..It's hard to hate someone once you understand them.
~Lucy Christopher
Once upon a time, there was a prince and princess...
The prince was beloved by his peers, the princess a fair and beautiful woman. They lived in a magical island kingdom where noble birth and cultured upbringing held sway throughout the land. Theirs was a proud lot in life; they were to be the scions of their respective fortunes and unite two powerful houses in wealth, standing, and lineage. Even if the two did not hold great passion for each other, they certainly cared for their soon-to-be spouse.
After they were wed, the princess gave birth to a son, then a daughter.
The prince was proud to have a young heir and glad at heart to see his wife so smitten with their youngest.
But all was not right with the world, for the lowborn masses had risen up in rebellion against their rightful lords and ladies. Many years ago, the peasantry of the land had sought to degrade the rights of their betters, attempting to force themselves above the station that nature had placed them at. Fortunately, a brave and forthright young lord stood to right the world back to it's proper order.
The prince, noble-born that he was, rode to be at this young lord's side.
As the gathered pride of the kingdom easily trounced the rabble of the land, even the mighty old keeper of the great castle was unable to best him in fair combat. Finally, when the battle was nearly won, the unthinkable happened: the young lord was struck down by a wicked trap laid by nefarious and twisted minds who used their own son as bait.
That young boy's name was Harry James Potter.
Some say history is written by the winners.
I say history is written in the hearts and minds of children.
This fanciful story was the tale written for me as a child. I was raised and reared in a pureblood household, born to wealth and privilege, sired into a world that lay open for me like a banquet. This was a world where my kindly, loving parents...the only one I should have ever known, were cast as villains by an uncaring and callous public when they should have been the prince and princess of wizarding society, as was their birthright.
My name is Desdemona Galatea Malfoy...
...and this is my story.
I was born the 17th of May, 1981.
By all accounts, it was an easy birth. The midwife who served as my nursemaid in my early years often recounted the ease by which it all transpired. I was, likewise, an easy infant to care for in contrast to my elder brother, whom I recall being quite fussy and irritable. Looking back, it is hard to call those memories anything but a portent of things to come.
Of course, it's odd that I can personally attest to all of this.
It's strange that I was, more of less, fully cognizant during my infancy
Still...the truly bizarre item is that I remember far, far more than my own fairly brief existence. I remember...what came before...
...before Desdemona Malfoy.
...before witches and wizards and dragons, oh my.
...before dementors and magic and...all the rest.
I remember books, movies, videogames, websites, and a thousand, thousand stories of all kinds and stripes about a world millions loved and derided with equal measure...a world that I now found myself in.
A fictional world.
Imagine my surprise.
But..that wasn't the first thing on my mind. No, those first sensations were simple things, intense things that my newly-born infantile brain could only interpret in the broadest of strokes. Thinking was...hard, cognition beyond me as I floated in a haze of emotion and sensation.
I was just...warm.
It was a sensation which suffused my very being, seeming to come from within and without at the same time. In the sudden darkness, completely withdrawn from any 'real' stimuli, I suppose I should have been afraid. Despite these facts, I was so utterly comfortable in this...place? Time? Space? Void? I was so at home that I drifted off to sleep almost immediately.
And awoke to screaming.
It took me a moment of startled alarm to realize it was my own.
I have to admit that realization scared me more than anything else that comes to mind, even now. To explain why that is...is difficult, I'll admit. To put the situation in proper perspective, imagine the situation as I've explained it: you are encapsulated in an all-encompassing warmth that promises safety, security, and protection; then, you are ripped from that warmth and pushed, roughly, into a cold and unforgiving world of harsh lights and blurry images mixed with ill-defined sounds.
And you can't control the fact that you are screaming.
Throughout my life, control of my body had been sacrosanct, something inviolate and unalienable. To realize, rather abruptly, that you can no longer do something so basic as to stop yourself from crying out?
That thought rips the last remnant of self control from you.
And then I wanted to cry.
Months passed.
Embarrassing months. Humiliating months. Messy, terrifying, painful, melancholy, exciting, depressing, and unreal months. I was an infant, for all intents and purposes, and there was nothing I could do to speed the flow of time, so I was confined to a crib and playpen or an adult's arms while the achingly slow flow of time passed.
But, as my eyes developed, I watched.
As my ears developed, I listened.
...and I learned.
My name was perhaps the most amusing and alarming of my early 'lessons.' The language my new parents spoke was English, thankfully, though a bit more proper and stuffy than I was familiar with. There were odd turns of phrase that eventually led me to the conclusion I was now British...
...and female.
My name was also a big clue that I wasn't exactly in Kansas anymore.
Desdemona Galatea Malfoy.
I cried a lot after hearing that little nugget, believe me.
By the time I'd learned my new name, though, I had long-since decided to go with the flow. There was no sense in disbelieving what my senses were telling me. I could be insane; even now the thought crosses my mind sometimes. I could be in a coma and this entire world could be a massive delusion designed to allow my subconscious to deal with some horrible trauma. There are other possibilities...but there's also the chance that 'this' is all real.
So, while I fancy myself a logical person, there came a time...probably about three months into my tenure as an infant, where I decided that I was far better off dealing with my 'new life' as if it were real, rather than a delusion.
If none of this turned out to be real, I reasoned, then there was nothing to lose by playing along and joining in the 'fun.'
If this life was real, though...well, I had everything to lose. If everything was real, then this was a second chance at life, a life that promised both danger and opportunities in equal measure. If I acted as though everything was a dream and disregarded any pretense of acting like a child...there was the chance I'd be thought possessed or strange and likely have no chance at a 'normal' life.
Normal.
Hah, that word has undergone serious revision for me over the years.
Desdemona Malfoy's 'normal' was far different from 'my' previous normal. It...took a lengthy amount of time for me to accept that name as well the things it implied.
Pureblood.
Prejudice.
Bigotry.
Female.
I will admit that, as much as I sometimes hoped I would wake up back in my own bead or in a hospital room, those instances have become fewer and fewer as I've spent more time in my new world, with my new family...although there is the occasional sting of betrayal when I think of Narcissa and Lucius as 'mom' and 'dad.'
...well, 'mother' and 'father.'
The...style of my new family...the manner in which they...'we' cared for each other, though, was not the only difference I've slowly acclimatized myself to. The sheer excess of my early days was probably one of the more jarring facts I'd eventually come to accept through the year. I've already mentioned the Malfoy's midwife; her name was Esmeralda and she was nominally in charge of my upbringing for the first three years of my life.
That's not to say that Lucius and Narcissa were not there, were not extant in my life...just not as much as I'd come to expect from a parental figure.
Lucius, in those early days, was a somewhat haggard and drawn figure who came and went at odd hours of the day and night, seldom appearing for two meals in a row. Narcissa, by contrast, was home almost overmuch and given to staring at portraits and albums with a melancholy and wistful expression in her eyes.
...and then there was Draco.
My older brother, as galling as that is to admit.
My new sibling was all the more difficult to accept because...well, I'd never exactly 'liked' Draco Malfoy. I'd generally tolerated him and enjoyed a few of his portrayals in fanfiction as a supporting character, but...he'd always been an 'annoying little snot,' to quote someone. Maybe Ron?
But, really, there are worse choices for a potential family.
I know the Malfoys as well as is possible.
I understand the pratfalls and pitfalls in this family. I understand, at lest a little, the people themselves. I won't say they're likable, exactly, or they're in many ways 'good' people, but they're certainly not the demons so many make them out to be.
At least, not all the time.
Case in point, Draco was nearly a full year older than me and very much a needy and clingy baby. In that respect, at least, I was probably a relief for my parents. It was easy to see the budding start of selfishness and arrogance in the small child, though I tried to turn a blind eye to his grabbing hands and temper tantrums...it wasn't like I was in any position to apply discipline, anyway. Still, at the first sign of distemper, Narcissa...mother, would shower the child in almost anything to get him to quiet.
Given the harried and panicked look in her eyes, the slightly frayed ends of her normally-immaculate hair, and the nervous tics that she usually suppressed, it was easy to see these were the actions of a first-time mother rather than someone trying to willfully distort and deform a child's ability to interact with other children.
Yes, mom was very much the picture of a scheming, evil matron of an Ancient and Noble House during those years. These scenes were actually the greatest source of amusement for me during the early years of my second childhood, especially because they usually presaged magic.
Magic.
If anything is worth the insanity of my new life, the trauma of realizing I had died, and the terror of realizing who my parents were...it was magic. It was a bit of a let down that my mother inched her wand out of the way every time I made a clumsy and fat-fingered grab for it, smiling as she admonished me.
"Now, now Dezzy, that's not for you. That's mommy's wand, you'll get your own later~"
Her voice was musical, lilting, and happy in a way I had never imagined it could be. Normally, that would have probably garnered a tantrum from a child my age, however I graciously allowed myself to be soothed with a song and a bottle of milk. To this day, I thank whatever incarnation of the Abrahamic God or pagan deity was involved in Narcissa's decision not to breast feed her children.
I think that would have probably broken my mind.
And, yes, my childhood nickname was Dezzy.
I'll wait for your laughter to subside.
Narcissa would often levitate various colorful baby toys around either Draco or myself and I have never before been so enthralled by anything. I suppose this was the first time I thought about doing magic myself, too...as well as the possibility that I might not be able to do magic at all.
And that was the greatest scare I'd gotten since I died.
Given the majority of stories I'd read tended to demonize the Malfoys, the idea that I might (and considering my 'origins' I considered this a probability rather than apossibility) not be able to do magic, that I was a squib, terrified me beyond rational thought. The more lurid and grimdark tales I'd looked at tended towards blood sacrifice and slavery as an eventuality in the Malfoy family.
And it was that momentary burst of fear, not entirely irrational, that probably had something to do with what happened next...
All of the windows in the west wing of Malfoy Manor exploded outwards.
Between my fear, my surprise, and the ensuing (not entirely voluntary on my part) temper tantrum, it took several days for me to realize that 'I' had caused the micro-disaster. In fact, it was my parents who actually pointed it out and, even then, it took several hours to penetrate my sometimes-thick skull that I...well, that I had superpowers.
Yes, laugh it up, I don't care.
I call 'magic' a consolation for this life, though...at times, this life is a consolation for magic. As great and terrible as it is to possess such a powerful gift, it's also frightening in it's own way. In my life, my first life, I had been raised to see power as an obligation to use it to do good works and great things. In the life I lived now, that very much was not the case. My parents used magic for trivial things, inane things which I wouldn't have batted an eye at doing by hand.
Even Esmeralda, my nursemaid, used magic to move about furniture, clean my diapers, set my room to rights, and all manner of little chores that were so second nature that I never would have conceived of using a wand on them. For that, if anything, I may love my parents. They taught me that magic was not some grave and tedious responsibility, but something which I could use as I wished, something to make my life easier.
While not particularly 'cold' towards mother and father, I had to intentionally remind myself to occasionally reach out for hugs and affection, not the least of reasons was because I tended to get lost in my own little world. If I had to pick a single word to describe my second childhood? It would probably be 'intent.' I was always studying my surroundings, gazing at things with such focus I think my parents must have noticed something was a little 'off' with me.
I was very quiet as a child, forgoing much of the babbling and cooing common to newborns in favor of silent observation, especially after I figured out exactly who my new parents were. Given that I already understood 'their' language (barring a few colloquialisms which were unfamiliar, honestly who uses 'biggie' to mean 'poo?'...and I don't think anything else quite shattered my image of Narcissa as a stuck up pure-blood wife than the realization that she indulged in baby talk), it was fairly easy to analyze their conversations and pick up interesting tidbits.
As I'd mentioned, for the first few years of my life, Lucius was a distant father figure and I only saw him when at the dinner table or a few scattered instances of tucking me in at night.
I have no doubt that many people think of my father, of Lucius, as an arrogant and cold person, beyond merely 'human' emotions and sensibilities. Much like my infant years with my mother, my first impressions of Lucius shattered that image. In retrospect, I shouldn't have been surprised; Lucius, for all the fact that he was a murderous monster, was also a human being. Even if that cold mask of indifference was a real aspect of his personality, it wasn't all there was to him.
It would be nice if monsters were so simple.
It would be nice if I could forget the bone-tired weariness that I remember seeing in my father's eyes those first few years. It would be nice if I could forget the moment I realized why he always looked so tired, so utterly exhausted. But, this isn't a nice, simple world with wicked witches and handsome princes ripped from a disney-esque fairy tale. No, this world is more like the older, dark, and meaner fairy tales...
I suppose that was my wake up call.
Well, one of them, anyway.