Disclaimer: I do not own anything except the plot. All the original characters belong to J. K. Rowling.
AN: Thank you EmDani522 for beta-ing this chapter. You are awesome!
This is my first Dramione multi-chapter fic ever, so your reviews would mean the world to me.
I wrote a one-shot, 'The First Friend' as a sort of background to this story. Do check it out and review.
Also, I recently joined Tumblr, so feel free to seek me out there if you ever want to catch up. I'm still new so there isn't much there, but I'm working on it. My tumblr is sparkleme26 .
But you see, it's not me, it's not my family
In your head, in your head, they are fighting
With their tanks, and their bombs,
And their bombs, and their guns
In your head, in your head they are crying.
- Zombie, The Cranberries
~O~
The woman looked down at the girl that lay barely conscious at her feet and laughed, a sinister sound that rang in the whole room. Her black hair was wild and unruly, a cold cruel look in her heavy lidded eyes.
"Hermione Granger," Bellatrix almost sang as she bent down and grabbed her hair in a fist. "Tell me what else you took from the vault? Tell me! Crucio!" she shrieked, almost madly, as Hermione cried out in pain.
"We didn't take anything," Hermione cried as she lay writhing on the cold floor, and she let out another piercing scream.
"Liar," her torturer sneered as she started carving on the girls arm while she screamed and cried in pain.
The boy stood to the side watching, wishing against hope that he could somehow stop his aunt from torturing his classmate even though he himself hated her. He could see the word 'mudlood' carved on her arm, blood dripping from it. 'Mudblood,' a word he himself had called her countless number of times, he realised as his stomach churned with guilt and something that resembled helplessness.
"Crucio!' Bellatrix pointed her wand again at the girl at her feet as she let out a blood curdling scream.
"No!" Draco screamed as his eyes shot open and he sat up with a start, confused at his surroundings.
He looked around at his bedroom, painfully aware of the fact that this was the same house he had watched his classmate and so many others being tortured and even killed.
It had been five months since the war that had defeated Voldemort once and for all, but he remembered everything clearly, no matter how hard he tried to forget. The memories kept creeping back in his nightmares and did not even spare his waking moments. His own conscience haunted him the most.
After all, here he was, Draco Malfoy, alive and well. A survivor of the war, but a survivor who has spent too long fighting from the wrong side of the battle only to realise that everything he had been raised to believe and fight for was a cold, cruel, manipulative lie.
He had been raised to serve and worship someone who wouldn't even flinch before finishing him off lest he ever became a liability.
He shuddered at the thought of how many people Voldemort had made him torture, made him do his bidding under the threat of killing him and his family. And where did that lead him? After all, his father was in Azkaban and his mother was almost on the verge of death, weak and frail.
For what, he thought, so they could rule over muggles who never caused them any harm?
He now realised how pointless all of that was and how foolish he had been to follow the footsteps of his father. Lucius Malfoy believed that pureblood wizards were superior to everyone else and were meant to rule. His father was cruel, Draco had to admit that. He truly believed in what he was fighting for and Draco had spent all his life trying to impress him, not even realising he was turning into someone he never truly wanted to be.
~O~