A brief history of Draco Malfoy.

It is best begun, not at the beginning as most tales usually do, but when he first met a most extraordinary boy by the name of Harry Potter. It took place in Madam Malkin's Robes for Every Occasion:

"Hullo" said the boy, "Hogwarts too?"
"Yes," said Harry.
"My father's next door buying my books and mother's up the street looking at wands," said the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice. "Then I'm going to drag them off to look at racing brooms. I don't see why first-years can't have their own. I think I'll bully father into getting me one and I'll smuggle it in somehow."
Harry was strongly reminded of Dudley.
"Have you got your own broom?" the boy went on.
"No," said Harry.
"Play Quidditch at all?"
"No," Harry said again, wondering what on earth Quidditch could be. "I do Father says it's a crime if I'm not picked to play for my house, and I must say, I agree. Know what house you'll be in yet?"
"No," said Harry, feeling more stupid by the minute.
"Well, no one really knows until they get there, do they, but I know I'll be in Slytherin, all our family have been imagine being in Hufflepuff, I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?"
"Mmm" said Harry, wishing he could say something a bit more interesting.
"I say, look at that man!" said the boy suddenly, nodding towards the front window. Hagrid was standing there, grinning at Harry and pointing at two large ice-creams to show he couldn't come in.
"That's Hagrid," said Harry, pleased to know something the boy didn't. "He works at Hogwarts."
"Oh," said the boy, "I've heard of him. He's sort of a servant, isn't he?"
"He's the gamekeeper," said Harry. He was liking the boy less and less every second.
"Yes, exactly. I heard he's a sort of savage lives in a hut in the school grounds and every now and then he gets drunk, tries to do magic, and ends up setting fire to his bed."
"I think he's brilliant," said Harry coldly.
"Do you?" said the boy, with a slight sneer. "Why is he with you? Where are your parents?"
"They're dead," said Harry shortly. He didn't feel much like going into the matter with this boy.
"Oh, sorry," said the other, not sounding sorry at all. "But they were our kind, weren't they?"
"They were a witch and a wizard, if that's what you mean."
"I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you? They're just not the same, they've never brought up to know our ways. Some of them have never even heard of Hogwarts until they get the letter, imagine. I think they should keep it in the old wizarding families. What's your surname, anyway?"
Before Harry could answer, Madam Malkin said, "That's you done, my dear," and Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop talking to the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
"Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose" said the drawling boy.

And now, into the past of Draco Malfoy.

It is a wonder and a tragedy to hear such prejudices spill from the innocent lips of a young boy; but unfortunately not an uncommon thing at all. As children as young as Draco have no grounds to come up with such accusations by themselves, it must come from the influences greatest in his young life; his parents. The Malfoy's thoughts about 'Mudbloods' and 'Pure Bloods' are hardly a secret well kept, and they felt no shame in imparting their particular brand of 'wisdom' on their young, impressionable, and only son. It is no suprise, therefore, that Draco felt so at ease to share his forced opinion on the boy he met in the Robe shop; the first other wizarding boy he had met outside of his parents' influence, and so the only one who did not share his veiws. It was not for him to know that these opinions were not highly thought of in all company.

The next point draws us outside of the wizarding world, to the muggle world. Draco, like many other young witches and wizards, before the day of their acceptance letter into Hogwarts, attended muggle primary school, to grasp a basic knowledge in that which they would need before entering the fantastical world of magic. Picture this young boy; startlingly fair hair and bright blue eyes, deathly thin and hauntingly gaunt, coming from a grand home, from a rich family who is whispered about in the streets as strange and to be avoided, as an only child, pampered from these erethral parents. He was the child in the corner. The one the other children would not or could not talk to. He sat with darting eyes, picking at his fingernails, and trying not to listen to the whispers around him, about him. He tried not to notice that there was a bubble around him of about a metre wide, into which no classmates strayed, of which even teachers tiptoed around. Quiet to the point of muteness. Shy to the point of invisibility. The times his estranged bubble was peiced was not by friendly faces, not even by embraces by his parents. It was penetrated by rude hands which pushed the boy to the ground, leaving him sprawled while they galloped away again, leaving a trail of laughs behind them. These bullies were not reprimanded by teachers, but were praised by fellow classmates for being so brave as to go near the haunting child. Draco grew up in the knowledge that to be cruel was to be loved.

And now we round back, to this conversation with the famous Harry Potter.

Draco had no idea who he was talking to at the time. It was simply another boy. He was not Crabbe nor Goyle, who were the closest he had to friends, who he knew only through his parents' connections. This was someone he was determined to speak up to, possibly for the first time in his life. He set out with the intention of leaving his old self, his quiet and fearsome self, behind.

But, to his dismay, he is unsuccessfull. A few tactless comments, meant only to gain a better understanding of this new boy, or to induce humour, go astray. His parents ideals leaking through his own mouth sully the meeting further, unbeknownst to him. To pair this with the boy's - Harry Potter's - preconception that an only child born into wealth must be one of the enemy (founded by his terrible cousin Dudley), Draco did not stand a chance in his first endevour of friendship.

He had tried being meek.
He had tried being friendly.
He had had no success.

But he remembers the boys from the playground, who pushed him down and kept him 'in his place'. He remembered watching the games these boys played from afar, the laughs they shared with their many friends.

What was he to think, other than that this was the way one had to be in order to be happy.

A childhood of bad memories. One bad encounter. It is all that is needed to turn a good child, into an enemy. A villian.