𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗶𝗿

(  cha  eunwoo,  nineteen  )     ⸻    it's  not  often  that  you  hear  muggle  music  in  the  halls  and  corridors  of  hogwarts  but  when  you  hear  new  skin  by  vérité,  you  know  that  it's  draco  lucius  malfoy.  the  fourth year  slytherin  is  known  around  the  grounds  as  being  sagacious  ,  voluble  and  industrious  but  if  you  know  them  really  well,  you  know  they  can  be  very  mordant.  there  have  been  some  whispers  that  their  family  are  siding  with  the  dark  but  right  now,  all  we  truly  know  is  that  this  year  is  going  to  be  very  different.

𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡  𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭  𝐚𝐧𝐝  𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐲𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞,

toujours pur. pure is the heart that throbs in sepsis ; that swells under necrosis, unable to bleed. to be pure is to be unyielding in one's beliefs and worship of that which can only be sworn yet never seen. draco knows this even as he resurfaces from the fever of childhood, transfixed on his father's lips and the small cruelties they shape.

he is sixteen, on the precipice of his first year at hogwarts, and narcissa stands vigil by his bedside when he slips uneasily into slumber. she says, before you go, my love, you must leave the best parts of yourself here. there, they just take and take. pure is the mind that hums with the electricity of unfettered anticipation --- how can he not ? his mother is a phantom whose fretful caution gnaws at his skin. unfailingly doting, he simpers and promises, it'll be alright. i have much to give.

draco's predilection for alchemy and potioneering dawns as surely and naturally as the hat's conviction of his sorting. pure is the pride that buffets him through the changing of seasons, and his mother's words have all but been cast into the recesses of his mind. voracious to learn, and with an appetite for flying to boot, he hurtles through the term as fiercely and undauntingly as the other first - year slytherins do.

as sixteen steals into seventeen, eighteen and nineteen, the condescension and vanity he was bred to wear like a second skin precipitates into something muted and indiscernible. his father makes no remark of it, perhaps for lack of comprehension, but his mother is attuned to him like the string of a bow. her embrace lingers on the platform and draco wonders if she's waiting to be proven right. pure is the intention of love, even when it cannot be reciprocated in kind.

fourth year. the cusp of transition. he feels unwieldy, like a concoction that has failed to yield the appearance prescribed in his newly - varnished textbook. fourth year is an equation with no known variables and an infinite slew of outcomes, none of which draco is certain. pure is the veritaserum that seethes in his cauldron, its inscrutability a thorn in his flesh.

𝐭𝐡𝐞  𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐬  𝐚𝐫𝐞  𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧  𝐚𝐧𝐝  𝐝𝐢𝐞.