Though I didn’t think of these things when he first asked me to be his wife, as the years went by, I came to appreciate that fact. Some may find me callous for what I was about to do, but it couldn’t be helped. I’d carried it with me this whole time, the knowledge of what must be.
The child born of that union must be the one to avenge his mother’s innocence. I was not sure that my husband would understand my thinking, though, so I never shared those thoughts with him. It brings me shame sometimes that I’m keeping it from him, but his way, for as much as his family is in ‘the life’ aren’t like the girl’s who had been brought up in that little village that time forgot.
So when my beautiful, carefree boy was thirteen, after he’d blown out the candles and opened his gifts, after his sisters had gone to bed, tired from a full day of play and joy, I made love to my husband until he fell asleep. I knew him very well and knew all the ways to bring this about.
I do not see it as manipulation; it in no way takes away from the love I bear him. But there’s a part of me that has been dead all these years. A place so deeply hidden that no light has ever shone there and never will until he has been vanquished. I didn’t see my actions as anyway harmful to my son and the man he would become.
That night I snuck into his room with one purpose in mind. “Gabriel, are you awake?” He was in bed, fast asleep under the covers. In his hand was the new computer game his grandfather had gotten him for his birthday, and the smile on his face told me everything I needed to know about how joyful his day truly had been.
It did my heart good to see how my boy was now accepted by those who had resented him even before his birth. To hear him lauded for his smarts and intelligence. This little throwaway that nobody wanted was now the apple of everyone’s eye.
He came awake, rubbing sleep from his eyes like the innocent he was, and I felt a sudden pang in my chest because I knew that after tonight a layer of that innocence would be stripped away by me. “Yes, ma!” I sat on the bed beside him and brushed the wayward lock of hair that fell across his brow out of his eyes. I kissed his forehead gently, my heart full and warm that he still let me.
I’d formed this bond with my son from the time I knew he was in the womb, a part of me. It was then the plan had taken root in my mind and had only grown stronger with time.
My love for him was sure, he was my son, and I never let the circumstances of his birth taint any part of my relationship with him, but not once have I ever doubted my course. Not once did I ever sway from what I knew must be.
So with all the love of the past thirteen years, all the strength I had instilled and fostered in him, I knew he was strong enough to face what I must share with him.
I did not tell him the whole of it that night, though the excitement of finally setting things in motion made me wish to lay it all out then and there. Instead, I taught him as a young man how he was to respect the female of the species.
It was calculating, I know, to go in such a roundabout way, but I needed him to have that foundation at least. I wanted to instill in him, to get him to a place where he could understand my pain, not only as his mother but as a woman.
He had grown up in a home where his father loved and doted on his mother and sisters. He’d never once seen his father yell at his mother or raise a hand to her in anger a home where his father taught him by example what and how a true man should be.
For the next year, as his father taught him how to be a man, at night, I would sneak into his room under the guise of saying goodnight, and each time I told him more of the story of how he came to be.
By the time his sixteenth birthday came Around, I had made up my mind to tell him the whole of it. He had grown into the kind of man any mother could be proud of. I had a small fear of the other side of Draco’s family business, something he had tried to keep hidden from me for a long time, but I knew the signs.