The Malfoy Project

𝙳𝚛𝚊𝚌𝚘 #𝟹 - 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚀𝚞𝚒𝚍𝚍𝚒𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚕𝚍 𝙲𝚞𝚙

     Before, some part of me wished I wasn't a Slytherin. Sometimes, I would look over at the other Houses and wonder what it'd be like to not have to doubt your friends, or bother about being the best at everything. They didn't seem to have the same type of problems as the House of Salazar. Or perhaps it was simply our innate inability to be trusting. Many of us had ulterior motives, so other people must, too.

     Everyone around me seemed to have a direction, a purpose. They had something they wanted in life, be it money, knowledge, or a job they'd set their mind on. I didn't have anything I wanted so terribly I'd do anything to achieve it. 

     The truth is, I don't think I had any dreams at all. I never found use for them when I was set to inherit my family's fortune. But after what happened at the end of Second Year, I returned to school with a new goal: to embrace all of it. The fake friends, the art of duplicity. My wealth.

     There was some sort of satisfaction from seeing their faces when I pushed them or stole their things. There, I'd think. You wanted a bully, now you've got one. And make no mistake, I knew what bullying was, and that I was doing it. In fact, I somewhat enjoyed it. Not their misery, but that for once, people were pandering to me. They were scared of me, and not the other way around. 

     I decided it was better that people feared me, because they'd think me a sorry excuse of a person anyway. I couldn't prove them wrong, so I'd prove them right.

     I liked to pick on their weaknesses, and of course it was even better when it was Harry. When I found out he was afraid of Dementors, it was like hitting the jackpot. It was proof that Harry wasn't immortal. He wasn't some revered god, but a normal boy like me.

     It didn't always work and my antics often caused house points to get deducted from Slytherin. It seemed like Potter was immune to my taunts. Whatever I said never seemed to affect him much. He'd hurl back a weak insult and get on with his life. I suppose he expected me to do the same, but I just couldn't. Potter was like this big boulder in my way. There's no possibility of going around it, so I had to destroy it.

     Buckbeak was only the first of many failed attempts. Seeing Harry ride the hippogriff only drove me further over the edge. It was ridiculous that even animals seemed to favour Harry over everybody else. I simply couldn't put my finger on what was so special about him. I ended up taking it out on Buckbeak. I don't know what possessed me to have such a go at the poor creature. I suppose anger makes you do thoughtless, stupid things.

     I told Mother in a letter that I had been sent to the hospital wing. It was she who told Father. What I hadn't expected was for him to get actually angry. When she told me Father had convinced the Board of Governors and the Ministry to put Buckbeak to death, I briefly considered warning Potter. But then I thought: why should I? He had everything. Took everything. He had taken Dobby.

     I couldn't sleep for a week after that. I wrestled with my own conscience every night. But I always comforted myself with the reminder that this was the first time Father was doing something in my defence. Admittedly, the very thought of that was a stronger anaesthesia than my buried desire to help Potter and his friends.

     It's difficult to admit, but I suppose the crux of this was jealousy. It was like I had been overcome with this manic desire to put him in his place. The more I failed, the more determined I was to bring him down. It was the only thing that really provided me with a sense of purpose.

     With Crabbe and Goyle, I rarely laid a hand on other people. It detached me from a sense of accountability: if I wasn't the one doing it, I wasn't responsible for the outcomes. It made it easier to do all these horrible things to people, make them as miserable as I was. I didn't want to, but I felt like I should. It was a duality I could never connect within myself. It felt like I had two personalities that co-existed, merging in and out of each other; I never knew which was at the forefront at any given moment.