A/N:Well, hello there.
How are you all doing?
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A true Malfoy doesn’t let his emotions show.
He observes carefully before drawing conclusions, rather than betraying any outward fluctuation to the world.
Draco was such a Malfoy.
Or rather, shaped by his long and dark memories, he was no longer the arrogant, wilful boy he had once been, but had gradually become something more cautious, more measured.
Though this approach might not serve him well with his parents.
They were completely unaware of the changes within him and still expected the eleven-year-old they had always known.
If they found their proud, headstrong son suddenly quiet and withdrawn, they would sense at once that something was wrong.
How would he explain it?
Draco hadn’t worked that out yet, and he had no desire to say anything dramatic at this stage.
He had grown accustomed to trusting no one, and no longer harboured any illusion that someone else might understand the full weight of what he carried.
Not even his loving parents had ever truly understood him.
So when Draco appeared at the breakfast table, he made a careful effort to project the bright, lively manner an eleven-year-old boy was expected to have—drawing on everything his long memory had given him.
He had succeeded, clearly.
Lucius and Narcissa continued to enjoy the breakfast served by the house-elves, unaware of anything amiss.
During the meal, Draco found himself stealing glances at them, again and again.
They looked very young—much younger than he remembered.
His father’s face was free of wrinkles, without the marks of fatigue or haggardness.
He wore his favourite snakeskin suit, and his platinum-blonde hair was immaculately styled, sleek and gleaming.
His mother was still beautiful and graceful, elegance evident in every gesture.
Her proud and composed face reserved its smiles only for her husband and son.
With every passing minute, Draco grew more certain of the truth behind his memories.
Lucius and Narcissa were discussing the same estate affairs and Ministry secrets he remembered—word for word, as though performing a scene he had already watched.
“Cornelius Fudge has actually applied for the Order of Merlin, First Class—for himself,” Lucius said, a faint curl of contempt on his lips.
“He’s a man who worships power and prestige above all else,” Narcissa replied, lifting her teacup with an unhurried elegance.
“We do love men of that type, don’t we? Vain, weak, short-sighted, and so very easy to manage. One can only hope his appetite for gold matches his appetite for glory…”
Lucius inclined his head slightly toward his wife in agreement.
Yes—just as in his past life.
His parents were already scheming how to ingratiate themselves with the self-congratulatory Minister for Magic.
Draco could even predict what would happen when the house-elves brought out the final course.
“So…” Lucius slowly picked up the small silver dessert spoon, studying the pudding before him with a contemplative air.
“Durmstrang or Hogwarts—which shall it be?”
Draco did not answer immediately.
In his memory, he had once blurted out an answer without thinking, only to be dismissed outright by his father.
Lucius had scoffed, calling him a reckless little fool who hadn’t bothered to think things through.
He had no intention of being ridiculed like that again.
Lucius had always been rigorous with his son.
He had made a habit of using sharp words to cut Draco down whenever he became too proud—his way of instilling humility.
His intentions, perhaps, were good.
But he never understood the damage his relentless criticism inflicted.
Under the steady pressure of those cutting remarks, day after day, Draco had grown into a boy who carried both arrogance and a deep-seated sense of inadequacy in equal measure.
No one could say Lucius didn’t love his son.
During the war, he had finally revealed a rare tenderness—a paternal warmth he had never shown in peacetime.
That fatherly love had only emerged in the darkest extremity, like stars that only shine when the sky is at its darkest—never glimpsed in ordinary daylight.
In the end, Draco supposed, his father had simply never known how to show it.
During most of the daylight hours, whatever tenderness Lucius possessed was reserved for Narcissa.
Only through his mother could one catch any real warmth from him at all.
It was something Draco had never noticed in his previous life.
His parents had always spoken openly in front of him about schemes, political advantage, or the dry mechanics of their social world—nothing remotely sentimental.
They rarely expressed affection for each other directly, and Draco could not once recall hearing his father say “I love you” to his mother in front of him.
And so, in that previous life, he had assumed their union was a cold arrangement—a partnership of blood and interests, nothing more.
Their personalities were so different, after all.
His father: stern, direct, and exacting.
His mother: warm, gentle, and patient.
Less a devoted couple than two people running a very old and very serious enterprise together.
That was how Draco had understood it then.
It wasn’t until everything began to fall apart that he started to wonder if he had been wrong.
His mother had never abandoned his father—not even when Lucius was imprisoned and every social door in their world slammed shut against her because of his disgrace.
And his father, who had always been autocratic to the bone, had set aside that autocracy for her—had listened to her, trusted her, and trusted only her.
Was there love between them, beyond the interests that bound them?
Draco glanced at his parents from the corner of his eye, genuinely uncertain.
“I want Draco to go to Hogwarts,” Narcissa said, looking up at her husband with a faint, assured smile—the same words Draco remembered.
“Surely the son of a school governor won’t be at any disadvantage there?”
“Of course not…” Lucius set down his spoon and leaned back comfortably, his gaze resting on his wife with quiet regard.
“Draco will be treated very well at Hogwarts, of that I have no doubt. But you know Dumbledore’s stance on certain branches of magic. I worry our son won’t receive the full education he deserves.”
Narcissa’s brow creased slightly.
“But Durmstrang isn’t even in England. Somewhere on the Continent—I’ve never been sure exactly where. And by all accounts it’s dreadfully cold…”
“I have connections with the headmaster there—Igor Karkaroff—so Draco would be well looked after,” Lucius said, one hand drifting idly to his silver-tipped cane.
Connections.
The fellowship of Death Eaters.
Draco thought privately.
Karkaroff—a cowardly man, as Death Eaters went.
The moment he heard that the Dark Lord had returned, he abandoned his post as headmaster and ran.
Not exactly the sort of man whose protection meant anything.
Even Dumbledore, for all his faults, was far better than that.
Draco skimmed a spoonful of pudding with an expression of polite indifference, keeping his thoughts carefully behind his eyes.
Thinking of Dumbledore brought the old nightmare rushing back—the Astronomy Tower, the green flash, the end of the most powerful wizard of the century by Professor
Snape’s wand.
It was still absurd, still almost impossible to believe, even with every detail as sharp in his mind as a knife.
He wrenched his thoughts away from it and began silently reciting things he knew by rote: the basic principles of Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfiguration, the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, the seven hundred Quidditch fouls.
“Is there any better method for clearing your head than reciting facts?” a girl’s voice from his memory asked him, chin lifted.
Yes, Granger.
You were right about that, at least.
Narcissa caught her son’s sigh with the quiet precision of a mother who notices everything.
“Draco, darling—tell me what you think,” she said gently.
“Which school would you prefer?” She assumed, no doubt, that his low spirits were the result of having been ignored during the discussion.
His mother’s care had always been like that—direct, warm, never as obscured as his father’s.
He had always known it even when he hadn’t deserved it.
As for the school question itself, Draco had already turned it over thoroughly while eating his pudding.
His parents’ behaviour this morning had been a near-perfect echo of his memories.
The conclusion was difficult to avoid: what he had experienced was real.
He would call it a “past life,” and this—whatever this was—a rebirth.
He had lived long enough, and seen enough of what lay ahead, that it felt like he had already reached the end of one lifetime.
If that past life was real, then the chaos to come was real as well, and he had to plan accordingly.
Several years remained before the worst of it.
He had considered leaving England entirely—keeping clear of the bloodshed, perhaps enrolling at Durmstrang after all.
But Draco knew well enough that Durmstrang offered no real safety.
The Dark Lord’s reach was long.
Hadn’t Karkaroff fled, and been killed for it all the same?
Hogwarts was dangerous—but it was a danger he knew.
He had seven years of memories to draw from.
He could learn from every past mistake and handle things better this time.
And more than that: the Malfoy family’s roots were in England.
They had stood on this land for centuries.
To rashly abandon the legacy their ancestors had built was unthinkable.
The Malfoys could surrender many things—but never their traditions.
Running away was not a solution.
It never had been.
There was also one other reason.
A faint, hazy, beautiful thing that lingered at the edges of his thoughts.
An unspoken, half-formed hope.
A shattered wish that had left him bewildered and bereft.
“Hogwarts,” he said at last, looking at Narcissa with a careful attempt at an innocent smile.
“I want to be close enough to come home for Christmas.”
He caught his father’s expression from the corner of his eye—a slight, familiar frown.
Lucius was displeased, either by what he deemed his son’s lack of ambition, or by the prospect of his and Narcissa’s quiet time being interrupted.
Perhaps both.
Your stern face can no longer frighten me, Father, Draco thought calmly, while maintaining his most guileless expression.
He pressed his advantage: “And Professor Snape will look out for me, won’t he? He’s Head of Slytherin, and his knowledge of both Potions and the Dark Arts is exceptional. I’d like to learn as much as I can from him.”
Lucius found himself with no reasonable grounds for refusal.
After the meal, Narcissa left the dining room with the brisk, satisfied air of someone who had gotten exactly what she wanted.
Draco guessed she had gone directly to her study to send off his Hogwarts enrolment confirmation.
Lucius lingered at the table.
When the two of them were alone, he fixed his son with a stern look and said: “Stop always playing the child with your mother. It’s unbecoming. You’re not a small boy anymore. And since you’ll be studying right here in the country, I expect you to conduct yourself accordingly—”
He leaned slightly toward Draco, his tall frame making the height difference impossible to ignore.
“A proper Malfoy upholds the family’s honour at all times. Work hard at your studies. If I don’t hear that you’ve applied yourself seriously, don’t expect to come home for Christmas.”
Draco held his father’s gaze steadily.
“Yes, Father,” he said.
Lucius looked into his son’s pale grey eyes and found something unexpected there: not the usual flash of panic, not the wounded pride—something closer to quiet warmth.
He cleared his throat, evidently unsure what to make of it.
“Tomorrow, your mother and I will take you to Diagon Alley for your school things. Think about what else you might need, and we’ll sort it all out then.” With that, he strode away, silver-tipped cane in hand.
Left alone, Draco looked at the extra serving of chocolate pudding sitting in front of him, and smiled to himself.
His father was still so awkward about it.
He remembered this moment from before—sitting at this same table after a very similar exchange.
What had his reaction been then?
He had been driven close to tears by his father’s cold, threatening words, and gone to his mother for comfort.
He had believed his father was growing colder by the year, had been tormented by the fear that the man he admired might not actually love him at all—that only his mother truly did.
He had been too young then to see the expectation hidden behind the severity.
And he had completely missed the significance of the extra pudding.
Draco could summon a house-elf and have a dozen servings brought in a moment—the pudding itself was worth nothing.
What mattered was that Lucius had saved his portion for his son rather than letting it be cleared.
It was an absurd, barely perceptible gesture of care—the kind that only made sense to someone old enough to look for it.
A child couldn’t be expected to notice something like that.
But he was no longer simply a child.
After his parents had gone, Draco finally allowed himself to drop the performance.
With the same unhurried, deliberate manner as Lucius, he finished his second pudding slowly, quietly turning over the decision he had made: Hogwarts.
He let the word settle.
His seven years at Hogwarts had not been what he had hoped for.
He had spent most of them contending daily with the arrogant Potter, the Weasleys who never missed a chance to mock him, and the insufferably clever Granger.
Draco exhaled through his nose—and then felt an involuntary chill run down his spine at the memory of the punch Granger had once thrown at his face.
Years had done nothing to dull that particular recollection.
If she hadn’t been Potter’s friend.
If he hadn’t been so insufferable back then.
If he had extended this Muggle-born girl even a fraction of the respect she had clearly earned…
After all, she wasn’t stupid.
She was, if he was being honest, extremely clever.
Lucius had often compared her marks to Draco’s—which had made him simultaneously ashamed and furious in his past life.
His father would say, with all the casualness of a blade between the ribs, that he couldn’t even outperform a Muggle-born girl.
As a child, Draco had both revered and feared his father, hanging on his every word as though it were law.
He had wanted nothing more than his father’s full approval—to become the Malfoy his father could be proud of—and was prepared to sacrifice almost anything to earn it.
And so his father’s disappointment had clouded his judgment, burying his own genuine feelings beneath a compulsion to deepen his hatred of the three of them.
He had loved being the centre of attention.
He had craved admiration, and collected it like a currency.
It was what most boys of eleven did, if he was being honest with himself.
Potter and his friends had stolen that particular spotlight.
Or rather, Potter’s presence was so overwhelming—like the moon, eclipsing everything around it—that
Draco’s own considerable star had been made to seem dim by comparison.
The contrast had enraged him.
He had considered himself exceptional, almost chosen, and the sight of someone else commanding that space without even appearing to try for it had been intolerable.
He had lashed out again and again, picking fights without ever stopping to ask himself why he was so angry in the first place.
Looking back now, it seemed he had spent most of seven years squandering his energy on pointless provocation.
The memory of it made him feel faintly ridiculous.
He had no appetite for that kind of ridiculousness anymore.
He had real things to contend with—a genuine and terrible enemy, already stirring somewhere in the darkness, preparing to tear the wizarding world apart.
The Dark Lord.
He had not yet returned.
But he was coming.
The Malfoy family’s oldest saying held that true glory lay not in never falling, but in rising after every fall.
If his previous life had been Draco Malfoy’s Waterloo, then now—with time restored to him, memories intact, and the knowledge of everything that was to come—was his chance for a very different ending.
It was not too late.
Not too late to cut himself free from all that filth.
There was still time to preserve the Malfoy family’s honour.
Still time to make a different choice—to seize the moment before it slipped through his fingers again.
Those Death Eaters and their kind must never again set foot in Malfoy Manor.
Must never again lay their hands on his parents.
Never.
How exactly he had come to possess these memories, and how he had been restored to eleven years old—these questions seemed less urgent now.
What mattered was the time, the place, and the chance.
In his previous life, it had been Dumbledore himself who told him from the Astronomy
Tower that he could still choose differently.
But he had hesitated too long.
And by the time he had found the courage to try another path, Dumbledore was already dying, and the green light was already in the air.
That opportunity had vanished.
And then more had followed—slipping away through his fingers one by one in a long chain of missed chances—until there was nothing left but regret.
But now, he had been reborn.
He was safe.
And he had a choice.
Was this Merlin’s warning?
A chance to begin again?
Draco did not want very much.
He had no ambition to achieve anything grand.
He was not so deluded as to think that being reborn gave him the power to defeat the Dark Lord with his own hands.
What he wanted was simpler: to keep the Dark Lord contained, use every Slytherin trick at his disposal to obstruct and delay him, prevent the resurrection if he could manage it.
And ultimately, to protect the Malfoy family.
To protect his own world.
To protect the people who mattered to him.
The Malfoys had weathered hundreds of years of storms and still stood firm on the
Wiltshire plains.
With so much more to fight with this time—knowledge, foresight, and the bitter wisdom of a life already lived—why could they not fight for a chance to come through unscathed?
Tomorrow, he would see Potter for the first time.
The crucial figure.
The foolish boy who had wheeled back on a broomstick to save him at the very last moment.
Eleven-year-old Potter—scrawny, shabbily dressed, still blissfully unaware of everything that was coming for him.
“Harry Potter,” Draco murmured quietly to the empty room.
“Let me get to know you again.”