A Walk to Remember

Prologue

            It was my last year at Hogwarts that changed my life forever...

            Nobody could ever understand anything that happened to me that year, and I don’t think I’d even bother to explain it if they asked me. Not out of selfishness, oh no, because I would tell a thousand people our story, were they patient enough to sit through it all and allow me to give them every last detail.

            Our story is too complex to even consider sugarcoating it and feeding it to the masses in a completely false form. Nobody at Hogwarts that year would even think about making me do it, knowing the circumstances.

            It wasn’t as much my story as it was theirs, considering how she touched all of their lives. However, it was I who was closest to it.

            I’m an old man now, but I can remember everything that happened that year, from the tinkle of bells to a car crash. I remember it all.

            Sometimes I wonder, if I had a Time-Turner, would I go back and take all of the depression and along with it, the joy, away? Deep inside of me I know that I would never relinquish myself of those memories, though.

            I could take you back there, you know? All I have to do is close my eyes, and then, as if I was looking into a Pensieve, the memories come back to life. I can smell the same scents from that day before I met her; hear the same sounds.

            I open my eyes and know where I am; standing in front of the entrance to the Great Hall, knowing exactly who I am.

            My name? Draco Malfoy, and I’m seventeen years old.

            This is our story, nothing misplaced. I can promise you laughter, joy, and heartbreak. All of which are inevitable. Read on, and discover how I’ve changed.

Chapter One

            Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry was one of the most welcoming places a beginning witch or wizard could go to for schooling. Children and teenagers alike glittered along the school grounds, giggling girls and laughing boys were everywhere. Ghosts travelled to and fro, leaving a faint stench of Deathday party food everywhere they went.

            Hogwarts School was probably the most popular magic school in all of Europe, and probably even in the world. You went there for all seven of your schooling years, and after that you were a legalized witch or wizard.

            I didn’t quite loathe anyone back then quite as much as I did Harry Potter and his best friend Ron Weasley. Ron, it was especially easy to make his blood boil, not to mention quite fun. My friends and I were quick to taunt him, especially about Mudbloods, for the love of his life, Hermione Granger, was one and he felt a strong urge to protect her against it.

            “Ron hangs around dirty, Mudblood filth!” my friends and I would call as we passed him, not a single glance in his direction. We could hear him saying “You’d better watch your back, Malfoy!” as we passed, no doubt Harry had held him back. I don’t remember ever quite feeling any guilt, not even during those times when Granger’d show up after we’d called things at her, tears developing in her eyes. Ron would throw death glares at us while trying to cheer her up. One time I overheard him saying something like “I’m sure glad my sister stays away from the likes of Malfoy,” but we’ll elaborate more on that later.

            Now that I’m an adult I realize that I didn’t have a great family life growing up. My father was a Death Eater, and was number two to Voldemort himself. He was barely ever home, and when he was he’d lock himself up in the Forbidden Corridor of our house that was designed to allow only Death Eaters and the like onto it without receiving excruciating pain. He had a lot of power in the community, and I bet if he had wanted he could have been the Minister of Magic, all he’d have to do was deliver a few threats.

            So basically it was just my mother and I living in a huge house by ourselves. My mother was an awesome mom, when father wasn’t around, and often wanted to leave him, though she never quite did. I didn’t blame her, but I did blame her for part of the reason why I never had proper male influences in my life, and the more I blamed her the more rebellious I became.

            I didn’t do anything horrible, but I beat up enough people and things to cause many people to fear me.

            Well anyway, my father hated all Weasleys with such a passion, and the feeling was mutual. I used to think that it was because we had much more money than them when I was growing up. It hadn’t occurred to me that my family was treacherous and filled with blood thirsty mongrels. Nope. They hated us because we had money seemed to be the reason to my mind’s ignorant eye.

            The Weasley’s were the poorest pureblooded family I had ever met in my life, but their family was filled with such emotion, the one named love mostly, that I still don’t feel is fair, though I’ve learned that life never is a fair thing.

            There was one man who seemed to stay neutral in the whole thing, and his name was Albus Dumbledore. In school I had my doubts about that; he seemed to loathe us Malfoys just about as much as everyone else in this world. Dumbledore was a great wizard. He was the only one that Voldemort had ever feared, though I still never found out the exact reason why. Well, he had written this play back before when he was the Headmaster of Hogwarts. This play was about a man who was basically soulless, who didn’t seem to know what the truth of love was. He hadn’t ever experienced it before in his life, and treated women as if they were something made for one purpose and one purpose only, sex.

            And then there was a girl. A girl different from any other. She wasn’t the prettiest, or the smartest, or the tallest, or anything like that, but this girl had something that no other girl could claim to have. She had a life filled with love, a soul filled with emotion, a brain filled with intellect, and the ability to find something about every person that could be loved. She was a true godsend.

            The man and the woman never did get along, for the man always seemed to find something about her to make fun of, but the girl never really let it get to her. In the end he finds out that the girl was his godsend and she teaches him in the end to respect everyone, and helps him find it in his heart to learn to love. As much as I want to tell you that in the play the two of them were written to fall in love with each other, I can’t, because that’s not what happened in it.

            Anyway, the play had been performed far and wide throughout the years before I was even born, but after a while the showings became less and less, causing everyone to wonder whatever happened to Dumbledore and his works. Well, he became a Headmaster and helped teach young children to find the magic within themselves. Though he never did forget that play he had written that became instant success.

            Perhaps that’s why he decided to have Hogwarts put the production on in my Seventh year, though I wouldn’t be able to bank on it. I suspect that people found out what became of him and sent him tons of owls, trying to get him to show the play again, which is exactly what he did.

            If I were to tell you that I was overrun with joy when I heard we’d be doing a play, I’d be lying. Most all of the Seventh and Sixth years were basically forced to do this play, though most of them seemed really excited about it. It wasn’t as if I was extremely angry about it, because if I was I could have written my father and had him get me out of it, but I didn’t. To this day I still don’t understand why I didn’t, it was just something I did.

            I was planning on skipping that first day of beginning the play, of course, but I was caught by Professor McGonagall, our school’s Headmistress, and she ushered me off to Professor Dumbledore’s room to begin working on the play. I was only a few minutes late, not enough for a lavish entry, so I took a seat down somewhere in the middle of the class and kicked my feet up on the desk nonchalantly. I had my mind set that this was going to be the most boring thing I had ever sat through, and wanted to make sure that every student in the room was sure to notice it.

            I surveyed the front row that was full of what seemed to be sixth year Gryffindors with a particular nasty smirk plastered on my face. Back then, a smirk was my trademark, and Gryffindors were my enemy. One of them caught my eye. She sat in the very middle seat, dressed in ragged hand-me-down robes, and I knew right there that she was a Weasley. In fact, if I remembered correctly, she was Ginny Weasley, and the youngest of all of them. I remembered her from having teased her when we were younger, though I never really payed any attention to her, I did have a reputation to uphold, didn’t I?

            Well, she sat there, a pale complexion on her face, bright red hair, and very few, very light freckles speckling her nose. She didn’t seem to be friends with the people sitting on either side of her, especially since both of them had their backs facing her and were chatting with people to the other side of them. She held her hands together in anticipation, sitting up as straight as was possible, for Dumbledore to enter the room.

            All in all, Ginny was a weird girl. She didn’t do things like the other girls did. She made Hermione Granger look like a ditz! She kept to herself most of the time, except for when she was doing things to help others. She loved helping others. She was often working in the Hospital Wing with Madam Pomfrey, trying to help the sick people get well. She worked with teachers to help them grade papers, or to tutor those students who needed extra help, and when we took weekend trips to Hogsmeade, she’d spend her time helping some old witch with their yard work or something crazy like that.

            And if that wasn’t enough to make people stay away from her, there was the fact that she was Ron Weasley’s little sister. Now, when it came to Ron, you could be his best friend or his worst enemy, but there was no in between. Where his sister came along, if you didn’t like her, he hated you, if you liked her he was suspicious, and if he knew just how MUCH you liked her, he was furious and was ready to rip your spine out, and for some reason, Ginny found that completely normal. She loved her brother almost more than her father, I’d imagine. We all wondered if she had some sort of mental illness.

            But that wasn’t it, oh no, that wasn’t what drove me crazy about her. The worst thing of all was that she was always cheerful. Nothing you could do, no hurtful thing you could say would bring her down. It seemed to only make her stronger, and irritate you more. She never quite did say anything bad about anyone, even if they were complete jerks to her. She was just so damn wholesome.

            It was then that she glanced around the room and looked at each person, her gaze catching mine. Her face broke out into one of those cheerful smiles of hers as she looked at me and it was obvious that she was glad I was in the class, though I wouldn’t know why until later.