What Once Was

I do know what I’m talking about, from both sides even. I watched as the world went from orderly to chaotic and back to orderly in a matter of months. I remember everything so clearly. The night Professor Dumbledore died only bled into the next night, and the next, and the next. Even in the History of Magic classes, there is only a short section dedicated to the life and death of this man, and nothing about the lives he touched in his own. In under a year I went from being heir to the most moneyed family in the entire wizarding world to being little more than a house-elf. Indeed, in those confused months after the War of the Lords, I did little more than clean the Prefects’ Bathroom once and again, trying only to be of some constructive use. A use that didn’t revolve around the war and my part in it. A use that I could call my own.

This world is far different from the world I was born into. Even at Malfoy Manor we cannot pretend we are the same. The Burrow has collapsed. The Dark Magic used in Ottery St. Catchpole overrode the charms used to hold the old fortress together. I never realized until too late the obscurity and the brilliance of the Burrow, and, most importantly, the occupants of it. Never did I realize it until 'twas too late.

You look at me like I’m possibly crazy. Well, perhaps so, but isn’t everyone? The first years, especially, think I am insane. That was the first impression of Dumbledore to other first years in my year, I suppose, but I had known him too long before to believe in his madness. Of course, I only believed him a genius in my own mind; Father would have had a conniption fit if he had known that I was already weakening, already betraying the Malfoy family. I am thankful he died before I became a true disgrace; before I attempted to make all Malfoys, past and present, spin in their graves. Indeed, I believe he’s still spinning over that one.

Indeed, Dumbledore was not the only casualty that day. The sunset of June 8, 1995 ended the noble and starkly short lives of Professor Minerva McGonagall, Rubeus Hagrid, and the much-whispered about Harry Potter. The pre-conceptions that the new students have now are rather amusing indeed. No, my dears, Harry Potter was not an angel sent to protect us all. He was indeed, all too much, a teenage boy, susceptible to his emotions like all of us are. This old man knew Harry Potter. You see, we were Prefects together in our fifth year...