Brilliant Disguise

Chapter one: Concerning Draco

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. I also do not own "Brilliant Disguise" by Bruce Springsteen. (Later chapters.)

A/N: This was originally a song fic, but while I was thinking of a setting in which to place the song Brilliant Disguise by Bruce Springsteen this story popped up. This was intentioned to be a one shot, but uh…yeah. Well I don't really know where I'm going with this yet, but I'm not going to post another chapter until the whole thing is finished, and this chapter probably revised. So really this is all for feedback, I want to know how this chapter sits with you guys…Does it suck, is it all right, or is it completely brill and shouldn't be touched (yeah…that's the case)? I think I need a brit beta b/c I'm American and not, ahem, 'trained', in the lingo, I don't like having a regular beta b/c I want to know what everybody thinks, and I don't let anything go out ever unless I've edited the grammar many, many times, 'cause I can't stand bad grammar! Wow, is this like the longest A/N ever? Really sorry guys, all I want is some feedback though!

Chapter 1

Concerning Draco

For most of his life Draco had been very confident. Some might have even called him arrogant, but then again he definitely was. That's what it'll do to you, being a Malfoy. Everyone fawning about your every whim twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Of course he was conceited and spoiled.

Coming to Hogwarts was no different at first. Then he realized that it would be a bit difficult dealing with "The Boy Who Lived" and his posse for the next seven years. And for five and a half of those years it was, however he had come to be quite good at "dealing" with them. But halfway through his sixth year he noticed something different about the youngest member of Harry's posse, Virginia Weasley.

He noticed something that completely tipped his world upside-down. She forgave where others could not. He of course knew all about the Chamber of Secrets, and he found out that she, her very being, was not able to blame any person for doing anything. She would instead blame it on something about them. For example; Virginia did not blame his father for slipping Tom's diary into her cauldron in Diagon Alley. She blamed his insanity for it; after all, how could someone bearing any semblance of sane possibly want to inflict that much pain one another person. And oh how much pain he had caused. The pain of trying to please someone as insane as Tom Riddle drove her to the brinkof insanity. In all honesty, that's what he wanted, Tom, not to kill but to trap people in their own minds.

She had tried to tell him that didn't matter anymore. After all, the war was over, Tom was dead, the Boy had Lived again, and it was all in the past. Hakuna Matata. He tried to make her understand though, that it mattered all the much more because it was her past. You can't just run away from your past he had claimed.

Believe him when he says that it does no good to hide from your past. There is no escaping it. He knew from experience. His past had taught him to hate, to always have an escape plan, and to never show emotion. And after a while, showing no emotion leads to not actually having any emotion, except hate of course. Because hate is hard to hide after all, that and love, but with a family like his, and the company he kept, love wasn't much of a threat. Until her of course.

After he began to notice Ginny in his sixth year, he realized how easy it was for people to feel. To just completely and utterly throw themselves into a feeling and to just front it without any hesitation. And he was jealous. That was what began it. You see, jealously is not the same as hate. For the longest time hate was all he knew. He hated it when Potter beat him at another Quidditch match. He hated that he was second in his class to a mudblood. But most of all he hatedhis father because it was he who had programmed him to hate, and hate alone. He knew of happiness, and love and laughter, he also knew at one time he had experienced these along with sadness, and fear. But all that was left was a cold, hard, unfeeling shell of a person who didn't even know how to attempt to let his façade down. To change was a concept foreign to him and his family. How sad it must have been then to grow up without love or fantasy.

But in his sixth year Virginia Weasley had torn down his walls in one fell swoop without even glancing at him. Just her living had made him realize how shitty the life was that he was living. And he couldn't deal with that. All of a sudden he felt everything at once, love, happiness, sadness, scared, confusion, and even betrayal. He didn't know how to handle it so he did the only thing familiar. He lashed out. He became more dramatic than usual. He would be unnecessarily violent and then plunge into depression and solitude for days before he would lash out again. Most of all though he became the most abusive to Ginny and to himself. He would try to inflict as much pain as he possibly could on her, he couldn't stand the way she had made him question his life. You have to understand, he never knew what to do. He couldn't just walk right up to her and say, "Oh hey you…uh…made me question my life here, and I'm sure that a few years from now I'll appreciate it, but for now, I really hate what you're doing to me." No, that wouldn't do at all. And anyways, for the most part all he knew was how confused she had made him.

After Hogwarts he disappeared. Some say he traveled to the US, because no one could ever find someone once they left for the US with the intention of not being found. Some say he went to Australia to travel as far away from Britain as he possibly could. He was the only one who knew that he had traveled only to Italy. Only he knew how there was just something about Italy that calmed him. The way life was so simple and easy there. In Italy everything was beautiful and good and easy. He stayed for seven years and found himself, really himself, the man who God created for the simple task of living, not the man who his father had created to hate and destroy others trying to live. At the end of his sabbatical he had resolved to finally meet this woman who had triggered this phenomenal change in his soul.

But that was it, he promised. Only to meet her, and then settle down in London with his books and writing to comfort him. Secluding himself to hermitism at 25 had not seemed like a bad idea at the time…but then again he hadn't actually met Virginia Weasley yet.