Broken Shards of Draco

Note to all dear darling readers:

Love and Chinese pancakes,

Your dear darling author

Chapter One: The Enchanted Hour of 2.a.m.

Draco and Idiot the Talking Diary

Idiot, wake up! Now!

#@*^%&! What the...

Astounding range of most impressive and extensive vocabulary, don't we?

It's freaking 2 freaking a.m. in the freaking morning!!! Don't the words "beauty sleep" mean freaking anything to you?!

Let's see...how about, they usually would not if some creepy mirror suddenly for some absolutely inexplicable reason appears at you bedside? And since when did books sleep?!

WHAT?! You woke me up to talk about the freaking mirror?!

!!!

Look, I would definitely have not asked you, if not for the fact that I had found the mirror in the basement, where, I might add, I was not supposed to be in the first place, so therefore it wouldn't exactly look fantastic to ask Father about this, would it?

Great. This is freaking great. My dear darling dearest Draco Lucius Xavier Dracognius-whatever-freaking-else Malfoy, you attract trouble like a freaking lodestone. I suggest you go bury yourself alive under one like the way that Chinese emperor buried prisoners-of-war in red soil and save me and the rest of the world from your annoying peroxide-blond Malfoyness. Serves you right, by the way, that the mirror has come a-haunting after you - and just to inform you, I don't believe you, since you could lie at wandpoint -very thoughtfully disturbed its peaceful rest in the, I might emphasise, FORBIDDEN basement. So there. Now go and scram and evaporate from my pages before I chant some ancient rune from the bowels of my deep and profoundly insightful knowledge and make the surface of the mirror start to skim and -luckily for me if it does - suck you in into the 403^rd dimension.

You know, I really hope for you own sake you hadn't really chanted some ancient rune.

Hunh?!

Because the mirror's surface just started skimming.

Hunh?!

Yeah, it's really skimming now.

Hunh?!

Are you already sleeping, or are you just on automatic cut-and-paste mode?

Is it skimming or is it not skimming.

It's skimming.

You seem awfully calm about it skimming.

I know. I don't know how to write screaming noises.

Oh.

Un-hunh.

Can I say something?

What?

You're lying, aren't you?

No, no, of course I am lying, darling! I just love having a creepy skimming mirror with a silvery surface that sticks to my fingers and crawls up my hand coming round to visit every once in a while! It just gives me a thrill! Gets me on a high! How very fun!

...*disbelieving look*

Ah! Ah! Ah! That good enough for you?! Or do you need any more description, like how my screams tear through my oesophagus and rip pass my lips? Tell me what to do, damn it!

I don't know, you're a good actor.

And I just like staying up at 2.00 am in the morning to write crap.

Er...news flash? You always write crap.

...

But good point there, anyway. You obsess over your 15 hours of sleep.

HELP!

Your handwriting only knows to get worse, doesn't it?

Frea

Draco?

Draco?

~

Alexei Sergiovitch Romanov 2.31 am

Alexei stumbled about the Durmstrang dormitory, which she had all to herself, as she reached for the television, switching it on. As usual, there was only one channel which could actually be seen.

"And welcome...to the PRICE is RIGHT!" said the overly hyper old man with the overly starched suit and the overly straight smile and the overly white hair.

"And who...who...WHO shall be our LUCKY winner for TODAY?" Alexei wondered if it was PREARRANGED that the old man on a SUGAR HIGH was supposed to OVEREMPHASISE every other RANDOM word.

And of COURSE there was a supposedly WONDERFULLY-LOOKING bed (which was actually CARDBOARD sides GLUED together with BADLY coordinated bedsheets - probably costing ONLY twenty bucks in all) at which, on CUE, the LUCKY contestant would paste his or her hands to the sides of his or her cheeks and start jumping about like a JACK-IN-A-BOX with a BROKEN spring and SCREAM like Armageddon had come. Alexei wasn't absolutely sure whether they were SCREAMING from the mere SHOCK of such an ugly raft thinly DISGUISED as a BED, or from REAL jubilation. She suspected the FORMER.

And then, each LUCKY contestant would name some painfully inane and ridiculously high price - or perhaps they were all trying to escape from the prospect of acquiring such an ATROCIOUS, disgusting-looking bed.

Alexei sighed.

It was going to be a LONG night.

~

Draco Malfoy

Draco was trapped.

Dead trapped.

He could sense Idiot, although he could not see him, because his eyelids seemed to be glued shut with a burning sensation, as if molten wax had been poured over his eyes. But he could not reach towards Idiot, for some reason. The silvery substance clung to his skin, choking him. It seemed to seep into his very being, and Draco was fast losing any sense of feeling in his limbs. Yet he could still hear -- He could hear his parents, a floor above; they were awake. He looked up, wanting to call out to them, but he couldn't open his mouth, couldn't use his tongue. So near, yet so far. A chill, somehow unnatural and not from his own making, grasped him.

Fear.

He tasted it on the tip of his tongue, a bitter, taunting speck that refused to be removed, but existed solely to play the demented jester.

Then suddenly the world lurched forward, darkness plunged and leapt at Draco. It strangled him in its vice-like claws, pulling him, sucking him in, until all Draco could see was black, so black. It was as if he were breathing in blackness. Draco shut them, trying to retain some sanity - the entirety of black was suffocating. Draco couldn't feel what he was standing on, he moved his hand, but fear, confusion seemed to pull him back, a hardening of his muscles were required to bring his hand to his face: and yet when he thought he had achieved this feat, it felt like it wasn't his hand. It was the hand of an alien, the hand of an unknown, unseen stranger. His mind was thrown in panic; Draco screamed, but it was an empty echo. Then he felt himself sliding, falling...into the seemingly endless black hole... Every fibre of his body seemed to tear, to rip apart excruciatingly; pulsating drums rung through his ears, his being...

~

The ground was swaying, swinging below his feet.

Draco opened his eyes, slowly, cautiously, trying hard not to puke - where was he? He felt the cold smoothness of metal in his hands, the polished surface of crystal...he looked down, his eyes adjusting to the light.

Oh lord.

Draco gulped.

He was somehow balanced very precariously on a huge chandelier, at least three storeys above ground.

He supposed it was about the time to hyperventilate.

~

Natalya Kornilov

She stared into the mirror, willing it to show her something, even for it to start showing some signs of something, anything.

All she saw was her own pale, haggard face, framed by her own dirty blond hair, her dark violet eyes staring questioningly back into themselves.

Natalya Kornilov, aged sixteen, sighed, turning away from the mirror. It was his, of course. She had stolen it the first time she had spied it, hidden amongst his things in his Prefect's room, beneath the many neatly folded clothes, the endless chronologically bound stacks of Quidditch and Dark Arts magazines. Yet why she stole it, she herself wasn't quite sure.

All she knew was that she wanted it, needed it, craved it, the minute she set her eyes on the protruding silver handle of the mirror. And it had given her so much, so much...

She leant back, and thought of all that it had shown her, and as much as she had hated the visions -- the memories it kept hidden and shared only with her -- at first, it soon became an addiction she could not do without. It was a seductive pleasure, even more intense than being close to him, that drew her into the past world captured within the seemingly innocent smooth surface of the mirror.

She knew, from the stories the mirror showed her, his past. His father's past. His grandfather's past. The mirror was a storage compartment, it seemed, of his family line's memories - all bad. They always ended with tragedy, for some reason - either there was betrayal woven into the plot, or rape, or suicide, or...

There was a rap on the door.

Natalya sucked in her breath, guessing that it had to be him. Again. He suspected her - she was sure, although he would have never betrayed his notions in his movements, speech, attitude; especially not his hard, distant eyes...but she knew. She was certain. Ever since that night, when he had met Tom Riddle, when he had spent that night alone with Tom Riddle...she could not let him have the mirror again. It was hers now. Natalya kept very still, remained very silent, praying for him to walk away.

A noiseless piece of parchment slid through the bottom of her door. Natalya's fevered eyes stared at it from her position on her bed, as she heard footsteps fading away. She rose.

Picking up the note, she read it once, then twice. Then she put on her robes, tucking the mirror away safely into an inner pocket. Opening the door, she cast a last glance at her room as she walked out, as if checking its furnishings.

The last random thought in the back of her mind was that the blood red colour of the walls was getting much too stifling.

~

Natalya Kornilov

How long was it since she had first met him? She wasn't sure - it seemed like it was an eternity ago. And yet, if she counted, it was only six years, or at least, five years and eight months. Her birthday was yesterday; he hadn't said anything. She wasn't quite sure if her heart felt broken or anything - she was probably already too jaded by everything that had been happening to really feel anything anymore.

Or perhaps her heart had already been broken long before that. Natalya shrugged, subconsciously, throwing that stray thought to some pocket at the back of her mind.

They used to be close, but then she could never be sure whether he ever showed her his true feelings, his true nature. All she could be sure was that they had definitely been physical. And yet she was losing memory of those intimacies every waking moment, like they were fast-slipping sand running through her fingers.

And then again, she could never be sure that he himself knew himself anymore, if he had ever knew himself in the first place.

Was there such a thing as an obsession with beauty? Because if there were such a classification of obsession, then she had probably been suffering from it, the very second she had met him.

When was it again? In their first year - 1946. Natalya was even smaller than she was now, she had always been a small child, caught somewhere between conventional beauty and mystical elfin, never quite definable. But he. He was another thing altogether. Even as an eleven year old he was already tall, and slim, and lithe, and, of course, beautiful, in that glacial, contradictory way that he was. The "once-in-a-life-time-that-you'll-see-this" kind of beauty, so to speak. Snow white skin that was almost painfully smooth and girlish, thick black hair which was cut just a bit too long in front, yet somehow still immaculate, falling into his hawk-like eyes, which were metallic grey.

Natalya had always been told previously that her pale violet eyes were unique. Obviously, she thought, those who had told her that had yet to meet him. His eyes, as far as she could say, which was to tell their colour, was indescribable.

It wasn't surprising to Natalya when he had sought her out amongst the rest of the girls. If he hadn't, she would have sought him out.

But it was surprising, although now that Natalya thought of it, she shouldn't have been surprised, that the boy they said was to be the Dark Lord himself would come all this way to have sought him out.

Natalya hated that black-haired green-eyed Tom Riddle, who had stolen him from her. That Tom Riddle had diverted all his energies, making him listen only to him, making him fall entirely into his hands to manipulate. Him, who was always the one to manipulate, not the other way around.

Natalya, it seemed, had been quite forgotten.

But at least she had had the mirror to tide over that period, and this period when he started to leave her out from his side. But now he wanted his mirror back.

Natalya quickened her pace, rounding the corner into the Durmstrang Blood Hall.

~

Natalya Kornilov, Draco Malfoy

DM: *Normal*

NK: *Italicised*

Draco tried very hard not to look down. It was, very literally, a long way to fall. He tried disentangling his long legs from the chandelier's equally long crystal chains.

Creak. The chandelier performed a graceful dip towards the right, and Draco's heart did a hundred-moves-in-a-second aerobics workout.

Okay, bad idea. Now Draco was forcing himself not to look up. He tried very hard to stare straight, at eye-level, but now the chandelier was swaying in a sadistic, pendulum-like manner to the beat of a piece of non-existent music. Draco clung on, and tilted his head to the side, pressing it against a thick gold rung. He didn't notice a black-haired boy standing directly beneath the chandelier; nor did he notice the blond haired girl working towards him across the wide floor.

Natalya saw him immediately, a black-haired, black-clothed figure, the snow-white of his skin a stark negative. His lips were slightly flushed, and so were his cheeks - points of sharp red marked the distinctive curves of his face. He looked like he was having a fever, she thought, until she noticed the ice cruel glint in his eyes. She saw the sheathed silhouette of his sword in his left hand, which was furthest from her. She drew back.

He came closer.

"Natalya, love. Hiding something, aren't we?"

Draco heard voices, foreign voices. His curiosity getting the better of him (after all, it was quite a hopeless case trying to dislodge himself: even if he did, what could he do to get down? Draco, being Draco, had already accepted his fate that he was at present stuck in this weird place - and he was pretty sure he was going to get out of it soon; if not, well, someone was going to pay for it. ), Draco leant down. He spied a boy, tall and lean, with an expressionless face, speaking to a girl, tiny and wraith-like, her heart-shaped face overwhelmed by her long dark blond hair. The boy moved towards the girl, and she stepped back automatically, retreating from his reach.

"Why don't you show it to me?" he asked, angling his body to the right, his weight on one foot. He seemed relaxed, but she noticed the tenseness of his muscles, ready to react. She knew him well enough.

She moved back another step, but it was a minute. Somehow she still couldn't quite bring herself to move away from him, not too far, anyway.

The silence dragged on.

Draco, from his perch, was getting bored.

There was absolutely no movement in the situation below.

The chandelier continued its gentle swing.

Then he suddenly moved forward; a quick, swift movement, too fast for her to react to, crushing her to the ground.

Within seconds, his hands were already reaching for the mirror.

Now it gets interesting.

Draco wished he had popcorn.

Her eyes filled with tears as she struggled against his hard, resilient body. Every time she fought back, he would somehow push her down again. She felt the comforting cold of the mirror's silver back leaving her as he grasped the handle, pulling the mirror out.

She could not meet his eyes, but she forced herself to look up.

She focused on his lips, which, for something so beautiful, was most grotesquely twisted into a malicious, unmerciful smirk. She felt her energy giving up on her, she felt tired...so tired...

She vaguely felt a sharp sting as he slapped her face forcefully. Her eyes closed, then opened, as she felt him get off her. He had opened the portal of the mirror, she could sense it, and she turned. A cascade of warm reddish light, rose light, she always thought, spilled from the mirror in his hands, diffusing throughout the room. She started, for no particular reason, to smile...

And then her smile froze on her lips. The rose light started to morph. It was changing into a gaping, sucking blackness which encased the whole room...then he came up to her again.

Natalya did not need to be told what he was about to do to her. She closed her eyes, her last tears slipping past her eyelashes like raindrops on waxy leaves.

As the gilded sword, unsheathed, in his hand plunged into her, she was already too numb to feel the pain.

~