just a boy


Sometimes he tries to remember the boy he used to be.

A boy who could smile and laugh and run and love, even though he didn't show it. A boy who'd never had to watch everyone he ever knew shrivel up and crumble and die. A boy who'd never been scared, so completely and so totally, so horribly, that he could feel himself slowly turning mad.

And sometimes he gets glimpses of that boy, snapshots, lifelines that he thinks are the only thing protecting what's left of his sanity, what's left of him.

But more often than that, they're too far to grasp, protected by a barbed-wire fence of madness and loss and fear, that etches pain into him so deeply whenever he reaches out. And so he sits, listening to the insanity of his aunt, the anger of his father, the emptiness of his mother. And it's always silent, but the noise is too loud, too much and it's all he ever hears, sees, feels.

Sometimes he tries to think of a future where he is the boy he wants to be.

A boy who cares and is cared for, loves and is loved and is so happy that there is no room in his head for anything else. A boy who goes to sleep with someone beside him at night, anyone, as long as he knows that they won't ever leave.

Because that is what he is the most afraid of. Because that nightmare comes true every day of his not-quite-a-life.

He watches his father disappear, replaced by a poor imitation of the man that he knew and looked up to and who let him know how very very proud he was. This new man is all cold words and cold laughter and a strange, cold look in his eyes. This man roars and bellows and yells and rages, all in a quiet, steely voice that tells him how very very disappointed he is.

He watches his mother fade, turn into a ghost of the woman who gave him warm hugs and kind smiles and who he would run to for comfort and who he knew would die for him in a heartbeat and whose eyes held nothing but love. But you can't seek solace from shadows, and she can't die for him because she has no life left in her, and now her eyes show him nothing, nothing at all, except a small flicker of madness he never thought he'd see there.

And he is glad of the fact that no one is ever going to leave again, but he mourns the fact that there is no one left to leave.

Sometimes, when losing himself in fantasies of what he imagines to be love isn't quite enough, he has nothing left to do but sit and be the boy that he is.

A boy who fears's tendrils have got ahold of so tightly, he thinks they are more a part of him than the blond hair, pointed face, crooked smile.

A boy who is so very alone that he doesn't remember quite what someone else touching him would feel like, he only knows he'd die to have that again, to know that that feeling is real, not just a figment of his own, twisted imagination.

A boy who likes it when he bruises because the colours are so real and brilliant and bright, and it's the most beautiful thing he's seen in a while.

A boy who relishes it when he bleeds because the sharp sting and intake of breath are enough to remind him that he can feel, that he can breathe.

A boy who envies the people being beaten on the dinner table where he used to blow out candles and make wishes because they get to leave and he wants to just leave more than he thinks he even knows.

A boy who cracks into more and more pieces every day, shards of broken glass and broken heart and broken mind.

A boy who looks into the mirror and is confused by what he sees because he sees a boy named Draco Malfoy, but he doesn't recognise that name anymore, he only recognises the grey eyes that scream let me out because they are the only part that's him.

Although if you were to ask him who he is, he'd only have one answer.

He is just a boy.