Draco woke in a four-poster bed draped with green silk curtains before breakfast.
Draco stared at the medieval tapestry depicting the adventures of Slytherin hanging on the wall for a long while.
Since gaining those nightmarish memories, he had hardly enjoyed a restful sleep.
For him, Malfoy Manor was no longer the warm, joyful, and safe home of his childhood. Although it appeared peaceful everywhere, it was inevitably filled with broken and painful memories.
That place had once been a murder scene, a prison, and a cage.
For the past month, he had been unable to avoid feeling tense and anxious in every corner of Malfoy Manor, and he had to try his utmost not to let his parents discover this, which was driving him mad.
Arriving at Hogwarts, Draco finally had his own private space, a place where he could shed his innocent facade and reveal his weary, hidden wounds. He finally found a long-awaited respite.
A rare restful sleep last night had restored some of his energy. Lying back in his dormitory beneath the Black Lake, watching the tranquil scene of gentle waves and shimmering light, he felt as though his mind had been emptied, and he finally ceased feeling panicked.
This was a Slytherin private bedroom, a small privilege enjoyed by Draco as the son of a school governor. Emerald green and silver dominated the entire room. Very Slytherin.
These two colors had a calming effect.
Excellent.
Draco liked the silver-green color scheme.
The garish gold and the ostentatious red—what discerning wizard would prefer such a clashing and troublesome combination? He frowned, privately comparing Gryffindor's representative colors with his own house's, and thought Slytherin's were far superior.
Although, although—some girls looked quite fetching in gold and red scarves, he thought absently.
Stop thinking about it. Those are all unrealistic fantasies! He straightened his collar before the full-length mirror, glanced at his reflection with a somber expression, and immediately wiped away the slight curve of his lips.
He walked from his dormitory with a stern face, adopting a Draco Malfoy-esque haughty posture, and passed through the Slytherin common room, numbly facing another routine day at Hogwarts.
Draco could not lower his guard and be overly friendly to those around him. Like a wary creature, he closed himself off, observing the reborn world with vigilance.
He had already conducted some small experiments on "change" using Longbottom's lost and found toad.
But he had not yet determined where the threshold for "change" lay. The only certainty was that the world in this lifetime was capable of "change."
What about other matters? Would things change as well?
Although after a month of observation, he found that the Malfoy family was no different from his previous life, this did not mean that his classmates at school were the same.
If he was able to begin anew, was it possible for others to do the same?
He needed to observe quietly for some time, especially regarding Harry Potter. Sitting at the Slytherin table, he popped some fried eggs into his mouth, lost in thought.
He needed to determine further whether the Potter across the table, grinning foolishly and clinking goblets with Weasley, was the same Potter as before, and whether his behavior was consistent with his past life.
Before he could understand this world, Draco thought he had to dutifully play the role of an ordinary first-year.
In such a strange, familiar yet unknown world, he could not attract excessive attention. That would be dangerous.
Playing an eleven-year-old boy was not difficult, it was simply mentally exhausting.
This often required him to think about problems from a child's perspective and react accordingly. But having been reborn, he always unconsciously viewed problems through the eyes of a seventeen-year-old, and it was difficult for him to feel the joy and excitement that a child should experience.
For example, the coursework that intrigued the new students, or the novelties of Hogwarts—moving staircases, ubiquitous suits of armor, and ghosts that appeared at will—did not interest him at all.
Draco had to feign surprise at those things at least three times daily, without any genuine emotion, to pretend he was a new student.
Apart from that, he focused his attention on small experiments related to "change."
Without attracting attention, he tried to make some minor "changes" and observed the results.
He was testing the limits of "change."
For example, given that "provoking Potter" was meaningless to him at present, he had deliberately abandoned the tense atmosphere that once existed between him and Potter.
He had even pointed out two routes to Potter and Weasley, those two boys who were running about everywhere—yes, in his eyes they were just excitable children—to spare them the embarrassment of getting lost as in their previous lives and the professor's disapproval for being tardy.
Draco was mildly surprised that Weasley, with his freckled face, would flush and say "thank you," which made him reconsider the Weasley family's upbringing.
Do not misunderstand. Although they had "changed" slightly and become somewhat more "polite" as a result, Draco still thought them reckless and impulsive.
Look at how they were racing like madmen down the corridor!
"Will these Gryffindors never learn to walk calmly through a corridor?" Draco thought to himself.
Half a minute before class started, Draco arrived at the Transfiguration classroom on the second floor precisely on time.
The classroom was already packed with students, but the teacher's desk was empty. A stately tabby cat stood on the desk, sternly scrutinizing the noisy students below.
Draco dared not give it a second glance. That was Professor Minerva McGonagall, the most formidable professor in all of Hogwarts. Before she transformed into human form and began to challenge him, he had to quickly find a seat.
Unfortunately, almost all the seats were occupied. Harry and Ron, who had just arrived, reluctantly sat in the first row. As they retrieved books from their bags, they whispered to each other, seemingly relieved that they had not been late.
It appeared that the seemingly trivial matter of "Potter being late for his first Transfiguration class" had been casually "changed" by Draco, and so far, it had been completely altered without any adverse effects.
Draco withdrew his gaze and walked calmly down the aisle, searching for an empty seat.
He had only two options. He could partner with one of Crabbe and Goyle, who followed him everywhere, and endure the entire class suffering from their utter foolishness. Or he could let Crabbe and Goyle pair together while he took the empty seat not far ahead, beside Miss Know-It-All.
To be honest, Draco, reborn, had completely lost patience with his less-than-stellar study partners.
If the world could accept small changes, then something as insignificant as "Draco Malfoy changing his study partner" should also be accepted by the world, correct?
Worth attempting.