"Roses are red for the crimson blood that their thorns draw from the soul"
First year, and he sees her and her bushy hair stepping out of the train, head thrown back in a loud, boisterous laugh, her golden-brown eyes twinkling with amusement. She glances back, for a moment, and they lock eyes.
His, glowing like molten silver, and hers, like fresh sunshine and the comfort of home. He doesn't really know how to respond, but she's a Muggleborn, and he's a pureblood, and her blood is as dirty as the mud on the streets and her family name and reputation just as worthless, so he glares, his lips twisting in a sneer.
The twinkle dies.
Second year, and he catches a glimpse of her in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, exhausted and sweaty and muddy and everything in between, with that damnable hair somehow tied back in a scruffy ponytail, with wispy curls escaping her nimble hands and somehow framing her face so beautifully. She's sitting cross legged on the stone tiles, stirring some sort of illicit potion, he's sure of it, and humming to some godforsaken muggle song.
Her voice floats over to him, warm and rich and comforting, and he's terrified by what he feels inside. She's more at peace than he has ever seen her, and he flees before she sees him through the crack in the door.
He doesn't report her.
Third year, and he's started to loathe her. She's getting in his head. Somehow, suddenly, she's all over the place, and he can't deal with her and what she's doing to him. He laughs and jokes and sniggers along with his friends, and he's seen the mutual hatred reflected back at him in her eyes.
He doesn't know what to make of it.
And then, she slaps him.
He doesn't fucking believe it. She slaps him. Quips and comebacks are what he's been taught to deal with. Not this. Definitely not this. He marches off, to nurse his wounded pride and drown in self-pity.
He never sees her as the same ever again. She's truly a Gryffindor, with her ego, and her wits, and her stupid fucking hero complex and know-it-all attitude.
He'd never hated yet admired something that simple about a person his entire life.
Fourth year, and its competition year. The Goblet of Fire. The fabled prize and selection. He doesn't even have to rack his brains to know that Potter and his gang will get meddled up in this somehow.
Of-fucking-course Potter gets picked.
Snape announces the coming of the Yule Ball in their dormitory, and suddenly girls are falling over themselves to get to him. He's cut his hair short this year, and given up on that hideous slicked-back look he used to think was so cool, much preferring ruffled hair. That way, he doesn't have to worry about his hair getting 'ruined' when he rakes a hand through them when he's frustrated.
Love letters, fan mail, even hate mail appear in his dormitory every evening.
He never responds to any of them.
He's a natural at dancing, so he skips all the lessons, much wishing he didn't when he hears how the Weasel had to pair up with McGonagall. What a sight they must have made.
The Ball arrives, and he's agreed to Pansy at the last minute, much preferring her over no-one, and she's clinging to his arm all through the night.
His eyes discreetly search for those wild curls, hoping to catch a glimpse, but he never sees her.
He's lounging around the corridors, and he hears Pansy's sharp inhale.
"What….?" He turns around, but never finishes his sentence.
It's her.
But she's different. Her teeth are shorter, hair finally tamed into beautiful curls flowing over her shoulder in an elegant hairdo, and her dress is off-shoulder and periwinkle, something he never imagined she'd wear. And she's arm in arm with….
His gaze glows molten silver with how incensed he suddenly becomes, and he struggles to hold it down. Her eyes pass over him like he's nothing, and yet she's his everything.
He snaps at everyone for the rest of the ball, and leaves early; eyes swimming with rage and fury and hurt, haunted by images of creamy exposed skin, and those fucking freckles on that fucking collarbone of hers.
Pansy follows him, and he takes it out on her in his bed, and he knows its unfair, but all he can think about is its while she's dancing and smiling and laughing with fucking Krum.
Its their first time, and he makes sure to be gentle with her, and Pansy staggers out of his room at two in the morning, a dazed but happy smile on her face, and its done nothing to alleviate his fury and guilt, because all the while, it wasn't Pansy he was seeing, it was her.
Her fucking cherry lips, and her fucking mop of curly hair and those fucking honey-brown caramel eyes that always made him so, so unsettled.
It never goes away.
Fifth year, and his father informs him that Potter has gone for trial for supposedly attacking and doing magic in front of a muggle.
He's joyful, but it passes. Dumbledore defends Potter, and the motion is lifted.
The Ministry is meddling with Hogwarts, and his father encourages it. He simply goes along with the ploy.
The Inquisitorial Squad, that fucking toad woman calls it, and he's the captain. He enjoys it, weirdly. He's never been given a place of power in his life, and he enjoys the thrill it gives him, catching students and taking away House points.
The guilt bothers him.
'You're a Malfoy,' he reasons with himself. 'You're supposed to enjoy this.'
Sixth year, and he knows he's changed. His time at the cruel place he called home was torturous. His own father, that son of a bitch…. his own flesh and blood, has promised him to the Dark Lord.
"Again, you pathetic boy! Again!"
He sits up from the stone floor with a grimace, blood trickling down his face, and nods. He doesn't have a choice. He sits in the way his father is teaching him to, spine straight, chin up. He builds up his walls again, stone by stone, fusing them as he goes.
He opens his eyes and nods.
"Legilimens!"
It's still not enough. It's never enough. Once his father found a flaw in his armor, he attacked it relentlessly until the whole wall crumbled to dust. It had always been that way.
"Weak." He advances towards him, and the boy who scrambles for purchase amongst the tiles of the cold stone floor, is just that, a cowardly, quivering, weak, pathetic boy.
"Perhaps… a little motivation is needed."
His eyes widen as he realizes exactly what his beloved father is going to do.
"No! Please! Not again!"
Lucius Malfoy was dragging a happy memory to the forefront of his mind, one of the few moments that he had cherished with his mother, where he had felt truly happy. Glimpses of Granger smiling at him, those warm, honey eyes of hers twinkling at him with genuine happiness.
"PLEASE!"
His cries fall on deaf ears. His father tears through the memory like paper, as he frantically tries to grasp the fleeting shreds. There had been something important…
"Idiotic child! Focus!"
"You are a disgrace to the Malfoy Name."
"Worthless."
He's tasked with something almost impossible now, and he doesn't even know where to fucking start. He has purple bruises under his eyes from lack of sleep, and he doesn't even really care about his appearance anymore. There's nothing left of him to save. Who would, anyway?
The pathetic Malfoy Prince of Hogwarts, a name whose reputation was tarnished into the dirt long ago. His friends are all in it for something. The money, the power, the fame…he's lost count.
He's not even sure they can be called friends. Most of his childhood memories have been erased, as punishment for various situations and disobedience and cowardice in the name of the Dark Lord.
His beloved father made his weakness commonly known amongst his peers, just so that his boy could come back stronger.
He stares at the cracked mirror in front of him, looking miserable, watching the tears streak down his face. He doesn't want to be at war with himself anymore. Wrong…. right….there was never any wrong or right…just the lines in between shades of gray.
He looks at himself, then, and gives up. He's become unrecognizable to his own self. Such cruel irony, mocking himself in the mirrors of the very same school he once used to stroll the corridors of, mocking others for that very same failing.
He's drowning, he realizes numbly.
He's drowning, and he doesn't have enough strength to break the surface.
He's drowning, and there's nobody that cares enough to pull him out.
The Dark Lord has started giving the juniors tasks to prove themselves worthy, to rise in rank and power. So many failed, died in the process. He was given multiple. But dying was not an option. No, dying would be a far greater kindness.
Killing muggles, children, in cold blood, defenseless, is a sin worthy of being flayed alive. He should be. Multiple times, until his porcelain skin is charred obsidian.
He sits alone in his chambers, sifting through piles of paper and scribblings, searching for some unknown alleviation. His nimble fingers pause at a stack of drawings from his youthful school years.
He loved artwork then, loved outlining a moment with his own hands, sculpting it exactly the way he wanted to. He remembers how he used to be so fond of art and photography.
He can't bring himself to tear it.
He leafs through the stack, searching for a particular one. He pauses at a flash of red, and all of a sudden he's hit by a whole waterfall of emotions.
It's what he imagined she would look like beneath all those layers of clothing. The Gryffindor Girl, resplendent in red.
Red, for the light in her eyes and the fire in her gut. Red, for her house pride.
She's wearing a crimson gown, meant for purebloods. It reaches all the way down to the floor, and would look unbelievably innocent, if it wasn't for the half turn she was caught in. The half-turn showing a backless, ruby red dress, showing off an elegant cut above her hips, embroidered with silver weave here and there, so thin it was nearly transparent.
He's blurred the halo he had drawn around her, he realizes with a frown. The halo hides one of the aspects of the sketch he spent so long agonizing over. The light is dim, and the marks are faded, too faded, he registers, and it's purely from memory that he sees the thigh slit exposing her caramel-toned skin. Almost invisible, but he knows it's there.
Her skin shines in the candlelight, and she's holding a wine glass, talking animatedly to someone out of the frame. Her hair are pinned, and her curls cascade down her back in a waterfall, barely held together by the diamond encrusted dragon clip shining bright amongst a sea of chestnut. They flow past her collarbone and neck in an elegant, wispy braid, and she's holding a book in the crook of her arm, and she's wearing sneakers, and he's drawn every line and curve so lovingly and spent so much time obsessing over the smallest details, that it could almost be a portrait, if it were real.
But its not.
It's a figment of his seventeen year old imagination, drawn when his mind was filled with visions of golden brown skin, and freckles, and caramel eyes, and wild, overflowing curls, and all the things he shouldn't be dreaming of but was.
A photograph falls out of the sheath of papers. It's black and white. She's quietly reading, eyes skimming animatedly over the pages in front of her, and her shoes are off, and she's barefoot in the grass, eyes focused on the book in front of her, and she looks radiant.
And later, he remembers adding to it.
He remembers reaching for the ink pots of white and ebony. Remembers drawing long snow white feathers, glittering silver, forming graceful wings sprouting from her back in a blinding arc, glowing with a brilliance rivaled by only her and her alone. Its befitting, he thinks.
"And not even all the alcohol in all of London can drown that sorrow or chase off those nightmares. If being hurt is the only thing that makes you feel alive, that you feel you deserve, then you'll seek it."
...
It's the last thing he remembers her saying to him.
He was drunk, and she was there, and he recoils in shame and self-disgust in the state she would have seen him in.
Its the last thing he remembers before the war.