The Sentence
Draco Malfoy’s POV
The walls of Malfoy Manor had never felt more like a prison than they did now. Even after I had been released from Azkaban, even after my mother had thrown her arms around me in a way that made me feel, for the first time in years, that I was something more than a pawn in a war I never wanted to fight, this house still wasn’t home. It hadn’t been home since the Dark Lord had taken up residence in it, turning our ancestral estate into his own personal war room. Every shadow in the corridors still felt like it belonged to him, every echo of my own footsteps still sent an unnatural chill up my spine.
Eight months in Azkaban had done its work on me. I had never been the same after the war, but prison had taken what was left of the boy I used to be and crushed it beneath the weight of everything I had done, everything I had been forced to witness. My father, of course, had been there longer—nearly a year. He had always been the one to command a room with his presence, but when he was finally released, he looked older, more fragile. A part of me felt something akin to relief when I saw him, alive and well, but another part of me—one that had been growing ever since he had branded me with the Dark Mark—wanted to turn away. I loved him, I always would, but I couldn’t forget that he had been the one to let the Dark Lord into our home. He had been the one to allow my mother and me to become prisoners in our own house long before the Ministry ever placed us under house arrest.
We had spent the last month learning how to be a family again—or, at least, pretending to be one. My mother was the glue that held us together, speaking carefully, treading lightly over the unspoken tensions that sat between my father and me like a silent curse waiting to be activated. It was on one of these seemingly normal mornings that the letter arrived.
I had been seated at the breakfast table, lazily stirring my tea, when the owl came. Its arrival had been unceremonious—just a single, Ministry-stamped envelope, dropped in the centre of our table as if it were any other bit of post. I remember how my mother’s fingers had tightened around her teacup as I reached for it, how my father had slowly folded the Prophet he had been reading, his expression unreadable.
I broke the seal with a flick of my wrist, unfolded the parchment, and scanned the words written in bold, unwavering strokes. And then I froze.
The cup slipped from my fingers. It hit the table with a dull clatter, spilling dark liquid across the pristine white cloth. My mouth had gone dry, and my hands, though steady in battle, began to tremble.
They were sending us away.
Not to another prison, not to another house arrest, but somewhere much worse.
We were being assigned—like common criminals, like schoolchildren placed in detention—to live with Muggle-borns and half-bloods for a full year. And not just live with them, live as them. No magic. No wands. No house-elves to cook our meals or clean our messes. Stripped of everything that made us who we were.
I barely heard my mother’s sharp inhale beside me, but I did hear my father’s chair scrape against the marble floor as he stood, reaching for the letter with a tense, outstretched hand. I couldn’t look at him as he read it. I already knew what I would see—the barely concealed disgust, the quiet fury.
“After house arrest,” he said, his voice low but venomous. “After Azkaban. Now they want to strip us of everything and force us to live like filthy little—”
I winced.
The word Muggles felt foreign in my father’s mouth. It wasn’t the same word I had grown up hearing him say with effortless superiority. It was bitter now, resentful, like something rotting at the back of his throat.
But I—I couldn’t share in his outrage. Not truly.
Once, I would have sneered. Once, I would have thrown the letter aside and spat about how unfair it was, how wrong it was. But now… now, I only felt numb. Because the truth was, I had already known this day would come. The moment the war had ended, the moment Potter had stood victorious and the Ministry had begun its campaign to rebuild the wizarding world, I had known that we—the children of Death Eaters, the ones raised in homes of unchecked bigotry—would not be allowed to walk away unscathed.
I didn’t believe in blood purity anymore. Azkaban had beaten that out of me, but even before that—Hogwarts had started the process. The war had finished it. I had learned, too late, that the ideals I had been raised to uphold had led to nothing but ruin.
I was nothing like my father.
And yet, standing there in my childhood home, I had never felt more like him.
Mother reached for the letter, her fingers ghosting over the parchment before she slowly folded it closed. She let out a long breath, steadying herself. She wasn’t as visibly shaken as I was, nor was she openly enraged like my father, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the way her lips pressed together just a fraction too tightly.
“We’ll do what must be done,” she said at last, her voice carefully measured. “We always have.”
Father scoffed. “And that’s it, is it? We’ll simply allow them to strip us of our magic and place us like misbehaving schoolboys in some half-blood’s home?”
“Yes,” Mother said simply.
He turned to her then, his expression darkening. “You cannot possibly—”
“I can.” She cut him off, meeting his gaze with quiet defiance. “And so can you.”
Father’s jaw clenched, but he said nothing.
I, however, couldn’t keep silent any longer.
“This isn’t a choice,” I muttered, my voice quieter than I would have liked. “It’s not a punishment we can bargain our way out of. We either comply or…”
Or what?
Would they send us back to Azkaban? Would they strip us of our wands permanently? Would they brand us, mark us, make an example of us?
Father must have been thinking the same thing, because his shoulders stiffened, his lips pressing into a thin line.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
I closed my eyes for a brief moment, inhaling deeply before glancing back down at the letter. The words blurred together, but one line stood out among the rest.
‘You will be assigned to your residence within the coming days. Any attempt to refuse will be considered an act of defiance against the Ministry of Magic.’
There it was. The final nail in the coffin.
I exhaled slowly, setting the letter down on the table as I ran a hand through my hair.
I had spent my entire life being told that Muggle-borns were beneath me. That they were lesser. That they stole magic that was never meant to be theirs. I had spent years watching my father scoff at the mere mention of them, listening to my aunt Bellatrix cackle about their undeserving existence.
And now?
Now, I was going to be placed in one of their homes. Forced to live as one of them. Learn their ways. Become… one of them.
The irony of it all would have been laughable if it weren’t so bloody terrifying.
I swallowed hard and finally spoke the words I had never imagined myself saying.
“Who do you think they’ll send me to?”