But the airplanes hanging from the ceiling of the Imperial War Museum weren't passenger planes. They were weapons of war. Muggles dropped devices that exploded from them; they could wipe out buildings, decimate a city using them. As Draco walked around the museum with Mother, he saw how Muggles used their ingenuity to turn against each other in horrid ways. They fought savagely bloody battles in trenches during World War I, and then they were dumb enough to have yet another world war not thirty years later. It was a hard thing to accept, but it could not be denied either: Muggles were even more skilled at killing than mages.
After Mother showed Draco a replica of the atomic bomb which had decimated a city in an instant at the end of World War II, Draco had had enough. He didn't understand what Mother wanted. Did she want him to like Muggles? Did she want him to hate them? It didn't make any sense. Mother's behavior was normally quite understandable, but she was being uncharacteristically opaque.
"You don't understand, Draco," Mother said with a sigh when he told her this. "I don't want you to hate or love Muggles. I want you to fear them. Muggles are savage, distasteful brutes, but they are not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Your father's rhetoric have caused you to severely underestimate them, and that is a potentially fatal mistake. At the end of the day, if there is a war between Muggles and mages, we will lose. It may be a long, bloody, protracted war, but we will lose it."
"So what, we're just supposed to roll over, then?!" Draco demanded, momentarily forgetting about the need to be quiet. "Should we just let people like Granger run our society, turn it into a copy of these barbarians?"
"Of course not," Mother snapped. "But we have to act with subtlety."
"The Dark Lord wasn't subtle," Draco pointed out.
Draco was expecting Mother to snap at him again, but she nodded as if he'd just made a salient point. "The Dark Lord had the power necessary to not require subtlety – sheer, raw magical power. We do not possess that kind of power, and so we must use more indirect methods to get our agenda in place."
Draco arched an eyebrow, a perfect mirror of his father. "And what agenda might that be, mother?"
"At the end of the day, the biggest – and perhaps only – threat to our people is the Muggles. Muggleborns are a danger because of their ties to the Muggle world. The more ties they have, the greater the danger of the Statute being broken. In my opinion, Muggleborns such as Granger must be seized from their families at the first sign of accidental magic and placed in our society. Leaving it until eleven allows them to infect us with this." She gestured at the various instruments of war around them.
This was a lot for Draco to take in, in his opinion. "Father doesn't think this way," he pointed out.
Mother frowned. "No. Your father's viewpoints have always been more…extreme than mine. And I believe for both our sakes, it would be inadvisable for you to mention this little outing to him." Draco could definitely get behind that idea. He did not want to face Father's considerable wrath if he found out about this. "Our enemy isn't each other, Draco. It's the Muggles. I am not saying you should make nice with Muggleborns like Granger. It is a waste of time, frankly; there is too much bad blood between our factions. But I will not permit this obsession with blood purity to get out of control and ruin our society either."
Draco shrugged. This was honestly starting to get a little above his head. "Can we go home, mother?"
"Of course, sweetling," Mother said, ruffling his hair like she had when he was a child. "I suppose this was too much to place on your head so quickly."
Draco was happy to put aside this bewildering experience after that. Well, he tried, anyway. But the glimpse of the world he'd long been trained to dismiss wouldn't leave his head at all. Draco occasionally found himself sneaking out of the manor and into the Muggle world. He visited some strange building like a theater but one that played projections upon a screen. There were…moving drawings was the best term Draco could think of, of a lion whose father was killed in an act of treason by the evil Scar, causing young Simba to go into exile. It was a mesmerizing experience.
"Malfoy?!" a voice whispered behind him and Draco nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Granger, sitting in the row behind him.
He nodded as coolly as he could, which wasn't all that coolly given the fact his heart felt like it was beating a million miles an hour. "What are you doing here?"
"I…I'm just enjoying the movie," she said, sounding positively baffled. A movie. So that's what this was. How fascinating. Perhaps it was that way because the drawings kept moving. "What are you doing here?"
Draco coughed. "I'm just…" How the hell was he going to explain his actions to Granger? He didn't even understand them himself! "That's none of your business," he said haughtily.
Granger rolled her eyes. "Typical. Would it kill you to act civilly?"
"I have been!" Draco shouted. Everyone glared at him. "Let's take this conversation outside." Granger nodded him and followed him out of the room. "Look, I have been trying my best to maintain a truce with you because of the life debt I owe Potter."
"Are you trying to learn about Muggle culture?" Granger asked, sounding curious, not even remotely malicious as Draco would have thought she'd be.
Draco shrugged. "Well, they do say know your enemy…"
Granger looked at him with a pitying expression. Draco did not like it one bit. "I see. You know, you could always take Muggle studies if you –"
"We're not friends, Granger," Draco spat. Granger closed her eyes and nodded. "Don't act like you know me. Just because I've decided on a nonaggression policy towards you doesn't mean I want to have anything to do with a mud – Muggleborn."
Granger arched an eyebrow at that. "Hmm. Interesting. Well…far be it from me to ruin your afternoon. But, look, Draco…" Draco startled at the unexpected use of his first name. "We all do dumb things when we're younger. If you want a second chance…I could see us being friends."
"I don't need a second chance," Draco snarled at her and stormed out of the theater before anyone could say anything else.