Confessions of an Ex-Death-Eater

10.

When Harry and Cedric Diggory disappeared from the centre of the maze during the final challenge of the Triwizard Tournament, it became apparent that something had gone seriously wrong. For the first time in my life, I saw Dumbledore look flustered. It made me worried. I wanted to contact my father to find out what he knew.

I felt sick, especially when I saw the colour drain from the face of my Godfather as he clutched his forearm and caught eyes with Igor Karkaroff. I understood in that moment that all the Death-eaters had been summoned by Lord Voldemort. I could only assume that Harry and Cedric were there too. It meant Voldemort had returned and had finally got what he wanted, it meant he had got Harry in his clutches. For the first time in my life I felt physically sick by the prospect of what was happening. I felt sick for what it meant for my father, but more than that, I felt sick for what it meant for Harry.

I remember whispering 'he's back,' to Vincent Crabbe, who looked at me blankly.

'The Dark Lord...' I clarified.

He grinned aimlessly, 'does that mean Potter's dead?' he said.

In that moment, I hated Vincent Crabbe but I drawled with my perfect Malfoy sneer, 'let's hope so.' I knew the importance of appearances.

He guffawed. And I clenched my fist and dug my nails into the palm of my hand to prevent me from punching his stupid round face.

When Potter returned carrying the body of Cedric Diggory, all hell broke loose. A turmoil which did not end for the next three years.

When I returned home, my father looked ill. He had lost favour with Voldemort because he had not looked for his Master, because he had lived his life out comfortably for the past fourteen years while other Death-eaters had been executed, suffered or locked up in Azkaban. He looked ill because Harry Potter, a fourteen-year-old boy, had duelled with the Dark Lord and had not been defeated, and because Harry Potter had escaped the Dark Lord once more. And the Dark Lord was angry.

There was some serious damage control for my father to do.

Lucius was given two tasks, the first was to retrieve something personal for the Dark Lord, I was never told what. The second was to manipulate the Ministry. Voldemort didn't want his return to be known yet, he needed to gain more power and more followers before he revealed himself in all his full glory. He wanted to be working in the shadows. My father needed to do some serious whispering in some influential ears to discredit both Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. By the time we returned to Hogwarts for our fifth year, my father had ensured that the Ministry had stepped up to interfere with the running of the school and to undermine Dumbledore's power. That odious woman, Dolores Umbridge, was installed as the new Defence against the Dark Arts teacher, soon to be High Inquisitor, then Headmistress at the school. It was hell, for some more than others, and I had to play the part of willing Death-eater in training.

I was caught in the middle. Despite his temper and his aggression, I loved my father and trusted him, I wanted to please him and emulate him. And I believe to this day that he was, in his own strange and warped way, trying to protect me. But I was also starting to have doubts about his beliefs in pure-blood superiority and the Dark Arts. It confused me, surely Harry was the prime example that blood purity and Dark Arts did not necessarily equate to power. Harry was a half-blood and mere boy and yet he had already bested the Dark Lord four times in his young life. I had to maintain the façade that I unfailingly followed my father's beliefs. I played the part, mostly because I was too blind to do otherwise.

But there was the small matter of an escape from Azkaban by some of the more dangerous Death-eaters from Voldemort's inner circle. For me, it meant coming home to the joyous company of my Aunt Bellatrix. And if I thought my father was bad, she was pure evil in a corset and as deranged as a box of chocolate frogs. To her, I was play thing, created for her pleasure, that is, to torture. She took over from my father in terms of my 'training'. I will not write about her methods of Legilimens, it is still traumatic, but I learnt that my father was not as abusive I had had begun to believe – he did, at least, exercise some degree of control.

At school, I fell into my old habits, partly because it was easy and familiar. Besides, Umbridge gave me certain privileges and, as I've already said, Malfoys like privileges. I was fallible in that aspect.

And partly because the idea of approaching Harry for help seemed impossible but I wasn't certain who else to trust. Besides, he was battling with his own demons, what with witnessing the return of the Dark Lord; a Dementor attack after which the Ministry tried to hold a full Wizengamot hearing for using underage-magic when he protected himself and his muggle cousin; the Ministry's and the press's hate-campaign; what was happening at Hogwarts; and becoming a victim of Umbridge's unethical detention methods. He didn't need the added burden of his arch-nemesis's woes too. The cavernous gap between us seemed bigger than ever, Harry carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. It only took a look from either of us to explode into a volcano of hatred. I wanted to reach out but I couldn't even bare to be in the same room as him.

All the feelings of the hatred of my home-life and the rejection and petty rivalries of school culminated into an irretrievable climax which resulted in the members of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad trapping Harry's friends, then Harry escaping, the so-called 'Battle of the Department of Mysteries', Voldemort's return being revealed to the world, the Ministry back-tracking on everything my father had achieved over the year, and my father getting arrested and thrown into Azkaban along with the two Lestrange brothers, Dolohov, Avery, MacNair, Crabbe Snr, Goyle Snr, Nott Snr, Rookwood, Jugson, and Mulciber. The only Death-eater present at the Ministry who escaped was my lovely Aunt Bella.

If the past two years were classed as difficult, dear Reader, now they escalated off the scale into utterly and completely dreadful.

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