Memoirs of a Serpent's Son

[Author’s Note: I realized that I never really explained this or mentioned it at all, so I’ll do it now ^^ When Draco started writing in his journal, eons ago lol, he treated it like a book… at first… just what a journal is I guess, but as time went on and he began to pour out his soul into it, it became more than just a journal, it became a confidant… more like a person than just a bunch of bound pages. I thought this was important not only because I think it makes you feel closer to Draco when he writes as though he’s talking directly to you, but also because in my mind the kind of religious documentation of his actions and feelings would turn the book into something more. I may be crazy but I just thought I should explain how and why the writing style changes… at least I think it does haha X_X Thanks!]

Memoirs of a Serpent’s Son

--Age 17—part 4

August 15

I don’t know what I’ve done. I, honestly and without any form of doubt, have not even the slightest idea as to what I could have possibly done to be treated this way. There is just no logic behind it, not from where I’m sitting…not that I’m going to complain.

After the wedding –and consequently the cake incident (which is what I call it now for lack of a better title) –Potter has been acting… strange.

Well, to be honest, Potter has ALWAYS been strange but he’s been different. He’s…well…

I’m not locked in my room anymore. Not during the days anyway. At night they lock the door like they did before, perhaps afraid of my escaping or something, but during the days they leave the door unlocked and I’ve been given permission to roam free in the house.

Maybe they were just getting tired of having to bring me my meals and accompany me to the bathroom every time I needed to bathe or whatever. I’ve no idea but I know that it was Potter’s decision alone and no one seemed to agree with him.

It happened the morning after the wedding… He came into my room in the morning with no breakfast tray…nothing. He just opened the door, muttered ‘morning’ to me and left it ajar.

I just stared at it…possibly for about an hour before I even got out of bed to see if it really was ajar or if I’d simply gone completely mad. But it was open… for REAL it was open. I poked the door open with my finger, testing the threshold to see if it was cursed or something but when nothing happened, I tentatively put my foot out into the hall and peaked around the doorframe.

There was no one there. There was no lingering spell to hit me in the face for breaking out of my cell… there was no hippogriff to stand guard and maul me if I decided to venture out of my pen… There was nothing. Nothing at all but an empty hall waiting for me to explore it.

So…being the true adventurer that I am, I followed the light and sound of voices until I reached the kitchen. Yes, fantastically creative, aren’t I?

When I got there, it was to find Potter, Weasel, the mudblood and the twin-Weasels sitting at the table with breakfast. Every single one of them looked up with daggers in their eyes (ones that were solely for me) except Potter. He didn’t look up at all. All the rest of them were seething with hatred and I could feel the animosity on the air. I was very tempted to bolt back to my room, forego nourishment and simply hide under my covers all day, but something stayed me… maybe it was Potter’s indifference.

“Y-you left the door open…” I muttered, feeling more inadequate than I ever had in my entire life. Weasel looked as though he was about to say something but Potter cut him off.

“Thanks, I’m not that thick,” Potter snapped, without looking up from the copy of the Prophet that he was reading. “Breakfast is on the counter.”

I think… I think I might have let my jaw drop. But I cannot be sure… I was in such a state of shock that Potter could have professed his love to me and I would never have noticed.

No…that’s a lie. I would DEFINITELY have noticed that. But everything else was lost on me.

Eventually, when I felt as though I couldn’t stand their angry eyes on me any longer, I walked towards the counter, made myself a plate and turned around only to realize that I had no idea what to do next. I was NOT about to sit down with a large group of people who were trying to kill me with their eyes…but I somehow felt uncomfortable with taking the plate back up to my room…

“God, Malfoy are you really that incapable?” Potter sneered, still carefully avoiding my face. “Did your servants spoon-feed you too? Or is it just that we’re not good enough for you to eat with?”

His voice was full of venom… it was the same kind of venom that I could taste on the air coming from every one else at that table…the ones that refused to look away from me. I felt as though I had some massive extremity growing from the centre of my chest or something… then I reminded myself that to them I was a Death-Eater sitting with “the good guys”.

“Funny, I could have asked you the same thing,” I retorted with none of the energy that my previous remarks had held. I think Potter sensed it, but the rest of those present did not take it well.

Weasel let out some incoherent exclamation of frustration and left, soon followed by Granger and the twin-Weasels. Then I was left alone with Potter and the breakfast.

I took a deep breath and laid my plate on the table, a few seats away from Potter, and sat down, feeling as though I could be attacked at any moment. He did not look up from his paper but I had the distinct impression that his eyes were not moving on the words…I could feel the tension coming from him… like it took every ounce of his resolve not to lunge over the table and strangle me right then and there.

I didn’t look at him. I didn’t look up from my plate at all. I couldn’t. I just…couldn’t.

I’ve never been unable to do something like that before. I’ve never had difficulty hiding my emotions, my discomfort, and putting up a flawless façade of arrogance and disdain… NEVER. Until that day…

I don’t know how he does it to me, but everything is thrown out of whack…Everything… he tortures me more than I torture myself and he probably doesn’t even know it.

“Your Hogwarts letter came today,” he said very suddenly, picking up a thick envelope and tossing it at me. I jerked to attention and stared at the yellowish envelope staring at me. It had my name scrawled on it in green lettering like it usually did…but I couldn’t believe it.

“W-what?” I stammered, having nothing better to say. He glanced at me for a moment and then shook his head as though refusing to answer the question directly.

“My thoughts exactly,” he muttered, turning the page of the paper. “The more interesting thing, aside from the fact that you have not been expelled, is that the letter showed up at the Burrow, along with mine, Ron’s and Hermione’s. I guess that was they only way it could get in.”

I heard what he said but I couldn’t process it… I just kept staring at the envelope and wondering how it was possible in any way that I was still recognized as a student at Hogwarts. There was no way at all…and even less chance that I was going back…

No, there was no chance at all. I couldn’t go back… not ever. Not after… not after what I’ve done…after that… and…

I picked up the envelope and wondered what might be inside. I wondered if maybe it was really just a letter to tell me that I’ve been kicked out… or something… Then something occurred to me.

“Are you going back?” I asked, almost wondering why I’d bothered. I didn’t think I would get an answer but the look on his face said otherwise. He looked as though he was considering what to tell me, if anything.

“It’s not safe anymore, without him,” he said simply but the words cut through me like knives and I know that he chose them very carefully. He finally looked at me. It was the first time he did so since the day I woke up here… and his eyes were hard and weathered by who knows what kind of battles… There was no comfort in his gaze and I knew in that moment that there would never be… not for me.

I couldn’t eat anymore. I couldn’t look at him either. I looked away almost immediately, picked up my plate, put it away and tried to leave but he stopped me before I did.

“You are free to wander around the unlocked areas of the house,” he explained with a strained tone. “There isn’t much harm you can do that way, but don’t open the curtains on the walls. And don’t be too noisy around those areas either.”

He didn’t explain and I didn’t ask. I needed to get out of there… to get away from him and stop feeling as though… as though I’d disappointed him.

I had to stop feeling as though I’d betrayed him so thoroughly… I had to stop FEELING.

I was breathing so hard when I got back up to my room and shut the door.

I felt the tears flow freely from my eyes as soon as I did and fell in a crumpled heap on the ground against the wall. I just…

He was so hard… so… cold and distant. So unlike him… and it was all I could do not to explode right there… So many feelings were coursing through me… I can feel them come back now… it’s like a floodgate was opened and everything, EVERYTHING I’ve ever felt needed to escape me in one go…

I’ve NEVER felt as culpable as I did in that moment… Even when I berated myself and spent hours in a self-loathing state, telling myself that I deserve to die for being the cause of Dumbledore’s death… even THEN I did not feel as responsible as I did the moment Potter looked at me.

…I can’t… keep writing about this… I need…

A minute….

………………

Alright… Alright I’ve shaken it off…

Anyway… needless to say that after that whole ordeal I had no compulsion to spend any more time around any of those people than I needed to. But that didn’t stop me from exploring the house…

As far as I can tell, this house is damn old. Centuries old, if I am not mistaken. It is probably almost as old as the Manor but, unlike the Manor, was never properly taken care of…well not in many years anyway. The woodwork is rickety and weathered. The once ornate decorations in the room and halls have gone unattended and so have gathered thick layers of dust and spider-webs in certain places. The walls creak, the floors creak, hell… everything creaks.

There is only one thing in the entire house that still seems to be in relatively good shape and that is the tapestry in the sitting room… the Black Family Tapestry.

This is the Black House… and it belongs to Potter now…

It struck me so hard when I saw that tapestry hanging there, glimmering in some inexplicable way. I stared at the family slogan under the name: “Toujours pur”.

Always pure.

The strangest feeling washed over me when I saw that too… I felt…disgusted.

I’ve seen so many tapestries like it before… we have one too, though it’s in a room I don’t often visit. I know the pride and worth behind an item like this… a family tree that proves that back through ages and bloodlines and history, you are pure-blooded and superior.

Maybe that’s what disgusted me so much…

My mother’s name was on that tapestry. It still is but…

There was a date of death underneath it.

I can’t say that it surprised me but… I don’t know how to explain it.

I just stood there…staring at the names for hours and hours. I felt such an intense hatred and anger course through me and I couldn’t find the right person to direct it at. I had no one to direct it at but me and I simply stood shaking with fury…I was breathing so hard that it was all that I could hear…

I don’t know if anyone saw me, but I would be surprised if they didn’t.

What made me angrier was not that no one had explicitly told me when they clearly had the knowledge staring at them from this wall, but that right next to my mother’s name was my aunt Bella’s name…and it was more brightly embroidered than anyone else’s… and there was no date of death.

She is still alive and being revered for it.

And she just LET HER SISTER DIE.

She probably helped kill her…

I just… I don’t fucking care.

She and Voldemort deserve each other.

In Hell, they deserve each other.

*****
August 18

I met the house-elf today. Kreacher…as it were. I was in the library (which is really the only place in the house apart from my room that is usually devoid of Order members) reading a book on ancient blood magic, when the little filthy creature hobbled in looking very suspicious.

“What are you doing, elf?” I snapped, knowing that I would probably get a disrespectful retort from an elf that worked for Potter (or so I assumed considering he is bound to the house).

Much to my surprise, however, upon catching sight of me he just dropped to his knees before me and began to kiss my feet.

I can honestly say that it was the most visually disturbing image I’ve ever seen. I jerked my feet away from him and demanded to know what he was doing again.

He told me that he was only looking to admire his master’s old books and remember the time when blood-traitors did not rule the house and taint all of it’s majesty with their dirty little paws (his words, not mine…though I had to clean them up a bit). Then he proceeded to go on about how he was unaware that such a deserving young master was living in the house now as well, at which point he pledged his allegiance to me, though he still had to obey that “dirty half-blood traitor”.

It was at this point that he feverishly started trying to caress my feet again.

I do NOT like it when house-elves touch me. It is NOT appropriate.

I shoved him off again and told him to go busy himself with something.

It was unnerving… for anyone or anything that is bound to Potter to show me that much loyalty… He was betraying Potter so candidly and it bothered me so… so terribly.

I took the book and brought it to my room and locked the door after that…

I haven’t seen him since.

******

August 19

I… did something I probably shouldn’t have done today… but I couldn’t help it. Well… I could have but Potter just made it so easy to do…and… Ugh…I just.

I was reading in my room again. The library is disconcerting to me now that Kreacher stalks the area waiting for me to show up. I send him away every time but he finds reasons to come back.

So I spend as little time there as possible.

I finished reading a book on ancient curses (the Blacks had many books on ancient Dark Magic that made me wonder why Potter thought that the place was ‘harmless’ for me to roam freely) and headed back to the library to get a different one when I heard voices coming from the room.

“I don’t know what to do now… I don’t know where to find the other Horcruxes, let alone the missing one,” Potter was saying. I stopped dead in my tracks and flattened myself up against the wall next to the door.

“Are you sure that one’s not real?” Granger’s voice sounded concerned and confused. Potter huffed.

“Yes, I’m sure, Hermione,” he snapped. “If it wasn’t for the inscription and the message, I would have known because it doesn’t look anything like the one from the memory…and besides…it would feel different, wouldn’t it? I mean, it has a piece of Voldemort’s soul in it, it has to show SOME kind of difference, doesn’t it?”

…………………………………………………………

I think my entire body froze at hearing those words… I didn’t even believe them. I couldn’t believe it. Had Potter REALLY said that an item was supposed to contain a piece of the Dark Lord’s SOUL???

…Am I just INSANE?

How….what the hell?!?

I… I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if I should keep listening or just leave or make a loud noise to show that there was someone nearby or… I suddenly felt overcome with discomfort and fear… I…

The necklace on my chest was burning against my skin for some reason. I didn’t like the feeling and tugged at the chain.

Was Potter really looking for things that held Voldemort’s soul?? Was that how he was going to defeat him? Was… was that why he really wasn’t going back to Hogwarts? There were so many questions and I felt such a flood of chaotic emotions as I stood there transfixed and terrified.

“Well… I don’t know, Harry,” Granger answered quietly. “I don’t know anything about Horcruxes…”

“None of us do, Hermione,” Weasel muttered. I could tell that he was feeling just as scared as I was…and he was actually fully informed.

“No,” Potter agreed. “I just wish I knew where the real one was… or where to find it. And WHO is R.A.B.?! This is just so frustrating!!”

“Harry…we understand,” the mudblood tried to comfort him.

“No! You don’t!” He was snapping at them harder than he did at me. “I just… this is what we were getting the night that he died!! This is… and that it’s not real… it feels like he died for nothing!!”

“He died trying to help you Harry,” Granger defended. “He was trying to save you and Malfoy and –”

“A great load of good that did,” Harry snorted humourlessly.

I felt a blade slice through my heart. My throat closed up. The chain around my neck suddenly felt very tight. I wanted to die. Right then… I think I could have.

“Well, what does the real thing look like?” Weasel said suddenly, clearly trying to change the subject.

“It’s…it’s silver, but brighter than this one…” Potter sighed angrily. “It’s a locket too though. On a silver chain…and there is a very ornate ‘S’ on the front of it encrusted with green jewels… Slytherin’s locket.”

And then I felt my stomach convulse and all of the air leave my lungs as though my entire body was trying to turn itself inside out. My eyes were wide and I felt like my skin was on fire…. Everything… everything was shifting around me and I felt like vomiting… or screaming or breaking through the wall. I don’t know, I don’t know!

But I couldn’t process the description. I couldn’t take it all in as the thing was hanging around my neck and scorching my flesh, compelling me to run and explode all at once. I let out some soft, almost inaudible sounds as I started to hyperventilate and felt my mind racing in no particular direction.

My mother…. Had had…. Slytherin’s locket…and it …it had…a part of Voldemort’s soul…in it. His soul… around my neck…

HIS SOUL AROUND MY NECK!

And all along…she was right! Just destroy his soul and then…then he’ll die right? Or… or…I don’t know… I don’t know but she wasn’t wrong! She…

R.A.B….Regulus…Black?

REGULUS!

Oh my god…. I …

I did the only thing that I could bring myself to do…I couldn’t believe it so… so I just ran right into the library and into Potter. I was panting and shaking and probably looked a mess but my eyes searched his as he looked at me in horror.

“Malfoy!! What the –” I didn’t let him talk. There was no time.

“What did the locket look like?!” I demanded quickly. I was staring right into his eyes as he gave me the most angry and disgusted look that I could ever have imagined.

“YOU WERE LISTENING IN?!” he bellowed, shaking now as well. “I KNEW I SHOULDN’T HAVE TRUSTED YOU!”

“POTTER!” I screamed back with desperation. “WHAT DID THE DAMN THING LOOK LIKE!?”

He just wasn’t understanding! He was concentrating on a completely MEANINGLESS matter when there were so many more IMPORTANT things at hand to deal with!!

“Where the hell do you get off eavesdropping on private conversations?!” he screamed, ignoring my question completely.

“If it was so private you could have picked a room with a door and a lock,” I muttered, shaking my head and throwing my arms in the air. “And you are completely missing the point here!! What does the locket look like?!”

“I AM NOT!” he hollered, his face going red from his anger. He drew his wand on me and held it to my chest. “I will NOT tell –”

But I cut him off. I couldn’t deal with it any longer. The thing was burning into my chest and I needed it off my skin. I pulled the locket from under my shirt and tore it from my neck holding it hanging out in front of him.

“Does it look like this?!”

------IIIIII------

A/N: *GASP* yes, I cut it off… it was getting too long and it serves the organization of entries better to put it this way… well it might not make sense to you but it kind of does to me lol X_X don’t kill me! Anyway, this is an important thing for Harry and Draco for many reasons, but you’ll see more why in the next few chapters. I hope you enjoyed it! I had a really rough day today so this was a little harder to write than usual…. Also, Harry’s reactions will be explained… along with a lot of things about him from the past…and I know Kreacher should be at Hogwarts, but that will be explained later too. Lots of random little tidbits here ^^;

Oh! And I got a song suggestion from ehcie-utada and I must say it was fantastic! Thanks so much for that it really does suit Draco’s situation very well! Again, if anyone else has any suggestions like that I would be overjoyed to hear them! (The song was Frailty by Urbandub, for those that want to hear it too)

I shall try to post tomorrow and Monday as well, hopefully my muses will agree! Reviews get cookies and my undying love!