Influences, or
When They Are Both Full Grown
Chapter 16
"Si, he had a room here," the Roman woman told Dita in Italian. "He only stayed a few days and went on again. I remembered him from a few years ago when he used to hang around. A bad boy, that one. I felt him so before, but now he was only unhappy. I thought maybe he was hiding. He wanted to see no one. He seemed afraid of everyone, and he was afraid of sleep."
"I don't doubt it," Dita murmured.
"He was such a strange boy. Not like any English boy I ever met. What was wrong with him?"
"His parents tried to make him kill someone he respected."
"Bontà mia!"
"Do you know where he went when he left?"
"No, I am sorry."
A bad boy, that one, Dita repeated in her mind as she went away to her own hotel. She didn't doubt that. Bad parents often created bad children. How easy it was to dismiss someone as simply a bad person and no longer have to think about him, unless his badness intruded on one's own world. But that was never the end of the story. Dita knew from experience that the worst people, the very worst, could have a chance to change and improve their lives. Sometimes a traumatic event could tip them away from their previous pursuits; sometimes it required punishments; always it required another human to lead them toward what was good. And why had no one done that for him at school? Again, it was easy to say it wasn't Albus Dumbledore's or Severus Snape's job to be his parent, but the truth was that if a school held nearly sole control over young people for seven full years, it was the school's responsibility to turn out young adults who contributed to a better society. So much trouble had been spent over Harry Potter, and with good reason and good result; why couldn't similar trouble be taken for the students who came in as thorough-going bad lots? You couldn't force a child to become a good person, but you could surround him with better influences than it seemed Hogwarts had surrounded Draco with.
At least one child of Lucius Malfoy has had a chance, she told herself fiercely. Lucia will never be in the position Draco is in now, whatever that is, thank God.