A.N. - Okay, this is a short chapter, but I have a longer one in the works, so it should only be a few days before the next one's up! And don't worry, the angst shall be over soon! haha. This is a new type: Draco perspective. (I know, shock, surprise, right?) Enjoy! R&R please.

Chapter Eight: Freezing

Draco stared off into space, waiting for the snow to fall.

He used to wait for the snow to fall when he was little and it was summer, because he liked winter the best of all seasons. He would sit in his room and stare out his large, bay window for hours on end. His mother would walk up behind him and ask him what he was doing, and he would tell her. She would laugh at him, merrily, happily. These were the days when his mother could still be happy. Now, there was no joy in her eyes, no laughter in her voice. She was desolate.

He had tried to reach her. Tell her he knew what his father did, that he had never really loved her, and tell her that Draco would love her no matter what his father said. Narcissa never listened. She had become someone like Lucius, someone who only cared about appearances. She was so wrapped up in organizing parties for the Minister, or attending political events.

Draco vaguely remembered his father laughing once. Draco had walked in to the kitchen with mud all over him from the gardens, and had decided it would be fun to draw mud art on the walls. Lucius and Narcissa had found him and as Narcissa scolded him, Lucius found it extremely funny. Not the scolding, but the mud drawings, Draco was sure, or at least liked to hope.

That was perhaps the only time Lucius had even really smiled, and Draco had learned from that example. He never smiled either, not anymore, only sneered and glared and did other nasty things. Unless he was with Hermione...

"Don't think about that!" he told himself aloud, but he knew he had to think about her sometime.

Why had he left her up on the hill top standing in the snow? Not even he totally new the answer. It wasn't that he was too good for her, or vice versa. They're hands fit together much too perfectly for that. It might have been that he was scared to start feeling that way about someone that he normally hated. But it was most likely that he had lied to her.

She would hate him... he knew she would. He had told her about his horrible life, with his father and his mother not paying enough attention to him... that part was true. What wasn't true... was why.

Lucius Malfoy did care about appearances, he always had, but for a while, Draco had been the perfect son. He did everything right, he was a good mirage. But then Draco screwed up everything his father had worked for. That's why Lucius didn't love him.

Draco had killed a Muggle.

Although Lucius Malfoy did not approve of Muggles, he wanted everyone to think he did. On that cold night in February when Draco had accidentally blown up a water pipe on the streets of London and killed a Muggle man in the street. The Muggle newspapers had said a pipe had frozen and shattered, but Lucius's political enemies knew the truth. His son had done it. They picked Draco apart for a year, and consequently lost Lucius a lot of power that took him years to gain back.

Draco had not meant to kill the Muggle. His magic had gotten away from him, his anger had betrayed him. He had been so young, unable to control himself or his impulses. But Lucius didn't know that, nor would he have cared. The fact was, his son had hurt him, and the only thing that could fix that was showing his disapproval in public as much as he could.

For years Draco had wanted to get it off his chest that he had murdered someone. The talk had died down years ago when Lucius regained most of his political standing and was able to silence it. None of the kids at school were old enough to read the newspaper at the time. No one knew about it, except Draco, and he desperately wanted to tell someone. To tell Hermione.

But if Draco told Hermione that... Lord only knew what she would do. Hate him. Never speak to him again.

"That's the way of the world, Draco," he muttered to himself in the darkness of his common room. "Everything freezes, everything fades."

He let out a sigh and turned away from the window just as a single snowflake fell.