Title: Vale
Author: Cynic ( QueenDrgn06@aol.com)
Disclaimer: See Draco? Not mine. See money? Not mine.
Rating: PG-13
Feedback: Anything! Constructive Crit is greatly appreciated.
Archive: Yes Please! E-mail me a link.
Warning: Slash and Suicide.
Summary: I studied you, Harry. I know you, but you will never know me.
Notes: Ok Ok. I know I am supposed to be working on Sparrow and Starling, I am almost done that chapter. And I think this is going to be three or four vignettes.. Enjoy! Oh and Vale means Goodbye in Latin
Harry,
Pride is Power. Do you know what that is? It is the Malfoy family motto. My family's motto. Do you know what it means? What it demands? I don't think you would. Do you know why?
That's what I was, Harry, cool and sophisticated. I knew I was better than all others, I did not have to prove it to the plebes I mingled with. I was taught not to concede to respond to insults, I was taught that I didn't need to. I was a patrician, a pureblood, more secure in my scant 11 years then most wizards are in their lifetimes. I was high class, high quality, high society, high magic and I knew it.
Then, Harry, I met you. Did you ever notice that you were always the only one that could ever disturb my façade of perfection? That even teachers, authority, could curse and scream, but I would smile slightly as though it was a child arguing with a playmate over some trifle. That even Weasly could rant and rave but I would stand serene, only hurting him when it would hurt you. Only hurting her to get to you. Around you I forgot that I was a Malfoy and only remembered that I was Malfoy. Your enemy, your rival, your foe, your nemesis of your schoolboy days. But I was never the enemy. If, Harry, you were the hero of this saga, surely I wouldn't be the villain. I was a gnat, biting and bothering, yet do I not seem more real then the distant antagonist? You were always my only enemy.
When we fought, your eyes would freeze up like a bit of leaf trapped in purest ice. I remember how you would stiffen, your back suddenly straight and your black hair wilder in the winds of your anger. You made me feel alive, like I was a person, not a simulacrum extension of the Malfoy name. I was myself. And I lost my pride.
You have always had power over me, Harry. You have always been my only catalyst. You somehow missed that, you never knew that you were the only one that could ever rile me or make me feel. Or maybe you didn't miss it. Maybe you knew. But you never manipulated me for it. How like you.
And I know you. As we grew up together, constantly bickering and quarrelling in the echoing stone halls of our school, you grew to be something that I could admire. And admire I did. I had been taught from infancy to appreciate beauty, after all, and you are beautiful.
Your hair is like a drop of night, somehow condensed and resting upon your head like a panther ready to spring. Eyes that are endlessly expressive, shifty and displaying your thoughts in pools of deepest green, showing your innermost feelings to a candid world. But you never held anything in them for me, but anger. Loathing even. Disdain. You may think me insane, Harry. But I studied you. And I know you.
Your nose is crooked from where you broke it in the Slytherin/Gryffindor final Quidditch game of sixth year. Pomfrey could have fixed it straight, but you refused to stop playing. You won that game, with blood dripping on the leather of your uniform as you accepted the cup, a small pool of scarlet resting on the cold metal. Red and gold are Gryffindor colors.
You always sit to the right of Ron, but Hermione moves around. Last night she was ignoring the two of you because Ron had just found out about her continuing letters to Krum and you took his side as you always do. You apologized to her by the end of dinner, ending up in the middle as you always do.
When you are nervous you ruffle your hair and chew on quills. On the day of our big potions test, you had ink all over your lips and tongue and the nib had sliced your bottom lip.
You doodle all over your textbooks, coloring in the page numbers and sketching poor pictures of your teachers and the Slytherins, typically deforming us in one way or another. Somehow you always loose at tic-tac-toe.
You tan well and in the summer you get freckles across your nose and cheeks. You hate them but Hermione told you they looked cute, making Ron not look or talk you to you for a week.
After the Cho episode you haven't dated, but four girls and Terry Boot asked you to the Halloween ball. You went alone, without a costume.
Your favorite candies are Chocolate Frogs, but you don't collect the cards. You collect the wrappers, saying that you never did anything normal. You really like Cockroach Clusters, but Ron is disgusted and you have to get them when he is not looking. You try to make them last as long as possible, but you never seem to have enough.
You fly like you have nothing to lose, like the only moment is now and neither past nor future matters. You fly like a wind in a hurricane. Nothing is controlled about your Quidditch game. You are everywhere at once and nowhere, energy that cannot decide what it wants to do. You are fire. You fly on natural talent and that fierce and all consuming desire to win. You have never accepted the offers of captaincy, because you say you do not have the skill to teach. People think this is false modesty, but I know you are telling the truth. You were born knowing how to fly, you where born for the skies. It is beyond you that someone would need to be taught.
You know what you are going to do when you graduate. Your not going to go into Auror training because you know you do not have the time. They need you on the front lines now, not only because of your talent but because of who you are. They need you.
I would also join this war, but not on your side, regardless about how much I need you. We would meet again on the battlefield, with our wands at ready, and it is worth wondering who would strike first. This cursed war. It consumed my father and left my vapid mother the head of our noble house as he rots in Azkaban. She will lead the Malfoys until I come of age. Until I turn eighteen. Tomorrow. I am nothing without you. I am nothing without my family honor. I am nothing.
We will never know who would strike first. But I am sure that it would have been you. I love you, Harry. You will never love me. I am nothing, but I hate it. I hate being confined and fettered by my love for you, by my family pride, by that horrible intangible called fate. I hate it. So, you see, I am not really giving up. I am being defiant by robbing them of their chess piece. But I know that I love you and I just wish that I could have known it sooner. And I wish that you did not think it hate.
Vale, Harry.