Disclaimer: Harry Potter was first made by J.K. Rowling.
Involves: ANGST![It's what's for dinner!], self-mutilation, a bit of violence.
Author's Note: This part of the story focuses on Draco, and how his summer went. I wanted to lay the ground work for the heavy emotional plot that I am planning on having between them [but haven't actually thought up in detail yet]. I actually really liked a good portion of this when I wrote it, and that is really saying something as I always instantly hate my writing. But anyway, it's best to think of the first three chapters as kind of a prequel. I'll get to the good stuff soon. Don't worry. :')
Chapter 3
A howling whistle cut through the compartment air. Draco flinched, blinked his eyes and snapped back into reality. He had tuned out his friends to concentrate. Harry Potter was the main topic on his mind.
He had waited so long to see him again. It felt like eternity had run its course twice in the months of summer vacation. Draco went to bed every night thinking of what he could say, what he could do, what kind of insult he could conjure to shock Harry further. It was something to do in that vast manor, something to keep the shadows away.
The days had seemed like weeks- dry, cold weeks in winter when frost had bitten the land and ice hung in curtains along the houses frame. It was a frozen palace ruled by a tyrannical rime queen, driven vindictive and unjust by distress. She was an irrational dictator governing an equally flustered nation with a wintry blade. His mother was terribly bereaved with her husband gone and debased.
Draco was the victim of her fragile temperament. She was easy to crack and the splinters stung no one worse than him. A tear-stained face would weep with sorrow while warping in disgust. Her pale hands wrapped tight around his delicate neck.
"Such an adorable boy, a prime example of pristine genes working their faultless miracle. Your father contributed himself to make you what you are today. And I have never heard you utter so much as a 'thank you' for that pretty face..."
She trailed off, eyes ablaze with the passion she wished she could harness to swallow the life of the Boy Who Lived, of Albus Dumbledore, or anyone who dared cross her prestigious lineage. Now all it could do was obstruct the breathing of her only child, and it did. Her grip grew fiercer, her finger prints transferred to Draco's neck in what looked like deep purple ink, crescent impressions were being pushed into his vulnerable flesh.
The thin boy bit his tongue until liquid red heat poured out of it, shoving its way between his teeth. He kept his eyes open to stare expressionlessly at his mother. He imagined he was elsewhere, not necessarily to avoid being strangled, but more to shield himself from seeing someone he held dear in such a state of disrepair. His milk white skin flushed from his ears, traveling on to the rest of his face.
His mother was silent, a frenzied look playing across her facial features. She released Draco, letting him crumple to the ground as a diminished power, the arrogance in him withered, his cocky demeanor dried up, his scathing self only a broken image in a mirror, totally unattainable through the glass. He was ruined.
She, however, was not satisfied with his sudden descent. He lay there, a disheveled heap pressed against the ground with no visible emotion at all. She took her wand out of her pocket, carefully, watching Draco's face for a reaction but there was none to be had. Enraged at his apparent indifference, she cast a curse on him, one so severe, it had been labeled 'Unforgivable'.
"CRUCIO!" She smirked at her use of the familiar incantation. A perverse interest steadied her hand until tears spilled out of her sons eyes and uncontrollable screams escaped his lips. Only then did she allow her child to fall free from the spell. She turned on her heel, fully contented, her recent rage merely a fading memory, and left Draco on the floor of his bedroom. Alone, more shaken than he ever had been, more bewildered, more frightened, more accepting, more understanding than he ever had been.
He was different. He knew, he felt it everywhere. It exploded in symphonies from his veins. There was desire for renewal, there was an urge to retaliate against his deranged mother, but a stronger one to understand her suffering. He would forgive her, he knew, but he did not allow himself to forget.
A mark spanned across his wrist, crimson beads oozing out of the fine, deep line. Another would appear the next night that she laid a callous hand upon him, connecting to the first, carving a circle around his arm. Three lines would complete a ring. By the end of summer, Draco had four blood bracelets carved in his skin...to aid his remembrance, to never forget the livid lunacy embodied in his mother, eating away at her core and his resilience.
Everything seemed muddled. It felt like he was watching said events play on a picture frame, like a boy in a portrait was collapsing on his knees, sobbing himself to sleep every night. But the boy was real, the boy was him. He cursed himself for bearing such weakness, such infirmity and imperfection. Where was his cunning and fearlessness now, when he needed them most? All the times he had called upon such attributes to mock the Gryffindors or insult Potter, they'd been there in a flash. Now, they had disappeared, abandoned him entirely.
That's right...Potter. Thoughts of that boy were filling up his head.
If he could see me now, like this, he'd probably laugh himself senseless. No, what he would do would be so much worse...he'd pity me. He'd....he'd feel sorry for me. He'd feel for me.
The idea of receiving Harry Potter's sympathetic gestures was devastating. Draco didn't want it. That was why he'd been so cold and cruel all those years, to avoid that very thing. He feared that his defenses would cave if he was shown genuine compassion, that he would fall and he wasn't sure that Harry would still be there to catch him, if he'd want to be. It was his greatest concern. Since his well-being was absolutely always put first, he was mortified to see what might happen if that changed. So he erected his shamefully malicious barrier for all to experience.
That's how it was. That's how he suspected he would remain, forever.
He convinced himself that he would act as he normally did in front of the Gryffindors, the Slytherins, everybody, chiefly Harry. Draco felt that hiding from him was most important. A dim suspicion that Harry would see right through him blossomed in the back of his mind. That sealed it.
He would never, EVER let anyone find out about that summer, about the marks under his sleeve.
Harry was his light in the dark, his sustenance during a ferocious famine. Images of him catching the Snitch, flying freely on his broom, being ridiculed by the Potions Master, trying to stand up to the Slytherins and succeeding only at making a fool of himself...They all rushed into Draco's mind whenever they could. He'd drift into slumber, smiling at the courageous boys green eyes and lightning scar, the serenade that was his laughter and the glare he reserved especially for the Malfoy family.
I can't wait to be back at school again, to see him. He'll help me be myself again.