The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity is to feel pain. That's what my grandmother said to me once when I was ten years old. She was a formidable lady, old fashioned in the sense of children should be seen and not heard, with a sharp tongue that knew how to cut you to your very core and the patented Malfoy sneer. Her heart had shrivelled up and turned to dust years before she actually did and the blood in her veins had long been replaced with ice (both descriptions just theory and not actual fact). Truth be told she used to scare the hell out of me, she had perfected the art of giving you one of those looks that you'd fear would strike you dead.
I'm not sure why that particular comment stuck with me all these years, back then I had no idea what she meant after all I was only ten (and talking to a ten year old boy about things such as love was bound to go over my head) but it did. I never really put much thought into it until I turned fourteen and suddenly decided that what she was telling me was that it was best not to love at all as love caused pain, pain was weakness and weakness was not tolerated in my family. So, at fourteen years old, I firmly closed the door on any ideas of love. It was surprisingly easy due to the fact that my entire family had the emotional depth of a teaspoon. You'd think I'm exaggerating but truthfully I had no idea what a hug was until I had a sleepover at a friends house and their mother hugged me. I stood their thinking I was being assaulted and staring daggers at my so called friend for bringing me to this crazy house. Talk about awkward.
I suppose, thinking about it, my own mother had her own quiet ways of showing me affection. They mostly consisted of nit picking at my manners and appearance but they say a mothers love is unconditional and she unconditionally stuck to messing with my hair so that counts, right? Mother always meant well but between Father and her I think more harm was done than good. Mother never stood up to Father and Father always got what he wanted, just like a true Malfoy. I used to strive to be like him, so cold and cruel and proud, what a fool I was, what a fool I've always been.
Going back to grandmother, she despised Father with a passion only my family could manage. To this day I never found out why and if you asked my Father he'd say she did it out of spite, just because she could and if you asked my Mother she'd say she has no idea why'd what you're talking about. Father was a champion in ignoring her, actually he was a champion in ignoring everyone he deemed beneath him. His idea of affection was endless berating and degrading of anything and everything I did, which only became worse when Grandmother was around as her favourite past time was to do the same to him.
The greater your capacity to love, the greater your capacity is to feel pain. Those words had an affect on me, whether or not I knew it then, they haunted the back of my mind and I didn't realise it until now but there's a lesson in those words. Maybe if I had considered all possibilities of those words I wouldn't be in this mess but I was a ten year old boy back then, how was I suppose to understand? Grandmother never gave me anything else but those words, not until the day she died but that's a story for another time