TITLE – My Name
RATING – PG-13
SUMMARY – Draco Malfoy reflects on a love affair. A heartfelt and very sincere one-shot, but still in character. DM/GW. Pre-OoTP
AUTHOR'S NOTE – I really like this story. Short, to the point, but emotional. I hope that you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
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It's quite true that I've led a privileged life. It's obvious; everyone knows this. I've mentioned it several times to friends, even more often to enemies, and occasionally to teachers who fail to realize who I am and what I have the power to do.
However, I never anticipated this. I never anticipated feeling so much for someone so little. Someone so underneath me. I don't think anyone else saw it coming.
In fact, nobody really knows. I've kept it hidden. Sure, I'll gladly tell people about the new broom my father got me, and I provide much locker room talk after Quidditch matches, but this kind of stuff is not what people want to hear about. It's not the kind of stuff I particularly want people to hear about.
I've thought long and hard about when it started and how it got to be this way. But unfortunately enough for my muddled brain, there's no clear beginning or middle or end. It all just runs together like a ruined painting – red bleeding into yellow and green silently slipping into blue to create this multitude of colors. One can hardly tell where one color ends and another begins. Such is my situation.
If anything, I guess I can start at the place where it definitely did not start. Before "it" even began to take place. The Great Hall.
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Many people may think that I am a nuisance. Always begging for attention, desperately crying for someone to listen to me make fun of someone else. It could be true, I'm not sure, but I also enjoy time to myself – one reason why I wake up early to eat breakfast alone. I've done so since the middle of Fifth year, and since then not a whole lot has changed.
I was sitting at the Slytherin table, enjoying the quiet that only surrounds me in my sleep and during breakfast, when a horrid flash of red sat down at the Gryffindor table, facing me. It wasn't Ron Weasley, oh no, this was the girl. The rising sun could be seen through the ceiling, and that increased the brilliance of her hair ten fold.
If you asked me now, I would more than likely describe it in a good way. Probably using plenty of sappy metaphors, trying to be some kind of a poet. But in truth, the hair was an annoyance then. It was riotous, and disturbed any and all visual peace I had at that moment.
She was looking down at her plate, trying to avoid my gaze (which in my mind I thought to be steely and calculating) but I wouldn't let her get away with annoying me. It sounds cruel and unjust, but I don't try to be nice. I don't do nice. I act on my emotions, and if someone interrupts anything I'm enjoying, then quite frankly, they deserve my cruelty. I don't try to be anything else but me.
So there I was, staring at her, sending telepathic messages for her to look back at me. Then she did. Her mousy brown eyes stared intently at mine, but she couldn't handle it. Within five seconds she was looking back down at her plate. Needless to say, it annoyed me, so I gave her an insulting comment (which I can no longer remember) and left the hall.
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For weeks things were exactly the same. I would wake up early for breakfast, she would come in with her blinding copper hair and tired, freckled face. The staring contest would ensue, and still she couldn't seem to handle my gaze. I tried many different approaches to try to get the girl to keep her eyes on me. Mostly I tried to use other facial expressions - some neutral, some mean, some nice - but nothing seemed to work.
I hardly saw the girl in the corridors, her being a year younger than I. But when I did it was usually when she was tagging alongside Potter, Weasley, and Granger, always listening intently to what the others were saying. She never seemed to give any input; she just listened.
It seemed to be the perfect situation. A girl who never talked, but listened to everything you had to say and every opinion you had to give. Loyal to the very end, no matter how many times you ignored her or forgot about her.
Suddenly I found myself looking at her not only during those breakfast times, but lunch and dinner as well. I felt jealous that while I had Pansy, the Girl-Who-Lived-To-Talk, Potter had this wonderful opportunity staring him right in the face, giving a dreamy sigh whenever he talked to or smiled at her, and listening attentively to every syllable that came out of his mouth. It was absurd. And I was insanely jealous.
It seems wrong, I know. But there I was, a wealthy young man who craved everything Potter got but threw away without a second thought. He had wealth, celebrity status, extraordinary Quidditch skills, and a legion of fans – and he didn't want it. How could he not want it? How could he not hunger for the attention that he was given?
Everyday I saw her with her freckles and her hair and the way she acted as if she were Potter's shadow. And I wondered what she thought about it all. It was obvious she never talked about it, or at least she never talked about it with the Golden Trio. Didn't she have any way of expressing herself?
Once again, weeks passed and I looked and watched and studied her. Every facial expression that was made, I analyzed and examined. But still I could not see anything but the same meek and mousy redhead doing the same meek and mousy redhead things.
So one day at Hogsmeade when I came across a set of notebooks that could relay messages to each other back and forth, I had to buy them. I had to know what she was thinking. It was killing me inside and not to mention, annoying the bloody hell out of me.
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I actually planted one of the notebooks in a place where I could be sure that she would find it. I kept the other one, and promised myself that no matter what, I would just let her write. I would not write back.
Eventually she did, but they were mostly doodles and the occasional song lyric. I recognized them immediately to be songs by a few of my favorites bands including Avada, Magical Malady, and Dragonhide, who are all mostly rock and heavy rock. This only intrigued me even more.
The Christmas Holidays were fast approaching and still I carried around the matching notebook everywhere I went, just hoping that the girl would give me a glimpse into her head. Just a brief glimpse.
And I'm not sure if I am glad that I stuck with it or not. In a way I am, because when she finally wrote over Christmas break, it overjoyed me. You can't imagine the feelings that ran through my head whenever this dumb girl I had been obsessing over for months finally gave me what I had been waiting for. My breath caught in my throat and my heart skipped a beat just watching as her small and messy handwriting slowly appeared across the page. I had been waiting for so long.
But then again, I don't know if it was a good thing that she wrote. If she never had, eventually (or hopefully, rather) I would have given up and forgotten all about the small girl. But she did. And I yearned for more insight. I can safely say that I am not an easy person to satisfy, and in this case all I wanted was more. I didn't even know her and all I wanted was to learn more about her opinions and life. For some reason, the girl that I had once wished as my own loyal follower who would listen to me and never talk, became the girl that I wished would tell me everything she felt and everything she knew. Funny how things work.
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Soon enough, the temptation to write back became too much to handle. I cracked. I thought it would be safe if I were to pretend that I, too, had stumbled across the notebook. I would say that I hadn't used it until now, but that I opened it and found all of her writings and drawings. And I would talk to her, and if all went well, she would listen to me.
And then she would be the one obsessing over me and worrying about reading every damned word I wrote. She would be the one needing just one more word, but after that word comes, finding that she needs another one. And another one after that. Soon she would be hearing every opinion and story and bit of worldly and wise advice I had to offer. And she would forget about Potter.
I waited until I saw her drawing on a blank page to act.
Hello. I'm terribly sorry, but it seems as if our notebooks are connected.
What? Who are you? Where did you get your notebook?
When I found it, it was blank. I didn't need it but kept it anyway. Then when I rediscovered it, I opened it and there were your drawings and stuff. Just now I saw you drawing so I decided to talk to you. Who are you?
Oh. Well it doesn't seem fair for me to tell you who I am when you didn't tell me who you are. Have you looked at everything I've done here?
I understand. No, I just flipped through. I didn't think it would be right to invade your privacy.
Oh. Well.. thank you. How old are you?
Almost 18.
Oh. I'm 16. Will you tell me your name now?
No, I'd really rather keep it to myself.
Alright then. That's fine.
So you like Avada? They're one of my favorite bands.
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We continued writing all throughout the Christmas Hols. Soon enough, I wasn't writing to the girl I had obsessed over for months on end. I was just a boy, and I was just writing to a girl. She liked writing to me, and I liked writing to her.
We wrote even after Christmas was over and classes were back in session. I would stay up in my bed until well after midnight, and we would write as small as our hands would let us so that we wouldn't waste space. Every time I saw her at breakfast she would be tired, but smiling off into space. And I can safely say that that's when the sappy metaphors began.
That's also when I stopped staring contests with her. I just couldn't do it. I knew that once she looked at me, my heart would race and the muscles around my mouth would be itching to smile at her.
When I saw her in the corridors with Potter and his sidekicks, I wanted so badly just to tell her. To say, "Don't you know that it's me who makes you smile? Don't you know that I'm the one who you tell everything to? It's been me all along."
But I knew that if I did, everything would be over. This fragile relationship I created out of thin air would fall apart. She would stop talking to me, and I would become angry and scoff at her when she walked by me in the corridors and ridicule her about everything that I knew would break her. I knew exactly what to say to make her scream with emotional agony. And I never, ever wanted to do that to her. And it was all because I liked her. And I couldn't believe that I liked her.
It was about May when she began pressing me for my name. Literally every other question she would ask would be about my name. I always avoided it. Always. We had started to take our notebooks into the Great Hall during breakfast. I, of course, would pretend that I was just doing work. But whenever I would write something, I would look up to watch her face as she read it. It was the strangest but greatest feeling in the world, to know that I was the one making her face light up and that I was the one making her giggle like that. And nobody else got to see it or hear it but me.
What school do you go to?
What school do you go to?
I'll tell you, but you have to tell me too. Hogwarts.
Me too.
Really? Please, please pleeeaasse tell me your name.
I really don't want to.
I'll tell you mine. And then you HAVE to tell me yours.
No.
Fine. Well where are you right now?
Hello?
Are you still there?
I'm in the Great Hall.
Where did you go?
Me too.
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It would be a lie to tell you that I had meant to do that all along. That I was waiting for the right moment and had finally found it. My heart was beating so fast. Suddenly, she understood. I expected her to take one look at me, the evil Slytherin, and run as fast as her little legs could carry her. But instead, she slowly lifted her eyes to meet mine. And she smiled. And Merlin forgive me, I smiled back.
She stood up and slowly walked over to where I was sitting. I didn't know if time was going in slow motion, or if it was speeding up. I just knew that my intakes of breath had become ragged and shallow, and the feeling in my chest was so heavy and hurt so badly, but felt so good. And then she sat down at my table. She turned to face me, and I turned to face her. And then she smiled and said, "I know your name now."
I couldn't even talk. I don't know if I even wanted to talk. But I didn't have to, because I think she understood. She said, "Meet me tonight. By the lake, after dinner." And she stood up and turned to leave. But she stopped, turned back around, and kissed me on the cheek. And I swear to you, it felt like someone had burned a hole there. I was sure she'd left a mark. It was the weirdest feeling.
That night at the lake was the best night of my life. Everything I had ever felt before was breathed into her. She smelled like heaven and her body was warm and soft and perfect in my hands. I had never felt anything like it. I liked her so much. And she liked me back. And it was the best feeling in the world.
I stopped going to breakfast early. We stopped writing to each other. We met every night after dinner by the lake. Even when it rained. Every kiss was as good as the last and felt better than before. I don't know how that's possible, but that's what it was like.
And then one night, she didn't come. The next morning I went to breakfast, and she wasn't there. So I searched through the notebook for some kind of clue. And I found one.
Harry's asked me out. I'm so sorry.
I didn't cry; I learned long ago to never cry unless you got something out of it. There was nothing to get from crying over this. But it was hard. Because the pain in my chest increased, and the lump in my throat was cold and tight and getting bigger every second. And I tried to swallow it down, but swallowing hurt. And then my breath got ragged and my heart began pounding, but not in a good way like before. And I remembered when she annoyed me and then I remembered when I liked her and then when she finally liked me back. And I remembered all of her kisses and all of her whispers and touches. And I remembered the way that I would hold her and she would tell me that she didn't ever want me to let go. And I remembered how I didn't want to let go. And I smiled. But then I remembered the note she wrote me, and it hurt to smile.
I woke up early for breakfast everyday, and she was never there. I didn't expect her to be there. I went to the lake everyday, and she was never there. But I didn't expect her to be there either. And then the last day of school came. My last day of school ever. The last day I would ever see her again - ever see anyone again. All I wanted was to look at her one more time. To see those deep brown eyes that I once thought to be mousy and innocent. To run my fingers through the deep red hair that I once thought to be wild and annoying. I wanted to hear her sweet voice say, "I was wrong all along. You're the one." Because that's what I wanted to say to her. So I scanned the massive crowd that was boarding the train, and I didn't see her. And I spent my last time on the Hogwarts Express ever in a compartment completely alone. And I cried. For the first time in my God damned life, I cried my fucking heart out. Because I loved her. And I think I still do.
So here I am, using the last two pages of this journal to tell you how I feel. Because I did read your diary entries. And you deserve to know my name, because I knew yours all along.
It's Draco.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE – So, I hope that I got the point across and did the job I was supposed to do. Please leave detailed, and disgustingly lengthy reviews. They are greatly appreciated. Any constructive criticism will also be put to very good use. Thanks for reading, and don't forget TO REVIEW!