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Chapter Eighteen

A pinch of salt

Draco didn't know what was wrong with him. He wasn't even sure if anything was wrong with him. Doubt flashed from one side of his mind to the other. Did he want to revert back to the Draco Malfoy that hated and annoyed Harry? It was so easy. And he so did like making up new versions of the Oh Potter You Rotter song. However, there was something special about...keeping Harry. Or should he say, letting Harry keep him? He wasn't sure which way it went, who ruled over the other.

He loathed the feeling of confusion. Being sarcastic, taunting Harry, Ron, and the Mudblood, hating Dumbledore, ordering house elves...these things were fun, cruel fun. Oh, he knew it was cruel. He didn't deny that, or feign ignorance. But it was fun. Yes, he knew it was evil to think that, to not care about the other's feelings. It was easy though...not confusing.

However, Draco did not want to let go of the relationship he had with Harry Potter, because it was oddly satisfying. Besides, if he did, he wasn't sure if he would be able to revert himself back to the way he was before (although he could easily make the situation and himself seem externally the same). Too difficult.

Contrary to popular belief, Draco was not full of himself; he didn't love himself. Sometimes, especially now, he hated himself, and those who he had influenced. Also, currently, he hated Harry, too, in a way. For making him have to choose between himself, or Harry. He wanted to please both of them, but wasn't sure if returning Harry's love was what he really wanted.

Pining for a way to release these pent up feelings, he shut himself away from the world for that morning. Only a miracle would make him go out to face the public, in the distressed state of mind he was.

-----*-----

Lo and behold...the miracle came only a few hours later.

Rain. Pouring and flooding in torrents of groggy sadness. There was nothing much to do. Some, like Hermione, were in the library studying, or just reading. Most stayed in their common rooms. Draco, however, despised sitting in the Slytherin common room. It was forever cold, dank, and dreary in the dungeon common room. Being packed with a bunch of more Slytherins was not appealing to him; they were inferior, or disgustingly heartless. They were all clones of each other. He despised each and every one of them.

So instead, he walked about Hogwarts, secretly longing to go out into the rain. He had always loved the rain, always wanted to run out into it, feel it pour down his skin, soak him wet, wanted to taste the liquid pouring from heaven. But he was never allowed to. He had always been forced to stay inside, learning more dark magic or fencing from his father, or slipping away to do things his father didn't believe in, like listening to music or reading books. Eventually, however, little Draco had learned that to go against his father's wishes meant punishment.

Also was the fact, of course, that any Hogwarts student who saw Draco Malfoy gleefully dancing about in the rain, or flinging arms up to the sky in soaked ecstasy, would either claim him insane or talk to other students about it--or both and worse. That would ruin Draco's reputation. So instead, he simply wandered from place to place, staying at each place for an hour, making sure to get near a window so he could watch the rain dribble down the window panes freely, not caged and not in turmoil, able to do and be everything he wasn't.

He had found himself sighing more than once today. All he could do, caged in Hogwarts castle, never alone, unable to join the drops of rain, was think. There no distractions about, either. This increased how miserable he felt. He wanted to let loose all the emotions inside him, confess to somebody the wickedness and pain he felt inside, make all the turmoil disappear by telling someone. Outside, he was calm, face disinterested. But inside, he was anything but. He wanted to swear, to scream in rage, to destroy another; and he wanted even more. He wanted to shriek in pain, rip himself apart, tear away from his soul every inch of the burden of having been physically pained. He wanted to cry out in pain, the other kind of pain, sink to the floor in mental anguish, let loose all turmoil in a crying fit.

He wanted to do these things, and more...but he knew he couldn't do any of them. Not a single one! And this made it all the worse. Everyone's presence, the inevitability of someone always being nearby, made it even more worse. Seeing so many joyful people around him, oblivious to his pain this rainy Saturday, caused him to loathe them all. No one ever understood him. Hatred, unlike any he'd ever felt, throbbed through him, a thread of pulsing, violent, furious emotion, burning hotly through his blood, causing him to grit his teeth in rage.

Finally, Draco went into hiding again. All traces of him vanishing from the earth, he remained, immobile, sitting at his window sill, in the very same secret room where he'd found out that not only he, but also Harry Potter, knew loneliness.

Then, just as his mind was about to collapse from its burden of handling his tsunami of emotions, and just as he reached out a tentative hand to see if, reaching out from this window that had no glass pane, he could truly touch the rain, he felt it. His mind was collapsing, even as his hand was trembling in awe at the possibility that, by a no paned window as he was, he could truly touch the rain, for once. It wouldn't be a dream. But it stopped him, he felt it so clearly, it was unlike anything he'd ever felt. Every sense heightened, and his very being, his soul, focused on it.

A tear.

It glided, slow and mournful, smoothly spilling from one blue-grey eye, to fall down his pale cheek. Draco shuddered, as the second tear fell, then he let it all go. His control, his mind's ability to handle the deep inner anguish of his soul, collapsed. Curling his knees up against him, Draco pulled his arms in, rounding himself into the tiniest ball of misery he could possibly be.

Sobs, hard and choking with just released misery that had been pent up for so many years, wracked his body. Tears, now pouring steady as the rain from the clouds, bathed his face with liquid agony. Even as he trembled and shuddered and shook with the force of having released it all finally, he marveled at the tears that flew so softly, light as feathers, down from his eyes. Every sense keen, he felt the droplets that stayed on his dark eyelashes, long angelic lashes that decorated his pale skin. Tears, tiny pinches of salt, slid into his mouth to flash against his tongue. He could taste his pain.

It was misery, sorrow unlike he'd ever felt, and releasing it was tough, like biting into something so hard that it seemed almost impossible. But it was relief. It was pure anguish at its most, and took its toll on him, but for once in his life, he felt like he could really, truly breathe. His whole life, he'd been guarded against anything that resembled giving to others; all he had done was take, take, and take. He'd never learned or tried to make others feel happy. It was as if a cloth swathed in poison, the poison of darkness and pain, had been shoved into his lungs. And finally, at long last, the cloth of poison had been coughed out, and no more was he suffocating, soul not anymore on the brink of dying.

He was free.

Even as the tears continued to fall, he uncurled from being a ball of misery, and began to laugh, the sweetness of having broken the bars of his cage hugging him. He felt as if he'd been walking in a blizzard of cold freezing snow all his life, and now had found shelter in a cabin, a cabin of freedom in which was a blanket of warmth. And in this blanket of warmth, this ray of happiness that struck his heart, he stood up, filled with mirth.

The angel, now revived and rescued from Hell, spread its wings, and flew!