Craig Parker

Backstory

Everybody knew the name Malfoy, whether it was spoken in trepidation, sighed in admiration or spat in disgust...it carried weight in all walks of life. A name like that was carved onto silver, hung in shadowed hallways, scribbled on scrolls carrying only the most magnificent of words; a name that bore only the best of witches and wizards with the purest of blood flowing through their veins. In all his lofty cynicism for the world, Abraxas Malfoy could never have imagined that the deepest betrayal would come from inside the gilded walls he’d built around his legacy of a name.
Leandra Malfoy was, for all intents and purposes, the idyllic daughter. She understood that her father’s coldness had less to do with who she was and more to do with what she wasn’t. When Lucius was born, it was easier, because he finally had a proper male heir. However, that didn’t mean that Lea was completely off the hook. She bore the Malfoy name, after all, and in that regard alone she was held to impossibly high standards, standards that had been handed down from legacy to legacy, held in sacred trust within the family.

So when she ran away at sixteen with a Muggle (and the word was whispered like a curse, like he couldn’t believe, like none of them could), Leandra Malfoy disappeared from the lineage, burned from the tree she’d thrown herself out of. Abraxas wasted no time ensuring that his wayward daughter was completely cut off, alone with her Muggle lover, to wherever it was she’d run to. If he’d bothered to look during his frantic need to completely separate himself from a ‘blood traitor’, he would have found that she hadn’t gone far. For all she desired escape and true love, Leandra cared deeply for her family.

But they weren’t her family anymore, not officially, anyway.

Leandra married her Muggle lover, Kendrick Parker, and lived as unremarkable a life as a Malfoy could (because it might not be her name, but it was still her blood). At twenty three, she gave birth to her only child, a process that ended in her death. And so, Craig Armand Parker, was taken into the arms of his Muggle father, sleeping and blissfully unaware of his mother’s last quiet breath. Kendrick sent word to Leandra’s family but there was no response, no acknowledgment and Leandra was buried at night, Craig and Kendrick laved in black with a Muggle preacher crossing fingers over a grave.

And so went Craig’s last connection to his wizarding family; blood or not, there was little proof he even existed.

Kendrick did the best he could while raising Craig and was as harsh as he was doting; but there was never a moment Craig felt unloved. When his powers began to flicker into existence around his seventh birthday, he was prepared; his father had never hidden his mother’s past from him and Craig was eager to harness his abilities. He grew up quick and solemn, with a mean streak that couldn’t have come from anywhere but his Malfoy blood, and a stubbornness to match. But it was smoothed by his father’s care and Craig learned to be careful with his emotions, to keep them in line and let them out as constructively as he could. It wasn’t easy.

When he was eleven, he got his letter to Hogwarts and he’d never seen his father look more proud. Despite being a Muggle, Kendrick did his level best to help Craig prepare for school using money Leandra had left for just this moment. And off he sent his blue-eyed son, into a world he would never be a true part of.

In the end, maybe that was what sickened him.

By the end of Craig’s second year, his father’s sickness was so bad, he was permanently hospitalized. Luckily he made friends at school whose families seemed willing to house the quietly controlled Slytherin despite his heritage. And Craig built a rage inside him, simmering low, as he watched his father die in his sleep, hooked up to Muggle machines that went haywire as grief crashed over Craig and sent him to drown in the wash of his own misery. Afterwards, when he finally pulled his head from the darkness, he promised that he would never let himself lose control like that again.

He had to look out for himself from now on.

So he went to school, he built strategic friendships, he got into trouble in the right moments, and played Beater on his house’s Quidditch team, even working his way up to Captain in his sixth year. Something has to give, but for the time being, Craig is content in his careful building of an empire to support himself.

Never mind the glass it’s made from.