Ravenclaw Head of House, Round ten of Year 2. Short, Prompt: Deluded, WC: 645

Authors note: the changes of address are on purpose (he, me, did). They are to represent Draco's confusion over who he is, and whether he is the "I" version, or the version (he, we, Draco) that other people may be seeing. The "we" represents his conflicting consciousness. The "he/Draco" represents a reflective view from a distance. The "I" is his self he believes he is - the one that is insane and dangerous.

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Crazy. Unstable. Dangerous.

These were words many people often used to describe Draco Malfoy. Me. Draco Malfoy is me. He has a hard time remembering. No, I. I have a hard time piecing together who I am, and who I was, and who we are meant to be. I am. Mustn't refer to myself as 'we.' That's what they told us. Me. The voices told me.

Though there are perhaps many more than three words to describe us, me, I also think there is another one hanging on the lips of society.

Deluded.

Draco Malfoy clung onto the thought of love, clung onto an ideal that was in no way true, and it drove him to the edge of insanity. That's what they all say about us. Me.

I remember it so clearly, as though I were watching it this instant. Voldemort was crumbling into dust, Harry Potter was leaning forward in exhaustion, and Hermione Granger had grabbed the nearest person to her in joy. We wondered, I wondered, whether it might have been pure chance, or whether she knew I was there all along. Perhaps she had meant to hold her redheaded friend.

Instead, she had clutched my shoulders, kissed my cheek, brushed her light fingers along my neck.

She was intoxicating.

We, I, are, am, not sure how it happened from there.

I had kissed her, her hair between my fingers, lips soft against my own, screaming on the inside, exulting on the outside, in this wild display of passion. She was everywhere. Her hands pulling me closer, her eyes slammed shut. People were shouting all around us, crying, agonised yells and uplifted, joyful expressions. The loss was so sudden and powerful for them, but she was there with me. She was there.

There is this play called Othello, written by a miraculous muggle called William Shakespeare - I read it from one of Hermione Granger's inundated book shelves. Othello is the man who loved not wisely, but too well. A man who thought he was a hero, but it turned out he was more dangerous than anyone could have anticipated. That, I think, is me. Except, there are many preconceptions about my family and danger.

Draco Malfoy most certainly deluded himself into thinking he deserved the girl he most wanted.

He, I, thought that with everything we had done, it was enough to earn him some sort of right to happiness. A right to love. A right to passion, dark hallway kisses, sweet early mornings, and a glowing light that is being completed with your other half. Becoming whole.

Draco Malfoy was fucking wrong.

It was very similar to Othello, how it had all turned out. All except for the part of us being married.

I thought we were destined to be together, two souls matched by the stars. Our names written amongst the cosmos - a nebula of glittering people celebrating our embrace on the battlefield, culminating in the most beautiful love there ever could be. And yet, she didn't seem to see it. She didn't quite see the stars, or our names, or that we were meant to be.

She called me many different names. Deluded. Deluded was in there, yes.

He, me - I had to stop her from screaming.

Othello was right. Poison would have been better. It would have preserved her beauty. Now, there are marks covering her neck and face. Her breath lies on the dead air, a puff of smoke from the cold, dead meat of her. Purple decoration surrounding her features. A trail of blood from her nose and between those rose-bud lips I kissed so long ago. Dried since the breath of life left her.

We don't think she told anyone she was coming here, to my house, to talk.

She hasn't left.

Draco Malfoy is the deluded one, perhaps. But I am the dangerous one.

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Thanks for reading!