Kneeling

The man screamed in fury and barely resisted putting his fist through the mirror. He punched the wall instead, barely noticing the sharp pain in his knuckles. That fucking stupid bastard brat! He had been so close to breaking down and telling Lucius, and then, out of the blue, he seemed to have changed his mind.

What was up with the brat? He’d never displayed any signs of any kind of character strength before. Why on earth did he have to start now, of all times? The damn potion was costing him an arm and a leg, and getting it smuggled into the castle posed a not inconsiderable risk that was increasing with every time he had to do it. His perfect revenge plan was turning out to be a whole lot more work than he had anticipated.

Still, by now he had invested way to much time, money and work into this to just give up. He would give it some more time, see what happened.

At least the show was interesting. He wouldn’t have suspected that Harry had it in him. Watching him putting that arrogant brat down had been its own kind of reward. He sighed and leaned back in his chair. He had to admit that he was curious where things would go from here.


***********


Harry drew his legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees, but he could do nothing to still the shaking of his hands. Obviously, he was not one of the good guys. Strangely enough, it was the biggest revelation he’d ever had about himself. Finding out that he was a wizard couldn’t even begin to compare to this.

His life had always been kind of black and white - on the one side were the Dursleys, who were clearly the bad guys, he’d never had any doubt of that - had always been utterly convinced that they were wrong when they treated him like he was worthless, just like they were wrong when they told him that his parents had been worthless. Finding out who he was, who his parents had been, had proven him gloriously right - his parents had been heroes, and he, himself, was a hero, too, albeit an unwitting one - and as uncomfortable as that thought had made him, even then, it had also fit right in with the image he had of himself as the good guy.

And then there had been Voldemort - and with an enemy like that, so utterly, irredeemable evil that he made the Dursleys’ petty vindictiveness seem completely insignificant in comparison, how could he himself have been anything less than a shining hero?.
But now? It was as if his whole life had suddenly been turned upside down, and he didn’t know where he was standing anymore. He couldn’t pretend that he was the good guy in this particular scenario, hadn’t been for a long time, even if it had taken a drastic event to make him realize it.

God, the look on Draco’s face - he felt sick, disgusted with himself, thinking of what he had done. Their relationship had been wrong from the beginning, based more on contempt and selfishness than anything he could justify feeling even for a casual bedpartner. He hadn’t been thinking, hadn’t cared about anything other than his own pleasure, his own selfish desires. The fact that Malfoy’s motivations had probably not been much different didn’t make it any better - in fact, it made it worse. Hadn’t he always prided himself on being better than him, on being the good guy where Malfoy belonged to the villains?

But what had happened tonight had gone beyond that. He hadn’t been thinking clearly, his mind clouded with the worry of the past few days, with the rage about what had been done to Lupin. But that was no excuse. Nothing could excuse what he had done, mistreating Draco like that. In his mind it had been Lucius he was punishing, but it was Draco who had ended up hurt - again. God, he should have known after the first time, because that - using Malfoy, punching him - that had clearly not been something a good guy would ever do.

And still that was nothing compared to what he had done today. He shuddered. God, it was worse than anything Dudley had ever done - he couldn’t remember a single time that Dudley, cruel as he was, had ever humiliated anyone as badly as he had done to Draco today.
This rage, this capability for hate, was not something he’d ever thought to find in himself. But he couldn’t ignore the knowledge. It was there, in the way he’d coldly calculated the most effective way to hurt Malfoy, the way the only reason that he hadn’t resorted to physical violence was that he had seen a more effective way to hurt him - the way he’d used sex to do that, to punish and humiliate. The selfish way he’d used Draco even before that, letting him tend to Harry’s pleasure without ever making an effort at retaliation. And the worst thing was, he’d been feeling in the right.

Maybe that is how it started for Voldemort, he thought suddenly. He’d never thought about that before, but there had to have been some kind of turning point for him. He hadn’t been born as Voldemort - he’d been Tom Riddle first, young and good-looking and charming, and not yet evil.

Maybe he’d been feeling something like this, too - this sense of entitlement, of feeling that the world owed him something for the things he’d missed - loving parents, for one thing, just as Harry had. He’d always flinched from the parallels between their lifes, but he knew he couldn’t allow himself to do that anymore, not if he didn’t want to end up like him.

God, he didn’t want to become that. He wouldn’t. He’d take care of that, starting right now. He would apologize to Draco. Offer to make amends. He was pretty sure that Draco would make him do something horribly embarrassing in retaliation, and that probably in public, and maybe he’d beat him up for good measure, but despite the way his stomach clenched at the thought he didn’t allow himself to back down. He’d never be able to live with himself again if he didn’t do what he could to make up for what he had done.

He owed that to Draco, and he owed it to himself just as much.