"You have your mother's eyes."
The sound floated down the hall in the form of Flitwick's whining voice, and Draco had to wonder just how the Golden Boy had sucked up this time. Golden Boy, Smolden Boy, he thought mockingly. Teacher's pet more like. And if he has his mother's eyes I have my fathers' everything. But only Harry Potter gets praised for being like his parents, parents who got themselves freaking killed by the Dark Lord. Weaklings.
"Potter!" Draco called, as the teacher's pet himself emerged from the Charms room with a faint smile on his face. Potter ignored him to throw a quiet "Thanks" over his shoulder at Flitwick, then turned, the emotion vanished. And that is what I can do, Draco thought smugly. How many can HURT our Golden Boy? And yet I can do it without effort.
"Hearing about your very dead parents?" Draco sneered, leaving no room for comment before he went on. "All that's left of them—some colors in your face. Enjoy it, Potter!"
Potter's face darkened, but he didn't respond. Draco almost frowned, but recovered and kept the sneer in place. We're alone here, Draco noticed rapidly. Crabbe and Goyle just left me for lunch, and Harry's goons just abandoned him too. Probably don't want to hear Flitwick's gloating, Draco established, straightening up even further. But it was the first time in quite a while that they were completely alone. Forever, maybe.
Potter began walking towards him, and Draco actually backed up a step before admonishing himself. Malfoys do not yield! his mind screeched, and Draco's brow furrowed angrily before flattening into the dignified smirk that was expected of him. But why is Potter coming? And why didn't he respond? Questioning for a second, Draco calmed and gave it up as Potter just being his horrible self. He turned on his heel and stalked off towards the Great Hall, because it was lunchtime, and he was hungry.
Hurrying steps followed him, and soon he and Potter were walking side by side, his arms swinging slightly and eyes looking away through the walls at something distant that no one else could see. Draco did frown at this. Obviously, Potter had finally lost his mind—he was Draco Malfoy, and Draco Malfoy did not walk with anybody. Draco lengthened his steps slightly, but as Potter's feet shadowed, Draco resolved himself to his usual walk. He would get rid of him later. A Malfoy did not hurry-- they strolled.
"You know, when I was younger, I played a game." broke the silence, and Draco turned abruptly to the tilted dark head of the boy besides him. "It was a good game, still is, I suppose, difficult, lasts a while, used up time."
There was a short pause, and Draco was left staring incredulously at the Boy-Who-Lived. Well, this was certainly unexpected. A little more information, and it would be perfect. Draco listened eagerly, looking for possible weaknesses he could probe at later—or now, if the opportunity arose.
Potter seemed almost to be unaware Draco was present, and went on rambling, still with that faraway, distant look to him, though Draco couldn't see his face. He considered moving to Potter's other side, but when Potter began again, he decided to concentrate on the important—words had power, as he well knew.
"Most people don't consider that a good game, I suppose," Potter stated doubtfully, "long-term games, I mean. But I think those are the best ones. The rewards come in gradually, you know. You know?" Potter swiveled his head to meet Draco's, and Draco nodded attentively. "Go on," he said.
Potter ignored the comment, but his head listed back to the side and he continued on in his own time. "I called it the My Parents Love Me game."
My Parents LOVE me game?
"Every day, in my cupboard," Potter blew over Draco's uneasy snort, "I'd try to think up the perfect answer. This was my favorite game, so I did a lot of thinking. Every night, I'd try something new, and every day, I'd watch Aunt Petunia. Uncle didn't know my parents, so he wasn't important."
Potter sniffed through his nose, and the wheezing sound was loud in the quiet only broken by their footsteps. Draco's nose wrinkled—the least Potter could do was try not to get him sick. He was listening to him after all… though he wasn't sure he wanted to. "But Aunt Petunia knew them, or at least mom." Potter interrupted, and Draco reluctantly focused.
"So every day I'd change something about myself. I didn't get to see mirrors most of the time, but Dudley always told me what I did, so that wasn't a problem. My nose even turned blue with pink spots one day. They all screamed." Potter had a fond smile on his face, and this was starting to feel creepy. But now that Draco was here, he couldn't leave. It was enrapturing in a spooky, malicious way—and more than unease settled in Draco's stomach at that thought.
"But eventually I got it right." Potter said. "Eventually you always do. I learned that early on, that you can succeed at games with enough time and patience. And I got a good answer to the game."
Potter was quiet for a long time after this.
Draco interrupted the musing silence. "What was the answer?" Draco asked civilly, beyond horrified at his action but needing to know. "How do you win your Parents Love You game?"
"Oh, you don't win," Potter cut in dismissively, shaking his head lightly and coming out of whatever resided in his head. "It doesn't work that way in long games. But I got my greatest success. Because all you need to do to play is to get the most people in the whole wide world to talk about your family, your real family, without bringing it up. It's fun."
And Potter's face finally turned towards him, the first deliberate action in all this cursed talk. His hand rose to his scar, and for the slightest second, the smallest amount of time Draco had ever been forced to see and process and be done with something, Potter's eyes flicked brown. A light, normal, pleasing brown that made his face glow and look like a ordinary teenage boy, instead of the uptight Boy-Who-Lived, responsible for the Wizarding World.
It looked nice.
And then it was over, and Potter lowered his hand and smiled absently and seemed to come to himself. Grey eyes were left staring deep into glazed green, a green that Draco had never noticed never quite smiled, never quite showed anything. A green with a film of blankness and white and artificialness that he bet no one had ever noticed before.
"What are you looking at?" Potter barked, and Draco looked at him blankly.
"Why are your eyes green?" he asked back.
There was a startled silence, and then the softest of the absent look Draco had been shown all this time returned.
"They're Lily's eyes."
Draco's step faltered. Harry's hand strayed upward and Draco heard a horrified accidental magic! ring in his brain. Harry's eyes flickered—green and brown, green and brown, green and for the quickest three seconds it took Potter to speak on brown…
"Do you want to play?"
Draco shook his head frantically.
Potter's hand fell. And his eyes turned green.