Title: A Perfect Colour.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: They're so not mine.
Notes: This is H/D SLASH. It's rated NC-17 for a reason. Maybe Draco and Harry aren't doing any sexual gym yet, but it's a look into Draco's mind, how politically incorrect can that be? Many many thanks to Slytherlynx, who proof-read this for me, and was very patient while I did the groupie thing. Many thanks to Ruby, too, for moral support and such (and the impromptu beta on AIM). Although she probably won't see this, because she claims not to read HP slash. (Ah!)
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Prologue: My nausea in a silver package
===========================
Hanging by threads of palest silver
I could have stayed that way forever
Bad blood and ghosts wrapped tight around me
Nothing could ever seem to touch me
[A stroke of luck – Garbage]
Mother. Smell of richness and beauty, and warmth of love. Cologne, and softness, the soft skin between her neck and her shoulder where I allow myself to rest my head, in the brief embrace before I leave for Hogwarts. Morning.
Sometimes I regret being a man, but at sixteen, that's what I am. I don't hold onto my mother for too long, I don't cry when I feel unhappy, frustrated enraged murderous overlooked, no, I don't. Not when others can see. I am a man. At five, I was a child. My mother was there when I was taught to fly. Father was at the Ministry, so it was her. She looked from a corner of the green gardens while I tried and tried and tried again. I giggled, yelped. I was afraid to fall. When I went back on the ground, I clutched at her robes, tight.
Later she went in my room dressed in precious fabrics and diamonds, to kiss me goodnight after the nanny had me cleaned and tidy and stuck under thick, ancient blankets. She kissed me every night, and told me stories that scared me, before leaving for a party, for a dinner with people that I thought to be as beautiful and distant as she was. While she spoke of ghosts and incantations and fear, her eyes were blue, deep blue delicate and intense together, like a doll's–I widened mine and didn't dare move. What if I left the shell of my blankets, what if the Dark Witch got to me. She would surely slice my throat. That my mother was a Dark Witch herself, I found out just years later. At five, I was a child. Because the Dementors were still patrolling the Manor, Father tried to teach me how to conjure a Patronus. Mother taught me one night how to summon fairies.
It was education. Education to me from my mother's smooth hands. It tingled like the little fairies' twinkle, it's subtle and frizzling, it seems so silver and innocent but there's plenty of mysteries. Silver is a Slytherin colour. When she was finished telling the story, Mother leaned onto my forehead and enfolded in the yellow light from the candles, she gave me the long awaited, reassuring kiss. Goodnight, goodnight. Be beautiful, you're mine. Who cares if my mother is a Dark Witch? She won't ever slice my throat. Someone else's, maybe. Not mine. She smells of long lost assurance. I can't hold her anymore, not too long, I can only wrap my arm lightly around her; we walk forwards prettily, beautifully, and full of power. How much power the Malfoys bought themselves. How many second chances. When we walk, people look at us. Straighten your back, raise your chin. When they whisper, breathe it all. That you're the middle of it. And I still can smell Mother's perfume, vague small and dying, curling in the air. I wish I could stay closer.
The fairy I summoned yesterday night looked into my eyes, battling her wings quickly, in the half dark of my room. I was not sure I wanted to leave for school. The fairy was a little annoyed that I tear her from her world simply to entertain myself. To watch her when I am bored. To smell her, and realize she has no perfume. She's just silver, and silver is just a colour. So since she moved too much and too quickly, I bullied her, slapped her away when she went too close. In the very end, I fell asleep, and by then, she was already all over me. Little dumb creatures, the more you treat them bad, the more they get attached. Really, they just pretend to protest. I felt empathic. I decided to let her stay with me a little longer. Before I fell asleep, I heard a faint fluid sound, like water cascading down, from far, far away—fairy powder over me, she said, to give me sweet dreams, to take the nightmares away. I let her do, although it was pretty pointless. I never have nightmares.
I never have nightmares. I sleep a dreamless sleep. The day, I straighten my neck and raise my chin. That seems to be enough. After Mother left the room, when I was five and she had just told me a scary story, I stared in the dark, trembling a little, clutching at the blankets, waiting for the Dark Witch. Then, I just closed my eyes and made myself forget about it. And slept my dreamless sleep. Smart child that I was. Champion talent that I have. Forget the monsters. Forget all about bad things, bad dreams, bad omens. Malfoys' goodnight stories are about Dark Magic, the mothers take care that their children grow well. I did. The summer is over, the morning is white and piercing like cold. I had no dreams yesterday night, and I am leaving for Hogwarts. A kiss received on my forehead. A hug that's no longer a hug. A brief curl of lingering perfume.
Sometimes I wonder if Potter would smell like Mother.
============
The train to Hogwarts it's just a clichè. People meet after the summer—a lifetime, one would think—and they do their best to look thrilled, to look like they have missed each other so much, they could just have died. The girls could have, at least. The boys just go for manly hugging and male bonding, much of it. I suppose I would have liked something like this—or at least, taking part in the general celebration in a more stylish like I love others to think of me—if I was the toast of this school. Six years ago I though I was going to be, but then, no. No, I lost. The day I got up the train the first time, it was decided I wasn't to be in the spot-light. All the glory was stolen away for me. Father says Slytherins have their victories in the dark, and they are all the more sweet for that. Maybe. Surely. If Father says so.
But still.
I never really enjoyed the trip to Hogwarts anymore, since that day.
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At platform 9 ¾ I ran into Ginny Weasley. She was standing in my way—I wanted to go in, and she stood by the door, looking flustered about her trunk, waiting, I thought, for the miracle to happen. Guess what? I wanted to climb right in that wagon. Couldn't use another entry, no no.
"Waiting for Wonder Boy to help you, Damsel in distress?"
She looked over, and blushed. Then she glared a bit, aware of having just been insulted somehow or maybe just annoyed at me by default; but she didn't speak back. Self-consciousness seemed to lead her more than anger, and she didn't seem quite able to form a counter line. Even if by the look on her face, she was desperate for one.
That's the future Mrs. Potter for you. An idiot without control over her semantics. I suppose the Hero's woman doesn't need that: the more helpless she is, the more brave he feels. Good guys are so dull. Never give you a surprise.
Just as my thoughts were starting to get metaphysical, came the "Let her be, you sodding git" from somewhere behind my shoulder, loud and self- assured and—it's not funny how the way I feel about him mirrors perfectly what he thinks about me? I listen carefully to the reports, I am eager to know what people say about Draco Malfoy. Ron Weasley's favourite nickname for me is 'That self-centered Ferret'. He thinks I am pompous and arrogant. I think the way he feels justified in his murderous instincts towards me, so un-Gryffindor like, is equally arrogant. Self-centered, to the core. So maybe I gave him reasons to hate my guts—but still, why shouldn't I? I am rich and pureblooded, I have a name whose mere mention inspires awe, and those of his kind are below me. I treat them just as I like.
I turned to him and smirked, Ron Weasley coming to his sister's rescue was quite a sight. "Weasel, Weasel, do you love your sister so much?"
"Malfoy!" The subtext contained in the question was completely uncalled for, and he growled, disgusted. "I swear, you have a sick mind," he hissed. "When do you think up—"
"Where is your pimp?" I drawled, ignoring him, feeling on a roll. "Did he dump you to grope Granger, or maybe it was Finnigan?"
He took a step towards me, movement violent and sudden. I don't think he was going to beat me, we were, after all, in full sight of the whole school body and the teaching staff. But the temptation was there, wasn't it. He does have a horrible temper. His sister flinched, and grabbed his arm before he could reach me. That was too bad. I wondered how many points from Gryffindor I could get before we even boarded the train. He was glaring at me, muttering obscenities. His sister looked panicked.
Since I am not a Gryffindor unthinking idiot, I took a careful step back. "I swear, Weasley, you always make my day" My lips twitched into a little, smug smirk.
"If it wasn't for my sister, Malfoy—
"What?"
"You're asking for it"
"Ooh, scary. What exactly I am asking for?"
"A Firebolt up your ass, that's what," he spat.
I rolled my eyes. "Of course. Troll"
That did it. Indeed, a horrible temper. He freed himself from his sister's grasp, made a wild dash for my front collar while she cried out, "Ron!", and I stepped back again, ever the prudent Slytherin. Unfortunately, that's when Perfect Potter decided to step in the scene.
"Don't run too quickly, Malfoy," he said. "I am sure Ron wouldn't make it that bad, in public"
I heard his voice. I stopped in my—rush, that's all right with me—and looked at him. He was taller than he had been. I couldn't figure out how put together he was under the large robes he wore, but this was Potter, not Weasley, and with him, it never was a physical threat. I looked at him. I took in his glasses, his eyes behind them, his expression calm but still revealing. He did loathe me. He still aimed to win with me.
Both Weasley and his sister went, "Harry!", and even Weasley's voice contained relief, but he wouldn't look at them yet. He was all for me. I ducked my head, thought quickly, and gave him a grin.
"Why, Potter. Never thought you cared. Missed me over the summer?"
He snorted. "Like you wouldn't imagine, Malfoy," he said, voice so stretching and sarcastic it made me actually wonder if he hadn't been studying me over last year.
"Never fear, Potter, that's exactly how I feel," I sneered, stretching even harder, striving to sound as malicious and cunning as I could. That was my playground. He couldn't even hope to win using my weapons.
He didn't of course. Because then he did that thing he always does, while looking at me, like he was losing his patience. It always made me lose my patience too. Something like the game I always managed to play over Weasley. Which wasn't proper at all, of course. I did that. I was the Slytherin—not Harry Potter. The thing he did—when we where younger, it was more like a huff, an annoyed scowl. Now it was subtler, more poised, despite the whole teenage angst and awkwardness, he mastered his space very well when he was with me. He just rolled his eyes, or shook his head, gave me a mild look that read, Don't you ever get tired?
Yes. Yes. I do.
I am sick of it.
And then he reminded me what I thought I made him forget, that in the moment he walked in the train, in the moment he stepped in the scene, I lost. "Where are Crabbe and Goyle?" he asked. "I missed them too, you know. But I am sure," he started to smile, the little shit, smile like a cat that just ate a deer. "No one missed them like you did when you were talking with Ron, Malfoy"
There. See what I meant? He always steals all the glory away from me.
Weasley was cheering on him, even his little useless sister, probably, was smiling thinly in triumph. I wasn't going to let that last. "I overheard an interesting conversation about you this summer, Potter," I murmured, sneering into his face, realizing with some amount of surprise but not discomfort that when I murmured to him like this, I almost sounded seductive, like purring into a lover's ear.
Potter was still in smug mode. "Oh? What about it?"
"That's a secret" I gave him a full, lovable grin, and ignored the incensed growl Weasley made for what I was saying implied—little Death Eater son that I was—and the way Potter's eyelids lowered and he suddenly was looking at me, focused. It was a good moment to end the conversation. It's fun how it's always me to win—in the small fights. I am very good at faking a victory. Pleased to know that at least they would throw insults at me through the whole trip, I turned to get as far as possible from them.
============
So after that I locked myself in this lonely compartment, not entirely able to black out the squeals and the calls and the occasional 'Oh and Potter this—Oh and Potter that'. I just wanted to have a private breakdown, really, maybe cry a little, slam my feet against the floor. I want to beat them into a bloody pulp. I swear, one day I will. I want to see if it looks as nice as it sounds, the bloody pulp. I'd kill Weasley if I could, the day I'm powerful enough I will, I'll tear his sorry, ruined excuse for a heart from his chest and feed it to the mountain trolls, where it belongs. He can be pureblooded as he like, but I am sure even his heart would look an unsatisfying, dull shade of red. And Potter—Oh, God. I refuse to second his Gryffindor code of nobility where people never run, to the point where they get themselves killed for some cheap overvalued concept like honour. I refuse to feel embarrassed by the fact that I am important enough to have personal bodyguards disguised as friends. It's not really this that does it. It's the fact that he doesn't seem to think I am important enough to act like a prince. I am not important enough. He is, of course—one day, I swear, he'll have more than one scar that gets everyone to look at him in sympathy. To coo and hug that fucking tender body of his, with the childish fat and the rosy cheeks, oh, look at him, isn't he pretty and sad, so sad, c'mere, let me hug you. He's not so small now, had quite a growth spurt over the summer, hadn't he. How dare he grow, make his presence more conspicuous than mine, make his words surer than mine, how dare he be happier than me. I grab a handful of my robe, I clutch tightly and twist the black fabric, I look while my knuckles go white.
Then I bring my hand to my mouth and bite, hard. God, Potter. Potter, Potter, Potter, Potter.
Ginny Weasley only pretends to be pure and white and innocent, because that will look best in the dress she wears the day she gets lucky.
And then Pansy slides the doors of the compartment open—it couldn't last long—and looks down at me, the knuckles reddened in my mouth, my little white teeth sinking deep. She arches an eyebrow. "Out of control, already?"
I put my hand in my lap. "Of course not. I was testing how much it takes before bleeding"
She stares some more, then smiles greasily. "Nice," she says, walking in, all flesh, over her breast and her hips. She puts her trunk away and before sitting down, she rests a hand on my arm and leans over to kiss my cheek. Her nails sink in my skin, even through the robe, clingy Pansy, now it's just confined to brief moments which she thinks are dignified enough, but she just cannot hide her need. I stare at her, unimpressed, when she retreats and sits on the seat opposite mine. "Slytherins don't do that," I say pointedly.
She tilts her head, smiling. "Slytherins don't do many things" She says this in a slightly wry tone, and of course, there's nothing to reply. "How was your summer?" she continues "I developed mad Imperius skills"
I am so happy not all girls in this school are Gryffindor. Pansy may still fancy me, and that's rotten—not because of the feeling per se but because it's obsessive—but at least she doesn't blush. "I thought," I say "You already did that—all last year"
Her smile gets sincerely merry. "Yes, but I had the House Elves dancing the waltz this time—all of them, in circle, in the Main Hall!" She sighs. "What a sight"
My recollection of the Parkinson's Hall is a gash of sparkly pink and a display of clashing textures and materials. It has my father always hissing under his teeth, "Nouveau riche", with an oddly satisfied smirk on his lips. House Elves dancing the waltz must have been, through, a great sight indeed. I raise my eyebrow at her. "Oh?"
"Mm," she nods. "Too bad I couldn't dress them. Would have looked even better in a pink tutu" She throws me a regretting look. I roll my eyes, in spite of the almost coziness of it all. Of course, we can't get cozy. Slytherins don't do that.
Slytherins don't do many things.
Blaise bursts in the compartment, noisy and egocentric as always. "Dearests, I was searching for you" he says with a delighted smile. He has a fair complexion, brown eyes, and black hair that he gets to be a bit unruly because 'It's a lot sexier than a good boy style'—and here he throws me a meaningful look, that I counter muttering 'Harry Potter', which makes him frown and stress that, 'It's an entirely different thing—I do it purposely, I know what's a brush, and can we stop talking about Harry Potter please"
"Where are C&G?," he asks lazily now, sitting himself down near Pansy, accepting a kiss from her with a lot more ease than I did.
"Guarding the baggage and staying away" I explain vaguely, leaning on the window and resting my forehead against it.
He nods. "What lovely servants you Malfoys have" Then he breaks into an excited grin. "But, how boring. Let me tell you about my summer. You wouldn't imagine how shameless French boys are"
Pansy sneers, and stretches in her seat, showing off her remarkable leverage. I look at my perfectly polished nails. "Do tell"
He starts talking, and I look out of the window, smirking as he proceeds with his tale. It was pretty tiring before, with Potter. Isn't it always. But I like this. Relief. Time break. Some day I'll burn a wedding dress and I'll send it to Ginny Weasley, wrapped in a silver package. Maybe, I'll send a rose, too. Scarlet.
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The Sorting Hat's riddle is a pink strawberry-flavoured candy, like butterbeer in a snug corner, children dancing in a circle, lovers kissing in front of the fire, exchanging rings and eternal vows. The fire is too warm.
You just know what founder that hat belonged to.
Lucrezia Ledeuil, Zackary Bosh, Frederick Rowland, the new kids in our ranks. Then I lose interest in the Sorting and start doing my own. Which Hufflepuff I'd love to see quivering, cornered by Crabbe and Goyle in a lonely corridor, white as a dead, pleading for release. Which Ravenclaw I'd like to… lay, let's say: we're not trolls, we're not Weasleys, language, language. There are voices in my head again—I roll my eyes. As for Gryffindors, I never look at their table once. I need a pause before the Grand Reopening. I breathe.
The Sorting has finished.
A dark-haired boy sits in front of me. Eleven years old, pale and thin, gaunt already, he smiles—knowingly. I return the smile. Through the whole dinner, I chat with him absent-mindedly, to relieve myself from the fact that it tastes a little too much Gryffindor, what doesn't in this school. The boy's name is Ellis, Ah, yes, I believe my father knows yours, of course he already knows who I am, other smiles, the Gryffindors? Dumbledore's pets, they'll get what they deserve. More smiles, more empathy, I know, you know. He looks smart.
He'll soon find out the Gryffindors are never going to get what they deserve. And how to make them pay for it.
I make a mistake, and look over at their table. Weasley is laughing. Potter is talking with Granger, they look animated, and ordinary. They don't look at me. I stand up, and walk away.
===============
Blaise is bugging me. He always wants to fuck, and I never let him. He keeps coming onto me and talking to me and he even touches my hair. For fuck's sake, I hate that. I tell him to go and do some Hufflepuff since that's all he's good for. He asks Crabbe if I have PMS. Crabbe doesn't understand and grunts. I throw them out.
Alone, with the green blankets and the elegant posters. I free the fairy and she starts flying everywhere, hissing in my face.
"A whole day into a trunk! That was not nice! I am a first class! I am a pure one!"
Just like me, love. I admit that was not nice. I gather her in my hands, I kiss her on the head.
She pouts. "Where are we?"
"Hogwarts"
"Ew" she wrinkles her nose. "It's filled with crossbreeds!"
I nod, understanding. "I know, love" Indeed, it is.
She frowns. "Well, do something about it, Sir. It's you the one who called me. You know it's illegal? The Avalon Act of the 1635 on Relations with Forbidden Lands states—
I do something about it. I smack her, then cast a sleeping charm.
Looking at her lithe body resting in my hands, I remember two things.
I remember: my first summoning, when I was five, the spark of black fire, the rapid heartbeat. And then the silver traces dissolving in the air, quick, beauty in motion, through the silver my mother's doll eyes, beauty in stillness.
I didn't know it was Dark Magic, summoning pure fairies from forbidden lands.
I used to ask, can we really? Can we?
I didn't ask to be reassured that we were in the right, I asked to be reassured that we could do everything.
She always answered, Yes.
And I remember: lurking behind my father's door, one night, end of August, I always lurk there, I almost never knock. I remember, that night, hearing Potter's name. Potter, Potter, Potter. I couldn't tear myself away. I forgot to leave. Father found me sitting down against the walk opposite his rooms. I glanced in through the half-opened door. There was no one. The flames in the grate where dying.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"Wormtail"
"Who?"
"Never repeat that name with anyone"
"Who?"
"Do I have to put a memory charm on you?"
"…No"
I look at the fairy. So Potter will die. Probably. So he will. I wished for his death, I even prayed for it, after the Triwizard Tournament. A prayer wouldn't hurt anyone, would it? And even if it did? We can do everything. I grew up, and I still wish for Potter's death, sometimes. Growing up you deal with long summers, you overhear conversations; growing up, it happens some nights that you are so angry to pour Veritaserum into your father's brandy, because he wouldn't bring you to see the Chudley Cannons after getting the best places booked, after promising he would and it was so hard even to ask him to promise. Growing up you spend the whole night sweating and shaking and looking at the ceiling and at six in the morning, long before the Ministry officers arrive, you sneak out of your room and get the damn bottle and just throw it away. Potter's Death will feed the Eaters. Father will take me to see the Chudley Cannons.
"Do I have to put a memory charm on you?"
"…No"
It was a moral query. I didn't want to respond.
I still don't.
I slide the fairy inside my robes, and leave for the common room. Blaise did go hunt Huffelpuffs, in the end. I tap my fingers on Millicent Bullstrode's shoulder, she looks up and nods, she stands, without bothering to apologize with the group of six years she was talking to.
Bullstrode isn't blond nor pretty like me, and proved herself to be a remarkable stress reliever after Easter break last year. She's different from Pansy, she is even less nice, for one. But if you hold her gaze long enough, she smiles knowingly, too. She does so opening the door of Snape's classroom, we share a kiss or two, I believe this will be the last time I do this with her, and she knows it too. After a while, it gets repetitive. I am about to push her on her knees in front of me, when I notice that the door to the cupboard near the class is half opened, and from inside comes a dim, yellow light.
I tell Bullstrode to go. Smart girl, she immediately does so. Then I slide the door open, and lower my eyes to a small girl, sitting cross-legged in a corner, clutching a diary and a quill to her chest. A small lumos radiates light in circles just near her head. It's Ginny Weasley. I smile, knowingly.
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Sometimes I wonder what is it that makes Slytherins smile the way they do—what do we know that the others don't. Probably it is just the knowledge that it's good to have a secret, so we act like we have one, even if we don't. Maybe it's this our secret. Maybe we have a secret that we still don't know.
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"Weasley? Oh, this is rich," I drawl, holding my phonemes firmly in place, controlling the sounds to be sweet and slow and faintly feral. I love the 'r'. The 'r' comes so in handy. The girl has red hair and her pale face is bursting now, into a violent, irregular red too. Unlike all her brothers, though, she has some delicacy hidden there, in the curve of her chin, the roundness of her eyes. It must come from being a female. Maybe it comes from being preordained. Preordained to becoming the Perfect Potter's Wife. Even scrawny and clumsy adolescent girls manage to give out the requisite air of loveliness, if they are Potter's Mate of Choice.
I suddenly remember I should sound more feral than sweet. Like I could draw blood.
"Well? Can't you talk?" I ask. She's all bones and eyes. And mortification, shame, humiliation paint themselves clearly onto her small, graceless face. I know that look, and it annoys me. She's feeling so stupid right now, so invisible despite trying, trying so hard. Can't even come up with an effective comeback. They are never effective enough. Seeing the pain inflicted, I seek for more. "I always suspected it, you know" I see then, that her eyes are full of rage, also, and I admit I am surprised, who knew there could be so much. But it's suppressed rage, she won't let it come out and kill. She has to be kind. Bear it all. I duck my head, I am so tired all of a sudden, and I ask, then. "Why do you even exist?"
There is a sudden intake of breath. Trembling, hissing, almost, almost slithering. There is a sudden silence. The residual image of a possible action, the contemplation of her jolting up, jumping me, biting and scratching and venging it all on me. That residual image is silver.
She doesn't do it.
She breathes again.
She tries to speak a couple of times.
"Fuck… fuck… fuck you"
As I said, this is rich.
===========
When I come back, Bullstrode stops me before I slide in my bedroom. Dark all around. A vague buzz from the girls' chambers. Everybody else sleeps.
She says, "Let's finish this well"
Indeed.
While she works her head on my lap, I think that an orgasm is violent like vomit. Coming is like puking at its peak, it tears you apart. I buckle, close my eyes. An orgasm is so violent it makes you sick. Waves of nausea constricting my throat, an acid taste in my mouth. I feel like this when I think of Potter, the acid nausea pressing but never bursting, bidding its time and suffocating until I am afraid I will implode. I feel like this when I lurk behind my father's door, when my mother's arm wraps around mine and I am too distant to small her perfume, almost there but not quite, I feel sick. I feel sick now because an orgasm is violent, just like when my eyes meet Potter's, I hate him so much it just turns to ache. I stop bucking, I stop thinking of him, she's lapping at me now, lazily, cleaning me and taking care of me.
There are moments when I wish that Father had put that memory charm on me.
I don't kiss her before leaving.
=======
My last thoughts before falling asleep are for Ginny Weasley. I think of her and communion, because, as I said, communion is rich. As I lay awake in my bed, I am still contemplating why I did what I did then, after hearing that girl's slithering voice insulting me, so shaky with feelings it could hardly express one. A hiss in a whisper, a whisper in a hiss. In the darkness of the cupboard, I took the fairy out of my pocket, she was still sleeping, and we were both so silent and alert that the charm never broke. I handed the small bundle out to Ginny Weasley. I told her, "Look how benevolent I can be. This will give you sweet dreams." It was vaguely insulting. I always take care to sound at least a bit insulting when I speak to Gryffindors. And I am still wondering why she took it, why despite her eyes widening, her hands shaking with fear she took it, took a present from me.
I thought: to actually fuck Ginny Weasley there and then. To try at least, to scare her for dear life—traumatize her and nullify her possibilities for happy Potter ending.
I thought: to snatch her diary and make sure the whole school is informed, tomorrow, of its contents. I am fairly certain there is plenty of moaning and sighing and bad poetry about Potter. He would be sympathetic with her, furious at me, but it would change nothing, she'd never be able look at him in the eyes again. Ron Weasley incensed. People hissing, Malfoy, that creepy jerk. Death is not enough for him.
I gave her the fairy instead—because she clutched so hard that diary to her flat chest, and I am sure the reason she was in that cupboard all alone is that she is afraid to let her friends know she is keeping a diary again. Because she really slithered, for a moment. Because now I don't even need to cast silencing spells around my bed to black out Blaise's sated snoring, I am too wrapped in my wonderment to notice: I wonder about her. I wonder if my fairy will brush her powder over her sleeping body tonight, if it will give her sweet dreams. If she will dream of Potter.
I always do.
She was swallowing under the feeble light of her lumos, she was trying to figure if this was just another ploy to take revenge on her for something she didn't do—like father, like son. She was looking at the fairy like she really wanted to take it.
"She still doesn't have a name. Pick one for me, why don't you" I told her then.
And she nodded, took the fairy in her hands, careful not to awaken her. "I won't tell anyone," she whispered.
"I'll kill you if you do"
Sudden scared huge eyes silence long focused and expecting and then a wild nod, a skinny girl turning and running out of a room, with a silver fairy nestled carefully in the cradle of her hands. Scared rabbit, couldn't resist the temptation. Or maybe what she couldn't resist—was the communion.
There's my present for Ginny Weasley—I thought about giving her a burnt wedding dress and I ended offering her a fairy instead.
Silver is a Slytherin color.
================
TBC
Shot outs:
-- The very lovely Audrey Thurston Hirsch, who writes the sexiest and most brilliant Ginny ever: 'Speak Desire'. I'm sure you already read it. If not, you really should.
-- Ivy Blossom's goth Ginny, who's very different from the blushy girl in my fanfic, and probably a lot more fetching. Goth Ginny is part of 'Belong', and 'Belong' is definitely a must-read. I'm sure you know that.
-- The Fairy in Libertine's 'Harry Potter and the Internet'! *laughs* I thought she was going to be just eye-candy (which was fine with me, there are too little fairies in the HP fandom) but turns out she's God's messenger instead. Cheers! By the way, do you know any fanfic with fairies in a lead role? I never found one, was very disappointed. But maybe that's because I only read H/D, it's a bit limitative, isn't it? Oh, and read Harry Potter and the Internet. It's for your own good.
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'Zackary Bosh' is the main character of Drawing Blood. Read Poppy Z Brite!
Bret Easton 'Ellis' is my favourite writer. He really is.
'Avalon': quite obviously, from 'The mists of Avalon', by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Revival time two weeks ago with a friend: was very pleased to realize that my favourite writer when I was thirteen was really into incest and threesomes and boy on boy stuff.
The song 'Doll parts' was listened repeatedly through the writing of this. Maybe it shows out.
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Next chapter will feature: Pansy forcing Snape in a pink tutu with her mad Imperious skills. No, really. There's Harry speaking, more of the fairies, and your standard detention. Oh, and a final note: I love Ron. Just, Draco doesn't.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: They're so not mine.
Notes: This is H/D SLASH. It's rated NC-17 for a reason. Maybe Draco and Harry aren't doing any sexual gym yet, but it's a look into Draco's mind, how politically incorrect can that be? Many many thanks to Slytherlynx, who proof-read this for me, and was very patient while I did the groupie thing. Many thanks to Ruby, too, for moral support and such (and the impromptu beta on AIM). Although she probably won't see this, because she claims not to read HP slash. (Ah!)
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Prologue: My nausea in a silver package
===========================
Hanging by threads of palest silver
I could have stayed that way forever
Bad blood and ghosts wrapped tight around me
Nothing could ever seem to touch me
[A stroke of luck – Garbage]
Mother. Smell of richness and beauty, and warmth of love. Cologne, and softness, the soft skin between her neck and her shoulder where I allow myself to rest my head, in the brief embrace before I leave for Hogwarts. Morning.
Sometimes I regret being a man, but at sixteen, that's what I am. I don't hold onto my mother for too long, I don't cry when I feel unhappy, frustrated enraged murderous overlooked, no, I don't. Not when others can see. I am a man. At five, I was a child. My mother was there when I was taught to fly. Father was at the Ministry, so it was her. She looked from a corner of the green gardens while I tried and tried and tried again. I giggled, yelped. I was afraid to fall. When I went back on the ground, I clutched at her robes, tight.
Later she went in my room dressed in precious fabrics and diamonds, to kiss me goodnight after the nanny had me cleaned and tidy and stuck under thick, ancient blankets. She kissed me every night, and told me stories that scared me, before leaving for a party, for a dinner with people that I thought to be as beautiful and distant as she was. While she spoke of ghosts and incantations and fear, her eyes were blue, deep blue delicate and intense together, like a doll's–I widened mine and didn't dare move. What if I left the shell of my blankets, what if the Dark Witch got to me. She would surely slice my throat. That my mother was a Dark Witch herself, I found out just years later. At five, I was a child. Because the Dementors were still patrolling the Manor, Father tried to teach me how to conjure a Patronus. Mother taught me one night how to summon fairies.
It was education. Education to me from my mother's smooth hands. It tingled like the little fairies' twinkle, it's subtle and frizzling, it seems so silver and innocent but there's plenty of mysteries. Silver is a Slytherin colour. When she was finished telling the story, Mother leaned onto my forehead and enfolded in the yellow light from the candles, she gave me the long awaited, reassuring kiss. Goodnight, goodnight. Be beautiful, you're mine. Who cares if my mother is a Dark Witch? She won't ever slice my throat. Someone else's, maybe. Not mine. She smells of long lost assurance. I can't hold her anymore, not too long, I can only wrap my arm lightly around her; we walk forwards prettily, beautifully, and full of power. How much power the Malfoys bought themselves. How many second chances. When we walk, people look at us. Straighten your back, raise your chin. When they whisper, breathe it all. That you're the middle of it. And I still can smell Mother's perfume, vague small and dying, curling in the air. I wish I could stay closer.
The fairy I summoned yesterday night looked into my eyes, battling her wings quickly, in the half dark of my room. I was not sure I wanted to leave for school. The fairy was a little annoyed that I tear her from her world simply to entertain myself. To watch her when I am bored. To smell her, and realize she has no perfume. She's just silver, and silver is just a colour. So since she moved too much and too quickly, I bullied her, slapped her away when she went too close. In the very end, I fell asleep, and by then, she was already all over me. Little dumb creatures, the more you treat them bad, the more they get attached. Really, they just pretend to protest. I felt empathic. I decided to let her stay with me a little longer. Before I fell asleep, I heard a faint fluid sound, like water cascading down, from far, far away—fairy powder over me, she said, to give me sweet dreams, to take the nightmares away. I let her do, although it was pretty pointless. I never have nightmares.
I never have nightmares. I sleep a dreamless sleep. The day, I straighten my neck and raise my chin. That seems to be enough. After Mother left the room, when I was five and she had just told me a scary story, I stared in the dark, trembling a little, clutching at the blankets, waiting for the Dark Witch. Then, I just closed my eyes and made myself forget about it. And slept my dreamless sleep. Smart child that I was. Champion talent that I have. Forget the monsters. Forget all about bad things, bad dreams, bad omens. Malfoys' goodnight stories are about Dark Magic, the mothers take care that their children grow well. I did. The summer is over, the morning is white and piercing like cold. I had no dreams yesterday night, and I am leaving for Hogwarts. A kiss received on my forehead. A hug that's no longer a hug. A brief curl of lingering perfume.
Sometimes I wonder if Potter would smell like Mother.
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The train to Hogwarts it's just a clichè. People meet after the summer—a lifetime, one would think—and they do their best to look thrilled, to look like they have missed each other so much, they could just have died. The girls could have, at least. The boys just go for manly hugging and male bonding, much of it. I suppose I would have liked something like this—or at least, taking part in the general celebration in a more stylish like I love others to think of me—if I was the toast of this school. Six years ago I though I was going to be, but then, no. No, I lost. The day I got up the train the first time, it was decided I wasn't to be in the spot-light. All the glory was stolen away for me. Father says Slytherins have their victories in the dark, and they are all the more sweet for that. Maybe. Surely. If Father says so.
But still.
I never really enjoyed the trip to Hogwarts anymore, since that day.
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At platform 9 ¾ I ran into Ginny Weasley. She was standing in my way—I wanted to go in, and she stood by the door, looking flustered about her trunk, waiting, I thought, for the miracle to happen. Guess what? I wanted to climb right in that wagon. Couldn't use another entry, no no.
"Waiting for Wonder Boy to help you, Damsel in distress?"
She looked over, and blushed. Then she glared a bit, aware of having just been insulted somehow or maybe just annoyed at me by default; but she didn't speak back. Self-consciousness seemed to lead her more than anger, and she didn't seem quite able to form a counter line. Even if by the look on her face, she was desperate for one.
That's the future Mrs. Potter for you. An idiot without control over her semantics. I suppose the Hero's woman doesn't need that: the more helpless she is, the more brave he feels. Good guys are so dull. Never give you a surprise.
Just as my thoughts were starting to get metaphysical, came the "Let her be, you sodding git" from somewhere behind my shoulder, loud and self- assured and—it's not funny how the way I feel about him mirrors perfectly what he thinks about me? I listen carefully to the reports, I am eager to know what people say about Draco Malfoy. Ron Weasley's favourite nickname for me is 'That self-centered Ferret'. He thinks I am pompous and arrogant. I think the way he feels justified in his murderous instincts towards me, so un-Gryffindor like, is equally arrogant. Self-centered, to the core. So maybe I gave him reasons to hate my guts—but still, why shouldn't I? I am rich and pureblooded, I have a name whose mere mention inspires awe, and those of his kind are below me. I treat them just as I like.
I turned to him and smirked, Ron Weasley coming to his sister's rescue was quite a sight. "Weasel, Weasel, do you love your sister so much?"
"Malfoy!" The subtext contained in the question was completely uncalled for, and he growled, disgusted. "I swear, you have a sick mind," he hissed. "When do you think up—"
"Where is your pimp?" I drawled, ignoring him, feeling on a roll. "Did he dump you to grope Granger, or maybe it was Finnigan?"
He took a step towards me, movement violent and sudden. I don't think he was going to beat me, we were, after all, in full sight of the whole school body and the teaching staff. But the temptation was there, wasn't it. He does have a horrible temper. His sister flinched, and grabbed his arm before he could reach me. That was too bad. I wondered how many points from Gryffindor I could get before we even boarded the train. He was glaring at me, muttering obscenities. His sister looked panicked.
Since I am not a Gryffindor unthinking idiot, I took a careful step back. "I swear, Weasley, you always make my day" My lips twitched into a little, smug smirk.
"If it wasn't for my sister, Malfoy—
"What?"
"You're asking for it"
"Ooh, scary. What exactly I am asking for?"
"A Firebolt up your ass, that's what," he spat.
I rolled my eyes. "Of course. Troll"
That did it. Indeed, a horrible temper. He freed himself from his sister's grasp, made a wild dash for my front collar while she cried out, "Ron!", and I stepped back again, ever the prudent Slytherin. Unfortunately, that's when Perfect Potter decided to step in the scene.
"Don't run too quickly, Malfoy," he said. "I am sure Ron wouldn't make it that bad, in public"
I heard his voice. I stopped in my—rush, that's all right with me—and looked at him. He was taller than he had been. I couldn't figure out how put together he was under the large robes he wore, but this was Potter, not Weasley, and with him, it never was a physical threat. I looked at him. I took in his glasses, his eyes behind them, his expression calm but still revealing. He did loathe me. He still aimed to win with me.
Both Weasley and his sister went, "Harry!", and even Weasley's voice contained relief, but he wouldn't look at them yet. He was all for me. I ducked my head, thought quickly, and gave him a grin.
"Why, Potter. Never thought you cared. Missed me over the summer?"
He snorted. "Like you wouldn't imagine, Malfoy," he said, voice so stretching and sarcastic it made me actually wonder if he hadn't been studying me over last year.
"Never fear, Potter, that's exactly how I feel," I sneered, stretching even harder, striving to sound as malicious and cunning as I could. That was my playground. He couldn't even hope to win using my weapons.
He didn't of course. Because then he did that thing he always does, while looking at me, like he was losing his patience. It always made me lose my patience too. Something like the game I always managed to play over Weasley. Which wasn't proper at all, of course. I did that. I was the Slytherin—not Harry Potter. The thing he did—when we where younger, it was more like a huff, an annoyed scowl. Now it was subtler, more poised, despite the whole teenage angst and awkwardness, he mastered his space very well when he was with me. He just rolled his eyes, or shook his head, gave me a mild look that read, Don't you ever get tired?
Yes. Yes. I do.
I am sick of it.
And then he reminded me what I thought I made him forget, that in the moment he walked in the train, in the moment he stepped in the scene, I lost. "Where are Crabbe and Goyle?" he asked. "I missed them too, you know. But I am sure," he started to smile, the little shit, smile like a cat that just ate a deer. "No one missed them like you did when you were talking with Ron, Malfoy"
There. See what I meant? He always steals all the glory away from me.
Weasley was cheering on him, even his little useless sister, probably, was smiling thinly in triumph. I wasn't going to let that last. "I overheard an interesting conversation about you this summer, Potter," I murmured, sneering into his face, realizing with some amount of surprise but not discomfort that when I murmured to him like this, I almost sounded seductive, like purring into a lover's ear.
Potter was still in smug mode. "Oh? What about it?"
"That's a secret" I gave him a full, lovable grin, and ignored the incensed growl Weasley made for what I was saying implied—little Death Eater son that I was—and the way Potter's eyelids lowered and he suddenly was looking at me, focused. It was a good moment to end the conversation. It's fun how it's always me to win—in the small fights. I am very good at faking a victory. Pleased to know that at least they would throw insults at me through the whole trip, I turned to get as far as possible from them.
============
So after that I locked myself in this lonely compartment, not entirely able to black out the squeals and the calls and the occasional 'Oh and Potter this—Oh and Potter that'. I just wanted to have a private breakdown, really, maybe cry a little, slam my feet against the floor. I want to beat them into a bloody pulp. I swear, one day I will. I want to see if it looks as nice as it sounds, the bloody pulp. I'd kill Weasley if I could, the day I'm powerful enough I will, I'll tear his sorry, ruined excuse for a heart from his chest and feed it to the mountain trolls, where it belongs. He can be pureblooded as he like, but I am sure even his heart would look an unsatisfying, dull shade of red. And Potter—Oh, God. I refuse to second his Gryffindor code of nobility where people never run, to the point where they get themselves killed for some cheap overvalued concept like honour. I refuse to feel embarrassed by the fact that I am important enough to have personal bodyguards disguised as friends. It's not really this that does it. It's the fact that he doesn't seem to think I am important enough to act like a prince. I am not important enough. He is, of course—one day, I swear, he'll have more than one scar that gets everyone to look at him in sympathy. To coo and hug that fucking tender body of his, with the childish fat and the rosy cheeks, oh, look at him, isn't he pretty and sad, so sad, c'mere, let me hug you. He's not so small now, had quite a growth spurt over the summer, hadn't he. How dare he grow, make his presence more conspicuous than mine, make his words surer than mine, how dare he be happier than me. I grab a handful of my robe, I clutch tightly and twist the black fabric, I look while my knuckles go white.
Then I bring my hand to my mouth and bite, hard. God, Potter. Potter, Potter, Potter, Potter.
Ginny Weasley only pretends to be pure and white and innocent, because that will look best in the dress she wears the day she gets lucky.
And then Pansy slides the doors of the compartment open—it couldn't last long—and looks down at me, the knuckles reddened in my mouth, my little white teeth sinking deep. She arches an eyebrow. "Out of control, already?"
I put my hand in my lap. "Of course not. I was testing how much it takes before bleeding"
She stares some more, then smiles greasily. "Nice," she says, walking in, all flesh, over her breast and her hips. She puts her trunk away and before sitting down, she rests a hand on my arm and leans over to kiss my cheek. Her nails sink in my skin, even through the robe, clingy Pansy, now it's just confined to brief moments which she thinks are dignified enough, but she just cannot hide her need. I stare at her, unimpressed, when she retreats and sits on the seat opposite mine. "Slytherins don't do that," I say pointedly.
She tilts her head, smiling. "Slytherins don't do many things" She says this in a slightly wry tone, and of course, there's nothing to reply. "How was your summer?" she continues "I developed mad Imperius skills"
I am so happy not all girls in this school are Gryffindor. Pansy may still fancy me, and that's rotten—not because of the feeling per se but because it's obsessive—but at least she doesn't blush. "I thought," I say "You already did that—all last year"
Her smile gets sincerely merry. "Yes, but I had the House Elves dancing the waltz this time—all of them, in circle, in the Main Hall!" She sighs. "What a sight"
My recollection of the Parkinson's Hall is a gash of sparkly pink and a display of clashing textures and materials. It has my father always hissing under his teeth, "Nouveau riche", with an oddly satisfied smirk on his lips. House Elves dancing the waltz must have been, through, a great sight indeed. I raise my eyebrow at her. "Oh?"
"Mm," she nods. "Too bad I couldn't dress them. Would have looked even better in a pink tutu" She throws me a regretting look. I roll my eyes, in spite of the almost coziness of it all. Of course, we can't get cozy. Slytherins don't do that.
Slytherins don't do many things.
Blaise bursts in the compartment, noisy and egocentric as always. "Dearests, I was searching for you" he says with a delighted smile. He has a fair complexion, brown eyes, and black hair that he gets to be a bit unruly because 'It's a lot sexier than a good boy style'—and here he throws me a meaningful look, that I counter muttering 'Harry Potter', which makes him frown and stress that, 'It's an entirely different thing—I do it purposely, I know what's a brush, and can we stop talking about Harry Potter please"
"Where are C&G?," he asks lazily now, sitting himself down near Pansy, accepting a kiss from her with a lot more ease than I did.
"Guarding the baggage and staying away" I explain vaguely, leaning on the window and resting my forehead against it.
He nods. "What lovely servants you Malfoys have" Then he breaks into an excited grin. "But, how boring. Let me tell you about my summer. You wouldn't imagine how shameless French boys are"
Pansy sneers, and stretches in her seat, showing off her remarkable leverage. I look at my perfectly polished nails. "Do tell"
He starts talking, and I look out of the window, smirking as he proceeds with his tale. It was pretty tiring before, with Potter. Isn't it always. But I like this. Relief. Time break. Some day I'll burn a wedding dress and I'll send it to Ginny Weasley, wrapped in a silver package. Maybe, I'll send a rose, too. Scarlet.
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The Sorting Hat's riddle is a pink strawberry-flavoured candy, like butterbeer in a snug corner, children dancing in a circle, lovers kissing in front of the fire, exchanging rings and eternal vows. The fire is too warm.
You just know what founder that hat belonged to.
Lucrezia Ledeuil, Zackary Bosh, Frederick Rowland, the new kids in our ranks. Then I lose interest in the Sorting and start doing my own. Which Hufflepuff I'd love to see quivering, cornered by Crabbe and Goyle in a lonely corridor, white as a dead, pleading for release. Which Ravenclaw I'd like to… lay, let's say: we're not trolls, we're not Weasleys, language, language. There are voices in my head again—I roll my eyes. As for Gryffindors, I never look at their table once. I need a pause before the Grand Reopening. I breathe.
The Sorting has finished.
A dark-haired boy sits in front of me. Eleven years old, pale and thin, gaunt already, he smiles—knowingly. I return the smile. Through the whole dinner, I chat with him absent-mindedly, to relieve myself from the fact that it tastes a little too much Gryffindor, what doesn't in this school. The boy's name is Ellis, Ah, yes, I believe my father knows yours, of course he already knows who I am, other smiles, the Gryffindors? Dumbledore's pets, they'll get what they deserve. More smiles, more empathy, I know, you know. He looks smart.
He'll soon find out the Gryffindors are never going to get what they deserve. And how to make them pay for it.
I make a mistake, and look over at their table. Weasley is laughing. Potter is talking with Granger, they look animated, and ordinary. They don't look at me. I stand up, and walk away.
===============
Blaise is bugging me. He always wants to fuck, and I never let him. He keeps coming onto me and talking to me and he even touches my hair. For fuck's sake, I hate that. I tell him to go and do some Hufflepuff since that's all he's good for. He asks Crabbe if I have PMS. Crabbe doesn't understand and grunts. I throw them out.
Alone, with the green blankets and the elegant posters. I free the fairy and she starts flying everywhere, hissing in my face.
"A whole day into a trunk! That was not nice! I am a first class! I am a pure one!"
Just like me, love. I admit that was not nice. I gather her in my hands, I kiss her on the head.
She pouts. "Where are we?"
"Hogwarts"
"Ew" she wrinkles her nose. "It's filled with crossbreeds!"
I nod, understanding. "I know, love" Indeed, it is.
She frowns. "Well, do something about it, Sir. It's you the one who called me. You know it's illegal? The Avalon Act of the 1635 on Relations with Forbidden Lands states—
I do something about it. I smack her, then cast a sleeping charm.
Looking at her lithe body resting in my hands, I remember two things.
I remember: my first summoning, when I was five, the spark of black fire, the rapid heartbeat. And then the silver traces dissolving in the air, quick, beauty in motion, through the silver my mother's doll eyes, beauty in stillness.
I didn't know it was Dark Magic, summoning pure fairies from forbidden lands.
I used to ask, can we really? Can we?
I didn't ask to be reassured that we were in the right, I asked to be reassured that we could do everything.
She always answered, Yes.
And I remember: lurking behind my father's door, one night, end of August, I always lurk there, I almost never knock. I remember, that night, hearing Potter's name. Potter, Potter, Potter. I couldn't tear myself away. I forgot to leave. Father found me sitting down against the walk opposite his rooms. I glanced in through the half-opened door. There was no one. The flames in the grate where dying.
"Who was that?" I asked.
"Wormtail"
"Who?"
"Never repeat that name with anyone"
"Who?"
"Do I have to put a memory charm on you?"
"…No"
I look at the fairy. So Potter will die. Probably. So he will. I wished for his death, I even prayed for it, after the Triwizard Tournament. A prayer wouldn't hurt anyone, would it? And even if it did? We can do everything. I grew up, and I still wish for Potter's death, sometimes. Growing up you deal with long summers, you overhear conversations; growing up, it happens some nights that you are so angry to pour Veritaserum into your father's brandy, because he wouldn't bring you to see the Chudley Cannons after getting the best places booked, after promising he would and it was so hard even to ask him to promise. Growing up you spend the whole night sweating and shaking and looking at the ceiling and at six in the morning, long before the Ministry officers arrive, you sneak out of your room and get the damn bottle and just throw it away. Potter's Death will feed the Eaters. Father will take me to see the Chudley Cannons.
"Do I have to put a memory charm on you?"
"…No"
It was a moral query. I didn't want to respond.
I still don't.
I slide the fairy inside my robes, and leave for the common room. Blaise did go hunt Huffelpuffs, in the end. I tap my fingers on Millicent Bullstrode's shoulder, she looks up and nods, she stands, without bothering to apologize with the group of six years she was talking to.
Bullstrode isn't blond nor pretty like me, and proved herself to be a remarkable stress reliever after Easter break last year. She's different from Pansy, she is even less nice, for one. But if you hold her gaze long enough, she smiles knowingly, too. She does so opening the door of Snape's classroom, we share a kiss or two, I believe this will be the last time I do this with her, and she knows it too. After a while, it gets repetitive. I am about to push her on her knees in front of me, when I notice that the door to the cupboard near the class is half opened, and from inside comes a dim, yellow light.
I tell Bullstrode to go. Smart girl, she immediately does so. Then I slide the door open, and lower my eyes to a small girl, sitting cross-legged in a corner, clutching a diary and a quill to her chest. A small lumos radiates light in circles just near her head. It's Ginny Weasley. I smile, knowingly.
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Sometimes I wonder what is it that makes Slytherins smile the way they do—what do we know that the others don't. Probably it is just the knowledge that it's good to have a secret, so we act like we have one, even if we don't. Maybe it's this our secret. Maybe we have a secret that we still don't know.
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"Weasley? Oh, this is rich," I drawl, holding my phonemes firmly in place, controlling the sounds to be sweet and slow and faintly feral. I love the 'r'. The 'r' comes so in handy. The girl has red hair and her pale face is bursting now, into a violent, irregular red too. Unlike all her brothers, though, she has some delicacy hidden there, in the curve of her chin, the roundness of her eyes. It must come from being a female. Maybe it comes from being preordained. Preordained to becoming the Perfect Potter's Wife. Even scrawny and clumsy adolescent girls manage to give out the requisite air of loveliness, if they are Potter's Mate of Choice.
I suddenly remember I should sound more feral than sweet. Like I could draw blood.
"Well? Can't you talk?" I ask. She's all bones and eyes. And mortification, shame, humiliation paint themselves clearly onto her small, graceless face. I know that look, and it annoys me. She's feeling so stupid right now, so invisible despite trying, trying so hard. Can't even come up with an effective comeback. They are never effective enough. Seeing the pain inflicted, I seek for more. "I always suspected it, you know" I see then, that her eyes are full of rage, also, and I admit I am surprised, who knew there could be so much. But it's suppressed rage, she won't let it come out and kill. She has to be kind. Bear it all. I duck my head, I am so tired all of a sudden, and I ask, then. "Why do you even exist?"
There is a sudden intake of breath. Trembling, hissing, almost, almost slithering. There is a sudden silence. The residual image of a possible action, the contemplation of her jolting up, jumping me, biting and scratching and venging it all on me. That residual image is silver.
She doesn't do it.
She breathes again.
She tries to speak a couple of times.
"Fuck… fuck… fuck you"
As I said, this is rich.
===========
When I come back, Bullstrode stops me before I slide in my bedroom. Dark all around. A vague buzz from the girls' chambers. Everybody else sleeps.
She says, "Let's finish this well"
Indeed.
While she works her head on my lap, I think that an orgasm is violent like vomit. Coming is like puking at its peak, it tears you apart. I buckle, close my eyes. An orgasm is so violent it makes you sick. Waves of nausea constricting my throat, an acid taste in my mouth. I feel like this when I think of Potter, the acid nausea pressing but never bursting, bidding its time and suffocating until I am afraid I will implode. I feel like this when I lurk behind my father's door, when my mother's arm wraps around mine and I am too distant to small her perfume, almost there but not quite, I feel sick. I feel sick now because an orgasm is violent, just like when my eyes meet Potter's, I hate him so much it just turns to ache. I stop bucking, I stop thinking of him, she's lapping at me now, lazily, cleaning me and taking care of me.
There are moments when I wish that Father had put that memory charm on me.
I don't kiss her before leaving.
=======
My last thoughts before falling asleep are for Ginny Weasley. I think of her and communion, because, as I said, communion is rich. As I lay awake in my bed, I am still contemplating why I did what I did then, after hearing that girl's slithering voice insulting me, so shaky with feelings it could hardly express one. A hiss in a whisper, a whisper in a hiss. In the darkness of the cupboard, I took the fairy out of my pocket, she was still sleeping, and we were both so silent and alert that the charm never broke. I handed the small bundle out to Ginny Weasley. I told her, "Look how benevolent I can be. This will give you sweet dreams." It was vaguely insulting. I always take care to sound at least a bit insulting when I speak to Gryffindors. And I am still wondering why she took it, why despite her eyes widening, her hands shaking with fear she took it, took a present from me.
I thought: to actually fuck Ginny Weasley there and then. To try at least, to scare her for dear life—traumatize her and nullify her possibilities for happy Potter ending.
I thought: to snatch her diary and make sure the whole school is informed, tomorrow, of its contents. I am fairly certain there is plenty of moaning and sighing and bad poetry about Potter. He would be sympathetic with her, furious at me, but it would change nothing, she'd never be able look at him in the eyes again. Ron Weasley incensed. People hissing, Malfoy, that creepy jerk. Death is not enough for him.
I gave her the fairy instead—because she clutched so hard that diary to her flat chest, and I am sure the reason she was in that cupboard all alone is that she is afraid to let her friends know she is keeping a diary again. Because she really slithered, for a moment. Because now I don't even need to cast silencing spells around my bed to black out Blaise's sated snoring, I am too wrapped in my wonderment to notice: I wonder about her. I wonder if my fairy will brush her powder over her sleeping body tonight, if it will give her sweet dreams. If she will dream of Potter.
I always do.
She was swallowing under the feeble light of her lumos, she was trying to figure if this was just another ploy to take revenge on her for something she didn't do—like father, like son. She was looking at the fairy like she really wanted to take it.
"She still doesn't have a name. Pick one for me, why don't you" I told her then.
And she nodded, took the fairy in her hands, careful not to awaken her. "I won't tell anyone," she whispered.
"I'll kill you if you do"
Sudden scared huge eyes silence long focused and expecting and then a wild nod, a skinny girl turning and running out of a room, with a silver fairy nestled carefully in the cradle of her hands. Scared rabbit, couldn't resist the temptation. Or maybe what she couldn't resist—was the communion.
There's my present for Ginny Weasley—I thought about giving her a burnt wedding dress and I ended offering her a fairy instead.
Silver is a Slytherin color.
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TBC
Shot outs:
-- The very lovely Audrey Thurston Hirsch, who writes the sexiest and most brilliant Ginny ever: 'Speak Desire'. I'm sure you already read it. If not, you really should.
-- Ivy Blossom's goth Ginny, who's very different from the blushy girl in my fanfic, and probably a lot more fetching. Goth Ginny is part of 'Belong', and 'Belong' is definitely a must-read. I'm sure you know that.
-- The Fairy in Libertine's 'Harry Potter and the Internet'! *laughs* I thought she was going to be just eye-candy (which was fine with me, there are too little fairies in the HP fandom) but turns out she's God's messenger instead. Cheers! By the way, do you know any fanfic with fairies in a lead role? I never found one, was very disappointed. But maybe that's because I only read H/D, it's a bit limitative, isn't it? Oh, and read Harry Potter and the Internet. It's for your own good.
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'Zackary Bosh' is the main character of Drawing Blood. Read Poppy Z Brite!
Bret Easton 'Ellis' is my favourite writer. He really is.
'Avalon': quite obviously, from 'The mists of Avalon', by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Revival time two weeks ago with a friend: was very pleased to realize that my favourite writer when I was thirteen was really into incest and threesomes and boy on boy stuff.
The song 'Doll parts' was listened repeatedly through the writing of this. Maybe it shows out.
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Next chapter will feature: Pansy forcing Snape in a pink tutu with her mad Imperious skills. No, really. There's Harry speaking, more of the fairies, and your standard detention. Oh, and a final note: I love Ron. Just, Draco doesn't.