Sin to Kill a Dragon

Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the flowers gone?
Girls have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

Draco woke up bathed in cold sweat, his usually inert emotions raging in a passionate fire that blinded every rule that life in the Malfoy home had taught it. There was something feral about his new-found hope (was that what it was?), and yet the feeling had no ground of primal instinct. It was powerful, quiet and unbearably and yet so lusciously complete. Its holder was not its master, it was its slave, but oh what a happy slave Draco was. There was nothing anymore. Absolutely nothing. This had terrified Draco, torn him and completely abandoned him into a hole, a deep dark desolate scar and every meter was another gash torn into his disembodied psyche. Several days of lying in a ball on his bed, thinking hesitantly of all the implications of his new independent status, had taught Draco that watching life go by was the far more difficult choice. Joining and flowing right along with it, only being dumped on the banks when time to depart from the realm of mortal scars was the far better option. He would get himself a job, interact and find somebody to hold on to as the last breath leaves his carcass to rot, recycling it back into the earth.

Closing his tired eyes that glowed a dark onyx ice, Draco exposed his subsequently blue-tinged eyelids to the darkness of his small bedroom. Trying desperately to find a happy memory that his mind could not taint, Draco fell into a fitful sleep. Awaking the next morning, hopefully still empowered, he'd go to the Ministry, his name must still count ... for something...

*

"Mama knows better
I ask Mama why

But as Mama kisses me

Her Mama died

I held her close to me

Told her not to cry

But she picked up the gun

And said Goodbye."

Rolling his eyes and walking towards the Ministry Draco couldn't help but smile at one of his favorite memories, not meddled with much by his mind because it was so stained already. It was the first poem she had ever told anyone about, read aloud to an astonished class and teacher on one happy morning in the sixth grade. Her dark hair had fallen limply across her youthful face, perhaps in apprehension of hostility or perhaps an unconscious effort to cover her already dead eyes. Draco had probably been the only one who had seen anything other than a disturbed child behind those abrupt words. What he saw was hope (not the kind he was feeling now, he thought ruefully, wishing that he had been able to share this particular brand with her), not a hope of redemption or even solace, just a hope of company in the depths of whatever had gripped him. Of course, being roughly ten and an already bona fide Malfoy, the only sign that he had given her that she was anything special or comforting to him was that he had not tormented her along with the many members of the class that he considered below him. "Amor vincit omnia" Draco muttered to himself absentmindedly trying to locate the telephone box. "I supposed love cannot be conquered even in the bitterest, most trained hearts."

*

"Revenge through primal brutality is for the weak, and as much as I would want to partake, I cannot be as weak, Headmaster."

"Alas, I am. I see and I let my instincts guide me. I tell myself they are the enemy and they must be destroyed. As to your query, after a victory I do not know what the fighters will do without their dominance. And you are right - I can see it in your eyes - I am afraid of it."

*

"You had the dream, but your father disallowed a dreamer. He raised you in the way that he himself could only understand he could not be; cold, cruel yet able to see, in fact only to see, the ideological contradictions. He did not however breed you to be breakable. He did not understand that watching another die could stir something in you, because he did not associate love with you. You were simply a machine, one that he himself created and therefore assumed in his image, but he did not understand that his presence was the source of your running. You saw the world in deep shades of mahogany and violent red, the sun falling only to illuminate the fallen angels, copses broken against the ground of withered leaves. You drew eloquence from this, a clarity that seldom has made it through your bloodlines, a trait you share with one other that stands here in our midst. You are as the dragon is, the incomprehension of its magnificence offset only but the overestimation of its brutality. The minds that poison the blood inside your family cannot affect you. He pushed you too far, he did not choose to accept that behind those luminescent eyes lay a loving soul. You could not be touched because every time you look into a mirror, every time another person's face clears, fooled by the delicate beauty of your desolate soul, the lies you are wrapped in vanish and you hold yourself only as the things your father despises. He hated all that he considered good, and when you thought you were something he hated, you became it. In him you could find no love, save his apparent love to hate. You could not bear to let him want to hate you but not be who it was he hated. You would have done anything if you thought it would please him. By teaching you to lose all other attachments, and placing himself as the only consistency, you learnt only how to love.

"As the dragon cradles it's young, you must hide your vulnerability for you can seldom harm a dragon by attacking its hide. It is destroyed by attacking its love. Do not be slain in accordance with your name, Draco. Destroy what has destroyed, but do not touch what has not. Do this and only the blade you allow to kill you can. It is a sin to kill a dragon."

*

Draco just rolled his eyes. They both knew that sometime soon they wouldn't be able to have this anymore. They weren't dreamers after all. They only had the dream. He knew he would fight limbs and mind for her, and that she would the same for him but sometimes your life just wasn't enough. Raised the optimist, however, he could still imagine a symbolic enough death for himself. Whenever the picture expanded so he found himself next to his friend. After battling the unpleasantness he had been drawn to it. Fallen comrades, side by side, perfect synchronization. There was no mourning, there were no tears. They would die for each other, but they knew the other would soon follow. It was strange, this bond. There were no hugs, no tender words of praise, just the blatant admittance that they would lay down their lives for each other. Of course growing up in a world formed by angels and demons their lives had been made not to matter. Everyone was mortal and every life flew by. Without a purpose it was nothing and you were nothing. You died for another person because it is better than watching them die and blaming yourself for it. It was simply what they did. They hadn't been taught to have a cause or taught good from bad or how to make a difference. So they died for other people.

*

The steady flow of the river seemed to illustrate a life she had once known. She was a child wishing she would grow up, a hormone charged teenager wishing she could live, suddenly wishing she no longer had to, all aspirations simply disappeared, too futile for thought, asking softly and silently for the selfish solace of death. But she couldn't. She spent so long searching for a purpose - now she wished that purpose would disintegrate back into that beautiful futility her life had earlier had. No longer could gruff vocals and loud guitars lull her into a sense of completion, draw a smile onto her face. Understanding had less glory than was attached to it, she thought ruefully. But she did understand. Understand that she couldn't just curl up and die anymore - there were no more beautiful words to lull her into a sense of security, because there was no security anymore. Had she been more naïve, that comment would have been completed only with "except in his arms". However, had there by any chance been a romantic him, it would had taken even the dull comfort that if people around her died, she would have the strength to fight for them through life. If there was a special someone they would be another thing that stole her life force, but if she lost love... Besides it was messy. She had serious insecurity complexes, and if she lost someone, she could never look at them again without thinking about exactly how it felt to love them and exactly how it felt to be loved. Much easier to make sure it didn't happen. If only she could avoid everything else like she avoided romantic attachment, but as Harry had once told her, saving someone's life formed unbreakable friendships. And she was so afraid. Sure she would die for them, but what if that wasn't enough? It was all she could give - what if it wasn't enough?

The only real problem with her detachment, no pleasure means no pain, were the memories... the real, tangible memories... She felt them, in an offhand way, as they slowly ate through her.

*

Fear and shame had dissipated to a beautiful and fulfilled lust that craved nothing more than its own satiation, nothing more than its completion. His absence was as solid as his existence, the man she molded into the one she adored, subtle glances to other people transferred toward herself in one fluctuation of her troubled mind.

Roaring winds and whipped gray clouds low into shadow colored seas, as a dark mahogany vessels screamed for her every breath, submerging only to be thrown again, not even granted the mercy of death. The passengers, at that moment her offspring, that breathed only because she was fighting, huddled in large groups shouting prayers of faith into the heavens, asking for a redemption that they had been too comfortable to bother with before. They sang hymns and spoke the words of wise men, luckier than they to have emerged from the belly of the mighty inevitability of their doom that once more. Two shapes stood side by side at the foot of a satin covered mess, which sat in all its luxurious grandeur upon a king-size bed. The characters were standing, almost unmoving, as if asking silently for what is to happen next. Lightning further illuminates the room for but one moment and the lovers are upon each other. He is a poor artist from the north, talented but void, seeking the one that can redeem him from his lonely existence. She is a nun, traveling through the borders to work as missionary, trying desperately not to give in to the love she labels as cruel and unrelenting lust. Their lives are spun in an instant and their futures unfold like an arsenic laced carpet, the very essence that instilled inside it able to destroy it in but a tragic moment, one foot in too far and the life essence is pulled from your corpse. They are entwined in their dance of love, together forever encased inside the innards of the mighty ocean.

Thus she is sated, if just for today and she can look him in the face and ignore the pain that comes when he does not look back. Her explanation for his actions is wearing thin, and her subconscious struggles to locate and successor for it before Parvati opens her eyes and breaks in the gravity of the truth.

So I return to my fortress

I smile and hold your hand

the air my lover

silently singing our song

All those memories... all those dreams, desires, lives. Victory.

Truthfully, where is this light? Darkness was intangible, they all fought to die, no longer wishing to remain, only to grieve the lucky dead, those that had been so completely fulfilled they had permission to leave. They would simply give in to it - tucked in a tiny hollow of a weather worn tree, he would give into the demons, the shadows that his own actions had released, and scream his penance until he had nothing left to give, crying for the little boy locked in the carcass that refused to die.

Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the graveyards gone?
Covered with flowers every one
When will we ever learn?
When will we ever learn?