FicWad

It had always been easier to just play the part given to him. Nasty little Slytherin boy, can't stand up for himself, hides behind other people and takes the easiest way out. But somehow along the way, the easiest way had become the hardest one, and sometimes he didn't wonder if the stupid brave Gryffondors had it so much easier. Ignorance is bliss.

Hating Harry Potter had been only too easy, with the grudge of rejection from the idol early in their aquaintance fresh on his mind and soul. But now, with his soul branded by the mark of a skull and snake-tounge, he wishes he could erase all those years of childish egoism and just start things anew.

Finally breaking loose from his tether was easier than he thought. It was as if someone had been writing his entire life's story, and then stopped - leaving someone else of an entirely different mind to finish it up. It would have been easy to goad them into killing him, on the surface, but the pain in his soul would have haunted his ghost. He wanted life, the easy way out.

And of course they didn't believe him. He could only have expected it, but nevertheless it hurt the surprisingly large hopeful part of him as he listened to the bolt be thrown on the door and the jiggle of the lock as a securing charm was cast on it. But - a weight was off his soul. If he was killed by the others, well, at least they would know that he had been telling the truth.

For some reason, dying on this side of the line was infinitely preferable to dying on the other.

Then Harry Potter came to visit him. All alone, even though he looked like he needed someone to hold his arm to keep him upright, he kept his wand pointed in the last Malfoy's direction and a killing curse on his lips. The shuttering against the weak attempts at Occlumency was second-nature by now to someone who had lied to as many people as he had, and Harry soon realised it.

"You mean for us to believe you?"

"Yes."

"That you want to join us and start killing off all your old mates."

"Yes."

"Coward."

"Yes."

At some point the Boy Wonder stopped trying, unable to break the wall of Draco's impenitrable defense of politeness and honesty.

Funny thing, truth, he thought, bringing a tiny smile to his cracked and bruised lips. No one ever believes it.

He was asked what was so funny, and when he said exactly what he had been thinking, it only proved his hypothisis. Someone like Harry Potter could only be jaded against everything.

It was as if someone had jury-rigged a tunnel directly from his brain to his mouth, and even as he realised he was blabbing away his innermost thoughts, he couldn't stop himself.

"After all, with your familial history you can only have been taught that the truth you knew in your bones was irrivocably wrong, and from then on you have expanded this subliminal theory to cover every aspect of your life."

When he stopped for a breath, Harry merely stared at him.

"I apologise for my appearance, but you know how it is. Running from experienced and passionate killers only leaves so much time for primping before one throws oneself at the feet of one's equally deadly opponant's robes, in the mud no less."

He chattered on, enjoying the kind of awe radiating from Harry's idiotically transparent face at the sheer gall of it. It was either one giant lie, or one equally painful truth. They hadn't even needed to use the Veritaserum.

"And of course I had idolised you from youth, realising in my childhood desires to break free of the golden-gilt cage of society you were my only hope. It must be needless for me to remind you of how you reacted to my pompus attitude, carefully mimicing my father's, who I whorshiped on an equal footing with yourself. I straddled the fence; on the one hand, I followed my father's every footstep and revelled in following the family line back into the Middle Ages, and on the other I made up games that we would play together in the shed in the back yard where no one would find us. You broke my feeble little heart, as it were."

And there he stopped to take another breath, nearly grinning with a fiendish enthusiasm to prove to the Great and Noble Harry Potter how much of a fool, idiot, demon he had been. Oh, and he knew it was true, because he had dropped every pretense of hiding a long time ago in his diatribe, leaning back in his chair and staring those green eyes down.

Fortunately for Harry, someone knocked on the door, and he went out, casting a final, curious glance over his shoulder before shutting the door behind him. In his hurry, he forgot to lock the door.

Just to be annoying, Draco settled down on his small bed for a nap, but opened the door halfway so that everyone knew he could have left had he wanted to.

It took a week before Harry Potter got up the courage to come back, and then it was only to ask the question: "Why?"

And Draco Malfoy merely leant forward on the table as if about to express a deep confidance and said: "I think I told you that yesterday, Mr. Potter."

Of course, he knew another question would be forthcoming, but the other man decided to wait another week before storming back into the room like a thundercloud as dark as his hair.

"What do you mean, I broke your heart?"

Of course, he had to take the time to get one of his women-friends to translate. Men like Harry Potter did not need to know what a broken heart meant.

"It means that I had a whole one at one point, and you had permission to get close enough to it to smash it to pieces."

Draco had a deep sense of theatrics, and did not even look up from the book he was pretending to be reading although his heart thumped audibly in his chest under the tattered blouse that he had been wearing for a month now.

He had expected the violence, had been relishing the anticipation of it, in fact, and was fully gratified when he was siezed by the front of his tattered and worn, though clean, shirt and shoved up against the wall.

What he hadn't expected, though he had dreamt about it, was the kiss - harsh and demanding and he had to remind himself to hold onto the book as it bore down on him like so many tons of bricks.

He was thrust away as roughly as he was dragged closer and he saw stars when he banged his head against the stone wall, but he still heard the words that made him want to cry - but with fustration or joy he didn't know: "You're disgusting."

He knew he was disgusting. Knew it intimitely, in fact. But that didn't stop him from grabing onto a tiny hold, a meagre crack on Harry Potter's heart.