Pawns of War

For the rest of my second year, Malfoy and I spoke little than a mere few sentences to each other. He acted indifferent towards me, and I to him. I assumed that he would not take the words of a muggle-born, like myself, to heart in any sort of manner. While I chose to tell Harry that I did not care what Malfoy did or said from there on out, I did.

I pitied him as a product of extreme prejudice.

It was no secret that the Malfoy’s were involved in some way with you know who, but escaped imprisonment in Azkaban by claiming they were under the Imperius Curse.

The Malfoy’s were the personification of what it seemingly meant to be of pure blood. The majority of people simply chose to look away from their ideals and hailed them for their family name. Ron eventually spoke up about the matter, “No matter what you do, Clare, you can’t change a bleeding Malfoy. They are far too proud of their perfect bloodline – despite the amount of criminals it has – they’re so proud in fact that they deciding having their heads up their arses would be better than talking to common folk.”

I could only nod in agreement. People could not change other people, other people had to change themselves.

The second year whizzed by with more excitement than the last. The Chamber of Secrets was opened, and at least a dozen students and resident ghosts were petrified for a short while. Ginny Weasley went missing. Harry spoke parcel-tongue in front of everybody. He, Ron, and the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, Gilderoy Lockhart, went down into the Chamber of Secrets and fought a Basilisk. Professor Lockhart turned out to be a fake, and lost all of his memory. And Ginny Weasley was found in the Chamber and was returned safely to Gryffindor.

By my third year, I did not know what to expect – especially with my cousin. He was always getting himself into sticky situations and then miraculously getting out of them.

The trouble for Harry started before the school year began, as he accidentally turned his aunt into a human balloon, and was then followed by an attack from a Dementor. To say our third year was already interesting was a bit of an understatement.

I did my best to not let Harry’s constant shenanigans get in the way of my learning. I was on the track of becoming a Ravenclaw prefect and needed to stay on top of my schooling. But it was difficult when potions class suddenly went from hard to seemingly impossible. I knew I could not fall behind, so I went to Professor Snape to see if he could answer questions after our class was released.

“Professor Snape?” I quietly called.

“What do you need, Miss Evans?”

“I need help, sir. I don’t understand how the chemical properties of –“

“You need a tutor, Miss Evans?”

Before I could answer, he called out Draco’s name. He was nearly halfway out the door when he had to turn back around. “Yes, professor?”

Snape then turned to me, “Draco is my finest student, I’m sure that any questions you may have he can easily help you answer. Draco, if you would be so kind to help Miss Evans.”

With that Snape turned and went to his office, leaving Draco and I in a nearly empty classroom. I glanced up towards his face, he did not seem angry about it, but he did not seem happy either. I was about to speak saying that he did not have to help, but he interjected before me.

“I have class right now,” he said. “Meet me in the library before dinner.”

He turned and left just like that. His maturing silhouette faded and mixed in with the sea of students making their way down the hall.

I was dumbfounded. This boy who last year made it clear he did not really want to associate with muggle-borns in any way was going to help me with Potions. It was interesting to say the least.

He’s probably going to ditch, I thought to myself. He was just saying that in case Snape was listening.

Despite these thoughts racing through my head, I went to the library two hours before the dinner feast was to start. I sat down at one of the tables and began to do Snape’s impossible study-work. I spent nearly forty minutes just answering the first one when Draco Malfoy finally arrived.

He took a seat next to me and brought out the required materials. He began to look over the one problem that I had done and pointed out all the errors that I had made.

If there was one credit that I had to give Draco Malfoy, it was that he was a very bright student. Almost, if not, as smart as Hermione. As we neared the end of the homework, I thanked him for his help.

“This homework is hard,” he replied. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but did not know whether to speak or not.

“It is,” I spoke. I also did not know whether to continue. The silence that grew between us was awkward to say the least. I finally decided to ask.

“If you don’t mind, why did you decide to help me? I thought you disliked muggle-borns.”

He weighed the question, I could read it on his face. When he finally responded, his answer shocked me.

“You said I could be a better person.”

With that, Malfoy packed up his things and left the library in a rush. I watched as he left. He had listened to me. After all this time of thinking that my words had fallen on deaf ears, he had heard and listened to what I had said in the bathrooms the year prior. A small sense of accomplishment came over me. A smile tugged at my lips as I packed up my materials and made my way to Ravenclaw tower to wash up before the dinner feast.

The entire time during dinner, Cho Chang and Padma Patil chatted with me over trivial things as I would chance a glance over at Draco sitting with his fellow Slytherins. Padma eventually caught on to what I was doing and teased me, saying that I had a crush on Malfoy. I told them repeatedly that we were only acquaintances, but that did not stop their sudden interest into my love life.

Fuel was only added to that fire as Draco continued to tutor me over the next several weeks in potions class. Although he remained cool and collected, focusing only on the homework that was due, I began to want to know more about Draco and get to know who he really was.