We're made into monsters

In the begining.

Draco's father was always a right prick. When we were younger we used to sword fight with sticks and play hide and go seek in the shrubbery behind the Malfoy manor. It would last for a few hours but the time would come each time where Luscious Malfoy  would snap our sticks or wack us for hiding in the bushes. "pure-bloods don't waste their  time on foolishness like this. Play in the mud and that's what you become." he would say. At the time I didn't understand but now I know that he was referring to mud-bloods. My parents weren't overly fond of the Malfoys but, our manor was right near theirs and Draco was the only other kid around. One day, as I lay in my room reading up on magizoology I saw a boy with dove white hair and grey eyes speckled with silver that reflected in the sun peeping over the fence. I opened the window. "What are you doing?" I asked. However I had caught him by surprise and he fell. I immediately ran over to the fence, standing on a chair I looked over it and my gaze landed upon a boy with kind eyes and a massive graze on his knee. "Are you alright?" He looked up at me, those kind eyes now filled with fear and dread. "You mustn't tell father about this." he rattled off. "maybe I should if that would stop you from spying on me." Now back up on his feet he looked down at the ground as if ashamed. "I'm sorry, I just heard a new family had moved in next door and I...well theres no one else here even close to my age." He said blushing underneath his white cropped hair as he poked at the ground with his foot. "It would seem we're in the same boat then. I won't tell your father under one condition." He finally looked up from the ground and met my eyes. "You have to be my friend." And thus began five years of stick fighting, hide and go seek and tag.

 We were inseparable. When Draco and I had turned ten our parents had begun to talk about our boarding schools. Draco was to go to some snobby dark arts boarding school, and I was to go to Hogwarts. There was good moments that year. There were also bad. As Draco got older his father got meaner. I could see it rubbing off on Draco over time. But never to me. Maybe its because I was the one stable person he had, the one person he wouldn't let anything happen to, the one thing his dad couldn't take away from him, an unbreakable stick sword if you would. We would sit up against the shared fence sometimes and talk through the gaps that year. "I can't believe next year we won't be seeing each other every day" he said as he leant his head against the wooden plank. "I know, we really should have developed your social skills more, I don't know how you're going to make friends by yourself." That earn't a giggle from his side of the fence. "I'm friends with Goyle and Crabbe." We both knew that that was through no doing of his own. They were more family friends of a rich household within his fathers circle. But instead of bringing up that depressing fact I said "yeah you're right." 

On Draco's eleventh birthday he received a letter. Upon opening it and reading the contents he had sprinted 500 yards from his bedroom to my front door. I'll never forget the grin on his face as he held up his letter with a Hogwarts symbol stamped on the top. He wasn't going to Durmstrang Institute, he was going to Hogwarts. We'd later discovered that his mother had convinced Luscious to send him to Hogwarts which was closer. She was much more attached than his father. What she saw in the pale bastard, to this day I still don't know.

And then my eleventh birthday came. And with it my letter.

And that is how we end up here. In the Hogwarts dining room surrounded by students, teachers, and a beautiful starry sky above, lit by candles awaiting our turn with the sorting hat. Both of our parents had attended Hogwarts and both had been in Slytherin so it seemed fairly reasonable at the time to assume that we would both go into Slytherin. Crabbe and Goyle went first, being sorted into Slytherin as expected, I was not looking forward to spending time with them. They seemed like your usual dumb cronies that had never come up with a single original thought. As we waited Draco and I whispered amongst ourselves. "I'm nervous." he said. Why wouldn't he be. I couldn't even imagine the reaction his father would have if he wasn't put into Slytherin. He would be seen as a disappointment by his father no doubt. I smiled at him "Why would you be nervous? You're too dumb for Ravenclaw, too impatient for Hufflepuff, and too much of a scaredy cat for Gryffindor. By process of elimination, you have to go into Slytherin." At that he smiled deeply. "I don't know wether to be reassured or offended." "why not both?" at that he rolled his eyes. After studying me for a few minutes he asked "Aren't you nervous?" I scrunched my eyebrows together. "Come on Draco, like I wouldn't get put into Slytherin." "Draco Malfoy!" Professor Mcgonagall called out. He walked to the chair in the centre of the platform and sat down. We locked eyes as the hat was lowered towards his head. "Slytherin!" the hat announced before it even reached his hair. A smile that could easily be mistaken for joy spread across his face. However, we both knew that it was really relief that tugged at the corners of his lips. "N/A!" Professor Mcgonagall called out. I thought I might vomit. Not only were people looking at me but I suddenly had a terrible feeling. It was something that happened often, and it was never wrong. I sat in the chair, hands clammy as I wiped them against my cloak. I felt the pressure of the hat against my scalp for several seconds before it spoke. And in each of those seconds, I now know that the hat had been weighing its options. What good could Slytherin do for me? What good could the other houses do for me? I stared towards Draco sitting at the Slytherin table, his forehead creased in concern and curiosity. At least I wasn't the only one thinking the hat was taking a while. And when it finally spoke, I could have sworn I saw a spark die within Draco's eyes, the bit of silver that flashed under bright lights such as these, now undetectable. 

"Gryffindor!" the hat yelled. And I knew right then and there as Draco dropped his face from the hand he was leaning on to stare down at the table, I had lost my best friend. Because he was just a kid, a vulnerable kid and despite what we had, his father would never accept his being friends with a Gryffindor and at that time that was all the convincing he needed.