Thrive

It all began seven years ago, when I was eleven, happy fresh, ready for Hogwarts. I'm aware my some what cynical point of view will make it a tinse hard for me to tackle the whole story, but I suppose I can try. Forgive the darkness displayed in what would otherwise be the happiest moments of my life, I beg.

As I said, I was eleven and ready for Hogwarts, ready beyond any form of 'readiness' I had ever encountered. It was at Diagonal Alley that I first encountered that boy and his father, and at the time I could see everything wrong with them. Why was there that sad, malicious glint in the bright, young eyes of the boy? And why did his father keep one hawk eye on his son? Did he not trust him? Did they not trust eachother? The two were practically bathed in darkness, and I could sense a void of emptiness bordering on hate between them. Their relationship was sour, obviously.

And yet the boy managed to fool my family with his own sourness. They couldn't see through his arrongant facade. They couldn't even see through my happy one and they'd known me all my life. Fools, they are. Happy, bright fools who see that whole damn world through a pair of pink shades that, though made to block out the sun, blocked out the darkness instead. When they looked at me they saw a happy little girl, ful of joy and vibrance and all that gooey stuff. When they looked at him, they saw a arrogant son of a bastard, muggle-hating, Potter-hating...They didn't see what I saw.

I saw a little boy, afraid of the world, full of darkness that tipped over the brim of what he could hold. He needed balance, just like I did. We both needed balance, but right then, neither of us knew that the ultimate balance lay within eachother. I can't say I wasn't captivated by this boy's appearance, though. He was, shortly and well put, hot. Now, that is obviously something I say not often, but here, there was no other word fit to describe it. He was only twelve, but it was blandly obvious he had undertaken quiet a few growth spurts and that his body definetly would be a future bragging option for him. Trust me, it is. His hair was gelled back and a pale, pale blonde color that shown like a shell on his head in the sun, and his face was the most complicated, most handsome, one I've ever, up to this day, come across. His face still had a bit of a babyish look to it, but i could tell that by around this same time next year, it would be pointy and masculine.

And then his father went and insulted Harry, my, sad to say, current crush, knocking away from complete and total mesmiration and back to the real world to defend my 'love'. I shudder to think what had been going through my mind when I gave Harry the important position of first crush in my mind. Curse eleven year old judgement. Curse it to hell and back.

I honestly didn't even notice when Lucius slipped the diary into my second hand cauldron. Back then I was very unobservative, especially when I was caught up in a heat as I was at the milli-second that Lucius's hand snaked out and dropped the small book it. But, boy was I glad he had done what he did. Otherwise I'd have never met Tom.

Over the next two months Tom became my best friend, and I cannot neglect say that at some level I loved him deeply as a brother. Maybe more than a brother than I valued Ron to be. Cruel, I know, but Ron and I couldn't sit in the same room alone for more than five seconds without being at eachother's throats. Last time I'd had a knife.

Tom was both my best friend and my teacher. Together we reveled in darkness and he told be about it and helped me to delve into myself. His lessons fascinated me. I poured my darkened thoughts out to him and he would tell me the origin of these thoughts, why and how they had come to be, and why particularily in me. "It is a rare thing," he had once said, "Both a gift and a curse." But, though his lessons fascinated me, I remember there was many a time where he refused to answer my questions, countering them with the force of, "Certain things I cannot tell you. Certain things you must find out for yourself."

And certian things I did find out, and by the sweet, glorious time of the Chamber incident, I was much, much stronger darkness-wise, than Tom could ever imagine. But that is skipping ahead. I should describe to you somewhat the times us too had together. Me...I really did trust Tom. And, if I were to encounter him now, I still would. I'd trust him with my life and soul. He did, to some degree understand what was fueling me, understand why I acted as I did. Many of the things Tom supposedly made me do were actually off my own accord. One night it was the anger that pumped vigorously through my veins, mingling with my blood, that drove me to Hagrid's hut and to the murder of a chicken. I rung its neck with my bare hands, I did, and it was a glorious, glorious thing.

A kill, made out of anger. Once the cursed thing was gone I felt all the anger seep out into the lifeless body, filling it where the soul had vanished. And then I had run, laughing, all the way back up to the castle. Mad? No, actually. As I said, every one sees things differently, and though normal people may have thought this to be barbaric...to me, it was sheerly enjoyable, something I'd consider as a past time. Killing things. Crude amusement, if I may say so myself, but at this point care was beyond any feeling I'd ever experienced. I got a bit out of control, even Tom would have to admit. Ask him. He'll tell you.

And all of that was because my darkness had grown and the balance Tom had once offered was not enough. The Chamber incident was partially our unintentional fault. We just needed a quiet, desolate place to play our games. I was eleven, still a child by humans terms, therefore games I found appealing. But the games we played were different. They were dangerous. Very, very dangerous.

It was a game of test. Not to test academic skills or any such, but to test darkness. We tried to consume one another with our darkness, see whose was stronger and more abundant. At first Tom beat me easily. But I was weak then, when we first started, over time it became harder to beat me, fore I was stronger, and often times I could not beat him either for my darkness was too small. By that age I should have been able to resist Tom at his first try, but, here's a secret, I often denied and resisted darkness' force. I hadn't wanted darkness. I had wanted to be the sweet, pigtailed Ginny every one made me out to be. But over time, I gave up on her and just let the darkness build and build.

And by the time the Chamber incident fell around I could conquer Tom so perfectly it was breathtaking. By then I knew the art of probing into another's willing mind, and so I let him consume me for a time, let him feel he was winning, but pushing him away whenever he came close. By doing this I could see his thoughts and his memories and the happiest moments of his life. I could see his life, in other words, playing before my eyes. I was some where around his first kiss when Harry broke in and killed our concentration.

Of course, we all know how that ended. But thats fine. Thats just fine. Over the summer I underwent some changes. Changes that changed everything the Weasley family knew about their youngest member, me. And then there was my continually stubborn attitude, and I knew it was because I had no balance. I was in sudden states of abrupt depression, sometimes anger, sometimes fear. It was horrible and unpredictable, and it still is even to me, as I remember it now as part of history.

The night I spent alone in the dark, pinching myself, trying to feel the pain that darkness deprived me of. But I couldn't feel physical pain, and so the physical pain couldn't block out the internal pain. Those were the most horrifying moment of my life. But then I found a bittersweet gettaway.

Cutting. Sending that pleasantly sharp blade down through my tender, milky skin and watching as the precious crimson droplets showered the floor, my arm and often my dressing gown. The sting, the terrible burning sting was, unbelieveably, what kept me from commiting suicide. And soon, it became a habit, and I couldn't stop at all. I carried a blade every where I went. And I cut myself during every alone-moment I could find. The habit carried through till my fourth year. Thats when I walked in on him.

Of course I remembered him from so long ago, how could I have forgotten? But now he had most definetly changed. His hair was no longer a hard shell, and his features weren't babyish. They were sharp, his features, and his hair was loose and free and...beautiful. And he had grown to be so much taller, of such an impressive stature. But this...this was new grounds I was trudging on. And yet, what I had walked in on his doing paved a straight road for me to walk on.

"Malfoy," I had said, startling him out of his painful reverie. I could see the pleasant pools of blood that he was bathed in, and I could smell the metallic scent of blood that hung around him. And, best of all I could see the knife he had at his side. "How are you?" With that I had taken a seat next to him and pulled out my own blade, rolling up my own sleeves and revealing to him my faded scars and a few fresh cuts from last night.

He'd stared at me for a while. Stared at my arms and the scars that blemished them. Finally, as I sunk the sinful blade in, he made a noise. It was a pained noise. "I'm fine," he said after a moment, "And you're doing that wrong." He proceeded to instruct me in a more painful and less scarring way to cut myself.

After several practise lines on my arms, I finally sunk it in once last time, and got it right. Then I dared pose the question as we both sat bathed in our own blood. "Why are you cutting?" I questioned, watching him slowly, "You have everything and you're filthy rich to top that off." The question, like I had feared previously, did not piss him off in any way.

Instead he laughed a bitter, cold laugh and watched me intently for a few minutes. Then his voice whispered softly into my ear in a such a creepy way that it made my skin crawl. "It's there." And, to my surprise and his, I knew exactly what he meant. Exactly to some form of exactness that was fearfully new to me.

And, for the first time since Tom, I allowed myself to get close to some one. And, up to this day I can't say I regret it. Me and Draco became friends. Over time best friends. By my sixth year, his seventh, we knew we were meant to be with eachother. The insane sense of dark peace we felt with eachother was unexplainable in any other way. We were soul mates. What we shared was true, and purely dark, but most definitly everlasting.

I'm out of Hogwarts now. Me and Draco are engaged and going strong. We balance eachother off. We are the finishing touches on eachother's cake, the cherry on top. We're like two bodies, but one soul. We both love, we both thrive. We thrive, indeed, on the same thing.

Me and Draco thrive on darkness.

Author's Note: Its done. There, two chapters, neat and clean. As I said its just an experiment, I didn't even try that hard on it. I don't know what I wanted to find out. Well, whatever, review.