"Sometimes crying helps."
His pale hair brushed against the back of my hand and his weight upset my balance. I fought hard to regain it, to not fall with him again. His tears flowed freely and the sobs broke my heart. This was not a man who would cry on a young girl, but yet because of the cruelty of events here we were. I thought back to all the fear that I had ever felt and none of it really scared me as much as this. How fucked up could everything be if Draco Malfoy was crying on my shoulder, shuddering and sobbing like he was never going to quit. Tears stung my own eyes and I sniffled. Hearing my small noise Draco straightened himself, but the tears were still rolling down his face. I wiped at my eyes, desperate to keep this moment going. I opened my mouth to say something but realized that I had no idea what I could possibly say after what had just happened. Draco began breathing rhythmically, trying to calm himself. He wiped at his own tears and pushed his blonde hair away from his face. The red rimming of his eyes made him look younger somehow. But the pain in them told of his past and the years that he had endured under Voldemort's cruel gaze.
Conjuring the bravery that I had found earlier when he had scared me I said: "Why did you do it all, Draco? Why did you let your parents drag you into his circle? You could have escaped all the pain that you have been through." His eyes hardened and I immediately regretted the words. For a moment I was afraid that he might hit me or hex me but he did not.
"You don't understand, no one does. When your family is controlled by the Dark Lord you don't have a choice. I tried to fight it. I didn't want this. But I wanted my mother to be safe. I needed to protect her, and to protect myself. My father was a coward who couldn't do anything by himself. He feared the Dark Lord and didn't have the back bone to protect either of us. I did all this to keep my family safe. But she didn't care. She hated that I felt that way about my father. She tried to protect him. She cared about me and protected me from him, but she was always loyal and it is why she got drug with him. I told her what to do, I told her that because she saved Potter that they would forgive her and she could be happy. But she wouldn't. She stood by him and left me to deal with everything on my own." Hatred dripped from his voice. I knew all the problems that I had faced from the fact that my family had merely been in Slytherin house, I could only imagine all that Draco had to deal with.
He turned, his eyes steely and resolved again and slowly walked back to the castle leaving me to puzzle over how a boy who was know for his loyalty to his family could seem to feel such a hatred for them.
