called The Dark Lord. Wanted to take over the world, get rid of all the half-bloods and such. Evil and cruel and bad in every way.
Pureblood: A witch or wizard who's parents were both magic, and their parents were all magic, etc. All the pureblood rules and customs and such, I invented for the story.
Halfblood: A witch or wizard having one non-magical parent.
The War: Voldemort tried to take over once, he was defeated when his killing curse reflected off Harry onto himself, but returned and tried to take over again. I decided that he lost. The conflict = the war.
Azkaban: The prison where they send bad wizards.
Dementors: Former guards of Azkaban, they such the happiness out of people.
Aurors: Bad wizard catchers. The good guys.
Seeker + Snitch: Things from the wizard sport Quidditch. I'm not going to go into this, it's waaaaaay too complicated, so just forget the similie and keep reading.
Fic Terms:
Mary Sue: A generally good character with few or no flaws, who is everything the hero wants/needs. Extremely annoying.
AU: Alternate Universe. A story that does not fit in with canon, which in this case are books 1-6 of the Harry Potter series.
HBP: Stands for Half Blood Prince, the title of the sixth Harry Potter book.
Feel free to comment with anything else you didn't understand, and I'll be happy to explain.
Here's the fic!
“A Potter?” Draco could not believe his ears. Had his mother finally lost it? “She’s a Potter?”
“Yes,” came the icy reply. “There is much you do not know, boy, and even more you do not understand.”
That’s for sure, Draco thought. Ever since the second fall of Voldemort, Draco had been unsure about everything. Stunned early on by that lout Weasley; Draco had not participated in the epic fight that had interrupted what was meant to be his Death Eater initiation. He had been rudely awoken by the Aurors after the battle was done, and brought to trial with the rest of the fallen Dark Lord’s followers. He had escaped imprisonment in the now Dementor-less Azkaban due to the undeniable facts that he hadn’t actually done anything illegal, and he had still been an underage 16 year old.
That had been a year ago. Now it was his 17th birthday, the end of his self-imposed house arrest, the beginning of his adulthood, and the night of a time honored pureblood tradition. Tonight was the night Draco would meet the woman he had been bound to marry since age eleven.
It was the custom in the pureblood world that when children reached school age their marriages were arranged. Draco had been intended for this girl for six years; intended for a girl he would know nothing about until he turned 17. A girl who was three months his senior and therefore already knew who her future husband was. A girl he would spend forever with. A girl he had never questioned.
Before the second rise and fall of Voldemort, Draco had been sure that arranged marriages, because they were always done, were right. He had also been sure, however, that the Dark Lord would win. He had been sure his father was right about the world. His father…that was too painful. Draco shook his head slightly, trying to clear it away. It came regardless. His world had been his father.
“Oh, Draco, you look so much like your father!”
“Look at him! Just like a little Lucius!”
“You do take after your father so.”
“Just like me, you are.”
Draco shook his head harder at the last voice, his father’s voice, to make it stop. Hi father was gone now. Forever...His mother had noticed his head shake.
“Do not shake your head at me. You know nothing about this.”
“Yes, Mother,” Draco replied.
“You will be in the drawing room in ten minutes.” An order. Always orders with her now. His mother had not been the same since the initiation night. She had become colder and more distant, something many had not thought possible. She was all formality and propriety. Stiffness. Forced. As though if she showed flexibility on the outside, her inner resolve would crumble and she would be laid open and weak.
Draco knew that she too had escaped incarceration in Azkaban because she too had done nothing illegal. Lucius had done it all; he had kept her out of it. The trophy wife was not to be involved. Draco wondered if she felt guilty. Wondered if she should feel guilty.
She turned to leave, and he watched her walk out with the stiffness apparent in every step. One thing Draco was sure of was that she had not been quite sane since...he did not finish the thought.
Ten minutes to fix his hair and make sure he looked presentable for the uniting party was about nine more than he needed. His clothes and hair had been ready for a good quarter hour. The girl was fashionably late. She was supposed to be. It was traditional. Tradition.
These were the two most disturbing thoughts Draco had, next to his father…the girl and tradition. His mother had come upstairs to tell Draco the name of his betrothed, so that he could greet her properly. It was Potter. Anita-Marie Potter. She was half French and half Potter. Draco did not understand, just as his mother had said. He had thought they hated the entire Potter clan, and now he was supposed to marry one? Draco sighed.
He added Anita-Marie Potter to his mental and ever growing list of Questions Without Answers. On the top of the list was Why...but he pushed that aside. The most persistent and hardest question on the list, the question that would effectively answer all the others if he could just answer it, was “had Voldemort been wrong all along?” Because if he had, if all his ideas and concepts of the world had been false, as it now appeared, then Draco had to radically readjust his view of the world. He had to change his views on right and wrong and blood and school and politics and Dumbledore and his father.
Ultimately, he always returned to Lucius. And ultimately he always shoved those thoughts away. Maybe that was why he had spent a year brooding in his room and thinking about this non-stop, without reaching anything that even vaguely resembled a conclusion.
Draco sighed again. It was time to venture downstairs and meet his future bride. Though this marriage had become another Question, he didn’t have many other options now. Disobeying his mother and breaking with tradition almost certainly meant being disowned and thrown out, which meant losing the support of the pureblood community. He needed that support.
It was not for emotional reasons, not anymore, but once again because of his father. The name Malfoy, once so respected and feared, was now reviled and sneered at. Outside the pureblood community, Draco was sure he would starve within a week. No one in the normal wizarding world would have anything to do with a Malfoy if it was at all avoidable, which it was.
This was another question. Stigmas, like those he had formerly put on half bloods, didn’t seem quite as right now that he was on the other side of them. It all kept coming back to that. What was right?
I didn’t used to be like this, Draco thought. It all used to be so clear and solid. We were right, they were wrong. Dumbledore was an old fool. Voldemort had the right idea. Father had the right idea.
He stopped there. He needed to go downstairs now, and finally lay eyes on Anita-Marie Potter. He had to stop dwelling on all this morality crap. He had to start living again. But even as he thought it, Draco knew that he would never live again unless he resolved the morality crap, instead of merely pushing it aside. Maybe Anita-Marie Potter could help him. Merlin knew no one else had.
So with the thought that maybe things would get better, Draco ventured down the spiral stairs.
Anita-Marie Potter was beautiful. She had a slender frame that still contained lovely curves, and she was feminine in every way. Her face was perfectly made up, like a China doll, and framed by jet-black hair. Her hair was crinkly in such a way that it might have stood up at odd angles if it had not been so long. It hung all the way down to her waist, and shone in the dim light of the drawing room. She was wearing an elegant and tight evening gown of dark blue velvet, and diamond jewelry. It was only when he looked up from kissing her hand in greeting that Draco noticed her eyes. They were a cool, icy blue with no warmth at all beind them. Draco had never seen eyes quite like that. He was struck by what he saw in them.
“Good evening, Draco.” The voice was nearly as cold and formal as his mother’s, and he could feel the appraisal in her as she looked him up and down. The slight smile she granted him told Draco that she approved... of his looks anyways. He smirked in spite of himself; it was no small thing to be found physically acceptable by this beautiful creature. If his brooding had left any part of his old self unaffected it was his pride. Perhaps, Draco thought, arranged marriages are one tradition I can approve of.
Five hours later Draco wondered how he could ever have thought that involving himself forever with a person he had never met before could possibly be a good idea. Anita-Marie Potter was defined by her unaffected scorn for anything and everything. When they were alone in the garden she wasted no time telling Draco that as soon as she could she intended to correct all the faults of his house and his character. He learned that she looked down on everything except her mother, whom she idolized, and had no qualms about sharing her views. She was cold and contemptuous and cruel and put on an entirely different persona in the presence of adults.
She was everything Draco had used to be. He saw this, and wondered how much of that part of him was left after all his contemplation. He added this Question to his List. And in some part of his mind that he did his best not to listen to, he thought that maybe Harry had had a right to hate him after all. Because he certainly did not like Anita-Marie. The only difference was that Draco was going to have to spend the rest of his life with her, and Harry would probably never see him again.
It was when he lost track of Anita-Marie Potter, and then discovered her poking around his bedroom, that things came to a head.
“What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“Looking at the trash you call possessions.” She picked up a picture out of a drawer. It was a family portrait of the Malfoys. Draco had thrown it into the drawer when he noticed that the image of his father had faded slightly and he did not want to see that.
“Maybe I’ll take this back to my room to remember you by. A nice picture of the Malfoy clan, and their disgraced and inept leader.” Draco could not believe she had just said that. No pureblood, no matter what they thought about Lucius Malfoy after the incident, had ever dared insult him in front of his son or wife.
“You have no right to talk about him like that,” Draco said, his voice low and dangerous. “My father was a great man.” Whether he had been right about the world or not, Lucius had been Draco’s father. He had been a father who had taken pride in his son, protected his son, done everything for his son, joined the Dark Lord to make the world ripe for his son to lord over, and loved his son though he had never said it. Draco knew all this, and he was not going to let anyone, ever, say that his father had not been a great man. Not a good one maybe, but a great one certainly.
“I’ll say whatever I please about him,” Anita-Marie said, with her air of superiority, not upset by Draco’s tone at all. “It’s not as though he’ll ever find out. He’s dead.” There. There it was. The two words Draco had not dared string together in thought or voice for a year now. He’s dead. It had been spoken so easily, like it didn’t matter. Laid out in the open in an undeniable form. Draco could not think of anything to say to that, so Anita-Marie continued. “He’s dead and he wasn’t such a great man.” Draco could see something glinting in her mismatched eyes. She was enjoying this, and she was beginning to grin like a Seeker who has just spotted the Snitch. Whatever was coming next was even better for her because it was going to be worse for her opponent. “He wasn’t great enough that a well placed spell from a half-blood couldn’t take him down. Killed by a werewolf! Not even a real wizard! Imagine the shame!”
And then she laughed. If the words had not been enough to make Draco snap, the laugh certainly was. It was a cold laugh, but behind it was real mirth. She thought it funny to insult his father and make him red with anger.
Draco was suddenly seized by something he could neither explain nor control. He wanted in that instant to take Anita-Marie Potter down off her pedestal and show her that she was no better than him or his family. He wanted to put her in her place. And so he reacted with the first impulse that came to him. Draco shoved Anita-Marie over onto his bed and followed her down, holding her wrists. He didn’t know quite what he was going to do, but he wasn’t really thinking logically. He was following a blind hate coupled with an instinct to subdue this proud and insolent beauty. As he leaned down to kiss her, Draco saw a flicker of fear in her eyes.
But when his lips met hers she bit him so savagely that he started up and released her wrists. She kicked him once, calculatingly, in the stomach, and got up as he reeled away. From a bent position, Draco saw her straighten her skirt and fix an errant bit of hair. She then sniffed dismissively at him and walked calmly out the door as though nothing had happened.
When he could breathe properly again, Draco shut his door and lay down to think, as he had done every night since his father had…he still could not form the thought. Even after what had just happened, he could not admit it. But he was finally sure of two things. The first was that arranged marriages were not a good idea. The second was that what he had just been about to do, now that he was lucid and could recognize it, was wrong. He could see, quite clearly, right and wrong in this situation. He wondered what his father would have done, and then forced himself to pick up a book and read it until he slept. He was nowhere near ready to deal with Anita-Marie’s comments, and if he stayed awake much longer he would have to.
* * *
Draco awoke the next morning, groggy and still tired. He rolled over and groaned as the events of the previous night came flooding back to him.
Draco swore aloud. He knew that he had been wrong, but that was not really what bothered him. In fact, knowing that was somewhat of a relief. The trouble was that if Anita-Marie told anyone he had been rough with her there might be problems. And it was weighing heavily on him that since he had been wrong he should definitely go apologize.
Draco had only apologized to two people personally and sincerely in his entire life, and they had been his mother and father. His father. That part of the evening returned to him as well, but it made him angry rather than remorseful. She had no right, absolutely no right, to insult his father or even to talk about him. No right to say that he was…well, anything. No right.
True, said the part of his mind he usually managed to ignore, but you had no right to attack her either. Maybe if you apologize she will too. Draco did not think this was likely, but he knew that some hand of friendship, or at least mutual tolerance, had to be extended. He and Anita-Marie were going to have to live with each other for a very long time, and he did not care to do it in open hostility.
So Draco began to dress, with the enthusiasm of a man who has an afternoon appointment with Dementors. It was as he was tring to put his hair into some semblance of order that he noticed his lip. Somehow, in all the pain and turmoil in his mind, he had missed the pain in his mouth. But now that he could see how swollen it was, he could also feel it.
“Bloody hell.” If anyone saw that, there’d be trouble. Draco was not possessed of enough knowledge of healing charms to attempt one on himself, but he was pretty good at glamours. He withdrew his wand and pointed it carefully at his lip. He muttered the spell to make things appear normal. The pain lingered, but his lip looked as it always did. He then spoke aloud to make sure that he could do it without sounding funny.
“Good morning Anita-Marie. Like the taste of blood do you, you delightful little vampire harpy?” He hoped his apology would not sound like that, although that was what he would like to say to her. In any case, he could talk just fine, no self-incriminating lisp. He replaced his wand and started off slowly for Anita-Marie’s room.
It was customary for the betrothed girl to spend the time between the Announcement and the Marriage staying in the boy’s house. This was presumably to allow the two to bond, but if things between Draco and Anit-Marie continued in their current way one of them would be either dead or maimed before the wedding. This thought was the only thing that kept Draco on his slow course to the guest room that had become Anita-Marie’s.
When he finally got to the huge oak doors, Draco knocked before he had too much time to think about what he was doing.
“Yes?” inquired a sweet voice.
“Anita? It’s Draco. I...” The voice, now angry and mean, cut him off.
“Go away. I do not wish to speak with you.” She hadn’t been this offended last night when she had taken the time to let him see how unruffled she was before she walked out. Well, it’s not like she can go anywhere, Draco thought, so he plunged on. It would be easier to apologize to the door anyway.
“Look, I’m sorry I...er...” Attacked seemed too strong a word, but as he searched for a better one the door opened.
“On second thought, perhaps I would like to hear this. To my face,” said Anita-Marie in a voice that barely contained her vicious pleasure. Perfect, Draco thought. She’s going to make this horrible for me, and enjoy every second of it. Is this what the rest of my life is going to be like? And as he walked into Anita-Marie’s room, Draco thought that just maybe running away and starving in the unforgiving wizarding world wouldn’t be so bad after all.
* * *
Draco sat warily in the chair Anita-Marie motioned at, half expecting it to explode when he did so. He relaxed just the slightest bit when it didn’t.
“You were saying?” Anita-Marie prompted, after sitting on the edge of her perfectly made and pristinely white bed.
“I was saying that I’m sorry I er...overreacted last night. I realize that it was wrong.” She smirked a smirk that looked all too familiar.
“Well now, that’s awfully nice of you. Of course now you’ll have to do whatever I say or I’ll tell my father you attacked me and he’ll take me away and bring even more shame down on your pitiful household.”
“Absolutely not,” Draco shot back, his anger boiling up again.
“Then I’ll just be going to have a chat with Daddy...” and she started towards the door. Draco got in her way with a speed he had not known he possessed.
“No. We need to have this out. You and me. We are going to be together for a very, very long time, and I’m not going to spend the rest of my life fighting with you! Why do you want to terrorize me? What did I ever do to you? Or are you just a bitch? Because if that’s the case I’d rather be shamed and unmarried than married to you.”
“Fine,” she said. “You want to know why? I’ll tell you why. Sit down.” She indicated the chair again. Draco sat. Anita-Marie remained standing. “Let me tell you a story. When I was a little girl, my mother was killed. After the investigation into her death, my father lost his job at the ministry and was unable to get work anywhere else. It got so bad that we had to leave England. We went to Wales, Scotland, Ireland, but after a few years in those places the same thing happened. Finally we went to France.” Her voice became low and dangerous. “And do you know why we could never stay anywhere? Why my mother didn’t live past her 25th birthday? Because of your pathetic father.” Draco simply stared at her.
“Oh not just him, but he was one of them. Right after the original fall of the Dark Lord, a group of his…less faithful followers felt the need to prove their fealty to the ministry by capturing some of those still loyal to the Dark Lord. A group of former Death Eaters, who knew damn well that my mother would remain loyal, burst into my house one night. Daddy and I were out; Mother was there all alone. They told the ministry they killed her in self-defense. Daddy was never proven a Death Eater. I don’t even know whether he was or not, but he lost his job regardless. And then you father…and his…minions,” she spat the word, “turned on us because we were distantly related to the Potters that had caused the Dark Lord’s downfall. It was the same everywhere. No matter where we went, respectable people hated us, and the pureblood community eventually found out who we were and shunned us. They seemed to think we personally had ruined their chance for a pureblood dominated world.” She stopped.
“So you decided to what?” Draco asked, regaining his ability to speak, “Transfer your hate for my father to me?”
“Exactly. This marriage is a very sweet revenge. A nice neat poetic justice. I almost wonder if Daddy planned this union just so I could make you miserable.”
“Do you really want to devote the rest of your life to hating me?”
“Yes,” she answered simply. “Now leave. I won’t tell Daddy about you. I want to marry you.” And she grinned evilly and opened the door for him.
Draco left, slightly stunned. What now? He didn’t think he could go on like this for the rest of his life. But neither could he refuse the match.
Something occurred to him; he could ask his mother about this whole situation. Maybe, and he clung to the thought, if his mother explained why he was supposed to marry this girl who hated him with such a passion, he could find a way to deal with it. Or better yet, a way out of it. With hope in his mind, Draco started down the stairs to find his mother. True, recently they had been mostly ignoring each other, but she had always been there for him in the past.
* * *
Narcissa Malfoy was sitting in the kitchen, drinking tea out of a china cup. Draco was suddenly reminded, watching her, of a cracked china cup. His mother reminded him of such a cup. Still mostly functional, and appearing whole, but cracked below the surface and containing a dangerous liquid that would damage both its container and things around it if it found the crack and leaked out. One had to go very gently with such an object.
Draco wondered if, like a fractured cup, he would find his mother somewhere shattered and sobbing someday. Somehow, he doubted it. She was more likely to shatter him, especially if he botched something as monumental as his marriage.
Draco had never been as close to his mother as to his father, but he still loved her. She had been the one to dote on him, but rather less involved in his life than Lucius. Thinking about them both in the same senetnce, Draco was struck with the sudden question of whether his parents had really loved each other. It had never occurred to him before that the answer could be no, but then again he had never experienced meeting your future spouse at the age of 17 before either. In fact, there were a lot of things he hadn’t considered before quite recently.
A sharp voice pulled Draco out of his reviere.
“Do you want something?” The tone of this question strongly implied that if he did not he should leave. He wondered how long she had noticed he’d been staring at her.
“Yes.” He walked into the kitchen and sat down at the table aross from her. “You said yesterday that there were a lot of things I didn’t understand. I’d like to understand a few more of them.” His mother looked at him coolly, waiting for him to go on. He was distracted by how perfect everyting about her was, as if she was trying to make up for the shame of her family by always being perfect, even when no one could see her. She cleared her thorat.
“Anita-Marie... told me... well... that father...”
His mother held up a perfect pale hand. “Stop your babbling. She told you about her mother, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to know what? If it’s true? Of course it’s true. You’re smart enough to see that.”
Draco became suddenly irritated at his mother’s casualness. It was so like Anita-Marie’s and he wanted so badly to break that composure. His next words came out loud and angry.
“Well if we have such a nasty bit of family history, then why the bloody hell am I going to marry her?”
“Language.” Draco had never before in his life wanted to hit someone as badly as he did in that moment. He wondered if his mother saw that in his eyes, because without any more prompting she continued.
“Your father did what he did concering Anita-Marie’s mother for one reason only, and that was to keep his family name in good standing. The favor of whoever was in power needed to be held, no matter if they were near-sighted fools. Your father was willing to go to any lengths to ensure the susained propriety of his name, and the well being of his family.
“However,” she went on, seeing that he’d been about to interrupt, “he knew that he had gone too far this time. He’d never meant for Anita-Marie’s mother to be killed, and he knew that it had been wrong to let things get so out of hand. Then, in order to keep face with the purebloods, he had to shun the very man he had wronged. And Lucius knew that that was wrong too.
“At first he thought there was nothing he could do about it, and it pained him, because if there was one thing your father never left alone, it was an unpaid debt. He owed Geoffrey Potter, and he owed him a great deal. That is why you are going to marry Anita-Marie Potter. Because in arranging this marriage Lucius not only gave Geoffrey Potter the guarntee of a perpetuation of his pure bloodline and security for his daughter’s future, he also sacrificed his most precious posession. He gave his only son, who could at that point have been matched with any pureblood woman in the world, to Geoffrey Potter’s only daughter. A life for a life, in a sense.
“Do you understand now?” Draco nodded numbly. There was too much information in that story to take it in all at once. His mother continued. “Now, take this,” she produced a small velvet ring box from somewhere, “go upstairs, and give it to Anita-Marie. It’s only proper for a girl to have an engagement ring. Your father gave it to me and I accepted it, to seal out commitment to each other, and you will now do the same. Go.” And she turned her back on him as though he had already left. Draco rose and walked slowly out of the kitchen.
* * *
As he left, replaying all he’d just heard in his head, and clutching the ring box, realization struck Draco as hard as if his mother had slapped him. His father had been wrong. She’d said it, and she’d said that Lucius had known it. Suddenly, all the circular thoughts of the past year arranged themselves into a clear straight line, as though all they had needed to right themselves was the acknowledgment of that simple fact. His father had been wrong.
The seed of doubt that had been planted in Draco’s mind when they’d lost the war had been stubbornly trying to grow ever since then, but he’d been constantly either stomping on it or watering it keeping it at the same height. Now though, it burst into a form as tall, unmistakable, and solid as a tree. We were wrong. If his father could be wrong, than Voldemort certainly could be. It seemed that the necessary readjustment of Draco’s worldview had just instantaneously taken place.
At once, he felt that this was the conclusion he had been meant to arrive at all along, hindered only by his naive and dogmatic belief in the inerrancy of his father. He knew in that moment, with absolute certainty, that his father had had the wrong idea.
However, Draco also felt something else, something dissimilar but connected. As he continued up the stairs, he realized what it was. It was duty. This was a part of Draco’s character, as well as his father’s, and he could not change it. When someone hurt him, he sought revenge, and when he owed someone something, he paid it back. And now he felt the sense of duty replacing the sense of doubt in his mind as something to weigh on him.
At the top of the stairs, he paused and looked towards Anita-Marie’s door. He knew to whom his duty lay. His father had owed her father, had promised him something, and now that his father was dead-- He stopped. That was the thought that he had not been able to formulate in his mind for a full year, the reality he had not been able to face, and yet there it was, neatly laid out in a string of logic. My father is dead. It wasn’t that it didn’t still hurt, it was simply that he couldn't run from it any more. My father was wrong, and now he is dead. And I have to fulfill his promise. That was the full weight of the duty, he could feel that as well. He not only owed Anita-Marie the debt of his family, but he also felt obligated to carry out the last wishes his father had for him. All right then. There was a course of action at last. There were all the questions answered. Lucius had been wrong. They had all been wrong, they had lost the war, they were the bad guys, and his father was dead. His father was dead because he had been wrong and he had picked the wrong side. The end.
Draco however, was alive. He had to go on being alive, and in order to do that and retain his sanity, he had to carry out his duty to his father, to Anita-Marie, and to himself. He could finally see the right, straight, clear, path, and it was neither easy nor pleasant. Life with Anita-Marie was going to be difficult and most likely miserable, and he didn’t want to do it, but it was the only way. His father was dead, and he had left just this one thing unfinished, left only one thing for Draco to do, and he had to do it.
His decision made, Draco took a deep breath, and, ring box held firmly in his hand, knocked on Anita-Marie’s door. One last thing for you Father, to honor your word, and after this I start living by my own rules.
Please forgive me if there's anything lacking in italics or parargraph breaks. I'm not an expert at this HTML stuff yet.
Comments and Critiques welcome and appreciated.
