Ron had found that any topic of conversation was open with Draco, and this was something he had never experienced before. He was tired of trying not to upset someone by asking a question or talking about something that was on his mind. Every time he brought up Percy, or something about the Dark Arts, or just something that wasn't normally talked about at his house, he was told to shut up and sit down, basically. His family made him feel like it was wrong to be curious about something. He didn't really feel that he could talk to Harry or Hermione about things like that, either. They wouldn't know what to say or why he was asking.
Draco knew that Ron could be a true friend to him instead of clinging to him or being superficial and stabbing him in the back. But Draco had never had a true friend, and this prospect made him cautious. He wasn't sure that he had ever known that anyone could be a friend to him. He wanted to see Ron again, to get to know him more.
Seeing each other alone, things progressed from a nod, to a "Hey," until eventually they found eachother on the weekends and started spending their time in one of the old abandoned classrooms on the fifth floor.
"You realize if anyone comes in here, you're going to have to act like you're stabbing me or something, don't you?" Ron asked Draco one afternoon.
"I don't think anyone's going to get the urge to come up here unless we're unnaturally loud or something, but if you say so." Draco pulled out his pocket knife and set it on a desk jokingly.
"Hey, that's not funny," Ron said, trying to look serious.
"You're smiling."
"Shut up.".
Ron looked down at the long blade on the knife and noticed something on it that looked a bit like rust. Ron knitted his brows, still staring at it. Draco was walking around the room, too bored to notice. "Draco, is--is that blood?" Draco turned quickly and stared at Ron, then said,
"On-on my knife? ...Yeah." Draco rubbed the back of his neck impulsively.
"From what?" Ron asked, terrified. Draco walked over to the window ledge that Ron was sitting on slowly and pushed up the sleeves of his shirt. Ron looked up and down Draco's forearms, openly staring at all the scars and the new wounds. Looking back up at Draco's face, he asked simply,
"Why?"
"Mostly out of anger."
"Why are you so angry?"
"Because everyone expects me to be someone I'm not, my parents hate me, I hate me."
"Your parents care about you, and you shouldn't hate yourself. And I like you for who you are, so don't worry about it." Draco snorted and said, "Yeah, I've been trying to tell myself that all my life. But there's something you don't understand. I am moving unstoppably away from the world I am going to inherit as the owner of some four story mansion that I don't even care about and a life that I don't want. I am going to have to throw all of these redundant parties just like my parents do in order to make another attempt to please them. I will invite all of my parents' friends that have always seen my family as the beautiful, haughty mother; the mysterious, powerful father; and the pointless teenage mistake following them. I will spend the rest of my life with numbness instilled in my brain because my parents are trying to protect me from the contamination of emotion, which I never wanted anyway, but you know, it would have been really fucking nice to hear an "I love you" at least once. Yeah, they don't even believe in the world that they created for themselves, and for all their bitching and caretaking, they really don't give a damn about me."
Ron stared and eventually said, "It doesn't have to be that way."
"Yeah? What am I going to do, run away from home?"
"Good point. But don't give up so easily. Things could change."
"Yeah, I guess..." Draco shrugged and slowly walked back over to the desk that his pocket knife was resting on. He picked it up, stared at it a minute, then folded the blade in carefully and returned it to his pocket.
PLEASE REVIEW! I HAVE MORE CHAPTERS, BUT I AM GETTING VERY DISCOURAGED!