Confessions of an Ex-Death-Eater

8.

While I became more and more embroiled with my one-sided petty warfare with Harry, my father continued to quietly groom me in the background.

My mother told me after the war that when it became clear that Voldemort was, indeed, regaining strength so he could return, Lucius had decided I should receive the Dark Mark on my eighteenth birthday. Meanwhile, he would drip feed me glorified information about the Dark Arts and he would 'confide' in me tainted information about half-blood and, particularly, muggle-born families. He would talk about blood-traitors, particularly the Weasleys for whom he seemed to hold a unique hatred, and he would encourage pure-blood associations. The Bulstrodes, Parkinsons, and Zambinis were favoured acquaintances for me, particularly because they did not have known associations with the Dark Lord. They provided a clean cover for my friendships with the Goyles, Crabbes, and Notts. Academic subjects were encouraged which would ensure a future in politics. And, by the time I was twelve, even though I was at an age when the thought of girls was enough to make me run a mile, my father had negotiated a bride and a handsome dowry with a pure-blood called Astoria Greengrass (her sister, Daphne was in my year but I was yet to meet her younger sister). In Lucius' eyes, my future was very clear and already mapped out.

During the holidays, my father began to teach me Occlumency. With the threat of the Cruciatus Curse hanging over me, I quickly learnt how to proficiently layer my thoughts so that I could reveal some things and hide others.

When the Chamber of Secrets was opened for a second time, it was a prime opportunity to start spreading discord and fear about the safety of 'mudbloods' in the school. It was also a perfect opening to undermine Dumbledore's longstanding position as Headmaster of Hogwarts; my father would have preferred to see someone in that role who was more sympathetic towards the teaching of the Dark Arts. He would send me letters which he insisted I burnt after reading, in them he would tell me things I could say to stir up dissent. He enforced to me why I should say 'mudbloods deserved to die', he began to use language which pre-empted the trials which came after the ministry fell in which muggle-borns were accused of stealing 'true' wizards' wands.

And when Harry Potter spoke in Parseltongue in front of the entire school, well, it was an ideal chance to discredit the hero.

This conflicted me. For years my father told me that only a true heir of Salazar Slytherin could speak Parseltongue, I use to pretend it was me, 'practicing' to the snake head on my father's cane when no one was around. So, surely, it meant that Harry was a Slytherin in blood, that he was 'one of us'. But no, my father insisted I should spread the rumour that it was Harry Potter who had opened the Chamber of Secrets, that it was Harry Potter who was trying to harm his fellow school-friends, that he was unstable and trying to kill anyone who had crossed him. That rumour worked well enough until Hermione Granger became one of the victims, then it fell flat when people realised how ridiculous it was.

The thing was, at home, I had already overheard my father talking about the first time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened before I went back to Hogwarts to start my second year. I overheard him talking with Balstern Greengrass one evening, Greengrass was Dark Arts supporter, although not a Death-eater. I believe now that my father was testing the ground, recruiting my father-in-law-to-be, who did indeed take the Mark sometime later. The Chamber of Secrets was his perfect testing ground to find out how people sympathised with what had happened. I can't say I wasn't intrigued when he mentioned how the muggle girl was struck down by a sudden death with no visible signs of attack beyond evident fear in her glassy eyes. Mostly it was because it reminded me of something I had read with my mother over the previous summer.

And now, dear Reader, I shall let you into a secret. You see, my mother was very keen on reading with me, even when I was too grown up for bed-time stories, and the books we read often crossed over with muggle literature. And if my father complained she would simply reply that I should be educated to understand exactly why muggles are lesser than wizarding kind. Then she would lead me away and we would sit in her bed together, we read all sorts together and never, ever, did she explain to me how this showed muggles were inferior. Every summer we would study a Shakespearean play, and read Greek myths, and other muggle literature. I asked her, once, how this showed that we were superior to muggles? Her reply was that I should make my own judgement based on the evidence before me, then she opened up her Complete Works of Shakespeare and we started to read Macbeth. I never got an answer from her but I was, once more, conflicted because I have always thought that Shakespeare's plays were wonderful and how could a muggle write such brilliant and imaginative plays and poetry about real human emotions and be considered inferior? How could one man write words that made me want to laugh and cry and love and yet be called lesser than someone like me who could not imagine such beauty in life, let alone represent it in words? And I always secretly dreamt that one summer my mother and I would go to London, just the two of us, and we would watch one of his plays at the Globe Theatre because I was convinced it would be magical to see those words transformed onto the stage by actors. So, there you have it. I had my answer to my question all along, I just didn't see until I had broken free from my father's rhetoric and his bigoted words of hatred.

To return to the subject of the Chamber of Secrets, I began searching for the story again, trying to prompt my memory about eyes and a mysterious frozen death. Eventually I found the reference, it was in Shakespeare's Richard III, when Gloucester tells Lady Anne: 'Thine eyes, sweet lady, have infected mine,' and she replies 'Would they were basilisks, to strike thee dead!'. However, it wasn't until we were in Flourish and Blotts getting my school books that I found a better description which satisfied my intrigue. Flourish and Blotts had in a new stack of books on mythological magical creatures and as I flicked through it, there it was: a page on the mythological Basilisk, the one mentioned in Richard III which would strike its victims dead with its eyes. I will admit to a heinous crime, I tore the page out of the book so I could study it in private.

And as the year continued and the attacks became more and more frequent, I began to get scared for I was convinced from eavesdropping on my father and the clues I'd put together that it was indeed a basilisk that was being released from the Chamber of Secrets and making the attacks. I was convinced that somehow my father was behind all this too, but if he was, he certainly wasn't in control of what was happening. I didn't know what to do. Admittedly, I was scared for myself, it could be me as much as anyone who was the next victim. I did the only thing I could think of: give my clue from the page of the book to the one person in the school who was clever enough to work it all out. Well, I didn't give it to her directly, that would have meant breaking with my father's mantras and conversing properly with a muggle-born, no, I slipped the page within one of the books that I'd seen her reading in the library and waited, hoping for the best. The only problem was, Hermione Granger was the next victim.

*****