25Now, if any of you readers have read my user profile, you will have gathered that I thoroughly despise Draco Malfoy. However, this, erm...ferret business did seem really cruel - even the first time I readGoF (four years ago, it was actually the firstHP book I'd ever read,someone gave it to me for my birthday)I didn't find it funny. Here's my take on what Draco may have been thinking during this whole incident.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Harry Potter. If I did, would I even have created Draco Malfoy? Nope.
Draco Malfoy, The Amazing Bouncing Ferret
All around me, the students gathered in the Entrance Hall were reduced to a blur, pointing, smirking, jeering. My face was growing hot and screwed up in pain, but nobody noticed – they could not see past the small, pointed face of a ferret that bastard who called himself a teacher had made me into. The pain of being flung into the air, feeling as if there was an invisible iron claw clenched tightly around my chest, seeing the floor come rushing towards me, slamming into the cold stone and being thrown back up again, was almost unbearable.
My eyes were squeezed shut now, as if by doing so everything, everyone around me would just fade away, disappear into black nothingness. But still the torture continued. Each time I hit the floor, a tear seeped out from between my eyelids, a tear of painful humiliation. I had been brought up to see tears as a sign of weakness, I had not shed them for many years, especially not in public...but it wasn't as if anybody in that wretched dump of a school would care if they saw me crying.
Everyone there despised me, I was well aware of that fact…and in my own, twisted way, I was proud of it. Proud of being the cold, spiteful, pitiless bully that I was. Everyone there knew that I cared for no one. I took pleasure in hurting others, watching them shake with rage after I had made a particularly nasty comment about them, or someone they loved.
And I had always thought that none of their retorts would ever faze me. Nothing could ever upset the great, emotionless and heartless Draco Malfoy. The Dragon…my parents had chosen that name for a reason, I was sure of it. Both of them had great plans for my future. The road was already laid out before me before I was even born, and I had no choice but to follow it. I knew no other life. Bravery and courage meant nothing to me. I taunted the weak, ridiculed the poor, and my Father was proud of me.
But that day when that stupid Golden Boy of Gryffindor, Potter, insulted my mother…
"So tell me, is his mother really that porky, or is it just the picture?"
"You know your mother, Malfoy? That expression she's got, like she's got dung under her nose? Has she always looked like that, or was it just because you were with her?"
For some reason, that dim-witted insult struck a nerve deep down inside me, and my eyes were clouding over with fury. Nobody insulted my mother and got away with it. She loved me, she always had and always would love me, unconditionally, no matter what I do, and no matter what Father says.
Potter would never understand that; his tiny speck of a brain would not be able to even begin to fathom my mother's love for me. And when he insulted me…the hard outer shell of Draco Malfoy cracked, and, blind with fury, I cursed him while his back was turned, and the spell grazed his cheek.
The next thing I knew, I was shrinking, my world was spinning, my insides felt as if they were being mercilessly crushed and trampled on. My whole body was changing, so quickly and so painfully that I did not even have time to scream or gasp, before I was a white furry heap on the cold floor. The process of being transformed had exhausted me, I thought that my punishment had ended. I wanted nothing more than to run back to the dungeons and sleep, find a way to turn myself back, but suddenly I found myself struggling to breathe as that invisible fist of iron roughly grabbed me and threw me high into the air, and then let me go, letting me fall onto the stone floor.
And the students were all jeering, taunting, a blur of lips curled in disdain, talon-like fingers pointing, chests heaving with cruel laughter. Over their cackles and snickering, I could make out some of what my tormentor was saying,
"Stinking, cowardly, scummy…"
And I thought to myself, how much he reminded me of Father, and my insides churned horribly. I could hear footsteps in my whirling, slowly fading black world, an exchange of words, thuds, and suddenly I felt as if I was expanding; my skin was prickling as the fur and whiskers retreated, and then I was a trembling, weak, pathetic human heap on the floor. My hair was damp and stuck to my now dark pink forehead. My face was flushed, and tears still refused to stop falling, no matter how much I gritted my teeth and tried to make them stop. I felt someone staring intently at me, and I looked up into the eyes of the tormentor, that creature who had caused me so much pain and humiliation, and muttered to myself, I can't let my father know about this…he'd kill me for 'disgracing the family name'…
Suddenly the man was limping towards me, wooden leg clunking on the floor, growling.
"Oh yeah? Well, I know your father of old, boy…you tell him Moody's keeping a close eye on his son…you tell him that from me…"
And all I could do was stand there, for once, powerless. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that dumb Potter who was the cause of so many of my problems, snickering with his two sidekicks. That stupid Potter…everybody looked up to him, he had people practically worshipping at his feet, when really he had only narrowly escaped when he was a baby, without even doing anything himself – he escaped by dumb luck. And by the love of his mother. And he had the nerve to insult mine, implying that she hated me? Dumbledore, that old buffoon, loved Golden Boy so much it was almost sickening. In that fool's eyes, Potter could do no wrong. Potter…the very name nauseates me, that boy with a serious hero complex who thinks that he has it bad…
Perhaps I should have been better off studying in Durmstrang, was my last thought as I was marched off to see Snape, the roars of laughter and delighted high-fives slowly fading behind me.
Thanks for reading...I would personally have given up somewhere in the middle out of boredom, but well done for making it to the end. You thought it would go on forever, wouldn't you?
Anyway, please drop me a review, and tell me what you think of this fic. Reviews make me all happy inside.
QoB