A/N: Revised version of this story. Now it's going to be DHr from Draco's POV. Hermione shall be introduced shortly, so hold on to your trousers. Let's meet Draco first. Don't forget to REVIEW! and tell me what you think.
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No Evidence
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Our family, our people, have often been criticized for our treatment of muggles—those without traditional wizarding blood. The problem can be traced to a divergence in views. Simply enough, to us, they're not human.
It's like an ape to a muggle—the genetic difference is almost as similar. They're a step below us on the food chain. And yes, this doesn't give us justification to torture them and kill them casually, but it puts it on a whole different plane.
I mean, muggles torture and kill monkeys—in their laboratories, or whatever they call them, they give them cancer and watch them die. And yes, while it's not exactly right, and it sits on the conscience of many, it's not completely wrong either.
The muggles in America—they have all these debates and stuff over their Constitution. Apparently the rights of people only apply to certain people—American citizens and suchlike. It's rather like that for us. The rights of wizards simply don't apply to muggles. They're a substandard species.
And so a mudblood, to me, a pureblood, a mudblood is like an ape that suddenly stood up and started talking. Shocking—and kind of gross. Because the difference between muggles and wizards isn't like that of Asians and Australians. It's like that of Humans and Aliens, Homo sapiens and Pongo pygmaeus.
They're weird. They're not normal. They're below us. And so, while it's not exactly justification, that's our logic.
Or, I should probably say, that was our logic. Because, ultimately, some people began to realize that it was flawed.
The tragic flaw, I suppose, was the fact that just because they were below us didn't justify torturing them, excluding them, killing them. If, in Granger's case, for example, they are just as good as us, there is no logical reason to not accept them.
That's where this little thing called prejudice comes in.
From there, it's really all downhill. I realized—and that's basically what this story is about—that I had been raised to believe in something obsolete. An old prejudice. There was no reason to still follow it.
So I stopped.
After that, I realized that muggles, too, are normal, even people, overcame my aversion to them, and so on. I'm still not Draco Muggle-Lover Malfoy, but I don't want to go out and torture and kill every single last one, either. I don't believe they are a pollution to our planet.
It wasn't quite as easy as I make it seem. It took a long time, and a lot of pushing. While I hadn't been abused and beaten as a child, I didn't have a traumatizing past or any sort of thing to get over, I had to break away from everything I'd ever been taught.
I remember the first time I stepped out of my childhood. It was the first time I allowed the mantle of naivety I wore to fall. Maybe it was the only time, too, but I'm not really sure. It never came back.
All children have the wool pulled over their eyes, at least a little. Everyone idolizes their parents; they say that's why two year olds are called "terrible twos," because children start to realize that the world is no longer restricted to them. Only, most children have this internal revolution at the age of two or three. Mine was at eleven.
I was always a late bloomer.
It's quite simple, really. Cliche, probably. Who couldn't he save? Obviously, Harry Potter saved everyone. Dredged them up from the deepest, darkest, depths of despair and saved their sorry skins.
I might be a little prejudiced against him, because the way I look at it, he stole my innocence. Took it. Maybe he used it for himself, I don't know, but he always did seem dreadfully clueless.
Or maybe I lost it on my own. But admitting that would entail losing the last remaining shard that I've been holding on to since that moment.
I still dream about it sometimes; the moment I first realized that my childhood might not have been like everyone else.
For one thing, I bet most kids weren't given 200 galleons a week as pocket money.
One thing I know for sure, really know, is that my parents loved me. They loved me above all else, and my mother risked her life for me. More than once, I'm sure. Even my father, harsh as he could be sometimes, he loved me too. He loved me with the fierce, proud, biting love that was all a harsh and life-hardened man had to offer. But they loved me all the same, and that's what counts.
My mother was the traditional one. She showed her love in obvious ways—pampering me, spoiling me atrociously, sending me sweets and letters at Hogwarts, smoothing my hair off my face, singing to me at night when she thought I was asleep. Even when I was gawky and gangly as a teenager with a pointy face, she would smile at me adoringly and tell me I was the best, handsomest, smartest boy in the whole entire world.
In the eyes of my mother, I could do no wrong. Not that I didn't try, especially during those angst-ridden teenage years. But even when I was inaugurated in to the sect that (I now realize) my mother had always secretly despised, she still loved me, and approved of me, and ultimately, saved me.
Yes, it was my mother who saved me, that day.
I wasn't always aware of my father's deep and all-encompassing love. He was a hard man, emotions other than contempt rarely played across his face. He, too, always provided me with every material item for which a young boy could wish. But for the longest time, I couldn't shake off the feeling that he didn't know. He didn't quietly accept, like the soft love of my mother. Instead, he questioned, searched, and then he understood. I understood, too, eventually.
He would never stoop so low as to play with me, but he managed to provoke my fun in subtle ways. My father bought me my first broom, and encouraged the riding of it. He took me to work, exalted me in subtle ways compared to the incessant praising of mother, made me feel like a man.
But the way I knew he truly cared, was the first time I failed. I dragged my feet and hemmed and hawed, sure that I was about to face a wrath incomparable to any which I had ever known. My tortured conscience imagined beatings, crucios, or huge rows at best.
Instead, I received a nod, an impassive face, and a twinkle in his eye I was sure I imagined it. There was no anger, no disappointment, no superhuman expectations for the idolized son. I was shocked, more so than I would have been if he had raged and screamed and thrown my failed Charms exam in to the fire.
Instead, a nod, a flickering glance, and he pointed to the first question.
"The summoning charm?" He asked, not a trace of sarcasm in his voice at the fact that I had failed such an obvious question.
"Yeah…" I managed abashedly, trying to convey my shame at failing but disdain for the subject at the same time.
"No Draco, what is it?" He asked, and shocked, I mumbled out a quiet "accio."
"Spell it," he commanded, and I was stumped. "A-C-C-I-O," he said slowly, and we went through the entire test like this, until I could conjure the answers the first time, and repeat them word for word.
That was true love, I realized. He loved me, even with my flaws, and perhaps he always would. Years later, when Voldemort (yes, I can say his name now) had set me to the impossible task, which was doomed to failure, I was allowed to go home. That summer, the summer after sixth year, the summer after I had failed to kill Dumbledore, I had gone home, and all was as it should be.
My mother was perhaps a little paler than she should be, my father in Azkaban. But there were no cursings, rejections, banishments. I was allowed to just be.
And so, the answer is no. No, I did not have a tortured, anxious adolescence with Death-eater parents who beat me and forced me to witness ritual rapes of muggles. No, not in the least. I had a fairly normal childhood, I believed.
That is, until I shook hands with Harry Potter in Madame Malkins. Up until the point when I asked him to play with me, instead of Weasley. Until I was rejected. As I left, turning dramatically upon my heel, Crabbe and Goyle already following me around, I felt something break.
I would never have that easy friendship; those intimate laughs and secret shared moments. I had been raised to be aloof, reserved, to show as little emotion as possible. I would never open myself up to another. Basically, I would never fall in love.
That was when I realized that I was not entirely normal—even less than the average unique person. For, whether or not there is evidence, for good or for worse, I was alone. I was raised to be alone, to stand alone, to die alone. I would be forever alone.
I was not depressed and internally tearing myself apart. Being alone and undesirable did not make me a nice, pity-worthy person. It fed in to my anger and resentment, and ultimately, it made me in to the person I am today.
But then she came.
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