The Gospel According To...

The Gospel According To....

Draco Malfoy always remembered his first brush with fame. Oh, he'd experienced it on a smaller scale when he arrived at Hogwarts, soon establishing his reputation as the scion of the purebloods, the only one with the guts to take Saint Potter on and survive, the one who said what needed to be said, like pointing out those who were stupid and poor and insipid. He had a calling, a destiny, a duty to show the world exactly what brilliance lay in Draco Malfoy. This was clear to him, always, and appeared in a thousand little details. The way he shone in Potions Classes, as was he due and fair right. The way the older students even in his first year would go out of their way to trip him up or make life miserable for him - because they knew exactly how superior he was, and they were trying to intimidate him before he learned the truth of his potential, and brought them to their knees. The way his own year gathered around him like a beacon - as they should, because who else could give them what they needed like he could?

But these victories were fleeting, the time in the spotlight predictable. After all, who else would be so brilliant in Potions? The sheer obviousness of his position almost reduced his wit and sparkling intelligence to the level of the mundane - almost. He became accustomed to such attention, the attention that he deserved, and privately he considered Potions to be the Proud and Debonair Slytherin Hour featuring Draco Malfoy (with special assistance from Professor Severus Snape.)

The first time he experienced real fame, however, was in second year when he came onto the Quidditch ground for his first match as Seeker, and could feel the shouts of the crowd within his bones. That was what he lived for, made it worth it. All the petty jealousies, the fools who couldn't see his brilliance, who would give that bookworm Granger and her tag-along ragamuffin Weasel and a messy little twat who hadn't the decency to even die properly the recognition that had been meant to be his. They'd stolen it, all of them, and Dumbledore and the hag McGonagall and every single student was complicit in that crime, preferring to believe in the delusion that such idiotic little children were actually worthy of their time, and not him. Potter even had the arrogance to refuse him - a Malfoy! No-one refused a Malfoy. Even the Weasels knew that. In doing so, Potter had ruined several centuries worth of reputation and heritage, and given the rest of those addle-brained twerps the so-called freedom to break beyond tradition and balk at his every demand - a Malfoy - refusing to give what he was owed by the lesser lights of the wizarding world. The Slytherins were the only ones in the end who would listen to him, who would cower in appropriate fear at his rants and rages. They were the only ones who made him feel he was real, before he heard the roar of the crowd.

When the crowd saw him flying there, above all the petty humanity of normal life, how could they not love him? How could they not adore his grace, his persistence in the face of all things Potter-esque and Gryffindor? When he flew, they sobbed for the sheer ecstasy he inspired, Draco was sure of it, and neither the insipid jealousies of his classmates nor his father's constant disapproval could touch him. He ached for the crowd when he flew, when he soared; there were his people in a way that no-one else could ever be.

Draco knew that he wasn't well liked off the Qudditch pitch, or on. He had a way of getting in people's faces, reminding them of their own failings and his brilliance, their own muddled hypocrisies. It didn't matter. The fact they hated him only went to prove just how special he was, how talented, how jealous they all were. Contorted in rage, with the self-righteousness granted to him by generations of Malfoys being right, he could tear a person in half with his words, friend or enemy, and his anger was a sight to behold, carrying neither fear nor favour. And in the end, they were all enemies, weren't they? He'd made Weasley cry in fifth year, taunting him about his dead sister, and Granger had slapped him several times over. Even Perfect Potter had tried to punch him, although Draco had ducked, and kicked him in the groin. He used to tease Pansy so much her mascara would run down her face from the tears and then he'd just tease her more. Oh, she was a friend, an ally, someone who liked him, but he couldn't trust that, and besides, he got a twisted glee from seeing her hurt; seeing that she was just human and weak and vulnerable and that his power was all consuming. Even if he could only inflict pain, it was something, and it was something worth fighting for, that power. Because at least it meant he wasn't human and weak and vulnerable himself, a nobody, a nothing, a Weasley. Draco hurt people because he could and because it made sure he would not underestimated and ignored as they would have him be.

His rage was both beautiful and terrifying, but ultimately if someone got hurt it was because they were weak and they deserved to. The only thing Draco could trust - that was worth trusting - was love, because love was eternal, not ephemeral, it wasn't passing or fleeting or allied to fancy or mood. And love was adoration and worship, what he deserved and craved and lived for and couldn't survive without, and the screams of the crowd as he sailed above the Quidditch pitch like a god.

Some years later, after war and death and pain had dulled the opportunities for the appropriate worship of Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter touched him for the first time. And Draco felt a familiar flutter in his body, like the first brush of fame, and wondered that perhaps there was only one audience he need take heed of again.