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The idea of loving someone who wasn't a carbon copy of himself had never crossed Draco Malfoy's mind, until he realized that even he wasn't perfect. Of course, this realization took time; it didn't sneak up on him during some rainy Tuesday afternoon and ambush him with self-conscious and degrading thoughts. Instead, it began to fester and boil around the outskirts of his brain sometime during the summer before his fifth year. Soon it found a weak spot in the massive ivory gates that protected his ego, and very slowly began to scale the walls. When he was a child, Narcissa and Lucius were constantly stopped on the street and told just how beautiful their son was. Of course they knew their spawn was beautiful. He was, after all, a Malfoy; and Malfoy's were innately beautiful, stunning, ethereal, deadly. His father would place him on the laps of adoring guests (wealthy friends, ministry good-for-nothings worth sucking up to and veritable legions of Death Eaters.) and they would get some perverse thrill at running their fingers through his silky white-blond hair and staring into his stormy gray eyes. He was his father's pet, his lap dog. The guests told him he was exotic, that his pale skin was like gossamer silk and incredibly sensual. Draco, however, was only 7, and didn't quite grasp what they were implying. He'd been brought up correctly, his mother was etiquette obsessed, and he had learned at an early age to smile shyly at these perverts and gaze demurely up at them from under his almost invisibly eyelashes -- it was only proper, his mother said. When Draco got older he stopped letting them touch him and compliment him, he stopped letting the house elves brush and style his hair, he stopped letting them dress him in little white knee socks, black shorts and that damnable vest and lace-collared white shirt. The only remnant of his childhood wardrobe that still found it's way onto his body were the black silk robes that he found extremely comfortable. Once Draco grew up he knew just how beautiful he was. He also knew, because of his somewhat unconventional upbringing, how to use that beauty to his advantage. He was also 16 and incredibly anxious for a victim. End |