*Disclaimer:* Let's just say that if I owned Harry Potter and the
characters within those books, it. . . would not be aimed at children.
Unless children liked manly nudity. In that case, yes. Yes it would be
aimed at children.
*Rating:* R, simply because I can't be too careful with Fanfiction.net in these dark ages.
*Author's Notes:* This is another one of those things inspired by my friend Louise; however, this time, it didn't turn out as crazy or random. Actually, it's rather. . . odd and. . . I'm not sure, contemplative? *shrugs* Meh.
La, thank you Naomi for encouraging me through this. You're a wonderful person for doing so.
To the rest of you, I hope you enjoy this. I suppose it's just. . . one take on Draco Malfoy, and his various thoughts. Remember, it's all one person's opinion, pretty much, so take it with a grain of salt, if you would. ^^;
Anyhoot, enjoy. =D
~*~
Stream of Consciousness
~*~
It had been a few weeks since the summer holidays had begun. Ron Weasley was all snug in The Burrow, Hermione Granger was happily catching up on the muggle reading that she'd missed, Harry Potter was wallowing in self-pity yet again in his lonely room at Number Four Privet Drive, and Draco Malfoy was staring at his wall.
Staring. At. His. *Wall*. As the song goes, one of these things is not like the other.
Lucky for Draco, there were an assortment of walls to choose from - there was the wall that his dresser was against, the wall that his bed was against, the wall that his desk was against, and the blank, empty wall that Draco had not thought to put anything against.
Yet.
He sat in the lotus position, just as his instructional book had told him. He had concentrated, breathed deeply in and out, tried to reach his inner core and find himself within the layers upon layers of other self that he wore more often than not, and allowed his head to gently roll like a nicely cooked piece of asparagus. It took about five minutes to reach nirvana. Nothing special to be had, really. The colours were rather funky, though, in a vomit-inducing sort of way.
So, now that Draco Malfoy had achieved total consciousness, he was bored out of his mind. He'd already gone swimming in the large, indoor pool they owned, went horseback riding, played squash; basically, he'd done most every activity that was pretentious and snooty that one such as a Malfoy was expected to do and enjoy. Truth be told, he hated swimming (fear of water instilled in him by his baptism that had gone horribly, horribly awry, thanks mostly to the fact that his father was *not* Catholic, nor did he know how to perform the service himself, despite the fact he *thought* he did. Of course, this was the man who also thought the Bible was a handbook for world domination. Scary, how he was right). Riding horses made his testicles hurt and made him walk funny afterwards, and in squash, his head made more contact with the ball than his racquet did.
He'd also done the less strenuous exercise of practicing his violin; his father had made him take lessons since he was little, and while it was true that Draco was good at playing this particular instrument, he'd always been fonder of the guitar. Ah, but the guitar was such a lowly *muggle* instrument. At least it wasn't made of horsehair or cat innards. . . . not that he knew of, at least. Could never be sure of the products made in China anymore.
With his rich-boy options spent, the youngest of the clan Malfoy had decided to have a nice fly around the estate on his broom - the brand- spankin' new Nimbus 10K-Y. To be honest, Draco had no idea what the 'Y' stood for, but it reminded him of sex jelly, so at least it was amusing. Because, shock, gasp, Draco Malfoy *was* amused by such humour.
The problem with the Nimbus 10K-Y was that it, too, was made in China. It said so in tiny little printing near the base of it. Ever since Nimbus had acquired most of the major broom manufacturing companies, the quality of the brooms had seriously gone downhill; from the tendency of the bristles to fall off at random junctures in time, to the stains that could be found on his Quidditch gloves due to the cheap varnish wearing off under stress, the broom was, truly, essence of crap.
But it was expensive. And that was all that mattered. Sure, the older Nimbus brooms handled much, much better, and didn't break down after only a year's use (and repairs - if Draco weren't rolling in money, he would be outraged, simply *outraged* at the cost of repairs!). However, the old Nimbus brooms were just that - old. And old was bad. That was why Draco's mother had had many a cosmetic spell placed on her by trained MediWitches and Wizards across the fair land of theirs. Whatever she got done to her lips this time around surely cost upwards of a hundred galleons. Per lip.
"New" was not synonymous for "good" in the case of his sex gel related broomstick, which was such an innuendo in itself that it threatened to make Draco's mind burst with the naughtiness of it all. After only about half an hour of relatively easy flying (which meant as few barrel rolls, donuts, and hairpin turns as was humanly possible), the broom had just petered out, all on its on, and sent him crashing into the gardens. He landed in the bushes; the soft, cushiony bushes were so easy to fall into, as they didn't have those nasty little thorns and prickers growing all over them. However, Draco had landed in the bushes with the nasty little thorns and prickers growing all over them. Goddamn roses.
He'd cast a quick and efficient healing spell on himself after his debacle with the rose bushes. His lust for physical exertion now fully satiated, Draco wanted to do something a little calmer, a little more inward. So, he'd snuck into his mother's room (the one she used to store all her assorted stuff), and stole one of her books on yoga; some sort of East Asian practice or whatever, at least it was something to do.
And done it Draco had. He'd always been eerily flexible, which was a talent his father tried to discourage him of ("No boy of mine is growing up to be a gymnast! I know what they do in those locker rooms!" Turned out he *didn't* mean manly sex, so Draco was still confused as to what Lucius was so opposed to. Maybe he meant, "No boy of mine is growing up to be given compliments, praise and attention so that he may be reinforced positively and live a good and upstanding life devoid of crippling, emotional ills!"). Thus, performing the tricks that yoga asked him to do was like taking candy from a mentally retarded, wheelchair-bound baby. From experience, it *was* easy. And somehow, he was quite able to balance on his hands, and let his legs gracefully bend ever so forward, before his feet touched upon his carpeted floor.
It, ah, took him a bit longer to figure a way*out* of such a position, but eventually, he made it without a lot of pain involved. In the yoga book, he flipped to the back section, which offered helpful tips on meditating; without much else to eat up his time, Draco decided to give it a whirl.
Now he was left staring at his wall.
Dark green could only stay interesting for a certain period of time; viridian, jade, olive, bottle green, forest green, whatever you wanted to call it, it was just a colour, and a colour is really not something intriguing if stationary. Draco stood up without the aid of his arms, rolling effortlessly onto his feet; maybe he could go for a walk in the nearby forests, do some deep contemplating about life, the universe, and everything. More green to stare at. It was a different kind of green, though. Alive-green. The term sounded stupid enough that were Crabbe and/or Goyle present, he would have ordered them to punch his good self. Thankfully, they weren't.
Crossing the expanse of his room, Draco plucked a book at random from one of the many shelves; he also opened his dresser drawer, emptying the contents inside. He popped up the fake bottom, and retrieved a thick, yet small, leather-bound book, a quill, and a bottle of ink.
~*~
He refused to start anything off with "Dear Diary". For one, he'd sound like some sort of vacuous twelve-year-old girl who was about to gibber on about her newest crush, but not without starting with "How are you? I am fine." It was simply one of those things Draco refused to do. He knew he was writing to himself; the diary (or journal, because once again, use of the term "diary" immediately brought to mind visions of pink and other things typically associated with femininity) did not require a "Dear". Unless the diary was enchanted (it wasn't), then the diary was never going to respond and be royally pissed at Draco for not using pleasantries. He found it was so much easier to just write as he felt: stream of consciousness.
'What's with all the green?' he started off with. Oh, there. *That* sounded refined and intelligent. But, he'd written it, and he wasn't about to scratch it out; after all, it was his thought, and stream of consciousness writing only works if one writes within the stream of consciousness. 'Green's nice, but it's like sugar - good in small doses, sickening in large amounts. What would be wrong with a splash of blue, or red, or God forbid, *yellow* here and there?'. He quickly re-read what he wrote. Stream of consciousness Draco, it seemed, sounded very much like a gay interior designer.
At least he wasn't a gymnast.
Draco's back was comfortably nestled against the bark of one of the thick maple trees they'd had transplanted all the way from Canada. Once, when he was very young, Draco had attempted to siphon maple syrup out of the trees with a straw. All he got were bugs. Soon afterwards, he found out Santa Claus wasn't real. Just another crushing childhood experience at the jolly Malfoy Manor.
Breathing in deeply, the boy took in the surroundings about him; nature was everywhere, from the leaves of the trees, to the small animals darting hither and thither, going about their inane business with such seriousness that it almost - *almost* - brought a smile to Draco's face. These days, nothing short of masturbation could force anything that remotely resembled pleasure to show on his face. . . . which sounded terribly, terribly wrong, but sadly, it was true.
Ah, sex. Good times to be a teenager - STDs were down, protection was up, legs were spread, happiness ensued for about fifteen minutes. To think, human existence all boiled down to scant moments of fleeting pleasure brought on by a few jerky movements and an awful lot of fondling. He jotted that down in his journal.
Besides, sex was really just sex, because women were simply insane. Sure, they were beautiful, had curves in all the right places, and their genitals didn't look like God went glue-happy at the last moment and stuck something random between their legs, but actually settling down with one of those tempermental, over-emotional girls seemed more like a prison sentence than a joy. Maybe men were just all inherently masochistic. They'd *have* to be. His own mother - his *parents* - were enough to discourage him from pursuing marriage ever in his entire life. Dinner conversation usually went something along the lines of:
"Why darling, the house elves have done a *wonderful* job on this food once again; because, of course, heaven forbid you could ever cook anything decent. How predictable," Lucius would say.
"Perhaps if you weren't so busy preening yourself all day long, you'd realize this was food from Bistro Pierre, and not the work of the house elves. Of course, I could never count on you to be that observant. How predictable, indeed," Narcissa would reply.
Pause.
"Draco, did you know your mother is a whore?" And Draco himself would say nothing.
What was truly sad was that his mother *was* a whore. Then again, so was his father. Draco was just keeping up yet another proud tradition of the family Malfoy. Rich, blond, sarcastic and horny - wizarding world, beware.
But hey, if a grouping of such like-minded, like-haired, refined miscreants could become the most powerful and influential family this side of England, then surely, anything was possible. Perhaps it was just because blonds *did* have more fun, though Draco wasn't sure.
Of course, he never thought, personally, that he had any more fun than the next person. Maybe he had even less - as much as he hated to admit it, the saying 'money can't buy you happiness' was horribly, terribly true. He was far too cynical to be much happy. Then again, most intelligent people seemed to be. Except that Hermione gnat. She always seemed a bit flustered, but generally happy, which irked him to such an unbearable end that he thought sometimes he'd rather stab himself in the eye with his wand than associate with her.
It wasn't that she was a bad person. Not really. Draco would admit (to himself, at least) that he was not exactly a good judge of what is bad or not-quite-so-bad, what with him being a Malfoy, Slytherin, supposed Jr. Death Eater, and all - not to mention he was quite cranky, to boot. Such things aside, there was a part of Draco that almost admired Hermione for her intense set of morals. Almost. Morals only got one so far, and they also closed quite a few, potentially successful, doors.
His father, for instance. He could write an entire novel about all that his father had done to achieve such a level of success, grandeur, richness and power - however, said novel would only be about four pages long, considering such things were basically handed to Lucius on a silver platter by obliging butlers and terribly accommodating maids. One time, when Draco was but a wee lad of eight, his father (in a wonderfully drunken stupor) had recounted to his one and only son the story of the time that he'd had a maid of his try to seduce him when he was around seventeen or so, and it was a practice that involved kinky messages and "surprises" of the maid's underwear in Lucius' room. As painfully scarring as the story was to him, at least Draco was secure in the knowledge that he was the youngest boy in his school to know where babies came from. Ironically enough, his father never did sleep with that particular maid.
Not long afterwards, Draco found out that the *man-servants* were a completely different story. The poor boy had had nightmares for weeks.
'It certainly isn't that I feel sorry for myself,' Draco wrote in his journal, his quill scratching amiably against the paper, 'because only pathetic louts dredge up pity for their own being. It's not a pretty sight - God, that one time in fourth year, when Pansy would not shut *up* about her old boyfriend was worse than sitting through Care of Magical Creatures. "Oh, Draco, I thought he cared!" I can't remember much of what she said thereafter, because her pitch became so high that I'm sure only dogs could hear her. She didn't seem to notice that I didn't care, either. To think I got to third base with her. I need to brush my teeth.'
Idly, Draco looked up at the tree before him, which stood mutely with its brethren. He sighed deeply, feeling his breath being carried off by a soft breeze that barely ruffled the maple leafs surrounding him.
'Worst of all is Potter,' he wrote. Oh, *God* how he was the worst. So he survived an attack from the world's most notorious dark wizard before he knew the goings-on of a toilet, big deal. So he'd done some "heroic" stuff around the school, whoop-dee-doo. So he was incredibly attractive, what a -
Wait.
Draco felt something cold knot in his stomach. A heavy feeling, like that of lead, settled in the acidic depths of his digestive system, and stubbornly refused to be evicted. Swallowing dryly, he stared, wide-eyed, at nothing.
In this sort of situation, his associates ('friends' being too strong a word) had told him to just think of Quidditch. So he did.
'Think of Quidditch. Think of flying on my broom, speeding towards the Snitch, my hand outstretched, Potter flying beside me stretching for the tiny golden ball as well, so close to my body, I can hear him breathing, the adrenaline pumps through my veins, watching Potter strain himself to win, could almost touch him, our bodies straining, sweating, gasping for breath. . .'
Draco slapped himself quickly.
Okay. Okay, so what? So what if, somewhere, in the deep, dark recesses of his mind, Draco Malfoy harboured a mild - *mild* - crush on his rival? After all, there was always so much tension between them, and words and wands did only so much. It was all perfectly biological.
Draco had come to terms with the fact that he couldn't pick just one hole and stick with it way back in third year. It wasn't a huge shock to him, and he didn't really need to wrestle with his sexuality, because frankly, it felt natural. Besides, his father was obviously as fruity as a low-cal smoothie (he just wasn't as, ah, *flamboyant* about it as most), and his mother was. . . too wrapped up in her own world to give a straight and true damn. If he could chalk anything good up to his parents' ignorance of their own child's existence, it was that at least they had never tried to confine him sexually. Or had given him that much dreaded 'talk'. Oh, God, imagining Lucius trying to explain to him the intricacies of sex. . .
It would, Draco figured, go something like:
"So then you hold him down, and after you have the handcuffs on him, you - "
"Father?"
"What, Draco?"
"I thought you were supposed to be telling me about girls."
"Oh. Yes, well, girls. They're basically like boys, except less masculine, and more expensive."
". . ."
Draco sighed.
A boyfriend wouldn't be a big deal. A boyfriend who happened to wear glasses, bore a lightning-shaped scar, and whose name began with 'H' and ended in 'arry Potter' would create mass panic and anarchy. Thank God such a thing would never happen, because Draco was positive that Harry would never wish to associate with a Malfoy in such a biblical way.
'That phrase has always confused me. I thought the Bible was against homosexual acts of debauchery - or, be that as it may, sex in general,' he quickly scribbled into his journal.
Besides, it was purely physical. *Purely.* For one, Harry was a Gryffindor - and, to be honest, the Gryffindors generally annoyed him to such a great extent that he boycotted the colour red from his wardrobe all first and part of second year. Secondly, Harry was, in all likelihood, a straight shooter. Hadn't he been going out off and on with that little Weasley brat, Ginny? God, what ugly, ugly children they would have. And third, the boy's sense of morality and goodness and all that jazz would certainly get in the way of interesting sex.
Plus Harry always felt so damn sorry for himself. Finally revisiting his earlier point, Draco scowled at the book in his lap as he wrote down his thoughts: 'He's not the only one who's had a tough life. There are those who've had it worse, and don't bitch all the time about it (complain is, frankly, too soft a word to use). Those people don't get special treatment - oh no, they don't get noticed at all, for that matter. The world does not revolve around you, Boy Who Refuses To Die. I don't care if you're heroic, brave, exceedingly good in the Dark Arts, or if you're attractive enough to warrant my attention.'
And that right there. . . that was another reason Draco knew that a spark of something between him and Harry would never develop into the full- fledged flame of romance. He didn't want to be like. . . *them.* Those masses of people who adore the Savior of the Wizarding World. Those people who take everything at face value. Those people for whom white was white, black was black, and gray was just a pencil crayon. Draco knew the world was a much, much more complicated place. He wouldn't be one of *those* people.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Birds sang softly in the trees.
That right there was one of the major problems facing him. He didn't know who he wanted to be. Granted, there were plenty of teenagers of both wizard and muggle descent who were confused as to how they wanted to spend the rest of their life, but Draco figured having to choose a side in a potential war was much, much more difficult than choosing what to wear in the morning.
Well, sometimes. He hated laundry days, because then there really was absolutely *nothing* in his closet except a few hangers and his muddled sexuality.
His father expected him to become a Death Eater, just like him. His mother expected him to do as his father said. Harry expected him to become a Death Eater, just like how every other student at Hogwarts thought. Dumbledore. . . probably expected him to go on a horrible rampage that ended in potential murder-suicide. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, that.
'However, it most likely would never happen, because as appealing as that option is sometimes, I have no desire to go to Azkaban. It's crowded, filthy, and the only action one ever gets is the Kiss of Death from the Dementors. Come to think of it, why hasn't the Ministry built another prison? Surely Azkaban was not designed to hold so many people; but, that's what you get for using facilities built thousands of years ago, before the invention of sanitation and vaccines.'
Draco furrowed his eyebrows. Did those who were caught shoplifting go to Azkaban too? He looked up at the sky; they probably did. He decided then and there that, were he to ever hold a position of power in the Ministry one day (which, in all likelihood, he would), he would have built some lower security prisons. Those poor shoplifters. They just wanted something for free.
He ran a hand through his surprisingly un-gelled hair. Draco figured there was no sense in going through all the pains of 'dressing up', as it were, if he wasn't to even be seen by anyone outside of his immediate family. His blond hair had been growing a bit on the long side lately, and it fell into his eyes as he wrote.
'Father was in Azkaban for a short time. I knew it wouldn't last long, because. . . we have money. Money seems to fix everything in this place - seriously, I think my mother even temporarily patched up a hole in the wall with a few sickles, before she had the sense to write someone to fix it. That's my mother - her lips are full, her head is not.'
A brief smile flashed across Draco's face - when he'd found out that his father had been sent away to Azkaban, he really hadn't been all that upset. Lucius ignored him most of the time anyway, so it really wasn't as if he'd miss him; sure, he thought that perhaps his reputation would change, but only for a short while. If the Ministry is good at anything, it's covering its tracks. It was when Draco found out that Harry Potter had sent Lucius off to jail that he felt. . . something.
'Gratitude?' he wrote slowly. His eyes flickered for a moment, and his quill moved once more in a thoughtful manner. 'Gratitude in the form of a death threat.'
Hindsight can be blinding.
Yes, Draco had felt grateful to Harry for putting his father in the (only) big house, despite the fact it only lasted for a month or so. The point, he thought, was that he'd never really felt gratitude to anyone before. Ever. It was overwhelming to the point that it had kept Draco up the entire night prior to his wonderful "You're dead, Potter." To which Harry had responded sarcastically. Draco could've just hugged him for that. He'd always had a thing for dark, brooding men.
'I won't get into my fascination with Severus Snape right now, though,' Draco penned. 'One clinically depressed man at a time.'
Well, Draco was fairly sure Harry could be clinically depressed; he'd been through and seen enough to warrant at least a decade of brightly-coloured pills and brightly-lit rooms with shrinks who "just wanted to help". He knew that death was not a fun thing to witness; at one of the Death Eater meetings Lucius had brought him to, Draco had watched a "deviant" be punished (torture that involved more, well, *creative* spins on the Cruciatus), and killed. He was sick for weeks afterwards - it was the worst thing he'd ever witnessed. Quietly, Draco dipped his quill in his inkbottle again, and wrote in his journal.
'Unless, that is, you happen to be my father. Then death is just like watching a Quidditch match, sans annoying spectators and over-priced snack foods. Sane people wouldn't be able to keep anything down after watching such a thing, anyway (murder, not Quidditch) - even now, just the thought of red meat makes me squeamish. My father wanted to "celebrate" my attendance to my first Death Eater meeting with a nice dinner right afterwards. And people wonder why I am the way I am.'
Draco paused.
Did people actually wonder why he was the way he was? Did people care that much, if at all? He was comfortable in the certainty that Ron "Weasel" Weasley hated him because he was the natural antithesis of all that the carrot top stood for. Poor/rich, friendly/shrewd, large-but-happy family/small-but-dysfunctional family. . . even their own fathers hated each other. Workplace animosity passed down to the children was a powerful thing. Then again, Draco's father generally hated anyone who knew the social difference between murder and a friendly game of wizard's chess, so Draco never really wondered why he had so few friends as a child.
'Consider,' he wrote, 'my earliest childhood friend, William "Billy" Grier. I believe we were about seven years old when I made the mistake of going to my father for advice.'
"Father," young Draco had whined shortly after a playtime with Billy, "Billy took my toy train!" His father had been disinterestedly reading The Daily Prophet.
"Then curse him." Seven-year-old Draco had blinked. He was taught that curses were a no-no, at least for now.
"But I'm not allowed to." Lucius had turned the page, and tsked at the crossword.
"Nonsense. You're a Malfoy, you can do as you please." That had probably been one of the main things that Lucius Malfoy had said to his son that had a most profound impact on his personality-to-be.
"Oh." But he had not wanted to hurt Billy. He liked him, and he was the only other little boy that would be friends with him.
"But Father, I don't wanna curse Billy. He's nice to me."
"Was he being nice when he took your toy train, Draco?" Lucius had asked after successfully figuring out a five-letter word for 'drape'. Draco had thought about his father's words.
"No. . ."
"Then he's not nice to you. When people aren't nice to you, and especially when they take your things, you curse them." The young boy had furrowed his eyebrows.
"But - "
"Billy's a bastard son of a bastard, now curse him as horribly as you know how before I do the same to you."
'Needless to say,' Draco put in writing, 'I was less one (read: all) my friends the very next day.'
Now that he was on the path of recollection, Draco thought that, yes, Billy *was* a rather good friend to him. When the other kids tried to pick on him, Billy would always be there, ready to seriously kick an ass or two, despite the fact that he'd end up just getting it worse than Draco would have himself in the first place. No, he wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had a good heart. Draco couldn't help but wonder where he was now.
'Probably studying to be an Auror, or something else ridiculously adventuresome,' the boy wrote. 'He always liked discovering something new, or fighting, all those heroics. I suppose I was just content with staying in the background, doing the thinking for the both of us.'
He stopped his writing, only for an instant. Draco stared hard down at his journal.
'That's changed,' he wrote.
It had, too. Ever since he'd started going to Hogwarts, Draco always wanted to be the centre of attention, everyone's main focus. After all, why shouldn't he be? He was intelligent, witty, quite attractive (according, at least, to all those rather dirty notes he always managed to collect over the course of the year from various girls in various houses), and. . . well, perhaps not humble. Then again, what had the meek inherited lately?
'After all, it's not as if my father pays any attention to me, except when it suits him.'
It was true. If it wasn't Ministry work that needed attending to, it was Voldemort; if it wasn't the devil incarnate that needed his services, it was "business-related work, Draco, you wouldn't understand." Feh. Business-related work, wouldn't understand. . . hardly, he thought. What was so complicated about sneaking behind the backs of those idiots in charge of the Ministry? It didn't take a genius. Just someone with enough edge.
Lucius Malfoy had edge in abundance. When he wanted to be, Draco had experienced first hand that, when in such a mood, his father could be icy and sharper than a blade. The words he said, at least, were; no, when Lucius was *really* angry, he seemed to prefer blunt instruments over sharp ones. Too much hassle to get the house elves to clean up afterwards, Lucius had said.
It still hurt. Draco paused for just a moment, before setting quill to paper.
'The worst part, though, is that I prefer his anger to his ignorance of my existence. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Seventeen years old, and still craving Daddy's acceptance. I sicken me.'
He couldn't help but cringe as he dotted his i's and crossed his t's, finally finishing the last sentence with a definitive period. As long as Draco could remember, he'd never hated Lucius Malfoy - he only hated the fact that he needed him. It was horrible; after all, Draco was a Slytherin. He was supposed to be completely and utterly independent and self-reliant - no ties meant no harm and no foul. And yet, despite that and the fact that his father had only really shown care to him when they were to be out in public (Draco was, more or less, something of a trophy son), Draco. . . needed him. Wanted his attention.
At least, the good kind of attention. Sure, once Draco had set fire to the carpet just so Lucius would quit worrying about those Ministry reports of his for half an hour; and yes, perhaps Draco *was* responsible for dumping a large bucket of black paint onto Narcissa's favourite white couch, and then proceeded to write rather naughty words with it. . . but he was only ten or so at the time, one couldn't blame him. The irony of it all was that his parents ended up blaming the house elves.
His luck.
Other than that, shows of affection from his parents had been either so insignificant it was practically unnoticeable, or horribly disturbing, especially coming from his father. Once, shortly before he came to Hogwarts, Draco had been awakened from his slumber only to find Lucius, strangely flushed and breathing heavily over him. His father had later explained to him that he was only having an asthma attack, but. . . his father didn't *have* asthma. . . needless to say, Draco didn't sleep for the rest of that night. Or week. By the time he'd passed out from exhaustion, he'd imbibed so much coffee that it was all he could taste for nearly a month.
'Apparently, in my family, Mudbloods are looked down upon, but homosexual incest is fine. I suppose years of extremely selective marriages - usually to our cousins, as it turns out - has finally caught up with us,' the boy wrote down. To be honest, there always *was* some sort of mildly esoteric feeling of madness that surrounded the clan Malfoy; his great-great Uncle Leopold had once put an electric-current spell on a river he was fishing in, in order to make all the (dead) fish surface. He'd, of course, waded in to collect the fish, and was promptly electrocuted by his own spell and was thus found floating amongst his catch. As far as Draco knew, great- great Uncle Leopold was always looked down upon in the family. At least, the teenager thought, he didn't lust after his son.
. . . to his knowledge.
'With the way my family is, I wouldn't be surprised if he did. I think that's why we've never had a family reunion - it would all just end up being one mass orgy, after the potato salad and bunt cakes had been consumed. Though who, exactly, would make that food is anyone's guess - the only thing my mother is good at making are reservations.'
He thought for a moment, putting his writing on hiatus for but a second.
'Maybe I would make the food. I haven't done much cooking, but from the small amount I've managed to accomplish, I actually quite enjoyed it - the products were also far better than simply edible, as well. Hm, note to self: cook something later today. Maybe something vaguely Oriental.'
The wonderful thing about being bisexual, Draco thought, was that there was really no need to try to defend his 'masculinity', whatever the hell *that* was. Boys, girls, it was all good: he could watch some horrendously violent sports whilst crocheting a nice blanket if he so wanted, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference, since it would all balance out.
Except for the fact Draco hated anything to do with crocheting or knitting. It only left him with bloody fingers and an unfinished sweater. He also lacked the patience for such a precise thing; Quidditch was practically instant gratification, since there was always movement and excitement and heavy objects flying at one's head. Something as slow as knitting required waiting and waiting for the finished product, and only after a sufficient amount of work had been done. Far too painstaking.
How he managed to enjoy and do so well in Potions had eluded Draco for years for such a reason; potion-making was practically a science, requiring skill, efficiency, and an insane amount of patience. One mistake could ruin an entire day's work, and in some cases, it had - certainly such an aspect should have turned Draco off to potions and all that it was related to in an instant, but. . . it didn't.
'Severus Snape,' Draco slowly wrote in his journal, the marks clear and obvious. The man's name even suited his personality - sharp and severe, yet with a distinct flow and dignity that was hard to find anywhere else. From the moment Draco had first laid eyes on him, he'd been deeply intrigued; it wasn't just the man's tall stature and dark demeanor, but. . . his voice.
Oh. That *voice*. It could send shivers down his spine. Snape was a man who could deliver verbal assault with a tongue as sharp as his wit, and yet it could be in such a way that one would almost look past the words, if only to hear his dulcet tones.
'As I said, I have a thing for dark, brooding men. Yet I have the horrible suspicion that my father does, too,' he wrote, dipping his quill into the inkpot once more. On the off-occasion that Lucius ever asked his son about how he was faring (other than marks, of course; Lucius Malfoy demanded nothing but top grades from his only boy-child), the subject of Professor Snape would, without fail, come up. Somehow, subtly, his father would guide the path of conversation until all roads seemed to lead to Snape - whether it was a discussion on the state of Slytherin house ('And Snape is still the head of it? How has he been?'), Potions class ('You're doing quite well in potions. Snape teaches that, does he? How has he been?'), Lucius' own days at Hogwarts ('When I was your age, I would never have accepted lackeys such as Crabbe and Goyle to be my only friends. Severus and I always got along quite well, we were both smart for our age. How has he been?'), or he'd simply use Snape as a racy conversation starter ('I fucked your Potions teacher. He was quite good, then. How has he been lately?'). Draco wasn't sure if his father was ever insinuating anything when the discussions went down that particularly shady road.
He sighed. Draco had long ago accepted the fact that his father was a promiscuous youth back in the day, and that he was a promiscuous adult now in the day, but the time Lucius had let *that* little nugget of truth out. . . well, if he had the same taste in men as his father, perhaps something was wrong.
Of course, Draco was fairly certain that Lucius felt no such attraction towards Harry Potter. If the subject of *him* ever came up, his father would speak of *him*with a familiar tone of scathing and loathing - the entire wizarding world rests on the laurels of one moody teenager, oh how I weep for your generation's future, Draco. The mental picture of Lucius weeping for anything creeped Draco out to no end, anyway.
'Though I just don't understand what Severus Snape ever saw in my father. Sees, maybe? Please, God, let that not be the case - I don't want to know the other being responsible for keeping me up at night with those grunting, moaning, and bed-spring creaking noises, because it sure as hell is not my mother who's in there with Lucius; I'm mentally scarred as it is. To be honest, I'm surprised he ever bothered to have sex with my mother, which is no less a disturbing thought than my father screwing my teacher. It's a wonder I was ever born.'
With a bit of a self-depricating smirk plastered on his admittedly pale face, Draco looked up at the sky; a cloudless blue void stared back at him. The day was, by all standards, exceptionally beautiful; it wasn't warm enough to warrant copious amounts of deodorant, but not chilly enough to need a long sleeved robe. It was that transitional time between spring and summer - thus, the ground was cool, yet thankfully devoid of dampness. Soggy grass was no good for Draco's stream of conscious muse.
Snape just seemed too complex a man for his father to really appreciate. Granted, Lucius Malfoy was by no means what one would call a stupid man, but he was extremely set in his ideals - there was no such thing as flexibility in that sort of arena, as far as the Malfoy patriarch was concerned. It was do or die, eat or be eaten, fuck or be fucked. Simple. That was probably why he never questioned his place as, essentially, Voldemort's lapdog.
Another intriguing quality of Snape's that most seemed to lack in one way or another: the man had made a decision, but was able to actually *change* when he felt something was 'wrong'. Oh, sure, it was common knowledge (at least, amongst the purebloods) that Snape was a Death Eater. In some instances, he was all that more respected for it. What most in the innermost of inner circles did not know was that Snape simply *was* a Death Eater, strictly in the past tense.
Slowly, Draco tore his gaze away from the sky, picked up his quill, and resumed writing.
'One perk of being a sneaky bastard is that I'm privy to more information than anyone would suspect. I know that Snape is working as a spy for Dumbledore in this almost-ludicrous "War on Horrorism" that the Daily Prophet continues to write about, despite their obvious lack of sources. I also know that Professor Sprout grows more than just Madrake Root in her gardens - shame that no one else seems to have found those marijuana plants, because it would be extremely fun to watch half the school population stumble around, completely stoned.'
He paused for a moment.
'Note to self: special brownies - possibility for the future.'
Draco had to admit, pranks could be fun, if done at the proper time to the proper person. Fred and George - the only members of the Weasley family that he could ever bring himself to not intensely dislike entirely.
'It was a little creepy how they'd sometimes finish their sentences for each other. Brothers and lovers - most likely. After all, technically, the Weasleys *are* purebloods, much as most the adults I know would loathe to admit it.'
At the most personal level, Draco didn't have a whole lot against witches and wizards who weren't purebloods - if they weren't related to him, then they had to be alright, somehow. The term 'Mudblood' just happened to be a very useful insult; he'd heard other, less able-minded kids, at Hogwarts refer to those they hated as "fag", "queer", and so forth. Surely these idiots had nothing against the gay wizarding community, but "fag" and "queer" were simply good bad names. "That lesson was so gay. Oh my God, look at that queer little dog. He's stupid, what a fag." Draco shook his head.
'A lesson has no sexuality, so it can't rightly be gay. I've never heard of there being a completely straight lesson, either. As for the dog. . . perhaps the dog is queer. It can happen. Now, I'm also sure there are plenty of stupid homosexuals in the world, but being of a low intelligence does not decide a person's sexual preference. In fact, most of the gay people I've met have been a lot smarter and better dressed than the majority of the straight population I've been exposed to.'
Draco blinked once.
'Is Headmaster Dumbledore gay?'
He furrowed his eyebrows in thought.
'Yes,' he wrote beside it, 'Yes, he is. Pastel robes, far-too-friendly countenance, predisposition to hard candy. . . it all makes sense.'
He paused again, and made a face.
'Ew.'
Shuddering gently, Draco flipped to the next page of his journal, noting that the previous page had been completely filled by his small, yet horrendously neat handwriting.
Glancing over, Draco caught the sight of the other book he'd brought with him out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't too sure why he brought it; after all, no one save himself ever really came out into the forests on their grounds, so it wasn't as if he needed it to act as a cover for his journal writing. He chalked it up to habit; whenever Draco needed to bring something anywhere, he always took along a different object as well, "just in case". After all, what if the Hogwarts Express had broken down, and Draco was forced to associate with idiot Hufflepuff students for hours on end? Clearly, bringing along a couple extra books to read would save him such indignity. Hell, he'd even rather *crochet* than socialize with Hufflepuffs. And he would've, too, right in front of the entire population of the school. If Harry would ask him (nicely), he even would have made him a scarf.
'It's not that I'm some horribly kind gift-giver - really, far from it - it's simply that crocheting a scarf for my sworn enemy on a broken train would generally be more intellectually stimulating than talking with most the student body of Hogwarts. Lucius would then, in all likelihood, have grounds to skin me alive. . . at least I would make an exceptionally beautiful wrap.'
Because his father was the type of man who would flay and proceed to use his son's epidermis as an article of clothing. Draco figured he'd only be worn on special occasions, though, like Death Eater meetings. Such as:
Voldemort would begin, with all his cronies surrounding him, and that pet serpent of his coiled wonderfully around his feet. "I call to order this meeting of the Death Ea - oh, Lucius! Smashing pelt you have there!"
"Why thank you, he used to be my son."
"Well he looks very smart on you, Lucius, don't you think Pettigrew?"
"Oh, yes Master, very smart. The blond-avec-blond is most classic."
"Classic, indeed. He looks wonderful when he's on you." At this, Lucius would smirk proudly.
"That's what I tried to tell him last night." This would be met with hearty laughter, of course, because Voldemort was, in all likeliness, an advocate of forced familial sex.
Draco closed his eyes, and stretched his arms out. Perhaps his father's wrath and disturbed nature wouldn't be of such a calibre; admittedly, Draco had an extremely far-reaching imagination, born of the days of childhood when he hadn't any other children to play with. Narcissa and Lucius were adamant on the fact that their boy would not be "tainted by filthy Mudbloods at such an early age", to which Draco supposed he was alright with, were it not for the fact that none of the other pureblood kids seemed inclined to the act of "playing". Draco had once thrown a ball to another child of his age at some sort of function (Cecil, was the name of that kid?), and rather than instigating a game of "catch", it simply hit Cecil in the head. Three days later, Cecil's father attempted to sue Lucius Malfoy; this dragged on in the courts for what seemed to be forever, as Cecil's father tried to prove to the judge that Draco was sent on behalf of Lucius to start "maiming the future prospects of his company".
He'd just wanted to play catch. For Christ's sake, he was four.
'But that's how it is, I suppose. Catch isn't catch - catch is a pretense for gaining information, power, and money. Somehow. I can barely remember it. How throwing one fucking ball somehow constitutes such things. . .'
Draco sighed noisily.
'That's why I'm a Slytherin, just like my father was before me, and my grandfather before him, I'm sure. To be perfectly honest, Slytherins are no more cunning or intelligent than the Ravenclaws - I've never been able to figure out a rubix cube, for example, and one long, dreary day, I actually sat down and watched some Ravenclaw fifth year do the puzzle in under twenty minutes. Under twenty minutes. When I had tried it, I got fed up with it after an hour and simply broke the damn thing, only to put it together again in such a way that it looked as if I had mastered it.
And still, that's not only a Slytherin quality. The Gryffindors seem to bend or, at times, outright *break* the rules on a regular basis, to only achieve what they want. Depending on my mood, this is either annoying or arousing. . . . also depending on the person. That boy's sudden rebellious nature just makes my insides squish together and flutter almost painfully. Or I could have an infection. I'm not sure.
I won't say anything about the Hufflepuffs. They're really just the rejects of the school that have no real place, and no one could think of what to do with them. Slytherin, sadly, also houses many a reject: two words - Crabbe and Goyle. I would compare them to retarded monkeys, if only that weren't so terribly offensive to retarded monkeys.'
He paused.
'Then why do we Slytherins feel so much the same, yet so different too? I'm not my father - I'm far from my father, I hope - but why do I share the same qualities as him? I'm not at all like Crabbe and Goyle; certainly I get along with Pansy, but for lack of a better word, ugh.
Why are we all in the same house?'
Thoughtfully, Draco chewed on the end of his quill. Furrowing his eyebrows in thought, he looked over at the other book he had brought with him, still lying, untouched, on the earthy ground. The dark green cover of it blended nicely with the grass and surrounding foliage, and was accented only by the gold lining framing the cover of it. The gentle breeze that lifted blond tendrils of soft hair onto its current made no difference in the book's inertia.
Blue eyes were lost only for a moment behind slowly blinking eyelids. Draco dipped his quill into the inkpot once more; with another quick glance at the second book he brought with him, Draco carefully wrote in his journal.
'Because Slytherins have secrets.'
He watched as the ink, once shiny and slightly above the paper, sank into the paper, absorbed by the pulp's greedy thirst. Each word set itself individually on the blank space of the sheet. Satisfied, Draco smiled softly to himself, and he closed the writing journal he held in his hands.
"Secrets, Draco," Lucius had said to him one evening, when the silence had simply become unbearable, "You understand their importance, don't you?"
"Yes, father," he had answered automatically, disinterestedly flipping through an older novel of his.
"I don't think you do."
"That's presumptuous of you."
"It's correct of me, that's what it is," his father had said, in the tone of his that belied any pretence of serenity. He continued, anyway.
"A family like ours, we cannot allow ourselves to rightly mingle with the ordinary people. We are above them." Draco remembered a fire crackling somewhere in the background. "Do you know why, Draco?"
Draco said nothing.
"The skeletons in all our closets are dangerous, son." It had been the first time Lucius ever referred to Draco as 'son'. "The dead and the mute can only speak through the living and the able."
"So?" Draco had asked, not exactly liking where the conversation was going.
"We are quite alive and more than able, Draco. But the dead and the mute are the way they are for a reason. Remember that."
Draco had hoped to God that his father was drunk at the time, but had sadly realized that, no, he wasn't. A drunk Lucius would never sound so utterly honest.
Oh, and he had remembered what his father had said. It was one of the only pieces of advice of his father's that he'd ever really followed; to put it bluntly, Lucius didn't want his own son to somehow send him to Azkaban, or find a way to make him lose the Malfoy fortune by exposing the corruption in their family.
Lightly, Draco fingered the covering of his journal. Silent as they may have been, the mute were certainly not blind.
The birds continued to sing softly in the trees as he stood up, books, quill, and ink in hand; and quietly, he made his way out of the forest.
~*~
Most of you are probably wondering the same thing as me: "What the hell was that?" It's a good question. I'm not sure, myself. I just started writing, and. . . this is where I ended up.
Yes, this is a one-shot, so no, I don't plan on writing anything else to expand on this. God knows I already have enough on my plate as it is. @.@
Anyway, reviews are. . . extremely, extremely appreciated. You have no idea. I love reviews. ^^;
Thanks for putting up with this enough to keep reading right to the end. I, uh, I hope you liked it and all - please do note that I really appreciate constructive criticism, and even praise. ^_^ Flames will be ignored, because frankly, it's just a waste of your time, and mine. With all the energy one takes to write a flame, said one could have made a sandwich.
~Chibikat
*Rating:* R, simply because I can't be too careful with Fanfiction.net in these dark ages.
*Author's Notes:* This is another one of those things inspired by my friend Louise; however, this time, it didn't turn out as crazy or random. Actually, it's rather. . . odd and. . . I'm not sure, contemplative? *shrugs* Meh.
La, thank you Naomi for encouraging me through this. You're a wonderful person for doing so.
To the rest of you, I hope you enjoy this. I suppose it's just. . . one take on Draco Malfoy, and his various thoughts. Remember, it's all one person's opinion, pretty much, so take it with a grain of salt, if you would. ^^;
Anyhoot, enjoy. =D
~*~
Stream of Consciousness
~*~
It had been a few weeks since the summer holidays had begun. Ron Weasley was all snug in The Burrow, Hermione Granger was happily catching up on the muggle reading that she'd missed, Harry Potter was wallowing in self-pity yet again in his lonely room at Number Four Privet Drive, and Draco Malfoy was staring at his wall.
Staring. At. His. *Wall*. As the song goes, one of these things is not like the other.
Lucky for Draco, there were an assortment of walls to choose from - there was the wall that his dresser was against, the wall that his bed was against, the wall that his desk was against, and the blank, empty wall that Draco had not thought to put anything against.
Yet.
He sat in the lotus position, just as his instructional book had told him. He had concentrated, breathed deeply in and out, tried to reach his inner core and find himself within the layers upon layers of other self that he wore more often than not, and allowed his head to gently roll like a nicely cooked piece of asparagus. It took about five minutes to reach nirvana. Nothing special to be had, really. The colours were rather funky, though, in a vomit-inducing sort of way.
So, now that Draco Malfoy had achieved total consciousness, he was bored out of his mind. He'd already gone swimming in the large, indoor pool they owned, went horseback riding, played squash; basically, he'd done most every activity that was pretentious and snooty that one such as a Malfoy was expected to do and enjoy. Truth be told, he hated swimming (fear of water instilled in him by his baptism that had gone horribly, horribly awry, thanks mostly to the fact that his father was *not* Catholic, nor did he know how to perform the service himself, despite the fact he *thought* he did. Of course, this was the man who also thought the Bible was a handbook for world domination. Scary, how he was right). Riding horses made his testicles hurt and made him walk funny afterwards, and in squash, his head made more contact with the ball than his racquet did.
He'd also done the less strenuous exercise of practicing his violin; his father had made him take lessons since he was little, and while it was true that Draco was good at playing this particular instrument, he'd always been fonder of the guitar. Ah, but the guitar was such a lowly *muggle* instrument. At least it wasn't made of horsehair or cat innards. . . . not that he knew of, at least. Could never be sure of the products made in China anymore.
With his rich-boy options spent, the youngest of the clan Malfoy had decided to have a nice fly around the estate on his broom - the brand- spankin' new Nimbus 10K-Y. To be honest, Draco had no idea what the 'Y' stood for, but it reminded him of sex jelly, so at least it was amusing. Because, shock, gasp, Draco Malfoy *was* amused by such humour.
The problem with the Nimbus 10K-Y was that it, too, was made in China. It said so in tiny little printing near the base of it. Ever since Nimbus had acquired most of the major broom manufacturing companies, the quality of the brooms had seriously gone downhill; from the tendency of the bristles to fall off at random junctures in time, to the stains that could be found on his Quidditch gloves due to the cheap varnish wearing off under stress, the broom was, truly, essence of crap.
But it was expensive. And that was all that mattered. Sure, the older Nimbus brooms handled much, much better, and didn't break down after only a year's use (and repairs - if Draco weren't rolling in money, he would be outraged, simply *outraged* at the cost of repairs!). However, the old Nimbus brooms were just that - old. And old was bad. That was why Draco's mother had had many a cosmetic spell placed on her by trained MediWitches and Wizards across the fair land of theirs. Whatever she got done to her lips this time around surely cost upwards of a hundred galleons. Per lip.
"New" was not synonymous for "good" in the case of his sex gel related broomstick, which was such an innuendo in itself that it threatened to make Draco's mind burst with the naughtiness of it all. After only about half an hour of relatively easy flying (which meant as few barrel rolls, donuts, and hairpin turns as was humanly possible), the broom had just petered out, all on its on, and sent him crashing into the gardens. He landed in the bushes; the soft, cushiony bushes were so easy to fall into, as they didn't have those nasty little thorns and prickers growing all over them. However, Draco had landed in the bushes with the nasty little thorns and prickers growing all over them. Goddamn roses.
He'd cast a quick and efficient healing spell on himself after his debacle with the rose bushes. His lust for physical exertion now fully satiated, Draco wanted to do something a little calmer, a little more inward. So, he'd snuck into his mother's room (the one she used to store all her assorted stuff), and stole one of her books on yoga; some sort of East Asian practice or whatever, at least it was something to do.
And done it Draco had. He'd always been eerily flexible, which was a talent his father tried to discourage him of ("No boy of mine is growing up to be a gymnast! I know what they do in those locker rooms!" Turned out he *didn't* mean manly sex, so Draco was still confused as to what Lucius was so opposed to. Maybe he meant, "No boy of mine is growing up to be given compliments, praise and attention so that he may be reinforced positively and live a good and upstanding life devoid of crippling, emotional ills!"). Thus, performing the tricks that yoga asked him to do was like taking candy from a mentally retarded, wheelchair-bound baby. From experience, it *was* easy. And somehow, he was quite able to balance on his hands, and let his legs gracefully bend ever so forward, before his feet touched upon his carpeted floor.
It, ah, took him a bit longer to figure a way*out* of such a position, but eventually, he made it without a lot of pain involved. In the yoga book, he flipped to the back section, which offered helpful tips on meditating; without much else to eat up his time, Draco decided to give it a whirl.
Now he was left staring at his wall.
Dark green could only stay interesting for a certain period of time; viridian, jade, olive, bottle green, forest green, whatever you wanted to call it, it was just a colour, and a colour is really not something intriguing if stationary. Draco stood up without the aid of his arms, rolling effortlessly onto his feet; maybe he could go for a walk in the nearby forests, do some deep contemplating about life, the universe, and everything. More green to stare at. It was a different kind of green, though. Alive-green. The term sounded stupid enough that were Crabbe and/or Goyle present, he would have ordered them to punch his good self. Thankfully, they weren't.
Crossing the expanse of his room, Draco plucked a book at random from one of the many shelves; he also opened his dresser drawer, emptying the contents inside. He popped up the fake bottom, and retrieved a thick, yet small, leather-bound book, a quill, and a bottle of ink.
~*~
He refused to start anything off with "Dear Diary". For one, he'd sound like some sort of vacuous twelve-year-old girl who was about to gibber on about her newest crush, but not without starting with "How are you? I am fine." It was simply one of those things Draco refused to do. He knew he was writing to himself; the diary (or journal, because once again, use of the term "diary" immediately brought to mind visions of pink and other things typically associated with femininity) did not require a "Dear". Unless the diary was enchanted (it wasn't), then the diary was never going to respond and be royally pissed at Draco for not using pleasantries. He found it was so much easier to just write as he felt: stream of consciousness.
'What's with all the green?' he started off with. Oh, there. *That* sounded refined and intelligent. But, he'd written it, and he wasn't about to scratch it out; after all, it was his thought, and stream of consciousness writing only works if one writes within the stream of consciousness. 'Green's nice, but it's like sugar - good in small doses, sickening in large amounts. What would be wrong with a splash of blue, or red, or God forbid, *yellow* here and there?'. He quickly re-read what he wrote. Stream of consciousness Draco, it seemed, sounded very much like a gay interior designer.
At least he wasn't a gymnast.
Draco's back was comfortably nestled against the bark of one of the thick maple trees they'd had transplanted all the way from Canada. Once, when he was very young, Draco had attempted to siphon maple syrup out of the trees with a straw. All he got were bugs. Soon afterwards, he found out Santa Claus wasn't real. Just another crushing childhood experience at the jolly Malfoy Manor.
Breathing in deeply, the boy took in the surroundings about him; nature was everywhere, from the leaves of the trees, to the small animals darting hither and thither, going about their inane business with such seriousness that it almost - *almost* - brought a smile to Draco's face. These days, nothing short of masturbation could force anything that remotely resembled pleasure to show on his face. . . . which sounded terribly, terribly wrong, but sadly, it was true.
Ah, sex. Good times to be a teenager - STDs were down, protection was up, legs were spread, happiness ensued for about fifteen minutes. To think, human existence all boiled down to scant moments of fleeting pleasure brought on by a few jerky movements and an awful lot of fondling. He jotted that down in his journal.
Besides, sex was really just sex, because women were simply insane. Sure, they were beautiful, had curves in all the right places, and their genitals didn't look like God went glue-happy at the last moment and stuck something random between their legs, but actually settling down with one of those tempermental, over-emotional girls seemed more like a prison sentence than a joy. Maybe men were just all inherently masochistic. They'd *have* to be. His own mother - his *parents* - were enough to discourage him from pursuing marriage ever in his entire life. Dinner conversation usually went something along the lines of:
"Why darling, the house elves have done a *wonderful* job on this food once again; because, of course, heaven forbid you could ever cook anything decent. How predictable," Lucius would say.
"Perhaps if you weren't so busy preening yourself all day long, you'd realize this was food from Bistro Pierre, and not the work of the house elves. Of course, I could never count on you to be that observant. How predictable, indeed," Narcissa would reply.
Pause.
"Draco, did you know your mother is a whore?" And Draco himself would say nothing.
What was truly sad was that his mother *was* a whore. Then again, so was his father. Draco was just keeping up yet another proud tradition of the family Malfoy. Rich, blond, sarcastic and horny - wizarding world, beware.
But hey, if a grouping of such like-minded, like-haired, refined miscreants could become the most powerful and influential family this side of England, then surely, anything was possible. Perhaps it was just because blonds *did* have more fun, though Draco wasn't sure.
Of course, he never thought, personally, that he had any more fun than the next person. Maybe he had even less - as much as he hated to admit it, the saying 'money can't buy you happiness' was horribly, terribly true. He was far too cynical to be much happy. Then again, most intelligent people seemed to be. Except that Hermione gnat. She always seemed a bit flustered, but generally happy, which irked him to such an unbearable end that he thought sometimes he'd rather stab himself in the eye with his wand than associate with her.
It wasn't that she was a bad person. Not really. Draco would admit (to himself, at least) that he was not exactly a good judge of what is bad or not-quite-so-bad, what with him being a Malfoy, Slytherin, supposed Jr. Death Eater, and all - not to mention he was quite cranky, to boot. Such things aside, there was a part of Draco that almost admired Hermione for her intense set of morals. Almost. Morals only got one so far, and they also closed quite a few, potentially successful, doors.
His father, for instance. He could write an entire novel about all that his father had done to achieve such a level of success, grandeur, richness and power - however, said novel would only be about four pages long, considering such things were basically handed to Lucius on a silver platter by obliging butlers and terribly accommodating maids. One time, when Draco was but a wee lad of eight, his father (in a wonderfully drunken stupor) had recounted to his one and only son the story of the time that he'd had a maid of his try to seduce him when he was around seventeen or so, and it was a practice that involved kinky messages and "surprises" of the maid's underwear in Lucius' room. As painfully scarring as the story was to him, at least Draco was secure in the knowledge that he was the youngest boy in his school to know where babies came from. Ironically enough, his father never did sleep with that particular maid.
Not long afterwards, Draco found out that the *man-servants* were a completely different story. The poor boy had had nightmares for weeks.
'It certainly isn't that I feel sorry for myself,' Draco wrote in his journal, his quill scratching amiably against the paper, 'because only pathetic louts dredge up pity for their own being. It's not a pretty sight - God, that one time in fourth year, when Pansy would not shut *up* about her old boyfriend was worse than sitting through Care of Magical Creatures. "Oh, Draco, I thought he cared!" I can't remember much of what she said thereafter, because her pitch became so high that I'm sure only dogs could hear her. She didn't seem to notice that I didn't care, either. To think I got to third base with her. I need to brush my teeth.'
Idly, Draco looked up at the tree before him, which stood mutely with its brethren. He sighed deeply, feeling his breath being carried off by a soft breeze that barely ruffled the maple leafs surrounding him.
'Worst of all is Potter,' he wrote. Oh, *God* how he was the worst. So he survived an attack from the world's most notorious dark wizard before he knew the goings-on of a toilet, big deal. So he'd done some "heroic" stuff around the school, whoop-dee-doo. So he was incredibly attractive, what a -
Wait.
Draco felt something cold knot in his stomach. A heavy feeling, like that of lead, settled in the acidic depths of his digestive system, and stubbornly refused to be evicted. Swallowing dryly, he stared, wide-eyed, at nothing.
In this sort of situation, his associates ('friends' being too strong a word) had told him to just think of Quidditch. So he did.
'Think of Quidditch. Think of flying on my broom, speeding towards the Snitch, my hand outstretched, Potter flying beside me stretching for the tiny golden ball as well, so close to my body, I can hear him breathing, the adrenaline pumps through my veins, watching Potter strain himself to win, could almost touch him, our bodies straining, sweating, gasping for breath. . .'
Draco slapped himself quickly.
Okay. Okay, so what? So what if, somewhere, in the deep, dark recesses of his mind, Draco Malfoy harboured a mild - *mild* - crush on his rival? After all, there was always so much tension between them, and words and wands did only so much. It was all perfectly biological.
Draco had come to terms with the fact that he couldn't pick just one hole and stick with it way back in third year. It wasn't a huge shock to him, and he didn't really need to wrestle with his sexuality, because frankly, it felt natural. Besides, his father was obviously as fruity as a low-cal smoothie (he just wasn't as, ah, *flamboyant* about it as most), and his mother was. . . too wrapped up in her own world to give a straight and true damn. If he could chalk anything good up to his parents' ignorance of their own child's existence, it was that at least they had never tried to confine him sexually. Or had given him that much dreaded 'talk'. Oh, God, imagining Lucius trying to explain to him the intricacies of sex. . .
It would, Draco figured, go something like:
"So then you hold him down, and after you have the handcuffs on him, you - "
"Father?"
"What, Draco?"
"I thought you were supposed to be telling me about girls."
"Oh. Yes, well, girls. They're basically like boys, except less masculine, and more expensive."
". . ."
Draco sighed.
A boyfriend wouldn't be a big deal. A boyfriend who happened to wear glasses, bore a lightning-shaped scar, and whose name began with 'H' and ended in 'arry Potter' would create mass panic and anarchy. Thank God such a thing would never happen, because Draco was positive that Harry would never wish to associate with a Malfoy in such a biblical way.
'That phrase has always confused me. I thought the Bible was against homosexual acts of debauchery - or, be that as it may, sex in general,' he quickly scribbled into his journal.
Besides, it was purely physical. *Purely.* For one, Harry was a Gryffindor - and, to be honest, the Gryffindors generally annoyed him to such a great extent that he boycotted the colour red from his wardrobe all first and part of second year. Secondly, Harry was, in all likelihood, a straight shooter. Hadn't he been going out off and on with that little Weasley brat, Ginny? God, what ugly, ugly children they would have. And third, the boy's sense of morality and goodness and all that jazz would certainly get in the way of interesting sex.
Plus Harry always felt so damn sorry for himself. Finally revisiting his earlier point, Draco scowled at the book in his lap as he wrote down his thoughts: 'He's not the only one who's had a tough life. There are those who've had it worse, and don't bitch all the time about it (complain is, frankly, too soft a word to use). Those people don't get special treatment - oh no, they don't get noticed at all, for that matter. The world does not revolve around you, Boy Who Refuses To Die. I don't care if you're heroic, brave, exceedingly good in the Dark Arts, or if you're attractive enough to warrant my attention.'
And that right there. . . that was another reason Draco knew that a spark of something between him and Harry would never develop into the full- fledged flame of romance. He didn't want to be like. . . *them.* Those masses of people who adore the Savior of the Wizarding World. Those people who take everything at face value. Those people for whom white was white, black was black, and gray was just a pencil crayon. Draco knew the world was a much, much more complicated place. He wouldn't be one of *those* people.
He closed his eyes for a moment. Birds sang softly in the trees.
That right there was one of the major problems facing him. He didn't know who he wanted to be. Granted, there were plenty of teenagers of both wizard and muggle descent who were confused as to how they wanted to spend the rest of their life, but Draco figured having to choose a side in a potential war was much, much more difficult than choosing what to wear in the morning.
Well, sometimes. He hated laundry days, because then there really was absolutely *nothing* in his closet except a few hangers and his muddled sexuality.
His father expected him to become a Death Eater, just like him. His mother expected him to do as his father said. Harry expected him to become a Death Eater, just like how every other student at Hogwarts thought. Dumbledore. . . probably expected him to go on a horrible rampage that ended in potential murder-suicide. It wasn't out of the realm of possibility, that.
'However, it most likely would never happen, because as appealing as that option is sometimes, I have no desire to go to Azkaban. It's crowded, filthy, and the only action one ever gets is the Kiss of Death from the Dementors. Come to think of it, why hasn't the Ministry built another prison? Surely Azkaban was not designed to hold so many people; but, that's what you get for using facilities built thousands of years ago, before the invention of sanitation and vaccines.'
Draco furrowed his eyebrows. Did those who were caught shoplifting go to Azkaban too? He looked up at the sky; they probably did. He decided then and there that, were he to ever hold a position of power in the Ministry one day (which, in all likelihood, he would), he would have built some lower security prisons. Those poor shoplifters. They just wanted something for free.
He ran a hand through his surprisingly un-gelled hair. Draco figured there was no sense in going through all the pains of 'dressing up', as it were, if he wasn't to even be seen by anyone outside of his immediate family. His blond hair had been growing a bit on the long side lately, and it fell into his eyes as he wrote.
'Father was in Azkaban for a short time. I knew it wouldn't last long, because. . . we have money. Money seems to fix everything in this place - seriously, I think my mother even temporarily patched up a hole in the wall with a few sickles, before she had the sense to write someone to fix it. That's my mother - her lips are full, her head is not.'
A brief smile flashed across Draco's face - when he'd found out that his father had been sent away to Azkaban, he really hadn't been all that upset. Lucius ignored him most of the time anyway, so it really wasn't as if he'd miss him; sure, he thought that perhaps his reputation would change, but only for a short while. If the Ministry is good at anything, it's covering its tracks. It was when Draco found out that Harry Potter had sent Lucius off to jail that he felt. . . something.
'Gratitude?' he wrote slowly. His eyes flickered for a moment, and his quill moved once more in a thoughtful manner. 'Gratitude in the form of a death threat.'
Hindsight can be blinding.
Yes, Draco had felt grateful to Harry for putting his father in the (only) big house, despite the fact it only lasted for a month or so. The point, he thought, was that he'd never really felt gratitude to anyone before. Ever. It was overwhelming to the point that it had kept Draco up the entire night prior to his wonderful "You're dead, Potter." To which Harry had responded sarcastically. Draco could've just hugged him for that. He'd always had a thing for dark, brooding men.
'I won't get into my fascination with Severus Snape right now, though,' Draco penned. 'One clinically depressed man at a time.'
Well, Draco was fairly sure Harry could be clinically depressed; he'd been through and seen enough to warrant at least a decade of brightly-coloured pills and brightly-lit rooms with shrinks who "just wanted to help". He knew that death was not a fun thing to witness; at one of the Death Eater meetings Lucius had brought him to, Draco had watched a "deviant" be punished (torture that involved more, well, *creative* spins on the Cruciatus), and killed. He was sick for weeks afterwards - it was the worst thing he'd ever witnessed. Quietly, Draco dipped his quill in his inkbottle again, and wrote in his journal.
'Unless, that is, you happen to be my father. Then death is just like watching a Quidditch match, sans annoying spectators and over-priced snack foods. Sane people wouldn't be able to keep anything down after watching such a thing, anyway (murder, not Quidditch) - even now, just the thought of red meat makes me squeamish. My father wanted to "celebrate" my attendance to my first Death Eater meeting with a nice dinner right afterwards. And people wonder why I am the way I am.'
Draco paused.
Did people actually wonder why he was the way he was? Did people care that much, if at all? He was comfortable in the certainty that Ron "Weasel" Weasley hated him because he was the natural antithesis of all that the carrot top stood for. Poor/rich, friendly/shrewd, large-but-happy family/small-but-dysfunctional family. . . even their own fathers hated each other. Workplace animosity passed down to the children was a powerful thing. Then again, Draco's father generally hated anyone who knew the social difference between murder and a friendly game of wizard's chess, so Draco never really wondered why he had so few friends as a child.
'Consider,' he wrote, 'my earliest childhood friend, William "Billy" Grier. I believe we were about seven years old when I made the mistake of going to my father for advice.'
"Father," young Draco had whined shortly after a playtime with Billy, "Billy took my toy train!" His father had been disinterestedly reading The Daily Prophet.
"Then curse him." Seven-year-old Draco had blinked. He was taught that curses were a no-no, at least for now.
"But I'm not allowed to." Lucius had turned the page, and tsked at the crossword.
"Nonsense. You're a Malfoy, you can do as you please." That had probably been one of the main things that Lucius Malfoy had said to his son that had a most profound impact on his personality-to-be.
"Oh." But he had not wanted to hurt Billy. He liked him, and he was the only other little boy that would be friends with him.
"But Father, I don't wanna curse Billy. He's nice to me."
"Was he being nice when he took your toy train, Draco?" Lucius had asked after successfully figuring out a five-letter word for 'drape'. Draco had thought about his father's words.
"No. . ."
"Then he's not nice to you. When people aren't nice to you, and especially when they take your things, you curse them." The young boy had furrowed his eyebrows.
"But - "
"Billy's a bastard son of a bastard, now curse him as horribly as you know how before I do the same to you."
'Needless to say,' Draco put in writing, 'I was less one (read: all) my friends the very next day.'
Now that he was on the path of recollection, Draco thought that, yes, Billy *was* a rather good friend to him. When the other kids tried to pick on him, Billy would always be there, ready to seriously kick an ass or two, despite the fact that he'd end up just getting it worse than Draco would have himself in the first place. No, he wasn't exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, but he had a good heart. Draco couldn't help but wonder where he was now.
'Probably studying to be an Auror, or something else ridiculously adventuresome,' the boy wrote. 'He always liked discovering something new, or fighting, all those heroics. I suppose I was just content with staying in the background, doing the thinking for the both of us.'
He stopped his writing, only for an instant. Draco stared hard down at his journal.
'That's changed,' he wrote.
It had, too. Ever since he'd started going to Hogwarts, Draco always wanted to be the centre of attention, everyone's main focus. After all, why shouldn't he be? He was intelligent, witty, quite attractive (according, at least, to all those rather dirty notes he always managed to collect over the course of the year from various girls in various houses), and. . . well, perhaps not humble. Then again, what had the meek inherited lately?
'After all, it's not as if my father pays any attention to me, except when it suits him.'
It was true. If it wasn't Ministry work that needed attending to, it was Voldemort; if it wasn't the devil incarnate that needed his services, it was "business-related work, Draco, you wouldn't understand." Feh. Business-related work, wouldn't understand. . . hardly, he thought. What was so complicated about sneaking behind the backs of those idiots in charge of the Ministry? It didn't take a genius. Just someone with enough edge.
Lucius Malfoy had edge in abundance. When he wanted to be, Draco had experienced first hand that, when in such a mood, his father could be icy and sharper than a blade. The words he said, at least, were; no, when Lucius was *really* angry, he seemed to prefer blunt instruments over sharp ones. Too much hassle to get the house elves to clean up afterwards, Lucius had said.
It still hurt. Draco paused for just a moment, before setting quill to paper.
'The worst part, though, is that I prefer his anger to his ignorance of my existence. Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. Seventeen years old, and still craving Daddy's acceptance. I sicken me.'
He couldn't help but cringe as he dotted his i's and crossed his t's, finally finishing the last sentence with a definitive period. As long as Draco could remember, he'd never hated Lucius Malfoy - he only hated the fact that he needed him. It was horrible; after all, Draco was a Slytherin. He was supposed to be completely and utterly independent and self-reliant - no ties meant no harm and no foul. And yet, despite that and the fact that his father had only really shown care to him when they were to be out in public (Draco was, more or less, something of a trophy son), Draco. . . needed him. Wanted his attention.
At least, the good kind of attention. Sure, once Draco had set fire to the carpet just so Lucius would quit worrying about those Ministry reports of his for half an hour; and yes, perhaps Draco *was* responsible for dumping a large bucket of black paint onto Narcissa's favourite white couch, and then proceeded to write rather naughty words with it. . . but he was only ten or so at the time, one couldn't blame him. The irony of it all was that his parents ended up blaming the house elves.
His luck.
Other than that, shows of affection from his parents had been either so insignificant it was practically unnoticeable, or horribly disturbing, especially coming from his father. Once, shortly before he came to Hogwarts, Draco had been awakened from his slumber only to find Lucius, strangely flushed and breathing heavily over him. His father had later explained to him that he was only having an asthma attack, but. . . his father didn't *have* asthma. . . needless to say, Draco didn't sleep for the rest of that night. Or week. By the time he'd passed out from exhaustion, he'd imbibed so much coffee that it was all he could taste for nearly a month.
'Apparently, in my family, Mudbloods are looked down upon, but homosexual incest is fine. I suppose years of extremely selective marriages - usually to our cousins, as it turns out - has finally caught up with us,' the boy wrote down. To be honest, there always *was* some sort of mildly esoteric feeling of madness that surrounded the clan Malfoy; his great-great Uncle Leopold had once put an electric-current spell on a river he was fishing in, in order to make all the (dead) fish surface. He'd, of course, waded in to collect the fish, and was promptly electrocuted by his own spell and was thus found floating amongst his catch. As far as Draco knew, great- great Uncle Leopold was always looked down upon in the family. At least, the teenager thought, he didn't lust after his son.
. . . to his knowledge.
'With the way my family is, I wouldn't be surprised if he did. I think that's why we've never had a family reunion - it would all just end up being one mass orgy, after the potato salad and bunt cakes had been consumed. Though who, exactly, would make that food is anyone's guess - the only thing my mother is good at making are reservations.'
He thought for a moment, putting his writing on hiatus for but a second.
'Maybe I would make the food. I haven't done much cooking, but from the small amount I've managed to accomplish, I actually quite enjoyed it - the products were also far better than simply edible, as well. Hm, note to self: cook something later today. Maybe something vaguely Oriental.'
The wonderful thing about being bisexual, Draco thought, was that there was really no need to try to defend his 'masculinity', whatever the hell *that* was. Boys, girls, it was all good: he could watch some horrendously violent sports whilst crocheting a nice blanket if he so wanted, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference, since it would all balance out.
Except for the fact Draco hated anything to do with crocheting or knitting. It only left him with bloody fingers and an unfinished sweater. He also lacked the patience for such a precise thing; Quidditch was practically instant gratification, since there was always movement and excitement and heavy objects flying at one's head. Something as slow as knitting required waiting and waiting for the finished product, and only after a sufficient amount of work had been done. Far too painstaking.
How he managed to enjoy and do so well in Potions had eluded Draco for years for such a reason; potion-making was practically a science, requiring skill, efficiency, and an insane amount of patience. One mistake could ruin an entire day's work, and in some cases, it had - certainly such an aspect should have turned Draco off to potions and all that it was related to in an instant, but. . . it didn't.
'Severus Snape,' Draco slowly wrote in his journal, the marks clear and obvious. The man's name even suited his personality - sharp and severe, yet with a distinct flow and dignity that was hard to find anywhere else. From the moment Draco had first laid eyes on him, he'd been deeply intrigued; it wasn't just the man's tall stature and dark demeanor, but. . . his voice.
Oh. That *voice*. It could send shivers down his spine. Snape was a man who could deliver verbal assault with a tongue as sharp as his wit, and yet it could be in such a way that one would almost look past the words, if only to hear his dulcet tones.
'As I said, I have a thing for dark, brooding men. Yet I have the horrible suspicion that my father does, too,' he wrote, dipping his quill into the inkpot once more. On the off-occasion that Lucius ever asked his son about how he was faring (other than marks, of course; Lucius Malfoy demanded nothing but top grades from his only boy-child), the subject of Professor Snape would, without fail, come up. Somehow, subtly, his father would guide the path of conversation until all roads seemed to lead to Snape - whether it was a discussion on the state of Slytherin house ('And Snape is still the head of it? How has he been?'), Potions class ('You're doing quite well in potions. Snape teaches that, does he? How has he been?'), Lucius' own days at Hogwarts ('When I was your age, I would never have accepted lackeys such as Crabbe and Goyle to be my only friends. Severus and I always got along quite well, we were both smart for our age. How has he been?'), or he'd simply use Snape as a racy conversation starter ('I fucked your Potions teacher. He was quite good, then. How has he been lately?'). Draco wasn't sure if his father was ever insinuating anything when the discussions went down that particularly shady road.
He sighed. Draco had long ago accepted the fact that his father was a promiscuous youth back in the day, and that he was a promiscuous adult now in the day, but the time Lucius had let *that* little nugget of truth out. . . well, if he had the same taste in men as his father, perhaps something was wrong.
Of course, Draco was fairly certain that Lucius felt no such attraction towards Harry Potter. If the subject of *him* ever came up, his father would speak of *him*with a familiar tone of scathing and loathing - the entire wizarding world rests on the laurels of one moody teenager, oh how I weep for your generation's future, Draco. The mental picture of Lucius weeping for anything creeped Draco out to no end, anyway.
'Though I just don't understand what Severus Snape ever saw in my father. Sees, maybe? Please, God, let that not be the case - I don't want to know the other being responsible for keeping me up at night with those grunting, moaning, and bed-spring creaking noises, because it sure as hell is not my mother who's in there with Lucius; I'm mentally scarred as it is. To be honest, I'm surprised he ever bothered to have sex with my mother, which is no less a disturbing thought than my father screwing my teacher. It's a wonder I was ever born.'
With a bit of a self-depricating smirk plastered on his admittedly pale face, Draco looked up at the sky; a cloudless blue void stared back at him. The day was, by all standards, exceptionally beautiful; it wasn't warm enough to warrant copious amounts of deodorant, but not chilly enough to need a long sleeved robe. It was that transitional time between spring and summer - thus, the ground was cool, yet thankfully devoid of dampness. Soggy grass was no good for Draco's stream of conscious muse.
Snape just seemed too complex a man for his father to really appreciate. Granted, Lucius Malfoy was by no means what one would call a stupid man, but he was extremely set in his ideals - there was no such thing as flexibility in that sort of arena, as far as the Malfoy patriarch was concerned. It was do or die, eat or be eaten, fuck or be fucked. Simple. That was probably why he never questioned his place as, essentially, Voldemort's lapdog.
Another intriguing quality of Snape's that most seemed to lack in one way or another: the man had made a decision, but was able to actually *change* when he felt something was 'wrong'. Oh, sure, it was common knowledge (at least, amongst the purebloods) that Snape was a Death Eater. In some instances, he was all that more respected for it. What most in the innermost of inner circles did not know was that Snape simply *was* a Death Eater, strictly in the past tense.
Slowly, Draco tore his gaze away from the sky, picked up his quill, and resumed writing.
'One perk of being a sneaky bastard is that I'm privy to more information than anyone would suspect. I know that Snape is working as a spy for Dumbledore in this almost-ludicrous "War on Horrorism" that the Daily Prophet continues to write about, despite their obvious lack of sources. I also know that Professor Sprout grows more than just Madrake Root in her gardens - shame that no one else seems to have found those marijuana plants, because it would be extremely fun to watch half the school population stumble around, completely stoned.'
He paused for a moment.
'Note to self: special brownies - possibility for the future.'
Draco had to admit, pranks could be fun, if done at the proper time to the proper person. Fred and George - the only members of the Weasley family that he could ever bring himself to not intensely dislike entirely.
'It was a little creepy how they'd sometimes finish their sentences for each other. Brothers and lovers - most likely. After all, technically, the Weasleys *are* purebloods, much as most the adults I know would loathe to admit it.'
At the most personal level, Draco didn't have a whole lot against witches and wizards who weren't purebloods - if they weren't related to him, then they had to be alright, somehow. The term 'Mudblood' just happened to be a very useful insult; he'd heard other, less able-minded kids, at Hogwarts refer to those they hated as "fag", "queer", and so forth. Surely these idiots had nothing against the gay wizarding community, but "fag" and "queer" were simply good bad names. "That lesson was so gay. Oh my God, look at that queer little dog. He's stupid, what a fag." Draco shook his head.
'A lesson has no sexuality, so it can't rightly be gay. I've never heard of there being a completely straight lesson, either. As for the dog. . . perhaps the dog is queer. It can happen. Now, I'm also sure there are plenty of stupid homosexuals in the world, but being of a low intelligence does not decide a person's sexual preference. In fact, most of the gay people I've met have been a lot smarter and better dressed than the majority of the straight population I've been exposed to.'
Draco blinked once.
'Is Headmaster Dumbledore gay?'
He furrowed his eyebrows in thought.
'Yes,' he wrote beside it, 'Yes, he is. Pastel robes, far-too-friendly countenance, predisposition to hard candy. . . it all makes sense.'
He paused again, and made a face.
'Ew.'
Shuddering gently, Draco flipped to the next page of his journal, noting that the previous page had been completely filled by his small, yet horrendously neat handwriting.
Glancing over, Draco caught the sight of the other book he'd brought with him out of the corner of his eye. He wasn't too sure why he brought it; after all, no one save himself ever really came out into the forests on their grounds, so it wasn't as if he needed it to act as a cover for his journal writing. He chalked it up to habit; whenever Draco needed to bring something anywhere, he always took along a different object as well, "just in case". After all, what if the Hogwarts Express had broken down, and Draco was forced to associate with idiot Hufflepuff students for hours on end? Clearly, bringing along a couple extra books to read would save him such indignity. Hell, he'd even rather *crochet* than socialize with Hufflepuffs. And he would've, too, right in front of the entire population of the school. If Harry would ask him (nicely), he even would have made him a scarf.
'It's not that I'm some horribly kind gift-giver - really, far from it - it's simply that crocheting a scarf for my sworn enemy on a broken train would generally be more intellectually stimulating than talking with most the student body of Hogwarts. Lucius would then, in all likelihood, have grounds to skin me alive. . . at least I would make an exceptionally beautiful wrap.'
Because his father was the type of man who would flay and proceed to use his son's epidermis as an article of clothing. Draco figured he'd only be worn on special occasions, though, like Death Eater meetings. Such as:
Voldemort would begin, with all his cronies surrounding him, and that pet serpent of his coiled wonderfully around his feet. "I call to order this meeting of the Death Ea - oh, Lucius! Smashing pelt you have there!"
"Why thank you, he used to be my son."
"Well he looks very smart on you, Lucius, don't you think Pettigrew?"
"Oh, yes Master, very smart. The blond-avec-blond is most classic."
"Classic, indeed. He looks wonderful when he's on you." At this, Lucius would smirk proudly.
"That's what I tried to tell him last night." This would be met with hearty laughter, of course, because Voldemort was, in all likeliness, an advocate of forced familial sex.
Draco closed his eyes, and stretched his arms out. Perhaps his father's wrath and disturbed nature wouldn't be of such a calibre; admittedly, Draco had an extremely far-reaching imagination, born of the days of childhood when he hadn't any other children to play with. Narcissa and Lucius were adamant on the fact that their boy would not be "tainted by filthy Mudbloods at such an early age", to which Draco supposed he was alright with, were it not for the fact that none of the other pureblood kids seemed inclined to the act of "playing". Draco had once thrown a ball to another child of his age at some sort of function (Cecil, was the name of that kid?), and rather than instigating a game of "catch", it simply hit Cecil in the head. Three days later, Cecil's father attempted to sue Lucius Malfoy; this dragged on in the courts for what seemed to be forever, as Cecil's father tried to prove to the judge that Draco was sent on behalf of Lucius to start "maiming the future prospects of his company".
He'd just wanted to play catch. For Christ's sake, he was four.
'But that's how it is, I suppose. Catch isn't catch - catch is a pretense for gaining information, power, and money. Somehow. I can barely remember it. How throwing one fucking ball somehow constitutes such things. . .'
Draco sighed noisily.
'That's why I'm a Slytherin, just like my father was before me, and my grandfather before him, I'm sure. To be perfectly honest, Slytherins are no more cunning or intelligent than the Ravenclaws - I've never been able to figure out a rubix cube, for example, and one long, dreary day, I actually sat down and watched some Ravenclaw fifth year do the puzzle in under twenty minutes. Under twenty minutes. When I had tried it, I got fed up with it after an hour and simply broke the damn thing, only to put it together again in such a way that it looked as if I had mastered it.
And still, that's not only a Slytherin quality. The Gryffindors seem to bend or, at times, outright *break* the rules on a regular basis, to only achieve what they want. Depending on my mood, this is either annoying or arousing. . . . also depending on the person. That boy's sudden rebellious nature just makes my insides squish together and flutter almost painfully. Or I could have an infection. I'm not sure.
I won't say anything about the Hufflepuffs. They're really just the rejects of the school that have no real place, and no one could think of what to do with them. Slytherin, sadly, also houses many a reject: two words - Crabbe and Goyle. I would compare them to retarded monkeys, if only that weren't so terribly offensive to retarded monkeys.'
He paused.
'Then why do we Slytherins feel so much the same, yet so different too? I'm not my father - I'm far from my father, I hope - but why do I share the same qualities as him? I'm not at all like Crabbe and Goyle; certainly I get along with Pansy, but for lack of a better word, ugh.
Why are we all in the same house?'
Thoughtfully, Draco chewed on the end of his quill. Furrowing his eyebrows in thought, he looked over at the other book he had brought with him, still lying, untouched, on the earthy ground. The dark green cover of it blended nicely with the grass and surrounding foliage, and was accented only by the gold lining framing the cover of it. The gentle breeze that lifted blond tendrils of soft hair onto its current made no difference in the book's inertia.
Blue eyes were lost only for a moment behind slowly blinking eyelids. Draco dipped his quill into the inkpot once more; with another quick glance at the second book he brought with him, Draco carefully wrote in his journal.
'Because Slytherins have secrets.'
He watched as the ink, once shiny and slightly above the paper, sank into the paper, absorbed by the pulp's greedy thirst. Each word set itself individually on the blank space of the sheet. Satisfied, Draco smiled softly to himself, and he closed the writing journal he held in his hands.
"Secrets, Draco," Lucius had said to him one evening, when the silence had simply become unbearable, "You understand their importance, don't you?"
"Yes, father," he had answered automatically, disinterestedly flipping through an older novel of his.
"I don't think you do."
"That's presumptuous of you."
"It's correct of me, that's what it is," his father had said, in the tone of his that belied any pretence of serenity. He continued, anyway.
"A family like ours, we cannot allow ourselves to rightly mingle with the ordinary people. We are above them." Draco remembered a fire crackling somewhere in the background. "Do you know why, Draco?"
Draco said nothing.
"The skeletons in all our closets are dangerous, son." It had been the first time Lucius ever referred to Draco as 'son'. "The dead and the mute can only speak through the living and the able."
"So?" Draco had asked, not exactly liking where the conversation was going.
"We are quite alive and more than able, Draco. But the dead and the mute are the way they are for a reason. Remember that."
Draco had hoped to God that his father was drunk at the time, but had sadly realized that, no, he wasn't. A drunk Lucius would never sound so utterly honest.
Oh, and he had remembered what his father had said. It was one of the only pieces of advice of his father's that he'd ever really followed; to put it bluntly, Lucius didn't want his own son to somehow send him to Azkaban, or find a way to make him lose the Malfoy fortune by exposing the corruption in their family.
Lightly, Draco fingered the covering of his journal. Silent as they may have been, the mute were certainly not blind.
The birds continued to sing softly in the trees as he stood up, books, quill, and ink in hand; and quietly, he made his way out of the forest.
~*~
Most of you are probably wondering the same thing as me: "What the hell was that?" It's a good question. I'm not sure, myself. I just started writing, and. . . this is where I ended up.
Yes, this is a one-shot, so no, I don't plan on writing anything else to expand on this. God knows I already have enough on my plate as it is. @.@
Anyway, reviews are. . . extremely, extremely appreciated. You have no idea. I love reviews. ^^;
Thanks for putting up with this enough to keep reading right to the end. I, uh, I hope you liked it and all - please do note that I really appreciate constructive criticism, and even praise. ^_^ Flames will be ignored, because frankly, it's just a waste of your time, and mine. With all the energy one takes to write a flame, said one could have made a sandwich.
~Chibikat