This is turning out to be an epic story. I find that rather funny since
this was going to be a short little ditty to hone my writing skills. It
was to be about five or six chapters but it came alive and won't leave me
alone at all. I've even thought of how I could sequel it- and it's still a
ways from being done. Anyway, just wondering if anyone else has noticed
any improvement in my work over time because I've reread the whole thing
and I sure have.
On a similar note, I have again been struck by inspiration. This story was mostly a two axis story - Harry and Colin and Ron and the Spirit. Now it is tri-axial with Harry/Colin, Ron/Spirit, and Hermione/Draco. Now don't worry, it won't be a lovey thing, she's already taken (do you know by whom?). The actions of those two will be related a bit more now and I think add greatly to the story. Just stand by for some Malfoy. Happy reading…
The day in which we saw some frisbeeing, a really tormented Draco, a caring Crabbe and Goyle (surprised? Me too), and a crying Hermione has passed. Most of the people involved in the events had gotten themselves back into the norm, except for Draco.
Draco wandered the halls of the dungeons early the next morning. He had slept hardly three hours and he felt like a too-tightly wound spring. It seemed as if the skin he wore was made for someone a few months younger, hard pressed to keep everything in. He stopped a moment to look into a classroom door's glass. Yep, it looked like Draco Malfoy in the reflection, but he didn't feel like him anymore. Draco pushed a lock of hair back from his face and strode on.
He thought back to yesterday when he came from his room and found Crabbe and Goyle standing in the doorway keeping everyone else from entering. He glanced on the clock behind him and saw that it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. Those two had been standing guard outside his door for almost four hours. Draco felt many things at that moment. One was that they were stupid oafs for staying in the same spot for that long. Another, and this was the stronger of the feelings, was that they were far from stupid, way beyond that. They were caring about him. Like a real friend would.
A thought like that would never have crossed Draco's mind a scant week before. He would have called them morons and pushed past them like old women at the market, not that Draco Malfoy had ever stepped foot in a market, of course. Instead of pushing past the two boys rudely, he looked at the two of them a few seconds before speaking. The typical Malfoy insult didn't follow the inspection, but instead he simply said one word. "Thanks." The two nodded and gave slight smiles and let him pass.
He wasn't quite sure, but Draco thought that he surprised the two of them more than himself by his reply. They seemed prepared for the normal insult, and weren't about to flinch from it. When they didn't receive it, they smiled at him. No one smiled around him unless it is out of meanness or a plan for future meanness. Now what the hell was the deal? He obviously wasn't the old Draco Malfoy anymore, so exactly who the hell was he? Or more importantly, was the fact that he wasn't the old Draco Malfoy anymore a bad thing?
He was passing another classroom and when he looked into the glass in the door this time, he could have sworn that just for a second he saw his father in it. He even heard his father's voice in his head after the last questioning thought. "Draco," it said, "you'd better be the old Draco Malfoy when I see you next." Draco shivered uncontrollably for almost a minute. He finally got himself under control and looked back in the glass. No Lucius Malfoy in there. Only in his head. But the voice in Draco's mind said almost exactly what the real thing would have said.
"Why do I have to be a bloody Malfoy anyway?" he asked no one. The other voice in Draco's head, his little and abused conscious, spoke to him for the first time in a while. "You don't have to be a Malfoy, Draco, only yourself, you know. You can be your own person, not just your father's son."
The voice quieted down and let him think about that. It was right, he decided, but it wasn't as easy as it might seem. He couldn't just walk up to his father and say, "Hey pops, I think I've let you run my life long enough, so be so kind as to stick yourself up your own ass." That just screamed out life-ending beating. "Dammit all," he said to the wall behind him as he returned to his House to prepare for the day.
He walked into his room and grabbed his shower items, casting a glance over the still-sleeping forms of the other four boys in his room. Snores poured from under the blankets of either Crabbe or Goyle, Draco wasn't quite sure. It could easily be either of them. He smiled absently at that. "Did I just smile at their snoring?" he asked himself. Then his next thought about knocked him to the floor in it's suddenness. "I've known them for this long and I'm not sure which one snores like that." Why that was such a powerful and apparently important thought eluded Draco as he turned on the water. He pondered it for a minute more and then relaxed as sound of the water cleared his mind as well as his body.
Draco finished showering and dressed and began to prepare the 'Malfoy look'. He gelled his hair back, making sure that it was in perfect place. He picked any loose thread and lint ball from his robes. Once again checking his hair, he had another of those rogue thoughts, as he'd come to call them. "Why are you doing all this, Draco?"
"Because, this is what I've always done."
"Why?" the voice asked again before falling silent. Draco didn't have an answer for it. He looked in the mirror and found that he had absolutely no idea whatsoever. He shook his head, carefully so as to avoid mussing it up, and left the bathroom. Once back in the bedroom, he noticed that his two friends ("Are they really friends," he asked himself) had already gotten up and left the room. Draco half scowled at that detail. It seemed that they were going to forego bathing again today. Draco reminded himself to not sit too close to them.
He left the bedroom and made his way to the common room and he noticed it was full of students, as it should be. He was making his way over to his two friends (he had decided that yes they were friends) when he was called to by another Slytherin standing by the two.
"Hey Draco, want to help us hex the Gryffindor's plates before breakfast?"
Without a second thought, Draco replied, "No." He looked to Crabbe and Goyle and said to them, "Let's eat, guys." Saying that they were surprised was a gross understatement. Usually, the answer would have been a resounding yes. But he simply blew it off and walked to the door. Crabbe and Goyle exchanged puzzled glances and followed Draco out of the room.
"Did I say 'no'?" Draco asked himself as he headed up the steps toward the Great Hall. He replayed the incident in his mind a half dozen times and each time he found that he did in fact say no. This puzzled the fire out of him. Why would Draco Malfoy, Gryffindor hater extraordinaire, not help belittle them? "Because that's not you," the voice in his head told him. He walked on, thinking.
As he rounded the corner and took the steps down he looked at the people around him. To his left he saw a boy he knew only as Smythe, his last name. He'd been in Slytherin for four years now and Draco had no idea of his first name. To his right was Pansy, one of the few people he called by their first name. Actually, now that he thought about it, he could likely count the first names he knew on one hand, maybe two if he thought real hard. "And these are to be my friends," he said to himself as he reached the bottom of the steps.
Draco slowed his pace considerably, causing most of Slytherin house to pass around him and continue on their merry way. Crabbe and Goyle stayed at his pace, just behind him. Pansy slowed for a second and turned to him and received a furrowed brow and cold stare for her effort. She sped up and rejoined the rest of the students. "Whatever becomes of me, I'll never be able to stand her," he told himself and smiled. "Even a Hufflepuff's patience would be sorely tested on her," he thought and smiled a bit bigger. He entered the Great Hall with Crabbe and Goyle a good thirty seconds behind the others.
"Draco, what's going on with you today?" Goyle asked, genuinely concerned.
"Nothing," Draco snapped, then was surprised at himself. "Well, that's not entirely true," he said in a reconciliatory tone. "I honestly don't know, Goyle." they took their seats well away from the others in the house, at the end of the table far from the usual Draco Malfoy spot. The boys had just begun digging into their breakfast when mail came in. Draco never had been fond of getting letters from home, and this morning was no different. He was looking absently across the room and happened to see Granger catch a letter dropped to her. The same owl dropped a letter to Weasley next and sped out the way it came. She opened it and Draco saw a quick pain spread across her face, quick in that it was covered almost before it showed. Draco knew that trick and knew it well.
He would have watched her further but he received a letter of his own. "Great, it's from home," He thought as he slowly opened the end of the letter. Draco steeled himself for the verbal abuse he knew was coming and he unfolded the parchment. He read on, getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Son," the letter said, "It has come to my attention that your marks in Transfiguration are less than satisfactory. It has also come to my attention that many of the accursed Gryffindors in your class have higher marks than you, especially the Mudblood Granger…" The letter went on another four paragraphs outlining Lucius' displeasure with his son and the things that would occur if the marks didn't improve. The last line, seemingly an afterthought, read "Your mother wishes you well."
Draco felt his face redden, part from shame and part from anger. He crumpled the parchment up and stuck it in his robes to dispose of in the fireplace a bit later. All he felt now was impotent rage to his father. No longer hungry, Draco pushed his plate away from him and tried to think of something else.
"Goyle," he said, "I mean Gregory, what's your favorite color?" Draco had no idea where that come from. Gregory Goyle looked at him in surprise, more from being called Gregory than the question.
"Um, well, I guess green."
"No, what is *your* favorite color? What color do you like?"
"Um, red?"
"Is it red? There isn't a right or wrong answer, you know."
"Then it is red, then."
"Then why did you say green first?"
"Um, that's what my parents have always bought for me are green clothes."
"Exactly." Draco said that to both himself and to Goyle. "You like red. You're bought green things. Have you ever told them that you like red?"
"Yes, but they said that Slytherins wear green and that I should wear green."
Draco looked as if he'd just discovered the theory of relativity. "Because that's what they thought you should wear." Draco nodded his head back and forth and got up from the table. "I'm going to get to class a bit early, see you two there." Draco strode away from the table leaving the two boys exchanging confused looks.
Draco's thoughts were certainly not on Transfiguration or Herbology or even Potions that day. Wherever his mind was, it was not in Hogwarts. He wandered the grounds after the last class, thankful to be alone. He did appreciate the fact that Crabbe and Goyle "No, Vincent and Gregory," he told himself, were trying to get him to talk, but he wasn't ready yet.
His stroll took him out near the quiddich pitch and he saw people flying around, practicing. As he came closer, Draco noticed the Gryffindor colors on them as they flew. He went to one end of the field where there were a few low benches and he sat on one of them. He was supposed to hate them, but did he really? No, probably not. And why was he supposed to hate them? "Because my bloody father says so, that's why," he said aloud.
Draco became angry again. "Who am I?" he asked. "I know who my father wants me to be, but who the bloody hell am I?" The clouds and the wind gave him no answer. The wind, which had grown colder as he'd been walking, gusted and blew his hair askew. Running a hand through it, Draco turned and headed back to the castle. He surely didn't want to be around his housemates yet, so he went to the library. The library was known to the Slytherin community as Gryffindor Territory, so they usually stayed away unless required by law, or Snape, to be there.
As Draco entered, he saw that it was rather empty which suited him just fine. He walked thru the stacks of dusty books and looked at a title here and there. He spotted a book on one of the lower shelves bound in blue , his favorite color-not green, and lowered himself to glance at the title. He was crouching down when he heard a muffled sob a bit further down the stack, on the other side. It was definitely a girl, or maybe a first year boy, Draco decided. He heard a second voice comfort the first. His interest raised, he quietly moved down the row.
"Everything will be okay, Hermione," the second voice said. Granger? Granger was crying? Draco slid closer still, trying to hear more.
"I don't know anymore. I really don't," Hermione replied in between sobs.
"Hermione…" the second voice started but was cut off by Hermione.
"I've been so strong for so long. I've helped Harry and I've helped Ron, and now I can't seem to help myself at all."
"Listen, I know that they will do everything they can to help your parents. That's what they do there. They heal people."
"Ginny, you didn't see them. You didn't see the way they looked, so horribly wrong after the Death Eaters did whatever awful thing they did to them. They looked completely gone. Whatever was left inside was mad, completely mad. I don't know how much longer I can hold out hope."
"Death Eaters? What is Granger talking about?" Draco asked himself. "Oh," he thought, suddenly remembering the events over the summer. And Ginny who? Weasley? Likely.
"Hermione, how come you've never talked to me about this before now?"
"When everything was going on, with Harry and Ron and Colin and Draco and all, I didn't have time to hardly think about it. I could shelf it and focus on their problems. Now since those are mostly set in order, I have a bunch of free mental time." Hermione was crying freely again now.
Draco was torn apart by grief. He saw himself back in Diagon Alley, when he made fun of the attack on her family. He recalled it word for word.
**"Crabbe, what's a shame?"**
**"Uh, I don't know, Draco."**
**"When a Mudblood house gets attacked by Death Eaters. Now Goyle, what's a crying shame?"**
**"Um, I don't know either."**
**"When one of them isn't home."**
He remembered it so clearly. He had never even thought that she had feelings then. She was only a Mudblood. The two girls continued talking, all the while Draco listened and his grief rose. As Hermione talked on about how she hurt inside, Draco was drawing near tears. He was wishing that she'd stop talking or that he could leave, but he stayed, feeling like this was his penance for his earlier actions. Finally the two took leave.
Draco sat back on his knees and broke into tears. Draco Malfoy was crying. Oh, was this ever grand? Tears flowed down his face in streams. He hitched and sobbed as Hermione had done before. "And my father wants me to follow in his footsteps and become a Death Eater too," Draco thought and wiped an eye. "He wants me to become just like him." Draco wiped his other eye. "He wants me to hurt people just like he did." Draco slowly got to one knee and paused as a thought raced across his mind.
"Did my father have a part in that?" A few more tears leaked out. "He likely did," Draco decided. "Never," he said aloud, "never will I do that." he was still a bit shaky as he got to his feet and slowly walked out of the library, the blue book laying in the floor. Draco's favorite color.
He returned to Slytherin house and entered the common room and found people milling around. He shot them all the patented Malfoy scowl and proceeded to his room. There was conviction behind the scowl this time, the same that used to go with the scowl he gave the Gryffindors, but now he liked the Gryffindors more than his own housemates.
He laid down on his bed and proceeded to think many a thought.
On a similar note, I have again been struck by inspiration. This story was mostly a two axis story - Harry and Colin and Ron and the Spirit. Now it is tri-axial with Harry/Colin, Ron/Spirit, and Hermione/Draco. Now don't worry, it won't be a lovey thing, she's already taken (do you know by whom?). The actions of those two will be related a bit more now and I think add greatly to the story. Just stand by for some Malfoy. Happy reading…
The day in which we saw some frisbeeing, a really tormented Draco, a caring Crabbe and Goyle (surprised? Me too), and a crying Hermione has passed. Most of the people involved in the events had gotten themselves back into the norm, except for Draco.
Draco wandered the halls of the dungeons early the next morning. He had slept hardly three hours and he felt like a too-tightly wound spring. It seemed as if the skin he wore was made for someone a few months younger, hard pressed to keep everything in. He stopped a moment to look into a classroom door's glass. Yep, it looked like Draco Malfoy in the reflection, but he didn't feel like him anymore. Draco pushed a lock of hair back from his face and strode on.
He thought back to yesterday when he came from his room and found Crabbe and Goyle standing in the doorway keeping everyone else from entering. He glanced on the clock behind him and saw that it was nearly 4:30 in the afternoon. Those two had been standing guard outside his door for almost four hours. Draco felt many things at that moment. One was that they were stupid oafs for staying in the same spot for that long. Another, and this was the stronger of the feelings, was that they were far from stupid, way beyond that. They were caring about him. Like a real friend would.
A thought like that would never have crossed Draco's mind a scant week before. He would have called them morons and pushed past them like old women at the market, not that Draco Malfoy had ever stepped foot in a market, of course. Instead of pushing past the two boys rudely, he looked at the two of them a few seconds before speaking. The typical Malfoy insult didn't follow the inspection, but instead he simply said one word. "Thanks." The two nodded and gave slight smiles and let him pass.
He wasn't quite sure, but Draco thought that he surprised the two of them more than himself by his reply. They seemed prepared for the normal insult, and weren't about to flinch from it. When they didn't receive it, they smiled at him. No one smiled around him unless it is out of meanness or a plan for future meanness. Now what the hell was the deal? He obviously wasn't the old Draco Malfoy anymore, so exactly who the hell was he? Or more importantly, was the fact that he wasn't the old Draco Malfoy anymore a bad thing?
He was passing another classroom and when he looked into the glass in the door this time, he could have sworn that just for a second he saw his father in it. He even heard his father's voice in his head after the last questioning thought. "Draco," it said, "you'd better be the old Draco Malfoy when I see you next." Draco shivered uncontrollably for almost a minute. He finally got himself under control and looked back in the glass. No Lucius Malfoy in there. Only in his head. But the voice in Draco's mind said almost exactly what the real thing would have said.
"Why do I have to be a bloody Malfoy anyway?" he asked no one. The other voice in Draco's head, his little and abused conscious, spoke to him for the first time in a while. "You don't have to be a Malfoy, Draco, only yourself, you know. You can be your own person, not just your father's son."
The voice quieted down and let him think about that. It was right, he decided, but it wasn't as easy as it might seem. He couldn't just walk up to his father and say, "Hey pops, I think I've let you run my life long enough, so be so kind as to stick yourself up your own ass." That just screamed out life-ending beating. "Dammit all," he said to the wall behind him as he returned to his House to prepare for the day.
He walked into his room and grabbed his shower items, casting a glance over the still-sleeping forms of the other four boys in his room. Snores poured from under the blankets of either Crabbe or Goyle, Draco wasn't quite sure. It could easily be either of them. He smiled absently at that. "Did I just smile at their snoring?" he asked himself. Then his next thought about knocked him to the floor in it's suddenness. "I've known them for this long and I'm not sure which one snores like that." Why that was such a powerful and apparently important thought eluded Draco as he turned on the water. He pondered it for a minute more and then relaxed as sound of the water cleared his mind as well as his body.
Draco finished showering and dressed and began to prepare the 'Malfoy look'. He gelled his hair back, making sure that it was in perfect place. He picked any loose thread and lint ball from his robes. Once again checking his hair, he had another of those rogue thoughts, as he'd come to call them. "Why are you doing all this, Draco?"
"Because, this is what I've always done."
"Why?" the voice asked again before falling silent. Draco didn't have an answer for it. He looked in the mirror and found that he had absolutely no idea whatsoever. He shook his head, carefully so as to avoid mussing it up, and left the bathroom. Once back in the bedroom, he noticed that his two friends ("Are they really friends," he asked himself) had already gotten up and left the room. Draco half scowled at that detail. It seemed that they were going to forego bathing again today. Draco reminded himself to not sit too close to them.
He left the bedroom and made his way to the common room and he noticed it was full of students, as it should be. He was making his way over to his two friends (he had decided that yes they were friends) when he was called to by another Slytherin standing by the two.
"Hey Draco, want to help us hex the Gryffindor's plates before breakfast?"
Without a second thought, Draco replied, "No." He looked to Crabbe and Goyle and said to them, "Let's eat, guys." Saying that they were surprised was a gross understatement. Usually, the answer would have been a resounding yes. But he simply blew it off and walked to the door. Crabbe and Goyle exchanged puzzled glances and followed Draco out of the room.
"Did I say 'no'?" Draco asked himself as he headed up the steps toward the Great Hall. He replayed the incident in his mind a half dozen times and each time he found that he did in fact say no. This puzzled the fire out of him. Why would Draco Malfoy, Gryffindor hater extraordinaire, not help belittle them? "Because that's not you," the voice in his head told him. He walked on, thinking.
As he rounded the corner and took the steps down he looked at the people around him. To his left he saw a boy he knew only as Smythe, his last name. He'd been in Slytherin for four years now and Draco had no idea of his first name. To his right was Pansy, one of the few people he called by their first name. Actually, now that he thought about it, he could likely count the first names he knew on one hand, maybe two if he thought real hard. "And these are to be my friends," he said to himself as he reached the bottom of the steps.
Draco slowed his pace considerably, causing most of Slytherin house to pass around him and continue on their merry way. Crabbe and Goyle stayed at his pace, just behind him. Pansy slowed for a second and turned to him and received a furrowed brow and cold stare for her effort. She sped up and rejoined the rest of the students. "Whatever becomes of me, I'll never be able to stand her," he told himself and smiled. "Even a Hufflepuff's patience would be sorely tested on her," he thought and smiled a bit bigger. He entered the Great Hall with Crabbe and Goyle a good thirty seconds behind the others.
"Draco, what's going on with you today?" Goyle asked, genuinely concerned.
"Nothing," Draco snapped, then was surprised at himself. "Well, that's not entirely true," he said in a reconciliatory tone. "I honestly don't know, Goyle." they took their seats well away from the others in the house, at the end of the table far from the usual Draco Malfoy spot. The boys had just begun digging into their breakfast when mail came in. Draco never had been fond of getting letters from home, and this morning was no different. He was looking absently across the room and happened to see Granger catch a letter dropped to her. The same owl dropped a letter to Weasley next and sped out the way it came. She opened it and Draco saw a quick pain spread across her face, quick in that it was covered almost before it showed. Draco knew that trick and knew it well.
He would have watched her further but he received a letter of his own. "Great, it's from home," He thought as he slowly opened the end of the letter. Draco steeled himself for the verbal abuse he knew was coming and he unfolded the parchment. He read on, getting a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Son," the letter said, "It has come to my attention that your marks in Transfiguration are less than satisfactory. It has also come to my attention that many of the accursed Gryffindors in your class have higher marks than you, especially the Mudblood Granger…" The letter went on another four paragraphs outlining Lucius' displeasure with his son and the things that would occur if the marks didn't improve. The last line, seemingly an afterthought, read "Your mother wishes you well."
Draco felt his face redden, part from shame and part from anger. He crumpled the parchment up and stuck it in his robes to dispose of in the fireplace a bit later. All he felt now was impotent rage to his father. No longer hungry, Draco pushed his plate away from him and tried to think of something else.
"Goyle," he said, "I mean Gregory, what's your favorite color?" Draco had no idea where that come from. Gregory Goyle looked at him in surprise, more from being called Gregory than the question.
"Um, well, I guess green."
"No, what is *your* favorite color? What color do you like?"
"Um, red?"
"Is it red? There isn't a right or wrong answer, you know."
"Then it is red, then."
"Then why did you say green first?"
"Um, that's what my parents have always bought for me are green clothes."
"Exactly." Draco said that to both himself and to Goyle. "You like red. You're bought green things. Have you ever told them that you like red?"
"Yes, but they said that Slytherins wear green and that I should wear green."
Draco looked as if he'd just discovered the theory of relativity. "Because that's what they thought you should wear." Draco nodded his head back and forth and got up from the table. "I'm going to get to class a bit early, see you two there." Draco strode away from the table leaving the two boys exchanging confused looks.
Draco's thoughts were certainly not on Transfiguration or Herbology or even Potions that day. Wherever his mind was, it was not in Hogwarts. He wandered the grounds after the last class, thankful to be alone. He did appreciate the fact that Crabbe and Goyle "No, Vincent and Gregory," he told himself, were trying to get him to talk, but he wasn't ready yet.
His stroll took him out near the quiddich pitch and he saw people flying around, practicing. As he came closer, Draco noticed the Gryffindor colors on them as they flew. He went to one end of the field where there were a few low benches and he sat on one of them. He was supposed to hate them, but did he really? No, probably not. And why was he supposed to hate them? "Because my bloody father says so, that's why," he said aloud.
Draco became angry again. "Who am I?" he asked. "I know who my father wants me to be, but who the bloody hell am I?" The clouds and the wind gave him no answer. The wind, which had grown colder as he'd been walking, gusted and blew his hair askew. Running a hand through it, Draco turned and headed back to the castle. He surely didn't want to be around his housemates yet, so he went to the library. The library was known to the Slytherin community as Gryffindor Territory, so they usually stayed away unless required by law, or Snape, to be there.
As Draco entered, he saw that it was rather empty which suited him just fine. He walked thru the stacks of dusty books and looked at a title here and there. He spotted a book on one of the lower shelves bound in blue , his favorite color-not green, and lowered himself to glance at the title. He was crouching down when he heard a muffled sob a bit further down the stack, on the other side. It was definitely a girl, or maybe a first year boy, Draco decided. He heard a second voice comfort the first. His interest raised, he quietly moved down the row.
"Everything will be okay, Hermione," the second voice said. Granger? Granger was crying? Draco slid closer still, trying to hear more.
"I don't know anymore. I really don't," Hermione replied in between sobs.
"Hermione…" the second voice started but was cut off by Hermione.
"I've been so strong for so long. I've helped Harry and I've helped Ron, and now I can't seem to help myself at all."
"Listen, I know that they will do everything they can to help your parents. That's what they do there. They heal people."
"Ginny, you didn't see them. You didn't see the way they looked, so horribly wrong after the Death Eaters did whatever awful thing they did to them. They looked completely gone. Whatever was left inside was mad, completely mad. I don't know how much longer I can hold out hope."
"Death Eaters? What is Granger talking about?" Draco asked himself. "Oh," he thought, suddenly remembering the events over the summer. And Ginny who? Weasley? Likely.
"Hermione, how come you've never talked to me about this before now?"
"When everything was going on, with Harry and Ron and Colin and Draco and all, I didn't have time to hardly think about it. I could shelf it and focus on their problems. Now since those are mostly set in order, I have a bunch of free mental time." Hermione was crying freely again now.
Draco was torn apart by grief. He saw himself back in Diagon Alley, when he made fun of the attack on her family. He recalled it word for word.
**"Crabbe, what's a shame?"**
**"Uh, I don't know, Draco."**
**"When a Mudblood house gets attacked by Death Eaters. Now Goyle, what's a crying shame?"**
**"Um, I don't know either."**
**"When one of them isn't home."**
He remembered it so clearly. He had never even thought that she had feelings then. She was only a Mudblood. The two girls continued talking, all the while Draco listened and his grief rose. As Hermione talked on about how she hurt inside, Draco was drawing near tears. He was wishing that she'd stop talking or that he could leave, but he stayed, feeling like this was his penance for his earlier actions. Finally the two took leave.
Draco sat back on his knees and broke into tears. Draco Malfoy was crying. Oh, was this ever grand? Tears flowed down his face in streams. He hitched and sobbed as Hermione had done before. "And my father wants me to follow in his footsteps and become a Death Eater too," Draco thought and wiped an eye. "He wants me to become just like him." Draco wiped his other eye. "He wants me to hurt people just like he did." Draco slowly got to one knee and paused as a thought raced across his mind.
"Did my father have a part in that?" A few more tears leaked out. "He likely did," Draco decided. "Never," he said aloud, "never will I do that." he was still a bit shaky as he got to his feet and slowly walked out of the library, the blue book laying in the floor. Draco's favorite color.
He returned to Slytherin house and entered the common room and found people milling around. He shot them all the patented Malfoy scowl and proceeded to his room. There was conviction behind the scowl this time, the same that used to go with the scowl he gave the Gryffindors, but now he liked the Gryffindors more than his own housemates.
He laid down on his bed and proceeded to think many a thought.