Chapter 3

The Legacy of Malfoy

Draco regarded the four witches and wizards in front of him, the four people he had caused the most trouble and that his family had nearly destroyed at one point or another. He wished he had more time, but now was the only chance he would have to get them alone, in private and without an audience. If they didn't listen or at least give him a chance, his year was going to be pure hell.

"Like I said, I just want to talk. My wand is in my back pocket if you want to hold on to it, but I need to say my piece." Draco turned around slowly; so they could see the wand poking out.

He glanced over his shoulder when nothing happened and everybody's attention was on Harry, who still had his wand leveled at Draco's back. He could see the emotions running across Harry's face, anger and disgust of course, that was to be expected. A tension that implied he was ready for whatever Draco might try, but finally, curiosity mixed with distrust. Draco knew he would get his chance to talk, Harry had always been soft that way, this time though, Draco didn't intend to use it against him.

"Ginny, please remove his wand and hold it for him while we talk." Harry's choice of words was very specific; Draco knew it to mean that Ginny was not taking his wand from him, which meant it was still Draco's wand. He appreciated the distinction, especially after what happened last year.

"You can turn around now. Everybody else, put up your wands. I don't think Draco is going to try anything at this point." Harry said.

As Draco turned around he lowered his hands, relaxing a little. The others were putting their wands away. Ginny and Ron seemed to be doing so reluctantly but they did it. Ginny never took her eyes off Draco and the others kept looking back and forth between him and Harry.

"Thanks Harry." Draco said simply. He took a step into the room, and closed the sliding door behind him. He looked over the compartment and realized, he didn't have anywhere to sit and he got a slightly chagrined look on his face. Looking at Harry again he said, "Um, would you mind? This might take some time and I think everybody would be more comfortable if we were all sitting." He made a little circling motion with his finger toward the floor.

One eyebrow rose all the way to Harry's hairline and caused his scar to be lost in the folds of his forehead. "Oh, I don't think this will take that long. Now what did you want to get off your chest Malfoy, and why should we listen?" Harry asked.

Draco took a deep breath; he hoped he got this right and that his legs would hold up long enough.

"I would like to start out by saying, you don't have to listen, but I would be in your dept, even more than I already am, if you would please try. This might be something of a long story, so when the cart comes by in a few minutes, we might want to get something to eat and drink, I know I will need something wet, if you guys let me say all I need to anyway." He was glad he had timed this right as he just heard the trolley in the passageway.

Harry paused and Draco thought he was disagreeing again but then he asked Ron to get them all something. When Draco handed Ron his money Ron took it with the tips of two fingers and wiped it on his pants. After Ron returned and passed out the food and drinks, practically throwing Draco's at him, the four friends sat back down, sitting just a little stiffly, unable to completely relax. Harry and Ginny were on his left and Ron and Hermione were on his right. The girls, he noticed, were both against the window, putting the young men between him and them.

Draco cleared his throat and began. "First, what I am about to say is not intended to excuse my behavior in the past or imply that I might never make a mistake in the future, though I sure hope I won't." He had been running this conversation through in his mind for the last month and he hoped he at least made sense.

"In some ways I think part of why I treated you the way I did Harry, was because, whether you knew it or not, we had a lot in common." Harry opened his mouth and Draco raised his hand, "Please let me finish. I know your time away from school was bad, your Aunt and Uncle treated you pretty crappy. While it may have appeared otherwise on the surface, my summers and first eleven years were not much better."

Harry and the others looked like thunderclouds and Ron spoke up, "How dare you compare what Harry went through with your pampered prince life, you have no idea."

"Actually, I have a pretty good idea, both from things I heard in school and from other sources. However, the pampered prince thing is hardly accurate. While I may have had whatever physical items I wanted that hardly made up for the abuse I took from my parents, specifically from my Father. If you think he was hard on you guys, imagine what he did to a son who didn't measure up, that was maybe a little too soft."

Draco paused, this was the part he least wanted to talk about but most had to say.

"When I was about four I found a stray cat, it was just a couple months old, dirty, hungry. I took it home with me, I wanted to help it. I had never had a pet before, I even named it, Merlin, he was going to be all mine. Like any child would, I already loved it." The others looked at each other, knowing Lucius Malfoy as they did, this was hardly going to end well.

"I brought it to my Father, so happy to have a kitten and asked him if I could keep it. My Father sneered; of course, he always sneered, and demanded that I get rid of it. I got upset, said no, I wanted to keep it. I promised I would take care of it, it would never cause him any trouble, I begged, as a four year old will do." Draco looked down at the ground "My Father called for our house elf Dobby, I always liked Dobby, he was nice and fun when he was with me. Well, he called for Dobby and while looking at me, told Dobby to take the cat, draw it a bath and then drown it. Of course Dobby did exactly as he was told; he had no choice, though I didn't realize that at the time. I begged Dobby not to do it, I started to cry when Dobby managed to get the kitten from me. It had started meowing quite a bit and was struggling to get away, scared. Dobby vanished and I never saw the cat again. My Father hit me, causing me to fall down. I was surprised; he had never hit me before. While I stared up at him, he insisted it was for my own good. He stated that the Malfoy name must not be sullied by any common elements."

Draco took a minute to open his Butterbeer and took a long drink. He took the opportunity to look at the others, Ginny and Hermione had a look of horror on their faces and Ron looked disbelieving. But Harry looked intent and then lifting his his wand, he conjured a chair for Draco, it wasn't as uncomfortable as he would have expected either. Draco sat down and continued.

"I told my Mother later what had happened, she told me to do what my Father told me and to never do anything like this again. She held me, I guess to be comforting, but since there was no sympathy involved it kind of fell flat, even to a small kid. Because of what Dobby had to do, I never trusted him again, I had thought he was my friend, but he hurt the cat only because my Father told him to. It was a long time before I understood he had no choice and by then, my attitudes had been pretty well set and I couldn't forgive him. Actually, I didn't see a reason to forgive him to be honest, he was just a House Elf."

"While our exact details may vary, I think you can agree Harry, that there are all different kinds of abuse and the impact it can have, whether physical or emotional is very real."

Harry nodded, "Yes, that's true, my Aunt and Uncle were emotionally abusive as well as physically on occasion, the physical was easier to handle."

Draco nodded in agreement.

"While my Mother was always affectionate in public, it was for show. She was not willing to go against my Father. So anything he said was the rule of the land. For example, she held me after the incident with the cat, but that was all, when I tried to get her to make Father change his mind she refused. 'Your Father knows best.' She would say, as long as I didn't do anything contrary to what Father wanted I was fine."

"For a while I had one escape. My Grandfather, on my Father's side, was less driven than my Father. While he also had the, shall we say, belief in Pure Blood Supremacy, he was not obsessed with it. He refused to have anything to do with Voldemort and thought he was an upstart. I would spend hours with him on the weekends and when Mother and Father went on holiday's. He was, for the most part, kind, while still being a Malfoy. But Father didn't really approve of him and would have kept me away if not for Grandfather's influence and position as Head of the Family, there was not a whole lot he could do about it. When Grandfather died, he left me a sizable amount of gold that came to me when I turned 18."

"The story of what happened when I was four was just an example of some of the things that have happened in my life. They helped shape me, made me who I was and influenced how I behaved and the things I did. Again, this is not an excuse, it's an explanation. In the last two years I have done a lot of thinking. At first there was nothing I could do, or at least, nothing I was willing to do, to change matters. Voldemort made it very clear that if I didn't kill Professor Dumbledore he would kill my parents and me, very slowly and only after he let Aunt Bellatrix have us for a while. But even with that threat, I couldn't go through with it."

Harry interrupted, "I know, I was there when you faced Professor Dumbledore, I know you couldn't do it. Dumbledore had faith in you Draco."

"You were there? I had heard rumors, but I didn't know for sure." Draco looked down at his lap, the now empty Butterbeer bottle still there. He set it down on the floor next to him and opened the second bottle.

"After Snape did the job," Draco did sneer now, for the first time since he left the Headmaster's office months ago. "I couldn't stay at the school of course, so I had to go back to my house. The begging and bootlicking of my Father began to disgust me, he whined every time he spoke to Voldemort and Snape was Voldemort's most trusted man now. My Father couldn't stand that. But my Mother was starting to change, she would look at my Father and there was a look in her eyes that I had never seen before."

"Later when we were all upstairs, my Father became angry with me, he was furious, he claimed I had ruined his place with Voldemort. It was because I failed that Snape was now in such a powerful position and he hit me, many times. For the first time my Mother interfered. She used her wand to push my Father back and told him to never touch me again." Draco smiled a little at the memory.

"Anyway, after you all escaped last spring, nobody told Voldemort, and since he was out of the country he couldn't read it from our minds either. We were all just waiting, not sure what was going to happen next. Aunt Bellatrix was in a state, worried about the bank and what you all knew but even she was terrified to call for Voldemort so it was all just conveniently forgotten when nothing new happened.

"But then the bank was broken into, and Voldemort went missing for a while. Next thing we knew you had been sighted at the school, so we all headed that way. Crabbe, Goyle and I headed there through the vanishing cabinet. We stood inside for a long time while nothing happened and then it sent us through to the room of requirements. That was when we found you Harry, I just wanted to take you alive, take you back to Voldemort. I don't even know why I thought that was a good idea, it's not like anything would get better if you were dead. I loud voice in the back of my head kept screaming at me to let you go, again. But fear is a powerful motivator and I was always better at being scared than being brave."

"Well, you know how things went after that." Draco said, "After the battle was over, for some reason my parents weren't arrested, neither was I and I had no idea why. But while we sat in the Great Hall, I came to a decision. I could not and would not be what I had been raised to be anymore. If I was going to do this though, I could not be with my parents either. I left, and have spent the last summer starting to figure myself out. I don't know where I am going to end up, but I do know it is going to be a better place than I was headed before."

Draco stopped, "Ok, I'm done. I just wanted to tell you guys this, I wanted you to know that I will not be making any trouble for you this year, or in the future. I would say you don't have to watch your backs, but that would be foolish, not only should you watch your backs I might be able to help. With Voldemort gone there is a power vacuum that somebody might try to fill and we're all going to be targets. So we'll have that in common as well. I'll let you know if I hear or see anything that might be a problem." He paused and asked "Any questions?"

Harry looked at Draco for what seemed like a minute and his face was unreadable. Then he turned to Ginny. "Ginny, I think you have Draco's wand."

Ok, this was a LONG chapter, I hope you liked it.

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9/16: Updated to improve flow