Blood in His Ears

Draco sits in a hallway--any hallway, all hallways, except this one has no paintings, none at all, and that's why he comes here. He likes it bare.

He sits because he stopped walking. And stopped standing. And stopped breathing, maybe.

And he wonders--no, screw that, Malfoys don't wonder, wondering is for tiny, baby-blue girls and soft-focus, sensitive writers and Potter, always Potter, damn Potter and his torture and his warm bed sheets and his wonder--he thinks.

He thinks that maybe he is currently without a heart.

He didn't lose it. Malfoys don't lose things. Things go missing, but Malfoys do not lose them. And they certainly do not lose important things like hearts. Maybe, Draco thinks, it dissolved in his chest cavity--maybe his body, a body made of bulletproof glass, destroyed his heart in an act of self-preservation. He's always had a ruthless immune system.

He used to feel the blood in his ears, feel it pound and move. He used to get angry and the blood in his ears would make it hard to hear. He always spoke quietly--it was cooler, far cooler than screaming--but the blood in his ears would drown out his soft, icy voice so he wasn't completely sure he was speaking at all. He would see the object of his careless anger squirm or crumple or turn red with fury, and it would surprise him a little. I did that? Wait---wait, that was me?

It doesn't surprise him anymore, because Malfoys always learn from experience, and because the blood has stopped pounding in his ears and now he can hear.

He can hear himself when he makes Hermoine blush, even though a little not-dead part of him thinks she's beautiful and loves the trace of unnecessary apprehension in her voice when she answers questions in class. He hears himself when he tells Blaise she's a whore with expensive jewelry, even though he knows she would give him her heart if he ever told her his was missing.

But with Potter, he thinks, and puts his hands flat on the floor that feels warm because he is so cold, with Potter, he's deaf again. Deaf to his own voice, chilled and feeble. Deaf to everything except a heartbeat.

Not his.

Potter's.

Draco thinks, staring at hands that look more like his father's every day, that maybe he is missing his heart. But that's okay. That's fine. He can deal.

Harry Potter was born with two.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Draco rises from the floor, sliding up the wall until he's standing. His legs feel strange, like they are made of a heavy, expensive metal, like sometime in the last few minutes his bone marrow has been replaced by silver.

But his bones are just bones, he reminds himself. He's not actually made of metal. When Ron punched him yesterday, it hurt. He bruised.

He saw himself in his bathroom mirror afterward, watched the purple bloom like a dark flower along his cheekbone, and both hated Ron for knocking him to the floor in front of the entire Slytherin table and loved him for giving him something so beautiful.

He'd gotten something beautiful from Ron before. Ginny.

But he hadn't received Ginny.

He'd taken her.

Hence the punching-out, Draco's head and elbows stinging on the floor, Ron's face hot and contorted and close. Draco's hands around Ron's neck, pale against Ron's pinkness. Hermione screaming. Ginny crying. Blaise laughing.

Now, Draco walks down the hallway, alone. He's fairly certain he doesn't love Ginny, because, though she brings color to his cheeks, she looks at him like he is a particularly beautiful animal, a shark or a dragon. She wonders what he is thinking, wonders all day, wonders as she runs her fingers along his collarbone. But in the end, realizing that she'll never be able to understand sharks or the way they think, she settles for simply admiring his beauty from the other side of the glass.

So the bruise is the best thing he's gotten from this whole entanglement.

He's okay with that.

When he walks into the Slytherin common room, Blaise is waiting for him.

Her legs are long, stretched out on the floor by the fire. She rises in one movement, and more quickly than he expects, her face is an inch from his, and he follows the line of her eyelashes, sharp like the edge of a knife. When she blinks he flinches involuntarily. He's not used to doing things involuntarily.

Blaise touches his cheek. Her fingers are cold, though she'd been sitting by the fire, and he is reminded how similar they are. She smiles.

"Nice bruise," she says.

"Thanks," Draco says. "I kind of like it, myself."

And he wishes, powerfully and painfully, that Ron had not hit him.

He wishes Harry had.