Confessions of an Ex-Death-Eater

11.

So, yet another school year ended and I returned home with some trepidation. The Ministry finally had admitted that Voldemort had returned and my father was in prison, which meant it was just mother and I.

Or so I thought.

Severus met me at King's Cross Station to Apparate me back to Malfoy Manor. He looked sallow and drawn. He hissed as if in pain when I touched his arm. He told me things would be different for me now, that I was expected to step up and take my father's place. He told me to be ready. He told me to go to him if I needed help.

I stuck my nose up at him, not understanding the true implication of his words. I didn't need his help. My mother and I would be just fine, thank you very much.

It wasn't until I walked into the Manor that I finally understood his words. That is, when I stood face-to-face with Lord Voldemort in the hallway of the Manor, and when he held my face with long, pinching fingers, turning my head from side to side as if inspecting me for dirty marks. That was when I understood why things were different now.

He was leaning close, so close I could smell his breath. It smelt like rotting fish.

'Welcome home, Draco,' his words sighed and curled around me but he held me so I could not recoil, his red eyes piercing my soul, his strange slitted nostrils moving imperceptibly. 'We have moved in.' I realised he referred to the various Death-eaters and hangers-on who had joined our little party in the hall, including my Aunt Bellatrix who was wanted after Battle of the Department of Mysteries. 'The Manor suits my purposes nicely and the Ministry won't be visiting while Lucius is so disagreeably incarcerated in Azkaban.' There was an underlying threat behind the hissing sibilance in his words. I held still.

He continued to scrutinise me. He was probing my mind, that much I knew.

This was the moment my father had been training me for, though he'd actually failed to warn me of the Dark Lord's skills in Legilimency.

The Dark Lord curled his lip at me, then whispered, 'I hope you are not the same dissatisfaction your father has shown himself to be.' And I was pushed towards my mother by sharp, taloned fingers that felt as if they touched my naked skin through my school uniform. I wanted to shiver but knew I should not dare. My knees felt as if they might buckle but I could not falter.

'You will take the Mark tonight,' he hissed at my back. 'Then you will take your father's place at my Counsel tomorrow for I have a very specific task for you, Draco Lucius Malfoy.'

When I got to my room and shut the door, I vomited onto the carpet at my feet.

That was the point, dear Reader, when reality came crashing down around me. When I knew I didn't want this, when I knew I hated my father for what he had led me into, when the years of abuse and cruelty suddenly fell into place and I realised that it had all merely been grooming for this moment. That I'd never had a choice. And I hated Severus too, for surely he could have saved me from this, taken me away, prevented me from going home, but instead he had marched me into the snake's pit like the loyal Death-eater I thought he was.

I suddenly felt so desperately alone. I wondered what my so-called friends from school would think if they actually knew what I was facing. But I realised that there wasn't one of them I could confide in, let alone call on to help me out.

I had one chance, I had to find my mother and we had to escape. I was, at that point, willing to walk away from everything I had grown up with, I would leave Voldemort the manor and all that was in it, just to escape. I didn't know where we'd go, but we had to leave.

I ran to her rooms, bursting through the doors.

And skidded to a horrified halt.

There was a man in her rooms.

A stranger.

I know now that it was Thorfinn Rowle.

He was a thick-necked stocky man with cropped blond hair, a dark shadow of stubble across his face, and piercing blue eyes. And he was roughly pushing my mother down onto the bed, fumbling to hitch up her skirts as he fought to pin her hands above her head. He looked at me, grinning lasciviously but not breaking in his movements. I did not need to see my mother fighting to push his solid weight off her, to see the fear and panic in her face, I did not need to see that his trousers were around his knees to understand what he was trying to accomplish.

Fury quickly supplanted the sheer horror that this was happening in our own home.

It was a just over a month past my sixteenth birthday when I cast my first Unforgiveable Curse.

I cannot lie, I felt the power of Dark Magic as Rowle curled over and fell to the floor, doubled up in pain, gripping at his head like he might tear his own eyes out. Salazar, that's what I wanted him to do, I would have watched him tear himself apart with pleasure as he squirmed on the floor, his semi-flaccid penis flopping around from his open pants, belying his sickening intention. I felt such anger. Anger that the Dark Lord and his sycophants had invaded our house. Anger that this man thought he could rape my mother, violate her in her own home just because he could. Anger that my father had let this happen and wasn't here to protect us. Anger that my life should end up here, so trapped, so sullied.

'You can stop now, Draco.' That voice, so even, so commanding, hissed behind me. 'Although it is gratifying to see one so young use the curse so well.'

I released Rowle from the Cruciatus I had cursed upon him and he scrambled backwards across the floor, trying to tuck himself away and do up his trousers.

My mother, ever the dignified woman, pushed herself up off her bed and brushed down her skirts as if she were knocking crumbs away. She did not look at me or Voldemort, but at Rowle. There was an icy hatred that could freeze hell over in her steel-blue eyes. She walked towards Rowle until she was stood over him and lifted her heeled boot, bringing the pointed stiletto down on Rowle's groin, grinding it as she went. The man paled, and whimpered, and then went a sickening green. I like to think that even Voldemort winced next to me.

'Please leave,' she said coldly. 'I wish to talk to my son alone.'

But Voldemort gripped my arm tightly with his digging fingers. 'You will do as I say, Draco. For who will protect your mother if you do not?' he hissed quietly in my ear.

I understood then, I understood that I could not escape.

*****