Because Devil loves the angels and saint loves the sinners, I too love the poison, I too love the forbidden, and I too love the villain.
"Let's begin, shall we Mr. Malfoy?" The lady in the grey suit asked.
Draco nodded despite that he was chipping his nail off while sitting in that comfortable chair in front of her.
"Are you sure? If you’re uncomfortable, do tell us."
Draco nodded again, "I'm good. This chair is awfully comfortable."
The lady smiled and then nodded.
The sound of reel being put into a camera and it being set up was heard quite clearly. He hated this place instantly. He hated this but he knew he had no other option.
"Can you sign this consent, it just includes that this meeting is recorded for safety purposes?"
Draco nodded and signed the consent.
"Then let's begin. You have known Mr.Potter for how long?" The lady asked.
Draco pulled himself inward and responded, "From as long as I can imagine. We first met at Hogwarts. We didn't get along throughout our school life but we did when we hinged back together while we started working, which was almost 2 years ago."
"That's quite a long time to know someone, don't you think so?"
Draco shrugged, "I don't think you can ever really truly know a person."
The lady nodded, perhaps agreeing or maybe acknowledging that Draco could've been right.
"Over the course of your friendship,you developed feelings for Mr. Potter, isn’t it so?”
He nodded.
“So, when and how did you ever learn that you had feelings for him?"
Draco started to become a little more comfortable second and second and was starting to restore some confidence so that his voice didn't tremble anymore.
"I had pretty much always seen Harry as a friend, from the very moment we started working in the same office. It wasn't until we started working on Morgan's case that I realised that maybe I liked Harry more than just a friend, in a romantic way but I was never sure of how he felt about me, so I remained silent and in denial for a long time. I think it was our 3rd week of working together on the case when I realised my feelings."
She nodded and noted down something in her note pad then asked again, "When did you finally accept that you wanted to be with him?"
"Maybe when I realised he saw us more than just friends. Back then we hadn't even confessed our feelings but we were dropping hints to one another and I caught on during that time that I accepted my feelings and wanted to be with him." Draco explained calmly.
"So, when that happened, when both of you confessed your feelings, what happened then?" She asked as though she was genuinely curious.
Draco's face lit up with a small smile as he remembered the early days, when there were all rainbows and daisies, when things were a lot less complex, "It was in the heat of the moment that it came up. We were having a random conversation at a party and I suddenly confessed, probably a little drunk but I did and so did he, but nothing really happened till after a week. We let things slide during that time."
"And what after that week?"
"He asked me out on a date. Maybe to get a rise out of him I had told him that I'm seeing someone that weekend though I was unsure and maybe it worked, so he asked me out on a date and I didn't deny but I told him the truth on the date." Draco shrugged.
“And how did that date go?” She asked.
Draco smiled, “The best one I had ever been on.”
“How was the beginning of your relationship with him?”
Draco looked at his feet for a while, his fingers twitching. He took a little pause, then replied, “As good as anything can be. It was like everything I could ever ask for. The beauty of being with him and then just knowing that I had him in my life. The beginning was the best part, in my opinion. We couldn’t get a hold off on each other and it was scary, the way that we fell in love so quickly but it was so beautiful. I never spoke out loud to Harry, not my fears for that matter but I always felt that everything was too good to be true back then. I had never met anyone like Harry, and I loved every second of it. It was- it was the best. I wouldn’t change anything about it.”
She smiled, almost as if she knew what Draco was talking about. After all the beginnings are the most beautiful parts of the relationship.
“How did he make you feel?” She asked, again.
“I- He made me feel all the things I never knew I could feel,” Draco felt air choke in his lungs. It felt a little too much and his eyes cornered up with tears,
“I was born and bought up to believe that love was for the weak, that love made you vulnerable but he- he made it feel like the strongest thing in the world. That if I loved him and he loved me back, I could win all the battles in the world,” he took a deep breath, a smile etching upon his face, “He made me feel beautiful, that I was worth something way more than the world saw me. That I had everything in my life, he made me feel, he made me happy like I was on top of the world and its funny to say but he made me feel as though I was better than everybody else because he was with me. He made me feel better. Being with him was like- being in a patch of sunlight on cold winter nights--, it felt like skating through ice, or sitting over a rainbow-, he made me feel like I was in some other world, the one I had always dreamed of. He made me, happy.”
Draco chuckled as he felt tears prickle down his face.
“Tissue?” the lady offered and Draco took it and wiped those tears of.
“We can take a short break if you want?” She asked with a low tilt of her head for emphasis.
Draco shook his head, “I’m fine.”
She nodded and continued, “Do you have any idea of how you made him feel?”
He shrugged, “I can’t be sure. It was what he felt right? How could I had possibly known? But I always wished that I made him feel the same way he made me feel, you know. That I made him happier, that I too made him feel loved, made him believe in love, made him feel worthy of all good things.”
“Were there ever troubles in your relationship?”
“Of course, we had fights every now and then-”
“how did you overcome them?”
“We used to talk about it. The problem was, I always felt as if I was the problem, so I used to constantly apologize. Maybe because I had fucked up so much in my past that I always felt that I would fuck it up and I did not want to lose him, at all but we still used to fight, mostly silly things. We only had one big fight, just once when I said things I didn’t mean and he did the same. We didn’t talk for a while but then we worked it out, I cried that day, so did he. We always worked things out. We believed in good communication.” Draco explained.
She nodded and made a remark in her notepad once again, “Did you ever feel that he was growing distant at one point, that he ever pushed you away?”
Draco took a while to reply for that question. He nodded, “Only once. He had been working on some case and was returning home very late. I was starting to get worried and paranoid and he, I believe was maintaining a little space. It was in the beginning of the relationship.”
“But you really loved Harry and do you think he loved you the same way? The same unconditional way that you did?” She asked, her voice more softer than before, as if it hurt her the same way.
Draco smiled. He turned his head to see outside the window. It was a beautiful day outside, it was cold and foggy and it was raining but it was Draco’s favourite weather. He loved the rain, the pattering sound of water against the window, the earthly smell of mud, the petrichor, the sound of water hitting the road and the clouds tearing. He loved the rain. It made him feel calmer.
“I think I loved him too much,” a pause, “I often find myself thinking that maybe I loved him more than I was supposed to, more than I let myself believe. I did love him unconditionally, a little too much but he was just that lovable. I gave him my all. But I think he loved me too, at least I think so. He said he did but I don’t know how much of it was true. Somewhere I hope he loved me the way he told me did.”
“So, he made promises, a lot of them?”
“No. I did not believe in promises,so, we never made any but it was all just words.”
She took a little pause, drank a glass of water, offered Draco one too and then continued, “What's your fondest memory with him?”
Draco smiled again, “Think you’re making me emotional on purpose.”
The lady chuckled and shook her head.
Draco nodded, “All of them, It sounds strange but all of them, from the first date to the last one, from first conversation as a couple to the last one, every single one of them. He’s the bane of many memories that I’ll cherish my whole life. I loved every single second I spent with him, every single one of them.”
She smiled for a brief moment then perhaps as he profession has taught her, she turned serious and asked, “Would you had done anything in the world for him? Even if it was the most illegal thing in the world?”
The rain started pouring down more heavily after the thunder broke. The sound of the howling wind resonated the room and Draco despite that, found himself more calmer.
He took a deep breath but did not break his gaze from watching the rain and finally said, “I’m afraid I might’ve. That’s what scares me, the love I had for him. If he had stood before me with a gun and asked me to kill someone for him, I fear I might’ve done it.”
And even though the thought was scary, even though his answer was scary, they both knew Draco would’ve never done such a thing.
But she didn’t feel disturbed at all, in fact she asked again, “Do you think Harry would've done anything for you In the world?”
“I’m afraid so, yes.”
“You said you had been with him for an year, how was that one year?” She asked as if taking the conversation to a lighter side again since it had turned dark too soon.
“It was- the best. What we had, what we turned into, I would never change any of it for the world. It was beautiful, waking up next to each other, going out together. Its funny to think of it but we never got bored of each other, its like I’d spend an entire day with him and the moment he’d leave, i’ll miss him immediately. It was all about the spark- the electricity-,” he took a pause, a knot forming in his throat, “but all of it, it seemed as if I had been with him forever. I’m sorry- I don’t mean to cry but it’s- I’m sorry.” he choked on his own tears.
“We can come back to it later if you want?”
Draco shook his head, he cleared his throat and spoke again, “No- it’s just a little overwhelming talking about Harry. He meant the world to me and now, I don’t know how to explain. It feels emptier without him and when I talk about him, it just rips something inside.” his tears didn’t stop even though he was trying to control it, he couldn’t stop it. Maybe it was all the memories rushing back to him or the emptiness, or his feelings for Harry which made it almost unbearable to breath.
She nodded understandably and despite his denial, she gave him a little break. It was only moments later when Draco had calmed down further that she asked again, “Did you ever think about your future with him?”
Draco nodded.
“What did you see in your future?”
He was fidgeting his fingers when he took a deep breath and finally looked up at her to respond, “It was never really clear, our future. Like I said, I somewhere always felt it was all too good to be true, so, I often felt like things would come to an end way before I would even realise it but I used to think of moving in with him one day and all these scenarios I had in my head with him, like how we’d get a dog together or how we’d go furniture shopping, or maybe one day we would just be celebrating us far away from everyone else. That image though, it was very vague. I could never fully imagine my future with him but I liked to think of being with him, a lot longer than I believed for.”
“Do you think you would've eventually ended up being married to him? Did you ever think about it?“
Draco shook his head, “I never got that far, though I think I would’ve liked it one day.”
“What's the one thing about him that you'll never forget?” she asked.
Draco looked at the watch kept beside her on the table, it was ticking slowly or what seemed to him, or maybe it felt as though because this was the first time he was something so real in a really long time, or maybe it was entirely something else, he didn’t know.
“What he gave me, what he taught me, his smile, his words, his love. I’ll never forget how I loved him, how he loved me but most of all how he made me feel because I don’t think anyone will ever make me feel the same way.”
“why do you think so?” She asked as though that question wasn’t scripted, as if it had been her mere curiosity.
Draco however shrugged, “I don’t know. I can never think of it. Its just something I know. Maybe- its because we all love differently and all my life I was searching for that kind of love, that I was searching for him and I didn’t even know and when I finally got it- when I got him, I feel as if, I’ll never be the same. I never quite understand the entire reason though.”
“Did you ever think after a fight that you wanted to leave him alone and run away?” She asked, looking at her wrist watch. It was coming to a close.
“Never.”
“Why?”
“You don’t runaway from Home, you never do unless it abandons you, and he felt like Home. No matter what happened, I still loved him more than anything and I could not imagine a life without him.”
She finally took a deep breath, a long one and asked, “And did it feel real? Any of it?”
Draco felt as though his entire world had crashed, stopped. That if his life was a continuum, but it stopped right there, in those differences, or in that space, in that time, in that room with that camera still video taping him. Did it feel real? Did Harry feel real?
“It did. Even if it wasn’t all real, I know he could not have faked it all that much. You can’t fake that kind of love.” His eyes watered, his vision blurred and his voice trembled again. His hand shook. His legs shook and his brain as if slowed down.
It was real. He told his own heart, It was real. It could not have been fake. It could not have been. Harry would not fake love.
And yet, he hoped... he hoped it was real because he wasn’t brave, he didn’t have faith in his own love to believe that it was all real.
It felt real though, he couldn’t say it out loud.
“That night, what changed?” She finally asked, her stare dead serious, unlike Draco’s.
“Everything.”It came out as a low whisper. He wanted to run away now. He was done. He had answered enough. He wanted to go away. He knew what was coming, he knew what was next and he didn’t want to hear those words again, he didn’t want to.
“How did you feel when you realised that Harry is a murderer?”
And it stopped again, his world.
She asked him again because perhaps she had asked him twice in 5 minutes and he had still not answered. He didn’t know how to. He didn’t believe it but the worst thing, he knew it was true. He knew it and that truth was bitter than all the poison in the world.
That truth was poison itself and no bezoar could fix it.
“My Harry could never be a murderer.”
His Harry...