Disclaimer- I Don't Own Harry Potter.

Read on, please review

"Not So Different"

Harry stared at the black board darkly. Compared to any other detention he had suffered, this was the worst. He would have even taken Umbridge's sadistic punishment to this. No lines, no trophy polishing, just sitting at this desk.

Locked in a room for three hours.

With Draco Malfoy.

Nothing had passed between the two yet. They had simply come in and sat down as far apart from each other as the room allowed. Draco was at the back of the room, glaring at the back of Harry's head. Harry was in the front row, burning imaginary holes in the blank black board.

Harry heard Draco snort derisively. "What?" he snapped.

"You really did it this time, Potter," the platinum blonde replied.

"You're the one who tried to jinx me, Malfoy," Harry bit back.

McGonagal had finally tired of the two sixteen-year-olds' bickering and locked them in a room with orders to sort their problems out.

"You deserve everything you get," Draco muttered, crossing his arms and hunching down. They dropped into another tense, ten-minute silence.

Harry finally snapped. He jumped up and started pacing. "What makes you think you're so much better than me? I come from a pureblood family, too. And the Potters were a lot higher ranking than any Malfoy, from what I've heard. What do you have to prove?"

"I don't have to prove anything to you, Potter," Malfoy spat. "You don't even know anything about my family. You think that just because you defeated the Dark Lord once, you can do it again?"

"I don't really have a choice in the matter, now do I?" Harry leaned furiously against a wall.

A whisper came from Malfoy then, barely perceptible. "Neither did I."

"What was that?"

"Neither did I!" Malfoy yelled. His hands were knotted in his blonde hair, and Harry imagined for a second that he saw a tear leak from his enemy's bloodshot eyes.

Harry ran a hand through his tousled hair. "What...exactly...do you mean?"

Malfoy ground his teeth and jumped out of his seat, pulling his left sleeve up as he stormed towards Harry. Harry saw, branded on Malfoy's forearm, the Dark Mark. He had known that the brand was present, but he was still shocked.

"Do you really think I joined him willingly?" Draco hissed.

"Yeah, actually, I did."

Draco laughed bitterly. "It has become a tradition in my family to be a Death Eater. You see, the Dark Lord showed up at the manor after I returned home, after your little party at the Ministry, and told Mother that I had to make up for Father's bumbling."

Harry looked down at his shoes, pitying Malfoy and feeling guilty for making assumptions.

"So," Draco said quietly, his face blank, "I had no choice. I didn't want to be like this. If I had known it would be like this, I would never have turned out like I did."

"Malfoy..."

"Don't. I shouldn't have said anything," he said, turning away haughtily.

Malfoy stayed quietly in the same place for a moment before walking to a desk and sitting on top of it. Harry continued to stare at him. Malfoy decided to stop him.

"You'd never know it, but my father is violent. I would never live through turning down the Dark Lord, because father would kill me. He hates me," Malfoy said casually, as though talking about a particularly boring article in their History of Magic books.

Harry frowned deeply. He knew how abuse went. Vernon was no stranger to is. "I know how that feels."

"No, you don't Potter."

"They may love me here, but my life during the summer is hell, and has been siince I was four. I've had too many broken bones to count, and no one ever cared. Hogwarts was my first home, my first family." harry sat on the desk beside Draco, and put his head in his hands. "I was forced to live in a tiny cupboard that barely fit a cot, and I was locked in it for doing the smallest thing wrong. My cousin could make something up and get me locked up for a month. Nobody noticed. Nobody cared. When my uncle drinks, he takes anything that happened to him that week out on me. Not even magic could save me most of the time."

"So we've both been abused by the people who were supposed to protect us, and we'ved been locked into a destiny that neither of us want." Draco paused thoughtfully. "Maybe we aren't so different."

Harry though deeply about Draco's words. He was right. bth lived in abusive situations, both were backed into corners...opposite corners, but corners nonetheless. While Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived, the savior of the wizarding world, Draco was a pawn of Voldemort, a slave to his whim.

"You're right," Harry said. "We're not so different after all."

This came to me after I read another fanfiction, I can't remember which one. But it included Malfoy making reparations for things he and his family had done. I hope you enjoyed it!