belonging
So, I got this idea when I was pondering why Draco hates muggles and mudbloods. This turned out darker than I pictured it but I like it all the same.
He sees a little girl clutching her mother's hand in the throng of passing people; his innocent, blameless gray eyes gleam as they trace the slightly pudgy edge of her jaw and the way her eyes seem to twinkle with golden sunlight.
They don't say hi; she doesn't even see him, only continues on her lovely way with her mother and her cropped pants and silver sweater that don't match and the pure, white rose she's tucked into her fingers.
A ball flies through the air, rotating in a whirling fashion. He's been handed a worn object called a glove - and what a filthy rag it is compared to all his finery - and told to catch the ball but he's not quite sure what they mean by the word 'baseball.'
And then the ball hits him right in the nose and there's blood spurting on the ground, staining the earth in a crimson sheen - since then blood always reminded him of foolishness - and they're laughing at him. Their taunts ring in his ears incessently and he's too embarrassed to say a word.
"What a wimp," they chorus and saunter off, leaving him to wilt on the ground. He doesn't like being weak.
Later, when he's sleeping under silken covers he suddenly feels better and his mother tells him that it was a miraculous recovery, quickly hiding an odd, shiny stick behind her skirts.
He's reading a book on the veranda when a familiar pair of golden eyes peep up at him from in between the wooden slats. Her mouse brown hair curls around her shoulders now, longer than it was when he first spotted her and she smiles at him, revealing a missing front tooth.
"Can I help you?" He asks, because his mother has always taught him to be polite - of course that doesn't mean he always listens to her because he doesn't.
She doesn't say a word, only reaching out to tug at his right hand - her fingers aren't nice and clean anymore; they're tarnished and covered with soot and she looks rather abandoned - and they play and play and play until the sun bleeds behind the horizon.
He determines they belong to each other.
The boys tease him about playing with a girl - they say he needs to grow up and quit acting like a toddler.
He's too scared - he always was cowardly - to tell them off because they're bigger and stronger and he doesn't want them to beat him up.
So he doesn't say anything at all.
(And later his father whaps him about the thighs for giving in to pressure, because Malfoys are supposed to be witty and unconquerable and his legs bruise and the bruise travels up his bloodstream and pounds into his heart, leaving a jagged scar.)
"You look lost." Those are the first words the mysterious girl ever tells him - he doesn't ever learn her name.
"What do you mean?" He wonders, smoothing back his luscious, blonde mane. "I live right here." He gestures towards his imposing home situated about twenty feet from their current position.
Shaking her head - and spilling her creamy hair over her shoulders to frame her porcelain skin too fragile to be normal in the process - she murmurs, "No, you look lost." And then she pats his chest where, just underneath the surface, his heart beats.
His parents tell him that he is a wizard, a powerful, magical being that roams the earth - but the one thing that sticks in his mind is that he is a pureblood and he is above everyone else.
So, naturally, he hexes the boys that taunted him while hiding behind some hydrangea bushes and is reprimanded by his mother for being so irresponsible.
It's worth the monotonous lecture to see the horrified expressions on the lads' faces.
"I get to go to a special school," he tells the mysterious girl with flowing hair one afternoon, a smile lighting his face - he doesn't smile very often so people learn to appreciate the times he does show a bit of joviality, "and learn about magic and I will be the best wizard in the whole world. Did you get the letter for Hogwarts, too?"
She only shakes her head at him, sadness lingering in the depths of her golden gaze, "There is no such thing as magic, Draco. If there were then my parents wouldn't have left me all alone. If there was magic my mommy and daddy wouldn't have stopped loving me."
He discovers that she is a muggle, a non-magical being. And the filth covering her shivering, frail body suddenly makes sense.
"They don't belong in this world," his father tells him one evening, "the filthy muggles."
He cowers in the corner, pictures of golden eyes and pale skin racing through his mind as he hears his pappa speak, "Why not, father?"
Lucius scowls, his eyebrows slanting down into a menacing frown, "They don't possess magic, Draco. They don't even believe in it. They are simply a waste of space."
He is too cowardly to tell his father that he doesn't hate muggles - after all, his friend is a muggle and he still cares deeply for her. But because he is scared he doesn't say a word and seals his fate.
When he heads away from his father's gloomy presence and into the flailing fingers of the ferocious storm outside, looking for his friend, all he discovers is a broken, once pure white, rose lying on the veranda in front of the door.
She never visits him again.
He lies there at night, refusing to let a single teardrop roll down his pallid cheeks, a mixture of sorrow and anger brewing in his chest.
"Stupid muggles," he hisses to himself, his brooding, silver eyes landing on the frosted window pane. "Who needs them?"
He won't think of those piercing, golden eyes in the way that he used too, with their peaceful charm and endless questions - now all he sees is eyes closed forevermore and sees himself pointing a wand at her blackened chest. In his dreams he has disposed of her corpse and buried her unfailing love and trust.
A single teardrop races down his face.
His parents drop him off at Platform 9 3/4 and they spot a boy with a dingy, checkered top, round glasses and green eyes waiting to board as well.
"That's the Chosen One," his father whispers into his ear. "He managed to defeat he-who-must-not-be-named. Try to get close to him." There is an edge to his father's tone that suggests malice, however.
Draco doesn't like the idea of a 'Chosen One.' It makes him feel inconsequential in comparison.
It's nearing Christmas of his first year at Hogwarts when he sees her for the last time.
His heart has already wrapped around the very essence of Slytherin itself - he feels dark, like a dank dungeon, and his heart constricts painfully with each breath, like he doesn't even deserve to breathe.
Her limp fingers curl around one of the common room window panes, the dirt exempt from her fingernails and her skin as pure as the white rose when she'd first held it as a child. Her creamy hair falls down her shoulders like a waterfall and her sightless, glassy eyes gaze into the sky, clear of any golden traces. Her spirit hums in the air and then vanishes with the rest of her beautiful soul up to the heavens.
He realizes she was trying to reach him, to find a fresh start, clothed in nothing but a thin, hole-infested rag.
Draco Malfoy slumps into the chair by the window where her deceased corpse rests, covering his head in his shaking hands as he cries over her for the last time. And with the slipping of his normally chilly exterior comes the freezing of his heart.
From then on he spits over the name of muggle, picturing the girl dancing in his mind with her golden, golden eyes and soft smile.
oO - the end - Oo