As Draco and Hermione talked, the sky beyond the carriage window gradually darkened.
"Do you know which house you're hoping for?" Hermione asked him.
She didn't wait for an answer. "I've asked everyone I could find, and I hope for Gryffindor—everyone says it's the best, and Dumbledore himself came from there. Though I don't think Ravenclaw would be terrible either…"
The sheer volume of words pointed to one cause and one cause only: nerves. She was trying to cover them with chatter.
Draco glanced at her. Sure enough, the closer the train drew to Hogwarts, the more tightly wound she became.
Fear of the unknown. He had never seen this side of her before. In his past life, Granger had arrived at Hogwarts already armoured in certainty—the girl who had apparently memorised every available textbook before her trunk was even packed. He had never imagined she might have been frightened underneath it.
"Don't worry," he said, without entirely meaning to. "I think you'll end up in Gryffindor."
"Thank you." She gave him a faint, unconvinced smile and turned back to the window. The mountains and forests beyond had become dark shapes moving slowly against a deep violet sky.
"We're nearly there," Draco said.
"You should go change into your robes." She shifted the toad, which was making a determined effort to escape her arms. "I need to return this to Neville before he dissolves entirely. I'll see you later."
He gave a brief nod and watched her disappear down the corridor.
Gryffindor, he thought, with a private shake of his head. And your reasoning for wanting Gryffindor is that it's the best and Dumbledore came from there. Those were ambitions, not values. For someone who claimed to want the house of the brave, she sounded rather more like a Slytherin making a strategic placement decision.
He found this genuinely funny, and kept it to himself.
Back in the compartment, Crabbe and Goyle had eaten everything in sight and were now sprawled across their seats in attitudes of profound contentment, occasionally producing sounds that suggested the snack trolley had not emerged victorious.
"Did no one mention that Hogwarts opens with a feast?" Draco said pleasantly. "A rather lavish one, by all accounts."
Two pairs of eyes snapped open.
"A feast?" Crabbe said, in the voice of a man newly acquainted with tragedy.
Goyle blinked. "Tonight?"
"I would imagine your stomachs will manage," Draco said, pulling on his robes.
He watched their expressions cycle through horror, calculation, and reluctant optimism, and decided this was probably the most entertainment he would get from either of them for some time.
When the train came to a full stop, the platform materialized out of the darkness—small, damp, and lit only by lanterns that did very little. Hagrid's enormous silhouette rose above the crowd like a small hill, shepherding the first-years onto a narrow path that descended steeply into the dark.
The path was treacherous. Wet stones, exposed roots, and the particular darkness that only exists deep in old forest. The newer students stumbled at regular intervals.
Draco could hear Hermione behind him trying to keep pace with Neville—and then a yelp, a scuffle, and the sound of small, determined feet hitting mud—and then nothing.
Trevor the toad made his bid for freedom directly under Hermione's feet. She lurched sideways to avoid him. Neville made a desperate grab and missed. The toad vanished between two roots and was gone into the treeline.
"No—" Neville's cry carried the particular anguish of a boy for whom this was not the first time, nor the second.
Hermione, wrong-footed in the dark and still moving, had no chance of recovering her balance.
A hand caught her collar.
She spun around, startled, and made out a gleam of platinum hair in the darkness.
"Thank you," she said, slightly breathless, her usual composure temporarily misplaced.
"Grab my sleeve," Draco said.
She didn't move.
He had expected this. Granger's coordination on uneven ground was, generously speaking, not her strongest quality—a fact she would sooner have hexed him than admitted. She would not willingly accept help in front of an audience.
"Grab my sleeve," he repeated, "unless you'd prefer to arrive at the Sorting Ceremony covered in mud in front of the entire school."
A pause. Then her fingers closed around his sleeve.
"Thank you," she said, with slightly more dignity this time. "This is—yes. This is much safer."
Draco navigated the remainder of the path with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had correctly anticipated every step of the negotiation. Granger followed, holding on with rather more grip than was strictly necessary on the steeper parts, and saying nothing, which was unusual enough to be pleasant.
Then the trees ended, and the path levelled, and the castle came into view.
"Oh," he heard her say, very quietly, behind him.
He understood the feeling, even now. Even knowing what he knew—what had happened within those towers, what was still to come—Hogwarts at night from across the Black Lake was difficult to be unmoved by. The spires rose against the stars. The windows glowed. The whole reflection shimmered in the water below, doubled and dreamlike.
Before the Death Eaters came through it, he thought. This is what it should always look like.
On level ground, Hermione released his sleeve and thanked him again, this time without embarrassment. Then she joined the rest of the first-years at the water's edge.
Draco stood apart for a moment, watching.
He had been tracking the toad business with more attention than it warranted—or rather, with exactly the attention it warranted as a small experiment. In his past life, Trevor had gone missing on the train and turned up when Hagrid checked the empty boats before departure. In this life, Draco had retrieved the toad early, and it had still escaped—but this time it would be found on the grass outside the castle, not on a boat.
The outcome was the same. The path had changed.
That was worth knowing. Fate, it seemed, was not immovable—it bent, absorbed interference, and rerouted rather than repeating itself exactly. Something could be altered. The toad was trivial. The implications were not.
He needed far more evidence before drawing real conclusions. But this was a start.
He found a boat and took his place in it alongside Zabini, Parkinson, and Nott. The boats moved without oars, carrying their passengers across the mirror-still water, through the curtain of ivy that veiled the cliff face, and into the darkness beyond.
The underground dock was cold and damp and smelled of deep water. Students disembarked onto gravel, muttering complaints about the ambience.
"We're at the dock beneath the castle," Draco said quietly to no one in particular, scanning for Hermione. "Not far now."
"It's damp," came a voice he recognised. "I do hope the rest of it isn't like this."
She most certainly would not enjoy the Slytherin common room, Draco thought.
Not long after they emerged from the tunnel onto flat grass, he heard it—Neville's voice, suddenly jubilant rather than distraught:
"Trevor!"
The toad was sitting in the grass, entirely unbothered.
Draco allowed himself a small, private smile.
The Entrance Hall was ablaze with torchlight. The first-years clustered together, listening to Professor McGonagall deliver her address on the four houses, the importance of conduct, the House Cup, and various other points that Draco had heard often enough to recite in his sleep. She swept out. The students immediately began speculating nervously.
Not far ahead of him, Potter was asking Weasley how the Sorting worked. Weasley, with characteristic helpfulness, suggested it might involve some sort of test that hurt—his brothers had told him. Several nearby students went pale.
Draco heard Hermione somewhere behind him quietly reciting something—a spell, from the sound of it, something she'd been practising at home and was now running through in self-defence against her own nerves.
He let out a quiet click of the tongue.
"It's just a hat," he said, to the space beside him.
Hermione turned. "A hat?"
"An old, patched hat with opinions. It reads your thoughts and assigns you a house. They call it the Sorting Hat." He paused. "And before you ask—yes, I'm serious."
She looked at him with the expression of someone deciding whether or not to believe this, and apparently concluded that inventing such a specific thing served no obvious purpose.
The great doors opened. Professor McGonagall led them in.
The Great Hall exceeded the expectations of everyone who had never seen it before. Four long house tables stretched the length of the room, lined with hundreds of students. Candles floated above everything. The ceiling was invisible beneath what appeared to be a living night sky.
On a stool at the front of the hall sat exactly what Draco had described: a battered, ancient pointed hat, stained with age, its brim frayed, its crown creased and worn. A long tear near the brim opened like a mouth, and the hat began to sing.
Hermione, to her credit, recovered quickly from the surprise. "You were right," she murmured.
"I usually am," Draco said, which was entirely untrue in aggregate but felt correct at this particular moment. "When it's on your head, think of where you want to go. It takes preferences into account."
"Susan Bones!" McGonagall called.
A girl hurried forward. "Hufflepuff!" The hat announced it almost immediately, and the table on the right burst into applause.
"Will it really put me in the right house?" Hermione asked.
"The four founders designed it specifically for this purpose. It sorts by qualities, not by ambition."
"Seamus Finnigan!"
The boy sat on the stool for a full minute, hat down over his eyes, before: "Gryffindor!"
Hermione let out a small, anxious breath. "Why does it take so long for some people?"
"It means the choice isn't obvious," Draco said. "The Hat is deliberating."
"Hermione Granger!"
She startled. He had a moment to say— "When you put it on, think of where you want to be. It will listen"—before she was already moving, half-walking and half-running toward the stool, dropping the hat over her curls with both hands.
"Gryffindor!"
She ran to the left-hand table to considerable applause, and was immediately claimed by several upper-year Gryffindors who seemed delighted to have her.
A moment later, Professor McGonagall called his name.
The hat touched his head—barely—and shouted "Slytherin!" before it had fully settled.
Good, Draco thought. Consistent.
He had prepared himself for the possibility that seven years of dark memories, sealed carefully behind Occlumency, might not be perfectly sealed against something that had been reading minds since the founders were alive. But it seemed the Hat had found what it needed at the surface and needed nothing more. He made a note to remain vigilant.
He walked to the Slytherin table with the particular unhurried ease of someone who has made this walk many times before, and took his seat.
From across the room, the Weasley boy was in the middle of whispering something to Potter that Draco couldn't hear—though the word Slytherin and a certain expression on his face suggested the content. Draco watched Potter listen, glance toward the Slytherin table, and then, when their eyes met, offer a small, tentative smile.
Not bad. Whatever Weasley had said, it hadn't landed.
Potter was sorted to Gryffindor—to a commotion unlike anything else in the evening, the name Harry Potter rippling through the Great Hall in waves of recognition—and took his seat opposite Hermione, who appeared to have already made herself comfortable and was in animated conversation with a nearby Gryffindor prefect.
The feast materialised and conversation broke out across all four tables simultaneously. Draco exchanged greetings with his new Slytherin housemates with the right amount of reserve, the right handshake, the right smile—everything measured and appropriate and empty of any real warmth.
He was working from memory. He knew these people's names, their families, their rough trajectories. He introduced himself and was introduced in return and performed the ritual with expert fluency while thinking entirely about something else.
Specifically: the figure floating at the far end of the Slytherin table.
Most of the first-years were avoiding looking at him. His name was the Bloody Baron—Slytherin's resident ghost, and the only ghost in Hogwarts that even Peeves refused to cross. He had been here for centuries, hollow-eyed and gaunt, his robes marked with old silver stains that no one liked to ask about.
Marcus Flint, a fifth-year seated diagonally across from Draco, caught him looking and seemed amused. "Don't bother," he said, with the world-weary authority of someone who had tried. "He's like that always. Even on a good night, he doesn't speak to students."
Draco offered Flint a mild smile and turned back toward the end of the table.
"My lord Baron," he said carefully, with the precise degree of deference he had calculated would avoid sounding either presumptuous or absurd, "how many consecutive years has Slytherin held the House Cup?"
The Bloody Baron's hollow gaze tracked slowly toward him. The silence around them deepened slightly.
"Six," said the Baron. His voice was like something heard through water—quiet, and final.
Draco turned back to his plate with equanimity, as though this happened all the time.
Flint was staring at him.
In Slytherin, respect was not given by age—it was given by demonstrated ability. A first-year who had, in a single sentence, accomplished what fifth-years had apparently failed to do over five years of trying had just made an impression that money couldn't buy.
Draco noted this as a pleasant, if minor, development and returned to his steak.
He had no intention of pushing further tonight. The Bloody Baron was not a ghost who spoke carelessly or often—one sentence in a feast was already extraordinary. Gaining his trust would require time and patience, and Draco had, for the first time in a long time, an abundance of both.
What he needed from the Baron was indirect. A route to someone else.
The Grey Lady—Helena Ravenclaw, though she disliked being called that—was Ravenclaw's ghost, elusive and avoidant, famously reluctant to hold conversation with anyone. She favoured the upper towers of the castle, particularly Ravenclaw Tower, and spent most of her centuries in careful, deliberate solitude.
If anyone alive, or formerly alive, had knowledge of Ravenclaw's lost diadem, it was her. She was Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter. The timeline suggested she might have still been living when the diadem disappeared.
Approaching her directly was unlikely to work. She was shy in the particular way of someone who had been badly hurt by having trusted too easily once before, and Draco had no currency with her.
The Baron was a different proposition. He avoided no one and turned away most—but he could be moved, Draco suspected, if approached correctly and consistently over time. A month ago, reviewing everything from his past life, Draco had pulled a particular memory apart very carefully: the night of Dumbledore's death, passing through the Astronomy Tower, brushing past the Baron in the dark. The ghost had been standing where he could see Ravenclaw Tower. He had been murmuring a name.
Helena.
The Baron had been watching her tower from the Astronomy Tower for centuries. That was not nothing. That was grief of a very old, very specific kind—the kind that keeps a wizard from moving on and leaves them here instead, chained to the world by something unresolved.
What had happened between them? The school knew almost nothing. Students over the centuries had found the Baron too frightening to enquire after and the Grey Lady too distant, and so the story had simply gone untold.
Draco intended to learn it. Not out of curiosity—out of necessity. The diadem was somewhere in this castle, had been for centuries, and it was connected to something the Dark Lord wanted badly enough to search for. He needed to understand what it was before he could decide what to do about it.
He already knew where it was: the Room of Requirement, seventh floor, buried in years of accumulated hidden objects. He had no intention of touching it without knowing exactly what he was dealing with. It had been sitting there quietly for centuries and would continue to sit there quietly. It could wait.
For now: start with the Baron. Earn enough ground for an introduction. Find Helena. Ask the right questions.
He turned the problem over methodically as the feast wound down and the Slytherin prefects led the first-years out of the Great Hall and down toward the dungeons.
The common room was green-lit, subaquatic, the windows overlooking the black water of the lake. Through the glass, the shape of the giant squid moved slowly past, enormous and unhurried, and settled into the depths.
Draco lay on his four-poster bed and listened to the sound of water moving against stone outside the window, watching the dim lanterns overhead shift their light with the current. Around him, new Slytherins moved through the dormitory talking and unpacking and establishing themselves. He let the sounds blur into background noise.
Baron. Helena. The diadem. The diary. He constructed the problems into a rough order of priority and noted where they intersected.
He was still thinking when he fell asleep.