the girl with all of the choices

f o u r t e e n

5017 words

february twenty-fourth- falling apart

The wind was slapping my face as I ran towards the castle after Fawn. It was as if it was doing what I wanted to do to myself. I wanted to hit myself, to make myself hurt so I felt like they were feeling. I had lied to them. I had broken their trust with the one person they despised most in the world.

My group's feelings towards Draco, and the entire Malfoy family really, were cemented by the time I got to know him. Unlike the usual beliefs of our house, that people can change and become better, my friends and the majority of my house, the majority of our school even, believed that Malfoy was a vile human being who did not have a shred of empathy or compassion in his body. Most of our prejudices were based on the fact that he was a dick for the first 3 years of school. He made everything about him and only looked happy when others were in turmoil.

I was the one person in the group that dissented when it came to these beliefs, even from the start. Don't get me wrong, there are most certainly people who cannot change to become better, to move past their past. I mean, look at Hitler. There's no way that any of what he did would ever be forgivable, among any standard. But the concept that someone we knew was so terrible, so demented that they could not change to be better was two things: improbable and baffling.

Fawn had told me earlier in the year about how she saw Draco at the Quidditch World Cup with his father. She said he looked so unbelievably uncomfortable around him and even went as far as to insinuate that she thought his father was abusing him physically. The thought made me flinch then and continues to make me flinch now. She showed no sympathy to him. I could never imagine thinking that and not feeling any sort of compassion for anyone in that situation. However, I guess Fawn had her reasons.

Fawn had two older sisters. The younger was about 6 or 7 years older than us. The older was 15 years older than us. Unfortunately, the older sister died when Fawn was a newborn. Her name was Olivia. She was out with some of her school friends at a birthday party during the summer when a group of Death Eaters killed the lot. She could never trust Draco because his father was a Death Eater once. She speculated that he still was and that he was raising Draco to be just like him.

The rest of my friends knew Fawn's story and sympathized with her and took on her beliefs. Of course, I always felt sorry for Fawn, but judging someone based on claims that have no base was unjust. There was never any proof or small sign that Lucius Malfoy was training Draco to be a Death Eater. Plus, You-Know-Who was gone, so there was no point. I could understand being mad at his father, but to take it out on Draco was cruel. As children, we don't have control over our parents and their past. We only have control over how we move forward from it.

My friends also thought that it was never okay to belittle and be mean to others, no matter the situation. I always understood the sentiment, which seemed to be good, but it never took into account the other person's emotions. We all have them. Some people are better at handling their emotions than others, and the latter often turns to anger and the belittlement of others in order to make them feel like they have control. I could always understand that, but they never could.

Plus, it never helped Draco's cause that he frequently called me a mudblood in our younger years. It had gotten to the point that the word didn't mean anything to me anymore. My friends always took it personally when they heard him call me it. They all had at least one magical parent, but most of them were Pureblooded.

I never blamed Draco for calling me it, though. He was mean to everyone. I could always see somewhere in him that this wasn't his choice, that his actions and his demeanor were a result of something else that nobody saw. I never liked him, but I could understand why he belittled others. Nobody is born being a bully, or with blood-prejudice, but anybody can develop those tendencies in the right atmosphere. Each learned trait a person had was like a plant. They had to live in the right conditions to be able to grow. Some people grew up in beautiful lush greenhouses, and their learned traits reflected that. Others grew up in swamps and cold marshes, and their learned traits almost always reflected that. His presence was annoying and usually brought bad things. That was before, though.