Lost - Dramione

Chapter 1

The first time he saw her, he was on a train platform. It was a busy day, clearly - filled with people of all shapes and sizes and quirky personalities, people dropping off their kids on their first day of school and kids being dropped off, some willingly, others unwillingly as their parents beckoned them to get on the big, steaming train. Draco still remembers that day, it was important in his life, significant to him finally being useful to his family - almost like an initiation into the Malfoy clan. His father kept repeating it, the process of it all and how the day was going to go for little Draco. It wasn't an act of reassurance in any way, it was almost a warning, a threat, that if by any chance, the day didn't go like how Lucius Malfoy had planned, there would be serious problems ahead. If his son didn't get sorted into Slytherin house, for example. That would have been near equivalent to a banishment from the Malfoy household, and a big black scar in the place of Draco's face on the family banner.

Draco remembered the feeling of it, the excitement, the curiosity and the anxiety all mixed up into one. His mother had stayed up all night, telling him stories of Hogwarts, the staircases moved, she said! She also said that the gardens and grounds were filled with little magical creatures, if you look hard enough. Draco liked the idea of finding a little Bowtruckle among the grass or trees, maybe even a tiny baby dragon egg hidden among the green! Anything was possible to an eleven year old boy on the brink of discovery and adventure. He was at that crossroads in his life, the one that dictated to him freedom and possibility and exploration of not just the magical world, but his own.

His thoughts were interrupted by his father, scoffing loudly. And that was when he saw her. A little girl about his age, wearing a big, bulky scarf. She had curly, frizzy, brown hair that almost consumed her whole and she was carrying a few books that he had too. Draco still remembers the first thing he thought of when he saw her, he thought that her hair was really..different. At the time, Draco hadn't known that girls could have hair like that, big, curly and all over the place, so it intrigued him and he watched her for a bit. She was talking animatedly to her parents, who looked both incredibly confused and excited at the same, she kept pointing at the parts of the train, The Hogwarts Express, or so it was called. She must have been explaining the functions of each train part.

Draco couldn't hear, the platform was too loud with the chattering of excited people and the steam train blowing rhythmically. The girl's father's confusion was gently masked with pride when his daughter started reciting the history of the train, she must have memorised it from their textbook. Then she nudged her parents in the direction of a young girl who's suitcase and belongings started to lift itself from the floor and float it's way into one of the empty compartments in the train. Draco swore her parents' faces turned a little white, but they smiled encouragingly at their daughter, knowing that she would soon be taught that in this fancy school and definitely much more. One thing her parents were certain of was that their daughter was soon going to be able to do things unheard of even in the deepest crevices of their imaginations, somethings that would make dentistry seem incredibly arbitrary and mundane - and that made them extra proud of her.

Draco remembered his father making an irritated noise and looked up at him. He was staring, the vein in his neck almost popping, his face turning a light shade of purple, at the young girl and her parents. His mother was trying to pull him away, almost as if she believed that if he didn't look at them, he would calm down. Draco was incredibly confused at this, were they enemies of his family? Maybe it was the big, curly, frizzy hair that threw his father off. He wanted to reassure his father, that he wasn't the only one who found it odd that the girl had such peculiar hair, that he also was seeing this for the first time but -

"Blasting Mudblood!" his father almost spat, Draco was surprised the vein hadn't already popped.

Mudblood? This was the famous Mudblood that his family kept on grilling him about? Of the Mudbloods that they said he would meet at Hogwarts? The embarrassments to society, the misfits of the magical world and "those undeserving of equal treatment from pure-bloods like us"? They are the enemy. They are tainted, and impure and a havoc to magic and everything that stands for it, especially with the including of their Muggle parents in the magical world, it only makes them worse. Agents of disease and despair. The Ministry must at least regulate the letters sent to these Mudbloods to provide a fair balance of ugly and beautiful in the magical world. Draco had practically memorised his father's words, sometimes his father told it to him, sometimes he'd overhear his father ranting about it to his mother or Aunt Bellatrix or even the house-elf!

"These are the Mudbloods, Dad?" asked Draco, making sure it was the girl and her parents they were talking about.

"Yes and no, son. The girl is the Mudblood, the parents are Muggles. All of them filthy, all of them completely and utterly below us".

Draco remembered feeling something, as an 11 year old boy, standing there on that busy. cheery platform. He remembered something stirring up inside of him, waiting to burst, to erupt at the surface, it was disgust and hatred.

"Filthy Mudbloods" he almost spat out. He remembered feeling almost proud of himself after saying that, it was always his father's approval he vouched for and if his father was proud of him, he would be too - even if he wasn't quite sure why at times.

Looking back, Draco always wondered where the feelings came from, because he always remembered that they sprouted in him spontaneously. They came from nowhere inside of him, almost as if he was imitating his father, feeding off his feelings and trying so hard to reproduce them in his own self. All those words that his father grilled into him, that he heard kept getting repeated, echoed and left a scar here and there in little Draco's brain. The scars forced him to feel what his father felt, his brain was being molded that way, as a little boy, he didn't know what was right or wrong, he couldn't even ask his feelings because his father had a hold of them and locked them away somewhere deep, he clearly didn't know who he was and what he felt at that age and it didn't seem to matter to him at the time. Because his father's word was gospel, his family knew best and he didn't know any other opinions. Being surrounded by the same opinion for 11 years of your life certainly takes a toll on your ability to think based on the confines of morality. He was exactly what his family wanted him to be, a doll to play with - or a zombie with no mind of its own. At that moment, right and wrong didn't make sense, they blended together until the edges became the beginnings. The only words that did actually make sense were Lucius'. By default, that was the only thing Draco could believe in.

Present Draco was always reminded - every time he thought of the mindless follower that was his 11 year old self and prior - that hatred is never born, it's bred. He was born into the Malfoys, he wasn't born into hatred, he was born into innocence, he was born into his mother's arms, he was born into love, he was also born into immense pressure of how he would uphold the family name. He was bred, however, into hatred.

"That's my boy! Remember, they're a terrible race of people, and they would do anything to be as powerful as us SO always keep vigilant in Hogwarts, boy!"

"Alright, Lucius, that's enough. Let him check his belongings in peace, okay? It's his first day of school. Draco, honey, did you find your copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them?"

Draco nodded and tried not to think about the scary people he would meet at Hogwarts like his father said he would. He was scared to be vigilant, deep down he didn't want to be. He just wanted to make friends, of course not with the Mudbloods, his father wouldn't like that.

His mother's voice was like warm honey over his father's cold, hard ice. If Present Draco could get hold of Hermione's Time-Turner, he would go back in time and tell 11 year old Draco so, so many things. One of them would be to never let go of his mother, because she's the closest thing he has at the moment to finding out who he truly is and unlocking his heart, freeing his feelings from the prison his father kept them in. Present Draco always joked with Hermione that he would one day, unbeknownst to her, go back in time. But both of them knew Draco would never do it, although how tempted he always is to patch up the broken pieces of his heart left over from a failed childhood, to rid himself of the future pain that no child or teenager should ever experience. Not just one thing changes with a quick trip through the Time-Turner, and Draco was well aware of that.

That day was the first day he used the word Mudblood, he knew there was another word for those like the girl he saw, Muggle-born - but he never understood why his family never used it. He watched the girl get on the train, excited and innocent, her hair bobbing about her shoulders. She was waving excitedly at her parents, who looked a little sad but very proud and just a tiny bit confused still. Draco checked his owl, who stared at him through the cage. He didn't know why he had to use his father's old one, the owl hated him!

His belongings started to float off the ground, thanks to his mother, conducting the bags inside the train like she was conducting an opera. He said goodbye to his parents, sat comfy in his train compartment and hoped to god he would be sorted into Slytherin.