Confessions of an Ex-Death-Eater

2.

When I was growing up, I was taught that 'blood is everything'. I grew up surrounded by phrases like 'blood-purity', 'pure-bloods', 'the Sacred Twenty-Eight', 'blood traitors', 'half-bloods', and the most abhorrent of all the words that I was taught: 'mudblood'. It was so embedded in my vocabulary that I never even questioned why I should be calling someone 'dirty-blooded', let alone what that even implied. Instead, I grew up believing that my heritage set me at the top of the ladder, that those whose 'blood' was 'less pure' meant that they were less worthy. If pure-blood wizards were on the top rung and muggles were not even on the ladder: then everyone else was on a scale in between. But more than that, this was a British-centric and, foremost, a Malfoy-centric view. As far as my father was concerned, if the British Sacred Twenty-Eight families were the best of the best, then the Malfoys were at the very top of the pile: the equivalent to British muggle royalty. Malfoys were the ultimate in pure-blood lineage. Our name meant privilege and our name meant power.

Imagine that, dear Reader, imagine growing up believing you are above the world and no one could touch you.

The problem of being at the top of the ladder is that it is a very long way to fall...

I never questioned this belief in my sense of superiority over others because my father is a persuasive man. And is it not the very nature of power and privilege, in that, those who possess any form of hegemony will not question it in case it uncovers an ugly truth: the truth about the meaningful cost to others caused by that very dominance and sense of supremacy.

War teaches many things, but above all, war finally taught me my father was wrong. At the end of the day, all blood bleeds red, no matter what our background, and it hurts so deeply to lose someone we love. That is what I finally came to understand, although it was not until the Battle of Hogwarts when I truly came to realise what it means to lose someone you love.

In all honesty, I had begun to have doubts in my father's rhetoric long before the Second Wizarding War ended, but when we are children, we want to believe our parents for they are the main influencers of our young lives, the people who mould us and set us up for adulthood. We are innocent and we trust the adults around us. We position them as invincible heroes: those who can do no wrong, those who know best. And, unless that trust is broken, they are infallible gods, especially if they place themselves as such. It means any doubts we may have are quashed until we learn better. As a child, I believed my father was unfailingly correct in every utterance that came out of his Merlin-forsaken mouth.

I am a father now, dear Reader. And my biggest fear is that I should repeat his mistakes. Perhaps that is why I have sat down with a muggle laptop, not the traditional set of wizarding quills and scrolls nor any Quikquills—though there is another reason for that—I want to confess my wrong-doings; my poor unfortunate mistaken beliefs; my regrets. I want to apologise for the person I was. But I also want to straighten myself out, reassess what I do believe, for the sake of my son. I do not want him to live what I have lived through. I do not want him to fall like I have fallen, but if he does, I want to be there for him, to help pick him up, dust him off, and guide him gently forward to a better future.

We are not our parents, dear Reader, but we can take their good parts, discard their faults, and learn from their mistakes.

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