When a Malfoy Loves

When A Malfoy Loves

His surroundings had formed his tastes at a very early age. Draco Malfoy could not remember a time when he did not appreciate and love the ebony fireplace in his father's office, with its ornamentations of embedded silver and delicately placed emeralds. Just as his father was, he was interested in the plain leather-bound books that were piled on top of the smallest bookshelf in their library, and he spent quite a few hours poring over them, searching for the Invisibility spell said to be hidden inside the pages. Not literally, of course. Draco and his father were convinced that the spell had been written on a piece of palimpsest that had been reprinted, and it was fascinating for both of them to pore over the old pages, trying to discern old, unruly lines of ink that shouldn't have been where they were. And Draco, like his father, never gave up. It was not in his instilled nature to give up on anything. His father certainly didn't, and his mother only did when she was opposing his father.

His mother had never had to force him into his dress robes. They were well-tailored velvet, with a black inset in the front embroidered with the silver Malfoy crest, and he had been brought up to like them. His uncle Senoyak never had to ask what the Malfoy boy wanted for Christmas. He knew perfectly well that Draco would be happy with a new racing broom, or a good, expensive set of chessmen, because he had been around Draco so much when he was younger and had introduced Draco to Quidditch and chess. The Malfoy boy was quite a good flyer by the time he was eleven, and not bad at chess. He grew better at both while at school, and never learned to dislike them.

Draco's nature had been easily formed when he was a child. When he was about two or three, whatever he liked or did not was completely influenced by the tastes of those around him; he had been strangely desperate to be a pleasing baby. He grew out of that stage later on, when he discovered the art of being pliant, not submissive. By then, however, his opinions had been formed, his likes and dislikes had been set in stone, and his parents prided themselves on having such a well brought-up child. And he was. He was everything his parents hoped for him to be, except possibly in the way of his grades; Harry Potter's Mudblood friend beat him every year, and he got to hear about it at home. It was interesting, in a way, being scolded; he had never been reprimanded before, because he had never had an inclination to do as he shouldn't.

He wasn't to be pitied for what some would call his lack of character, either. He had character; it had just been taken from bits and pieces of everyone else he had encountered in his life. He had not found parts of his character in books or fairy-tales the way many others did; in fact, he hardly ever read anything except the magical nonfiction books in the Malfoy library. And, despite what his Gryffindor classmates thought--particular, three of them--he had not been brought up to sympathize with the evil stepmother in the traditional fairy-tales like Cinderella, or the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.

He had not been raised from the "opposite" point of view, either, in which his parents handed him a version of Sleeping Beauty from the evil fairy's point of view, twisted so that the fairy was the sympathetic one and everyone else was unreasonable, crude, and wrong. He had been reared to see the advantages of a world with Grindelwald or Lord Voldemort at its head: no more of wizardkind concealing itself from its more inferior counterparts just so that their inferiors wouldn't kick up a fuss; no more nonsense about not researching every extent to which magic could reach because of the term "Dark Arts".

The term "Dark Arts", actually, was complete bollocks, something everyone in his or her right mind realised. It was a term invented by the Ministry to apply to types of potentially harmful magic, which was just pointless. The Trip Jinx was potentially harmful; did that mean that it was also forbidden? And the Ministry itself was permitted to use the Killing Curse, or the Imperius Curse on occasion, which in itself revealed the Ministry as a self-pleasing, controlling form of government. Conform to what we say, their motto went, and if you don't, go to Azkaban. If you don't cooperate when we try to drag you to Azkaban, we'll kill you. As simple as that.

Draco's father, relatives, friends, and consequently Draco himself, had immense problems seeing eye to eye with this philosophy. They hated it, and they hated the non-gifted Muggles that had made a government like this possible as well as the Muggle-sympathizers. Muggles forced wizardkind into the despicable position of having to hide who they were simply to keep up the Muggle state of mind. Draco and his father believed a good shock would do the Muggle world a bit of good, but that was a view that had to stay inside the family, thanks to a very corrupt Ministry of Magic.

Draco himself was quite spoiled. It would be ridiculous to say that he wasn't. He was his father's almost-perfect son, and in consequence of doing everything that he wanted to, Draco was showered with expensive gifts that he really did like. The gifts were always useful, and he always learned to use them, and use them well, which would garner him upgrades of his presents. This earned him a Nimbus 2001 and a place on Slytherin's Quidditch team at twelve years old. At fourteen, he received a set of ebony and ivory chessmen decorated in phoenix feathers and with phoenix-feather silk, and he beat every Slytherin soundly over the course of his fourth year. When he turned sixteen, his father gave him an Invisibility Cloak, and was dragged off to Azkaban three weeks later.

It would have been ridiculous to say that Draco was such a perfect child that there was no one that disliked him. Little Norma Lestrange never liked visiting him, because he was an intolerable show-off. Frederick Macnair didn't like him because Draco was unquestionably smarter than he was, and knew it. Draco Malfoy knew himself very, very well, and he did not care who knew it. His father was proud of him for knowing his own worth, convinced that modesty was a sign of weakness, a sign of wanting to please others.

He loved his father. Lucius Malfoy had never abused him, and he did not teach his son to draw and quarter lawn gnomes in his spare time. Lucius was patient when teaching his son, inflexible, strict, proud of Draco, and a good husband to his wife. Narcissa Malfoy loved her son, was convinced that nothing was too good for him, and concealed everything she felt behind a veneer of coldness to those she disliked.

Narcissa and Lucius were not cruel to him. Their home atmosphere was much more formal than the typical British family was, but love and loyalty were not absent. The old, pure-blood families did not frown on any semblance of affection or steadfastness--after all, Lord Voldemort prized loyalty and trustworthiness above many other qualities in his followers. The forefront they presented to those they did not like, however, suggested the opposite. They were cold in public; the true pure-bloods did not feel inclined to be familiar when talking or sharing the same air as those that kept wizardkind from being what it truly could be, and, consequently, neither did Draco. He did not force himself to be cold, he just was. He did not force himself to be like his parents; he just was, and he never had to fight against his nature to conform to what his surroundings expected him to be.

It was this, perhaps, that confused him about her. He knew instinctively that his father would deem her unacceptable, and yet he did not feel the same way. She was just there; she existed, rubbed her chin when she was trying to remember something, shrugged her shoulders back instead of forwards, and had very neat fingernails that took about two weeks to grow out perfectly, and then she would do something like drop her books in the corridor, try to catch them, and break one or more of her nails in doing so. He had done his fair share of insulting her in the past, and saw no reason to stop now that he remembered fleeting glimpses of her more often then he had before. He wasn't going to do anything about her; his father, mother, friends, and relatives would be outraged, but he saw no reason to prevent himself from thinking about her.

It was very, very easy to look at her. Too easy, really, and it shouldn't be. It should have been so hard to stare at her without going into a world of complete bliss that he should only allow himself to catch a glimpse of her once in a blue moon. Ideally, in a love story, he should have built up some block about her, something that would keep him from casually staring at her, and something that would keep her away from him and, in doing so, only endear her more in his eyes.

But Draco Malfoy wasn't like that. What he wanted, he wanted; what he liked, he liked; what he hated, he hated, and he wasn't one to try to make himself hate something that he didn't dislike in the first place. That was a very, very Gryffindor thing to do. He knew very well that he wasn't supposed to like her, but he was so accustomed to going with his instilled instincts by then that he only thought it was curious, this situation.

But Draco was seventeen years old now, in his last month at Hogwarts, and he refused to think about her. He had his N.E.W.T.s coming up in three weeks, and he couldn't afford to waste time. Purposefully, he strode into the dining hall after Potions, intent on nothing but the feat of eating a complete dinner in ten minutes, and, as luck would have it, his eyes were instantly drawn to her.

She was sitting at her House table, next to her boyfriend, who was alternating between taking bites of food and trying to kiss her. She fended him off, half serious, half laughing, with a "You're eating, honestly!"

Draco, watching her for all of about five seconds, was revolted at the sight. He slid into his seat at the Slytherin table, thinking furiously about what he'd love to do to that immature prat. It was disgusting, to think that she was there to be grabbed and kissed at every opportunity, especially by some idiot with food still in his mouth. She wasn't like that. She wasn't made for that. She...

Yes, he thought dully, of course she was. She was human. Only human. And, if he had the chance, she wouldn't stay with him, because he saw her as something above a mortal, and often forgot that she probably liked being kissed, though possibly not by someone with kidneys on his chin.

All he really, truly wanted was to be able to hold her. To touch her, lightly, with his hands resting on her waist, to look at her, and to see her smile at him. Something that would never happen, and something that bothered him, because he hardly ever had to "deal with" anything.

He wolfed down his steak-and-kidney pie, lasagne, and custard, wrapped a few scones in a napkin, which he shoved inside his schoolbag, anticipating to find a heap of crumbs once he got around to eating them, and, peevishly, left the Great Hall, heading for the dungeons and his dormitory--which was thankfully a single one, due to his prefect status. It was quite a bit smaller, true, and he had to patrol the seventh-year dormitory corridor and make sure the eleven o'clock curfew was enforced, among other duties, but he could also study by himself and in peace, something out of the question in shared rooms.

He was just turning a corner to reach the stairs that led to the dungeons when he ran directly into someone, lost his balance, and flung one arm out wildly, grasping for anything that might break his fall. As luck would have it, he caught the banister of the stairs he had been about to descend, and whoever-it-was landed crosswise across his waist, hair flying wildly, and emitting a muffled shriek bouncing off the walls.

"Merlin's beard, get off," Draco said peevishly. She--for it was she--tried vainly to push herself off of him, but failed.

"I can't reach anything," she gasped. "Help me!"

"Oh, for..." Peeved, Draco shrugged the shoulder that his books were hanging off of, let them fall to the floor, and slid his arm around her waist, lifting her off of him. With quite a bit of effort, he managed to pull them both upright, and they stood there for a few seconds, panting, and trying not to think of what would have happened if their heads had gone crashing into the paved stairs.

"Thanks," she finally mumbled, trying weakly to grin at him. "I--er, that was...yeah. Thanks."

"Watch where you're going," he said coldly, letting go of her, picking his bag up, and heading out of sight. His mind was curiously blank except for the memory of his arm around her waist and her smile.

Later on in the evening, he fell back onto his bed, rubbing slightly reddened eyes and kicking his Transfiguration book as far away as it could fly. Predictably, he went back to thinking about her, and what had happened after dinner. And he wondered if she had seen anything in him, anything she might like--anything that might persuade her to think of him the way he thought of her.

He loved her in his own peculiar way, the way of a spoiled child untaught in the art of caring about others. He loved her in the way of a slightly insecure teenager with an imprisoned father. He loved her in the way of a person that had never had to really try to get anything he wanted. He loved her, and that was all.