Dear Journal

I have been avoiding writing in this atrocity for nearly a week, a week in which both my mother and Severus have continually pressed me to write in it daily. They think I'm unstable, they think I'm going to break down, because I haven't shown any emotion since the war ended, since the Dark Lord died. I ignored their pleas until my mother started making demands and again threatened to reveal my secret to the whole school. I have many secrets I want no one to know but this one is by far my most coveted secret. So I compromised, and promised to write in this atrocity at least once a week, my mother's stipulation being that I must put down my actual emotions, my feelings. Sometimes I wonder if she would have been better off in Huphelpuff, if only for her believe that we all have emotions.

So what are my feelings? I don't know.

During the war I was in such a constant vortex of overwhelming emotions that somehow I managed to just turn everything off. I could afford to feel, so I just stopped, I turned it off like a switch. Only now I don't know if I can ever turn them back on, even if I wanted to. This would not have been a problem if my father was still… alive, still the head of the Malfoy family, but since I'm still in school my mother is currently the controller of the Malfoy fortune, and will be until I receive my N.E.. It might not have even been a problem now, if my mother hadn't seen my face, if she hadn't looked up at my blank expression as she cradled my father's broken and dead body with her bloody hands.

Apparently it's not natural, according to my mother and Severus, to be able to just turn off your emotions. They both think that I'm lying when I say that I don't feel anything, they think I'm just repressing my emotions but they don't know… they don't understand what it was like for me. If it had just been the fear, the pain, the negative emotions, I would have kept them, I wouldn't have turned them off, but… there were other emotions too, not just negative ones. Not even my mother knows this secret, I am about to tell.

Before the war it was like I was a starving man, who hadn't had a drop to drink in days and hadn't had any food in even longer. I was weak and on the brink of death, and they put him in front of me. He was a cool glass of water and a steak dinner, and he was right there. If I lifted my tired arm I could have touch him, but I couldn't have him, couldn't bridge that tiny gap separating us. Life was a cold and cruel bitch, and I think I might have killed her mother, for why else would I have been forced to live like that for so long.

I was terrified of failure, terrified of what would happen should I have succeeded, I wanted nothing more than to just fling myself off the astronomy tower and let my body break when it reached the bottom. I was so tired, couldn't get even an hour of rest the nightmares were so wretched, and I knew even my cunning mother could not find a way to escape the Malfoy dungeons. The Dark Lord had her locked in a cell meant to house our worst enemies. I was so afraid, but… that wasn't all I felt. If that had been all, then I might have kept my emotions, because fear is a tool when wielded correctly, but when I saw him… Merlin it hurt, my heart felt like it was trying to rip itself free from my chest.

Mother doesn't know this secret, no one does, although a few suspect. Severus has told me a time or two that it's unusual for two people to hate each other so much, of course he was saying it as praise, but for a moment my heart had stopped and I thought perhaps he had discovered the truth. Severus and I are much alike, so if anyone ever stumbled on the truth it would be him. I know Severus was a spy, knew it all along, because I saw the picture he kept, keeps, in his bottom drawer, the one framed in a wreath of flowers that are only still in tact because of multiple preserving charms and potions. I never knew for sure who the woman in the picture was till I met a boy in the robe shop and found myself in love with those almost familiar green eyes.

Severus loved Lily Evans, and yet if not for him she would still be alive. Severus probably loved her at first sight, but then they went to school and she was sorted into a different house, and she made different friends, and he was consumed by jealousy and anger and hurt. Like a true Slytherin he hid the emotions he felt, and lashed out at the one he loved, hurting her with his words. and hurt. Like a true Slytherin he hid the emotions he felt, and lashed out at the one he loved, hurting her with his words, until his words didn't seem to have the desired effect so he moved on to hurting her friends, those closest to her, insulting those around her to get a rise out of her. We're so alike, Severus and I, only if he had not been so cruel he might have had a chance at her.

I'll never have a chance at the one I love. Love, yes, Draco Malfoy the ice prince of Slytherin, has a heart, or at least I did. I wonder if perhaps when I turned of my emotions if my heart died then, or if maybe it stopped beating that time, that time in the bathroom when the one that made my heart beat cut me deep, literally and figuratively. He used a slicing hex on me, one of Severus's creations designed to kill with the maximum amount of pain and blood loss without leaving room for a secant attack on the victims part. I would have died, for a secant I did die, my heart stopped beating, but Severus saved me, healed my body, but not my heart.

I think that is enough writing for a day, I'm afraid if I think back on this any longer I might just turn my emotions back on, and I don't want to feel that pain again.

Au Revoir