Twelve Years Later
Platform 9 3/4
Draco Malfoy took a long, deep breath and told himself to be calm. His daughter was about to start her first journey to Hogwarts School of Magic; she wasn't going away forever. She'd be home again for Christmas. But still he couldn't help missing her already.
"Love, some help with the luggage would be nice!" his wife Marianna called from the other side of the car.
Twelve years earlier, even after the war and all what Voldemort had done to his family, Draco would have never believed if anyone had told him he would fall in love with a Muggle. But that was exactly what had happened.
After Voldemort was gone, Draco had endured two weeks of interrogations by the Ministry. When the message arrived that Harry Potter had personally testified that the Malfoys had been fighting alongside the Order of the Phoenix and Dumbledore's Army, that they had been cleared of all charges, that none of them would be sent to Azkaban -
Even more astonishingly, Draco had not even been accused of assisting to the murder of Albus Dumbledore - Harry Potter had declared that Dumbledore himself had ordered Snape to kill him, so Snape could continue to spy on Voldemeort and protect the children in Hogwarts.
Back then, Draco had simply grabbed some clothes, some food, his traveling cloak and went abroad. He didn't have a wand and he didn't have much Muggle money, so one day he ended up completely broke on a sidewalk in Spain.
That's where he had fallen in love with Marianna who had been kind to a stranger, just because she felt sorry for him, because he looked so desperate and lost. Sitting on her kitchen table, crying, he had told her everything that had happened. She never thought that he was crazy, talking about wizard wars, magic and killing each other. She saw right into his heart, saw how deeply sorry he was, how desperately he was searching for forgiveness. She wasn't the one who could grant him this foregiveness, but she had believed in him and from that moment on never stopped believing in him.
It was her love that made it possible for him to face his past, return to the UK, and ask the right persons for foregiveness.
"Gimme a second." Draco made sure that his father Lucius was able to get out of the car safely and not being run over by another car in the mad traffic around King's Cross, then he assisted his wife with their daughter's trunk.
Little Lucinda proudly carried her owl cage on her own, beaming all over her face, her blond pigtails bouncing.
"Can I go ahead and take a look with Grandpa? Mommy?" Lucinda extended a hand to her grandfather. "Please, please, please, please!"
"Alright, darling. But stay with your grandfather!"
Draco and Marianna exchanged a smile while they put the trunk on a trolly and locked up the car.
Draco watched his father walking slowly with the help of his cane. Lucius Malfoy had never been the same since his wife Narcissa had passed away earlier this year. Only his granddaughters sometimes seemed to be able to cheer him up. The younger one, four-year-old Alexandra, was at home with her babysitter.
"Okay, where do we have to go now?" Marianna beamed. "Oh, I'm so exited our girl's leaving for school! She looks so cute in her uniform!"
"This way." Draco led his wife to the platform between the tracks no. 9 and no. 10. Other wizarding families were busy with their own children, but some people waved when the recognised Draco and Marianna.
Lucius had made Lucinda wait for her parents, so the girl could walk trough the secret passage in the brick wall with her father. Marianna clapped her hands exitedly after they had vanished.
The gentleman he was, Lucius offered her his arm and together they entered the magical world of platform 9 3/4.
Lucinda had already spied some children she knew, the Potters, the Longbottoms and quite a few Weasleys.
"You must have been such a cute boy when you came here first." Marianna told Draco.
"Nah... I was a total git." Draco felt some remorse. The guilt was never far away, but being with Marianna made it bearable.