He remembers the first time he really saw her. She was thirteen years old. She punched him in the face.
It's that memory of her that stands out to him, looking back. Windswept and fierce, holding her head high and facing him in such a brazen manner that he's not sure if she's the same mousy girl who usually tags along with the boy who lived.
He ran, of course. He'd just been assaulted, and in such a low way. Such a muggle way. His friends were there as backup, but so were hers, and his were as dumb as rocks and half as useful. So he ran, because he knows a losing game when he sees one. If she'd resort to such crude methods, who knew what those idiot friends of hers would do. He ran because bravery is foolish where cunning will suffice. If he were brave, he'd have been in Gryffindor. If he were brave, he'd be thinking about what that catch in his chest had meant, about why he'd stopped breathing, frozen mid-sneer when he'd seen that determined expression transform her soft features into something almost beautiful.
As it happened, he wasn't brave, and so he found himself pacing in the Slytherin common room, recounting the incident. How dare she touch him? Pureblooded as he was, she wasn't suited to clean his robes. Attack him? The nerve! The prissy little mudblood would pay when his father heard about this... no. She was nothing. Below his regard, and certainly below his father's. He could take care of this himself. An image came, unbidden, to his mind. The steely set of her jaw. Golden-brown eyes filled with disappointment and righteous anger. Something tightened in his chest.
That night, he lay awake, words drifting into his consciousness. He grasped them, considerate. Foul. Loathsome. Evil. He frowned. The words hadn't seemed important when he was standing there with his nose throbbing, watching her blaze before him like some avenging angel, but now... It's not like he had actively tried to cause anyone harm. Sure, he teased sometimes, but it was just that-harmless teasing. And she couldn't possibly care about that stupid hippogriff - the thing was a menace! It had damn near torn his arm off. Merlin knew what it would do to the next student... If he had known the monstrosity was so important to her... He paused, thoughtful. He didn't care what she thought, per se. But he certainly couldn't disgrace his family. With a lineage like his, public image is very important. And if the general public thinks of him as loathsome, well. He can't have that. Foul. Loathsome. Evil. That's what she thinks.
And as he drifts off to sleep, he finds he wants to prove her wrong.
Things would start to go badly for him the next year. With the Dark Lord's return, his father had gone off the deep end. Thrilled with the power given him as the right hand of his old master and desperate for more, he had been all too eager to offer his only son as a novitiate. And so, at fourteen years old, he is unwillingly branded with a mark it would mean death to refuse. His father had smiled at him, so proud. Had told him that soon, the mudbloods would be purged from their world and magic would reside only within those for whom it had been intended.
It all suddenly seemed very real.
Lying in bed that night, a certain mudblood comes to mind. One to whom magic comes as if it's second nature. So powerful a young witch that he cannot imagine magic was not meant to reside within her. He can see that righteous fury in her eyes, hear her voice - "Foul. Loathsome. Evil."
Maybe... maybe there's still hope. Maybe he can still outgrow those words. Maybe he can prove her wrong.
But then he remembers, and stares at the mark on his arm in utter despair.
He cries himself to sleep that night.
That summer, he is tasked with a burden so heavy it feels as though he will collapse beneath the weight of it. The beginning of the school year finds him distraught, struggling to keep up with coursework he knows won't matter in a matter of weeks and a secret he can feel tearing through him. He tries to keep up appearances, but even his harassment of Gryffindor's golden boy is halfhearted. Sleepless nights leave him paranoid and jumpy, and on the rare occasion anyone cares enough to ask, he can only give a shaky laugh and dismiss their concerns.
As the determined time for the monumental task before him looms closer, he finds himself thinking more and more often on the girl who had called him precisely what he'd become. Foul. Loathsome. Evil. He had wanted so badly to prove that judgment wrong... but here he is, falling neatly into the mold she'd cast. He supposes she wasn't called the brightest witch of her age for nothing.
He doesn't want to fulfill the Dark Lord's task, isn't even sure that he can. But if he doesn't... he's seen the killing curse too many times in these last months. He knows that if he fails, that same horror awaits him. He isn't brave. If he were brave...
In his mind, he sees a flash of golden-brown eyes and a jaw set in stone, hair whipped by the icy wind.
If he were brave...
A voice calling him precisely what he was. Foul. Loathsome. Evil.
His memory comes with a startling clarity, and suddenly he thinks he detects something beyond accusation. It's in the draw of her eyebrows, the slight welling of tears in those determined eyes. She is not condemning-she's imploring. Foul. Loathsome. Evil. But you don't have to be.
And maybe he doesn't.
Maybe, every once in a while, a Slytherin can be brave too.
It is shaky, and only there for a moment. But for the first time in months, Draco Malfoy smiles.