Broken Shards of Draco

Prologue: Broken Shards of Memories

When Love and Hate collide...ties that bind, break and destroy.

Draco Malfoy and Idiot the Talking-diary

31^st July 1996

Gel supply: Enough to last me at least thirty more showers, which would, erm...equate ten more days. Better to get that stupid, clumsy oaf of a new house-elf to go get some for me. If it knows what gel is.

Standing at: 5'9" still. Maybe if I comb my hair a bit higher I'll cut an inch from Potter's being three inches taller than me. Hmph.

Looking: Good, if not Dastardly Dashing

More like, pathetic, if not utterly pathetic.

You're a diary. As in, would you have any eyes?

What did I do in my last life to wind up with an owner like you? Did I totally screw up my karma? "If diaries did have karma that is"

You mean, what did I do that I should have ended up with a diary like you?

How about this: Any other diary would have wilted miserably under your successive and excessive ego-bloating sessions. So Fate decided that only I, as the greatest diary ever in the history of mankind and magic, would be able to help you out there...

"look who's ego bloating now..."

I may suffer now, but I shall prevail! *choir singing majestic praises in background*

You need help.

Look who's talking.

I knew I should have gotten a ordinary, normal diary in nice black leather with silver snake grasps instead of some psychotic, wise-cracking smart-alec cum Agony Aunt like you. And the nice black leather diary had a 99-year warranty...

It's not my fault I have a cheap-skate as an owner who bought me only because I cost 5 sickles lesser than the ordinary, normal diary in nice black leather -- and it's Agony Uncle to you!

Yeah, yeah whatever. Anyway, guess what?

*Uninterested bored tone* What?

I've just found this coolest thing in the basement...and guess what it was?

Ohh...the suspense is killing me...a new bottle of gel? *yawn*

It was, like, this really smashing mirror!

What a profound discovery! What did you do, pose incessantly in front of it? Gasp, you mean you actually bothered to tear yourself away from it to come and tell me? *Tearfully* I am sooo touched!

To think I used to think you hated me!

I named you Idiot, didn't I, Idiot?

*Ignores comment about very...idiotic name, especially since the christened name only reflects on the christener* You shouldn't have! I would have thought you were surgically attached to mirrors!

This is, like, such a profound moment!

It'll go down in history, it will!

Imagine, one day, you'll be sitting down all these little revolting blond Malfoy-clones around you and displaying me to them!

The honour!

The glory!

The -

There happens to be a really huge incinerator...just outside my window, maybe?

Gulp.

Right.

Riiight.

*Nervous laugh* You were saying, yes, oh benevolent and wonderful Master?

So this mirror - it's so absolutely -

"Cool 'cos it has all these magical lengthening effects that actually makes me look taller than the puny 5'6" (that including the patent dragonhide charmed platform shoes) I so punily am?"

The incinerator is really very conveniently situated just outside my window...and I'm 5'9''! Without any help whatsoever!

Hee.

Just joking, just joking...

But there're some words on it that I don't quite get.

Figures.

The calculated distance between the window ledge to the incinerator is only around a hundred feet...I'm sure that you'll have a quick and painless death...

Actually, a hundred feet would be 1200 inches, which would be approximately 3048 centimeters which would equate 30.48 meters, and with the pull of gravity at...

Would you like to try it out and see if it really is a quick and painless death?

*Quickly deflects current subject of conversation* So...what were the stuff you couldn't read?

It's not that I can't read it, it's more that I can't understand it!

I'm literate, just in case you forgot!

Hey, chill out, kid...you're going to add wrinkles to your beautiful forehead.

Ha! You finally admit that I am the most perfect-looking person alive!

Yeah, sure. Whatever. As long as you don't throw me into the incinerator.

You are really no help whatsoever.

I'm so glad to be of service.

...

What?

I'm going to sleep.

Why the heck are you so moody nowadays?

Draco?

Draco?

Sheesh.

Going through puberty, he is.

~

Alexei Sergiovitch Romanov

"Destroy the mirror."

Alexei sighed, the words floating around her head, mocking her at every turn. She turned back to her books, stacks and stacks of them; books about ridiculous things like Herbology, Transfiguration, Potions, History of Magic, Dark Arts, Magical Creatures, Quidditch...

"Alexei, my phoenix."

Sure, so Alexei was his phoenix. Which explained how he hadn't been around for, oh, fourteen out of sixteen years of her life? And the reason why her mother, the original blonde French tart, had managed to show some signs that deep in that big gap between her ears there existed a bit of brains by giving her a boy's name to trick him into believing that he had a male heir, because if he had found out that she were a girl at birth he would have probably have drowned her in the Seine?

"Alexei, please listen to your father."

How ludicrous. To think, after fourteen years - one decade and four years, for crying out loud - her father would pop out of their fireplace, of all absurd places to pop out of, waving around some stupid wooden stick, wearing some weird in-vogue-a-good-five-centuries-ago-if-never robes, which weren't evened ironed, just creased like hell, acting like he owned the whole damned place, which he probably did, because that would explain the generous relief checks they received every month, since all her mother knew how to do was giggle and flirt and diet and shop incessantly...But no, that wasn't bad enough. He had to go on and on and on about some exclusive magical world which apparently existed alongside the so-called Muggle world, which was where she and her mother supposedly lived in, and that he thought it was about time that Alexei got educated in the ways of the mad-capped wizards and witches. Alexei, who never even believed in Santa Claus.

"You will have to come to us, Alexei. It's where you belong."

Which would definitely explain why he had stared at Alexei like he had just seen a ghost when he saw her, right? And which would also explain why his first ever words directed to his only daughter were, in utmost shock and contempt: "You're a girl!"

Male chauvinistic pig.

"I didn't want to disappoint you, Alexander. I know you always wanted a boy..."

Oh wow. It's a great feeling to know that you're unwanted. How well that we all now know about it. Now we can all sit down together and discuss all our complex and heartbreaking life difficulties. What a model dysfunctional family!

Alexei supposed she had to be lighter on her mother. To be nice, her mother was, at best, "a social butterfly, cute as a button, charming, and pleasing to the eye".

To be brutal, her mother was, also at best, air-headed, flighty, untrustworthy as a broken paper cup, forgetful, careless, selfish, painfully tactless, annoyingly stuck at the mentality of a thirteen-year-old schoolgirl...

And forever nursing a huge crush on Alexander Romanov, Alexei's father. So much so she easily forgot the minute he had appeared that he had dumped her - fine, not really to fend for herself, since he was still humane enough to provide extravagant financial backup, but still - to look after her baby daughter. Except, typically in the case of Anne-Marie d'Alessandry, Alexei's mother, it soon became more of Alexei looking after Anne-Marie.

So of course Anne-Marie had instantaneously agreed to having Alexei drop out of school, where she had spent ten years slaving away to be able to be proficient in five languages, and going for an intensive training course in North Europe under some Durmstrang (some cranky magical school) professors for two years (which also encompassed hectic and exhausting Quidditch 8-hour-a-day trainings with the so-called best players the Institute had, including Durmstrang alumni like Viktor Krum, who walked like a duck, in Alexei's opinion). It didn't in a bit matter that Alexei had her own dreams to pursue a degree in archaeology; what did Alexei see in digging up old filthy remains and getting all dusty anyway in some forsaken pit in Egypt? It would have absolutely ruined her darling complexion!

"Please, Alexei. It'll be great, promise!"

But Alexei knew it was only for her mother, of course. And now, to please her father, she was to go to some stupid wizardry school called Hogwarts, to look for some stupid magic hand-mirror from some stupid teen wizard. And obviously she wasn't getting any more clues other than the kid was the same age as her, was a male, was probably in Slytherin house, and was most likely going to act weird, because that was the effect the darned mirror had on its owners. Oh, wow, again. That would be a real snap. Not forgetting, of course, that no one was about to tell her why she had to destroy the mirror in the first place. And how the heck, Alexei didn't understand, was she supposed to destroy the mirror with the kid's consent? Or should the question be, any kid who carries a hand-mirror around with him would be definitely supremely weird, so how was she going to deal with some sort of freak?

A vain freak, at that.

There was nothing more Alexei wanted than to get her life back.

Which reminded her. It was July the thirty-first, meaning that Durmstrang's whole bunch of fanatic cum psycho Dark Arts profs and her dad were going to have some sort of morbid ceremony to commemorate the birth of the "Boy-Who-Lived", some punk also the same age as her. Apparently he led to the downfall of their greatest hero. And apparently Alexei had to go join them.

Alexei sighed, dragging her feet as she stood up and walked to her room to get dressed.

~

Draco Malfoy

It was early morning, nearly two am. Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy hadn't returned - still off gallivanting in the Durmstrang Institute, moaning and groaning with the rest of the old cronies that Harry Potter had been born today - no, make that yesterday, since it was already the morning of the first of August. Well, yesterday sixteen years ago, anyway. Draco had refused the offer to attend, of course - it was enough that he was going to have to see Potter everyday in exactly a month's time. And the fact that Potter was still a irritating three inches taller than him wasn't exactly the best thing Draco needed to think of.

Hmph.

Draco half-fell out of bed as he slipped on his silk black slippers; his throat was awfully dry. His hand groped around his bedside table for his wand: perhaps he could summon some drink to his side; that was when he felt a cold polished surface.

Draco's brows furrowed, he hadn't left anything on his table besides his wand. Flipping on the lights, he turned to see what he was holding in his hand...

It was the hand-mirror, the one he had seen - and left - in the basement earlier.

~

Alexei Sergiovitch Romanov

"So what will your name be, Miss Romanov, when you get to that fancy English school?" came the reedy voice of Professor Volkov, Herbology teacher, a thin, prune-dried old man with matching seedy eyes and fluff-like hair, which looked very much the colour of mould. The "party" had long since finished, and now all that were left were the Durmstrang profs, Alexander Romanov and Alexei.

Alexei had been glad to see the "guests" leave - a gang of hypocritical, proud-as-peacocks types with their haughty accents and gaudy silk robes, asking her all sorts of nosy questions, at which she mostly either lied through the skin of her teeth or gave a blank look at, pretending she couldn't understand their English. One platinum-blonde pony-tailed middle-aged fellow even tried to preach to her about the whole "worship-and-join-the-great-and-powerful-Voldie" movement, wasting his breath for a full half an hour, ending finally when Alexei had tiredly and almost purposely yawned loudly in front of his face, with the question, "So whose side is more attractive, Miss d'Alessandry?" - her father had decided it more prudent to use her mother's maiden name, and had said that Alexei was his friend's cousin's stepdaughter - at which Alexei blinked, and pretended to think for a moment, before answering carelessly: "Three answers, sir: it's not my war; it depends on which side is winning; I honestly don't care."

Obviously that wasn't quite the answer the platinum-blonde pony-tailed middle-aged fellow had expected. He pretty much snorted and said some rather rude things under his breath, to which Alexei had returned a saccharine smile, replying with a good couple of French curse words.

You only live once, anyway.

But it turned out that the night was too young for the Durmstrang profs, who insisted that they had to go through some top-secret classified stuff with Alexei and her father right there, right now. And thus the interrogation began, and this time it was even worse because the Durmstrang profs, annoyingly, had come to know her well enough through her two years with them just how to make her answer questions properly.

And so now, not only was she going to do their dirty work, she was also to concoct and memorise an entire bogus personal history of herself, and basically dream up of some new identity. Which was more than easy: so far they had agreed to her saying that her adopted father, a French wizard with a fetish for fawn fur coats, had picked her, then a nameless six-year-old Anglo-Vietnamese orphan, from the streets whilst visiting Vietnam just after the Muggle Vietnam War when she had expertly stole his wand and started flicking sparks out of it. There, the kind-hearted gentleman, whose name was Jean-Claude, took it upon himself to bring her back to France to look after her with his wonderful French wife, a homely homemaker called Sophie. Upon further investigations, they found out that she was the orphan of a late wizarding couple, who had died in the War. They couldn't decide what to name her though; in the end they decided to name her after the name on a gold cuff link she had dipped.

And now they were discussing what name that was. Alexei thought that they should at least show some appreciation at her quick-thinking skills: she had cooked up that entire story in five minutes. And now they were pressing her to think about that, too, even with the overworked, deep-fried brain she had.

"How about Brigitte?" asked Professor Andreyev, Charms teacher. He had a smooth talking, playboy streak, which was probably why he was in charge of Charms in the first place.

"Brigitte's the name of every hooker down at Paris!" Alexei said, irritated. "And how can it appear on a guy's cufflink in the first place?"

"Then why don't you suggest a name, Alexei?" Alexander Romanov suggested, turning towards his daughter. He had been pretty quiet throughout the "meeting", so to speak; Alexei had almost forgot he was there.

"How about...Philippe?" Alexei said, looking around, not wanting to meet her father's gaze. She had avoided it as much as possible for the past two years.

"Philippe's a boy's name, Miss Romanov," said the bushy-haired Professor Petrofsky, head of Arithmacy. He frowned at Alexei, waiting for her to answer.

"So I'll have a boy's name. That part, at least, would be something truthful," replied Alexei, pointedly.

Everyone just stared at her.

Alexei groaned inwardly. Getting up from her seat at the end of the table, she pushed back her chair and walked out, not bothering to say goodnight.

When she was out of earshot, Professor Andreyev turned to Alexander Romanov and said, "She really is quite a character, isn't she?"

"Such a pity that we're probably going to lose her."

~