Hey everybody! I HAVE BRIEFLY RETURNED TO DELIVER THIS REWRITTEN ONESHOT TO YOU ALL :) I've taken quite a long break and now I'm ready to get back into the writing groove, if only to update this cringe-worthy short story (seriously, I was re-reading the previous draft and my wincing almost permanently marred my face).

Enjoy the new-and-improved oneshot, you guys! LOVE Y'ALL!

Everyone had their own way of dealing with the stress after the war. Some people decided to help others cope; going to the funerals, offering a shoulder to cry on, and caring for those whom could not care for themselves. They tried their best to bear the invisible brunt of grief and in secret desperately wished for help of their own. Others took a more violent turn; dark people in even darker masks, hidden by the shadows, clutching their wands with terrible intent. There were harsh red sparks, a gleam of green, and the next thing you knew some poor soul was being brought into St. Mungo's the next morning. Yet still others did absolutely nothing; became shells of their former selves, refusing to stand up, wake up, and believe.

Draco Malfoy wrote letters.

Dozens upon dozens of letters. Within an hours time, blank sheets of parchment were filled with smooth script. Ink bottles littered the carpets of his lavish office. Quills had been snapped and thrown about and crushed and could be found anywhere from the inside of the oven to the white roses growing in the garden. It was a simple task taken to the extreme. It was madness. Bordering on insanity.

But Draco Malfoy had to write his letters.

And write he did. As much as he could bear. Everyday.

Nobody except for Draco himself knew what the words on the pieces of parchment proclaimed; the platinum-haired man seemed to have too much pride to send them, or perhaps is was fear, or perhaps it was self-loathing that held him back from doing so.

As for the letters themselves, a few were confessions, buried and then brought up from the deepest pit of his heart. There were a couple dedicated to his family, though they were locked behind steel bars in Azkaban, telling them his true thoughts on the Death Eaters and his father joining them. He had even addressed a simple one or two to himself, containing dark secrets and a scared boy and an evil menace. Some were short, but many were longer. The one he was currently working on looked to be of the longer pile, but Draco could never predict his letters, so he could not be completely sure.

He didn't want to be sure; he wanted to write.

The entire ordeal had started out innocently enough; he would wake up, eat the breakfast that the house elves had prepared without tasting it, take a warming shower, and then seclude himself to his Potions lab for the better part of the afternoon. He would emerge several groupings of sixty minutes later and eat a late lunch, work on his Potions again, eat dinner, and then go to bed. He had thought that he was acting like his godfather Severus: unemotional, distant, and addicted to Potions. But nonetheless, it was a strict routine, though it bored him and contained no life, color, or freedom, and he followed it. However, at that time Draco hadn't been looking for life, color, or freedom. He hadn't been looking for anything.

Then one bland afternoon, he had decided to clean out his office. It was in an utterly horrendous state, one that vaguely surprised Draco (whom was usually rather neat), and he realized he'd put off organizing it for far too long (he couldn't trust the house-elves to take care of it. They'd end up touching the wrong thing and turning themselves inside-out or something equally drastic).

While digging though his drawers, a light blue quill caught his eye. He had picked it up and twirled it between his fingers and noted that it was one he'd never gotten around to using in his second year at Hogwarts. He had bitten his lip, paused, and thought for a moment. That had been what set everything in motion; stopping to consider. Said considering lead him to search for a blank piece of parchment, a new inkwell, and taking the time to sit down and write a letter to Albus Dumbledore. He couldn't send it, of course, and Draco knew that, but he felt that he owed his headmaster in some way for what he had done. And besides, it felt good to get a little bit of weight off of his shoulders.

He planned to only write a quick note, but he ended up staying in that room for the rest of the day, writing away to his dead headmaster. Before he had known it, Draco had finished that letter, and had started another one. And then another one. And another.

And another.

Draco did not stop writing for forty-two straight hours. He did not eat, or use the bathroom, or sleep. He wrote. He dared himself not to pause, because he feared that if he did he would stop feeling the emotions and motivation necessary to write the way he was writing. So he kept up until his hand was so sore he couldn't cross his t's or dot any more i's and his vision was blurred (was it from lack of sleep or because he had been crying?) and he fell out of the chair he had been sitting in to the floor, worn out physically and mentally and emotionally.

Draco woke up the next morning to bright sunlight streaming in his eyes and shining on all the letters he had written. His stomach was cramping painfully and his bladder was screaming at him and his eyes were coated with a film of exhaustion. He smiled thinly before summoning an elf to make breakfast.

From that point forth, Draco dedicated at the very least two hours everyday to writing letters, nonethematter what time it was. Draco made time. And as happens with all things, he learned as he went along.

For instance, one morning he brought a cup of tea with him, spilling it all over his writing when a freshly-woken hand crept up too slowly and it slipped. He had immediately woken up fully, cursed because he had been halfway through the damn thing, and wiped the mess away with a flick of his wand. Draco could do nothing about his stained parchment and the smeared words decorating it, but he made do and recalled as much of the letter as he could from memory in order to re-write it. Another time he had ordered an elf to bring a hot towel for his stiff neck. The charms on the towel were good; too good, however, because the moment he set the towel down on the table as he made a move to get up it burst into flames. The towel ended up scorching three letters, and burning two more into nothingness.

That had not been Draco's best day.

However, it was not his worst. A few weeks after those incidents, during an intense second of emotion and thought, he had pressed down too hard on the quill he had been using. It snapped in half, which would not have usually bothered Draco...if the quill had not been the light blue one that he had used to write his first letter and all those letters from the hours that followed.

Now, that had been Draco's worst day.

But whether or not he had a good day or a bad one didn't matter anymore. Draco was past the point of caring. All he did was write and write and write. And he coped.

Then one day Draco Malfoy left the Manor and did not return.

No one knew why. He simply never came back. It might've been because he was killed, his face recognized by an angry soul on the streets. It might've been because he wished to leave everything he had behind and start anew. It might've been because the words, the sentences, the paragraphs he wrote, they were too much for him to handle. He stopped coping and began to write the very code of his soul. He poured himself into the parchment until there was nothing left.

Nobody knew.

After a while (when the dark wooden floor gathered so much dust it looked white, when the cobwebs hanging on the walls resembled chandeliers, when there were more weeds in the garden than flowers), something had to be done about the decaying estate. House-elves were summoned; traditionally, the duty of cleaning up a master's house resided with these small, dedicated creatures. And clean they did: soon the grand Manor was sparkling and shining as if it was newly built.

One room remained untouched, because no elf dared enter it. Their Master's study, where he kept all of those piles of parchment locked up. As a result of the incident with the burning towel, not a soul besides Draco Malfoy himself ever set foot there again: the elves were frightened that the grey-eyed man would hex them if they defied his direct orders.

Yet, a single elf managed to sneak inside, for it could not resist it's urge to keep things neat and tidy and simply couldn't stand the fact that a room was still dirty.

The elf stood among the mass of papers, and sighed. So much parchment was in the office it appeared as though there was nothing but the parhcment in here. The desk of Draco Malfoy was overrun with them, his walls stacked with them, his floor covered by them. They littered nearly every single inch of space in the room, choking the air with their musky scent.

There was a fireplace in the corner. The parchment would have to be burned as a proper means of disposal.

A fire was started, and the elf stood ready. It's eyes scanned until they caught something: a gleam of light blue ink, different from all of the other plain black colors. The elf made it's way over to the letter and picked it up.

Dear Harry James Potter,

I'd like to start by saying that I'm sorry. I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry that I was mean to you in Hogwarts for years on end, sorry that I joined the Death Eaters, sorry that I was part of the murder of Dumbledore. I didn't know what I was doing. I still don't know what I'm doing, writing to you. But I am.

I don't think that I ever crossed your mind in a pleasant way. Perhaps you always thought of me as out to get you. Your enemy. One who wishes to see your final demise. And you wouldn't be wrong; in those days, I hated you. I hated you for picking Weasley and not me. At the time, I'd never been denied anything, and to be denied the thing I wanted most was like a tear in my soul. But tears can be mended, with a skilled hand and a sturdy thread, right?

Well, you would be right if you agreed, but my case was a special one. Demanding parents forced the tear open again, and the person they answered to filled the tear with darkness. It was horrible, working for him. I was always afraid. So were my parents, I think, my mother especially. My father I wasn't sure about. And I don't think that he was sure about me, either. But I suppose that it doesn't matter anymore, does it? They're in Azkaban. Wasting away.

...I'm sorry. I'd forgotten that you didn't have any parents. Forgive me.

I'm straying terribly off my intended topic. My apologies again. The true reason I'm writing you this letter is...to say how I feel.

I know that you never gave much thought to the corrupt Slytherin whom bullied you and treated you like dirt. I know. And I know that I hated you just the same. But somewhere in our six years of education, of seeing your bloody face every single day, somewhere in that time span I fell in love with you.

It began as a simple crush, similar to a pathetic schoolgirl. I squashed it with everything in me, I forced it to turn into something it shouldn't have been. That's why I bullied you, you know. So that you would never know. So you'd never figure it out. And you never did.

But yes, it began merely a fluttering in my stomach whenever you walked by...and grew. I'd find myself glancing at you more often than I should've, foolishly hoping you'd glance back. Merlin, you'd be shocked at the amount of times I stared at the back of your head at breakfast and wondered what you would do if I marched across the Great Hall and grabbed you by the front of your robes and kissed you senseless. You were brave, you were empathetic, you were well-liked. You were everything I was not and that was why I liked you so much, aside from my thoughts of your physical attractiveness.

You were everything I couldn't have. But still. My stupid young self didn't care and I loved you anyway.

...good lord, I've only just realized how awful this letter is. More of a diary entry, really. Perhaps I shall send you this one day, if only to mess with you, and perhaps make myself feel a slight bit better. It would be comforting having someone else besides my self know.

I think that's my cue to make my leave. It's time for tea anyway, and I cannot spill it all over another letter. Writing the confession above twice would kill me on the inside.

Good day, Potter. I plan to see you in person quite soon.

Sincerely,

Draco Malfoy

The elf had no use for the unsent letter. After all, it was only a piece of parchment taking up space. Without a second thought the elf turned and threw the letter into the fire.