Thank you very much for taking the time to read this prologue for a story I am starting up for one of my favorite ships. I hope to update at least once every week to two weeks seeing that I am primarily typing this up at work when I have free time xD. This story will be a little angsty as I just can't see them being all happy ecstatic after a war. It will not be epilogue compliant to the book and it will contain man on man action so you are forewarned!

As everyone else already knows, they only owner of this wonderful universe is J.K. Rowling therefore the only one making any monetary gains from her written work, not me!

Prologue: A Chance

He had never imagined that sitting upon the old wooden desk he would find a letter written on the familiar old parchment with the red wax seal of the once grand Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He had seen firsthand the devastation that had been caused to the old school during the war; whole parts of the castle destroyed by ogres, fires set everywhere for distractions, and the spells cast by both sides for destruction. He had read headlines in the Daily Prophet here and there when he could stomach to look at it about the Ministry trying to prevent the future of their young wizards and witches from being affected by the war. A thought far too late in his mind as many like him already had blood upon their hands and had watched much death envelope the Wizarding world. Restoring Hogwarts for people to return and finish their schooling as if the last year was nothing more than a nightmare you couldn't wake from and all share it.

The letter had been lying on his desk for 3 days now, unopened and untouched. He didn't care what was in it in the least bit and it just laying there brought back memories he wanted to bury away forever. There in that castle he had lost his childhood to childish school rivalries because of his father, he had lost himself in that bathroom everyday he had cried his sixth year, he had lost his hope and one of his best friends in the Room of Requirement, and almost his life. He touched lightly one of the many scars that were hidden under his jumper, one of the many reminders of what the war had left behind to always remind him of the pass each and every day. That castle would be a constant reminder of who he was and it would be only a mild improvement to the memories that haunted him at Malfoy Manor.

Malfoy Manor, once standing tall with prestige of centuries of a pureblood lineage and now only a symbol of what the war cost so many. It was there in the walls, in the hallways, in what others thought was silence...the screams of a war that ravaged his home and still lingered. Every night they grasped at his mind and followed him in the daytime, there was no hiding from it awake or asleep. The eyes of people now long gone and with no life left to them still looked back at him through his closed eyelids and corridors in the manor. He had escaped Azkaban but he could not escape what he once called home. No longer was it the home he grew up in or the home where he had watched his mother peacefully read and his father work quietly in the study. It was the empty shell of death; it was the ground where innocent blood had spilled so many times, where people had lost all hope, and where his family had become broken.

Often he would find himself walking the halls of the Manor in search for a peace that he knew he would never find in the home again. He would pass by the study, which once served as his father's study, to find his mother sitting in the large black chair his father use to sit at. She would be accompanied on both sides by large stacks of Daily Prophets that had already been read through thoroughly. He had watched as the piles grew larger and larger as the trials went on for them. Each paper contained one thing or another about them but mostly about his father. It was in those papers that he watched his mother attempt to keep her grounded to reality that her husband was never coming back and that her home would never be the same again. He would watch her quietly sometimes as she would pick up a paper already read and stare at the moving pictures of a broken Lucius Malfoy during his long trial. It was what he found himself doing that particular afternoon, standing outside the study watching her in the same quiet manner that she read in.

"Draco dear, please come in to speak with me" the voice was quiet, almost enough that he hadn't almost heard it at all. "I know you're there watching as you tend to do" she added on, this time looking up from the paper in her hands to look out the slightly open doors.

It was unusual for him, to have his ritual broken of silently observing his mother before moving onto the dungeons. He had never asked about her actions in fear that he may take from her a private moment that was not meant for others to see. He knew better than anyone how hard it was for a Malfoy to show emotion of any kind, that bitter mask of indifference that was a staple of the Malfoy lineage always present. He wanted his mother to let out what he could not find himself doing in the privacy of his quarters behind closed doors. He wanted his mother to remain the amazing woman she was even before the war claimed the Malfoy name.

"Draco" he heard once more from his mother, snapping him from his thoughts and causing him to walk into a area his mother could see him from within.

He had felt as if his hands were trembling as he reached for the handle to open the door but he knew he wasn't. A ghost of a reaction he had found himself once before doing when he had gone to visit his father after being given his task to kill Dumbledore. There in that room he had felt trapped and suffocating as the words sank deeper and deeper of what he had to do so that he would never had to see the lifeless eyes of his mother. That room was yet another memory that haunted him constantly during every hour of the day. As he entered he saw the familiar towers of books all along the walls with many empty spaces.

He remembered when the trials ended and Aurors littered his home all hours of the day combing every inch of the Manor for dark artifacts and books. They had taken most of his father's personal collection from the study leaving many of the shelves empty. Another reminder in those shelves of the holes that been left in their lives, another memory for him. He walked slowly to the chairs that had not been moved in weeks in front of the large heavy desk. He seated himself quietly before his mother, looking up to find eyes filled with concerned.

"My dearest have you opened the letter from Hogwarts yet?" she asked in the same serene voice he had heard from a child, one of the few things to not change over the last 2 years.

"You should not concern yourself with the letter Mother" the reply held the tenseness that was in his shoulders despite trying to keep his voice neutral.

"My son, I don't want to see you waste away in these walls for the rest of your life," the sadness that laced her voice was evident as she stood from her seat to take the one beside her son. "McGongall has written to me that you have not responded to her request for you to return to Hogwarts."

Now he knew the contents of the letter than remained untouched. An invitation for him to return to Hogwarts to finish his education, a sad and feeble attempt to make it seem like everything was fine. An invitation to watch as the school turned hateful eyes upon him, to an empty common room where Vincent would never sit again, a school that would forever remember Pansy attempting to give over the Boy Who Lived, and a classroom where his godfather would never teach in again. He could feel the bile rise up in his throat as bitter as his thoughts and he tried to push it down as quickly as possible.

"I have no intention to ever set foot there again," he began as he turned away from his mother and her saddening gaze. "I am more than sure no one will miss my presence there."

"My son you were freed from your charges by the Wizengamot just as I was, there" Narcissa had began to implore only to be cut off by her son looking at her in outrage.

"You in the eyes of the Wizarding world is the woman who lied to protect Harry Potter which saved this war but that is not who I am" Draco ground out as he attempted to control all the emotions that stirred in him suddenly. "I am the one who let those Death Eaters into Hogwarts, I was the one to cross that courtyard into that mad man's arms, I am the one who holds his mark upon my arm, I am the one that tortured Muggles in this house!" his attempt to have control was lost as his guilt consumed him more than ever. He stood from the chair to look down at his mother who held back the tears in her eyes. "I have certainly not forgotten who I am so why do you think the rest of the Wizarding World has?" he asked in a lowered voice now as he watched the tears spill forth at his question. "I am sorry mother but this is the life that is meant for me, not the one I want but the one given to me. I am not returning to Hogwarts" he almost whispered to her as silence overcame the both of them.

He turned away from her before she could say anything else and exited the study to seclude himself in his quarters. He had grown accustomed to his days dragging on as if there was no end as he wallowed in his emotions but now they seemed to overpower his very being. There it was again, that sensation of so much self hatred that it was barely containable. He reached up to touch his scars once again through the jumper he wore, reminding himself that his body was already littered with scars so adding another was pointless. It reminded him of all the pain already he had endured so why go through more of it at his own hands.

He had passed the parlor but stopped for a moment as he saw upon the table another Daily Prophet lying there awaiting his mother to be read. He approached it slowly and from where he stood at the large entrance he could see the large title that was smeared across the front "Boy Who Lived to Return to Hogwarts". There you could see the Boy Who Lived with merely a smile on his face as his friends behind him seemed to smile to make up for his lack of enthusiasm. The Savior of the Wizarding World and all people could talk about everywhere, a presence he could never escape no matter what. He could still remember him in the dungeons of the manor and yet not being able to say it was him. The feeling had been so immense to say it was Potter but he wasn't able to bring himself to it. At the time he had told himself that he really wasn't sure that it was Potter but the real reason he had buried down much deeper.

He had lied because there before him was his salvation. Heavens he would never admit to anyone that he had considered Potter in any way his salvation but it was evident that Potter was not only his but everyone's only hope to a future that wasn't tainted completely. In Potter's defiant gaze in those dungeons he realized that Potter was his last result to preserving what little was left of his humanity between the cold walls of reality. It was a way of remembering his days in Hogwarts when things hadn't been as complicated as they had turned. It had made him miss the small trivial fights he had picked with Potter and the Weasel, much tamer than the torturing he partook in now.

He wanted no recollection of the Golden Trio in that instance, taking out his wand to set the paper a blaze but that only served to be more of a taunt to him. His mother's wand is what sat between his fingers, different from his Hawthorn wood one that lay somewhere in Potter's belongings rather than with him. That overwhelming bitter feeling was starting to return to him as he realized once again why he had practically stopped using magic altogether. His wand had obeyed another and allowed Potter to use it like nothing, forcing him in turn to use his mothers that rejected him often as time went by. It seemed not even his wand could hold loyalties to him just like everything else. With a growl he snatched up the paper before proceeding to rip to shreds without noticing his mothers calculating gaze watching him.

As he watched the last torn pieces to the floor he began to try and regulate his uneven breathing. He couldn't control a lot of things in his life but he would make sure that his emotions would be one of them. Even here in the parlor with no eyes watching he grew angry at himself for letting bitterness overtake him and shred the paper to bits. He showed him how weak he still was and how easily Potter could control his emotions without even realizing it. It was still as when they were at Hogwarts, as if Potter held in his hands a string straight to his emotions to pull on at will. He shook his head at that notion, that someone could have so much power over him once again.

He backed away from the pieces slowly catching sight of one torn piece that stared up at him, still there the gaze of Potter. There would be the last time he would see the other in anyway, he vowed that to himself. He would make sure never to pick up a Daily Prophet or the even more ludicrous Quibbler so that he would have to stare at photographs and read articles gushing over him. He would shut himself away in the Manor where no one spoke of the one who had assisted in sending Lucius off to Azkaban. He would never return to Hogwarts to hear him again.