Scars

three

Hermione found herself woken up by the booming sound of thunder. She heaved, eyes wide open and in shock as she saw the room repeatedly illuminated by the flashing light, and tried to steady herself as the room shook with the thundering outside. A wild wind blew, whistling furiously against the windows and the trees shook with the force of an unknown entity. Hermione looked around, expecting to see the rest of the girls awake too, but to her dismay everyone was fast asleep. She couldn't understand how anyone could sleep through such chaos, but was then reminded of the cruel fact that the events of the past years had sharpened her senses to a higher degree.

Heaving a sigh, she tried to calm her racing nerves and laid back in bed.

It took a while, but eventually the dancing shadows of the trees against one another lulled her back into a dreamless sleep.

•••

Meanwhile on the other side of the castle.

Draco stood beside the giant arching windows in the common room, gazing out into the murky waters of the lake, listening to the vicious sounds of the storm outside. Unable to sleep, as he found himself every night, he let his mind be distracted by the noises outside.

Alas, for him, his mind resembled quite closely the storm raging outside. He could not let the demons stay quiet, for every thundering sound resembled the cackling laughter of the Dark Lord and his companions as they finished off one of their many enemies. The laughter would forever ring in his ears, reminding him of his incompetence, ignorance.

Every blinding flash of white reminded him of the spells he was asked to cast, and of his cowardice as he recalled complying. He was pathetic. He cursed.

The whistling wind carried the tortured cries of the innocent, the screams that echoed through his manor and memories of those torturous nights where he cried as the people he had known his entire lives suffered in front of him, and he only stood there, helpless, useless.

He did not hate any one of them, and even if his dislike for a few ranged on various levels, he still would never have wished to see them tortured, killed, before his very eyes.

And the thrashing of the trees harshly against the stone walls above reminded him of just that, the slender shadows mutated through the waters and, writhing and weak, shaking viciously in his line of sight, reminding him of all the bodies he had seen suffering before his eyes.

He hated it. Hated everything. His father, the Dark Lord, Harry Potter, this god forsaken castle and everything that came with. He hated his father for pressuring him to become someone he was not, to do something he knew in his bones he could not do. He hated himself for always agreeing to whatever he said, for being forced into making all the wrong decisions. Decisions that ruined his life, his family, his mother, his future and everything he stood for.

He was supposed to be the great Malfoy prodigy, someone who could roam the halls of this very school with his head high and tall, someone who could be proud of his bloodline. But instead all his choices had lead him to an insulting fate, the fate of an outcast. He wouldn't have minded it though, not having any friends or being alone, what bothered him was the fact that he could not be who he wanted anymore, the great Malfoys were no longer great anymore, and their grand reputation in the wizarding world (which was all that they had left, except for the large amounts of fortune) reduced to shreds. They were now known as the ones who fled, the ones who could not even bear the loyalty of their so called great Dark Lord, of whom their father (and him too) had talked so highly of. Draco was disgusted at his fate, saw too that it was somewhat fitting. He could not argue when people said that this was what he deserved, for a large part of him believed that he did.