you raise me up || harry potter

chapter 49

»»————-　song:　————-««

too young

★ by louis tomlinson ★

❝ i've been looking back a lot lately...
me and you is all i've ever known.

it's hard to think you could ever hate me,
but everything's feeling different now. ❞

♢ ♢ ♢

"Harry?" A voice was muffled by the heavy curtains of Harry's four poster bed. 

Harry blinked blearily. It had been a surprisingly nightmare-free night, and he couldn't help but be annoyed that he had been woken up. He yanked back the curtains.

Draco stood by the bed, looking impossibly small. He looked abnormally pale, and a faint sheen of sweat clung to his temple. "I..." he trailed off, then looked instantly ashamed, his pride seeming to overtake him. "Never mind. Sorry for waking you up."

"Wait, wait—" Harry scrambled to untangle himself from his blanket. "What happened? Nightmare?"

Draco hesitated. Without looking at Harry, he nodded almost imperceptibly. 

Harry patted a space next to him. "Wanna talk about it?"

Draco trudged over and sat down heavily. He didn't speak for a moment. Harry didn't prompt him—he knew how difficult these things were, and especially for Draco, who had been taught never to show weakness. 

"When I was younger," Draco said in a low voice, "Father used to play a game with me." He ran a hand through his already mussed blonde hair distractedly and repeatedly. "He knew I was... not very fond of snakes. He didn't like that, obviously, being a former Slytherin and all... well, he'd blindfold me and conjure snakes onto my body." He shivered violently, and Harry instinctively reached out to wrap an arm around him. Draco relaxed into his touch, but only slightly. 

"It only made me dislike snakes even more," Draco admitted. "Especially since I never knew if Father would conjure venomous or non-venomous snakes... it was always a surprise. And when the venom started to take effect, Father would feed me an anti-venom potion. If not, well, I'd walk around with little bite marks all over my body for a day."

Harry suddenly felt nauseous. What kind of parent could do that to their own child? A part of him, though, reminded him that the Dursley's let Dudley use Harry as a punching bag. That couldn't be much better than what Lucius Malfoy did to Draco.

"How could he do that to you?" Harry whispered.

Draco smiled bitterly into the darkness. Harry could just make out the sharp outline of his nose and chin. "Because I'm the Malfoy heir. I have to be perfect. I have to have perfect manners, and never show fear. I have to have perfect marks, and when I don't, Father whips me."

Harry struggled to breathe. "He—he whips you?" he gasped.

Draco nodded, strangely blank-faced. "With those magical whips that make the bruises disappear; all the pureblood parents use them."

Harry suddenly had the sickening revelation that there was more to Draco not liking Hermione than just being jealous. His father punished him when Hermione got higher marks than him. For coming in second, second to a Muggleborn girl. A wave of anger and sadness washed over Harry. 

"And do you want to be?" Harry asked. 

"Be what?"

"The Malfoy heir."