He drank his tea and stared at the untouched grapefruit.
The problem was Nott was right, Draco mused with resentment. Everything had changed and Draco hated it.
He started to worry over Nott's comments in his head. Well, not the comment about Slytherin because Draco had been born and raised to be in Slytherin although he knew his father would have preferred to have sent him to Durmstrang and avoided Hogwarts altogether; it had been at his mother's insistence that he had gone to Hogwarts. Still, Slytherin was for the ambitious and cunning; Draco had been raised to be both. So a pox on Nott for his stupidity in suggesting Draco should have gone somewhere other than Slytherin. And Draco knew he ruled in Slytherin…at least he had until that Summer. He shifted position uncomfortable with the thought, a frown on his pointed face.
Truthfully, he had always known that he held his place in Slytherin because of his father; the Malfoy name, status and wealth kept most of his contemporaries in line, and the upper years would ignore him rather than risk upsetting him and provoking consequences for their families' businesses or political dealings. What was beginning to sink in was that it hadn't been the Malfoy name, status and wealth so much as the Black.
Draco had been told, of course, that he was the Black Heir and would complete the inheritance rituals when he was seventeen and of age. His father had talked about a family fortune from his mother's side that would add to the prestige of the House of Malfoy. What he hadn't told Draco was that other candidates for the position were still alive nor that his Great-Uncle Arcturus hadn't actually named him as Heir despite being alive until just before Draco entered Hogwarts. In hindsight, he'd simply naively accepted his father's word.
He'd accepted a lot of what his father had told him as truth and he was beginning to understand that some of it wasn't truth at all.
It wasn't truth that he'd been the Black Heir and once Sirius Black had claimed his rightful position by law, blood and magic, any claim Draco had to inherit the House of Black was gone especially as Black had made Potter his Heir. Perhaps Draco could have been Black's Heir in another life where Black had done the right thing and sorted to Slytherin and hated the Potters but the likelihood of him ever ditching Potter and naming Draco instead was very remote and most likely would involve a compulsion spell of some kind.
Potter.
It was all his fault, Draco thought furiously. How dare he swoop in and take what was rightfully his?! He should show Potter that nobody messed with a Malfoy and…
His magic tingled and Draco recognised the warning signs of the magical Vow he had taken. Negative and angry thoughts about Potter apparently set off the alarms in his magic that he was coming close to breaking his vow.
Balls, Draco thought morosely. He couldn't even have a good mental rant about Potter! On the other hand, he was quite grateful for the internal warning system that magic had come up with whenever he strayed into thinking of Potter with murder or harm in mind. He liked his magic too much to want it stripped from him.
And if he was being completely honest, it wasn't Potter's fault. He wasn't responsible for Draco being led to believe he would be the Black Heir when all was said and done. No, that had been his father – and his mother to a lesser extent; leading Draco into believing one thing when the truth was far different.
Like the Dark Mark his father had branded into his forearm. From everything Black had said at the meeting and his mother had said in their lessons that Summer, the Mark was the equivalent of a brand of slavery; a subjugation of will and freedom to the Dark Lord's whims. His father had once proudly displayed the faint outline and told Draco that he wore it as a badge of pride.
His father, who had been stupid enough to brand himself a slave and follow a Dark Lord who wasn't even a pureblood; his father who had actually killed someone; had tortured people.
Draco shuddered. He poured himself another cup of tea to distract himself from the thought. He had known in the abstract that the followers of the Dark Lord had been intent on killing muggles and muggleborn; on eliminating the blood traitors who had stood in opposition to the pureblood agenda that the Dark Lord espoused. But for all that he had known those facts he had never put it together that his father had been one of those followers and therefore had killed and tortured and eliminated…
Personally, Draco didn't want to kill anyone.
Well, maybe Potter…and there was that tingle again.
He sighed.
He wasn't stupid; he knew himself well. He knew he had a cruel streak a mile wide; he wasn't a kind person. His father had taught him that kindness was a weakness. If someone got hurt, he didn't necessarily care and he might even revel a little in their pain. Draco had happily used to kick their old house elf when he was in rage for no other reason than the house elf being there.
But the occasional violent temper tantrum aside, he'd always believed he, as a Malfoy, was the brains and others were the brawn. Others might be the ones to get blood on their hands and he might direct it but he wouldn't actually do it himself. He'd be in the Wizengamot leading others. He wouldn't be actually killing people. And in truth, he had never seen the need to kill people. Why kill when muggleborns could be shopkeepers and farmers? Why interact with muggles at all? Why not legally restrict muggleborns and halfbloods and ensure the ruling elite would always be pureblood?
No, Draco had never envisaged killing in his future. Immersing himself in politics, being Minister of Magic, walking the corridors of power, and using others to threaten violence and cajole; yes. Premeditated murder, torturing for just to create pain, and killing someone in cold blood – even Potter; no.
He didn't want that in his future.
And he certainly had no wish to bow down to or brand himself with the Mark of a son of a muggle even if that son of a muggle was a descendent of Slytherin.
Draco sipped his tea.
It was all his father's fault that Draco's world had turned out to be nothing but a lie (as his mother had been subtly telling him all Summer). For years Lucius Malfoy had been feeding Draco dragon dung, spoonful after spoonful that Draco had swallowed down because he believed his father hung the moon. Well, no more.
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