(no subject)

[kittydesade]

Ow. And Ow again. And did I mention Ow? Because I really do mean it. Even stretching more than I usually do (which isn't much, since I don't stretch) in the morning before my walks ins't helping my shinsplints. This is aggravating. Not to mention painful. Fortunately they only start by the time I'm at the other end of my street, at which point it's either sit down on cold concrete for twenty minutes while I wait for the pain to subside, which it won't because the second I get up again it'll start, or keep walking. Guess which option I usually pick.

But still, ow. I probably do need to stretch more, but there's something vaguely nagging about stretching these days. Something in the strained tendons in my body that says Hey, you. Lost all the flexibility and muscletone over the last seven years, have we? Guess what? You've no one but yourself to blame for that! Yeah, thanks self, I really needed that. Remind me to kick my ass later.

I'm eating Milk Duds for breakfast. I shouldn't, but I am. No, dammit, on second thought I'm not. Away with ye, o tempting Milk Duds of Doom and Teeth-Sticky. Have you ever noticed how Milk Duds never seem to want to go away, they cling to your teeth and shriek No! Don't leave me! like a Warner Brother's cartoon character clinging to someone's ankle. I hate that. I don't know why I eat them anymore. But they're so tasty. *whimper* No! No, I must be strong. Fight the Milk Duds. Pitch them into the trash. There we go.


Lucius Malfoy, you really are such a louse.

It's depressing: the more I think on the entire Malfoy clan, the more warped and twisted they become. Lucius Malfoy strikes me as a man of great passions, at least when he wants to be. The trouble is that all that passion is directed towards evil things. Hating Muggles and Mudbloods and, really, anyone who stands in his way. Preserving his pride and ... I'd almost say honor, and it kind of is. In a warped and twisted fashion. For a value of "honor" that no Klingon, Numenorean, or Jaffa would recognize. But it is a bizarre sense of honor, solidarity among wizards and superiority of the Master Race.

Oh yes, we have no bananas, the Emperor has no clothes, and there are few to no differences between the Death Eaters and the Nazis/KKK, depending on when in the timeline you look at them. We have no bananas today.

But honor it is, and pride and face. When he tells Arthur Weasley that Weasley is a disgrace to the name of wizard, he really means it. I don't know if he was raised to think that way... quite probably, although not so violently. Certainly he was raised to think that he was a cut above everyone else, one of the hazards of being born to an old and noble dynasty. To be honest, I don't think he was raised to hate Mudbloods. Maybe Muggles, maybe not. But I think as warped and twisted as he is in adulthood, he made himself that way.

I've no idea how. Possibly through Slytherin; I agree with almightyhat (or maybe just the voices in her head?) in that Slytherin was changed after Tom Riddle ran through it with the Chainsaw of Prejudice. Which is secretly disguising the Scalpel of Self-Hatred; how much of Tom Riddle's hatred of Muggles and Mudbloods, do you think, stems from his own horrible childhood? Voldemort is a cookie cutter villain. Tom Riddle is an enigma wrapped in a conundrum and topped with the tabasco sauce of hatred. But I digress. Slytherin and the Slytherin prejudices were probably a great influence on Lucius Malfoy. Of course he would have been sorted into Slytherin: ambition and cunning, right? And once there they would have reinforced all his beliefs that his bloodline is superior, he is better, stronger, faster, and smarter than the entire damn school. He probably would have played Quidditch, perhaps as a Chaser or a Keeper. Maybe even as a Seeker if he resembled Draco at all in his own childhood. And Slytherin probably taught him that not only was he above the rest of the wizarding world, but that there was a whole 'nother group of people out there to look down his eminent nose at. Perhaps even to hate. Maybe there was something wrong within his family at the outset, maybe he just needed someone to blame a bad test grade on. But somewhere in school he started to hate Muggles and Mudbloods. And from there it was all downhill.

We don't see Lucius's childhood. Ever. Well, not yet, since there are still two books to go, but I think Tom Riddle's and Severus Snape's flashbacks are the only ones we're going to get. We don't know what his parents were like, we don't know if he had a normal childhood or was whipped severely every time he failed to measure up to family expectations. I doubt his adult life is anything remotely resembling a happy one. I bet his marriage bed, assuming he still shares one with his wife, is cold and I bet his home is echoing and lonely.

But I also don't think he cares anymore. It was too late for Lucius Malfoy a long time ago, possibly as early as when he was Sorted into Slytherin. There was a potential for greatness there, I think there almost has to be in order to get sorted into Gryffindor or Slytherin. But what might have been compassion was warped into sadism and cruelty. What might have been generosity was warped into a stiff-necked, unyielding arrogance, and what might have been love was warped into rabid avarice and lust.

It makes me wonder occasionally... more often, lately... what living in the shadow of this man is doing to Draco Malfoy.

Wow. That was... longer than I thought I'd get out of that. Nothing terribly new there, but now it's all down in one place. Comments welcome, of course, and debate. La de dum. I suppose I should get upstairs and get to work now.