Chapter Thirteen

He was still lying in bed, thinking, when an owl arrived late that night. Draco debated whether to read the letter or not, but the moment he recognized Ginny's handwriting on it he knew he wouldn't sleep without reading it.

Draco pulled it open and read, "Can you forgive me? Can we still be friends?"

He didn't even hesitate when he wrote back, "Yes, we can still be friends."

The owl came back within a half-hour with the reply, "Thank Merlin! I'm really glad."

He wrote back, "Me too." Then he went to bed, thinking, Just friends then. I won't tell her. She doesn't have to know. I'll protect her from one more problem – just another complication to worry her.

Draco closed his eyes, rubbing them tiredly. Neville Longbottom had stolen his story the day before right from under his nose; Draco had been horribly disappointed about it all because he had wanted the story, but had been so distracted by his own personal life that he didn't contact his boss about it.

Now he was stuck covering a rather droll art gallery that opened in Hogsmeade. It would be tucked somewhere on the Art and Entertainment insert; he didn't really want to go to the gallery as it reminded him of Vivian.

Mrs. Kampf had sent an owl just a few hours before, insisting that he hurried up with the story. He couldn't write a word. Instead, he pulled out one of his confessional letters to Vivian and wrote on the back of it; another page to his scattered, bits and pieces diary.

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I love you.

I want to kiss you.

When I look towards the sun and close my eyes I can't see. I'm blind. All I see is a dark orange glow. All I feel is the heat of the sun. That's how I feel about you. I don't have to see the Weasley red hair or the freckled face of an old prejudice I held. I don't even see your weight, your height, your brown eyes. That's because you're just a warm glow in my life. You're right, it was tedious and meticulous, planned to the last detail. Every day was the same. I even planned conversations in advance.

Now I know that there's more to life.

You're the only real friend I've ever had, that I've ever needed to have. I don't like relying on people. I like to stand alone. I hate losing control of my life. I practically hated you at some points, because you challenged all that. You made me feel as if everything had suddenly turned wild and random. You showed me a life where unexpected events happen all the time, where I can be surprised or shocked or reduced to tears of joy or laughter; where there's twists and changes.

I didn't think I loved you, not until the very end. When I finally thought to myself that it was possible for me to be able to develop feelings for someone; when I finally stopped being in denial about my feelings for you. When I let myself think that I perhaps do want to love you, everything fell apart again. It was like a warm surprise. My stomach was in knots, my heart was pounding, I was writing letter after letter, enflamed with passion. Passion!

I haven't felt passionate about anything in my life, except perhaps Quidditch. I haven't done a single good deed out of the kindness of my heart in years and years. I felt too proud and too superior. I saw it as undermining my social position, my Malfoyhood. I'm still horribly proud, at times. I'm still pompous a little. I still see my family as a line of truly strong, determined people; a line of sometimes perceived as evil people; but then, isn't anyone who has ultimate control of themselves and people around them, manipulating for power and for money, someone you'd consider evil? But a lot of successful people have to be like that. The Malfoy fortune didn't just sprout from the ground of fall out of the sky.

So, yes, I still look at people and see them as Mudbloods, but I even learned myself, from being a journalist that tried to look at things without any bias, that there's more to people than their bloodline. It's still instilled in me to be turned off by the idea of people that aren't pureblood; that's how I've been raised and taught for many years. That's who I was, and still am. I can't change everything. If everyday of your child hood your mother and father had taught you to harbor certain feelings and viewpoints that have been passed from generation to generation in your family, it's difficult to let go, to see the world differently.

That's what you managed to do.

I wouldn't have let you take charge; I would have never let go. You forced me into it, going in roundabout ways to slowly manipulate me into having abstract thoughts, having unusual feelings, unusual desires.

Perhaps you did brainwash me a little. Perhaps falling in love is being brainwashed to a certain extent; the person charms you to the point that you can't see yourself with others, to the point where their last name and appearance stops mattering, but their words and actions mean all the world to you.

I love you.

I love you, I love you, I love you.

I can say it a million times to a piece of paper, then crumple it and stick in the back of a desk. I can't see myself saying it to you. That Malfoy pride is unbeatable, isn't it? I'm bitter, yes. I have never looked at my family's traditions as a negative thing. However, now I see that this is a negative thing – that they have made me immune to people "below me", so that I would feel nothing for them; no desire to be charitable, no desire to make friends with them. And as a Malfoy, nearly everyone was below me at all times.

You are below me, yes, because I'm of a higher social strata. We're talking near nobility status. I'm also far richer; you barely make your own rent now. You're a Weasley and buy your clothes second-hand; my family is the Malfoys and we import designer fabrics and clothing from Europe.

Yet you are so high above me in reality. You can look at someone old and decrepit and actually want to know their life story; actually want to care about all they have been through. You could drop everything and write a story for a rude journalist, just because your heart told you to. Your heart guided you. Just like my father said, women think with their hearts, and men with their minds.

I've grown to detest my mind these past few days. I can't rationalize a positive result from telling you how I feel. I can't look at my own feelings reasonably; I see them as skewed, out of proportion, going into dimensions I never thought feelings could transcend. Everything I feel now is somehow laced with that undercurrent – I'm in love. It's so different. Before it was, 'I'm superior, I'm in control', that was the feeling that filled me. Now it's completely opposite. You've become in control of my heart and mind. I see from your point of view and from mine.

I don't see which one is truly the winning point of view, in the end. If I had stayed the way I was, I wouldn't have ever felt this... this tearing-me-apart feeling, knowing that I can't love you and you can't love me. Malfoy and Weasley would never mix. Your family would never let you, my family would never let me. I couldn't handle your friends, you wouldn't be able to handle my "friends" like Crabbe and Goyle. They are all such flat people, just as I was; a straight line opposed to your sphere. I got from point A to point B every single day. You found new roads every day to make your life worth living.

However, because of your point of view, I can be sensitive. I can feel good about myself rather than to just keep suffocating myself in egocentrism and pompousness. I can care for a bird whose wing is broken; I can show a woman a library and feel her happiness when she looks about it with marveling eyes. Happy for her feelings, not my own.

But your point of view is horrible too.

Just as my point of view made me blind, so your point of view makes you see far too much. Your heart is broken day by day by people that don't care. People let you down and you care, because you've turned your heart into a muscle that's stronger than a fist, though the same size. I can't stress enough how vulnerable it is - being so random, so open to everything.

It's poisoning yourself slowly, too; you're heading towards a downfall. Losing yourself like that, losing control, just leads to pain. Just as letting my emotions go, finally, just hurt us both. I should have taken another path; that's a mistake you take often when you are so happy, carefree, and fanciful.

I was too happy to feel passion to comprehend it, and to what it may lead. Now I know it lead me to a dead end, and to a great change in my friendship with you. You might carry on, but I've never been so vulnerable; I'm not used to having my emotional high being shot down. I've never had an emotional high. I was so naked; such an easy target to be hit by reality.

I love you.

I need you to feel happy again. You're like a drug. I don't know how I can see you, knowing how I feel inside, knowing that I'm stuck at the end of a road that I made the mistake of taking. While you still have roads ahead of you, I feel like I have to change my role in our friendship. I desire to separate; to be distant and cool again.

It would ease the pain of breaking up the friendship – by slowly returning to my old self. By slowly returning to my cage- remember the cage? I felt comfortable there, I felt secure. I want to feel like my future is secure and comfortable, though predictable. In the end it hurts less.

I wish you could have had a chance to feel my point of view too. You're too caught up in yours, though. You'll never understand the decisions I have had to make. You're too good, too kind, too humane.

I'm not good, or kind, or humane.

Especially not towards myself any longer. I'd rather be in a cage and know that everything outside is extraneous and beyond my reach, than to be outside and have millions of directions to go, and a future that is one big question mark.

No, freedom comes with a huge price.

I love you.

Good-bye.

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That letter he saved; he burned the rest. The smoke rose up the chimney like from a funeral pyre. He threw the feather in, then felt despair beyond comprehension. He went upstairs and found himself crying, silently. He tore his pillow open, releasing a multitude of feathers. He walked downstairs and burned them one by one.

Narcissa saw all this and said nothing, she had warned him and had come out triumphant. Vivian did end up giving him nothing but pain; nothing but agony that only returning to a flat, dull life would heal it.

When the smell of burning feathers became unbearable, Draco dumped the rest of the pillow into a trash can and left the house completely. He laid himself out on the soft, springy grass in the garden and looked up at the stars.

He planned to let go of Vivian, of Ginny, the next night. They were both going to stay up to watch the stars. Draco knew it would be his last night with her, truly; she thought it was the first night of a lifelong friendship.

He whispered the names of the constellations, then started again, until his voice was too weak with tears to continue. Then he turned his head and stared at the flower garden, crying in shame of his own feelings.

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"Dear Draco, I'll see you tonight, I'll bring my pillow and blanket. You bring your huge, swollen brain. I can't believe you. You know all the constellations. Geez. Then again, I can't believe that you still want to be friends, knowing who I am. Well, I'll be there at ten o'clock at night, so be out there. Maybe light your wand so I can find you in that huge garden. If I wander away the whole night we'll never have any fun. Love – Vivian."

He read it three times, then two more times the last two words. Love – Vivian. Love – Vivian. Love – Vivian.

He smiled forlornly and hid this in the bottom drawer of his desk as well.

She still wanted to be called Vivian, he realized. While he preferred his true name, in the end, she wanted to remain who she was for many weeks now to him. She wanted to stay separate from her family. Perhaps they could...

No.

He had made up his mind. This wasn't a sign that she was distancing herself from the Weasleys for him. She was doing it for herself. He wouldn't lead himself on, which would be the worst of all things to do.

Goodbye, he thought again, goodbye forever tomorrow morning.