The first morning inside the castle began with noise.
Not loud noise. Not chaos. A steady undercurrent of movement that never stopped. Footsteps above the ceiling. Doors opening and closing somewhere in the walls. Voices carried through stone and softened into echoes.
The castle was awake.
He opened his eyes before the dormitory lights brightened. For a few seconds he did not move. He listened. He mapped the rhythm. Even half-asleep, the structure of the place expressed itself. Hogwarts did not rest. It cycled.
Good.
Systems that never stopped moving revealed patterns faster.
He sat up slowly. The dormitory smelled of cold air and fabric. Four other beds. Sleeping bodies. Familiar faces attached to names Draco already knew. He did not look at them long. Observation could wait. Mornings were for internal calibration.
He closed his eyes again and tested the Inner Interface.
He replayed the previous day.
Every detail arrived intact. The train. The castle. The healer's wand. The exact angle of sunlight through the hospital wing window. Memory did not degrade overnight. It stacked cleanly.
He pushed harder.
He reconstructed the train ride backward, moment by moment. The memory held. No distortion. No blur. Perfect retention was not fading with rest.
Confirmed stable.
He allowed himself one quiet breath of satisfaction.
A mind like this could compress years.
He dressed with automatic precision. Draco's body remembered the motions. Buttons. tie. robe. He layered his new habits over the old muscle memory without friction. Identity was flexible if the core stayed intact.
When he stepped into the corridor, the castle greeted him with movement.
Students flowed toward breakfast in loose currents. Conversations overlapped. Laughter bounced off stone. Owls swept overhead carrying letters like fragments of distant worlds. Magic flickered in casual gestures — sparks to light candles, charms to lift bags.
No one treated it as miraculous.
He did.
He watched every small spell with the same attention he would give a machine revealing its internal gears. Magic was not dramatic here. It was infrastructure. That made it more valuable, not less.
Casual systems were the deepest ones.
The Great Hall opened before him in a rush of sound and light. The ceiling reflected a pale morning sky. Long tables filled with food that had appeared without visible preparation. Students attacked breakfast with the focus of the young.
He paused at the entrance for half a second.
The scale of the hall pressed against him. Hundreds of voices. Centuries of ritual condensed into a daily routine. This was not a school cafeteria. It was a gathering point for a population that would shape the wizarding world for decades.
He stepped inside and took his seat.
Conversation formed around him automatically. Draco's acquaintances filled the space with familiar arrogance and casual gossip. He responded when required. Short answers. Correct tone. The mask held easily.
While he spoke, he watched.
Who commanded attention. Who chased it. Which jokes landed. Which names carried weight when mentioned. Influence revealed itself in reactions, not claims.
He ate without tasting the food. His attention stayed on the room.
Hermione Granger sat at the Gryffindor table with a book open beside her plate. She read between bites. Not pretending. Not performing. Absorbing. Her eyes moved fast. Her posture did not slump with sleep.
Discipline.
He marked it again. Consistency confirmed the first impression.
Across the hall, Potter laughed too loudly at something Weasley said. Heads turned automatically. Attention followed him like a shadow. Fame created gravity. Even students who disliked him tracked his position unconsciously.
Another resource node.
Not friend. Not enemy.
Force.
He stored the observation and stood when the hall began to empty.
Corridors filled again. The flow toward classrooms had urgency now. The day was dividing into measurable blocks. Each class was an investment window. He would treat them as such.
The first lesson was History of Magic.
The room felt older than the corridor. Dust layered every surface with quiet authority. The ghost professor began speaking without greeting. His voice droned with steady persistence. Most students slouched within minutes.
He did not.
He listened.
Not to the words alone. To the structure beneath them. Dates. wars. treaties. Magical laws shifting across centuries. The wizarding world had evolved through conflict and negotiation like any other state system.
Power left records.
History was a map of pressure points.
He did not write. He did not need to. The Inner Interface captured every detail. Names aligned into timelines automatically. Cause and effect linked without effort.
He tested recall mid-lecture. Reconstructed the last ten minutes internally.
Perfect.
He adjusted his strategy in real time.
If memory cost nothing, attention became the only currency. He would spend it without hesitation. No daydreaming. No wasted class. Total absorption during instruction. Analysis afterward.
Compression method established.
A yawn rippled through the room. The ghost continued speaking, untouched by mortal fatigue. Hermione's quill moved without pause. She tracked the lecture with mechanical focus.
He watched her process, not her notes. She did not copy blindly. She reorganized information as she wrote. Headings. connections. personal structure layered over the teacher's.
Independent synthesis.
Rare.
He felt a flicker of respect. Clean. Quiet. Logged.
The bell ended the lesson. Students escaped with relief. He remained seated for two seconds longer and replayed the entire lecture once.
Still intact.
He stood and followed the current back into the corridor.
By midday, a pattern had formed.
Each class was a filter. Some students engaged. Most drifted. Teachers rewarded consistency more than brilliance. The system favored those who could endure repetition without boredom.
That suited him perfectly.
Repetition was not dull if the goal was mastery.
Lunch passed in another wave of observation. Faces sorted themselves into categories. Ambitious. lazy. volatile. dependable. He did not need to know everyone. Only the ones who would matter later.
The castle revealed hidden logic the longer he walked its halls. Staircases that forced traffic through narrow points. Portraits that watched movement. Teachers positioned where they could intercept problems before they spread.
Control architecture disguised as tradition.
Elegant.
By evening, fatigue settled into the student body. Voices dropped. Steps slowed. He felt the tiredness in Draco's muscles but not in his mind. The Inner Interface held his thoughts sharp.
He stood near a high window and looked out at the darkening grounds.
The day replayed automatically. Breakfast. History. corridor flows. behavioral patterns. Every detail stacked into a growing internal map.
Hogwarts was no longer a fantasy location.
It was a system he could model.
Magic was not random here. It was structured, taught, measured, ranked. A ladder hidden inside ritual and childhood.
He felt the hunger return.
Stronger now.
Not wild. Directed.
Every year must produce measurable gain.
The sentence settled into place like a rule carved into stone.
He turned from the window and walked back toward the dormitory with steady steps. Around him, students talked about homework and gossip and small victories.
He walked through it untouched.
They were living inside the story.
He was studying the framework that held it together.
And tomorrow, he would begin climbing.