Tied With a Red Ribbon

Tied with a red ribbon, by Dark Fairy of the Wood

Did you really think that

I would really take you back,

Let you back in my heart

One more time?

Oh, no, no...

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

You have left a few minutes ago to call off your wedding with the Mudblood and to then come back to my arms, to return to me with the same suddenness that you left me all those years ago. You came to ask for forgiveness and left, impetuous Gryffindor that you are, without it, holding nothing but a kiss and a few unspoken words against your heart. With those, you will now face your bride-to-be, your friends, the rabble you consider your family, and tell them that you are forsaking them for me, for Draco Malfoy, for the Dark-tainted creature most of them wish dead.

How brave of you, Harry. How brave and how rash.

Did it never occur to you that when you left me because it was too complicated to stay with me you delivered me a fatal wound? Did it never occur to you that some of us cannot forgive and forget as you yourself do?

Did you not remember that the Malfoys motto is 'Nemo me impunit laccesit'? No one offends me without punishment, Harry. I may love you, but I'm still a Malfoy.

Did you think I'd still care,

That there'd be more feeling there?

Did you think you could walk back

In my life?

Oooh...

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

Oh, yes, I still love you, undoubtedly. But you have taught me, along with many other things, that love is perfectly compatible with intense hatred. Those two emotions have been feeding each other inside my heart for the two years that have flown by since our last kiss. Every second without you made the wound a little deeper, festered disappointment and regret into hate and a thirst for revenge the power of which you can never imagine.

I'll admit I had hoped that one glance from your beautiful green eyes would purify my heart, freeing it of those revolting emotions that tainted what was once a pure and selfless love. I had hoped that if you ever kissed me again, the power of your love would return me to the innocent, naïve seventeen-year-old that loved you so freely.

You have looked at me, you have kissed me, and you have proved me wrong.

You have disappointed me, Harry.

Running back for forgiveness, unable to remain loyal to me or to the Mudblood that must be, at this very same moment, staring at your kiss-swollen lips in disbelief... is that the Harry Potter I fell in love with? This fickle young wizard running between what he wants and what he thinks he ought to want, unable to be contented with neither?

So you found you missed the love

You threw away.

Baby, but you found it out too late,

Too late...

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

Oh, but I am fickle too. Two years ago, perhaps, I would have taken you back. I would have forgiven you your defection from my side, your cowardice at being something else than what the world wanted you to be. I would have forgiven you, Harry, had you only seen fit to ask.

But not any more. I still love you, yes, I could never lie when faced with those intense green eyes where your dear imperfect soul shines so brightly, but no longer is your love all I want. I remember a time when all I could dream of, all I could wish for, all I wanted was you, back at my side.

That time is gone. During one of the endless evenings when I cried myself to sleep with your name on my lips and your face imprinted in my memory, I unconsciously wandered across the fine line that divides the love of a boy from the hate of a man.

I still love you, Harry, but you should have asked me whether that was all I felt for you.

And so you know the way it feels to cry,

The way that I cried when you broke my world in two,

And, baby, I learned the way to break a heart,

I learned from the best, I learned from you.

Oh, baby, now I learned from you.

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

Once I finish writing this letter, which I will leave on the bench where you came to find me tied with a red ribbon, I will leave this place, this quiet house where I meditated upon my revenge for two eternal years. When you return, heartsick from breaking the heart of the Mudblood, the only person who has remained loyal to you for all these years, I will not be here.

The house will be empty, and you will search it in desperation, wondering where all the expensive furniture and helpful house-elves have gone. Above all, you will tear through these empty rooms wondering where I am, where the person for whom you've given up all you had is.

At last, you will come to the garden and find the letter on the bench. You will take it up with shaking hands, a small smile coming to your lips, thinking that your dear Draco could not help a little prank in the momentous occasion of your return.

When this letter flutters from your grasp, you will have come to understand how I have felt for all these two endless years, while you were happy in the outside world, enjoying your successes, flattered by your admirers, planning your wedding and trying to forget me.

I knew you would come to see me, sooner or later. I knew you would need to see me again. You have seen me, and rest assured it was the last time.

I remember cold nights,

Tears I thought would never dry,

How you shattered my world

With your goodbye.

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

For two years I have cried for you, Harry, torturing my heart with useless regrets, wondering what I could have done to keep you by my side, not to lose you.

Would you have loved me more if I had been different? If I had gone to meet you in the Hogwarts Express with an awed expression and a pitiful story to reassure you that you weren't the only miserable person in the world? Would you have loved me more if I had given up everything I had, my family who loves me, my friends who look up to me, my ideals, for you? Would you have loved me more then, if I had done all you couldn't?

Why did you think you had the right to ask me to change, and I didn't? Why were you the one who could give me an ultimatum, tell me what Right and Wrong were, draw the line that I would have to walk to be accepted?

You didn't love me half as much as I loved you, Harry. I never asked you to change, I never wanted you to change, because I loved who you were. Perhaps you loved who I could be, with your dedicated help, but it never occurred to you that I didn't want to be that person.

It has cost me two years of my life to come to these conclusions, Harry, and now I'm freely sharing them with you. They are, along with that one last kiss that I couldn't resist offering you, the only things you will have left. You have renounced to friends and family to come to me, and now you will have to renounce to me too, and embrace nothingness like I did that night you walked away from me.

When I'd sold my soul then,

Just to have you back again,

Now you are the last thing

On my mind...

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

Oh, I can almost see the horrified expression on your beautiful face, Harry. Don't worry, I have not gone to kill myself. My thirst for revenge could not be quenched from the Afterlife. I will still be alive when you read this, and I hope to remain alive for many years more.

But don't deceive yourself, Harry. I don't want you to find me again, and you will not. You may search, but I can say with confidence you will not find me. And if you ever do, by an extraordinary coincidence or a stroke of luck, there will be no tearful reunion, no longed-for embrace.

I loved you so much, Harry, than when you left me I was left stunted, unable to grow, to mature, to move past what we had been. But not anymore. I will reclaim the life you took away from me when you left me. I have, as if in a deal with the devil, exchanged one life for another. I have taken yours in a hope to reclaim mine.

So spend your life looking for me, if you will. Keep this letter close to your heart while you search for my face in distant cities, in busy streets. Dream of me while you are sleep, and think of me when you are awake.

I know you love me, Harry, and I have no other wish that for you to be damned for it, because you loved me, but you didn't love me enough.

Now you say you're sorry

And you changed your ways.

Sorry, but you changed your ways

Too late...

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

But, Harry, I love you too much to leave you without some small comfort. It meant a lot to me that you were willing to return to my arms. I was almost tempted, for one fleeting instant, while I enjoyed the taste of your sweet mouth, to stay and to love you. But you don't deserve to be loved anymore, Harry.

In a way, I have done a favour to the Mudblood, although I doubt she will ever acknowledge that. Do you think that even her, that annoying creature that I wouldn't have killed for disgust of dirtying my hand with her blood, deserved to believe in such a fickle and unreliable love as yours? You betrayed her, Harry, as you betrayed me, at the first available opportunity.

Do you understand now how deep the wound you inflicted me runs? Do you see how it poisoned my whole being? I'm not the Draco you fell in love with, Harry. You have made me into someone much stronger, and much more bitter.

Now that you are left alone, Harry, perhaps you can reflect on what you made of me.

I survived my father's teachings and the Dark Lord's influence without a dint or a smudge inside of me, where it really counted. And then along came you, and with a few cowardly words you shattered me, infected me, broke me and then left me to stare at the pieces of what had been once an innocent soul.

What I have now, Harry, is what I managed to rebuild from those pieces, but I won't trust you again with its care.

And so you know the way it feels to cry,

The way that I cried when you broke my world in two,

And, baby, I learned the way to break a heart,

I learned from the best, I learned from you.

Oh, baby, now I learned from you.

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

The house in front of which you are standing as you read this has been left empty but from whatever curses and nightmares I might have left behind. You are free to hide in it, if you wish, to carry out your own penance like I did mine. It might serve you as a consolation, or perhaps as a further pain, to pace along the same corridors I paced, blind with helpless tears, cursing your name with lips that longed to kiss you.

When you came to look for me, I asked you to leave. It was my love speaking, wishing to save you from this, and you should have listened. Now, you have promised me 'forever' and I will make sure that is what I will have, even if I'm not there to see it. 'If I kiss you again, it'll be forever,' I told you, and foolishly you took my kiss, accepting a forever that it's going to be very different from what you expected.

But I know you so well that I know you will never break that promise that I wrung from you with the taste of my lips still tingling in your own mouth. You promised me forever, and even if it damns you, you are not going to break your word.

So when all you've got are sleepless nights,

When those tears are clouding up your eyes,

Just remember, it was you who said goodbye,

Who said goodbye!

(Whitney Houston, "I learned from the best")

Now you have been left in a Hell that you yourself built and that I have only opened the doors to. You, with your beautiful green eyes and your heart full of good intentions, lovingly grew a Hell for me to remain after you were gone, and it might have held me all my life if you hadn't had the weakness to come and drive the knife in deeper, to gloat over my misfortune, to make sure you had made the right decision.

I have been left scarred, but I will survive you.

Cry now, Harry, for me. I, from where I will be when you read this letter, want to feel your tears scalding that face I will never again hold in my hands, running over those lips I will never again kiss, dripping over the robes I long to lovingly take off.

If it's any consolation, the rest of your wretched life will be as much of a punishment for me as it will be for you.

Lovingly yours,

Draco Malfoy