Hogwarts Castle. Halfway through October, 1996.
In the early evening, the day after he had visited Borgin and Burkes, Draco Malfoy was to be found, strangely enough, in one of the girl's bathrooms in Hogwarts.
He was leaning against the wall and crying. This was not uncommon. He had spent many evenings, either here or elsewhere, crying to himself. He had been given a nearly impossible task to complete by a sadistic madman, and threatened with terrible things, if he did not succeed. And it was not merely the threats against him that made him cry, but the undoing of a lifetime of belief. He had been taught since a young child that the madman who now threatened him was a friend of his family's. Now that friend had been shown to be no friend at all. And he could hardly turn to the people whom he had spent his whole life insulting and alienating for succor. No, so far as Draco knew, he did not have a friend in the world.
Except of course, for the ghost that hung out in the bathroom, Moaning Myrtle. Though Draco was not sure if she actually was a friend, so much as she was attracted to someone who managed to spend more time crying than even she did. He could hear her coming up now, making the toilet gurgle and spill water onto the floor. She emerged from it, dripping water, and looked at him with her transparent, ghostly eyes.
"What's wrong, Draco?" She asked. "You come here all the time, crying."
"It isn't fair." Draco snivelled, wiping his face on the sleeve of his robe. "I didn't mean to hurt anyone."
"Well I'm sure you didn't." Myrtle said. "Were you in an accident? I was in an accident once. I slipped on the floor and spilled a cauldron on someone's pet cat. But they fixed the kitty up fine in the hospital."
"It wasn't an accident." Draco pounded his fist on the walls. "I suppose I meant to do it, but not in the way it happened. I didn't mean to hurt HER. Why couldn't she just do what I told her to do? Why did her friends have to stop her and ruin everything?"
Myrtle had not idea what Draco was refering to, that he had sent an Imperio'ed student by the name of Katie Bell to deliver a cursed necklace from Borgin and Burkes to Dumbledore, but that the necklace had accidentally cursed her instead. She regarded him with puzzlement, looking at not only his body, but his aura, which ghosts could see. She had had several decades to study auras and learn to read the minute details of it, quite accurately. What she saw in Draco's was quite distubing. It had grown darker over the years he had attended Hogwarts, of course. A lot of student's aura's did that. Even many of those in Gryffindor, despite their claims to the contrary, were seduced by various forms of evil. But there was something new and strange in Draco's aura, something that had not been there only yesterday. It was faint, and rapidly fading, but she could still see it.
"Draco," She said faintly. "Did you kill somebody?"
"NO!" He shouted forcefully. He had tried to kill Dumbledore, but had failed. "She isn't dead. She probably should have been, the stupid little chit, but she isn't. I don't understand why I have to do this anyways. Why won't people just leave me alone!"
He burst out sobbing afresh, smashing his fist on the tile floor, wishing that it were the face of all his countless enemies he was really slamming his fist into.
"I just ask because there's a strange mark on your aura." Myrtle said, floating around the room lazily as she examined it from different angles. "We ghosts can all see auras. Though we generally don't tell the living what other people's look like. It's kind of private, you know."
"Really." Draco sneered faintly. "I'm sure you see all sorts of horrible stuff in mine."
"I don't know. It doesn't look like you've killed anyone exactly, now that I look at it more closely. Have you been to any funerals lately? Or maybe seen someone killed?"
"No, I haven't been to any funerals. I probably will be to my own pretty soon, if I can't figure things out, though. What do you say a disgusting thing like that, for, anyways?"
"Well it's just the strange mark in your aura." Myrtle reached out her hand to a point in empty space near Draco's body, indicating something he could not see. "I don't think you've killed anyone, and I don't think you're going to. But you've definitely been close to someone who's dead. Or at least not alive."
She squinted at it again. "You're not being bothered by a vampire, are you, Draco? If you are, you should tell the headmaster. He could help you."
"No-one can help me." Draco sniffed miserably. "And I'm not being bothered by a vampire. If that were my only problem, I could handle it myself, believe me."
"Hmm." Myrtle floated up to the ceiling and twirled lazily around. "You know, it doesn't exactly look like the mark you would get from being by a vampire. It's close, but not quite the same. I've never really seen anything exactly like it before. It's hard to tell, it's fading fairly rapidly. Probably be gone in another few days. Perhaps I'll go ask the Bloody Baron about it. He's been dead much longer than I have, so perhaps he'll know."
"Yeah, you just go and do that. Thanks a heap for making me feel worse." Draco said in a sullen tone, as Myrtle flew away right through a wall. As if he did not have enough on his shoulders with the task the Dark Lord demanded he perform, now he had some mysterious problem with his aura. And there was no-one he could go to ask about it. He certainly did not want to put himself under the peircing gaze of the headmaster, and he doubted very much whether the Dark Lord would care about some mysterious ailment of the soul. He was all alone in the world. Even Moaning Myrtle was gone, now. He was alone, except for a flickering motion on the floor, it's distorted reflection shining off the water Myrtle had spilled from her toilet. Listlessly, he stumbled over to look at it.
It was a chocolate frog card, dropped by one of the younger students no doubt, who had probably had a very full bladder to brave Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Looking at it closer, he saw Dumbledore's cheerful looking portait, far more cheerful and healthy than the living headmaster was looking these days, waving back at him.
Damn him! Draco thought. This was all his fault, just as much as it was that of the Dark Lord. Why couldn't the package have been delivered to him like it was supposed to have been?
Furious, he raised one foot and kicked the card into a filthy corner. Where, because it was filthy and never swept by Filch, it remained; along with the countless other cards which were in Hogwarts. The first hand of the wizard had been dealt, played out, and the ante collected in full. He now knew almost everything about the location of the one he sought, Harry Potter. But mapping was not the only thing the cards he had created were capable of doing. Like a muggle swiss army knife, they were quite versatile, and had a number of carefully thought out functions. He had had 15 long years to decide exactly what spells to put on them. 15 years in which to plot his revenge, and find a way to obtain that which he wanted more than anything else in the world.
The first hand of the wizard's game was over. He had won that round. The second hand was about to begin, and the stakes were now far higher. Things were going to get much worse.
