Oimoi! ('Alas' in ancient Greek)...
Eek! Am horribly behind on answering pretty much anything that has come my way in a computerly manner! I have a HUGE backlog of emails and comments to answer because I have been at summer school for two weeks having an intense crash course in ancient greek. More on that when next we meet. I’ve only just got back but I am going to London on Thursday for a couple of days so I won’t have a chance to update again til I get back. I’m still alive though!
So lately it seems that I have been writing fic like crazy. I have also got pitifully little to show for it but have finished the short, Draco-centric fic that I mentioned. So here it is…
Now titled
Title: Narcissist (formerly Gray)
Pairing:: Gen
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: No infringement intended. Characters not mine etc. etc.
Summary: A fic that was inspired by my favourite book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. To affiliate this story to Oscar Wilde’s work as closely as possible I have used a sentence or two from the original text as well from others that he wrote. Prizes for those who catch all the references.
We’re living in a looking glass
As the beauty of life goes by
You’re going to be so oh
You’re going to grow so old
You’re skin so cold
Well they’re just narcissists
Well wouldn’t it be nice to be Dorian Gray
Just for a day?
Such narcissists
What’s so great to be Dorian Gray
Every day?
The Libertines - Narcissist
The rich fragrance of honey lingered thickly in the still air, its scent drifting from the abundant white blooms that broke into bursts of stars beneath the heavy, stone balustrade that clung to the wall of crumbling stone. The French windows that led into the room beyond were flung open and the listless breeze nudged fold after fold of thick shot silk, the crimson drapes that hung around the windows being tugged from their lethargy. The occasional shadow of a bird in flight rippled across the fabric like some passing wraith seeking to conceal itself within the creases of Indian vermilion. Their birdsong was reduced to a peal of distant notes echoing from the cluster of bright oak trees and the noise coiled and stretched through the air as though to the rod of some unseen conductor who directed their cadence.
From his position, lying comfortably across a wide bed in the refracted dimples of sunlight, Draco Malfoy could just see his reflection in the mirror at the other end of the room. It was an ornate creation with echoes of some lost age in each whorl and tumbling relief sculpted around the edge. It was of an antique, Romantic style that had extinguished itself in the nineteenth century as though at the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in a glass. It hung precariously on the wall by intangible threads of magic and Draco often wondered what it would look like should it fall. The weight of the mirror would certainly ensure it shattered immediately and when the thousand of cut-glass pieces littered the wooden floor the world would seem as broken and fragmented as the mirror itself. Draco imagined his own face shifting away from itself, a foreshadowing of the years that would strip his extraordinary beauty from him. He shivered involuntarily, although the day was warm and the monotonous, thrumming magic that wrapped his room with spells generated its own, steady heat.
“What’s the matter?” Blaise asked sleepily from where he was reclining on a deep green chaise-longue. Lilting tendrils of smoke escaped his lips from his opium-tainted cigarettes, adding yet another heady perfume to the already saturated air.
“Nothing,” Draco said and yawned widely. He rolled off the bed like a cat and padded, barefoot, across the room to run his finger along the gilt frame of his mirror lovingly. “Do you ever think about getting old?” he asked Blaise who opened one eye and raised the appropriate eyebrow lazily.
“I try not to make a habit of it,” he said. “Getting old will mean all sorts of things, such as losing my looks or my mind. One of those I could possibly get away with but losing both would look like carelessness.”
Draco smiled, a flash of white teeth. “I’d hate to lose my looks,” he said.
“Well darling, you’ve got so many to lose,” Blaise replied obligingly. He lifted the cigarette away from his lips for a moment and ran his eyes over Draco with an appraising glance. “They mask all sorts of things.”
Draco turned to him. “And what is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
Blaise smiled and paused for a moment before delivering his answer. “Merely that people like you, the wilful sunbeams of life, will forever have beauty to fall back on and to disguise all manner of indiscretions.”
“What manner of indiscretion do you imagine me capable of committing?” Draco asked, smoothing back a lock of hair and watching Blaise’s reflection.
“Oh the very worst kinds,” Blaise replied through a smile. “Sex, drugs and drink. You shall have to prolong your life indefinitely of course, so that they might find somewhere safe to bury your liver.”
Draco laughed. “Harsh words coming from you,” he exclaimed. “I’ll never forget your reaction to Pansy’s declaration that she would be forever teetotal.”
“I have nothing against sobriety,” Blaise said airily, “as long as it’s in moderation. Everything seems so much more unpleasant when one is sober. I like to think that reality is merely an illusion brought about by a lack of alcohol.”
“If age doesn’t catch up with your looks then drink and those cigarettes certainly will,” Draco said, moving to sit beside his friend.
“But I must have an occupation,” Blaise said, calmly blowing a ribbon of smoke to wreath itself around Draco’s comely form, “there is no worse sin than idleness.”
Draco fought back a cough from the pungent smoke and waved it away from his face. “Not even vanity?” he asked. “The vanity that I know you consider to consume far too much of my time.”
“Vanity fades,” Blaise said with an unexpected touch of pathos in his voice. “Idleness sinks into your bones and you forget it’s there until it’s too late and your youth has quite finished with you.”
The humming of a bee at the window provided a slight elevation in the delicate noise that sang around them and as Draco watched Blaise with an expression of slight surprise Blaise composedly took a sip of Darjeeling from a gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass. Draco felt quite at a loss, unused as he was to his friend revealing even a trace of any insecurity he might be feeling, however obliquely. He wondered if he should say something to comfort Blaise, Blaise whose pleasant face and easy affability incongruously meant he was often overlooked within moments of being met. The words that slipped from his tongue were typically empty epigrams and snatches of philosophies that began and ended at the same place and which Draco rarely remembered for more than a few minutes. Blaise’s very presence was like the hoop of smoke that he was presently releasing into the heavy air, insubstantial but for when it was touched.
Draco decided to make light of what had been a moment upon which time had seemed to hang. “What you mean is that you’re lazy,” he said, resting an arm on Blaise’s knee and inhaling the proffered cigarette. “You’ve also dusted ash all over the floor.”
“My abject apologies,” Blaise said, allowing his mouth to play with a smile. “I suppose you’re going to make me tidy up after myself like after the time I was sick in the fireplace downstairs?”
“Nah, that’s what house-elves are for,” Draco replied watching the motes of ash that continued to drift from the dying cigarette get caught for a moment in a shaft of sunlight that pierced his room. Just for a second they were illuminated before vanishing into the ether once more. He was reminded of the story of the sparrow that flies from a tempestuous night, through the window of a great hall, skimming the length of it before emerging from the other side and flying back into the storm. That hall had been likened to life and life’s brevity, the confused tumult of the skies around being symbolic of that unknown chasm of death that awaits us all. Life seemed to Draco to be a thin beam of sunshine through which he would pass far too quickly and it was in that moment that he first wished more than anything in the world to be able to live on and on. Then, like the sparrow, the feeling was gone almost at once.
~*~
The Malfoy portrait gallery was situated in the East Wing and was a long hall in which the polished wooden floors reflected the deep green walls and the draped sumptuousness that was seen fit to house the likenesses of the Malfoys, both living and dead. Soft candlelight illuminated the paintings, leaving thick shadows to nest in the corners of the room and leave scope for the imagination to conjure all manner of crawling presences that seemed to linger in this room of memories. At one end of the room was a magnificent grandfather clock, the antique hands of which ticked their way across its face with a loud certainty, chiming each hour without fail and casting the glittering reverberations around the walls. The portraits around the room varied in age, size and style. At the head of the room was a huge picture of a group of Malfoy ancestors, their pale gold hair shining with a lustre that should have been impossible to capture with paint and their lips quirking into peculiar half-smiles as though they knew something about the fates of their descendants that time forbade them from divulging.
Draco walked into the room with a slow determination and with each footfall sounding particularly loud in the otherwise frozen silence. The portraits hanging on these walls were strange in that they were imbued with the ability to move and yet all seemed to have uniformly chosen not to. Occasionally a lock of hair would fall or a soft mouth open as though taking a mockery of a breath. A pair of eyes would flick to exchange a glance with another or a quiet sigh would escape a pale figure but that would be the limits of their mobility. As a child Draco had found their stillness to be incredibly unnerving but now as he padded through this arched gallery of his dead ancestors he felt the weight of their eyes and the soft rustling of their unseen movements as something to take comfort in. It was the solidity of five hundred years of his family and it imbued Draco with a certain sense of permanence that in the past few days he had found slipping ceaselessly away from him, as though as grains of sand in an hourglass.
The newest picture was barely fifteen years old and it was comprised of Draco sitting on his mother’s lap, his father standing with one hand on her shoulder. Draco remembered the portrait vividly, remembered being given a toy broomstick as a reward for sitting so still for such a long time. He remembered curling one little, pale hand around the folds of silk that made up his mother’s dress, remembered his father winking at him and quirking a smile when the temperamental artist, Fra Pandolf, was absorbed in his canvas. He had been full of innocence then, innocence that had seemed to shine through every facet of his glimmering, gold hair, every sweet curve, as though nacred or burnished by moonlight. His soul had been as pure as the white silk dress that enrobed his mother or the sparkling diamond nestled at her throat. These days there was a more bitter twist to his mouth, a crueller curve in the set of his eyes and deeper shadows hollowing his cheeks and his muscles. His beauty was untarnished but reflected somewhat the changing tone of his soul as it grew into something more cynical and edged with spite. He shuddered at the thought that one day he might be transparent to any malice that festered inside him, the malice that came, unlike the superficial, physical beauty, de profundis.
“I thought I heard someone in here.” The door opened with a snap behind him and Draco whirled around to see his mother gliding across the floor, moving with the grace of a wild animal as she headed for her son. She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Darling, what are you doing?” she asked.
Draco shrugged and didn’t quite meet her astonishing grey eyes. “I haven’t been in here for a while,” he said. “I thought I would take another look at the family before I go back to the academy tomorrow.”
His mother looked almost pleased, so proud was she of the name she had married into. “How lovely,” she said, walking with Draco through the silent, still portraits. “This is exquisite.” She pointed to a portrait of a young woman, ice blonde and willowy figured. “This is Sibyl,” Narcissa said softly, “she died when she was very young. Committed suicide, I believe, when her heart was broken in her search for an ideal husband. This is the last picture that was ever made of her.” Draco looked up at the woman whose gaze lingered slightly to the left of his. She had looked just like that when she had died, and would live in memory as beautifully as she had walked through life. “And Basil,” Narcissa said, moving on to focus on a more softly set man with soulful, stormy eyes and profuse sorrow in his countenance. “Basil fell in love with someone, became absolutely fixated by them, and was heartbroken when he realized that behind their façade they were truly monstrous.”
“What happened to him?” Draco asked, staring with undisguised fascination at the shifting hues of grey in the man’s eyes that seemed to suggest so much and yet disclose so little.
Narcissa looked sad. “It is recorded in the family records in the library,” she said. “The person with whom he was obsessed stabbed him in the neck over and over again. He died in that part of the North Wing that has been boarded up for years. Your father doesn’t like the thought of that part of the house being kept open.”
Draco was surprised, having lived in the manor all his life and yet never questioning why some of the largest rooms were kept closed to all and covered with dust-sheets that seemed perfumed with the incense of age and disuse. He looked up again at the picture before him, a record of the Malfoy family’s tragic history standing beside a florid Louis-Quatorze screen, a slight jar in the way he held his head, as though his neck would always cause him pain. Draco didn’t think he could look at him for much longer. He continued to walk.
“Who’s that?” he asked, reaching a third single picture of a sardonic-looking man leaning with apparent nonchalance against a marble pillar. Unlike his fellows he had been painted in what looked like a city square filled with birds throated by opal and iris and great, exiled columns rising into sunless skies. Beneath his feet, painted at a slant in delicate letters of pearl were the brushed words, ‘Devant une façade rose, sur le marbre d’un escalier’. A summary, of sorts, a setting of the romantic scene.
“The family had properties in Venice,” Narcissa explained. “This gentleman was a lord, and one of the few who seems to have survived the tragedy that has littered our family. In his old age, though, this was the only picture of him that he would permit to survive, saying that it showed him to his best advantage. Vanity, my darling Draco, has always been a vice of ours.”
“I wouldn’t call it a vice so much, mother,” Draco said absent-mindedly as he looked for features of himself in those that surrounded him. “Every Malfoy in this room is alike in that they are beautiful.”
“They are young,” Narcissa replied. “Every Malfoy in this room is alike in that they are young. Age withered all of them, as it does everyone.”
Draco felt a cold thrill prickle across his alabaster skin as the wide years yawned before him like the jagged gates of Tartarus, inevitability escaping with every weary heartbeat. At that moment the unfairness of it all hit him hard in the chest. He was going to succumb to age and ugliness whilst his portrait would remain beautiful forever. Draco knew then that age was the thing he feared most of all and anything that could delay it but not at the expense of his beauty would be treasured by him beyond all else.
~*~
Draco’s hands worked quickly, moving over the crumbling and cracked pages as though he was reading with his fingertips, the looping scrawls of ink glittering menacingly underneath his hands. As he cast the book aside it landed on the richly lacquered side-table with a thud and Draco moved towards another one. The titles had long been made illegible through age and sometimes the books themselves chose to conceal their titles, wanting to keep themselves hidden from prying eyes, becoming jealous over the years of their secrets.
Draco kicked a stack over in frustration, their pages releasing a faded billow of dust against the chalcedony wallpaper and mahogany shelves. Wearily he rubbed his brow, moist with an undignified sweat and picked up another book, the silence and solitude closing in upon him.
The writing was archaically styled in loops and elaborate scratches of ink that made it difficult to read but several words had leapt out of the page and caught Draco’s eye. Remaining Younge. His heart pounded emphatically, as though stressing that he had found it at last, that the hours spent amongst dust and forgotten knowledge had been worth it. He scanned the text as quickly as he could, balked at the complexity of the potion and spells required and shuddered at the thought of what would be required as a sacrifice.
There was no doubt that this was Dark Magic, the very pages crackled with a sense of malice and the words seemed to shimmer beneath Draco’s eyes as though daring him to embark upon something so heinous that the price would be more than he could imagine paying. The spell didn’t even seem to be eternal. It was a delay, to prolong the inevitable, but to grant the caster many more years of flawlessness and beauty than was natural. And this, above all, was what Draco so dearly desired. Haunting music swelled ominously in his ears and as he raised his black wand the air became charged with a supernatural electricity that echoed like thunder around him.
~*~
Years passed in which Draco Malfoy’s face escaped the stain of age. The same purity that had so captivated his friends was still present in his countenance, in the lazy of sweep of his golden hair and his dove-white skin with the roses damasked in his cheeks. He was so untarnished and fair that it seemed to cover all manner of sins and whatever his mode of life, preserved an image in the minds of others of the structure of his soul. Rumours about his life and his actions spread through the London clubs and became the sole topic of the conversation conducted between snifters and cigars. Evil things were heard about him but his undecaying beauty served as a rebuke to those indulging in conjecture for on his entrance into a room, men would fall silent and seem to forget that which had so occupied their tongues. He was rumoured to spend his days drugged by poppies in the company of dissolute aristocrats, was rumoured to frequent some of London’s most notorious brothels where the expensive and beautiful rent-boys serviced him in payment for the gifts he lavished upon them. The name Draco Malfoy was spoken as though with pearls and silk rolling off the tongue, his long absences from London society richly discussed and his unspotted visage made the subject of much interest for the many years he lived under the spell’s power.
With skilled fingers Draco dressed himself, a flood of silk shirt draping over muscles defined by candlelight. A white waistcoat and dinner jacket followed and Draco spent a moment arranging a white handkerchief in his pocket when his companion sat up lazily from the bed.
“Going already?” he asked, a thin coil of smoke turning and looping from between his lips.
Draco’s mouth twitched into a smile but he did not turn round. “I have dinner arrangements,” he said, smoothing back his hair. “I cannot keep Lady Windermere waiting, she looks on me rather as a protégé and would be very upset were I to decline her invitation. I do believe she’s my biggest fan.”
There was a rustle of bedclothes behind him and a tanned, muscular hand snaked seductively over his shoulder and stroked at the sensitive skin of his neck. “I’m sure I could make it worth your while,” the voice went on, husky now. Draco turned around to see the handsome boy he had spent a very pleasurable hour with kneeling nakedly in front of him eyes heavily lidded with desire.
“You’ve already done so,” Draco pointed out, removing the boy’s hand and eliciting a petulant pout. “And done extremely well, if I might say.”
“Do you have something for me?” the boy asked, trailing his fingers over Draco’s pockets.
“Perhaps,” Draco said, finishing his cravat and running his hands over the ridges of muscle either side of the boy’s torso. He extracted from his pocket a black velvet box which the boy pounced on immediately with an expression of childlike excitement. He opened it to find a pair of beautifully crafted Cartier diamond cufflinks with the square set design frequently observed in the 1920’s.
“Those are antiques,” Draco said carelessly. “So don’t lose them like you did that signet ring. It was nice of you to pretend you didn’t but unfortunately you’re rather too transparent for that.”
“They’re beautiful,” the boy said, his voice breathless and his eyes reflecting the starlike quality of the diamonds in his palm.
“I know,” Draco replied, shrugging on his overcoat and white silk dress scarf. “You seem to appreciate fine things so you might as well have them.”
“Who is Lady Windermere anyway?” The boy asked, tearing his eyes away from his latest gift.
“Lady Windermere is the archetypal lady,” Draco replied cryptically. “She is every woman in polite society in London. She is also very cross with me for I invited her to a soiree with strict instructions to be there at eight-thirty only I myself didn’t arrive until nine and it was at my own house.”
The boy smiled. “You must apologize to her.”
“And I did so, very earnestly for it’s important to be earnest about these things.” He made to take his leave but the boy scrambled from the bed and stood in front of the door.
“When am I going to see you again?” he demanded, with the odd expression of someone whose heart is torn. Draco beheld him for a moment, his own mind turning over the boy’s feelings towards him.
“When I next happen to find myself in need of a shag and am in this part of town,” he said, calmly stepping around the boy whose evident confusion and momentary flash of pain flared openly in his eyes. “You have customers,” he pointed out as he exited the boudoir-like contours of the back room to find himself in the passage that led to the elegant bar where he had the shock of his life.
Making his way towards the revolving glass doors, Draco happened to glance to his right and in one of the dark green leather chairs, smoking a pipe and sipping a glass of brandy with a man he didn’t recognize was none other than Blaise Zabini. After the preliminary flash of recognition Draco did the smallest of double takes and then couldn’t believe that he had even recognized Blaise in the first place.
Blaise’s face was changed in the way that years will change a face, adding strategic lines and papery skin until the entire effect is one of disuse and discolouration. His eyes were the same as ever, though, that bright, lancing blue that seemed to bore into Draco the minute their gazes locked. Draco faltered for the merest moment.
“I’m looking at a ghost,” Blaise said quietly and even his voice stirred something deep inside Draco. His heart was hammering against a ribcage kept young by magic and the slightest tremor shot through one of his hands as the past forty years caught up with him all at once and he was faced with a living memory.
“I might say the same,” Draco replied with a hint of coolness that he hoped would mask the near break in his voice.
Blaise got shakily to his feet and stood facing him, his eyes clouded with disbelief. Draco stood a little straighter. “You are Draco, aren’t you?” Blaise asked, pointing a finger at him.
Draco didn’t reply. “You are, you must be. Unless you’re his son, a Malfoy heir.” Blaise’s state was moving Draco in a way that he had forgotten over the years of apathy and dissolution. Draco felt his calm façade slipping as he beheld his once best friend as a grotesque mockery of the way Draco had last seen him.
“You’re Blaise Zabini,” Draco said quietly, looking at his friend with eyes from which the bluntness of mortal sight seemed suddenly peeled away. “You’re Blaise forty years on,” he said, with the air of someone putting a face to a name.
“Draco, please. You are Draco aren’t you?” Blaise looked so bewildered and upset that Draco felt his emotions shifting dangerously towards an edge within himself that he never approached. Draco wasn’t sure how he should answer, how he should avoid putting himself in danger and avoid causing himself and Blaise more pain.
“I have dinner arrangements,” he said quietly. “I must go. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“I must have the wrong person,” Blaise said, holding one hand to his forehead. “Draco Malfoy would be my age by now. You must be a relative, though. See my picture, did you? Draco was fond enough of taking them. I haven’t seen him in forty years, but you, lad, you’re the spitting image of him!”
Draco bowed his head very slightly and nodded to Blaise’s companion and left without a word, his insides churning with the horror with which his friend’s appearance had struck him. Nauseated, he ran along the road beneath the night’s pale stars and leaned over an iron railing, breathing hard and trying to compose himself. For forty years he had appeared a though crafted by china, escaping the stain of age and sin, the yellowing given by cigarettes, the blotchiness of alcoholism. But now the smallest thing, a run in with an old friend, was in danger of shattering his control and the threads of magic binding him to his flawless image.
He had been so unprepared to see Blaise that every word had vacated his mind and his head was full of a numbing fog that seemed to block out everything but the fear of being caught for what he had done, the fear of the retribution that he knew would someday find him. That fear had begun to haunt his every dream in recent weeks and he felt as though he were trying to outrun Time, and failing miserably.
~*~
The Malfoys had owned a house in Kensington for as long as Draco could remember and it was to here that he fled now, seeking familiarity in the hope that he could regain his composure before he lost his mind completely. Blaise’s face was etched into his thoughts and Draco found himself wondering whether Pansy too was wrinkled and hunched, whether Greg’s huge bulk had diminished to a birdlike frame or whether he would have recognized any of the people he had once known had he not met with Blaise. He threw himself onto a chaise-longue the moment he arrived home, waved away the concerns of the maid with a sharp word and fought the raging bubble of hot bile in his throat that he knew was the guilt and the self-loathing he had repressed finally breaking through the surface after so many years. Even the pale hand with which he roughly brushed back his hair suddenly revolted him and every inch of the skin in which his spirit resided made him feel sick because it symbolized everything he had become, every lie he had ever told and every life he had ruined. He had forgotten the truly wonderful gift that was apathy and as he seemed to drown in self-contempt at the twisted form of a human being he had made himself so many years ago, a blind rage took over and choked down every rational thought until hatred and anger were all that was left.
“Like a painting of a sorrow,” he quoted furiously. “A face without a heart.”
Draco tore through the house searching for the mirrors he had ordered removed so many years ago. He terrified one of the maids as he shouted at her incoherent words about his need to see himself as he truly was. She cowered in the corner whilst he, infuriated by her lack of help, continued to burn through the fine house, tearing at the curtains around his bed and at the paintings on the walls, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he went. As the soldiers rushed forwards to destroy Salome, daughter of Herodias, Draco raged blindly through the house in pursuit of something that would show him as he really was, as he hadn’t seen himself in forty years. He had remained unchanged for as long as he desired but now he had lost everything that it meant to be Draco Malfoy and knew that everything he appeared to be was a lie. His very existence was a lie and for all the terrible things he had done in his lifetime he deserved to die many, many deaths. Draco recalled a girl he’d dallied with over twelve years ago. She had called him Prince Charming and told him in no uncertain terms how much she would love to be his wife, a notion that Draco indulged. That girl had killed herself, perhaps with Sibyl’s foresight, when she caught a glimmer of her lover’s true self. Draco hadn’t bothered attending the funeral and now wondered how many mourners would gather at his own. He’d destroyed so many people over the years and thought nothing of it because he himself remained untouched by everything. His life was a dreadful thing.
“Sir!” the maid called out to him as he scrambled upstairs. “Sir! Please stop!”
“A mirror!” he yelled down to her. “Where is there a mirror?”
“Sir ordered them all removed!” the maid replied, looking close to tears. “Sir demanded they be taken from this house.”
Draco felt like shaking her but settled for growling in frustration. The jade-faced maid was almost trembling at the bottom of the stairs, her fragility contrasting starkly with Draco’s burning movements. “There must be one!” he exclaimed.
“If Sir would go to the third floor,” the maid squeaked, “there is a mirror in the box-room.”
Draco’s heart thudded wildly against his chest as he took the stairs three at a time and sprinted up the stairs, his muscles gathering acidly in his legs and his breath catching in his lungs. The box-room was a deceptively large room in which were kept the odds and ends that Draco sporadically deemed fit to be thrown away and the staff couldn’t quite bear to part with. There were paintings and ornaments in here, furniture and monogrammed linen and boxes full of dusty memories that would have broken Draco’s tight heart to sort through. Draco ignored them, stumbling over broken glass and rolled up papers. He flung aside the dirty sheet that covered a full length mirror and found that it was the same one he had looked into in his bedroom at Malfoy Manor, all those years ago. The beautiful etchings around the edge were as exquisite as ever and the clear glass showed the same beautiful reflection as it always had. Draco looked at himself, an image he had had imprinted in his mind for forty years and felt sick. He still looked as though he were twenty and the depth and extent of that lie was killing him. Raising his wand with one trembling hand he pointed it at himself.
“Finite incantatem,” he said with a voice that broke itself on every syllable. A shock as though of electricity powered through him and left every extremity tingling and left the air crackling around him with magic. The stench of dust and age filled his nostrils and the suggestion of burning flesh and hair as the heat of the magic warmed him and everything around him. Finally the sensation stopped and Draco slumped to his knees, breathing hard with lungs that felt shallow and frail. He examined his hands, brown with liver spots and scars and weathered by the sun. He looked with morbid fascination at every wrinkle and crease, not quite believing that they were there, Time’s tattoos.
With a racing pulse and a dry mouth he raised rheumy eyes to the mirror.
~*~
When Draco was found, two hours later, the screams of the maid echoed all through the house, filling the hearts of everyone nearby with an intense disquiet. With shaking hands she pointed wordlessly up the stairs and when the butler and the cook entered the box-room both of them nearly vomited. Their master lay on the floor, shrivelled up as though he were a thousand years old, one hand gripping stubbornly to the edge of the mirror. For one wild moment the butler thought that he was seeing his master’s soul instead of his body, but could not fathom where that arcane thought had come from. Holding his hand to his mouth where it trembled against his skin the butler went cold and fearful as he noticed that whilst Draco’s lifeless body was withered and grotesque, his reflection in the mirror was now of the same beautiful creature that the butler had served for five years. The painless, glassy eyes of the reflection were gazing as though enraptured at the mirror image of the night’s first stars that twinkled through the window from the darkness.
Whatever his master had become, this awful creature, despite his life ending in the very gutters of morality and probity, he was still, and would forever be, looking at the stars.
******************
Yes, yes, an ending stuffed full of double Gloucester. Anyway, whether you loved it, loathed or didn’t care much either way, let me know!
There’s also a tiny pathetic excuse for a TF AU scene that I finished a while ago but was unsure whether to post. It’s lame. Oh so lame. You know when, as a writer, you reach a point in a difficult scene where all you want to do is make the characters just fuck off out of there and damn the consequences. No? I do.
Title: A Jaunty Angle
Rating: PG
Summary: Very short AU scene (less than 500 words) set the morning after Harry and Draco wake up and sleep in Gryffindor tower. Inspired by something finjeof suggested in jest when I was ranting about being stuck on this scene.
Dean Thomas whistled softly to himself as he attempted to charm a set of particularly stubborn wrinkles out of a pair of trousers that were folded over his knees. Around him, the dormitory was a hive of activity as Neville, Ron and Seamus bustled about blearily, trying to ready themselves for the new day. The sun was shining through the arched windows, Dean had done all his homework, word on the grapevine was that Harry was getting better and all in all, life was good.
The trousers on his knees wriggled a bit as trickles of blue light ironed out the creases and Dean shook them to clear the magic out before putting them on. He was up relatively early, even for a school day, and had a leisurely half hour to gather his things together and go down for breakfast. He wondered idly what was eating the other guys as both Ron and Seamus seemed to be in rather bad moods. Ron had only grunted when Dean had bid him a cheery good morning and Seamus had dived for the bathroom the moment he had woken up. Only Neville seemed to be in a good mood and he and Dean spent a good ten minutes discussing the various successes of the Chudley Cannons, who were enjoying a surge of good luck in their recent matches.
Neville nudged Dean as Ron stomped past them, clutching a grubby shirt. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked curiously and Dean shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Seamus is being like that too. Maybe they haven’t done some homework.”
“They never do their homework,” Neville pointed out.
“True,” Dean said and sighed contentedly. He could hear birds singing outside. It really was shaping up to be a lovely day. Maybe he would go out later and play a bit of Quidditch with Ron, if Ron’s mood improved. Or he could go and feed the squid after breakfast. It was Wednesday, and that meant extra bacon at the breakfast table. The house elves seemed to like Wednesdays and were always more cheerful.
Suddenly Dean noticed something that made his heart skip a beat. Harry’s curtains were closed, yet rustling. That must mean…
“Neville,” Dean began but never got to finish as the curtains slid open and two figures emerged from within the confines of the drapes and a silencing spell.
Harry and Malfoy.
Dean was so shocked he was sure his jaw had dropped a good six inches and as the Gryffindor and Slytherin clambered from the four poster and made their way towards the dormitory door hand in hand, they looked over to where Dean and Neville were sitting, flabbergasted.
“Morning, guys,” Harry said merrily and walked out.
*****************
*coughs* Abject apologies for that one.
In other news, I HAVE A TATTOO! Squee! I got it done on Monday and OMGithurtlikeasonofabitch. I’m really bad with pain and was enough of an idiot to get it done on the side of my foot, probably the most fleshless place on the body, elbows and knees notwithstanding. I love it, though, it’s black, curly writing that says ‘Vade in pace’ which is Latin for ‘make your way in peace’. Yep, cheesy, but it means something to me. I am SO pleased. FINALLY!
In other news I drove over my glasses. And then I drove over them some more until they were more mangled than Posh Spice’s pop career. I’m so sad, not the least because they were Dolce and Gabbana and horrifically expensive for what, when all is said and done, are two sheets of glass and some wire. That’ll teach me.
Last week I bought a big, pink daisy from a florist, walked into a posh men’s shop in my town where the most BEAUTIFUL man works and I gave it to him. He looked very surprised but thanked me as I grinned inanely and wandered away. I had never spoken to him but he was so hot, I just had to do it. Aha! Let this be an exhortation! Go forth and spread the love with flowers! Give it to someone on the street or someone in a shop or just someone you want to appreciate.
I LOVE HOUSE! Have just discovered it and will never never never stop loving it. OMG Hugh Laurie is so fit now that he’s got older and bitter and sexy. I’ve always been a fan of his, ever since Jeeves and Wooster in fact, but even without the British accent he’s just to die for. I really don’t want him to hook up with that Cuddy woman, though. She irritates the shit out of me so please don’t tell me if they do. I might just cry.
Ack! I have to go and pack! I will be back though, with fic and emails and coherent updates about the fandom. Am really hoping there won’t be another terrorist attack while I’m in London! Back soon…
So lately it seems that I have been writing fic like crazy. I have also got pitifully little to show for it but have finished the short, Draco-centric fic that I mentioned. So here it is…
Now titled
Title: Narcissist (formerly Gray)
Pairing:: Gen
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: No infringement intended. Characters not mine etc. etc.
Summary: A fic that was inspired by my favourite book, The Picture of Dorian Gray. To affiliate this story to Oscar Wilde’s work as closely as possible I have used a sentence or two from the original text as well from others that he wrote. Prizes for those who catch all the references.
We’re living in a looking glass
As the beauty of life goes by
You’re going to be so oh
You’re going to grow so old
You’re skin so cold
Well they’re just narcissists
Well wouldn’t it be nice to be Dorian Gray
Just for a day?
Such narcissists
What’s so great to be Dorian Gray
Every day?
The Libertines - Narcissist
The rich fragrance of honey lingered thickly in the still air, its scent drifting from the abundant white blooms that broke into bursts of stars beneath the heavy, stone balustrade that clung to the wall of crumbling stone. The French windows that led into the room beyond were flung open and the listless breeze nudged fold after fold of thick shot silk, the crimson drapes that hung around the windows being tugged from their lethargy. The occasional shadow of a bird in flight rippled across the fabric like some passing wraith seeking to conceal itself within the creases of Indian vermilion. Their birdsong was reduced to a peal of distant notes echoing from the cluster of bright oak trees and the noise coiled and stretched through the air as though to the rod of some unseen conductor who directed their cadence.
From his position, lying comfortably across a wide bed in the refracted dimples of sunlight, Draco Malfoy could just see his reflection in the mirror at the other end of the room. It was an ornate creation with echoes of some lost age in each whorl and tumbling relief sculpted around the edge. It was of an antique, Romantic style that had extinguished itself in the nineteenth century as though at the rage of Caliban at seeing his face in a glass. It hung precariously on the wall by intangible threads of magic and Draco often wondered what it would look like should it fall. The weight of the mirror would certainly ensure it shattered immediately and when the thousand of cut-glass pieces littered the wooden floor the world would seem as broken and fragmented as the mirror itself. Draco imagined his own face shifting away from itself, a foreshadowing of the years that would strip his extraordinary beauty from him. He shivered involuntarily, although the day was warm and the monotonous, thrumming magic that wrapped his room with spells generated its own, steady heat.
“What’s the matter?” Blaise asked sleepily from where he was reclining on a deep green chaise-longue. Lilting tendrils of smoke escaped his lips from his opium-tainted cigarettes, adding yet another heady perfume to the already saturated air.
“Nothing,” Draco said and yawned widely. He rolled off the bed like a cat and padded, barefoot, across the room to run his finger along the gilt frame of his mirror lovingly. “Do you ever think about getting old?” he asked Blaise who opened one eye and raised the appropriate eyebrow lazily.
“I try not to make a habit of it,” he said. “Getting old will mean all sorts of things, such as losing my looks or my mind. One of those I could possibly get away with but losing both would look like carelessness.”
Draco smiled, a flash of white teeth. “I’d hate to lose my looks,” he said.
“Well darling, you’ve got so many to lose,” Blaise replied obligingly. He lifted the cigarette away from his lips for a moment and ran his eyes over Draco with an appraising glance. “They mask all sorts of things.”
Draco turned to him. “And what is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
Blaise smiled and paused for a moment before delivering his answer. “Merely that people like you, the wilful sunbeams of life, will forever have beauty to fall back on and to disguise all manner of indiscretions.”
“What manner of indiscretion do you imagine me capable of committing?” Draco asked, smoothing back a lock of hair and watching Blaise’s reflection.
“Oh the very worst kinds,” Blaise replied through a smile. “Sex, drugs and drink. You shall have to prolong your life indefinitely of course, so that they might find somewhere safe to bury your liver.”
Draco laughed. “Harsh words coming from you,” he exclaimed. “I’ll never forget your reaction to Pansy’s declaration that she would be forever teetotal.”
“I have nothing against sobriety,” Blaise said airily, “as long as it’s in moderation. Everything seems so much more unpleasant when one is sober. I like to think that reality is merely an illusion brought about by a lack of alcohol.”
“If age doesn’t catch up with your looks then drink and those cigarettes certainly will,” Draco said, moving to sit beside his friend.
“But I must have an occupation,” Blaise said, calmly blowing a ribbon of smoke to wreath itself around Draco’s comely form, “there is no worse sin than idleness.”
Draco fought back a cough from the pungent smoke and waved it away from his face. “Not even vanity?” he asked. “The vanity that I know you consider to consume far too much of my time.”
“Vanity fades,” Blaise said with an unexpected touch of pathos in his voice. “Idleness sinks into your bones and you forget it’s there until it’s too late and your youth has quite finished with you.”
The humming of a bee at the window provided a slight elevation in the delicate noise that sang around them and as Draco watched Blaise with an expression of slight surprise Blaise composedly took a sip of Darjeeling from a gold-beaded bubble of Venetian glass. Draco felt quite at a loss, unused as he was to his friend revealing even a trace of any insecurity he might be feeling, however obliquely. He wondered if he should say something to comfort Blaise, Blaise whose pleasant face and easy affability incongruously meant he was often overlooked within moments of being met. The words that slipped from his tongue were typically empty epigrams and snatches of philosophies that began and ended at the same place and which Draco rarely remembered for more than a few minutes. Blaise’s very presence was like the hoop of smoke that he was presently releasing into the heavy air, insubstantial but for when it was touched.
Draco decided to make light of what had been a moment upon which time had seemed to hang. “What you mean is that you’re lazy,” he said, resting an arm on Blaise’s knee and inhaling the proffered cigarette. “You’ve also dusted ash all over the floor.”
“My abject apologies,” Blaise said, allowing his mouth to play with a smile. “I suppose you’re going to make me tidy up after myself like after the time I was sick in the fireplace downstairs?”
“Nah, that’s what house-elves are for,” Draco replied watching the motes of ash that continued to drift from the dying cigarette get caught for a moment in a shaft of sunlight that pierced his room. Just for a second they were illuminated before vanishing into the ether once more. He was reminded of the story of the sparrow that flies from a tempestuous night, through the window of a great hall, skimming the length of it before emerging from the other side and flying back into the storm. That hall had been likened to life and life’s brevity, the confused tumult of the skies around being symbolic of that unknown chasm of death that awaits us all. Life seemed to Draco to be a thin beam of sunshine through which he would pass far too quickly and it was in that moment that he first wished more than anything in the world to be able to live on and on. Then, like the sparrow, the feeling was gone almost at once.
~*~
The Malfoy portrait gallery was situated in the East Wing and was a long hall in which the polished wooden floors reflected the deep green walls and the draped sumptuousness that was seen fit to house the likenesses of the Malfoys, both living and dead. Soft candlelight illuminated the paintings, leaving thick shadows to nest in the corners of the room and leave scope for the imagination to conjure all manner of crawling presences that seemed to linger in this room of memories. At one end of the room was a magnificent grandfather clock, the antique hands of which ticked their way across its face with a loud certainty, chiming each hour without fail and casting the glittering reverberations around the walls. The portraits around the room varied in age, size and style. At the head of the room was a huge picture of a group of Malfoy ancestors, their pale gold hair shining with a lustre that should have been impossible to capture with paint and their lips quirking into peculiar half-smiles as though they knew something about the fates of their descendants that time forbade them from divulging.
Draco walked into the room with a slow determination and with each footfall sounding particularly loud in the otherwise frozen silence. The portraits hanging on these walls were strange in that they were imbued with the ability to move and yet all seemed to have uniformly chosen not to. Occasionally a lock of hair would fall or a soft mouth open as though taking a mockery of a breath. A pair of eyes would flick to exchange a glance with another or a quiet sigh would escape a pale figure but that would be the limits of their mobility. As a child Draco had found their stillness to be incredibly unnerving but now as he padded through this arched gallery of his dead ancestors he felt the weight of their eyes and the soft rustling of their unseen movements as something to take comfort in. It was the solidity of five hundred years of his family and it imbued Draco with a certain sense of permanence that in the past few days he had found slipping ceaselessly away from him, as though as grains of sand in an hourglass.
The newest picture was barely fifteen years old and it was comprised of Draco sitting on his mother’s lap, his father standing with one hand on her shoulder. Draco remembered the portrait vividly, remembered being given a toy broomstick as a reward for sitting so still for such a long time. He remembered curling one little, pale hand around the folds of silk that made up his mother’s dress, remembered his father winking at him and quirking a smile when the temperamental artist, Fra Pandolf, was absorbed in his canvas. He had been full of innocence then, innocence that had seemed to shine through every facet of his glimmering, gold hair, every sweet curve, as though nacred or burnished by moonlight. His soul had been as pure as the white silk dress that enrobed his mother or the sparkling diamond nestled at her throat. These days there was a more bitter twist to his mouth, a crueller curve in the set of his eyes and deeper shadows hollowing his cheeks and his muscles. His beauty was untarnished but reflected somewhat the changing tone of his soul as it grew into something more cynical and edged with spite. He shuddered at the thought that one day he might be transparent to any malice that festered inside him, the malice that came, unlike the superficial, physical beauty, de profundis.
“I thought I heard someone in here.” The door opened with a snap behind him and Draco whirled around to see his mother gliding across the floor, moving with the grace of a wild animal as she headed for her son. She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Darling, what are you doing?” she asked.
Draco shrugged and didn’t quite meet her astonishing grey eyes. “I haven’t been in here for a while,” he said. “I thought I would take another look at the family before I go back to the academy tomorrow.”
His mother looked almost pleased, so proud was she of the name she had married into. “How lovely,” she said, walking with Draco through the silent, still portraits. “This is exquisite.” She pointed to a portrait of a young woman, ice blonde and willowy figured. “This is Sibyl,” Narcissa said softly, “she died when she was very young. Committed suicide, I believe, when her heart was broken in her search for an ideal husband. This is the last picture that was ever made of her.” Draco looked up at the woman whose gaze lingered slightly to the left of his. She had looked just like that when she had died, and would live in memory as beautifully as she had walked through life. “And Basil,” Narcissa said, moving on to focus on a more softly set man with soulful, stormy eyes and profuse sorrow in his countenance. “Basil fell in love with someone, became absolutely fixated by them, and was heartbroken when he realized that behind their façade they were truly monstrous.”
“What happened to him?” Draco asked, staring with undisguised fascination at the shifting hues of grey in the man’s eyes that seemed to suggest so much and yet disclose so little.
Narcissa looked sad. “It is recorded in the family records in the library,” she said. “The person with whom he was obsessed stabbed him in the neck over and over again. He died in that part of the North Wing that has been boarded up for years. Your father doesn’t like the thought of that part of the house being kept open.”
Draco was surprised, having lived in the manor all his life and yet never questioning why some of the largest rooms were kept closed to all and covered with dust-sheets that seemed perfumed with the incense of age and disuse. He looked up again at the picture before him, a record of the Malfoy family’s tragic history standing beside a florid Louis-Quatorze screen, a slight jar in the way he held his head, as though his neck would always cause him pain. Draco didn’t think he could look at him for much longer. He continued to walk.
“Who’s that?” he asked, reaching a third single picture of a sardonic-looking man leaning with apparent nonchalance against a marble pillar. Unlike his fellows he had been painted in what looked like a city square filled with birds throated by opal and iris and great, exiled columns rising into sunless skies. Beneath his feet, painted at a slant in delicate letters of pearl were the brushed words, ‘Devant une façade rose, sur le marbre d’un escalier’. A summary, of sorts, a setting of the romantic scene.
“The family had properties in Venice,” Narcissa explained. “This gentleman was a lord, and one of the few who seems to have survived the tragedy that has littered our family. In his old age, though, this was the only picture of him that he would permit to survive, saying that it showed him to his best advantage. Vanity, my darling Draco, has always been a vice of ours.”
“I wouldn’t call it a vice so much, mother,” Draco said absent-mindedly as he looked for features of himself in those that surrounded him. “Every Malfoy in this room is alike in that they are beautiful.”
“They are young,” Narcissa replied. “Every Malfoy in this room is alike in that they are young. Age withered all of them, as it does everyone.”
Draco felt a cold thrill prickle across his alabaster skin as the wide years yawned before him like the jagged gates of Tartarus, inevitability escaping with every weary heartbeat. At that moment the unfairness of it all hit him hard in the chest. He was going to succumb to age and ugliness whilst his portrait would remain beautiful forever. Draco knew then that age was the thing he feared most of all and anything that could delay it but not at the expense of his beauty would be treasured by him beyond all else.
~*~
Draco’s hands worked quickly, moving over the crumbling and cracked pages as though he was reading with his fingertips, the looping scrawls of ink glittering menacingly underneath his hands. As he cast the book aside it landed on the richly lacquered side-table with a thud and Draco moved towards another one. The titles had long been made illegible through age and sometimes the books themselves chose to conceal their titles, wanting to keep themselves hidden from prying eyes, becoming jealous over the years of their secrets.
Draco kicked a stack over in frustration, their pages releasing a faded billow of dust against the chalcedony wallpaper and mahogany shelves. Wearily he rubbed his brow, moist with an undignified sweat and picked up another book, the silence and solitude closing in upon him.
The writing was archaically styled in loops and elaborate scratches of ink that made it difficult to read but several words had leapt out of the page and caught Draco’s eye. Remaining Younge. His heart pounded emphatically, as though stressing that he had found it at last, that the hours spent amongst dust and forgotten knowledge had been worth it. He scanned the text as quickly as he could, balked at the complexity of the potion and spells required and shuddered at the thought of what would be required as a sacrifice.
There was no doubt that this was Dark Magic, the very pages crackled with a sense of malice and the words seemed to shimmer beneath Draco’s eyes as though daring him to embark upon something so heinous that the price would be more than he could imagine paying. The spell didn’t even seem to be eternal. It was a delay, to prolong the inevitable, but to grant the caster many more years of flawlessness and beauty than was natural. And this, above all, was what Draco so dearly desired. Haunting music swelled ominously in his ears and as he raised his black wand the air became charged with a supernatural electricity that echoed like thunder around him.
~*~
Years passed in which Draco Malfoy’s face escaped the stain of age. The same purity that had so captivated his friends was still present in his countenance, in the lazy of sweep of his golden hair and his dove-white skin with the roses damasked in his cheeks. He was so untarnished and fair that it seemed to cover all manner of sins and whatever his mode of life, preserved an image in the minds of others of the structure of his soul. Rumours about his life and his actions spread through the London clubs and became the sole topic of the conversation conducted between snifters and cigars. Evil things were heard about him but his undecaying beauty served as a rebuke to those indulging in conjecture for on his entrance into a room, men would fall silent and seem to forget that which had so occupied their tongues. He was rumoured to spend his days drugged by poppies in the company of dissolute aristocrats, was rumoured to frequent some of London’s most notorious brothels where the expensive and beautiful rent-boys serviced him in payment for the gifts he lavished upon them. The name Draco Malfoy was spoken as though with pearls and silk rolling off the tongue, his long absences from London society richly discussed and his unspotted visage made the subject of much interest for the many years he lived under the spell’s power.
With skilled fingers Draco dressed himself, a flood of silk shirt draping over muscles defined by candlelight. A white waistcoat and dinner jacket followed and Draco spent a moment arranging a white handkerchief in his pocket when his companion sat up lazily from the bed.
“Going already?” he asked, a thin coil of smoke turning and looping from between his lips.
Draco’s mouth twitched into a smile but he did not turn round. “I have dinner arrangements,” he said, smoothing back his hair. “I cannot keep Lady Windermere waiting, she looks on me rather as a protégé and would be very upset were I to decline her invitation. I do believe she’s my biggest fan.”
There was a rustle of bedclothes behind him and a tanned, muscular hand snaked seductively over his shoulder and stroked at the sensitive skin of his neck. “I’m sure I could make it worth your while,” the voice went on, husky now. Draco turned around to see the handsome boy he had spent a very pleasurable hour with kneeling nakedly in front of him eyes heavily lidded with desire.
“You’ve already done so,” Draco pointed out, removing the boy’s hand and eliciting a petulant pout. “And done extremely well, if I might say.”
“Do you have something for me?” the boy asked, trailing his fingers over Draco’s pockets.
“Perhaps,” Draco said, finishing his cravat and running his hands over the ridges of muscle either side of the boy’s torso. He extracted from his pocket a black velvet box which the boy pounced on immediately with an expression of childlike excitement. He opened it to find a pair of beautifully crafted Cartier diamond cufflinks with the square set design frequently observed in the 1920’s.
“Those are antiques,” Draco said carelessly. “So don’t lose them like you did that signet ring. It was nice of you to pretend you didn’t but unfortunately you’re rather too transparent for that.”
“They’re beautiful,” the boy said, his voice breathless and his eyes reflecting the starlike quality of the diamonds in his palm.
“I know,” Draco replied, shrugging on his overcoat and white silk dress scarf. “You seem to appreciate fine things so you might as well have them.”
“Who is Lady Windermere anyway?” The boy asked, tearing his eyes away from his latest gift.
“Lady Windermere is the archetypal lady,” Draco replied cryptically. “She is every woman in polite society in London. She is also very cross with me for I invited her to a soiree with strict instructions to be there at eight-thirty only I myself didn’t arrive until nine and it was at my own house.”
The boy smiled. “You must apologize to her.”
“And I did so, very earnestly for it’s important to be earnest about these things.” He made to take his leave but the boy scrambled from the bed and stood in front of the door.
“When am I going to see you again?” he demanded, with the odd expression of someone whose heart is torn. Draco beheld him for a moment, his own mind turning over the boy’s feelings towards him.
“When I next happen to find myself in need of a shag and am in this part of town,” he said, calmly stepping around the boy whose evident confusion and momentary flash of pain flared openly in his eyes. “You have customers,” he pointed out as he exited the boudoir-like contours of the back room to find himself in the passage that led to the elegant bar where he had the shock of his life.
Making his way towards the revolving glass doors, Draco happened to glance to his right and in one of the dark green leather chairs, smoking a pipe and sipping a glass of brandy with a man he didn’t recognize was none other than Blaise Zabini. After the preliminary flash of recognition Draco did the smallest of double takes and then couldn’t believe that he had even recognized Blaise in the first place.
Blaise’s face was changed in the way that years will change a face, adding strategic lines and papery skin until the entire effect is one of disuse and discolouration. His eyes were the same as ever, though, that bright, lancing blue that seemed to bore into Draco the minute their gazes locked. Draco faltered for the merest moment.
“I’m looking at a ghost,” Blaise said quietly and even his voice stirred something deep inside Draco. His heart was hammering against a ribcage kept young by magic and the slightest tremor shot through one of his hands as the past forty years caught up with him all at once and he was faced with a living memory.
“I might say the same,” Draco replied with a hint of coolness that he hoped would mask the near break in his voice.
Blaise got shakily to his feet and stood facing him, his eyes clouded with disbelief. Draco stood a little straighter. “You are Draco, aren’t you?” Blaise asked, pointing a finger at him.
Draco didn’t reply. “You are, you must be. Unless you’re his son, a Malfoy heir.” Blaise’s state was moving Draco in a way that he had forgotten over the years of apathy and dissolution. Draco felt his calm façade slipping as he beheld his once best friend as a grotesque mockery of the way Draco had last seen him.
“You’re Blaise Zabini,” Draco said quietly, looking at his friend with eyes from which the bluntness of mortal sight seemed suddenly peeled away. “You’re Blaise forty years on,” he said, with the air of someone putting a face to a name.
“Draco, please. You are Draco aren’t you?” Blaise looked so bewildered and upset that Draco felt his emotions shifting dangerously towards an edge within himself that he never approached. Draco wasn’t sure how he should answer, how he should avoid putting himself in danger and avoid causing himself and Blaise more pain.
“I have dinner arrangements,” he said quietly. “I must go. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
“I must have the wrong person,” Blaise said, holding one hand to his forehead. “Draco Malfoy would be my age by now. You must be a relative, though. See my picture, did you? Draco was fond enough of taking them. I haven’t seen him in forty years, but you, lad, you’re the spitting image of him!”
Draco bowed his head very slightly and nodded to Blaise’s companion and left without a word, his insides churning with the horror with which his friend’s appearance had struck him. Nauseated, he ran along the road beneath the night’s pale stars and leaned over an iron railing, breathing hard and trying to compose himself. For forty years he had appeared a though crafted by china, escaping the stain of age and sin, the yellowing given by cigarettes, the blotchiness of alcoholism. But now the smallest thing, a run in with an old friend, was in danger of shattering his control and the threads of magic binding him to his flawless image.
He had been so unprepared to see Blaise that every word had vacated his mind and his head was full of a numbing fog that seemed to block out everything but the fear of being caught for what he had done, the fear of the retribution that he knew would someday find him. That fear had begun to haunt his every dream in recent weeks and he felt as though he were trying to outrun Time, and failing miserably.
~*~
The Malfoys had owned a house in Kensington for as long as Draco could remember and it was to here that he fled now, seeking familiarity in the hope that he could regain his composure before he lost his mind completely. Blaise’s face was etched into his thoughts and Draco found himself wondering whether Pansy too was wrinkled and hunched, whether Greg’s huge bulk had diminished to a birdlike frame or whether he would have recognized any of the people he had once known had he not met with Blaise. He threw himself onto a chaise-longue the moment he arrived home, waved away the concerns of the maid with a sharp word and fought the raging bubble of hot bile in his throat that he knew was the guilt and the self-loathing he had repressed finally breaking through the surface after so many years. Even the pale hand with which he roughly brushed back his hair suddenly revolted him and every inch of the skin in which his spirit resided made him feel sick because it symbolized everything he had become, every lie he had ever told and every life he had ruined. He had forgotten the truly wonderful gift that was apathy and as he seemed to drown in self-contempt at the twisted form of a human being he had made himself so many years ago, a blind rage took over and choked down every rational thought until hatred and anger were all that was left.
“Like a painting of a sorrow,” he quoted furiously. “A face without a heart.”
Draco tore through the house searching for the mirrors he had ordered removed so many years ago. He terrified one of the maids as he shouted at her incoherent words about his need to see himself as he truly was. She cowered in the corner whilst he, infuriated by her lack of help, continued to burn through the fine house, tearing at the curtains around his bed and at the paintings on the walls, leaving a trail of destruction wherever he went. As the soldiers rushed forwards to destroy Salome, daughter of Herodias, Draco raged blindly through the house in pursuit of something that would show him as he really was, as he hadn’t seen himself in forty years. He had remained unchanged for as long as he desired but now he had lost everything that it meant to be Draco Malfoy and knew that everything he appeared to be was a lie. His very existence was a lie and for all the terrible things he had done in his lifetime he deserved to die many, many deaths. Draco recalled a girl he’d dallied with over twelve years ago. She had called him Prince Charming and told him in no uncertain terms how much she would love to be his wife, a notion that Draco indulged. That girl had killed herself, perhaps with Sibyl’s foresight, when she caught a glimmer of her lover’s true self. Draco hadn’t bothered attending the funeral and now wondered how many mourners would gather at his own. He’d destroyed so many people over the years and thought nothing of it because he himself remained untouched by everything. His life was a dreadful thing.
“Sir!” the maid called out to him as he scrambled upstairs. “Sir! Please stop!”
“A mirror!” he yelled down to her. “Where is there a mirror?”
“Sir ordered them all removed!” the maid replied, looking close to tears. “Sir demanded they be taken from this house.”
Draco felt like shaking her but settled for growling in frustration. The jade-faced maid was almost trembling at the bottom of the stairs, her fragility contrasting starkly with Draco’s burning movements. “There must be one!” he exclaimed.
“If Sir would go to the third floor,” the maid squeaked, “there is a mirror in the box-room.”
Draco’s heart thudded wildly against his chest as he took the stairs three at a time and sprinted up the stairs, his muscles gathering acidly in his legs and his breath catching in his lungs. The box-room was a deceptively large room in which were kept the odds and ends that Draco sporadically deemed fit to be thrown away and the staff couldn’t quite bear to part with. There were paintings and ornaments in here, furniture and monogrammed linen and boxes full of dusty memories that would have broken Draco’s tight heart to sort through. Draco ignored them, stumbling over broken glass and rolled up papers. He flung aside the dirty sheet that covered a full length mirror and found that it was the same one he had looked into in his bedroom at Malfoy Manor, all those years ago. The beautiful etchings around the edge were as exquisite as ever and the clear glass showed the same beautiful reflection as it always had. Draco looked at himself, an image he had had imprinted in his mind for forty years and felt sick. He still looked as though he were twenty and the depth and extent of that lie was killing him. Raising his wand with one trembling hand he pointed it at himself.
“Finite incantatem,” he said with a voice that broke itself on every syllable. A shock as though of electricity powered through him and left every extremity tingling and left the air crackling around him with magic. The stench of dust and age filled his nostrils and the suggestion of burning flesh and hair as the heat of the magic warmed him and everything around him. Finally the sensation stopped and Draco slumped to his knees, breathing hard with lungs that felt shallow and frail. He examined his hands, brown with liver spots and scars and weathered by the sun. He looked with morbid fascination at every wrinkle and crease, not quite believing that they were there, Time’s tattoos.
With a racing pulse and a dry mouth he raised rheumy eyes to the mirror.
~*~
When Draco was found, two hours later, the screams of the maid echoed all through the house, filling the hearts of everyone nearby with an intense disquiet. With shaking hands she pointed wordlessly up the stairs and when the butler and the cook entered the box-room both of them nearly vomited. Their master lay on the floor, shrivelled up as though he were a thousand years old, one hand gripping stubbornly to the edge of the mirror. For one wild moment the butler thought that he was seeing his master’s soul instead of his body, but could not fathom where that arcane thought had come from. Holding his hand to his mouth where it trembled against his skin the butler went cold and fearful as he noticed that whilst Draco’s lifeless body was withered and grotesque, his reflection in the mirror was now of the same beautiful creature that the butler had served for five years. The painless, glassy eyes of the reflection were gazing as though enraptured at the mirror image of the night’s first stars that twinkled through the window from the darkness.
Whatever his master had become, this awful creature, despite his life ending in the very gutters of morality and probity, he was still, and would forever be, looking at the stars.
******************
Yes, yes, an ending stuffed full of double Gloucester. Anyway, whether you loved it, loathed or didn’t care much either way, let me know!
There’s also a tiny pathetic excuse for a TF AU scene that I finished a while ago but was unsure whether to post. It’s lame. Oh so lame. You know when, as a writer, you reach a point in a difficult scene where all you want to do is make the characters just fuck off out of there and damn the consequences. No? I do.
Title: A Jaunty Angle
Rating: PG
Summary: Very short AU scene (less than 500 words) set the morning after Harry and Draco wake up and sleep in Gryffindor tower. Inspired by something finjeof suggested in jest when I was ranting about being stuck on this scene.
Dean Thomas whistled softly to himself as he attempted to charm a set of particularly stubborn wrinkles out of a pair of trousers that were folded over his knees. Around him, the dormitory was a hive of activity as Neville, Ron and Seamus bustled about blearily, trying to ready themselves for the new day. The sun was shining through the arched windows, Dean had done all his homework, word on the grapevine was that Harry was getting better and all in all, life was good.
The trousers on his knees wriggled a bit as trickles of blue light ironed out the creases and Dean shook them to clear the magic out before putting them on. He was up relatively early, even for a school day, and had a leisurely half hour to gather his things together and go down for breakfast. He wondered idly what was eating the other guys as both Ron and Seamus seemed to be in rather bad moods. Ron had only grunted when Dean had bid him a cheery good morning and Seamus had dived for the bathroom the moment he had woken up. Only Neville seemed to be in a good mood and he and Dean spent a good ten minutes discussing the various successes of the Chudley Cannons, who were enjoying a surge of good luck in their recent matches.
Neville nudged Dean as Ron stomped past them, clutching a grubby shirt. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked curiously and Dean shook his head.
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Seamus is being like that too. Maybe they haven’t done some homework.”
“They never do their homework,” Neville pointed out.
“True,” Dean said and sighed contentedly. He could hear birds singing outside. It really was shaping up to be a lovely day. Maybe he would go out later and play a bit of Quidditch with Ron, if Ron’s mood improved. Or he could go and feed the squid after breakfast. It was Wednesday, and that meant extra bacon at the breakfast table. The house elves seemed to like Wednesdays and were always more cheerful.
Suddenly Dean noticed something that made his heart skip a beat. Harry’s curtains were closed, yet rustling. That must mean…
“Neville,” Dean began but never got to finish as the curtains slid open and two figures emerged from within the confines of the drapes and a silencing spell.
Harry and Malfoy.
Dean was so shocked he was sure his jaw had dropped a good six inches and as the Gryffindor and Slytherin clambered from the four poster and made their way towards the dormitory door hand in hand, they looked over to where Dean and Neville were sitting, flabbergasted.
“Morning, guys,” Harry said merrily and walked out.
*****************
*coughs* Abject apologies for that one.
In other news, I HAVE A TATTOO! Squee! I got it done on Monday and OMGithurtlikeasonofabitch. I’m really bad with pain and was enough of an idiot to get it done on the side of my foot, probably the most fleshless place on the body, elbows and knees notwithstanding. I love it, though, it’s black, curly writing that says ‘Vade in pace’ which is Latin for ‘make your way in peace’. Yep, cheesy, but it means something to me. I am SO pleased. FINALLY!
In other news I drove over my glasses. And then I drove over them some more until they were more mangled than Posh Spice’s pop career. I’m so sad, not the least because they were Dolce and Gabbana and horrifically expensive for what, when all is said and done, are two sheets of glass and some wire. That’ll teach me.
Last week I bought a big, pink daisy from a florist, walked into a posh men’s shop in my town where the most BEAUTIFUL man works and I gave it to him. He looked very surprised but thanked me as I grinned inanely and wandered away. I had never spoken to him but he was so hot, I just had to do it. Aha! Let this be an exhortation! Go forth and spread the love with flowers! Give it to someone on the street or someone in a shop or just someone you want to appreciate.
I LOVE HOUSE! Have just discovered it and will never never never stop loving it. OMG Hugh Laurie is so fit now that he’s got older and bitter and sexy. I’ve always been a fan of his, ever since Jeeves and Wooster in fact, but even without the British accent he’s just to die for. I really don’t want him to hook up with that Cuddy woman, though. She irritates the shit out of me so please don’t tell me if they do. I might just cry.
Ack! I have to go and pack! I will be back though, with fic and emails and coherent updates about the fandom. Am really hoping there won’t be another terrorist attack while I’m in London! Back soon…