Introduction: Another of my stories ends with Draco in Azkaban for crimes his father committed. You don't need to have read that story to "get" this one, just know the sitch. The post-Azkaban Draco was somehow the only possible hero.
This is a follow-up to Dream On, which is a fairytale about the Mirror of Erised. This story is told partly from the princess's PoV and partly from Draco's.
- They all want to be loved.
Salazar taught me that first, gazing endlessly on my imprisonment, on our wedding day when the sun shone. I watch the bright black hair of a beautiful girl brushing Salazar's pale body. She is me but not-me: in Salazar's dreams this beautiful thing adores him.
I watch in impatience: I knew already that this was his dream, and it bores me. I want to scream with his grief, but it bores me.
- I gave in. Surrounded by the Dementors, surrounded by my past, I gave in.
How do they know it, where the darkest places of my soul are? I did not know I had so much of the dark within me-- how did they sniff it out?
How did they surround me with my own rank and stinking secrets, day after day?
And how-- how can one puny human body hold so much pain and terror?
I gave in, I confessed the truth, and my father took my place in Azkaban.
- Later on, there was Aenghus, known as the Traveller.
He took one glance at the shiny surface of my prison: he carried in his heart a girl with berry-bright eyes, laughing always. He saw her there, and fell in love.
Do all men only ever fall in love with themselves?-- He set off to look for her, searched all his days. Eventually he died of cold on a mountaintop, still searching.
Perhaps he found her then. I do not know. But I felt the cold and shivered as he died.
- I came back to Hogwarts, older, and aged far beyond my years.
The other students steer clear of me, as I would have myself. Who wants to associate with suffering? it might be catching, like leprosy.
And who could wish to associate with a coward, one who would betray his own father? Gryffindor and Slytherin alike despise me.
- There was the fighter. Beowulf. In the shifting mirror-light he saved England from the menace of the Worm. Filled with frustration, this fighter born in a time of peace, he gloried in the adulation he received. His heroism, his bravery. He loved it so much he watched it again. And again.
I felt his once strong muscles grow thin, felt flesh drop off his bones.
He died within a few feet of me: I could not reach him. The wall of glass is stronger than stone.
Perhaps, he died a hero. He was one before he met me.
I am wrung out and exhausted: there is no life left in me. I gave everything I had to my father, then the Dementors took the rest.
- Harry Potter, orphan child, older than his years. Lily and James Potter he carried always with him, a love so strong it screamed at me. I thought he would feel it himself: he didn't need me. Why did he come back?
He tried to touch them, to reach through the glass as I have tried so often. What he wanted was on the other side, all around him and he could not see it. I almost wept for his blindness. I tried to tell him. He couldn't hear. They never hear.
- And Hogwarts is different.
Once I saw-- an arena, a stage.
A place to enact the Illustrious Life of Draco Malfoy.
Strange, the freedom that failure and ignominy bring with them.
I can no longer hope to be Illustrious.
And Draco Malfoy?
I don't know who he is.
- A thousand years have passed, and I have learned nothing in that time. What is there to know? All dreams are the same, and I can see nothing other than dreams.
But I know my time is coming. He is coming. The man with no dreams. Soon I shall escape...
- I wander the dark deserted corridors of the school. I can't tell what I'm looking for, I only know it isn't Draco Malfoy. I'm glad he's gone.
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- A door creaks open as I walk past it. I enter the room, on tiptoe although I don't know why.
- He enters the room like a thief, silently. He feels he is trespassing, he can't know how much I welcome him.
- The room is dark blue and shadowy in the moonlight, my feet are awakening small clouds of dust. I see a silvery gleam in the corner-- caught by curiosity, I move closer.
- A gleam in his eye as he espies my prison. My heart beats so loud, I almost expect him to hear it.
-what is that noise? I almost feel there is someone else in the room with me. And there is some kind of shadow moving in that dust-coated mirror.
- there is a terrible wound in his heart, where the dreams were ripped out of him. I had not expected this-- he cannot see his own happiness.
-it's so dark. But there's light coming from the mirror, helping me to see my way.
-he stands before my prison gates. I'm looking right at him.
-what was I expecting? I can only see myself. It's a mirror.
-He has asked me for nothing. I can give him everything he has. Everything he is.
-why is my reflection glowing like that? Where is the light coming from?
- Where is the light coming from, that is suddenly filling my shadow world?
-The light has been there all along, I realise, and I laugh. Why did I never see it before? This is who I am. I can ask for nothing more.
-I gave him the truth, because he did not dare to ask for anything else. I have given him the gift of seeing what's there.
-and what do I see, suddenly in the mirror? A face. Red lips. Pale skin. Long bright-black hair. Not my face, but it still glows the same way.
-he sees me. I press desperately against the glass.
-she's pressing against the glass. How long has she been trying to get out?
-he punches through the glass, there's blood on his fist. My prison falls in pieces on the floor. He hands me out as if I was stepping out of a carriage. As if I were royalty. I'm touching his hand, it's real and warm and there's blood flowing from the knuckles. It's all delightful to me, it's so long since I touched anything.
-she kisses my hand, there's blood on her lips. She looks up at me, a little frightened and unsure. "Thank you," she tells me.
-he looks at me with understanding. "Thank you," he tells me. Then he says to me: "You gave me myself. Was that always your gift, to see beauty?" I have to think about it.
-"yes," she tells me. Then she says to me "You gave me myself. Was that always your gift, to see truth?" I don't have to think about it.
-"no," he tells me. Then he laughs, and I laugh, because our gifts are the same, however we earned them. We cling together in happiness, because we don't need each other, and a little time passes, and I kiss him, and then... the story comes to an end. Perhaps another tale is beginning.
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Author's note: Blaise beta-read this for me and gave me the confidence to post it without a whiny apologetic a/n. So I'd just like to thank her for that. Blaise and CLS both asked the interesting questions that inspired me to write this, and also I love the lovely people who reviewed Dream On, I'll love you even more if you review this.
Disclaimer: Not mine. JKR's.