There's a Draco/Harry vid that is just so absolutely, perfectly Draco that it breaks my heart. I don't remember how long ago that I found it, as I just relocated it in the wake of thinking about H/D after PoA. The song used is The Way Things Are by Fiona Apple and the lyrics just make me wibble and think that yes, I can imagine Draco telling himself these things. "I'm much better off the way things are. Much, much better off, better by far." The vidder's name is on the bloody vid, but I can't actually make it out, though I think the word 'sidhe' is in it.
There's a part of Deep Space Nine's pilot episode that always hits me so hard -- Sisko is trying to explain human, linear existence to the Wormhole Aliens/Prophets but keeps getting dragged back to the scene of his wife's death, because though his physical life has gone on, his heart and soul still exist in the moment of losing her.
"You exist here."
"I exist here."
"It is not linear."
Draco exists in the moment of "I can tell the wrong sort for myself." He hasn't gotten past it. Five years, and he's still an eleven year-old kid, reaching out the only way that he was ever taught how -- 'I can give you connections, I can make you powerful, we can be allies' -- and being rejected. He mentions that rejection in his big ending speech in Goblet of Fire because it's still the first thing on his mind, just as Harry is. Because that first cut never healed over, each slash that he receives from Harry hits just as deeply as that first rejection did, slicing straight through the thin armour of his skin and bone to hit his heart, the fragile scar tissue reopening and the wounds bleeding anew with each strike.
It is not linear, but it is very human.
What Draco has in common with various heroes that I adore without being a hero is part of what draws me to him (someone that he really reminds me of is Ray Kowalski, particularly when it comes to purposefully aggravating known wounds -- what, to see if they'll still hurt? Ray knows that Stella will shoot him down. Draco knows that the Gryffindors use their fists to 'solve problems', yet they each invite the pain because bad attention is better than no attention (which, in turn, reminds me of The Sound of Music, come to think of it))
( lyrics to 'The Way Things Are' )
There's a part of Deep Space Nine's pilot episode that always hits me so hard -- Sisko is trying to explain human, linear existence to the Wormhole Aliens/Prophets but keeps getting dragged back to the scene of his wife's death, because though his physical life has gone on, his heart and soul still exist in the moment of losing her.
"You exist here."
"I exist here."
"It is not linear."
Draco exists in the moment of "I can tell the wrong sort for myself." He hasn't gotten past it. Five years, and he's still an eleven year-old kid, reaching out the only way that he was ever taught how -- 'I can give you connections, I can make you powerful, we can be allies' -- and being rejected. He mentions that rejection in his big ending speech in Goblet of Fire because it's still the first thing on his mind, just as Harry is. Because that first cut never healed over, each slash that he receives from Harry hits just as deeply as that first rejection did, slicing straight through the thin armour of his skin and bone to hit his heart, the fragile scar tissue reopening and the wounds bleeding anew with each strike.
It is not linear, but it is very human.
What Draco has in common with various heroes that I adore without being a hero is part of what draws me to him (someone that he really reminds me of is Ray Kowalski, particularly when it comes to purposefully aggravating known wounds -- what, to see if they'll still hurt? Ray knows that Stella will shoot him down. Draco knows that the Gryffindors use their fists to 'solve problems', yet they each invite the pain because bad attention is better than no attention (which, in turn, reminds me of The Sound of Music, come to think of it))
( lyrics to 'The Way Things Are' )