On Windows and Reflections
Disclaimer: This isn't really mine, because you see JKR own Harry Potter, and last time I checked my name did not begin with J, or K, or R. Sad, really, but unavoidable.
A/N: Read at the back because what I want to say will ruin the story. Though if you've been around for any length of time, you'll recognize the metaphor immediately.
The other day I was tidying up my house when I looked through a window and saw a man.
He was a tired man, with blond hair that looked unkempt, uncared for, so different from its previous immaculate state in Hogwarts, and gray eyes that looked as if they had seen too much, known too much, born so much more than a man of his age should have to carry. His shoulders were slightly slumped, and some of that famous pride of his was gone from his spine.
He looked as though he could stand to gain some weight, and his clothes, of fine quality but worn out, faded, wrinkled, as though he just didn't care anymore, hung loosely on his spare frame, though you could tell that they had once been fitted to him by skilled tailors, and his face was pale and gaunt.
It was the face of a man who been through so much. From his earliest memories, he had never been a child—never allowed to be a child. His childhood was stolen away from him before he ever saw it, miniature adults following full-sized adults around the house, playing at being adult with long words and grave faces and tiny wands, complicated spells that got messed up and then Father yelled at you, with cold stern eyes watched dispassionately as the house-elves hit you, blue eyes that were so disappointed and full of love or was that all a lie?
There is a little boy crying because he has been pushed, violently, out of a second-floor window. No time to see it coming—only two, strong, firm, capable hands wrapping around his little shoulders and push!—out the window, he has landed on his side, rolled to hands and knees, and his clothes are dirty with rocks and mud embedded in them. Hands and knees scraped, skin clinging to his palm by the tiniest bit, blood running in rivulets down his legs, caked dust and mud and tears on his cheeks.
Lucius, standing over him, his face cold and stern, eyes unreadable: "Could you not have used your magic to save you, Draconis? No spell you could have used to halt your fall?"
Never mind that he is only four, never mind that there was barely time to yell, let alone formulate a spell.
He is a Malfoy, and that is both reason and fault for all.
Narcissa, crouching, throwing him scraps of affection, her face filled with disappointment. "Could you not at least try to please your father? Just once? For me?"
Later he overhears her commiserating with Lucius: "He's a lazy boy, shy, too easily intimidated and gulled. Definitely not worthy of a Black—or a Malfoy."
That day he cries himself to sleep.
On the day he was to enter his new school, he was frightened and confident, eager and reluctant. His mausoleum of a house is nowhere he will miss, not the overdone luxury, not the stale dignity, not the empty meaningless grandeur that rings so hollow. Nor will he miss his parents save like that of a well-trained dog missing its master though he kicks and spurns it with meaningless curses. It is the familiarity he will miss, the knowledge that he possesses the ability to make it through the day without breaking a rule if he really tries, only here he doesn't know any of the rules. And it is the same unfamiliarity that he so dreads that he looks forward to, anticipates with the hungry fire of a survivor.
"You'll soon find out that some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."
He is eater; this is the boy he has been told to befriend; this is something he knows all about—
Hours of poring over dusty tomes that are bigger than he is, struggling to lift them and place them neatly—"Gently, Draconis, gently, a Malfoy never thuds"—on the table, turning huge pages and determining rank after rank.
"The Weasleys and Prewetts are blood traitors, never commune with them."
"The Parkinsons are highly acceptable; make sure to befriend their daughter Pansy, who is your age of course at school. While I am aware that you two are already acquainted, it will never hurt to make alliances, even at your age."
"If I discover that you have ever been communicating with a Mudblood, the consequences will be dire."
—but the strange black-haired boy turns up his nose and says,
"I think I can tell the wrong sort for myself, thanks," he goes against all the rules of etiquette, common sense that he has ever been taught, but Lucius still punishes him for the dark boy's rejection, day after day standing upright in the corner with a stack of tomes on his head, no sleep, no food, no rest, just time time time blurring before his eyes until he starts to see stars dancing on the edge of his vision and then everything goes black. He wakes up and is beaten by the house elves, additional twenty stripes for passing out.
And he hates Harry Potter with all his heart.
School was no different from his home after all, only more study and more pressure and more need to remain cool, calm, a Malfoy at all times, and more urge to win at everything.
But he is always beaten—sags, hollows under his eyes from memories that keep him up at night—by his nemesis, three of them, until they blur in his mind, beating him collectively in Quidditch, schoolwork, fame, popularity, everything and everyone, until the whole world is a series of beatings, from the Trio at school and from his father at home and fake tears and sorrows from his mother in between.
And finally among them all one emerges as his main focus of hatred—the dirty Mudblood who beats him at everything. The Golden Boy is a half-blood, powerful, defeater of the Dark Lord, and he can respect that; the Weasel is uncertain, ineffective, and there is no threat from him but that of friendship. It is the Mudblood who beats him at the two things that really matter anything to him anymore: insults and grades.
"The Mudblood got better grades than you did, did she? Well then, I would like to introduce you to your new home, Draconis."
The dungeons are cold and cruel, and he bitterly regrets all the taunts of his about prisoners languishing in the 'basement.' They are far, far worse than his fourteen year old mind could ever imagine, and he stares off into nowhere as he hangs from his chains, iron and mental.
Scars on his wrists, shiny and smooth in the shape of a cuff, and a permanent indenture around his waist where the waist ring was locked, memoirs of a time he would rather forget stares out, and I wince in—not pity, for he would hate pity, but commiseration.
There is a ugly splotch on his left forearm, a black brand marring the pale ashen sickly beauty, a skull with a snake, hideous, irreversible.
Pain, more pain than he could ever imagine, screams that rang in his ears, and he wishes they would stop—make it stop, make it go away!—until he realizes that the screaming is his, unfamiliar, ripped from a throat that feels alien to his disembodied conscience, and through it all, cold grey eyes and cold blue eyes and hideous red eyes staring through the fog in his mind.
His new master, willing to sacrifice him as though he were nothing, thinking that he would never know—but he knows…he always knows…
"They thought I'd die in the attempt.."
Yes, he knows, and it stings…that his life is worth nothing to so many people, even his new liege lord.
"You're in my power…I'm the one with the wand…you're at my mercy…"
"Draco, Draco…you are not a killer…"
"You don't know what I'm capable of, you don't know what I've done!"
Childish, silly, stupid words, and they still ring in his ears and haunt his dreams, and I see their ghost swimming in his eyes, and know that they haunt him still, the vanity of his youth, and that they will for the rest of his life.
He has multiple scars on his torso, on his legs, even one faint, almost invisible silvery line that traces his jawbone and under his ear, reminders of a time when everything was run run run, and it was all about survival, of living another day, and of staying alive.
He is an outlaw on both sides, from one because he failed to kill Dumbledore, from the other because he tried. Tried and failed, and for that he is hunted, worth exactly twenty Galleons. It feels pathetic to be worth nothing but some gold to some greedy petty low-class wizard.
Maybe—he thinks—maybe he can appeal for sanctuary from the Order, maybe their stupid Gryffindor goodwill, which he has so often ridiculed, might save his life.
And so, because all he can think about is living, he staggers to Number 12 Grimmauld Place, hoping against hope that they will let him in, or he will fail and this time, there will be no Snape to save him, and he will die. And despite all that has happened, he still wants to live. Maybe it is his fighting instinct, maybe it is the 'hope which springs eternal in the human breast,' maybe it is simply his Malfoy stubbornness.
But he will not die like some common beggar on the street, his body left for the dogs to eat.
And so he staggers on.
He was not well received, but there are no marks of that on his body. Even to their enemy, they were not as cruel as the Death Eaters, and the bruises, the cuts, the abrasions and the spells left no mark. None save that to his mind, and who can see or comprehend that—and if it is not seen, who is to say that it is for real?—and if it cannot be proved, why not?—he is only a Death Eater—only Malfoy.
"Only a Death Eater—"
"Only a Malfoy—"
"Only Malfoy—"
Draco! He wants to shout. Not only! Draco! But no one listens.
And he is left in his aloneness in a small little room, confined, up in the attic, with no one to talk to and no one who will listen, alone with his thoughts and his hate and his misery.
Alone with himself.
There is no physical mark for this one, no look in his eyes for this experience, no sag in his shoulders or lack of sleep—though in a sense, all his lack of sleep could be attributed to her—but I know that she is the one who has left the most mark on him, because she is all that has kept him alive for so long.
"I still hate you, Malfoy. This doesn't change that in any sort of way. I just thought you should know that I'm sorry your parents are dead. No one deserves that—even you."
"I'm not."
"What?"
"Sorry that my parents are dead. They deserved that."
He tells himself that he wasn't angling for pity—for curiousity, but he knows and I know better. Anything to make her stay, her, the only human company he'd had for weeks, never mind that she was a dirty Mudblood and Granger to boot, never mind that Father had told him that he would kill him if he caught him consorting with one of her kind. Father was dead anyway, look where all his high-tone mentality had got him now.
I wonder if he has regretted it yet. He doesn't know.
"I still hate you, Malfoy. This doesn't change that in any sort of way. But I thought you might like something to read. I know I would."
"Jane Austen? Never heard of her."
"She's a Muggle."
"A Muggle? But—"
"But what, Malfoy?"
Anything rather than lose the last thing keeping him sane.
"Nothing."
And the books aren't so bad after all, even though of course he would rather die than tell her that.
He kept those books in his bookcase for the longest time until he burned them in a fit of anger. The ashes flew up and dotted his neck with little burn scars, hardly noticeable unless you looked for them, seasoning his neck and even his arm with remnants of hope and a better life replaced by hate.
"I still hate you, Malfoy. This doesn't change that in any way. This concerns you though, so I thought I should tell you. Harry only has one more Horcrux left. After that, he can kill Voldemort. It's almost over."
Of course he knows what Horcruxes are. How could he not, being who he is and living where he has for almost two years, even though he has been secluded.
He nods, and doesn't know what else to do to show his gratitude. But she understands anyway.
That was the best thing about her—she understood him like no one else could, ever had, would ever take the trouble to try to. Now that she is gone, nobody understands him either.
Nobody sees the scars on his arm like she would, scars caused by insomnia and nightmares and self-loathing and a Malfoy dagger that he managed to rescue from the Aurors that scoured his ancestral family home.
Nobody sees the pain in his eyes like she would, pain caused by lack of her and lack of love and lack of life, pain that brews like a festering storm.
Nobody but me.
"I still hate you, Malfoy. This doesn't change that in any way. But it's over, Draco, the war is over, Harry did it, he won, and we're all free—what?"
"You called me Draco."
"I did?"
"You did."
And then he is kissing her, or is she kissing him? He's not sure of anything anymore, only that her lips on his like he has wanted them to be for every of the single thousand little encounters he has had with her in three years in this tiny room, and the world spins and blurs in light of that fact.
She breaks off and looks at him, breathless. Her brown hair is mussed in a halo around her face and he thinks that she looks like an angel.
"I still hate you, Draco. This doesn't change that in—"
"Any way, I know," he finishes for her, and doesn't even bother to contradict that, because his victory was final in the moment she said Draco instead of Malfoy, and he sees no reason to inform her of that.
He had teeth marks on his lip for the longest time after that kiss. There are still faint scars on his lips if you squint, preserved by a spell meant for one's enemies, to remind them of their injuries. This is for a different reason, and he never tells her, but the scars remain, and I can see them now, silver and rounded and in an irregular pattern over the red of his mouth.
For a brief time after that, he was deliriously happy. The War was over, and he could breathe again, walk in the park and hold hands with his love and drink in the fresh sunshine.
And then the delicious intoxication was gone, replaced by awful sobriety, and changes were implemented. Having been bamboozled once, the Ministry was determined that they would not look like fools again, and so law after law, stricture after stricture was rewritten and put in place.
Anyone using Dark Arts was automatically apprehended and sent to Azkaban, with no courtesy trial.
Anyone who could speak Parseltongue (besides our glorious hero Harry Potter of course) or who had any other Dark gift was to turn themselves in for trial immediately.
Anyone with a Dark wand (werewolves' hairs, thestral hairs, etc.) were to snap it immediately and replace it as soon as possible.
Anyone who had Dark family connections was to give a record of them immediately to the Ministry, and report for examination twice a year for five years.
Anyone with a Dark Mark was to be given the Kiss, with no exceptions.
The man had all five. Dark Arts. He had grown up with them. Dark gift. Compulsion and possession. Dark wand. His old wand, taken by Potter, had been replaced with a thestral hair one. Dark family connections. His father had been the Dark Lord's right hand man. Dark Mark. On his left forearm, staring at me through the window at this very moment.
"I won't let them take you!"
"You can't do anything about it, Granger. Face the facts. I'm Draco Malfoy. Who's going to support me?"
"I will! I'm Harry Potter's best friend…besides Ron…that's got to count for something, right?"
"I don't know, Hermione. I really don't know."
It did. He stayed alive and out of Azkaban, minus his wand, and on condition that he turn in for a routine check-over once a year for ten years.
He's missed five of them now, but for some reason, nobody has come to drag him off to Azkaban. Perhaps they think he's dead.
Or maybe they just don't care. After all, they must have better things to do than chase an ex-Death Eater who didn't really do anything anyway.
And he could have been happy like that.
"I cannot believe this!"
"Why not, Ronald?"
"You—you're fraternizing with the enemy, that's what, and this time I'm not fourteen years old!"
"Ronald—"
"You said you loved me. Were you lying?"
"N-nno, I was only—"
"Only what?"
"I was confused—I didn't know what I was—I thought—for God's sake, Ronald, please, leave me alone!"
"Fine."
For once, he kept his word. Literally. She would pace up and down as the months went by and he never contacted her once. Neither did his family, and the Chosen One was too busy being the Chosen One and staying Ron's friend to visit her.
The man watched helplessly as she grew thinner and thinner and the circles under her eyes grew larger and larger. She moved restlessly about the tiny flat he had rented with the little monthly allowance from his once huge Malfoy funds.
Nobody would hire him, and so he lived off the government's sense of guilt—they were confiscating so much from his vaults, surely they could give him something?—and loyalty to someone who had after all been Harry Potter's best friends.
The man grew thinner with her, and even now as I look at him, he has never regained the weight he lost.
"Eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"How could you not be hungry? You haven't eaten in days."
"There's nothing to eat."
He hisses, and she glances at him sharply. "Oh, did I hurt your pride? I'm so sorry. Face it, Malfoy, there's nothing you can do for me, nothing for me to eat, nothing to do, and all because of you!"
"Me?!"
"Yes, you, damn you, damn you to hell, if I'd never agreed to marry you, never agreed to come here and live with you, I'd still be in the Burrow with Harry and Ron, with three good meals a day, with my FRIENDS, instead of this miserable hovel with no food and no friends and no nothing."
"What, I'm not good enough for you anymore? Is that it?"
"What if it is?"
Her challenge hangs in the air, and he turns sharply away from her and walks out the door. For a moment she hesitates as though she would apologize, run after him and call him back, but she is too tired and too lonely, and he is too hurt and too proud.
Later that night she comes to him while he lies awake staring at the ceiling and whispers, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry Draco, I know how it feels, I'm your wife, I never meant to hurt you so, I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry," but he stares at the ceiling and does not answer.
So many empty fights. So many petty arguments. So many squabbles started over nothing in particular, like all love quarrels do. Stupid now that he thinks on it, and he wishes vainly that he could recall that heedless word, that spiteful phrase. Too late.
Too late for too many things.
"I'm sorry."
"For what?"
She is twisting her hands and will not look at him. Vaguely he wonders what she did, but cannot muster up the energy to ask. Too tired; too drained to care much.
Her head lifts, and her eyes meet his in a sudden flash of defiance and honesty, and he realizes with a sinking feeling that it is not for something that she has done for which she is apologizing, but for something which she will do, and intuition follows insight, and it dawns on him what she is planning to do even before she says it.
"I'm leaving."
There are extra hollows under his eyes, extra scars on his arms for those words that echo over and over in his head, like a scratchy CD that has caught on the wrong place and spins round and round in the player, on that same spot, over and over and over and over…
He threw those pants and robes he was wearing that day away. They were his favorite, and since he has never cared much about what he wears. His clothes are black, black as they have been since that day he couldn't bear to wear green anymore…or red…that was her color, the two colors that were keeping them apart.
Black scratchy robes with holes and wrinkles all over them. I would wrinkle my nose in distaste but that I understand, all too well, what would drive a man to such militant indifference.
"Come back."
"No."
"Come back."
"No."
"Goddamn it Hermione, why won't you come back with me?"
"You know why."
He did know why.
Too many empty hours spent staring at the fireplace. Too many nights with tossing and turning. Too many long days with nary a word passed between him or her. Too many minutes spent longing for even a single owl from her friends. Too much too much too much. Too much water under the bridge.
He bought her flowers. He bought her clothes. He bought her jewelry, spent the last of his money on things to win her back, something, anything he could do, because apparently he was no longer good enough.
"Please Draco, for God's sake, please, don't do this."
"I can't stop. You know I can't stop."
She did know.
"Please, can't you see you're killing me, you're killing me everytime you bring me something, and I remember how much you know me and love me and how much I—"
"Love me. Say it. Why can't you say it? Why won't you say it, dammit?"
"I can't."
"Why? For God's sake Hermione, this is hurting me too! Come back to me!"
"I can't, Draco, I CAN'T! I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry, I'm sorry a million times over, I'm sorry more than you'll ever know, but—Harry and Ron are my friends, Draco."
"What about me?"
You're not enough. The words, unspoken, hung in the air nevertheless as heavily as though they had been spoken, and after a long minutes, while time and universe hung suspended, he turned away.
He did not come back.
That was the day he started to prepare. It was only little by little at first, but as time pressed on he hurried faster and faster, a frenzied sense of urgency pervading his life. Cleaning the house frantically, dusting, washing dishes, cleaning doorknobs, throwing away everything but basic necessities. Even, he ate a little, though not enough to regain all the weight he had lost.
And buying certain things. An owl. Parchment , quills, and ink. Only one owl, because he had only one person whom he really wanted to know.
And his dagger lying on the tabletop, shiny and polished as it had been when he was five and staring at it with wide eyes while Lucius explained to him why it was so dangerous, and how sharp it was, and that he should never, never touch it, until he was old enough and could go fight next to Father like a big boy.
I see it next to him now, he is touching it, no, he is holding it, cradling it with a caressing white hand like a child, or a pet dog that he is particularly fond of, then putting it down on the table and staring at it wonderingly.
And I know this too.
I know that today, right now, he is about to slit his wrist cleanly with the dagger. I know that he has already cast a pain-numbing charm on him with his wand, that he has bundled it with a few other personal effects and sent it with a note by the owl he bought—an eagle owl, to remind him of the one who had died in the War—to his wife (they never really divorced, he thinks, but then since he's about to die it doesn't really matter now, she'll be a widow, Widow Granger, how quaint). And I know that he is the happiest he has been in years now.
How do I know this? The answer is really quite simple. The window is a mirror, and the man is me, and the knife is sitting on the tabletop below me.
And I am picking it up now, caressing it yet again, and drawing it neatly across my wrist.
Only the faintest touch will do. Father always said it was very sharp.
I've done it.
How strange.
I've actually done it.
I've committed suicide. A Malfoy. Father will be rolling in his grave right now.
Hermione, I loved you.
Finis
Post A/N: This window/mirror thing has been floating around for quite a while now. Too long actually, and of course I needed to use this cliché like every other writer around. I don't know who exactly first came up with it, but my compliments to that writer and my sincere regrets for mangling the way I have!
Oh, and the 'hope which springs eternal in the human breast' is from Casey At the Bat by Earnest Lawrence Thatcher.