As time passed, the Malfoy name began to primarily be associated not with a family of Death Eaters, but the family that the best Harry Potter painter came from. It was almost like no one remembered Draco had been a Death Eater. Or they did remember and they just didn't care, because his paintings were that good. His paintings were praised far and wide, everyone agreeing that each and every one was special and not just because I was the subject. They recognized the rawness of them and wanted more.

While I shied away from the paintings themselves, Draco had always been a matter of curiosity with me. Six months after that fateful gala an interview with him came over the Wizarding Wireless. I listened to it, just as eagerly as the fans. Maybe even more so, because I wanted to know what made him tick. I wanted to know how he could see me so clearly, when no one else did. I wanted to know if he really saw me as I truly am, as how he painted me, or was he painting me like that to sell portraits. I wanted to know why me. Why didn't he sell portraits of his mum or his peacocks or of the mermaids in the Black lack, as seen through the windows in the Slytherin dungeons?

The interview began with a short introduction by a witch. She washed over his role in the war, while mentioning that he'd been at school with me and so had a front row seat to my teenaged years. She touted his paintings and praised his artistic genius with a brush. Then she asked him how it had all started with the painting and if he always wanted to be an artist.

"When I was little, I wanted to be a professional Quidditch player. I fancied myself a great champion on a broomstick. But when I wasn't flying, I was drawing or painting. I was well known among the Slytherins for my comics during my school years. Less so for my Quidditch skills. I had a happy childhood; as pleasant as could be, given my parents were who they were and taught me what they taught me. I was spoiled and overly praised. I had the best art lessons money could buy. I didn't paint these because I grew up, realized Quidditch wasn't going to happen, and decided to rely on my real talent. I painted these for me. These are my memories. They're my life, captured in Potter form. Potter was the hero; I was just the spectator to it," Draco's voice came over the wireless.

The female radio DJ then went on to say, "It is said that Harry Potter doesn't like your portraits. Hermione Granger has said that the reason for this is that they show him as he really is and he's a private person. Would you say this is true, Mr. Malfoy? Do you show Potter as he really is?"

"I try. I must admit to being biased. I paint the memories that are engraved on the back of my eyelids when I close them. I've never painted the final battle, because I was not there to see it. I was injured by then and had slunk off to my dorm to hide. I can't paint that. There are a lot of other really great moments in his life, that I'll never paint, either because I was not there, or because they were not my focus. I wasn't always concerned with him and what he was doing; I've always been self-centered, concerned with me. It came as a shock to me to realize that he was the hero of my story," Draco Malfoy answered.

The radio DJ continued, "Some of your paintings show Potter during his less heroic moments. Some say that things couldn't have been as you've depicted them. What do you say to that?"

"Potter isn't among those who say that. If he had something to say, then I'd pull the memory out and examine it in a Penseive. I do examine them in Penseives, when I can't quite remember a detail I want to draw. I never make any of it up; no artistic license. He is as he was. Everyone else draws him better than he was, but he was only ever human; just a boy, forced to play the hero."

There was a long pause, some shuffling of papers, and then a change in topic. "When did you start painting?"

"Before I can remember. My mother paints. She put a brush and a pencil in my hand at a very early age. She's shown me my early works; they're no different than the scribblings of any child."

"That's modest. You showed me one of an owl before we sat down to talk. You said you did that when you were four," she said.

"Well yes, by four I may have been better than your average child. But then my mother and my tutors had me drawing every day for two years by that point," he answered.

"Still, this is not your children's painting of a cartoon owl. You painted the owl how it really was. Have you always done that? Painted things as they are?" she asked.

"I'm not that imaginative; I have always only made what I can see. I start with my pencil and draw what's in front of me, whether it's Harry Potter, an owl, the Black Lack at Hogwarts, or my mother," he answered.

"Where are those other paintings? Why haven't you put them up for sell?"

"Oh I have those paintings. I just didn't think they would sell the way my Potter pieces have," Malfoy said. I wished he would've tried. He could've gotten famous for them and left me alone.

"You've said you painted the first one, of Potter catching the snitch in his mouth, when you were only eleven."

"Yes, I started it when I was eleven. It began as a sketch that night. I worked on it for a long time. I was obsessed with him," he admitted. "During the school year, I mostly sketched. When I went home for Christmas holidays, I painted it. I didn't finish it until the summer though, when I was twelve."

"You painted it, as it is in your collection? As it is in the reprints you sell?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You didn't touch it up, as you got better?" she pressed.

"No. It's far from my best work. There are some flaws with my technique. If I would do that one now, I wouldn't do it like that. That's how I painted when I was eleven. The second one I painted when I was twelve; that one is much better. I had a painting lesson with a master in Italy during the summer right after first year. He made all the difference," Draco answered.

This was hard for me to believe. His first painting was so unbelievably good. And Ron had been saying from the beginning that Draco must've gone back and touched them up, to remove the prejudice against me. But according to this interview, Draco hadn't changed a thing.

"So your collage: you had all of the portraits for that ready to go?" she asked.

"Yes. I'd done them all for myself. They were all in my gallery, along with the one of my father sitting at his desk and the one of a family house elf washing the dishes. I saw the article saying they were having a portrait made of Potter and decided to offer them a collage of my work. It paid off," he answered.

"It sure has. Word is that at least nine out of every ten portraits of Potter out there, is a reprint of one of yours. It sounds like you have been very successful. What do you plan to do next? Are there more portraits of Potter in the works?" she asked.

"No, not of him. I don't see him anymore. Lately, I've been going to the dragon reserve up in the Hebrides and drawing dragons. Maybe someday I'll be famous enough to sell paintings of dragons, instead of Potters," he answered.

And then the interview was over. The reporter thanked him for talking to her and he thanked her for having him. Wizard rock came on, finalizing the end.

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