There's No Difference In My Teardrops and the Rain

"Father, please, no! What did I do?" I whimpered, backing away as he raised his fist again.

He did not answer, just glared mercilessly at me. His fist swung and made a sharp, painful contact with my left shoulder.

"You pitiful excuse for a Malfoy. Only five years old and already a disgrace to me My only son, the only heir to my name and fortune, is a useless bit of filth," he spat, grabbing me by the front of my shirt.

-

"Draco, what do you think you're doing?"

"Nothing sir," I mumbled. I hadn't been doing anything, just laying on my bed reading.

"Nothing? Don't lie to me boy," he snapped as he crossed the room in several long strides.

He grabbed a fistful of my hair and wrenched my neck back painfully so that I was staring into his face.

"Daddy, don't," I begged him in a voice not above a whisper; I knew it wouldn't have any effect.

"Draco, don't call me 'daddy', you're seven years old now, no need for baby talk. You always have been to call me 'Father' and that is what you will continue to call me. Do you understand?" he said, tightening the grip he had on my blonde hair in a very painful way.

-

I was sitting by the pond on the West end of the spacious grounds that our Manor resided on one afternoon in late July. I was to start Hogwarts that September and I had never been more nervous about anything in my life. Father knew this and had tried on several occasions to beat it out of me. Obviously it hadn't worked, all he had succeeded in doing was making me more afraid of him. It left me wondering if everyone was like him. If everyone would hate me... If everyone would hit me...

-

Not everyone hated me. I still had my old friends, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle. I didn't like them much. Too easy to boss around and far too stupid for the greater good of humanity. 'Stupidity should be painful' had been literally beaten into me since I was a child and if this rang true, Crabbe and Goyle should be in constant agony.

But as I said, not everyone hated me. Just those who mattered. I even tried to make friends with him, but did he accept? No. He could have saved me, but did he? No. He chose Weasley and Granger over me. I had been raised to believe that the entire universe revolved around the name Malfoy and when I was shot down, it made me question what my father had taught me. What ensued was five years of torment.

-

"You tried to make friends with whom, Draco?" he yelled. Shouting was highly unnecessary as his face was just inches from mine.

"Harry Potter..." I whispered.

I was terrified. I had only seen him this angry once... Once when I was four and he caught me talking to a muggle girl. He beat me with a belt until my skin broke and I bled for that...

"Harry Potter. Why, Draco, would you want to be friends with the likes of that? The boy who is responsible for the downfall of the Dark Lord?" he said, moving away from me and pacing the width of the small room.

~*~

"Draco? Draco...?" Someone's voice came as they shook my arm roughly.

I opened my eyes and stared into the face of Pansy Parkinson. Probably the last person that I wanted to see.

"Hmm?" I said, looking up at her as though nothing in the world were wrong.

"Are you all right? You're out here all by yourself... I heard shouting and I came to see and it's you thrashing around and screaming in your sleep," Pansy said, her face very white. Not even pale white, just completely void of all color, nasty, pasty white.

"I was just dreaming, Pansy. I'm sure even one such as yourself would know that," I said flatly, willing her to go away so I could try and remember what had frightened me so badly.

"Oh, well, since we're both up, maybe we should get a jump on that essay for Binns..." Pansy said.

"No, I think I'll go to bed," I said, wanting more than anything to get away from her.

I left her there without waiting for a reply.

Pansy came from a wealthy pureblood family, of course she had nothing on the Malfoy's when it came to money and power, but rich and pureblooded she was. Aside from that, she was about the most annoying excuse for a female I have ever had this misfortune to meet.

I walked into my dormitory and stared out the enchanted window. Of course it wasn't a real window as we were in the dungeon, but it was enchanted to reflect the weather outside, just as the ceiling in the Great Hall was.

I crossed the room and sank down into the sea of hunter green that was my bed. The satin of the sheets caressed my skin and the cool touch of it almost put me to sleep immediately. But it didn't. I was far too awake to sleep now as the details of my dream were starting to return to me.

It wasn't, I'm sorry to say, fabricated in my mind. That dream had been compiled memories from my childhood coming back to haunt me as they always did when it rained.

"You pitiable excuse for a boy. How could I have been cursed with such a germ for a son?"

It was memories like that that made me cry when it rained; go and sit under a tree and cry in the rain. If anyone found me I could just claim that the tears were raindrops and no one would know the difference. The redness in my eyes could be from the cold bite of the water, the shivers that shot up and down my spine were from the chill of the wet robes that clung to me.

The one who could have saved me would never save me now. He hates me now. I'm trapped in my Father's prison and my own, and because of my Father, I'll never be properly free. It's my own fault that he hates me.... I tried to make friends with him, but perhaps my ulterior motive to be rescued from the hell and damnation that was the life my Father had written and planned for me caused me to seem cold and unfeeling, an unworthy friend, perhaps.

But since birth I've been cursed with this curse. 'Malfoy'. To some it's just a name, to others, it's power. To me, it's the final nail in my coffin. It will be my death and undoing all in due time.

I see him with his friends, the Mudblood and the Blood traitor. He chose them over me. They don't need him like I did. He doesn't know what happens to me, or that he could have stopped it. So brilliant and yet he doesn't have the faintest clue about what happens to those he brushed off. So noble and yet he doesn't care what happens to his enemy.

I pull the hunter green blankets up around my chin as I think these thoughts, the familiar burning sensation starting behind my eyes. But I press it down swallowing hard. Swallowing the lump in my throat that tells me that the tears will come. That the tears will fall. That I don't have a choice anymore... I throw the blankets off and snatch my cloak off the back of the black desk chair next to my bed. I wrap it around my shoulders and button it shut before creeping silently out of the dormitory, leaving Zabini, Crabbe, Goyle and Nott asleep behind me.

Tiptoeing without a sound through the dark corridors that made up Hogwarts School of Witchcraft with Wizardry had become almost a nightly routine for me. Go to bed, wait for everyone to fall asleep, sneak out for my evening stroll. I'd only been caught once, and thankfully it had been by Professor Snape. The only positive thing I could think of about my Father was that Snape was in his pocket and it kept me out of trouble. This was hardly worth the torture I went through, though. I'd take detention to a beating any day...

I crossed the Entrance Hall and exited the oak doors onto the grounds. My shoes making a soft noise against the stone steps as I descended onto the grass below. The rain fell on me, plastering my blonde hair to my forehead and clouding my vision, but it was what I needed. The rain was my sanctuary, or the closest thing I had. It was where I could cry in peace and no one would know... It was easy to cover up in the rain...

I came to a stop a few feet beyond Hagrid's cabin, thoroughly soaked and shivering, but finally where I could be alone and away from the prying eyes and judgmental faces. People who don't understand me or what I've been through.

There's so much pain in his green eyes just before the summer because of where he has to go. He doesn't know how lucky he is. Better no parents at all than to have a father who hates you, beats you, punishes you for things that you did or didn't do, even when it wasn't your fault. He may be the only person who would understand, but he won't even try. He just glares at me, all pain draining from those beautiful emerald eyes and utter hate replaces it.

I curl up at the base of a tree, letting the rain wash over my face and flush the skin so that when the tears come I can disguise it as the rain. Not that anyone would even bother trying to tell the difference.

Malfoy of Slytherin, what on earth would he have to cry about? It must be the rain. Raindrops washing over his milky skin. Raindrops, not tears. Never tears.

That's what they'd say. Not hugging me to tell me it's okay. Not telling me that I'm sixteen now, just a few more months until I'm free of him. That would comfort me, even if it weren't true... I'll never be free of him as long as he's alive, and who knows how long that could be. Even after that, what about my Mother? She was no different. She didn't hit me or abuse me, but she didn't stop Father, and in my eyes, that made her just the same.

Raindrops were my only comfort. Raindrops were what saved me.

Tears and raindrops. Both all I have at night now. Only in the winter.

Tears and Raindrops. Both liquid silver, both falling onto the grass, both streaming down my pale cheeks.

As the raindrops fall and my tears flow from my eyes my shoulders shake and I sob aloud. An agonized wail of emotional release that tears and raindrops bring me.

Tears of pain, yes, but also of abandonment and self loathing. It's my fault he won't save me. I drove him away from me the moment we met. All the pain I'm in is my fault. My fault no one can rescue me and the one person who can never will.

It's the curse of a Malfoy. We know exactly what we need but never what we want and never know how to get it. The pleas of innocent people fall like Hell's Bells on deaf ears. We hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see, only facing reality when the fantasy becomes too real for us.

It's not all money and power, it's pain. Not for my Father, but the pain my Father inflicts. Sometimes I'm thankful I'm an only child so that no one else has to suffer at his hands, but sometimes I wish I had a sibling to share my pain. It's an emotional landslide that would turn anyone mean. It's not how I was born, it's what happened to me after.

He put my father in Azkaban and I threatened him. The threat fell on someone who couldn't have cared less. Green eyes full of loathing, not fear. Even sympathy would have been preferable to the hatred that was burning in his eyes and being absorbed by mine.

But as it is, here and now, my teardrops fall and mix with the rain in the grass. My emotion drains from me but I can't stop crying. No one hears my sobs, if they do it's just the wind to them.

In moments like this, I know that there's no difference in the teardrops I cry and the raindrops that fall.

There's no Difference in My Teardrops and the Rain...