tamingthemuse | Anything For Love

Title: Anything For Love
Author:

spikespetslayer
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Prompt: Hamartia (tragic or fatal flaw)
Summary: He would do anything to make his father love him. Anything.

Anything For Love

He would do anything to make his father love him. Anything.

When he received his Hogwarts letter, his father had taken him into his study and sat him down in the chair across the huge, marble desk from his own. “Draco, I have certain expectations that you will meet when you enter boarding school.”

Draco Malfoy waited, chewing on the inside of his jaw as his father tapped one slender finger on the blotter, knowing how much his offspring was stewing. Lucius Malfoy leaned forward, his eyes cold steel in his aristocratic face as he studied the fearful look in his son’s eyes.

“I expect you to be the best. Malfoys are the best at everything. You will be the best student in the school and the best Slytherin in the common room. There is one minor exception that I shouldn’t have to mention. You will be the best enemy to anyone that is not of pure blood. Do I need to explain that to you any further?”

Draco stared up into his father’s face and did his best not to kick his feet. “No, father. I understand.”

Lucius leaned back in his chair, one finger aside his mouth as he perused the boy in the over-large chair. “Do you? I wonder. We shall see when you come home for Christmas if you have understood my expectations. You may go.”

It was with his father’s admonitions uppermost in his mind that he entered the school, any excitement that he might have felt secondary to the knowledge burning a hole in his brain. He must be the best because if he were, his father would love him.

As expected, he was sorted into Slytherin. It was, however, unexpected that he would be second in every class to a Muggle-born witch with unruly hair that seemed to have memorized every textbook before they had even begun school.

He hated her with a passion because of it; because of her, his father would never love him.

Draco possessed a quick mind and good memory, but although he spent more time studying than he allowed anyone to know, he still was second in every class except Potions—and that was because of Snape's unnatural dislike of his nemesis and nothing that he did out of the ordinary.

When he returned home after his first year, his father was irate.

“How on earth did you allow a mudblood to beat you in every single class? I cannot believe that a son of mine would allow a thing that should not even be in Hogwarts to achieve higher grades than he did! This is unacceptable, Draco.”

After several Crucios, Draco was inclined to agree.

The years passed slowly and Draco tried in every way possible to be better than her. He studied. He researched. If the assignments were a foot long, he wrote two feet. If she had the answer to a question, he would answer the next one that was asked.

His greatest failure came in Quidditch, although not at the Mudblood’s hands. That disappointment was the sole property of the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter. Against any other competitor he was able to catch the Snitch with alacrity, but against Potter he might as well have stayed on solid ground.

Instead of treating his failures as impetus for improvement, he taunted and berated those who doled them out. He verbally bashed his intellectual rival and occasionally physically threatened his Quidditch rival. He risked censure from the entire school to make their lives miserable, but nothing he did seemed to faze them.

If anything, his treatment of them made them try all the harder—and he was still left in the dust, choking on their perfection and taking the punishment for his lacking at home.

It was only when he had reached his sixth year, when Voldemort and his father had given him his ultimate assignment, his entry to prove himself worthy to the Pureblood cause that he wavered, wondering if this was the only way that he could receive his father’s love and approval.

It wasn’t because he was supposed to find a way for Death Eaters to enter his beloved school; blood traitors deserved whatever torment they received. It was only fitting that it be doled out by experienced wizards that wouldn’t hesitate to cast the curses necessary to fulfill their Dark Lord’s bidding.

It was the second part—killing Dumbledore—that made him wonder, hesitate, and finally cry to a ghost who couldn’t help him in any way but lending a friendly ear.

Killing was serious. Once he had performed the Killing curse, he would lose the purity of soul that he now held. He would…

He would do so, if it would make his father love him. If it would gain Lucius’ approval. If his father would clap his hand on his shoulder, just once, and tell him what a good job he had done.

With that in mind, he stood on the tower, an old mage before him, his wand trembling so hard that he thought he would lose his grip on it before he was able to speak the words that would finally make his father see him as worthy. His throat was dry and scratchy and his mouth tried several times to form the two simple words that he needed to say, but his voice had dried up and shrunk in his larynx, refusing to come out.

It was such a relief to see Snape that he forgot about his father for a moment. Snape would save him and convey the situation to Lucius in such a manner that Draco’s failure wouldn’t matter.

His gut twisted when he heard his favorite professor and a man that he admired do so easily what he himself could not. He wanted to vomit at the sight of the headmaster falling toward the ground, his sightless eyes accusing Draco of another failure, another instance where someone else had done better than he.

When his arm was grasped in a fist of iron and he was running away from the school, probably for the last time, he realized the irony of the situation. He saw the truth for the first time in his life and it made him want to die on the spot, scream at the sky, anything to purge the poison within.

His father would never love him, no matter how good or proper or well he performed. There was no love in the man anywhere; his purpose, Draco’s only purpose, was to make Lucius look good.

Having seen the flaw in his reasoning at last, he let hope go and allowed his heart to break into pieces that would never be repaired. His father would never love him and there was nothing more to strive for.

He would have done anything to make his father love him. Anything. Even murder.