Memoirs of a Serpent's Son

Memoirs of a Serpent’s Son

--Age 13—part 5

Quidditch Final –Slytherin vs. Gryffindor

It was the final today. I didn’t sleep most of the night. I was paler than usual when I woke up and couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. Flint urged me to eat something and Pansy was pleading with me but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t eat. Not knowing what was going on in my head… not knowing what I was about to do.

I went out to the pitch and got ready. I took a few moments, while Flint was giving the team his talk, to calm myself down and concentrate on my task. I couldn’t let anything get to me. I just had to go out there, fly like hell and take whatever means necessary to catch the snitch first.

When we got out there though, my resolve wavered a bit. I put up my sneer and pretended to be confident but just seeing Potter standing in front of me like that, holding his Firebolt, after what I dreamed…. It was just hard.

The match started. When I got onto my broom it felt like the whole world shifted and nothing was the same anymore. It felt like everything and nothing was weighing on this match, weighing on my shoulders. I wonder if Potter felt it too.

There was this perpetual deafening roar throughout the stadium and I closed my eyes, just for a moment, to regain my centre. When I opened them, I knew what I had to do. I tailed Potter. I followed him closer than his shadow would and didn’t let him out of my sights.

He flew so gracefully on that broom. It was like something out of an advertisement. Or maybe a dream…

I shook the idea off and urged my broom forward. I ignored all the yelling and screaming around me. I ignored the commentary and the fights and desperate moves that were made between both teams. It was like some epic battle, the green fighting the red, colours weaving in and out and players being knocked from their positions in the crossfire.

I know, I sound so poetic, don’t I?

There is no other way I can describe it though. None. I’ve thought for a long time about just what this whole game meant to me…what it meant to…everything. And this is the best thing I can come up with. I feel so… subdued.

I followed Potter still, the red and gold of his jersey burning permanent marks into my mind. I swear, I didn’t blink.

Then he sped up. He saw the snitch and was going for it. I’m not an idiot. I know my Nimbus Two-Thousand and One is no match for an international standard racing broom. None at all. So I did the only thing that I could to stop him.

I jumped onto his broom and held on for dear life.

Don’t get me wrong, Firebolts are good, but not that good. It can’t keep up the same pace when double the weight is on it.

Potter felt the slowing of his wand as the snitch moved out of his grasp and looked back at me. I was so close to him. His eyes burned me with his frustration but he couldn’t to anything. I smirked at him and I know my eyes must have been glimmering. The way he looked at me… you’d think I was pure evil or something.

But I shrugged it off and let go, falling back onto my broom. And it started again. I tailed him and followed him around, making sure that I knew every move he made. He couldn’t scratch his head without my knowing.

Then bludgers zoomed by and we were level with the rest of the game again. It was brutal really, but I paid little mind. I had one thing to do and it did not involve any one of the players.

Potter soared off fast and very suddenly. I snapped to follow him when I realized it wasn’t the snitch he was after, he was trying to dispel the wall of Slytherin players to protect one of his own. Stupid noble Gryffindor. While he was turned, I spotted the snitch out of the corner of my eye and smiled darkly.

I flew the fastest I ever have towards the opposite end of the pitch. The wind whipped at me as I cut through it but I didn’t pay any attention to anything but the snitch until Potter caught up with me. We were neck and neck for a while, so close together that our knees kept hitting against one another.

The brief touches were enough to send rolling waves of shivers down my back and throughout my limbs. I was so close to him.

I swallowed hard and pressed forward, holding my hand out. The snitch was inches from my grasp when Potter knocked my arm out of the way, hard, and caught it instead. I careened off to the side from the force of his push and everything caught in my chest. Everything. My breath, my thoughts, my heartbeat… everything inside me stopped and crowded inside of my ribcage as though trying to make it explode.

I landed without looking at the pitch. The game was called to an end and Gryffindor was named Quidditch Cup winner. I stood there, breathing hard and trying to breathe again. The stands roared like they were all trying to imitate the Lions and take part in the celebrations. As though in slow motion, I turned my head just enough to see Potter raised high about the crowd. He was yards away from me but his face was shining so bright, his smile was almost infectious.

I had to fight to clench my jaw and turn away, grimacing at myself.

I went into the change rooms with the rest of the team. One of them tried to say something. I think they were trying to tell me it didn’t really matter. I ignored them, chucked my broom across the room and shed my clothes, jumping into the showers.

I stayed there for hours… hours into the night when I was sure the Gryffindors were still celebrating.

How could I let anything affect me like that?? I could have WON this game! I could have wiped that smirk off of Potter’s scarred face and shown him once and for all that I’m superior…that I’m worth everything he thinks I’m lacking.

But that smile… I’d give anything to…

To wipe that smile off his face.

That’s what I meant.

GOD WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH ME?

I’ve spent all my life being in control of EVERYTHING. That’s what my father taught me. NOTHING can throw me off. Nothing can affect me on the surface because if someone affects you visibly, then they know they’ve won. They have power over you. They have something on you that you can never get back.

That’s why he taught me to do it to other people before they had a chance to think twice and consider doing it to me. But Potter…

No matter what I do, he just gets under my skin and burrows deep into my head… like I can’t escape him… like he’ll always be there…

*******

June 5

It’s my birthday today. Oh hurrah. I’m fourteen. Bring on the next phase of hell.

Father sent message today that the Hippogriff’s appeal was set for the 6th. He said that there’s no chance that he’ll get off so really, that’s the day the beast’s been sentenced to death. I think, in some sense, that was my father’s sadistic way of giving me a birthday present. To make up for all the bollocks I’ve had to deal with this year.

Maybe.

I never wanted the beast to get killed. I don’t care for that. There’s no need in my mind. Killing it won’t take the scars off my arm, it won’t turn back time, it won’t change things between Potter and I and it won’t do any good, altogether.

I don’t need Buckbeak to die. I don’t need Potter to hate me more than he does. I don’t need to feel the excessive focus of anger and fury against my soul every time Potter so much as walks by.

But I know Father disagrees. He thinks this is the perfect revenge. He thinks that this is the best way of keeping lower ranked people in line and teaching them to show me proper respect.

I’m glad to be getting back at Potter. I’m glad to knock him back down after his Quidditch win, but I didn’t mean for this…

Argh, what has happened to me??

I would never have cared this much before! I don’t care! I don’t!

The damn beast can die and Potter can watch it happen, for all I care!

He can hate me too.

********

End of Term

I have what Madam Pomfrey called a migraine right now and I definitely know why it’s there.

I have this desperate need to punch my fist right through a wall, which frightens me because I know that my fist would be subject to more damage than the wall ever would. I am NOT a physically violent person. THIS is DEFINITELY a result of the STUPID Muggle thing…. Puberty.

It HAS to be.

That and Potter.

Both of them. It’s as though they’ve joined forces secretly to make my life a living nightmare! You think I’m paranoid, but I’m not. How do I know this is what he’s done?

WELL because Potter’s face has been NOTORIOUSLY CLEAR of any of those damned red marks. Honestly, you’d think that he has some kind of agreement with the gods of puberty to make sure that I’M the only one to suffer from it.

Ok, ok….

………

That’s not really why I’m angry with him…

I’ve no idea what happened earlier this month at all. It’s always that way. Potter goes off on some kind of brilliant and heroic adventure and I’m stuck here, completely oblivious to it all until there is some kind of announcement in the Great Hall praising him once more for saving the world and proving his valor to all his little fanclubs.

Honestly, I should just expect this by now. It’s been the routine for the past three years, there’s nothing to indicate that it’s going to change now, so I suppose I should resign myself to the idea that Potter is going to remain the renewed hero every year hence forth.

Right, and while I’m at it I might as well just gag myself too.

Anyway, I don’t know what he did precisely, but it ended up sending Snape off the deep end completely. Honestly, that man was always a little tipsy if you ask me –not that I minded at all, considering that I never got the short end of his wrath –but Potter just HAD to go and knock him right off his rocker.

He came bursting into the Great Hall one morning and just about hollered to everyone in the room (which was the entire school considering that it was a Tuesday) that Professor Lupin was in fact a werewolf. No warning, no padding or sugar-coating the truth. No preparation. He just outright said it and freaked the hell out of the students present. Well except a few of those thick-headed Gryffindors who seemed to think it was rather amusing.

Idiots.

Anyway, through all of the uproar that caused, Lupin resigned and somehow, Potter was rumoured to be a kind of hero again, even though no one has any clue as to why or what he did. None. They just like to make up new adventures for him to play along in. It’s as though he’s some kind of fictional character that his fanclubs like to play with.

It almost sickens me.

Why should he have a fanclub and not me?? I mean apart from Pansy. She’s not nearly enough to qualify a fanclub either. I mean I’ve had plenty of girls ogling me in the hallways and a fair few have told me they find me attractive… and no they aren’t all from Slytherin. Some Ravenclaws and a few idiot Hufflepuffs actually have enough sense to know that Potter isn’t the only attractive person in the school.

Not that Potter is at all attractive.

……

Perhaps I should just stop trying to ignore that… I mean I suppose it’s not a total stretch to say that he has a strange kind of beauty… in his own warped little scarred way. It’s not a crime for me to admit that, is it?

No… no. It’s a good thing. Yes.

At least this way it makes him a more worthy rival, right? If he were as worthless and unattractive as Longbottom or Crabbe or Goyle, perhaps, then it would just be unrealistic that he get so much attention, no matter who he supposedly defeated thirteen years ago.

Ungh, I hate…

Him.

Why is that so hard to write?

Something is getting to be seriously wrong with me. Perhaps I should consult the family Nurse… she’s bound by secrecy with spells and magical contracts so it’s not as though she could admit anything to anyone…. Except Father.

No… I can’t go to her. I can’t risk Father finding out about any of my recent… problems. He’d just punish me again to teach me to stop.

And I can’t deal with that. Besides…

I don’t know if I really want to stop…

------IIIII------

A/N: OMG DRACO WHAT DID YOU ADMIT? Hahahah he’s going to keep on pretending but we all know the truth about Draco’s feelings. Yes, we do. I’m having fun with this but I’m more happy that this year has ended so now I can move on to fourth year and then finally to fifth and sixth, which is what I’m looking forwards to. Problem is that chapters will likely get a little more sparse after this weekend because I’ve got exams X_X I’ll do my best to post with good time, but I hope you won’t give up on me! Love the reviews! They keep me writing my craziness down hehehe