Another Turning Point

Trying To Understand

(Hermione's POV)

He went so white, I've never seen anything like it in all my life. Then suddenly there was this pause and I looked at his eyes.They were weird, as if there was no-one behind them. Then they flashed with an angry fire and he ran. Like lightening away from me. I don't know why I followed him but something made me, it was instinctive. And suddenly the stuff with my parents wasn't so important, there was nothing I could do about that so I didn't need to worry. But here was this boy, barely more than a child and he needed help. I didn't know why or how; I just knew I had to help him.

As I was looking for him, following the echoes of his panicked footsteps and the looks of confusion on faces of people I passed (its not every day you see the famous Draco Malfoy show any emotion other than hatred), I thought about what it must be like to be Draco Malfoy. I tried to put myself in his position. I'd heard the rumours and met his father, and the way he behaved all the time, with the sarcastic comments and hurtful jokes, didn't exactly scream I'm the happiest child alive.

I thought about what it must be like for him now that the Dark Lord had risen to new strength. It's a well known fact that the Malfoy family are supporters of the dark. He was way more involved than I was, despite the fact my parents were among the first to go missing and I was best friends with the Boy Who Lived, the Boy Who Everyone Expected To Save The World.

In fact I would say Draco was equally, if not more, involved than Harry Potter himself.

The footsteps had died away now but I went where I'd last heard them hoping that Draco had stopped rather than that I had lost him. The corridor was dim, the windows being on the wrong side of the castle to catch the sunlight. There was a door just ahead and I recognised it as the door to the tallest tower where years before I had gone with Harry to set Norbert free. The door was unlocked and I closed it gently behind me, treading carefully up the stairs trying to be as quiet as possible because I didn't want to scare Draco away. It sank in at this point who exactly I was trying to find and the horror almost made me turn back, but instead I trusted my intuition. Something had made me follow Draco from the hospital wing and it was probably for a reason.

There was another door at the top of the tower leading onto the roof. I pushed it slowly open and looked out. Draco was sitting dead still watching over the lake, his knees were drawn up to his chest with his arms wrapped tightly round them and his chin resting on his knees so he could see over the parapet. He was staring into the distance. I accidently let the door slam shut so I knew he must have heard me. I walked up slowly beside him, making sure he could see out the corner of his eye who exactly it was, giving him every chance to leave if he didn't want to talk to me of all people. But when I crouched down beside him and touched his shoulder he buried his face in his knees and leant on me. I sat down properly next to him and put an arm round his shoulders while he cried, stoking his hair soothingly and waiting until he was calmer. I didn't know whether he wanted to talk or just sit quietly so I didn't prompt him. After a while he ceased crying quite so violently and wiping his face on his sleeve he began to talk. He told me about the letter and his father and why the disappearance of my parents was his fault.

Strangely I didn't feel angry. Like I told him, using a child's petty playground squabbles to play God and choose your victims was not only wrong, its unfair. I was confused, I didn't know who to hate, I couldn't hate Draco because seeing him like that, so helpless and so innocent changed my opinion of him. He wasn't a nice person, he was spoilt and that made him spiteful when he couldn't get his own way, but he certainly wasn't a bad person. But, I couldn't hate his father; Voldemort is as renown for his heartless treatment of his followers as he his of his victims. Someone who willingly crawls back to that must be one very desperate man, cowardly and pitiful but not evil. It occurred to me that perhaps everything should be blamed on Voldemort the epitome of evil.

But... people generally aren't born evil. Tom Riddle was a bright student and while he was able to blindly hate all people of certain breeding at aged 16, was he capable of the same when he was still only 11? This wasn't a new question for me, it puzzled me for years but this was the first time I'd properly considered this. Up until then it had been a casual thought floating round my head on and off ever since I found out about the wizard world and Lord Voldemort. But after that morning on the roof with Draco the question has never strayed far from my consciousness. People aren't just evil, something or someone has to affect them to make them like that. Happy people don't become evil, only very very unhappy people. Or insane people. But in either case its seems that the person isn't really responsible for their mind set, it must be a pretty dire set of circumstances to affect someone that badly. So maybe everyone who ever put Tom Riddle down, everyone who insulted him, laughed at him and joked about him. All the people who had walked away from him when he was in need. All those people were the ones who had turned Tom Marvolo Riddle into Lord Voldemort. But they couldn't be blamed, how were they to know? Ultimately Voldemort was responsible for his own actions. It took me a long time to realise that and I only did so by looking at Harry.

Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived. The boy who lost his family when he was too young to understand. Who lived his life with a family that didn't want him. They treat him as a slave. He was shunned all the time when he was so young and so vulnerable. He had an awful time at school and had no friends until he was 11. He never knew what it was to have someone love him the way a mother does, though that was what saved his life. He was expected to save the world. He was wanted dead by the most feared sorcerer of the time. His one chance of happiness was taken from him. He believed that he would be able to leave the Dursleys and live with Sirius. I can only begin to imagine how happy that would have made him. Then all too soon he had that chance torn from him, I imagine it must have been like someone ripping his heart out. He felt responsible for the return of the Dark Lord and for the deaths of Cedric Diggory and Voldemort's other new victims. But he kept going. In some ways he had had a worse life than Tom Riddle ever had, but he kept going and he never once considered turning to the dark side.That strength of character was amazing especially at such a young age. A lot of his suffering was inflicted when he was too young to comprehend why. It's why he was an infinitely better wizard than Voldemort, and why he was liked by so many people that met him. Despite everything he had to put up with he remained a decent person. Nicer than some people who have very happy lives. He was polite and friendly almost the whole time even to people he didn't know.

But that doesn't make it OK to bully and abuse people, just because one person was able to cope with it. That's the true evil. It's not any one person but the way they treat each other that is to blame. Peoples' actions rather than the people themselves are evil. There are few people who really understand that. I've found over the years that a lot of people will agree with you if you tell them that. But when push comes to shove a very few of them will echo that knowledge with their actions. People always want revenge, they are sceptical and won't believe it when someone says they're going to change, or that they have changed. The only person I can ever recall knowing to act upon this principle, to not give in to hypocrisy, is Professor Dumbledore. The most obvious example that springs to my head is Severus Snape, known Death Eater, but who has Dumbledore's full trust. He's not the only one of course, Rubeus Hagrid and Sirius Black to name but two more, and I'm sure there have been many others.

After Draco had told me that he seemed to calm down more, and at the same time seemed to become aware of where he was, who he was talking to, and what he was saying and as I expected he stopped talking. I could tell there was more, a lot more though I'm not sure I would have wanted to hear it. He became suddenly aware that he was telling his darkest secrets to the one person, well one of the people, he wasn't supposed to tell his secrets to. I was half expecting him to run off again, or even hex me, but instead he just sat in silence. After what seemed like hours but must only have been minutes I spoke again. The similarities of hardship were so obvious to me that I had to say it. I told him:

"Think about Harry."