If Draco Malfoy had a weakness it was the tears of a woman. Oddly enough, that was one of the reasons everyone was convinced he was heartless. If some poor girl started crying in his presence he simply walked away. It wasn't because he didn't care as everyone assumed, no, he simply needed to leave before she asked for so much as a glass of water and the things girls asked for when distraught were rarely so simple. You see, he knew that if she asked for the moon he would break his back trying to get it for her.

Most of this was due to his mother, or rather, his father. Their marriage had been arranged and her one comfort was her son. Draco's earliest memory was trying to make his mother smile after his father had made her cry.

His mother was the one person to whom he showed his human side, as she called it. He himself had received plenty of pain at his father's hand, both physical and emotional. The last thing he could do was let someone see how much. Perhaps there was nothing he wanted more than to find solace in the sympathy and compassion of another, but there was nothing more dangerous. He needed to be strong for his mother's sake and to stand up to his father. If he let his defenses down, even privately, to himself, it would weaken his resolve before his father and his composure before his mother, and he needed all the resolve he could muster to concentrate his father's attentions on himself and all of the composure he could gather to convince his mother it would be all right.

If the world thought he was as cruel and hard as his father it was because he had to be to survive. He had to keep people at a distance and the easiest way to do that was to offend them. If he felt resentment and hatred for those around him it was because he envied what they had, even his housemates whose parents were by no means model for they were only overlooked, ignored, or at the worst labored with impossible expectations, and didn't believe they were properly grateful for what the fates had blessed them with. Thus his seemingly inexplicable hatred for the Weasel and the bloody chosen one.

One thing, however, never failed to pierce his armor and find him where he truly lived, where he truly felt. The tears of a woman, particularly those provoked by an unworthy git on whom she had bestowed her naïve hopes. Perhaps that is why he was powerless to stop the rampaging chain of events that turned his world upside down.

Ginevra Weasley rarely cried. What was the point? It only gave her a headache. Maybe if it actually made her feel better she would indulge, but she knew it wouldn't. She always felt as bad after as before.

Maybe that was why she was so good at comforting others. She really couldn't say what drove her to dry the tears of others. All she knew was that she was apparently good at it. Even the older girls came to her when they had their hearts broken. Somehow she always knew the right thing to say and the right thing to do to make them feel better and encourage them not to give up.

Oddly enough, that was why she never had anyone to turn to herself. Apparently, according to what the others seemed to believe, it is impossible to help another through their pain if you need help getting through your own. As a result, everyone to whom she might have considered turning were loathe to recognize her need.

She wasn't complaining, or at least, she tried not to. It wasn't like she really wanted someone to confide in. To her way of thinking, there was nothing scarier than opening yourself up to another when you were at your most vulnerable. It was hard enough to lay your heart out there, to trust it to another, when it was whole. The idea of doing so when it was battered, bruised, and broken was almost unimaginable.

Her experience the first year she attended school may have played a role in developing this closeness of hers or it may have simply been who she was all along, even she couldn't tell you. All she could tell you with any amount of certainty was that she hated to let other people see her cry. She couldn't even tell you whether it was because she didn't want them to see her at her weakest or simply wanted to avoid the questions. Whatever the reason, it also began a rampaging chain of events that would have unforeseen results.