Assisted Suicide (The Living Every Day Remix)
It seemed like the thing to do, and the place to do it. We all knew I would be a prefect one day; my father gives this school too much money to end up as anything other than head boy, no matter which favourite Dumbledore wanted to give it to. It was a beautiful weapon. Fifteenth century, diamonds and emeralds reflecting in the water. Priceless, of course. Stolen from my father's weapons cabinet, where it stared at me every day over the summer, begging me to take it out. I could hear it, whispering. I couldn't help thinking it must be what Potter's talking about when he hears Voldemort. Either that or we're both crazy, driven each other insane. My blood spills against the marble tiling and falls into the water, each drop reaching out like spider webs until there's nothing but deep scarlet. I see myself in the mirror. My skin's always pale, a family trait passed down through centuries of pure breeding. Funny how the loss of blood doesn't make me look any different. Funny how my blood doesn't look any different to anyone else's.
The enamel of the bath is cold against the back of my neck and I don't remember sitting down but here I am, palms up so I can see the line of my vein, emptying across the floor. I cut it the right way. Straight from wrist towards elbow, no half measures for a Malfoy. The door opens. Even in the half aware state that I'm in there's a visceral kick of pleasure when Hermione looks as if she's about to throw up. Useless bitch. She stands there, staring. Afraid to come in, afraid to leave.
"Sod off," is all I can mutter, and I know how pathetic it sounds. But her eyes go cold and she leaves, shutting the door behind her. Maybe she's not so useless after all.
They sent me home. Sat me with therapists, mediwizards, psychics. Trying to work out why I did it. Idiots. If they couldn't understand it...I answered their questions with what they wanted to hear, told my mother I was fine as I ate the food she put in front of me and put up with her fussing all summer. I gave them the answers they all wanted and they still weren't satisfied, but they didn't know what to do. So they gave up.
Not one of them asked me about Potter.
I shouldn't be surprised. He may be very important to most of the wizarding world but god knows he's never been liked in our family. I couldn't get him out of my mind all summer. He should have died when Voldemort killed his parents, but he's the boy who lived. Well, now so am I.
I wonder if he feels the same way about that as I do.
They sent me back to school. Even my parents gave up trying to understand; my mother cried in her room for two weeks before coming out without even trying to hide her red eyes, giving me the books she'd bought for my next year and trying to kiss me goodbye without breaking into tears again. Pathetic. My father just stared at me with disappointment, and I can't say that I blame him. Malfoys don't fail. I can't even kill myself properly. At Hogwarts, I'm still Malfoy. More than that, I'm Draco, and the Slytherins would do anything for me, thinking one day I'm going to be as powerful as my father is, and they don't want to be on the wrong side of that. I think they would have carried me to class and propped me up in a chair if I hadn't gone myself once in a while. Pansy, stupid bitch, insisted on dressing me once or twice, like some kind of doll. They should have given her the Kiss like her mother, mouth shut and legs open. Maybe that'd be a good solution to Granger's constant getting on my nerves. Those three, though...
I couldn't stop watching Potter, getting on with his work in between joking with Weasley and copying off Granger. He became a study for me, far more absorbing than anything they could teach me in Potions or Defence against the Dark Arts. Everything about him, I watched. The way he was with others, the way he was on his own. How he rubbed that infernal scar when he thought nobody was looking, the way he sometimes looked as exhausted as I was. I couldn't understand how he could go on like that, feeling that way.
Snape watched me. All the teachers knew I wasn't there, not really, but he was the one who didn't give up. He caught my eye in the dinner hall and that was it. Everything was in that glance. Pathetic, really, wanting me to harass Harry simply to get back at Harry's dad for harassing him. Get over it. But he called me into his office 'to talk'. Asking the same questions as all the therapists over the summer, thinking he'd get a different answer.
"Why did you do it?"
To see what it felt like, to slice into my skin with a fifteenth century heirloom. To watch my blood pool on the bathroom floor. To see Granger pale as a ghost and know that she didn't really want me to live, that she went to get Snape, two floors down while the bath was filling with my blood. Charming, really. Why did I do it? To know what it felt like to nearly die, to know why it's such a special thing to be the boy who lived when living never seemed like an accomplishment.
"Where have you been the past year?"
Right here. Watching. Waiting, just to see what happens. Where else would I be?
The poison was easy to make. There are hundreds of books in the library, and even ignoring the restricted section which would have sent up a red flag if anyone was watching, there's enough information on how to make a simple poison. It burned like whisky in my throat. I have Vincent to blame for that one. Funny how everyone always runs to Snape, as though he cared. He gave me an antidote that tasted worse than the poison and gave me a glass of water when I'd finished vomiting on him, but he didn't call Dumbledore or Pomfrey like he probably should have, just sat beside my bed all night.
He asked me why, and I told him the only thing he would understand - it seemed like the thing to do at the time. Vincent paid for fetching him; two weeks in the infirmary with a mysterious inflammation, very painful area. Snape cast a few looks in my direction but he never had the balls to come out and ask me. He must have told someone, this time. They watched me. Every moment, every bloody time I turned around she was there. Being the 'boy who lived' - such a fucking passive accomplishment, I thought the first time I heard it. Not exactly a great thing to be proud of - he lived; so fucking what? I lived every day. There was nothing for it but to act as though I wasn't burning with curiosity, with this desire I couldn't shake to know what he felt like. It couldn't be this. This obsession and hatred I couldn't shake. Because if it was, I'd seriously underestimated Potter.
I watched him lose horribly in Quidditch, despair on his face when he missed the Snitch as if it actually mattered, some stupid game. The rest of my team celebrated. I jumped off the astronomy tower and watched the ground rush towards me.
It didn't matter, and Snape finally got it. It didn't matter if I was alive or not, I'd never understand what it was like to really live, like him. Throwing himself into his school work, his Quidditch and those precious friends. Snape finally got it, and turned his back. Dumbledore said I was cured, the old fool, so wrapped a rope around my neck, and jumped off a table in the Owlery. For all the times my father had told me that Malfoy's don't quit, Malfoy's don't fail. His letters were full of disappointment at my failures.
That summer, I tried to die. I hadn't been trying before, not really. It was just - something to see what it was like, to see how it was different to life. My mother had been warned; nothing worked. There was some kind of protective charm around me. Not enough to make me less curious, not enough to make me try living instead, but enough to make my attempts at death simply land me in the hospital, under guard, for the best part of the summer.
Snape stopped me this morning. Thought he was going to give one of those lectures that everyone else had tried. Instead, he dropped this on my books. The metal's colder than I would have thought, and it's heavier too. I tried aiming it but somehow it keeps ending up pointing back at me.
What the hell. Maybe this time, it'll work.