The Night We Met

Chapter One

Draco could hear nothing but crunch of his leather boots on the early winter track leading to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The sound would have been relatively pleasant to hear, for Draco rather liked winter, but as he stared at the castle, all his eyes did were look up, not down.

There was still a lot of rebuilding to be done. Hogwarts in its recent blight had been hit hard by the final battle against the Dark Lord in May. It was December, now. For the first few months, Draco had barely been able to stomach the sight of the crumbled castle: he could hardly stomach the thought that more than fifty had died, or were murdered, or had fallen, or had been blown up, or...

Had given themselves to Voldemort.

Draco swallowed a mouthful of cool air, his ribs inflating with ice. His eyes drifted to the Forbidden Forest, untouched, and covered with clouds dumping snow on the trees. On former Headmaster Dumbledore's trees.

He was alone in the outdoors, but as Draco passed a particular spot in the opening of the trees, his body and soul felt heavy. He couldn't explain it. It was like the spirits of the dead were holding a meeting, and he was an intruder.

Draco pushed past the weight hanging in the air, taking a few more gulps of raw ice. His pale skin was pink, blushed with his blood attempting to circulate his body. He tried warming charms, but those only worked for a short time. And Draco had been out here since the morning, wondering if the final battle was worth the price of those hundreds of souls.

At the halfway point between that day and the final battle, Draco had a shock, in the sense that he could actually think for himself, finally. Lucius Malfoy, his father, had been sent to Azkaban for good, this time. Draco thought it wise of his father to finally stop pleading Imperius and give up. Besides, the evidence had been stacked against him.

Draco hadn't been safe from the laws of the Ministry of Magic himself. In fact, there had been a time where Draco was certain he'd end up in a cell adjacent to his mother and father for his following of the Dark Lord and the taking of his Mark.

But surprisingly, it took a joint success between Minerva McGonagall, the new Headmistress of Hogwarts, and one of Draco's former school nemeses, Hermione Granger, to clear his name.

The Mudblood Granger. Oh, if Potter could see me now, thought Draco, as he kicked up a patch of snow and crunched some more frost. Hermione Granger had testified for him at the DMLE trial, where he remembered being bolted to the chair, white as a sheet. His freedom had been up to Granger.

Draco took another breath of fresh, biting air. It took serious brain work to figure out how it had happened. In the Battle of Hogwarts, it had been Granger, Weasel, and Potter who had saved Draco's  life, not the other way around. But Granger had taken a stand and made a worthy case.

"Draco Malfoy played a pivotal role in the downfall of Voldemort," Hermione Granger announced boldly, once more in his memory.

Yes. Draco Malfoy played a pivotal role in the downfall of Voldemort. That was her thesis. But Draco had known none of it. The defense consisted of a presentation, reporting the cause of the Dark Lord's downfall, when Harry Potter utilized a relic belonging to a group of three, the Deathly Hallows: The Elder Wand, the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak of Invisibility. Potter had inevitably disarmed the Dark Lord with Expelliarmus, catching the wand of legend, often referred to as the Death Stick. And it was then that Voldemort fell, after all had been done. But why did the Dark Lord fall? It hadn't been just because of Potter's prowess.