Broken Strings

Part 1

PROMPT

Write about someone who decides it's time to cut ties with a family member.

Rules: Must be between 1000 and 3000 words long. Must stick to the topic.

The prompt idea: Draco and his father

Canon to the story? Sort-of. This happens after Draco's release from Azkaban, which happens two years before the start of the canon story.

Alright, lovelies! Here's the first of the 17 Short Story Collections. This is canon to the story, but sort of fleshes out Draco's backstory and his character in this story.

I am making these stories with the express intention of getting to know my characters so their story flows as smoothly as possible. I am thinking of doing this for other ongoing stories as well. Note: I do not reuse writing prompts unless strictly necessary so I don't fall into a comfortable pattern.

That being said, if anybody spots any contradictions either in this short or in a future short, please point it out as I would have missed it if I published it.

So backstory for this short: After the war, Draco Malfoy was charged with treason and was sentenced to life in Azkaban for his "crimes." His mother was outraged since she knew that he had done none of the crimes the other Death Eaters had committed and worked on bailing him out of Azkaban. After a year, Draco was released. This short picks up while he's living with his mother on his Magic probation for the next two years.

Rating: Teen (? Please tell me if I should rate it higher!)

TW: Mild language, brief mentions of mental torture (you have to squint to see it, but it's there), implied manipulation, heavily implied abuse

Broken Strings

Draco Malfoy had always known that his father was... corrupted for lack of a better term. Every time He Who Must Not Be Named came up in conversation, Lucius would always look... disgruntled, as if something hadn't gone to plan.

And perhaps it hadn't, Draco had thought when he first met Harry Potter. Harry Potter stood for everything his father was against, so Harry's continued existence undermined his father and his plans.

That alone made Draco want to befriend the boy, to get back at his father, but he had never had a way with words like his mother and he made a mistake. A mistake that he carried with him for the next seven years of his stay at Hogwarts.

He was expected to act like an arrogant nobody by his friends, "enemies", and even family and so he became that. He turned to his father for everything, as that was all that he had known.

Never speak back and never get hurt, the unspoken word of his house.

Draco didn't truly regret his mistake until he was forced to stand Dumbledore down, trembling from the force of the expectations weighing down on his thinning frame. He didn't truly regret his mistake until he heard about Harry Potter and his friends being hunted down one by one.

The rest of the war passed by in a blur and by the time he blinked — by the time he could breathe and process what the hell had just happened — he was in Azkaban, having to relive his biggest mistakes over and over again.

And then he was out and living with his mother, who let him breathe for the first couple of months.

And then she was asking him what he was going to do about his father, who was due to come back in a year.

The blond boy blinked at his mother, not understanding what she meant for a few moments before his eyes widened.

Shit, he had forgotten that his father had been given a two-year sentence and he winced in sympathy. One year was bad enough as it was.