𝐀 𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐓𝐋𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐂𝐄

Chapter 12

Chapter 12: "Chapter Twelve"

That evening, three people reached a brand new understanding.

When Theodore padded into Draco's room shortly after to find Draco and Blaise clinging to each other by the window, he had felt a throb of something in his chest, thinking for a horrifying moment that Draco, now that he had been accepted by his former peer, would no longer care for him. But he had been mistaken; as soon as Draco heard his footsteps, he looked up, and held out his free arm. Blaise had looked at him shyly for a moment, and had followed suit. Wordlessly, Theodore had joined them. He had learned in that instant that not all people are the same, regardless of how similar they might seem. He found in Blaise an understanding, caring person who was somehow able to go against everything he had been told and provide the comfort and acceptance that nobody else of his status was willing to provide, and the realization that decent, unprejudiced people still existed in the world was enough to drive Theodore to tears.

Blaise had learned that even those people around him who were richer, smarter, better raised, and stronger than he was were not necessarily right. When he saw the easy interactions between Draco and Theodore, heard the affectionate and reassuring way they spoke to each other, and experienced their admiration and respect, he knew that he had done with his schoolmates. All his life, he had yearned for acceptance from the 'in' crowd, the group of people who were the smartest, the best-looking, the most intelligent, the ones to be seen with, and never once had he ever felt so happy and safe and perfect as he did wrapped in the arms of these two societal outcasts. He had found his self-confidence, his ability to think for himself, to believe in himself, and he was so overcome with joy and satisfaction that he could barely breathe.

And Draco, poor Draco, who had spent so much energy closing himself off from the outside world so he would not have to deal with the ridicule and humiliation, realized that, in doing so, he had also been excluding those few good, friendly, worthwhile individuals who didn't care about his status as a criminal of war, or his shabby appearance, or his less-than-humble surroundings. They cared for him because of who he was as a person, regardless of the extenuating circumstances, and he felt that his heart would burst. He would not have to be forever an outcast, forever merely a statistic, a little drudge doomed to spend the rest of his life in servitude and disgrace. As long as he had people who cared for him, he would never have to face that life alone.

From that day forth, the three boys spent all their evenings together, in the still of night when nothing mattered but their companionship and conversation. Silence had prevailed at first, as they had sat together and observed the quiet, understated beauty of the world by moonlight, but, as hurts had begun to heal and the weeks passed, silence made way for quiet observations, and then actual conversation. By the time a year had passed since Lucius' death, the attic was every night filled with the sound of gay conversation and cheerful laughter. Draco had found in his pillars of strength the ability to resume his pretends, and so every night, he would weave a beautiful, complex story of a fantastic world where hunger, coldness, and persecution were not even whispers of thought, where every boy was a prince, and where nobody ever felt anger or pain or sadness.

Sometimes, after a particularly trying day, he would speak of their situation as if they were prisoners in the Chateau d'If, or the Bastille, the prisoners in the highest turret, guarded by the cruel and cold-hearted jailer (Fudge) and left to their own, secret devices. He managed to weave it into an intrigue, fascinating Theodore and delighting Blaise, as he invented secret codes for them to share, speculated on the state of their surroundings, and formulated secret conspiracies and corruption in the system that had resulted in the cruel conditions.

"Everything's a story," he said one day as he curled up tightly into a ball on the floor, scratching thoughtfully at his leg through a threadbare section of his trousers. "You are a story, I am a story, this room is a story. We can paint pictures with words, you know, so who is to say this isn't just a picture and we are the characters in some great work of art? Perhaps there is a whole other world out there that we cannot see, because the frame blocks our view? Or perhaps we are merely figments of a child's imagination, somewhere, in another time and place." He trailed off into silence, and Theodore and Blaise, as they often did, smiled at each other, contemplating the possibilities.