BANALITY : Draco Malfoy

44

            After thirty minutes of sitting in silence, we've finished off the better part of the bottle of Ogden's. I am not as drunk as I would like to be though. He is hogging the bottle. At least, Ginny and Harry will come home, and they won't be as mad as they could be about the destruction Draco caused in the kitchen. They might be angrier that I've been drinking.

"Did Marty like these books?" I ask, picking up the copy of 1984 and holding it in the air.

He looks at me, his eyes narrowing in. Instead of speaking, he goes to take another sip of the bottle. I now understand it to be firewhiskey, a drink made by and for wizards. He must have been giving it to me while I was in Brighton, which explains why it was stronger than anything else I drank.

"Come on," I reach for the bottle from him. He goes to jerk it away, but I coax it out of his hands. While he scowls, I shrug. "Anyway, 1984. Apparently I liked it."

His eyes seem to soften a bit, "well, the books weren't your favourites. You were against favourites as a concept."

I still don't have favourites. I don't dwell on the similarity between Marty and me.

"Well, why pick the books then?" I ask. I look from the bottle to the copy of 1984. I cannot imagine any previous version of me ever liking this book no matter what Hermione and Draco say.

He shrugs, "you told me to read them. I used to say that muggles couldn't understand wizard problems. You told me those three books would change my mind. I never read them until you disappeared."

I put the bottle down on the coffee table and flip through the book. My eyes cannot focus on the words even when I pull it closer to my face. So, what, these are supposed to tell me about Draco, not about who he thinks I ought to be? The Great Gatsby has themes of class and love, and how the rich are cruel and often unhappy. Was that what Marty thought of Draco? The Lord of the Flies is about war, evil, and self-interest. These stories don't paint a kind picture of the boy Marty knew. Perhaps these were wizard problems though, that Marty thought Draco could benefit from reading.

"If you had so much contempt for muggle-borns, why did you ever even talk to her?" I look over at him.

"You were just as charming then as you are now," his voice is dry.

I roll my eyes, "I'm being serious. You literally joined a hate group dedicated to killing people like me and Hermione. I assume Marty was an idiot who thought she could change you or some nonsense, but what could you have possibly wanted in her?"

"I was being serious," he snaps. With a flick of his wand, the bottle goes flying into his hand. The liquor sprays across the rug. "And you weren't stupid."

"I'm not Marty!" I stand, laughing. "When will you begin to understand that I'm not her?"

"You are!" Draco stands up. His face is red, with one hand curling tightly around his wand and the other around the bottle. "You're Marty. You can read me just as easily. You've said some of the same things, verbatim. We've already had this very argument about me being a Death Eater! Initially, you wanted to be hidden in the highlands so you could be close to Hogwarts as well as the water, and that's where you went after your memory was changed. And, you kiss me the same way. You say my name just like her. I'm not stupid enough to think that you are exactly the same, but you are in there, Marty."

"I'm not," I shake my head.

"Sometimes I wish you had just died!" he spits, stepping closer to me. He puts down both his wand and the booze on the coffee table and grabs my wrists. "It would be better to think that you are dead than to see you like this! You would hate Jane. You would hate how much you can't do, and you would hate fighting with me over such petty issues."