Under the Willow Tree | Draco Malfoy

chapter 40: the invisible wounds continue to bleed

Draco Malfoy | 5th Year

Before he went to Hogwarts, Draco had three friends, but only one of which remained his ally as the years went by.

One by one, Draco ruined things with the other two, starting with Briar Davies.

Draco and Briar had a strange sort of friendship, one where they also acted as rivals. They were raised in similar households and under similar circumstances. Both were purebloods, raised by fathers who knew one another during their time together at Hogwarts, and both children were incredibly wealthy.

In their younger years, the two were good friends, serving as partners in crime as they sneaked around their respective homes and pretended to be secret agents on a hunt for clues. On these adventures, they often found many strange things in their father's spaces, including some of the texts they used to teach themselves legilimency and occlumency.

Around that same time, their fathers both began to teach them what they believed to be important, and this was where Draco and Briar diverged.

While Draco consumed every word his father said and stored it away as absolute truth, Briar was suspicious of everything her father told her. She had once said to Draco, "Who someone's parents are does not determine their worth."

Draco didn't really understand the wisdom of her statement at seven years old — frankly, he didn't even understand what his brilliant friend was saying — and that was why he responded with all he had been taught. In the heat of the moment and feeling the need to defend his father, Draco then told her she should understand it better than anyone, for her mother's lackluster allegiance to "what was right" had certainly made Briar a less worthy witch than Draco was.

That was the first time Briar lashed out at Draco, the first to many feuds in the years to come. After that misguided insult in their childhood, their friendship still hadn't recovered many years later, when the two students were fifteen and had long since started to make decisions in the absence of their fathers.

However, Draco hardly mourned the loss of his broken friendship with Briar at the time since his father had taught him the disposability of friendships. It wasn't until years later that Draco would finally feel the hot regret burning him up from the inside out. By then, Draco would decide it was far too late to make amends, and his father had never taught him how to apologize.

However, around the time of his imploding friendship with Briar Davies, Draco had started to make other friendships with two boys: one named Vincent Crabbe and the other named Blaise Zabini.

Draco and Crabbe remained friends presently, although they were on shaky grounds after Crabbe hit Lorelei with that bludger. Draco had never felt as close to Vincent as he did with Briar or Blaise. His emotional distance is what he believed protected him from destroying his friendship with Crabbe all these years, but his relationship with Blaise was not as fortunate.

When Blaise and Draco first met, the two boys were practically inseparable. Their mothers had become acquaintances — loving to garden together at their respective manors — so they met on one of the days that Draco was dragged over to Blaise's home. Draco was young, merely seven years and one week old, when his mum dragged him kicking and screaming through the floo network to this other home.

However, Draco grew quiet once he saw the darker skinned boy with round, glassy eyes staring back at him in this unfamiliar room.

Without a moment's hesitation, Draco stepped forward confidently, forgot his previous tantrum, and offered a steady hand to the boy. "My name's Draco Malfoy. And yours?"

Blaise had smiled mischievously at him that day, and both of them just knew they would become fast friends.

Over the years, they became close, arguably even closer than Draco had been with Briar. They spent most of their time at the other's manors, hiding away in each other's bedrooms or in the most lavish parts of their homes. They would practice Quidditch with one another in their backyards, and they got lost in unceasing giggles whenever they tried to cast spells that they couldn't quite perform yet at their young ages.