A/N: This is not another chapter to Saving Face. It's a sequel; very different things. It may be a four hundred word sequel to an eight hundred word story, but it's still a sequel. For those who have not read Saving Face, the idea is that Draco is a fourteen-year-old actor who was precocious enough to have made it through Hogwarts together. There was a prophecy stating that, to defeat Voldemort, Harry had to show his anger. To get him to do that, Dumbledore placed Draco as a first-year in the same year as Harry. If you want to know more, read the story! *smiles* Not that it's much longer than the summary... Anyhow, if you're wondering why the heck I'm writing a four hundred word story, it's because I have no patience for anything long, and I had nothing to say after four hundred words. Why do you think I'm a poet, anyway?
Disclaimer: Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, Hogwarts, and the four houses are creations of JK Rowling. If they were mine, do you think I'd be writing on this incredibly slow computer??? Noooo... Alaine and Harry's unnamed girlfriend are MINE! *grins evilly* I don't know who chivalry belongs to, but they were pretty stupid to confine it to knights and Gryffindors... Dragons belong to themselves (I feel sorry for you if you've told them otherwise...) and Athena belongs to herself. All hail Athena!
PS. The title belongs to Margaret Atwood- it's beautiful, couldn't help but purloin it! All hail Margaret Atwood, as well!
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It's all over now. All over. Blessed Athena, we can finally be free. Voldemort... Voldemort is dead. He's claimed so many lives... I don't know whether to be happy now or to cry my heart out.
Harry defeated him. That battle almost claimed his life. He will live, and be happy, marry his girlfriend, start a family. But I? I- What am I to do? I have been so long Draco Malfoy, the Draco Harry knows, so many years spent being somebody else. How can I become myself again?
I am eighteen- no, twenty-one. I have gone through Hogwarts twice, once as a Ravenclaw, once as a Slytherin. I could have been a Gryffindor, but knowledge is my raison d'être, my reason for existing. Chivalry is well and good, but knowledge is power. Knowledge is power, and acting is life.
I nearly fell apart this past year, nearly gave myself away. For seven years, I have been imprisoned in this Draconian mind, this pale and cruel body. And it was slowly driving me mad- never to laugh, except in scorn, never to help, never to love. Never to love... Alaine, Alaine, I hurt you. I know I hurt you... You saw beneath this mask, my beautiful Alaine, my beautiful Ravenclaw, and I denied it. How was I to know that this would drive you to- suicide. Or an attempt at it... My empath-love, you felt me, felt me and loved me even in the confines of this act, of this most unnatural of roles, you felt. And nearly died, and it would have been my fault. Mine, and Voldemort's, and the prophecy's... I would have lost you, Alaine. I had to wait until the outcome of the battle was sure, my love, to show myself. To even find myself. And it was almost too late... You have forgiven me, O lovely Alaine, but what if I am unable to be whole again? What if I am still Draco Malfoy, unbeautiful tormentor? You remind me that I am Dragon of Hogwarts, that this is the meaning of my name, and that dragons are strength and energy and so much power... But dragons are not infallible, even in the form of a dragon, and I am naught but a dragon in the form of a human in the guise of darkness.
Alaine... Alaine...