Pyromania

Pyromania

"Potter isn't going to stay one step ahead of me forever." His voice was a nearly inaudible, grimly malevolent murmur, and his face was dark with an anger which had never overrun it like this before, even in his worst moments, or at least, if it had I hadn't witnessed it. I had stood to embrace him as he strode in, but registering the tightness of anger and battle scars which invaded his movements, I sensed that it wouldn't be appropriate to his mood, and shrank back onto the bed apprehensively. I waited for him here like this every evening, at the flat he was renting solely for the purposes of our supposedly clandestine affair. I supposed a Malfoy could afford it. Usually an embrace, further proof that I was putty in his hands, was what he craved. Not tonight though. I had learnt from experience that when he entered into one of his tirades, pouring out all his grievances with the world to me, only for me to pass the information on to the Order without his knowing, the only correct response was to sit and wait for it to be over.

Sometimes even that wouldn't be enough to ward off his anger. I couldn't really defend myself overly much, for the sake of preserving my weak, little girl role, and it seemed that it had been convenient for him to forget what a Bat-Bogey Hex I'd had back in fourth year. When he'd been made to feel powerless by the events of the day, it seemed he needed to prove to himself that he was in control somewhere in his life, not that he'd have put it like that himself. After a Death Eater defeat I always had to work hard to prevent him taking it out on me. "He's a fool," Draco continued angrily, "and with all the powerful enemies he's made, his luck's going to run out soon. Then he and his Gryffindor disciples will get what they deserve... and I have every intention of ensuring it personally."

I didn't know what had prompted this particular outburst, nor did I dare ask at that time. I heard the story later from the other Order members. They had been raiding a suspected Death Eater conclave and the fighting had degenerated into little more than a magical brawl, and of course Draco had sought Harry out particularly. They had both fought furiously, but in the end Harry had cornered a raging Draco and would have had him, were it not for the timely intervention of Lucius, who had ordered his son to Apparate away with the other Death Eaters and, in his words, 'live to fight another day'. Draco, even though he was some years out of Hogwarts now, was still incapable of disobeying his father, especially as the head of his family was now also his immediate superior among the Death Eaters.

No doubt the punishment which his father would have inflicted, in both of those capacities, for not matching up to Harry, would have compounded the rage I saw before me now. When the others told me the story later, I would have to force away my traitorous, guilty admiration for Draco's obstinate perseverance, the fact that he had been prepared to fight Harry to the very last. Draco wasn't one for half measures. By the time I heard that story from the others I would already have surrendered myself to my fate, but this moment, seeing him in front of me, bitter with anger and malice, was when I finally recognised and abandoned myself to the peculiar hold which that intensity held over me.

Somehow the smile which alighted on his face at the thought of his nemesis' destruction chilled me more than his anger, as the malice previously present in his words now became just as visible in the hatred of that smile. It was clear that I had never realised the true extent of that hatred for Harry. Maybe it was because I hadn't paid enough attention, or maybe I had never wanted to acknowledge that something could exist that deep and insatiable. Suddenly that hatred seemed to glimmer darkly in his face, as clear to me as any physical characteristic, the malevolence in his smile briefly as evident as the grey of his irises, as the impossible paleness of the strands of hair which wisped about his head, tousled from his infuriated hands running through it.

"Draco," I breathed thoughtlessly, terrified and yet sickly fascinated by the fierce power of his feeling. Terrified because I feared what it might mean for Harry, for my other friends in the Order. I knew well how You-Know-Who could play on your emotions, how he could twist Draco's hatred and forge it into a weapon for his own dark purposes. And yet still I couldn't shake that midnight fascination with the impossible intensity of his words and expression. I knew then, in the pit of my stomach, a knowledge that was somehow physical, somehow deeper than any rational, intellectual realisation; I knew that that intensity would never be directed at me, that he could never love me or hate me as fiercely as he hated Harry, that I would not hold his heart the way he held mine...

Because in that moment, I saw Draco as a reflection of myself. Even as his face was contorted with hatred for my former housemate, my comrade-in-arms, too involved in it even to notice my inadvertent murmur, simply continuing to pace back and forth, ignoring the twinges of his fresh wounds, railing against the odds which were stacked, as they always had been, on Potter's side, and fantasising morbidly about his eventual vengeance. An unexpected realisation struck me, emerging firmly but calmly within me as if it had been there all along, the reason behind my inability to pull away from him, despite his imperfections, despite the myriad dangers, despite the advice and pleading of everyone I cared for and trusted. Now I knew that my strange attraction to him lay in the destructive strength of my feelings for him, which had crept up on me unawares.

I had been able to make excuses for them, even to myself, up until now, until this sudden dark epiphany. No matter how many times other Order members had warned me to pull out, told me that I had done all that was necessary and that getting too close could be dangerous, still I had insisted that we might discover more from Draco. After all, he was one of Voldemort's most trusted and most zealous servants. He was prone to divulge information, as long as he believed that he was the one using the weak Weasley girl, as subservient and desperate for love and attention now as she had been when the memory of Tom Riddle had exploited her so thoroughly. Still I kept insisting that I didn't mind running the risk of what might happen if I was discovered by the Death Eaters, as long as the information I gained from him could help the Order in any way. I was so insistent, in fact, that Moody had demanded that I be checked for the Imperius, and all the other lesser mind-control charms. But of course they found nothing. There's no charm to detect an emotion.

And it didn't even hurt to know that there wouldn't be that same intensity in his regard for me, because this feeling wasn't about reciprocation, or a future relationship or final battle, or any of the things love and hate are supposed to be. Even at that first instant, I think I comprehended that this was not something which could ever endure for long, but that it would flare sharply, hot and bright and brief. This was about this single moment, about me, the youngest Weasley, the one who had always previously had to fit her wants in around the others, finally caring about something so deeply that nothing mattered except this power of emotion, unlike anything I had ever experienced before, as uncompromising and destructive as fire, yet just as guiltily captivating. I had never before shown more than a passing, fickle, vague interest in anything, not schoolwork, not Quidditch, not any of my crushes... Even Tom had never commanded my emotions himself. He had simply been bellows to a sputtering, wandering fire, not this focused, horrifying intensity.

In that moment, I felt the hot, guilty, terrifying swoop of fear and realisation that I had placed my all into another's hands and was simultaneously entirely free; freed from all responsibility, freed from any choice, from any future; and yet trapped by the slightest whim of that other who now held me as precariously as a fragile glass flower in the palm of his hand. He could clasp me to him, crushing the petals, shattering the stem, but making me his and commanding my fierce love. Or he could cast me by the wayside in his own obsessive pursuit, trying to sate his own burning intensity, abandoning me without a thought to be trampled under clumsy, passing feet, and allowing to germinate within me a passionate hatred for him. My destiny lay in him, and in that moment I had found both salvation and damnation in a single person. And that knowledge was so gloriously terrifying and liberating and thrilling, like the moment where you fling yourself over a cliff and know that now it is done and the uncertainty is gone forever in that magnificent moment. Only the fall remains.

I had allowed myself to be led astray without realising what my destination would be, and the labyrinthine twists and turns I had followed had led me here, to this moment where now I no longer cared that I was lost forever. For I had discovered at the centre of the maze, not the monster which everyone had predicted, but rather a fire which hypnotised and teased me as it hung just beyond my reach. I longed desperately, as all pyromaniacs secretly do, not just to watch it, but to experience it. To reach out and feel the sensation of its radiant, destructive magic for myself. The magical world has very little organised religion, for various reasons, but now I briefly understood how Muggles could devote themselves so entirely to such a cause. I felt stirring within me an unwavering and unshakeable veneration for the fire which would consume everything without a backwards thought, the fire which would enchant me more surely than any spell until it was too late to turn back. My world was filled simply with this one truth, this one passion to rule me so completely...

Though all this was definitely not to say that I would ever betray the Order. That may seem contradictory, but I hadn't been converted. That wasn't what this was about at all. I still knew whom I wanted to win this war, and how could I not? I was an Order member myself, with all my family and friends fighting alongside me, for a world we had to protect from the terrible threat You-Know-Who posed. Equally, I had no dreams of converting Draco, for I knew him too well for that. I knew that that was an impossibility, and knew that most of why I felt such a desperate passion for him was his frightening, incomprehensible zeal for what he believed in, whether I agreed with that or not. This had nothing to do with our politics, nothing to do with the roles we were both playing in this relationship, and everything to do with simply being able to stay close enough to the flame to feel its blue heat, close enough to watch it, entranced, as it flickered and writhed.

This was more than just that passivity, though; this, this was the true height of pyromania. I was now not simply watching the hypnotic flame with terror and glee, as it licked at the air, consuming a piece of parchment, slowly discolouring it, shrivelling it, so that by the end the parchment was writhing as if alive, as the flame burned on to the last...

This was not simply that mundane obsession with the beautiful play of the flame across a surface, with its flickering, mutable light, but also the knowledge which filled me with a terrible thrill, whispering that even as I watched the fire was consuming me too, that I could feel it flickering across me, the tongues of fire tasting my skin, the heat consuming me, the sensation of burning a curiously chill, biting pain which left me feeling more alive than ever before, even as the flames continued to devour me...

This all sparked into life within me as I let his words wash over me, as I cowered on the bed, until, as the explosion of emotion within me reached its peak, I stood abruptly, and embraced him as I had originally intended to, no longer caring for any possible consequences.

That was the moment I abandoned my futile resistance and indulged my pyromania.