Porcelain

Porcelain
Are you wasting away in your skin?
Are you missing the love of your kin?
Drifting and floating and fading away.

He was made of porcelain. Delicate, soft, breakable, hidden under a shiny and polished exterior that was cold to the touch. Porcelain could describe many things about Draco. His skin, his eyes, his hair. Him. He was, in all respect, what defined the word "porcelain" and that is why I hate the god damned word.

He also had beautiful hair, almost white, but beautiful and silky. Soft, fine, rolling through my fingers. He was a gentle soul, once you got close enough to see inside his cold shell.

But he also had this major flaw in him. He was so lonely, slowly kind of detaching himself from everyone. Believe me, I tried and tried to save him. I tried so hard to keep him from disappearing completely. As the years in school passed by, he became less and less popular. Top of the chain when he was eleven. When he was seventeen, he was barely there.

I never missed him. Something as beautiful as porcelain can't just escape my eyes like that.

Porcelain
Do you smell like a girl when you smile?
Can you not bear to share with your child?
Drifting and floating and fading away.

I first wanted to touch him when I rounded fifteen. I never told anyone, didn't even express it. But over the summer, he had to come stay in the Muggle world for protection and, by some bizarre coincidence, had stay with me (though I'm sure it was some kind of flaw, considering I wasn't the safest person to be staying with, what with all the Death Eaters wishing I would die and all.). I was ecstatic, though. A chance to find the joint between what was and wasn't him.

He was almost sixteen and my birthday was a little ways off. I guess it made sense that he was older than me, more mature. I always seemed so innocent with my big old green eyes. But when he came, he didn't insult me much. He was quiet, he kept to himself. He was... pleasant. I wanted to touch him even more at that point. I wanted to feel that delicate skin, delicate hair, delicate everything. I wanted to undo dainty clasps from silken shirts, remove fancy trousers. I wanted to see if his lips were as cold as they looked.

I had fantasies the first month, watching him sleep while I dreamed about all the things I could do to make him mine. I wanted to paint that porcelain green and red and silver and gold, a mix of all the colors he wanted to be and the colors that he knew he wanted. Most of all, I wanted a big, black paint brush, so I could paint my name, huge and angry and loving and crude, all over him. No one would touch him then, because he would be mine.

My cold piece of porcelain.

Little lune
All day
Little lune

I remember the first kiss, too. I remember, we were outside, in the park. I had just gotten tired and I said, "C'mon, let's go for a walk."

We'd wandered lazily down the moonlit walk, not saying much. It seemed as if the world was painted white and blue just for us, a sea of cold metals and fears. I never liked the night because it scared me. It made me think like everyone was just waiting for me to come out and that blue and white and all that serenity would be gone, replaced by the haphazard anger of the modern world. One of the things I loved was calmness. I would go insane.

We'd reached the park and I took his hand suddenly and gripped it tight. It was ice cold, like I'd expected, but whether or not he was actually a porcelain doll that everyone thought painted on a cold and sneering face every morning or the cold night air, I couldn't say. He didn't say anything. In fact, he gripped back, chilling my own skin.

I remember so much contrast, just like the white and blue in which we strolled gently. His skin, whiter than cream and mine, dark and tanned, like toffee. A sharp difference to tired and frightened eyes. I was contemplating this when suddenly I heard a small sniffle. I looked up. He was crying, wiping at those eyes (beautiful, gray, cold eyes that I loved.) and trying to catch the crystals that fell from them. Each one he missed dripped down his soft, pale cheek and glimmered in the moonlight before falling into the sea of monotonous color.

I found myself reaching up to wipe them away, and before I knew it, I was pulling his head towards mine and kissing him softly. He was breaking down right there, sobbing as I kissed him, wrapping shaking arms around my waist as I kissed him. When I pulled away, he started to cry again. I'd never seen anyone so upset, so scared. Crying like that in my arms.

I brushed away more tears and whispered, "What's wrong?"

"I'm... no one..."

"We should sit down." I helped him to a bench and held him as he just cried. When he seemed to calm down, he said, "No one knows me. No one sees me right. I just want them to see me for someone other than a cold piece of a person. I'm not like that, am I?"

I shook my head. "No."

"I would give anything for a normal life away from all the nonsense here... just a normal life for one day." He looked up at me, eyes wet and shiny and beautiful. "I want someone to love me."

"To make you feel..."

"...like I'm wanted."

We were quiet, and then I said, "I never saw you as cold, I promise." I almost told him about him being porcelain, but he just looked at me.

"Make me needed," he finally sobbed, hiding his face into his tender hands.

"Make you beautiful?"

"Just once, please."

Porcelain
Do you carry the moon in your womb?
Someone said that you're fading too soon,
Drifting and floating and fading away.

He spilled his heart out to me. It was more than just sex. I finally accepted that it was love. It was most plainly obvious he had never done something like this with anyone else. I loved him.

He told me about his life. I never once realized such a beautiful and remarkably innocent person could have such a threadbare and mediocre existence. His whole life had been a façade of seductiveness and hatred and betrayal, a stain on the most perfect dreams of mankind. Such a soft and easy and loving creature, destroyed by living a life of lies, being forced to do things, sexual things, because his sexiness could go without being flaunted in front of worthy business associates.

His heart bled open and bruised what did indeed happen to be my own very soul. Every tear he cried hit me hard, marked me and burned me and left me ridden with anger and hope to fix him, to make him feel.

His porcelain exterior was losing it's shine and it was crumbling with the many years of oppressed rage and fear and hate and desire. All the things put an emotional strain on the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, and now it was falling apart.

When we returned to school, he tried to keep his cold and smooth mask on and polished and ready, insulting me in the halls with sad and hurting eyes. No one can cover up their eyes. No one knew what secret pain he harbored and how less and less of him he was.

I recall walking down the halls when suddenly, someone grabbed my arm and said, "Come quick, Harry, something wonderful has happened!" No matter how I tried, the person wouldn't tell me. She just kept dragging me down the stairs, muttering, "Quickly, come on! Stop! Come! Hurry up!"

I heard laughter; mocking, angry, revengeful laughter and the sound of people taunting and biting and insulting. The person tossed me into the Great Hall, as of now, a large crowd had formed at a section of the Slytherin table. They were laughing like hyenas, growling and snarling and snickering and insulting. I ran towards the group and froze.

He had broken. His exterior gone and replaced by nothing, a cool, calm, detached face, his eyes scared and hurt and angry and delicate. As the kids around him thought of the meanest things they could to shoot at him ("You manky little wanker!" "Egotistical bastard!" "Fucking git!") and he didn't flinch or move. I cringed when "manky little wanker" came out. I almost screamed, "Fuck off! You don't know anything about him!" I refrained.

"Ah, Harry! Join in!" I flushed to find Ron amongst the taunting souls, taunting my porcelain, my shattered porcelain. I shook my head and ran to his side, helping him up and running him away from the crowd. They had fallen silent, no doubt curious and scared at my sudden move to rescue the one I loved from the sea of insults.

As soon as we reached his room, he let the tears fall, but didn't say anything and spoke with a clear, steady voice.

"I love you," he said as I gently wiped his face with a tissue I found. I smiled at him.

"I love you, too," I responded, grabbing his hand. "Are you okay?"

He hugged me very suddenly, and he whispered, "I'm sorry."

I kissed him and stayed the whole night. I didn't mean to... do it with him that night, I just wanted to comfort him. But he seemed happy when I did him, kissed his back and neck and whispered against his white, soft skin.

I wouldn't have left, but the school was suspicious. Looking back on it now, I kind of wish I had.

Porcelain
Are you wasting away in your skin?
Are you missing the love of your kin?
Nodding and melting and fading away.

Porcelain is just as beautiful left in shards as it is when it's intact. Porcelain is just as beautiful stained red and blue and black. Porcelain is beautiful no matter what.

When the news came about his suicide, I didn't know how to feel. I didn't even think he'd do something. He was someone who stood up for himself, but maybe he'd just grown tired of living, of being a cold person everyone thought him to be. Tired of living vicariously because his father was never given the chance to live a life of cruelty and cold-hearted respect.

He had done it a simple Muggle way, just so he could feel through his shiny and polished and darkening exterior. A simple drag of a blade across smooth, milky skin, out of which erupted streams of warm red paint that flowed through him. It rolled down his arm, over his wrists, dripping onto the forest-green carpets. Tears in his un-rested eyes, he placed more cuts, cut more rivers into his skin. Beautiful rivers of shining blood, providing an escape, staining the carpet something awful, a terrible mess his mother was not going to clean up.

Porcelain didn't care, though. He was finally happy where he wanted to be. Gone.

I guess it does take a while for one person to completely disappear. I know it will take until the end of my lifetime. I'd never forget who was made of fine, delicate China porcelain, covered with an outer shell that was not him, containing sensual red beauty that spilled over the edges over his own doings. I miss him. I miss him every day.

That's why I'm here, honoring the most beautiful person no one knew, who faded away until he couldn't take it, drifted into a sea of hate and fear, lived and died alone and scared. I'm here because you all deserved to know what was inside of him; not the red paint, but the feelings and emotions he conveyed to show who he really wanted to be. Not everyone is as they seem.

Everyone remember him. Everyone remember Draco Malfoy.

Don't let him die again.

Little lune
All day
Little lune