Full Disclosure (But I Thought You Knew)

Chapter Two | Draco Malfoy and All These Things That He'd Done

Draco Malfoy - 1998

Nostalgia.

Wistful, sentimental longing for the past.

That was the feeling that Draco Malfoy supposed Platform 9¾ on September 1st was meant to evoke in him.

But it didn't. It couldn't.

Because Draco Malfoy's past was not one which could be viewed with sentiment, certainly not longing. Even his earliest memories of Hogwarts were tainted with a hatred he'd felt so deeply, so purely in his youth that prejudice had poured from his mouth like cigarette smoke, wrapping in noxious billowing wafts around his friends and classmates, suffocating them. Ruining them. Just like him.

Draco had used slurs without thinking twice, he'd forced his friends to tolerate his bigotry or face alienation, and he'd desecrated his body happily, taking a mark representing his hatred with a respectful reverence.

But then, after he was given his suicide mission and forced to watch his mother be punished for his failure, Draco had been disillusioned with the ideology—too late, of course, far too late, and probably for what most would consider the wrong reasons. He'd paid dearly for that, but not as much as so many others.

He didn't want to return to Hogwarts. For fuck's sake.

How could Draco sit at the Slytherin table, chatting amicably with his friends, where he used to chat so proudly, foolishly about the Dark Lord's return? Where he'd, just months ago, huddled there with his parents, his mother crying silently and clutching his hand as if he were an innocent child, after the Dark Lord had returned and been defeated, and suddenly, the Malfoy family found themselves on the wrong side of history?

He didn't want to return to Hogwarts, but the Wizengamot had ordered him to do so.

Thanks to Saint Potter, they'd let Draco off easy, his father as well, and his mother hadn't even had to face trial. At least that was fair. None of it had been her fault, but a lot of it had been Draco's.

Too much had been Draco's fault.

It set heavy on his chest—the guilt, the remorse, the fucking everything of it all. That guilt and an acute, full-body sadness kept him awake at night and followed him throughout the day. While Draco Malfoy was not and never would be a good person, he was capable of feeling, and he felt bad about what he'd done; he really did, and not just about the war shit but everything. He wished he could start over, take it all back, but he couldn't.

And thus, The Draco Malfoy Apology World Tour of 1998 was born.

He was handing out apologies left and right—to Potter, to McGonagall, to Goyle and Pansy and Theo, to his mother, to every ginger-headed weasel he came across. If he'd wronged someone, he apologized—to some he sent letters, others he pulled aside in person.

Admittedly, the apologies were done selfishly, as he did most things. Apologizing alleviated the weight, made him feel just a little bit better about all the things he'd done, and loosened the constricting ache in his chest.

Maybe, if he didn't have so fucking much to apologize for, the sight of the Hogwarts Express waiting to take him to the Scottish Highlands for one final time would've evoked a feeling of nostalgia. Instead, as students pushed their carts toward the train, loaded with their belongings, and families made their loud, tearful goodbyes, he felt rather ill.

As he stood frozen on the platform, dressed in black like he was going to a funeral instead of a final year of school, someone clipped him on the shoulder. Pain shot down his arm, but he didn't really react, just a small, sharp hiss.