HP -- Perchance to Dream VI: Air
Title: Perchance to Dream
Chapter: 6. Air
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,149
Warnings: suicide, language, violence, a bizarre sense of humor
Summary: Chronicling the annual suicide attempts of one Draco A. Malfoy, failure.
Author's Note: I actually found the second Bridget Jones's Diary movie pretty amusing. Y'know. The song is really pretty; check it out.
VI - AIR
Down to the Earth I fell
With dripping wings
Heavy things
Won’t fly
- “Tonight and the Rest of My Life” - Nina Gordon -
It was Draco Malfoy’s thirtieth birthday, and he was trying to kill himself.
This was really just getting fucking depressing. Three-quarters of the way up the hill, and he couldn’t even kill himself properly?
There was something deeply wrong with him.
What a failure, he thought, stepping forward. What a pathetic failure.
This one hadn’t been easy. Being in public in the first place wasn’t one of Draco’s specialties anymore-hermit, remember?-and assembling an attempt that would play out entirely in the public sphere was more cowing still.
Also, it had been exceedingly difficult to find a building that was tall enough to splatter him on the pavement, but that wouldn’t have so many people milling around it that he’d splatter some of them in the process. Only one person had signed up to be splattered today, and that was the pathetic failure who was currently peeking over the edge of his chosen edifice.
It was kind of funny-how much further it looked when you meant it. When it mattered. When you were about to do a nosedive onto that distant pavement.
God save me, he thought weakly.
God wasn’t big on listening to him. Maybe if he got His attention.
God save the Queen? he attempted.
No, it was time to be a man-be a man by giving up once and for all.
There was a joke here, wasn’t there?
The newspaper headlines would be fun.
The Amazing No-Longer-Bouncing Ferret Dies Crumpled on Sidewalk!
Extra, extra indeed.
He drew in a breath, wiped his palms on his pants, and took another step towards the edge. The wind tugged insistently at his hair, at his clothes, at his heartstrings, and he could almost hear a whiny, nasal voice intoning, Come onnnnn.
Though there was always the rather likely possibility that that particular voice belonged to him.
He took two more steps, and then the third released him into empty air.
He almost thought for a moment that it would hold him up.
I think we’ve established, a small part of him muttered, that we are not Jesus.
If he was, God probably would have listened with a bit more consistency.
Too bad. Jesus was kind of a cool guy.
The rest of him was coming up with more headlines as he commenced plummeting. He wished he would have been able to wait and see what the real ones were; journalists could be ridiculously creative with stupid stuff like that.
Draco Malfoy-
Goodness, the air was cold.
-Makes Leap of Misguided Faith!
His eyes hurt.
Malfoy Heir Dead at Thirty!
The ground looked really hard.
Suicide Is the Next Big Thing!
No, like, really hard.
Draco Malfoy Seems to Think He’s Jesus!
All right, now that was a cheap-shot.
You’re the One Who Just Threw Himself Off of a Building!
Before he could retaliate by noting some nasty things about its mother, he heard a spell he’d hated the first time he’d failed to execute it (ha), and which he hated even more now.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
Well, hell.
He’d been kind of looking forward to splattering, too; he hadn’t tried that one before.
No such luck.
As usual.
There wasn’t much time to dwell on his misfortune, though he would rather have enjoyed it, because Pansy Parkinson was lowering him carefully to the ground-which was very solid, but not quite as actively malevolent as he’d begun to suspect-and taking him in her arms.
She was warm. And soft. And she smelled like…
“Love?” the echo of Luna supplied.
No, he corrected firmly, like floral shampoo and a bit of perfume.
And then, wonder of wonders, dream of dreams, she was whispering some sort of soft consolation and running her fingers slowly through his hair, like she had on the train all those years ago-presuming that he hadn’t imagined that moment along with his ludicrous mist-made notions of his own importance.
And presuming that he wasn’t imagining it now.
People were crying out and calling and crowing their incredulity, refusing to believe that they had just seen a woman rescue a man by pointing a stick at him.
More phallic imagery; blah, blah, blah; Freud would have a field day.
Someone should call the Ministry to send over some Obliviation specialists, but… Draco really didn’t give a shit right now. There was only one thing in the wide world that he wanted to do, and that was to lie in Pansy Parkinson’s lap and let her stroke his hair forever.
Perhaps this was God’s way of nudging him and reminding him that there was, in fact, a heaven, and that it was very likely full of kind and dutiful women who would be more than happy to stroke your hair until the sun burned out and the whole world shriveled away.
That would be Draco’s heaven, anyway, at least at the moment.
Pansy’s tone was not nearly so soft as her fingertips against his scalp. He wasn’t sure whether to attribute its edge to worry or to anger, and, per habit, he didn’t really give a shit.
“What the hell were you doing?” she demanded.
After some consideration, he announced, “Trying to fly.”
Sarcasm spread its varicolored petals. “How’s that working out for you?”
He opened his eyes and smiled up at her. “Better than I expected,” he reported.
Yes, Pansy Parkinson had been his first love-at least, the first one to knock him off his feet, send him head over heels, and facilitate bouts of darting into bathroom stalls for a bit of privacy in which to agonize over something she’d done. And you didn’t forget the first one. Any chick flick could tell you that.
Ah, so this was the way in which he was valuable to the world: In the meticulous rephrasing of the paltry excuses for messages conveyed by movies with names like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Clearly, he was a paradigm of human achievement.
It was true, though. No matter how long it had been, no matter how much had happened, no matter what had changed, the first one always touched something very deep within you, and, ever so faintly, that something stirred. It lived there, deep down in the pit of you, tiny and condensed, and it neither grew nor receded. It just… lived. Subsisted. And when you saw her, it moved-only a little, only subtly, only gently, but enough that you remembered and remembered why.
If only Draco himself had that kind of resilience.
But he didn’t, and that was why, when he saw the pair of rings on Pansy’s finger, something else in him curled up in a corner and cried.
It was probably Blaise, that no-good, back-stabbing, filthy, worthless son of a-
Bad Jesus, something else in him reprimanded firmly.
If that was God, he was going to become a Satanist.
[Chapter V] [Chapter VII]
Chapter: 6. Air
Fandom: Harry Potter
Character: Draco Malfoy
Rating: R
Word Count: 1,149
Warnings: suicide, language, violence, a bizarre sense of humor
Summary: Chronicling the annual suicide attempts of one Draco A. Malfoy, failure.
Author's Note: I actually found the second Bridget Jones's Diary movie pretty amusing. Y'know. The song is really pretty; check it out.
VI - AIR
Down to the Earth I fell
With dripping wings
Heavy things
Won’t fly
- “Tonight and the Rest of My Life” - Nina Gordon -
It was Draco Malfoy’s thirtieth birthday, and he was trying to kill himself.
This was really just getting fucking depressing. Three-quarters of the way up the hill, and he couldn’t even kill himself properly?
There was something deeply wrong with him.
What a failure, he thought, stepping forward. What a pathetic failure.
This one hadn’t been easy. Being in public in the first place wasn’t one of Draco’s specialties anymore-hermit, remember?-and assembling an attempt that would play out entirely in the public sphere was more cowing still.
Also, it had been exceedingly difficult to find a building that was tall enough to splatter him on the pavement, but that wouldn’t have so many people milling around it that he’d splatter some of them in the process. Only one person had signed up to be splattered today, and that was the pathetic failure who was currently peeking over the edge of his chosen edifice.
It was kind of funny-how much further it looked when you meant it. When it mattered. When you were about to do a nosedive onto that distant pavement.
God save me, he thought weakly.
God wasn’t big on listening to him. Maybe if he got His attention.
God save the Queen? he attempted.
No, it was time to be a man-be a man by giving up once and for all.
There was a joke here, wasn’t there?
The newspaper headlines would be fun.
The Amazing No-Longer-Bouncing Ferret Dies Crumpled on Sidewalk!
Extra, extra indeed.
He drew in a breath, wiped his palms on his pants, and took another step towards the edge. The wind tugged insistently at his hair, at his clothes, at his heartstrings, and he could almost hear a whiny, nasal voice intoning, Come onnnnn.
Though there was always the rather likely possibility that that particular voice belonged to him.
He took two more steps, and then the third released him into empty air.
He almost thought for a moment that it would hold him up.
I think we’ve established, a small part of him muttered, that we are not Jesus.
If he was, God probably would have listened with a bit more consistency.
Too bad. Jesus was kind of a cool guy.
The rest of him was coming up with more headlines as he commenced plummeting. He wished he would have been able to wait and see what the real ones were; journalists could be ridiculously creative with stupid stuff like that.
Draco Malfoy-
Goodness, the air was cold.
-Makes Leap of Misguided Faith!
His eyes hurt.
Malfoy Heir Dead at Thirty!
The ground looked really hard.
Suicide Is the Next Big Thing!
No, like, really hard.
Draco Malfoy Seems to Think He’s Jesus!
All right, now that was a cheap-shot.
You’re the One Who Just Threw Himself Off of a Building!
Before he could retaliate by noting some nasty things about its mother, he heard a spell he’d hated the first time he’d failed to execute it (ha), and which he hated even more now.
“Wingardium Leviosa!”
Well, hell.
He’d been kind of looking forward to splattering, too; he hadn’t tried that one before.
No such luck.
As usual.
There wasn’t much time to dwell on his misfortune, though he would rather have enjoyed it, because Pansy Parkinson was lowering him carefully to the ground-which was very solid, but not quite as actively malevolent as he’d begun to suspect-and taking him in her arms.
She was warm. And soft. And she smelled like…
“Love?” the echo of Luna supplied.
No, he corrected firmly, like floral shampoo and a bit of perfume.
And then, wonder of wonders, dream of dreams, she was whispering some sort of soft consolation and running her fingers slowly through his hair, like she had on the train all those years ago-presuming that he hadn’t imagined that moment along with his ludicrous mist-made notions of his own importance.
And presuming that he wasn’t imagining it now.
People were crying out and calling and crowing their incredulity, refusing to believe that they had just seen a woman rescue a man by pointing a stick at him.
More phallic imagery; blah, blah, blah; Freud would have a field day.
Someone should call the Ministry to send over some Obliviation specialists, but… Draco really didn’t give a shit right now. There was only one thing in the wide world that he wanted to do, and that was to lie in Pansy Parkinson’s lap and let her stroke his hair forever.
Perhaps this was God’s way of nudging him and reminding him that there was, in fact, a heaven, and that it was very likely full of kind and dutiful women who would be more than happy to stroke your hair until the sun burned out and the whole world shriveled away.
That would be Draco’s heaven, anyway, at least at the moment.
Pansy’s tone was not nearly so soft as her fingertips against his scalp. He wasn’t sure whether to attribute its edge to worry or to anger, and, per habit, he didn’t really give a shit.
“What the hell were you doing?” she demanded.
After some consideration, he announced, “Trying to fly.”
Sarcasm spread its varicolored petals. “How’s that working out for you?”
He opened his eyes and smiled up at her. “Better than I expected,” he reported.
Yes, Pansy Parkinson had been his first love-at least, the first one to knock him off his feet, send him head over heels, and facilitate bouts of darting into bathroom stalls for a bit of privacy in which to agonize over something she’d done. And you didn’t forget the first one. Any chick flick could tell you that.
Ah, so this was the way in which he was valuable to the world: In the meticulous rephrasing of the paltry excuses for messages conveyed by movies with names like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary.” Clearly, he was a paradigm of human achievement.
It was true, though. No matter how long it had been, no matter how much had happened, no matter what had changed, the first one always touched something very deep within you, and, ever so faintly, that something stirred. It lived there, deep down in the pit of you, tiny and condensed, and it neither grew nor receded. It just… lived. Subsisted. And when you saw her, it moved-only a little, only subtly, only gently, but enough that you remembered and remembered why.
If only Draco himself had that kind of resilience.
But he didn’t, and that was why, when he saw the pair of rings on Pansy’s finger, something else in him curled up in a corner and cried.
It was probably Blaise, that no-good, back-stabbing, filthy, worthless son of a-
Bad Jesus, something else in him reprimanded firmly.
If that was God, he was going to become a Satanist.
[Chapter V] [Chapter VII]