The Tragic Tale of the Boy Who Lived and the Boy Who Wanted to Die [ON HIATUS]

Draco expected his summer to be fun. Or at the very least, bearable. He hadn’t expected his entire world to be flipped on its head the moment he got off the train. Of course, he had already known about his father being sacked as school governor, but nobody had told him why. He planned on asking Dobby when he got back home. Unfortunately, that was not going to be able to happen.

“Draco, your mother and I have something to tell you once we get home.” His father said sharply, before leading him over to the platform’s Floo fireplaces. When they had arrived home, his mother sat him down and delivered the news.

“Dobby- well, he’s gone. From now on, I’ll handle cooking and the like. We will find a replacement eventually, but for now, just at least try to make this easy on us.” Draco couldn’t believe the calmness of which she spoke; how could she not care that Dobby was gone? How could she not let the fact that their house elf of so many years was just gone affect her? Not that Draco cared much about Dobby, it was more the fact that the thing who raised him was gone. Just like that. All the times that he had hurt himself as a child, Dobby would clean the blood and heal the wounds, and if Draco was hungry, Dobby made sure a meal would be served. How could he be gone?

“How did this happen? I mean, why did you free him?” He knew as soon as the words were out of his mouth that they were a mistake.

“You think this was intentional? You think that the second I lose my job, I would free our slave for fun? Or perhaps you think it was your mother's fault. She seems the type to accidentally hand him a clothing garment, does she?” Lucius Malfoy always kept up a respectable appearance outside of the family home, but once inside the Manor he was a very different person.

Draco revered his mother for the way she could always keep a straight face and monotone voice whenever his father got like this. He had always done the same, had always been able to shut down his emotions until his father calmed down his own, but he didn’t have a choice.

He remembered when he was six and hadn’t properly put away his toy broom, how his father raged. He remembered crying into his mother's dress afterwards, for her to only say, ‘You need to learn how to properly control your emotions. Crying like this gets you nowhere in life.’. That was the last time he had cried in front of his parents.

He always wondered why Narcissa never seemed sympathetic with Draco, why she only ever turned a deaf ear to his shouts, why she never left. If Draco had the choice, he would’ve taken her and run out of the country. But he couldn’t, so he stayed quiet.

His father did have a lot of influence in the Ministry, Draco knew this and how to take advantage of it. When his dad was in a good mood, he would do almost anything Draco asked of him. Everybody has their flaws, right? The pros and cons of living with Lucius Malfoy were perfectly balanced, as it should be. It wasn’t until dinner that night that Draco found out why Dobby had been freed.

“When I went to Dumbledore, after hearing he had returned as headmaster, the diary that had possessed that girl was blamed on me, and when your classmate decided to return it to me, he played a cruel trick that resulted in Dobby getting released from our care. If you must know, they attached a sock to the diary that, once I removed, got caught by that hideous house elf, exploiting a loophole that nobody in their right mind would think to exploit. No more questions.”

Draco had expected the story to be much different. His father was right though, who in their right mind would think to do that? No doubt it was Potter, he had saved Ginny hadn’t he?

However, Draco could help but think about what his father had said. The diary that had possessed that girl was blamed on me. His father had planted a book in Ginny’s cauldron, Draco had seen it. That must be why he was sacked. But also, hadn’t Draco heard Ginny’s frantic cries about a diary that she had, that Potter had taken? She had begged him to help her, to take it from him during a Potions lesson. And he had done it. He had used the Summoning Charm to take it while everybody had been finishing their potions.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he realised it was his fault that Ginny had almost died. That night, he contemplated writing to her, and apologising, before realising that if he told her, she wouldn’t ever talk to him again. Also, if he wrote to her, and his parents somehow found out he was in contact with a blood traitor, also the very girl who had just inadvertently gotten Lucius fired, he would be disowned.

Ginny seemed to have a similar situation with her family, because the only letters Draco got that miserable summer were from Blaise and Theo. Daphne and Pansy were busy on holiday, and they didn’t usually bother keeping in touch with him over break. Crabbe and Goyle hadn’t written either, but Draco didn’t think they could write so that might not have been entirely their fault. He really wished that Theo had written more, but he was still happy to receive a postcard from France, where Theo was presumably on holiday.

The only other exciting thing that happened that summer was that a high security wizard had broken out of Azkaban. He wasn’t at all worried about that, however, since he was a Malfoy and the escaped convict in question had worked probably with his father. He also knew that Sirius Black happened to be his mother's cousin. Narcissa had surprisingly been well up to the challenge of cooking and cleaning for the whole Manor. Not as good as Dobby had been at putting away his clothes, but she still folded them and made sure they were put away neatly. Draco was very glad when the time came to return to Hogwarts. He couldn’t stand to be stuck in the Manor any longer.