M: Microcosm
Part Three of the "M" Series
By Kick Flaw
Feedback: is pasted on my walls for future egotism. Feed the starving author?
Disclaimer: Is there any cross-dressing in Harry Potter? No? Then I still don’t own it.
Notes: It’s shorter than usual, sorry. Oh and yes, I’ve finally decided to title the series ‘M’ since all the titles so far have started with it. Crabbe and Goyle are still being explored, beware, Pansy will be in this issue. I like her. Ahh, ever the loyal Slytherin I be. When I’ve finished it, I’ll condense it into a whole series with these as chapters. Right now, it’s simpler for me to put it out this way. Thanks to everyone who reviewed!
M: Microcosm
Part Three of the "M" Series
By Kick Flaw
He left for detention.
He was gone, I think around two hours. Snape's a sodding bastard. No detention should last that long.
He came back.
I don’t think he’s blinked since he started staring at the fire.
The Slytherin common room always has a fire going. It gets so cold down here, especially in the winter, I think we’d all come down with hypothermia if it didn’t. It’s damp too, but that keeps many of us from getting sore throats. Unlike up in the Gryffindor House, where the lack of moisture dries everyone out at least once a year. They can laugh all they want about the significance of being placed in the dungeons. It has its benefits, trust me. The giant Grandfather clock which chimes every three hours, the deeply set study-nooks lined with pillows throughout the halls and a huge, year-round fire are some of them.
Get too close though, and you’ll be burned in this wet, cold abode.
Reminds me of other things. Like Draco, who’s sitting a little to close for comfort. I think he’s craving the heat. I think he’s wondering if being dried out may have its benefits as well.
I’m watching him again; watching the firelight glint in his steady, intense eyes and reflect back from them. It’s eerie, the red glow flickering over his pale skin. Crawling, almost, in its path over his features. The veins in his hands and wrists are made plainly visible, like a minute circuitry pumping not blood but electricity through him, and he’s giving off that light on his own.
He’s thinking about the boy. The boy who consumes light and creates heat from it. The boy who draws the world to him, our sole source of warmth. Without him, we’d be cold. We’d all be cold, like down here in these dungeons. The boy who needs light, though the world seems to have forgotten that.
Light and Heat. Heat and Light. Fire. Drying us up.
Drying the tears up.
Not that * I * ever cry. Nope, nope, nope. Goyle might. He’s desperately trying to finish his Transfiguration essay. It’s kind of funny. I completed mine yesterday with Draco. I’m glad, today he probably wouldn’t be up to coaching me in how to transform a feather into an elephant. And how knowing that will come in handy, we’ll never know. McGonagall is a hag.
Pansy just sat down next to Goyle, looking gloriously fake as usual. She’s clasped her hands tightly in her lap, her legs together, ankles crossed primly, head tilted so that bright gold curls wash down her slim shoulders: The picture of demure nobility. She hates it. She doesn’t have a choice. Much like Draco. I’m glad I wasn’t born into their class, sure my parents have power, but not aristocratic power. I’d hate to have been raised in that... stiffness.
“Hey, Goyle,” she murmurs, her cultured voice a soothing reprieve from the coarse language left behind with Draco so silent.
“Oh hey, Pansy.”
“You look like you’re ready to tear your hair out.”
Goyle nods miserably. “McGonagall is a hag. She hates me.”
“She hates all the Slytherins.” Pansy replies, grimacing.
“No kidding.”
“Anyway, would you like some help?”
Poor Goyle looks pathetically grateful. He’s such a dork. I have to smile. “Would you?” he asks beseechingly.
Pansy looks at Draco, at me and at Goyle again, smiling through her puzzlement. Yeah, I didn’t think we could have slipped mischief past Pansy. She’s got talent for trouble, the rare times she gets in on it with us.
“I don’t think Professor Draco is in right now, so I could give it a try, I’m not the best, but I’ve never failed in Transfiguration. Here, let me see it.”
He hands it to her, blushing slightly when their hands brush. She bites her lower lip shyly in response, before obscuring my view of her face with her curtain of hair. I give Goyle a thumb-up, making him blush even more.
Screw the Malfoy-Parkinson betrothal, I’ve got other plans for those two.
We’ll see, we’ll see.
Draco still hasn’t closed his eyes, but I don’t believe he’s seeing. Did I really start this? This chain of events grows into an increasingly miniature infinity. He started out so colossal, a dominating glance, word, touch, name. He was a vastness in my meager view. Now he’s descending. Not falling from it, no, never, not Draco. Falling into himself is more like it.
The microcosm of his soul –the most potent force behind his existence. Not his soul, the seed from which his soul was grown.
He’s searching for it.
He’ll find light.
El’Endo
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