And so began my contempt for Harry Potter: not a day passed without his concoctions in Potions exploding in his face, or inches mysteriously disappearing from his Transfiguration parchments. I stabbed at his famous virtue every day, my sour, sardonic words stinging him under his skin like thousands of insidious splinters.

Or so I presumed.

Virtually every waking moment of my Hogwarts years was spent lounging on the overstuffed forest green divan in the Slytherin common room, devising my next plan to get at Harry Potter. As my materialistic, infinitely desirable shell burgeoned into a glorious, impenetrable armor that rendered me virtually invincible to the cruel world that surrounded me, I developed a mantra to my life at Hogwarts: to get at Harry Potter.

Perhaps, had I been gifted with better emotional understanding of myself, and perhaps a little more honesty, I may have realized that even at the budding age of eleven, I was inadvertently shaping every shielded fiber of my being around the obsession that was slowly consuming me.

It was all for him. For him, and only him.

However colorful and creative the next plan was, the pièce de résistance remained the same: his reaction. It was timeless: his warm fingers pressing hard into my shoulder, spinning me around. His strong jaw tightened, his teeth bared slightly, like a refined beast on the brink of attacking. Anger crackled and crashed like roaring emerald waves in those enormous orbs for eyes: I could feel the rage, like salt, melt on my tongue and fill my ears. The world around became a series of still frames with colors swirling and merging into a seamless grey, moving at a lethargic pace while Harry's wrath descended upon me.

Upon me, and only me.

Eventually Harry learned to cast Sealing Charms on his parchments thanks to the Granger twit, and began to be more wary of where he put his things. Slowly but surely, he grew attuned to my obsessive, vindictive antics and developed a simple skill that rolled and crashed within my soul with such vibrato, even the thought could send me reeling.

With a shrug of his sun-kissed shoulder and an off-handed wave of his bony hand, he could dismiss me. Simply throw whatever foolery I had hatched up for him to the wind, gone in an instant as a Disapparating wizard. To be less histrionic, he could very well ignore me.

In my naïve, conceited mind, it was positively inconceivable for such a thing to happen: did he not know who I am? I, descended from the great Malfoy family, the most prominent of the elite pureblood families? Did he not understand the gravity of such circumstance, the prestige of my very name?

I realized too late that, to use vulgarity more akin to filth of the Weasley sort, though most certainly suitable in this situation, he couldn't have given less of a shit about what I was. It was the interior, the heart that counted, the message of his very core that bitterly haunts me to this day. In order to even begin to gain distinction in his eyes, I had to prove myself worthy, valiant and true.

By the time this realization dawned upon me, it was already too late; as an early spring swept through the Hogwarts grounds of my first year, I was utterly and completely consumed by Harry Potter.

Author's note goes here: So here is what I have thus far: I'd like to point out that I really am using the most elegantly pretentious and pretentiously elegant language possible to convey Malfoy's voice; I don't know, I always felt that he was exactly the type to talk like that. The format of the subsequent chapters will be slightly different, just a heads up, but don't worry, I doubt it'll change the dynamic of the story!

As always, flamers will be subject to a clever obliterating pun and reviews are more than welcome!

Also, I've changed my account name (not to inconvenience anyone...) to teacuptea. Just because.

~teacuptea