Draco Malfoy liked to think of himself as a changed man. Voldemort had been dead a year, but Draco still had nightmares of when the Dark Lord had taken over his family's manor. He'd seen too many murders, too many scared people, and too many families torn apart. He'd seen strong people broken and begging for their lives or the lives of their families. No one could witness that much violence and terror and not be changed somehow. His father had become cold and emotionless, his mother had taken to vanishing for hours to cry, and Draco was… improving.

Now, Draco was packing for one last year at Hogwarts. Everyone had decided that the previous hadn't counted since the school had been run by Death Eaters and half of the students had gone into hiding anyways. Draco was glad for one last year, he had some unfinished business…

Draco slouched in an empty compartment, hiding from the other Slytherins. Most of his housemates hadn't changed and he'd gotten tired of listening to them complain about being forced to go to school an extra year and how it had been a lot more fun with Death Eaters in charge.

"Now we'll have to go back to hexing mudbloods in private," Pansy had whined, at which point Draco had left. Draco sighed, stretching his legs, thinking, some people never change. He heard the door to his empty compartment slide open, followed by a soft "oops". A tiny black haired girl stood in the door, staring at Draco with her mouth gaping. She was wearing a generic Hogwarts tie meaning she was a first year.

"I-I'm sorry, I thought it was empty," stammered the girl, backing out.

"You can sit here if you like," said Draco, sitting up so he was only taking one seat.

"Aren't you Malfoy?" she asked timidly.

"Yeah," he answered, wondering what that had to do with anything.

"I heard about you at… camp," She said.

"Camp?" he asked. He was pretty sure first years had never had a camp before.

"Last year, I was supposed to go to Hogwarts, but they weren't letting muggleborns in. Some of us got whisked away and put in hiding together," she said, her voice was getting steadier now.

"Oh," was all he could say.

"You're a Malfoy, one of the biggest pureblood families in You-Know-Who's inner circle. You hate muggleborns," she stated bluntly, making Draco cringe.

"Well, I'm also just Draco, the boy who went through hell while Voldemort was around. I'm not as much of a muggleborn hater these days, so sit," said Draco. The little black haired girl slid into the chair across from him.

"I'm Ann," she said. Draco nodded and stared out the window again. After a long silence, Ann pulled a book out of the tiny bag she was carrying and started to read. Just because Draco had changed, didn't mean he liked talking to odd first years.

The rest of the train ride passed in a comfortable silence, Draco and Ann having reached an understanding of each other. When the train finally jerked to a stop, Draco and Ann faced each other. She was pale, her eyebrows were scrunched together, and she was chewing on her bottom lip. Draco realized that she was scared. Maybe it was about this time when she got yanked into hiding, thought Draco. Deciding that he needed to offer the girl some sort of comfort, Draco said, "If you ever have any problems, you can find me." Ann nodded and smiled weakly at Draco before vanishing in the hall among the sea of students.

Draco sat at the Slytherin table, waiting for this feast to be over so he could spend some time alone. All of his old friends were sitting around him, but a seat had been left empty for Crabbe. Malfoy was surprised that the Slytherins had bothered with any sort of gesture of mourning. Pansy leaned against Draco's arm and he'd stopped trying to push her off after a half an hour of trying. He quickly scanned the Ravenclaw table for Ann, strangely feeling like it was his duty to keep an eye out for her. She was sitting with a bunch of other Ravenclaw first years, looking a lot more relaxed than she had on the train.

"I'm going to miss walking around the school, knowing that I'm surrounded by only real wizards. At least the Dark Lord offed some of the mudbloods before-"complained Pansy.

"Shut up!" said Draco sharply, he had probably seen half of those muggleborns murdered in his own house. Pansy looked like she was about to say something when Blaise shot her a look and shook his head. At least Blaise still had his back. In the awkward silence that followed, Draco shifted his attention over to the Gryffindor table. Potter and his friends, heroes of the war, were surrounded by a flock of grateful admirers. Draco sighed inwardly; he would have to deal with them later.

The next morning came all too quickly for Draco. As nice as it was to be back at Hogwarts and out of his prison of a mansion, he hadn't really been looking forward to his actual classes. Schedules were passed out over breakfast the next morning. First class – Advanced Transfiguration, also called the hell class. Plus Professor McGonagall was sure to be even more stressed out now that she was acting as both headmistress and transfiguration teacher because she hadn't been able to find a replacement. Advanced Charms, Advanced Potions, Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts, Draco cursed his natural smartness, it was going to lead to a difficult year, not relaxing as he'd hoped.

Draco put his schedule aside to help himself to breakfast. Unfortunately, right when he had put a serving of eggs and toast on his plate, a copy of the Daily Prophet dropped right in the middle of his food. He glared up at the owl that had ruined his meal and his paper before it could swoop away back to the owlery.

The headline on the front page immediately caught his eye when he looked at his plate, "New Threat: Targeting Purebloods?" Below the article showed what looked like a broken statue, lying smashed on the floor in one of the elevators of the Ministry. The head of the stone figure sat propped up in the middle of the rubble, the outline of a dead tree drawn on his forehead.

Draco had read about this new group over the summer. It had started with some Death Eaters, bodies delivered to the ministry with that ominous dead tree marked on their faces. Then, more wizards went missing and turned up again dead, with the same dead tree mark. A couple of big name wizards had been killed, stirring up a bit of a panic that had died down since Voldemort had been killed.

Most of the bodies had been turned to stone and smashed to pieces as the one in the picture had. At first, when the broken statues were found, they had been repaired and counter spelled. Once brought back, the wizards would sometimes have a few seconds before dying and it was discovered that all the statues were returned without their hearts.