Two Sides of the Same Coin(DRARRY)

PROLOGUE

"When love is suppressed hate takes its place." - Havelock Ellis

Eleven-year-old Draco Malfoy was standing perfectly still, admiring his reflection in the mirror. A frumpy middle-aged witch pinned his new robes, and he sighed. Draco's gray eyes stared back at him from the mirror and his reflection gave a small wave, accompanied by a hesitant upturn of thin pink lips. The corporeal Draco frowned at his effeminate features: the soft white-blond hair smoothed back from his pale skin, the delicate pink lips, the thick white-blond lashes framing gray eyes. Truth be told, Draco found himself to be rather beautiful, but this opinion was constantly undercut by his father's comments of "You'll grow into your features one day, Draco." A cock of the head and a frown often accompanied the phrase, his father clearly not finding in Draco's appearance what he'd hoped of the heir to the Malfoy lordship.

Draco's reflection shrugged and lifted a hand to stroke its own cheek. Though the image could not extend beyond the glass to physically touch Draco, he felt the caress all the same, and was comforted by it. Draco had been told that most reflections did not move independently of their person, even in the wizarding world, but Draco's always had. His reflection had always been a companion of sorts, keeping Draco company at his most lonely – which was often. Draco had led an isolated childhood, having only his father's cohorts' progeny as a selection for playmates. After making the mistake of mentioning it once when he was six, his interactions with his reflection had, from then on, been one more thing he kept from his parents, at risk of appearing too fanciful. It seemed to Draco that everything he did revolved around avoiding garnering his father's disapproval, something that always seemed to follow displays of supposed softness of character on Draco's part: his looks, his imaginary friendship with his reflection . . . most of it things he could not help.

Draco sighed, directing the air upward to toss a few stray hairs off his forehead. He was starting Hogwarts in a few days. He hoped things would be better there.

Just then, there was a tinkle of a bell as the door to Madam Malkin's shop opened. Draco's animated reflection tossed a startled glance towards the door then disappeared, so that all that remained was Draco. Alert, his eyes watched in the mirror as the door admitted a scrawny boy with black hair and round-rimmed glasses. He looked nervous as he exchanged a few words with Madam Malkin, and then made his way towards where Draco was being fitted at the back of the store.

Draco's pulse elevated in excitement – his first chance to make a friend of his own. His father considered friendship a dalliance for the weak-spirited. But Draco could not think about his father at a time like this – he'd been so lonely for too long; his eyes widened in anticipation of befriending this tousle-haired boy.

As the boy got closer, and then stepped up onto the stool next to Draco, Draco got a better look at him. He was about Draco's size – a little shorter, but just as wiry – with messy black hair that fell into his dark green eyes. The lenses of his glasses were smudged – honestly, has he never heard of a cleaning charm? – but despite the fog, the vibrancy of those eyes was clear and undiluted. When the boy cast a look at Draco, the effect of those eyes focusing on him, Draco Malfoy, sent a jolt of anxious delight through the pit of Draco's stomach.

"Hello," said Draco to cover up the turmoil of exhilaration and nerves within him, "Hogwarts, too?"

"Yes," said the boy.

"My father's next door buying my books and my mother's up the street looking at wands," Draco informed him. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one, and then I'll smuggle it in somehow." Draco's voice fell into the Malfoy drawl he'd affected in public since he learned to speak. It became especially exaggerated whenever he bragged, as he was beginning to do now.