"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Draco Malfoy had never been much of a boy, not like his family needed him to be. He was the last of a line of a distinguished and Noble House, and he needed to be a he. He had to be normal. Otherwise, the family might be destroyed.
(it was familial, this feeling of wrongness.
bellatrix never felt like a woman, and lucius never felt like any gender at all)
Draco hid his fears close to his chest, but his mother always gave him soft encouragements.
(you're beautiful, darling she'd whisper carefully.
this will look stunning on you
she'd murmur as she slipped a pearl necklace gently around his neck, the pearls feminine in a way he dared not breathe)
Sometimes, growing up, he'd read about glamour spells and wonder about a softer jawline and gentler waist.
At eleven, his father told him that at Hogwarts, he mustn't show that he wasn't much of a boy at all.
(draco didn't know how to act any different than himself. all he knew of boys were the cutting remarks of teddy nott and blaise zabini, the blunt cruelty of vince and greg, and the impressive, impassive coldness held by his stoic father.)
Draco threw away the cheap Muggle makeup he had purchased. He couldn't look at the pale pink lipstick without thinking of the disapproving face his father had stared down at him. He didn't throw away the heels he nicked from his mother. Draco realized Narcissa knew about this, knew about the dresses he had worn and the heels he had tottered in. But they were not for him anymore.
He was to be a man, the heir for the richest family in Britain, and he was so confused as to why.
He resolved his confusion by taking it out on the Girl-Who-Lived, Harriet Dorea Potter. She declined his friendship, preferring to sit with Rhonda Weasley.
Merlin, Harry Potter, the bleeding Girl-Who-Lived, chose to sit with a Weasley instead of a Malfoy.
Draco decided to focus his rage on her, then, rather than on himself. Why did she get to be a girl? How dare she be normal?
Of course, Harriet Potter being who she was, normal didn't come very naturally.
(a gentle way of saying that harriet saw normality, craved normality, and when she tried to achieve it, she managed to blow a hole through it)
Draco's turmoil had to rear her twisted head once Harriet Potter came out as gay in Fifth Year, with her long, kinky locks and dark, smooth skin and striking green eyes.
(how dare she how dare she - she is an heir and heirs have to be straight and marry a man and marry a pureblood and marry and marry and produce heirs because heirs are to inherit the money and the status and the pureblood and homosexuality would destroy this how is this fair why does she get to be off why can't i)
Draco began questioning the beliefs his parents had instilled in him that night, and then, then he realized it.
I am not a man, Draco discovers. I am a woman.
These fundamental truths help him-her disavow the twisted mess she had conjured for himself, and yet, she still knew one thing.
Harriet Potter was gay.
Harriet Potter was gay, and so was Draco.
This came with all the things Draco wished to know about Potter. Why did her lips curl up at the edges? How does her hair feel, in all of its curls? Why do her eyes seem to put a Confundus on Draco?
why is she so beautiful
why am i not