~ Choral Fantasie ~
Chapter One: That Potter Boy
Was sich drängte rauh und feindlich,
What was crowded together in chaos and hostility
ordnet sich zu Hochgefühl
Now shapes itself into exalted feeling
The source of his anger lay on the floor behind him in a crumpled ball. He turned around and kicked it, and it went flying, hitting the opposite wall and laying to rest next to the piano bench across the room.
He could still hear his father's ominous, booming voice, reciting the words of the letter that had arrived via one of the Malfoy family eagle owls during dinner that evening. He'd read and reread it so many times since then, crumpled and uncrumpled it so many times, that his father's enraged words had been branded with an angry "Morsmordre" onto his memory.
Draco –
Please be advised that you are never to disgrace me in front of everyone again like you did at our last meeting.
Please be advised that I have a reputation to uphold and that I am not going to stand for your inappropriate behaviour.
Please be advised that you are to do as I say without question or argument.
Know also that if you even think of continuing your filthy relationship with that Potter boy, of which – as you should know by now – I vehemently disapprove, then I cannot and will not consider you a member of my family any longer.
Do not ever disappoint me again. If you do, you know the consequences.
Your father,
Lucius Malfoy
Draco snorted in disgust. He walked over to the piano bench and, with one last kick at the letter, sat down and opened the piano lid.
He laid his hands delicately on the keyboard. The odd blue light coming from the full moon outside gave his skin a sickly pallor, and his throat contracted. He looked up and for a moment, he saw his father's face reflected in the sheen of the piano's finished-wood music stand. The image of Lucius Malfoy stared at him, then threw its head back and laughed sadistically. Draco's shoulders tensed in response and he slid forward on the piano bench.
"AAARRGHH!" Draco yelled. He raised his hands high, and sent them crashing down into an angry C minor chord.
The first chords that he played were deafeningly loud and filled with the fury that he'd been holding in all evening. The sound ricocheted against the stone walls of the oft-unused Hogwarts conservatory, a room that almost nobody knew about that he'd found one day during third year. This room was his saviour during these times of frustration. This piano was his ultimate release. God only knew how many times he'd been in there, playing Beethoven and crying. Crying in a secret room, alone, because to the rest of the world he never cried. Malfoys did not cry.
Hot tears streamed down his pale face as his father's words echoed through his mind. "Please be advised that I have a reputation to uphold… Please be advised that you are to do as I say… I cannot and will not consider you a member of my family any longer…"
He'd heard the words so many times before. The letters that Lucius sent all bore the same message, threatening him with what he knew would be torture, Unforgivable Curses, and other forms of physical harm, and more recently, disownment. But not once before had he actually mentioned "that Potter boy."
The last Death Eaters meeting was the first meeting Draco had consciously attended against his will. He'd gone to all of the others in the past without question, because it was something that was implicitly expected of him. He'd maintained the veneer of being the perfect, obedient son. But at the last meeting, things changed. Dramatically.
That Potter boy…
It was at that very meeting that his relationship with Harry was uncovered, in what he thought was the most painful and humiliating way possible.
Sometimes, it still made him wonder how Harry Potter, Saviour of the Wizarding World, could have possibly seen anything in someone so diametrically different from him. Draco Malfoy was for years his greatest enemy, a person who went out of his way to make his life miserable, and whose father had most likely been involved with the deaths of his parents fifteen years before. Nonetheless, Harry had been the first to see Draco for who he really was: a scared boy, oppressed by the unreasonable and often cruel expectations of his father, burdened with beliefs that he didn't agree with, and staggering under the strain of having to live up to the Malfoy family name. Draco nevertheless held his head high, because he was a Malfoy. And Malfoys did not back down before anybody.
Draco often wondered, Why me? I mean… we've always hated each other. Haven't we?
It was true, Draco had detested Harry for not accepting his offer of friendship on the Hogwarts Express during first year, and as a result had gone out of his way to make Harry's life a living hell. But as the years passed, he had come to realize that the real reason behind his anger was not because he'd been brought up to believe that anybody who refused the friendship of a Malfoy was a fool and an inferior, or because he'd been made to believe that to ally himself with the great Harry Potter would put him at an advantage over most of the wizarding community, but rather because he had truly wanted to be Harry's friend. Draco had wanted to be able to claim that he could count a celebrity among his friends, to be able to spend time with him, and as the years passed, to be with him. But Harry had refused, in favor of a friendship with that… that Weasley.
Draco had never wanted anyone's friendship more than he wanted Harry's. There was a certain mystique behind the Boy Who Lived, the poor Muggle-raised orphan who defeated Voldemort's curse, who didn't even know he was a wizard until two months before he was to begin at Hogwarts. Something that made Draco want to get to know Harry, that made him want to uncover the person behind the legend. Something that inspired feelings of… well, there was no other word for it: attraction.
But he didn't like boys.
Or did he?
Truth be told, he'd shared a few kisses with Millicent Bulstrode, and even had a snog session or two in the North Tower with Pansy Parkinson, but all the while his thoughts kept drifting back to Harry. Always Harry. There was just something about him, that skinny boy with the messy hair and the bright green eyes, standing there in his too-big clothes, exuding an aura of simple, pure goodness, that ignited something in Draco's soul that had been unknown to him until then. And it was something he'd only recently begun to understand.
It was a spark of feeling. A spark of desire. A spark of… love?
Draco sighed wistfully.
Harry.
Since their relationship began approximately two years before – Draco sometimes couldn't remember how or when exactly it began - Harry had shown him how to be good, and had given him the courage to renounce everything that he'd been brought up to believe. Through Harry's eyes and with Harry's guidance, Draco learned to see things differently.
But his father was still unable to accept that.
Draco cringed inwardly as he remembered the look on Lucius' face on the day he had found a letter from Harry under Draco's pillow, full of sweet words that Draco could almost taste on his lips. Lucius had given him a dirty look of disappointment, anger, and betrayal. For someone who strongly advocated hiding one's feelings from others, Lucius was certainly bad at doing so himself.
"You are a disgusting embarrassment to the Malfoy family name. Do you want to ruin us? You… and that Potter boy…"
It was always "that Potter boy."
Now thoroughly lost in the music and his thoughts, Draco's slender fingers played the notes of Beethoven effortlessly, thoughtlessly, and yet full of the emotion that he was never able to display openly.
I'm sick of being a puppet to my father's desires and expectations. I'm being drawn against my will into a vicious circle of cruelty that will never end if I don't do anything about it. Now more than ever before, it's important that I show my father what I truly am, and who I really want to become.
But how?
The scene from the Death Eaters meeting came back to him in that instant, taunting him, but somehow he found something… reassuring about those words that he'd spoken.
"Father, don't make me do this," Draco whispered, not daring to look into Lucius' eyes.
"Draco. You are to do as I say without question. I realize that it's a little earlier than we anticipated, but I
Draco straightened up and lifted his gaze to meet Lucius' cold and emotionless silver-grey stare. He took a deep breath and said, "If being the heir to the Malfoy family name means being your precious little Death Eater puppet creation, then I won't have it. I've learned the hard way, with all your Crucio's and Imperio's and mental abuse – that that's not the kind of life I want for myself. I've learned, with the help of… well, some people, to look at my life from a different perspective. I know better now. I don't want to be part of that vicious circle of evil you've created. I won't follow you blindly, and I won't bow down to your expectations any longer. You once told me that Malfoys never bow down to anyone. Well, I'm going to take your advice and not bow down to you. I'm going to follow my heart. I want to make something good of myself."
"Damn you! It's because of that Potter boy, isn't it?" Lucius yelled in his son's face.
Draco said nothing.
"Answer me!"
"And what if it is?" Draco said quietly, with no hint of malice or rebelliousness in his voice. "What if I know something you don't? What if I know how it is to be in love?"
"Don't you ever talk to me that way!" Lucius bellowed. "No son and heir of mine will be a dirty fucking faggot!"
He raised his wand and leveled it at Draco's solar plexus.
The Death Eaters standing in the outer circle laughed sadistically as Draco screamed in agony and writhed in pain on the ground in the middle of their circle. Draco heard, indistinctly, voices all around him talking, like a whirlwind of spirit voices – reproving, judging, condemning.
"Did you hear that, Macnair? Young Malfoy, and Harry Potter? Can you believe that someone, especially a Malfoy, would dare stoop so low?"
"Right – who'd have thought? You must be so proud, Nott, that your children turned out better than that."
Crabbe Sr. – or was it Goyle Sr.? – grunted an unintelligible response.
Voldemort himself joined in with a high-pitched cackle that chilled Draco to the bone.
After what seemed like an eternity, Draco fuzzily perceived a soft, sibilant voice: Voldemort was speaking.
"Luciussss, that isss enough.
Draco tried to push himself up with one arm, but the Cruciatus Curse had drained him of his strength and he collapsed to the ground.
His face landed in a pool of wetness.
Lucius bent down and kissed the hem of Voldemort's robes. "You are merciful and most great, My Lord." When he straightened up, his face was flushed with what was unquestionably a combination of anger and embarrassment. He then rounded on Draco, who backed away. His eyes flashed menacingly in the moonlight.
"That Potter boy…"
Draco mustered up all of the strength he could, and pulled himself to his feet and faced his father bravely. He stumbled slightly, but steadied himself and glared daggers at Lucius. Now, when he spoke, there was an unmistakable note of defiance in his voice.
"You leave Harry out of this!"
Harry.
Draco saw, in his mind's eye, Harry laughing at something that Draco had said, Harry racing by him on his Firebolt in scarlet Quidditch robes as he angled for the Golden Snitch, Harry waking up next to him in the morning, with the early morning sunlight shining on his beautiful, toned body…
He pushed up the sleeves of his black cashmere sweater, revealing two unmarked porcelain arms.
Lucius hadn't won. And Lucius wouldn't win.
The storm of chords slowly calmed as his anger subsided. His shoulders relaxed, and he let out the breath he realized that he'd been holding.
Draco breathed deeply, and let his hands dance deftly over two, three, four octaves in a series of arpeggios. The force of his frustration was returning as his fateful words entered his mind again.
He'd unleashed a demon at that meeting. There was his most guarded secret, thrust out into the open like an article of dirty laundry. His father knew it, and the Death Eaters knew it too. And now, even Voldemort himself knew that he had the makings of a traitor within his next pool of Death Eater recruits. Draco had never wanted to be a Death Eater anyway. In the past, his father would have told him to do something and he'd have just gone and done it. That meant that Draco grew up with the notion that he would become a Death Eater just like his father, without question or argument. But his heart was really never in it. His aversion to the Death Eaters was sealed when Harry happened.
Draco's breathing slowed and became less ragged. The delicate melody he played on the piano matched the falling of the snow outside. Everything seemed peaceful. His mind felt at ease whenever he went to the conservatory, which he had named his "secret hiding place" long ago.
But there was something that still kept niggling him in the back of his mind. Something that just wouldn't go away.
"Do not ever disappoint me again."
Draco started as he thought of those words and his anger returned. Disappointment? How dare he! He always says that I've been nothing but a disappointment to my family. I've tried so hard to do everything right, and somehow it's never good enough. If what I'm doing isn't good enough for him, I don't know what is. I'm second in my year at Hogwarts, I'm top of my class in Potions, I'm the Captain and Seeker of the Slytherin Quidditch team, I play the piano at every party my parents give – hell, I've even gone on a date with Pansy "Arseface" Parkinson - but I've never really been allowed to live a life of my own. It's always whatever my bloody father wants. All of this is what my bloody father wants. I can't even remember one time when I've done something for myself and been truly happy.
At that last thought, his rage ebbed slightly, and began to dissipate. What replaced his feeling of anger in the tumult of emotions plaguing his fevered brain was a feeling of lonely dejection.
I've never known true happiness in my whole life.
Tears threatened to fill his eyes again, but he blinked them back valiantly. Draco sensed a stirring in the back of his mind as a memory rose to the surface of his consciousness. His tears receded and he managed a weak smile.
The hard expression on Draco's face softened completely as his memory called to him. That's not true, it seemed to say. Come with me. Let me show you something.
Come with me and let me show you that in your life you