Drarry One Shots

Just One Small Thing

A/N A short bit of ridiculous fluff

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There was just one small thing that I have unfailingly craved constantly, almost without default throughout my life to date, and that was the attention of one Harry James Potter.

I hadn't realised it at first. It was just there, a part of my being, as unalterable as my white-blond hair and the pure Malfoy blood that ran through my veins.

The craving had started long before I actually met Harry. From the very day I realised he and I would be in the same year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I just had a certainty in my bones that the famous boy and I were destined to be the best friends, inseparable, fated to roam the school corridors together and cause havoc, guaranteed to revel gloriously in fame... My imagination ran wild as I pictured the myriad of scenarios in which our friendship played out.

Oh! If only I'd known who I was speaking to the day I got my school robes fitted at Madame Malkins. If only I'd known when I stood on my stool next to that skinny boy with messy black hair and startling green eyes and clothes that were far too big for him... If only I'd known before I started bad-mouthing Half-breeds and Muggleborns because I was parroting my father's words... because that was what I thought everyone believed...

Still, that pretty much explained my audacity (and subsequent disappointment) when my eleven-year-old younger self threw open the door to his compartment on the Hogwarts Express and announced my presence with the unfailing expectation that Harry would be grateful to accept my so very grown up and important handshake. I assumed the boy would be relieved to be rescued from the Weasley boy with whom he'd been lumbered, what with being none the wiser. Burdened, that was, until I appeared in all my Pureblood glory to save him. Plus, there was the added bonus of dragging along two bodyguards to protect Harry from the plethora of fans who undoubtedly dogged his every famous footstep.

Hmmm... Hindsight was a wonderful thing (if not somewhat useless at the time).

As I had never really had anyone say 'no' to me in all my young life and was very used to getting my own way, I took rejection very badly. Very badly indeed.

I never once stopped to question why it was so important to me that I made something of the situation with Harry Potter. It wasn't as if I cared about the existence of Terry Boot or Dean Thomas or Anthony Goldstein—they were completely irrelevant to my life. But that skinny boy with messy black hair and startling green eyes—he was everything. And apparently Ronald Weasley's presence was utterly worthy of my hatred because he'd stolen what was rightly mine.

The craving for Harry's attention didn't lessen, it just changed in terms of how it manifested itself through the years.

And retrospection has revealed that in first year there was still a niggling hope we could be friends. Therefore, I was a little bit flamboyant and perhaps a bit of a drama queen ('A troll... in the dungeon!!!') and I made sure I was apparent in whatever I did, including taunting Harry in our flying lessons and sneering exaggeratedly and beginning the habit of shouting insults across the Great Hall at 'Pottah!'. It was all for nothing, Slytherin lost the House Cup and the Quidditch Cup and I faded into insignificance as Harry was lauded as the youngest and most successful Seeker in the History of Hogwarts and was gifted several hundred House points for killing our DADA professor at just eleven years old.

I observed, long after the fact, that in second year, I had tried to impress Harry and wow the boy to gain his attention that way, first with my father's wealth and sway and the Pureblood superiority of the Malfoys (oh, that blessed Malfoy pride). Then with my Quidditch skills (or occasional and distracted lack thereof as the first match proved). And then with my duelling ability ('Scared, Potter?'). Once more, my efforts failed as Harry was the one to rescue Ginevra Weasley from the Chamber of Secrets and generally save the school by killing a deadly basilisk while debilitating yet another DADA professor. I was left sulking at Slytherin table during the end of term feast as a small but gleeful voice could be heard echoing through the corridors, shouting, 'DOBBY IS A FREE ELF!'.