Maybe The Sky Will Fall
There's a painting on the wall outside Draco's dorm room of a knight walking with his lady fair. Draco thinks the knight looks like a giant poof: he wears a red cape and has dark hair. But the painting draws Draco's eyes every morning, and he can't help but notice the couple trawling in the woods. The type of woods seems to vary every day, and Draco thinks they've probably covered half the known world since he's been in school. Nevertheless, the basic image remains the same, and the knight's steed paws impatiently in the background while the knight removes his covering and places it over a puddle for the lady to walk across to safety.
However, just as she sets her foot on the cape, the sky opens up and it begins to rain.
Draco has seen the same thing every morning for the last six years. Today, when he puts his hand on the doorknob to leave his room, grimacing at Crabbe's snore/whistling, Draco realizes he wants to see something different: he thinks it's time for a change.
Draco's thrown his towel over his left shoulder instead of his right, and he's not going to shave before his shower, but after the game. Draco's not superstitious, and all the rabbit's feet he's ever touched have gone into potions, but a little change never hurt anyone. Today, he thinks, will be a day for this evolution: a Saturday, a Quidditch match, the day when he finally beats Harry Potter.
Perhaps this will be the day when the fates won't piss on Draco's head.
For six years Draco has been relegated to Potter's shadow, and for five years he's had to fly in his wake. Things have to change at some point, but the weather doesn't agree with Draco's proverbial new leaf. The sky thunders and the rain shrieks. There are a thousand and two people watching every move that he makes through soaked omniculars, except the 'he' in question isn't Draco, and Draco knows it should be. He doesn't care what anyone thinks; they'll all wind up dead one day, and Draco doesn't want to be liked - he wants to win.
No one likes a thief, but Draco has every intention of stealing today's game from the grubby mitts of Harry Potter, and he'll do it gladly. It's only sporting, although putting 'Quidditch' and 'sporting' in the same thought doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense. Considering how many different kinds of fouls there are - somewhere around seven hundred if Draco remembers correctly - then really sportsmanship has nothing to do with it. Not that any Slytherin captain has ever mentioned such a thing as being sporting, unless it's to point out exactly how not to play. But today, today, Draco wants to do this all on his own. Surnames and houses aside, Draco wants to beat Harry Potter of his own accord - because he can. It has nothing to do with scars and sorting hats, and everything to do with teenagers and stupidity. Draco is more than Harry Potter's equal, and he's so effing tired of the way that Potter always seems to win.
Beating Harry Potter is this thing that Draco wants. It's something he needs, and it's waiting on the tip of his tongue like the rain that beats against his mouth seeking entrance.
It's comeuppance, and Draco wants Potter to feel it for a change.
Draco has pride, and it's been injured every time he's been forced to shower after everyone else on his team because there are some things he just refuses to leave himself open to. Every time Harry Potter is lauded for being the hero he's quite obviously not, it rankles Draco, and he wants to break brooms and show people how things really are. Harry Potter isn't talented and brilliant, he's just lucky; and sometimes he's really fast, and that's the only thing that Draco can think of as he catches sight of that fragile ball of gold, shining through the gray and hovering by Laura Abraham's right knee.
Draco doesn't even have to look to know that Potter has made the same connection, and this will be the one time that he doesn't grab the tail end of Potter's broom to pull himself along. This will be the one time that Draco does this on his own; and what's the point in spending all the money on a broom if it can't do the job? Draco obviously needs a new broom, and as he pulls out of the dive after nearly colliding with Potter, Draco notices for the first time that the rain is letting up. So he wipes the rain from his face, noticing the grizzled feel of the stubble on his jaw, and pushes his hair behind his ears.
Maybe not everybody is pissing on his head, however, there's no reason for Potter to smile at Draco. It's a game. They're not playing, and the sky won't fall if Draco doesn't catch the snitch this time. He knows it won't, but today he feels like it will. Yes, he's been known to be dramatic at times, but he's overheard the flutters and the wagers. Draco knows that he - unfairly - doesn't measure up when he's being compared to Harry Potter.
Draco is not wanting; but it doesn't matter what they do, it doesn't matter what he does, Potter will always be the lauded one. Draco wants his own time, and he's wound himself up so badly that he completely misses the sun coming out to shine.
Draco keeps missing the forest for the trees, but he just wants something to call his own. So when the snitch makes itself known again, two metres from the bottom of the goal post, Draco doesn't wonder where Potter is. He doesn't care that flying this way might break his neck. Apparently, there's still dust in his eyelashes from the near midair collision, and that's why his eyes are moist; that's why Draco blinks. But when Draco crashes into Harry Potter, it's his fingers that catch the snitch and that's all that Draco can think of lying on his back in the pit.
There are grains of sand mixed in with his stubble, and the sky is just as gray as Draco's eyes. The sun may be shining, but Draco's not fooled: soon the rain will fall again. The more things change, the more they stay the same; and maybe that's why, when Potter offers him a hand up, Draco just smiles.
Draco doesn't give complements.
It's surely someone else who says, "nice game, Potter."
For such a small thing, Draco has worked very hard to catch the snitch, so when he's forced to give it back to Madam Hooch, he's more than a bit aghast. He holds onto it a bit longer than necessary, and finally relinquishes it in the crux of a severe case of longing. However, he doesn't brood in front of anyone because there are parties to have and butterbeer to drink and bragging to accomplish, and Draco has to clean himself up because he's a mess. But when he comes out of the shower and the snitch, his snitch, is sitting on top of his folded robes, Draco's not sure what to say. He has no intention of asking one of his teammates, and it's the strangest thing ever that he stalks over to the door and flings it open with relish as though he knows the answer is out there. Except that there's nobody outside except for Millicent Bulstrode, ostensibly waiting for Blaise Zabini, and it looks as though it's going to rain again.
Draco ignores Millicent's leering - he knows he's only wearing a towel - and whatever snide remarks she makes about him streaking about starkers. The towel does what it's supposed to, but it doesn't cover Draco up in the way he needs and he thinks his pride might be exposed. Draco can feel all those eyes he coveted earlier looking at him, or maybe just one pair: dull green encircled by glass and black plastic. Silver and green blurred together, like the Slytherin colours that Potter perhaps doesn't find so abhorrent. Except that Harry Potter doesn't have fine eyes, they're actually quite common and ordinary. But there's something about them that bothers Draco, much like the snitch he's now holding in his hand.
Things have either changed too much or not enough today, and as the clouds open up and Draco feels the first drops of rain on his newly shaved skin, he can't help but think that maybe the sky has already fallen.
Maybe Harry Potter is like the rain.