The Lost Boys

THE LOST BOYS

Sticks and Stones

Nothing he has ever done is his life has been good enough for them; his father looks at him sideways out of the corner of his eyes and his mother does not look at him at all. And his failures accumulate, one by one, stacked like children's blocks in a tower that will someday reach the sky if it does not fall and cover him the way he sometimes hopes it will. People think that his father hits him (his father is known for his temper, for icy control always just on the verge of breaking becoming a waterfall that washes over Draco and pulls him down and drowns him) but the truth is his father goes out of his way to avoid touching Draco. The truth is that until he went to Hogwarts no one had ever laid a hand on him in anger.

He deserves it, though; he deserves to be beaten. He is lazy and careless and foolish and when Narcissa says that sometimes she doesn't love him, sometimes no one could love him, he agrees. No one should love him. There has never been an unsuccessful Malfoy but he knows that he will be the first. He must do this on purpose, to embarrass them. He must not be trying; he is certainly not living up to his potential. He cannot possibly be doing his best, and why isn't he? His grades, his performance on the Quidditch field, are abysmal.

Anger, hatred; these are strong emotions, the kinds of things you only feel for those you care deeply about. There is nothing in Draco that can raise such feelings in his parents and sometimes he plays little games designed to attract their attention, to make them care even if he only makes them angry, because that is better than nothing and nothing is what he has now. He plays the doesn't eat game, and pushes his dinner around on his plate, but Lucius and Narcissa rarely notice and in the end Draco goes to bed hungry so often that he stops noticing. He cuts himself and waits for someone to say something, anyone to say anything, and they don't and eventually it becomes a little ritual all his own.

He says inappropriate things, picks fights, fails his classes, and Lucius calls him stupid but it is a vague insult, thrown in passing. He means it, he is truly disappointed in Draco, but not really disappointed, not enough to punish him. He does not expect much and so Draco must constantly find new lows, new ways to fail his parents. He is nothing to them; they do not love him because they realized long ago that he is not what they wanted. He is not perfect. Compared to other children he is nothing special and never has been.

Mid way through fifth year Snape catches on to Draco, bags him in the corridor and drags him into his office and rolls back the sleeves of his robes. He and Draco both look, expressionlessly, at Draco's wrists which are skeleton thin and skeleton pale except where the lurid red scars twine like ivy down a pillar. Draco struggles for words to explain this, words that mean what he needs to say: if I cannot be what they want why should I be anything? Or, I know there's something wrong with me, and I'm trying to fix it.

It seems that after all he does not want to disappoint his parents; now when it is too late he realizes that they will be hurt, that they have only ever wanted him to be the best that he can be. He should have known that they were trying to make him smarter, better, faster: he should have known but he didn't think, he never thinks, he's so stupid. He opens his mouth to tell Snape this but somehow all that comes out is, "Please don't tell my father."

And Snape, damn him, bless him, answers, "I won't."