A/N: Draco contemplates his footprints, again. Time jump to Draco's fateful Sixth Year.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
The snow crunched noisily beneath the soles of his expensive dragonhide boots as the blonde teenager walked along the edge of the Forbidden Forest. It was a cold Winter morning and Draco needed a break. He had to get out of that prison of a castle. He hated it here and would have loved to have gone home for the holidays like his classmates but there was a job to be done, a job he should have completed already, but was still unable to.
He kicked a small mound of snow in irritation. Why was this so difficult? Why was he asked to do this? When he had first gotten the job, he felt honoured, thrilled even, but now he knew he was just being naive and childish. No one should be thrilled to be a hired assassin.
But he just couldn't do it. He had made one attempt already that almost hurt another student and he couldn't get that bloody cabinet to work. He had been doomed to fail from the beginning. Maybe that had been the Dark Lord's plan all along, and Draco would pay the price of his inadequacies with his and his mother's lives.
He landed face first not a moment later, tripping over a stone half-buried in the snow. With a scowl, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and looked over his shoulder. He could see his trail of footsteps leading to his spot, evenly-spaced and heavy.
Draco got to his feet and walked over to one of his footprints. He could remember when he was younger wishing that one day he could fill his father's footprints in the snow. His feet had been too small then, his prints too light, but now they were long and deep, just as his father's had appeared to him those years ago.
He pressed his foot into one, making the indent deeper, but instead of feeling the accomplishment his five-year-old self thought he would feel, Draco just felt sick. Now that he had been forced to do it, to grow up before his time, Draco wished he didn't have to.