do you have to live quite so relentlessly in the real world?

It's lovely - he's a complicated character all right (but oh, the potential!) and I do just love the way you write him. It *is* tough growing up surrounded by that sort of expectation; just as tough, in a lot of ways, as growing up as the Boy Who Lived. At least Harry was on the "good guy" side of the line; poor Draco, through no fault of his own but of his family, was very definitely not. He never got the character development he deserved in the books (I was so looking forward to Deathly Hallows because I figured that after HBP he would finally be advanced to an actual character and not a plot device, but then JKR totally dropped the ball and I was thoroughly disappointed), which of course leaves lots of space for fic-writers...marvellous stuff. :D