In most respects, Hogwarts looked exactly as it had the previous year.
The dormitory beds were always clean and neatly made, the food on the long tables was always plentiful, and most of the teaching staff were familiar faces—if one ignored Gilderoy Lockhart, the preening, teeth-displaying, hair-flipping new Defence Against the Dark Arts professor.
The man was an outrage.
He had distributed a fifty-four question examination on the first day of term—ostensibly to gauge the students' familiarity with their new professor's personal preferences.
For those unfamiliar with Hogwarts testing conventions: detailed examinations of that scope were typically reserved for profiling the most dangerous Dark creatures. By the sheer number of questions, Lockhart apparently considered himself more worthy of academic study than a Hungarian Horntail, an Acromantula, or a Venomous Tentacula.
"That smooth-talking fraud," Draco said to Blaise, who was equally offended.
For a Malfoy, scoring highly on such a test would have been a personal humiliation. Without a second's hesitation, Draco had filled in the answers at random—the first time since his rebirth that he had deliberately failed an examination. The highest mark in the class had gone to Hermione, the incorrigible know-it-all.
Her memory was simply incomprehensible. She had apparently retained information as trivial as Lockhart's preferred colour of dress robes.
"I'm going to write to my father and have Lockhart dismissed," Draco told Crabbe and Goyle the following morning, on the path to the greenhouses.
Crabbe and Goyle nodded listlessly. They were still sporting the scratches left by the Cornish Pixies that Lockhart had released in their very first lesson—a fitting testament, Draco thought, to the professor's competence.
Hermione, hurrying up from behind, caught the tail end of this and pulled a deeply disapproving face. "Draco, what exactly has Professor Lockhart done to you?"
"You can't seriously tell me you haven't noticed he's less capable than a second-year student." Draco made no effort to conceal his contempt. "At least a second-year student knows how to cast a Freezing Charm on a Cornish Pixie. Lockhart just flashed his teeth, waved his hair, and then ran for his life."
"You're hardly self-taught either," Hermione said, lowering her voice with a glance at Crabbe and Goyle. "That Freezing Charm you used last year—with the troll—"
Draco paused. An unexpected look of approval crossed his face.
Merlin. He had used that spell exactly once, months ago, under entirely chaotic circumstances. She had remembered it.
"I think Professor Lockhart simply wanted to give us a chance to practise," Hermione continued, a faint blush rising as Draco's gaze lingered on her. "He must have a method for dealing with the Pixies—he's a highly experienced expert. Think of everything he's accomplished, all those accounts in the books—"
"He claims to have accomplished those things," Draco said. The momentary softness vanished.
He thought of that insufferable smile, turned at full wattage on a female student yesterday, and felt an irritation he couldn't quite account for.
Hermione, who really ought to have known better, was standing here defending the man with what appeared to be genuine conviction. Not only had she gazed at Lockhart with bright-eyed admiration throughout the lesson, she was now apparently prepared to argue his case.
"He's probably only written those books to sell copies," Draco said flatly.
"That's just jealousy," Hermione said, displeased.
"Jealous of what, exactly? His hair?" Draco glanced sideways at her. "It's hardly an uncommon colour. What is it you find so impressive? An empty head that fills the gaps in your own thinking?"
Crabbe and Goyle sniggered loudly at this.
"Draco, I thought you were a rational person!" Hermione stopped walking and turned to face him, genuinely cross. "How can you be this prejudiced?" She looked at him for a moment longer, then turned and marched ahead.
Draco followed at a pace behind, maintaining a careful distance—neither far enough to seem sulking nor close enough to invite another argument.
Professor Sprout was waiting for them outside the third greenhouse with her characteristic cheerful efficiency. This session they were continuing the repotting of the Mandrakes, which had outgrown their pots since the previous lesson and were, judging by their expressions, deeply unimpressed about the whole affair.
Hermione was still angry.
When it came time to form groups, she turned her back and walked straight over to a Hufflepuff girl with a badger-striped scarf, silently but emphatically declining to partner with the "prejudiced" Draco.
"Who's the Hufflepuff?" Draco asked Harry, who had ended up beside him.
"Susan Bones," Harry said. "She's absolutely devoted to Lockhart. Nine times out of ten, when Lockhart corners me in the corridor, Susan's lurking somewhere nearby. She's asked him for his autograph at least twice."
"Lockhart is a complete fraud," Draco said.
"I think so too," Ron muttered from his other side. "But you'd better say that quietly."
Ron's manner toward him had become noticeably more civil since the incident over the summer and the conversation on the Hogwarts Express—not warm, exactly, but no longer hostile.
Following Ron's cautioning look, Draco noticed several nearby girls had already glanced over at the mention of Lockhart's name.
Harry, catching their expressions, wisely said nothing further—but handed Draco a pair of protective earmuffs in a quietly companionable sort of way.
It was understandable that Harry found Lockhart a headache. Within days of the start of term, it had become common knowledge—even in the Slytherin dungeons—that the new Defence professor was making a habit of posing for photographs with Harry Potter in any public setting he could manufacture. Most of the school seemed to assume Harry was delighted by the association.
Pansy had held forth on this point in the common room. "He's clearly trying to exploit Lockhart's fame. Potter will stop at nothing to get himself noticed."
"On the contrary," Draco had said, without particular heat. "Potter doesn't need fame. He already has more of it than he wants. The question is who's riding on whose coattails."
Blaise had made a sound of agreement. Even Flint, who had a long-running grudge against anything Potter-related, had conceded the point. "Lockhart couldn't even stay on a broom. At least Potter can fly."
The response from the Slytherin girls had been immediate, organised, and loud. Four hours of debate followed—or rather, four hours of the Slytherin girls systematically dismantling every argument the boys put forward, while the boys discovered they had very little concrete evidence to work with beyond personal instinct.
Draco had slipped out to his dormitory somewhere around the second hour and spent the rest of the evening with a comprehensive volume on Dark creature classification, which was considerably more peaceful.
Similar arguments, he gathered, were breaking out across all four Houses. He had seen Hufflepuffs divided at their own table one morning, arguing in urgent whispers while their food went cold. It appeared that Lockhart had accomplished something unprecedented: abandoning House rivalry in favour of a new binary—devoted admirers versus convinced sceptics.
He took the earmuffs from Harry, nodded his thanks, and turned his attention to the Mandrake in front of him. It was a squat, scowling specimen that seemed to have taken particular exception to being repotted and was making this extremely clear.
As he worked, he caught a glimpse of Hermione through the leaves. She had her chin up and her eyes deliberately averted—except that they kept sliding back toward him in brief, covert glances, with the expression of someone who wanted very much to appear stern and was not quite managing it.
He thought about the conversation on the path. He had, objectively, been needlessly pointed. The comment about her "empty brain" had been beneath him.
Goading Hermione Granger into an argument was never productive and was, in retrospect, exactly as irrational as everything he had criticised Lockhart for inspiring.
He adjusted his grip on the Mandrake and considered his options.
The plant chose this moment to lunge at his fingers with surprising commitment. He made a genuine, startled attempt to extract himself from its mouth before managing to wrestle it into its new pot. He shook the Mandrake saliva off his dragonhide gloves with an expression of profound distaste—even though the performance was partly deliberate, the saliva was entirely real, and entirely revolting.
Across the greenhouse, Hermione pressed her lips together.
Then she laughed.
Draco waited until she looked up again, then glanced at her with complete neutrality and mouthed: "We're even."
She could not, after that, maintain her severe expression with any conviction. A reluctant smile crossed her face, and she dropped her gaze to her own Mandrake—but the corners of her mouth remained turned up.
He took this as a settlement.
---
Over the following days, Professor Sprout moved through the greenhouse making corrections and observations. The students were fully occupied with the Mandrakes and had no particular opportunity to do anything but work.
When they filed out afterward—backs aching, robes muddy, earmuffs askew—they had approximately ten minutes to make themselves presentable before Professor McGonagall's Transfiguration class.
Hermione had calmed down sufficiently to take her usual place beside him.
"Not sitting with Susan today?" Draco said mildly.
"Don't hold a grudge." Hermione settled her bag under her chair. "Why do all the boys have it in for Professor Lockhart? Even Hagrid—"
"What did Hagrid say?" This genuinely interested him.
Hermione's expression became slightly complicated. "He said Professor Lockhart was the only person willing to take the position, which is why Dumbledore hired him. And that he didn't think Professor Lockhart could have actually dealt with the Bandon Banshee." She paused. "But think of the book—'Bandon Banshee Battler'—he handled it perfectly."
"Hagrid has my complete sympathy," Draco said. "I hate to be the one to say this, but a professor who cannot manage a second-year Cornish Pixie did not, in my considered view, single-handedly vanquish a Banshee. The methods described in the book may be entirely correct. Whether Lockhart performed them is a different question entirely."
"If you keep talking like that, I'm finding a new partner," Hermione said, though her tone had already lost some of its earlier indignation.
When did she start issuing threats? Draco looked at her, mildly surprised.
"Let's make a bet," he said. "We'll see which of us is right by the end of the year."
He happened to glance at her timetable. Lockhart's lesson slots were ringed in ink. With small hearts.
He looked away.
"Fine," Hermione said crisply, and set to work on the beetles.
"Didn't you already manage this in the last lesson?" he asked. "Why are you still practising?"
"I want to add detail to the button. Make it look nicer." She tilted her wand slightly, working with great concentration on some subtlety of gesture that apparently only she could detect.
"Hermione, please," Ron said, turning around from the row in front. "Some of us haven't managed it at all yet. Could you possibly stop being brilliant for five minutes?"
"This was last lesson's material," Hermione said, with the matter-of-fact tone of someone genuinely puzzled by this complaint. "If you'd focused properly—"
"The beetle kept running off the desk," Harry said, making a resigned swipe at his own specimen with his wand. "It's very fast."
"This charm is considerably harder than last lesson's," Draco said, cutting in before the disagreement could develop further. "Professor McGonagall gave us extra time for a reason. That's not nothing."
It was true. Most of the class were struggling. He himself had spent far longer on this spell in his first life than he cared to remember. How Hermione had produced a satisfactory result in the previous lesson, without any of the supplementary resources he had access to, he found genuinely difficult to explain.
"You've got absolutely no standing to comment on anyone's progress," Hermione said, pointing her wand at him with mild accusation. "You finished it almost immediately, and yours was more precise than mine. Do it again slowly—I want to see the wrist movement."
Lockhart, at this precise moment, was nowhere in her field of attention.
"Watch the angle at the end of the movement," Draco said, and demonstrated.
Professor McGonagall moved through the room a short while later, pausing here and there to offer correction. She stopped at Longbottom's desk—his button still had a beetle leg attached—and reminded him, not unkindly but with great firmness, that only a complete transformation counted as a success.
At Draco's desk, she paused longer. She examined the button, which bore an intricately engraved serpent in the Slytherin style, and said, "Very fine work, Mr. Malfoy. When you've finished, try something more ambitious—an animal into a goblet, perhaps." She moved on. "And Miss Granger—your Gryffindor lion is equally neat. Well done."
In Draco's experience, Professor McGonagall was unfailingly loyal to her own House, but scrupulously fair in assessing work. She did not praise students from other Houses without reason. He found this particular variety of approval gratifying in a way he would have been hard-pressed to explain.
He had to concede, privately, that the advantage of a second life was not nothing. He was, in this body, a twelve-year-old; in his mind he had seventeen years of accumulated practice, and Lucius's demanding standards had ensured that not one of those years was wasted. He had never placed first at Hogwarts in his previous life—but he had consistently remained in the top ten, and he had never found the work easy.
Slytherin's internal hierarchy operated on multiple axes—bloodline, ability, ambition, Quidditch, social standing—but magical talent and intelligence ranked highest among them. Snape, a half-blood, commanded more genuine respect from Slytherin students than half the pureblood aristocracy, entirely on the strength of his abilities. Draco had understood this early, and had taken it seriously.
In retrospect, he had not taken it seriously enough.
He had spent too many hours in pointless conflict, too much energy performing superiority rather than building it. His complacency—the assumption that his advantages were permanent and his position was secure—had meant he consistently fell just short of where he could have been. He had never quite closed the gap with Hermione Granger, who had arrived at Hogwarts knowing nothing about the magical world and had outperformed him anyway.
His father had made his feelings about this very clear.
A Malfoy did not repeat a mistake twice.
He glanced sideways at Hermione. She had achieved a satisfactory result last lesson; she was now, voluntarily, trying to improve on it. The wand movements were smaller now, more refined, as she worked out what was making the difference.
This, he thought, was why she always won.
He had had every advantage. She had had none. And still she outworked him.
If she had access to the magical resources he grew up with—proper guidance, a library, a family who could explain the underlying theory rather than leaving her to rediscover it herself by trial and error—he genuinely wasn't sure what she would be capable of.
Hermione, for her part, was not thinking about any of this.
She was thinking about the book that had been sitting on the edge of Draco's desk since the beginning of the lesson—a slim volume titled A Thousand Transformations: The Practitioner's Guide. He had glanced at it twice, then seemingly lost interest in it, leaving it balanced on the borderline between their desks.
It might have tips on technique. It might clarify something she had been trying to work out.
But she could hardly ask without admitting she had been eyeing it for the past twenty minutes.
She hesitated. Then: "Draco, would it be alright if I borrowed that for a moment? If you've finished with it—"
The bell rang.
Draco looked up and regarded her steadily. "I haven't finished with it. I'm planning to read it again this evening."
Her face fell. "Oh," she said, and began packing her bag with rather less enthusiasm than she had started with, her eyes still on the book.
After a pause of perhaps three seconds, she heard him say, in a completely offhand tone, "I was going to the library later. If you wanted to read it there, that would be fine."
Hermione looked up immediately. "Should we go together?"
"If you like," he said, already tidying his desk.
And so Hermione Granger, who had declared that morning her firm intention to keep her distance from the insufferable, prejudiced Draco Malfoy, found herself installed in his private study an hour later, absorbed in exactly the book she had been trying not to stare at.
"Oh," she said, some time later, setting it down with the focused expression of someone who has just confirmed a theory. She cast the Transfiguration charm on the beetle she had brought with her, and it became a button—neater than before, the detail sharper, the edges clean.
She held it out. "Better?"
Draco, who had been writing, glanced at it.
"Better," he said.
She hummed in satisfaction, looked at the button for another moment, then picked up the book again.
Draco returned to his paper.
She was never satisfied with what she had done, he thought. She always needed it to be more—more precise, more elegant, more correct. At twelve years old. The very trait that made her the most aggravating person to sit next to was the same one that made her, objectively, extraordinary.
He still had ground to make up. He had an adult's accumulated knowledge and a second chance that most people would never be given, and she still pushed him to work harder than he otherwise would.
He could not afford to coast, and she would not let him.
There is a reason, he reflected, that making something look effortless requires twice the effort of simply doing it.