I never knew Bertie Bott…but I do like her jellybeans.

Funny how a single package of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans could have lead to this whole mess. All this crap I'm elbow-deep in now.

So I made a few mistakes. I'm only human. The problem is, I'm not allowed to be "only human." Not with my prestigious family name, abusive parents, violent and barbaric upbringing. The weight of all the hopes and dreams of my parents, and their parents, fall on my shoulders.

I guess I never knew any way other than the way I was raised. And that was to get what I wanted, when I wanted it. I have a short temper and access to a whole hell of a lot of weapons. Dangerous weapons, at that.

The boy should have known better than to provoke me. Surely some of the blame falls on him!

I would be tried as a minor…except that I'm eighteen.

I could pass for seventeen, or even sixteen. I'm not particularly tall or masculine. Kind of scrawny, if it comes to that. Pale, gaunt. I don't look eighteen. But I was eighteen before I could even count that high. My parents made sure of that.

Stayed a year ahead in schooling, always pushed to my limits, made to be more mature than any child should have been.

If I ever was a child, I have forgotten it now.

No. I was never a child. I had no childhood. It was robbed from me by two people with the nerve to call themselves my parents.

When I was nine, I shoplifted a bag of Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. Only one. I'd been forbidden to try them – "Too colorful," my father had said – but they always looked so good. So tantalizingly prohibited.

So I stole just one bag. I sat on the corner of the street and ripped it open greedily, stuffing the round, multi-colored beans down my throat at a tremendous rate.

They were every bit as good as I hoped. They were so satanically delicious, just the taste of their sweet prohibition, that I even ate and overlooked flavors such as sardine and blood. And when I was about halfway through the bag, my father caught me. And Lucius Malfoy takes no crap from anyone – not even his son.

"Draco!" he screamed at me. "Didn't I tell you never to eat those beans? They're too happy! Too…kiddy. You're too mature to eat a package of God damned rainbow colored candy jellybeans!"

He was furious. He yelled and screamed. He hit me. He took my sweet jellybeans away from me. I followed them with my small, sad blue eyes from my father's tight grip to their resting place in the wastebasket. My Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans. My prize. My sweet candies.

I was lectured for hours by my mother and father and even my house elf. I was only nine and had only eaten a stolen package of jellybeans, but they treated me as though I had committed murder. I heard their words of derisive hatred, but I paid no attention.

For I had tasted my first sample of defiance. I had broken my first family rule. And there is nothing more addictive than disobedience.