Cold

If Draco felt something he didn't want to, he wrapped it up and put it in a box, separate from the part of his mind where things got done.

It hadn't always been as easy as that. One day in the second year, he told Crabbe and Goyle that he hoped one of the Mudbloods would die. They were acting oddly that day, and once they were gone he sat in the common room and just read and read because he knew that his father wanted him to get better marks than Hermione Granger and that his mother would be upset if he didn't. That was the first time he remembered doing it.

The Dementors patrolling the grounds made him shiver and feel sick and remember when his parents had arguments but he lifted his chin and curled his mouth and made sure that no one in the year made the mistake of thinking he was a scaredy-cat like Potter. His father would know how brave he was.

Draco saw his father and his colleagues running around in the darkness of the Quidditch World Cup and smiled because it was fun to shake things up a bit. He heard a nearby witch point at the Muggles hanging in the air and whisper the poor things. He looked at their bulging eyes and their faces full of fear and said, they're not poor, they're just pathetic.

Smiling, earnest, golden boy Diggory was dead by the end of that year. Draco said nothing and felt nothing until he was in the train and felt his control slip as he yelled at Potter and Weasley and Granger about warned and losing side and too late. After that, he was more careful about letting the wrong feelings escape from their boxes.

Towards the end of the fifth year, his mother sent him an Owl saying that his father had been put into prison. When he returned to the manor, still limping from the curses Potter and his cronies had cast at him, his mother hugged him so tightly that he couldn't breathe. She said thank goodness and I was so afraid. It was only the two of them now, against everyone else.

If you don't do it, your family will die. Draco knew that he wasn't free any longer, but he dismissed the thought and simply told himself this is necessary. His father was in prison and his mother sometimes held his hand so tightly that her nails left indentations on his skin. He had to do something, otherwise no one else would.

Through the year, he repeated the word like a mantra: necessary, necessary. It became harder and harder to keep the feelings wrapped up. He cried, for the first time in so long that he couldn't remember, he cried so hard that it made his throat hurt when he answered questions in lessons (he didn't talk much any more, except to Crabbe and Goyle).

Aunt Bellatrix had told him that to be a true Occlumens you had to have the ability to block parts of your mind off from others. He had said that he did that all the time. She had given him a curious look from those hooded eyes of hers.

But standing at the top of the tower about to kill Albus Dumbledore it was so much harder than it had been before. His throat still hurt and he couldn't do it because he wasn't strong enough and he was going to fail everyone.

Professor Dumbledore's voice was too calm and he was saying words like mercy and protection. They scared Draco because they made it sound as though he was doing the wrong thing. And behind what Professor Dumbledore was saying he heard something else, other words that said You don't have to be cold anymore.

He lowered his wand.