Solipsist

Solipsist

i like the dark. i like the way it wraps around me and keeps me from harm and prying eyes, and the way that when i'm in the dark i'm alone, all alone, without people scheming and hissing and talking about me and laughing about me, and without crabbe and without goyle and without anyone.

~

What do I think of Draco? Well, from the minute we stepped inside the Common Room on the first day of our first year, Draco Malfoy owned us. He looked around disdainfully and barked out orders and spoke so eloquently for eleven years old that none of us could do anything but look on in awe. The ones who'd met him once or twice before school commented that he wasn't always this forceful, but then again we all knew that he preferred smaller crowds: the fewer people there were, the easier they were to control and the more likely they were to listen to him. He's always been like that.

~

i don't like people. people are cruel and mean and i'm sure they're all plotting about me and that the whispers stop when i walk into a room, but i can pretend - i've always liked to pretend, mother thought i should be an actor - and people listen to my empty insights and look into my cold eyes and sometimes even run away, which is exactly how i want it to be.

~

Draco Malfoy? He's a bit of a prima donna really, isn't he? I mean, he waltzes around like he owns the place, always butting in when he's not wanted or finding reasons to turn the conversation round to him. I mean, I don't really know him that well, we only have Herbology together, but I'm usually a pretty good judge of character. There's something strange about him sometimes, though...stilted, I guess that would be the word. His mannerisms are a little too affected or something, I don't know. It just strikes me that he may not be quite all there.

~

i still don't know myself why i act this way, so i tell myself it's all a game. if the people around me are going to turn and stab me at any second, they can't see my fear, so i show them that i'm not afraid and tell myself that over and over. the only problem is that i've tried so hard to convince myself that i've built a whole other world where i'm no longer trapped by people but by my own mind. i suppose it's not quite as bad because i can trust myself not to make any sudden moves.

~

Well, really, you don't need me to tell you that Malfoy's histrionic, do you? The symptoms have been obvious from the first time I heard him drawling from across the corridors. He's manipulative, attention seeking, and sulks if he's not in the limelight. He talks in extravagant hyperbole as if to prove his intellectual worth, and you can't not remember the hippogriff incident in Third Year: he exaggerated that injury so much they might as well have shipped him off to St Mungo's then and there and saved me the trouble of slapping him. Honestly, though, disorder or not, Malfoy is one of the least pleasant people I've ever met.

~

the real me's in a cage, i think, because that's all my mind is. i can't come out so i'm walking in circles and telling myself to hold until summer when i don't have to see anyone i don't want to. the thing is that i try to gain their undying loyalty by pretending, but their adoring smiles and awed tones are obviously as much of a front as my own smirk, and it might actually be this game i play that pushes them over the brink.

~

I don't like to say too much against Draco Malfoy: he's a good student, one of the best, and his father and I have a rather tentative arrangement that I don't wish to jeopardise. I suppose he does seem strange at times, though. He's always jumpy, constantly keeping an eye out for people who are going to leap out and bring a knife to his throat, especially since the time when that incompetent Crouch transfigured him into a ferret. If that boy wasn't paranoid before, he is now. Of course, though, he is definitely a Slytherin and definitely Lucius's son, and I don't think an incident like that would shake him too much, especially not visibly. The thing about the Malfoys, though, is that they're such accomplished liars that you can never be sure what's going on underneath it all.

~

i don't know how i feel, or if i feel at all. i don't know what it would be like to care about someone, to miss my parents when they're in azkaban or to feel sorry for zabini when he trips in a corridor. i lust after people but i don't understand how sex can mean anything but sensation, and i don't know what pansy means when she says she loves me but i let her suck me off anyway.

~

Malfoy! Merlin, don't get me started on that git. He's all me, me, me, all the time; he doesn't care about anyone but himself. I sometimes wonder if he even knows what it's like to care about someone, but then I realise that he's a stupid Pureblood bastard and that generations of inbreeding probably gave him all kinds of problems. Of course, I don't feel sorry for him: I want to punch that smug smirk off his face and ask him who the hell he thinks he is, walking in and thinking we're all just gonna bow down to him like he's the next, well, Harry Potter. I'm just glad Harry picked me over him at the start of first year, I don't know if I'd be able to take the gloating.

~

and then there's harry potter. i don't know what i think of him, really. i don't hate him, because i don't know what the word hate means. it's like love or anger or happiness: immaterial and insubstantial, and i don't see how anyone can put so much weight behind the words 'i hate you, malfoy' because there's nothing there to emphasise. what's a word without a meaning? potter's definitely attractive, and i can understand physical sensations like arousal around him, but he makes me feel sick and i have to take an analgesic potion when i see him to tame the doxies in my gut. He's the worst of the lot, potter, always laughing with his bloody friends and then looking at me like I'm the object of their private jokes, which I am, and I don't like having anyone's eyes on me, but his are the worst.

~

Malfoy? I dunno, he's just Malfoy, isn't he? I mean, there's nothing special about him, really, except maybe his cheekbones. Hehehe, sorry, it's just that there's not really much I can think of to say. I mean, he's just a bully, really. He likes the idea of attention, I guess, but I don't know how much he actually likes having everyone's eyes on him. It's the pressure, really, I get that a lot. But it's not like I can see into his mind or anything, I guess I'm just...projecting, I think that's what 'Mione calls it, so you probably can't take anything I say as Gospel. Malfoy, Malfoy, Malfoy...he's gonna be a Death-Eater, I know that much. He's probably gonna single himself out and get himself killed for calling Voldemort a Mudblood or something, because that's what he does: it's like he can't help saying whatever comes into his head, however confusing it may be. And I don't hate him, really: I don't exactly care either way. I s'pose he makes life a bit more interesting, but there's nothing to single him out from the crowd, not really. Not when you actually bother to look.

~

so I run away to the dark, every night, the solitary confinement of my curtained-off bed the nearest I get to alone, and I lie down and listen to people's conversations and wonder what they meant by that and whether nott and goyle are doing potions or sabotaging my essay, because that's just the kind of thing nott would do. I can't cry myself to sleep because I don't know how and I don't actually have anything to cry over, anyway, so I think and I think and I wonder what I'm going to act out tomorrow to save me from getting detention for missing homework.

~

Ah, Draco Malfoy. There's a lot that I can tell you about him, but I don't think that would be entirely fair, do you? Each of us is entitled to our secrets, and it's not my right to give away anything young Draco doesn't want me to. He's not what he seems, and that's all I can say for the moment. Now, are you sure I can't tempt you with a sherbet lemon?

~end~