Draco hadn't expected to see Granger again so soon.
That second encounter was on the platform at King's Cross Station.
In his past life, he had been too consumed by excitement—too focused on finding the hidden entrance
to Platform 9¾ and getting aboard the Hogwarts Express as quickly as possible—to notice whether he
had passed her. In this life, however, once a name had lodged itself in his awareness, its owner
seemed to appear everywhere.
He spotted her immediately. Who could miss that hair?
That spectacular tangle of brown curls had its back to him and had apparently been rooted to the
same spot on the platform for quite some time—long enough that Draco began to find it mildly
vexing. Beside her were two adults he took to be her Muggle parents; he could make out their anxious
expressions as they tried to explain something to a station attendant, who looked equally baffled.
Draco's expression settled into one of quiet, knowing amusement.
First-year students who couldn't find the platform. Every year without fail.
There was always a handful of bewildered Muggle-born first-years wandering King's Cross, pestering
attendants who couldn't help them, running the clock down to the departure of the Hogwarts Express.
Draco suppressed a smirk. From his fifth year onward as a prefect, sorting out these confused
students had been a reliable minor headache.
He made up his mind to do something to help the girl find her platform before it was too late.
He was, of course, not naive enough to simply walk over and offer his assistance. His parents would
think he had lost his mind entirely.
But an eleven-year-old boy who has been excessively indulged has certain natural, if unpleasant,
advantages. He can be annoying. He can be loud. He can make a scene.
Right, then. Embarrassing performance, begin. Draco shook his head at himself, steered his trolley
pointedly toward the section of platform nearest the Grangers, and turned back to his mother with a
studied air of childish exasperation—loudly complaining, "Mum, there are so many Muggles in here!"
Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw Granger turn and glance at him with curiosity.
Good. Excellent hearing, Granger.
"It's Platform 9¾, isn't it?" he continued, at full volume.
"Draco." Lucius glanced at his son with an expression of cool displeasure. "Mind your public
manners."
Narcissa, gentler as always, took Draco's hand and murmured, "My dear, not so loud—don't draw
attention."
Draco gave an obedient nod, pretending not to notice Granger's sharp gaze, and allowed himself to
be led through the barrier with his trolley.
As he stepped through the wall, he caught one last glimpse of her over his shoulder: mouth slightly
open, eyes wide with disbelieving wonder. Entirely worth the spectacle. That baffled expression—so
unlike the self-assured, all-knowing look she would later wear like armour—was something to savour.
He had always thought of her as a know-it-all. But she had looked genuinely clueless just now.
The corners of his mouth curved upward before he noticed.
Steam began to billow in great rolling clouds from the locomotive, the cheerful noise of the crowd
rising around it. Once aboard, Draco located Vincent Crabbe without difficulty, and was shortly
introduced to Gregory Goyle—just as in his previous life, the three of them settled into a
compartment together.
The Crabbe family had long claimed close friendship with the Malfoys—an assertion that implied
equality between the two families. The Malfoys, for their part, had always regarded the Crabbes as
dependents. As for the Goyles, they had never quite reached even that standing; Goyle had not been a
childhood companion of Draco's at all. He was simply a new acquaintance made on the train.
Because of how things stood between their fathers' generation—Draco's grandfather, Abraxas Malfoy,
who had wielded the influence of a "Shadow Minister" at the Ministry of Magic, with the Crabbes and
Goyles among his circle of subordinates—Draco in his previous life had never truly regarded Crabbe
and Goyle as equals. They were his grandfather's men, and then his father's, and therefore—by
default—his.
To put it bluntly: Crabbe and Goyle had always been seen as Draco's henchmen, not his friends.
Imagine a proud, headstrong boy flanked by two plodding companions whose primary interests appeared
to be eating and sleeping. It was difficult to form a genuine friendship under those conditions.
The Malfoys admired capability—sharp minds, confidence, rare talent. Crabbe and Goyle had little of
any of these. Even the qualities most prized in Slytherin—ambition and cunning—seemed largely absent
in them. It was a perpetual disappointment.
Draco wondered, not for the first time, what exactly the Sorting Hat was sorting for.
Later, at the Room of Requirement, Crabbe had ignored all objections and, in a bid to earn the Dark
Lord's favour, recklessly unleashed Fiendfyre in an attempt to burn Potter alive—a moment that
revealed, at least, that some sliver of Slytherin ruthlessness existed in him after all.
Unfortunately, ambition without ability is simply recklessness. Crabbe had put everyone in danger,
including himself, and it had cost him his life. And Goyle—consistently foolish, consistently
useless to the very end—had barely escaped the same fate. The memory gave Draco a dull, persistent
headache.
How was it that Potter's companions were brilliant, and his own were—this?
And not only foolish, but arrogant. So arrogant that Draco's own words had meant nothing to Crabbe
in the end. "Who cares what you think? I'm never taking orders from you again, Draco. You and your
father are finished..."
When the Malfoys lost their standing, Crabbe had long since slipped beyond Draco's influence, and
the Room of Requirement had been where that unravelling finally played out to its end.
Reflecting on it now, Draco could not honestly claim to have felt nothing but anger. He had still
thought of Crabbe, in some quiet corner of himself, as someone he could rely on. That, perhaps, was
why the betrayal had cut as deep as it had.
After his rebirth, alone with his thoughts, he had tried to make sense of it from Crabbe's
perspective. On one hand, a loyalty forged by the obligations of an older generation was always
fragile. On the other hand—he had not treated them well. He had been contemptuous and domineering,
quick to mock their slowness and take them for granted.
He had never learned how to be a normal, equal friend.
They had been beside him for years. By the time he had begun to understand the value of that—the
irreplaceable steadiness of it—it was too late.
Now, everything was back to the beginning. He was willing to try. Even a small change was better
than none.
He could make an effort to shed some of the arrogance. He was already too weary to bother with the
old habits of contempt and mockery.
What he could not do was offer them the same unguarded trust he once had. That part of him was
closed off now.
He would not give anyone a second chance to betray him.
He was staring idly at the pastoral countryside streaming past the window when he stirred himself
and said to Crabbe and Goyle, who were working steadily through an impressive pile of sweets,
"The two of you watch the luggage. I'm going to stretch my legs."
Both agreed without looking up from their food.
What remained of the sweets on the table was not much. Draco paused by the door, counted out a few
Galleons, and handed them to the cheerful witch with the refreshments trolley, asking her to bring a
little more of everything. Then he stepped out and let the compartment door click shut behind him.
Quiet at last. Draco leaned against the wall of the corridor, watching the fields blur past, and let
out a slow breath.
In his past life, he would have been on his way to find Potter at this point in the journey. In this
life, he had no intention of wasting the time. A sensible Malfoy did not stir up unnecessary
trouble—and Weasley, that ginger nuisance, was unlikely to have anything pleasant to say to him
regardless.
Was Potter in a compartment somewhere, happily making new friends, entirely unaware of the danger
already circling him?
The warning signs were always there in Draco's mind—a persistent, low presence ever since his
rebirth, impossible to fully ignore.
It had been a full month. Throughout August, he had occupied himself with adjusting to his younger
body, taking careful stock of his parents' state of mind, and performing the role of a proper
eleven-year-old boy with sufficient conviction.
There was no joy in it—only a kind of hollow fatigue. He felt acutely the wrongness of the
mismatch: an old, weathered soul crammed into a young, restless body. The prime of youth, and a
heart as grey and still as ash.
The memories of his past life came for him most nights, relentless in their clarity. The pain, the
struggle, the anger—it was all still there, ready to spill over if he let down his guard. The dark
years, the foolish choices, the things that could not be undone. He used Occlumency to dam it up,
night after night—pressing those memories down into the deep places of his mind, sealing them into
the ruins.
By day, he wore a mask of composure. Only he knew how desolate things were behind it. If not for
the unfinished business that kept him anchored, he suspected the sheer weight of it would have
crushed him long before now.
But there was hope—a sliver of it, real enough to hold onto—and there was one thing he could do
with it. One purpose: protect the people he cared about. Use what he remembered from his past life,
use every advantage his foreknowledge gave him, to bind the Dark Lord before he could destroy the
things that had once made life worth living.
He wanted to prevent every warning sign before it could flower into something irreversible.
Right now, at Hogwarts, who would believe that the Dark Lord's soul was concealed beneath Quirrell's
turban?
What could he possibly do about that?
Dumbledore's elaborate design—hiding the Philosopher's Stone at Hogwarts, using it as bait—
suggested either that he had noticed something wrong with Quirrell, or that he was aware of the Dark
Lord's presence altogether. The man was never straightforward.
Thinking back across his years at Hogwarts, something catastrophic had occurred every single year
without exception. The school had never truly been at peace.
Next year, a hidden Chamber would open—the legacy of Slytherin himself—and the monster inside it
would begin petrifying students.
And then there was the matter of the diadem. The one Potter had nearly died trying to retrieve from
the Room of Requirement in seventh year. There had always been something significant about it.
Something that had warranted far more attention than Draco had given it at the time.
Danger didn't only lurk at Hogwarts. Sometimes it lived inside the family itself.
His father, Lucius—a former Death Eater—was badly in need of a change in thinking, though Draco had
no idea yet how to accomplish that. His aunt Bellatrix was still imprisoned in Azkaban, as unhinged
as ever. And his distant uncle Sirius Black—a man he had barely seen in years—was rotting in Azkaban
as well, still bearing the blame for crimes committed by Peter Pettigrew.
Professor Snape, Head of Slytherin and a master of Occlumency, wavered between two opposing sides in
ways Draco still did not entirely understand. To this day, he could not say with certainty who Snape
truly served—or what he truly wanted.
He had killed Dumbledore. And yet he had also saved Draco's life more than once. Those two facts
refused to resolve into anything simple.
As for Dumbledore himself—Draco could not bring himself to trust him carelessly. The shock of his
death in the previous life was still too raw; Draco found it genuinely difficult to face him
directly. And Dumbledore, for all his power—for all the fear he inspired even in the Dark Lord—was
also an extraordinarily cunning and inscrutable man.
Without a guarantee of the Malfoy family's safety, without some means of ensuring they could not be
exploited or discarded, Draco could not simply walk into Dumbledore's office and lay out everything
he knew.
He had to be careful. Methodical. No hasty moves.
He needed to untangle every clue, gather enough leverage, and find enough ground to stand on before
any of that could happen.
The tangle of it all—the sheer number of threads to pull, the weight of what he was carrying alone—
gave him a persistent, grinding headache.
The last of the daylight came in low through the carriage window, gilding the seat and warming his
hands where they lay in his lap. Draco let his eyes drift closed, head tipped back against the wall,
the rhythmic thunder of the train wheels beneath him a kind of white noise for his thoughts.
This was the scene Hermione Granger walked into.
Through the steady clatter of the tracks, a boy with a sharp jaw and extraordinary platinum-blonde
hair caught her eye, prompting a second look she hadn't quite meant to take.
The fading light of the setting sun settled on his trembling eyelashes and lay in shadow across his
cheeks, giving him an air of lofty remove.
But he was very pale. Leaning against the carriage wall with a faint crease between his brows, he
looked almost as though he were in pain.
She had seen this boy before—twice, actually.
Once in the wand shop, where his hair had been impossible to miss. He had moved with the quiet
assurance of someone raised in a well-ordered household, slightly aloof but not unpleasant.
The second time had been not long ago, on the platform—where his deliberate, theatrical outburst had
been, she suspected, rather more helpful than accidental. She might not have found the platform in
time without it.
He didn't look well. Perhaps motion sickness, or perhaps something else. Hermione decided to say
hello—and to help, if it turned out he needed it.
"Excuse me—are you feeling all right?" she asked, keeping her voice gentle.
Draco opened his eyes.
Brown eyes. The colour of good chocolate, warm and close, and full of concern.
Granger. Of course. She was everywhere.
She had changed into her Hogwarts robes, which hung on her in dark, flowing folds. She looked
nothing like someone who had grown up in the Muggle world; she could have passed, in that moment,
for any girl from an old wizarding family.
"I'm fine." Draco straightened up. A faint flush crept across his pale cheeks. "Just stuffy. Came
out for a bit of air."
Hermione had been briefly caught off guard by his grey eyes when they opened—the colour of them,
unexpected and striking.
She collected herself, took a small step back, and tossed her hair in a way that she probably
thought covered the momentary lapse. "Oh, good. I was about to say there's a school nurse at the
back of the train, and I could show you the way if needed."
The concern was unexpected. Draco paused, then said simply, "No need. But—thank you."
He wasn't accustomed to this. In their shared memories of the other life, every encounter between
them had been loaded with tension, poised on the edge of conflict. This easy civility—her genuine
concern, directed at him—was disorienting.
"Well, since you're all right—could you help me with something? Neville's toad has gone missing, and
I've already checked almost the entire train." Hermione changed the subject smoothly once she was
satisfied he was unhurt.
Ah. There it was—the real Granger. Unfailingly drawn to whoever was most in need. He had known,
without quite thinking about it, that she would zero in on the most helpless person in the train:
Neville Longbottom.
"I see," Draco said, idly turning his wand over in his fingers. "What's the toad's name?"
"Trevor."
Draco raised his wand. "Accio Trevor."
The toad shot through the length of the train like a small, alarmed projectile and landed squarely
in his hand. He regarded the creature with calm disdain. Who in their right mind kept a toad as a
pet?
Hermione's slight hauteur evaporated instantly.
"That was incredible! I thought I was doing reasonably well—I was just in the next compartment
showing off a few simple spells I'd practised over the summer, and I thought that was impressive.
But you—that's a completely different level!" She stared at him. "Where did you even learn that?"
In his past life, being praised like that by a girl—especially by Hermione Granger, who held the top
marks in their year—would have inflated his ego to insufferable proportions.
Now, he knew perfectly well that the only advantage he held was the benefit of having lived it all
before. There was nothing to boast about. He quickly handed her the wriggling, indignant toad and
lowered his voice. "Keep it between us. I'd rather no one knew I'd cast a spell."
"If it were me, I'd be telling everyone," Hermione said, mystified. She thought it over, then gave a
small shrug that seemed to resolve something for her. "All right, your secret. For the record,
though—" She held out her free hand. "My name is Hermione Granger. You can call me Hermione. And
you are—?"
"Malfoy." A flicker of something uncertain crossed his face. "Draco Malfoy." He had not expected
things to turn out this way.
He reached out—cautious, tentative—and took her offered hand. Her grip was warm and definite.
"Lovely to meet you, Draco." She shook it with genuine enthusiasm. "I still don't understand why
you'd keep that a secret. A spell like that—my parents would have been absolutely delighted. And it
must be quite advanced, right? Well beyond first-year level, surely?"
And then she was off. Words tumbled from her in quick, bright succession, one thought sparking the
next like a string of small fireworks, her whole face alive with the pleasure of something new to
think about.
"What I mean is, I've read all the first-year course books cover to cover, and I haven't come across
anything remotely like that. Clearly textbooks alone aren't going to be enough—I do hope Hogwarts
has a decent library, I've been relying on that assumption, but I suppose I can't actually know
until—"
Draco hadn't genuinely encountered an expression like hers in a very long time. Not the kind he
could fake—he was perfectly capable of that—but this: unguarded, vivid, real.
His heart had been quiet for so long. He found himself, against all expectation, simply watching
her talk.
"Yes." He thought of how reliably he would find her in the library throughout the years ahead,
tucked behind towers of books, deeply absorbed. "You'll love the Hogwarts library. The collection
is vast."
"That's reassuring." The delight on her face lasted only a moment before a small, worried crease
appeared between her brows. "You're clearly from a wizarding family. I grew up in a Muggle
household—I'm always afraid I'll fall behind."
"You won't." Draco said it flatly, with a certainty that had nothing to do with courtesy.
What did she have to be anxious about? She would spend the next seven years at the top of every
class. The ones who ought to be anxious were the children from old wizarding families who would
spend those same years failing to keep up with her.
Though he kept that particular thought to himself.