Long Live the Mafia Prince - A Drarry Fanfiction

Part 022

I can't help but let a dumbfounded laugh slip. "A prey?".

Draco stands still, but the storms inside of him don't seem to settle. In fact, even he himself appears awkward and uncomfortable in his own emotions. As odd as it is, seeing Draco in such an unstable state when he has always been... perfect, it doesn't pull me back.

"You are not a prey." I say, taking a step closer, my emotions also rapidly rising, "Prey don't steal things for attention, kidnap and gaslight people, or murder their own parents. So, not only are you not a prey, but you're a predator. A harmful, toxic member of society who rightfully deserves to rot in Azkaban, and-".

"He killed my mother." Draco says bluntly.

A thick, heavy air falls between us. It feels as if a boulder dropped into my throat, ice over my head. Standing inches away from each other, I can feel Draco's heated breath on my chest.

His tone slightly calmed, he continued. "Your Ministry barely knows half the things he did. Even the things you claim you're aware of, most of the time it's nothing like that. Of course, no one would be able to understand the truth behind him, not just your side of the battle. How could any human physically understand a being so in-human?

Believe me, I tried, for years upon years, to get the slightest sense of what could go through the mind of a beast. If anyone were to have figured it out, it should've been me, not a single soul could've been as desperate. And again, you wouldn't get me, either. Could you even begin to imagine the thirst for reason a six year-old would have for being thrown in a tower by their own father, isolated from everything and everyone?".

With his pause, a scorching silence pushes me down. Taking a few breaths, he carries on again.

"Clearly I never managed to understand." Draco says, his voice sounding more stable, "Though, I no longer thirst to understand an animal, so I'm not fazed. The shameful part is that your Ministry still puts down their lives for answers, reasons to his actions. I know that you do, too, Harry, because if you didn't, you wouldn't be here. I also know that you're still listening to me because you want to know what I know. You want to know what he did on top of locking me in a tower and killing his own wife, in hopes that perhaps you'd get answers. Am I correct?".

I swallow, pupils shaking between Draco's eyes. Staring back into mine emptily, he doesn't wait for an answer before slowly walking over to his bed.

Sitting on his sheets, gazing down at the stone patterns on the floor, he starts. "When I was put up here, the only person I could interact with was Theodore. He was chosen because he couldn't speak, and so all he did was, as he was told, bring me food three times a day.

It only took a few months for most to forget I even existed, and after that, Theodore started listening to me reading aloud from time to time after bringing my lunch. When I started teaching myself violin, he would stand in the corner of the room and listen to that, too. Then I started talking to him, not that he was much of a conversationalist. That's when I learnt that talking to people was an easy way to understand them, help them, gain trust with them.

I was eleven when I managed to give Theodore a voice. It was a clever spell, even thinking back on it now. Little did I know of the things that the clever spell, the now unmuted Theodore could tell me.

I wasn't shocked, but my resent was enlarged when Theodore told me my father zipped him up, just so he could use him for keeping me alive. I would consider that moment in my life to be the beginning of the butterfly effect that ended in my father being dead today. Knowing that the only person left in my life was hurt by him is a pretty big deal to an eleven year-old, isn't it?".