As Draco and Hermione talked, the sky outside the train window gradually darkened.
"Do you know which House you'll be sorted into?" Hermione asked him.
She didn't seem to expect an answer right away, and went on by herself. "I've asked around everywhere, and I hope to be sorted into Gryffindor. Everyone says it's the best; I heard Dumbledore himself graduated from there. But I don't think Ravenclaw is too bad..."
In most cases, such a long stream of words could mean only one thing: she was nervous, and she was trying to cover it up, or at least ease it, by talking.
Draco glanced at her. Indeed, the closer the train got to Hogwarts, the more tense and serious she became.
Was it fear of the unknown? It was a side of Hermione that Draco had never seen before.
He had never imagined that the arrogant know-it-all he remembered, so sure of herself ever since their first year, would have such worries on her first arrival at school.
"Oh, don't worry." He found himself comforting her for no reason at all. "I think—you'll go to Gryffindor."
"Thank you for your kind words." She gave him a forced smile and followed his gaze to the window. Under the deep purple sky, the shadows of the mountains and forests seemed to pass more slowly.
"We're almost there," Draco said with certainty, gazing at the blurred shapes outside.
"I think you should go and change into your robes," Hermione said, carefully cradling the toad that was wriggling restlessly. "I need to give it to Neville right away, or he'll start crying. See you later."
Draco nodded to her reservedly, watching her hurried figure disappear into the corridor.
Gryffindor... Hermione Granger, listen to what you're saying!
Your reasons for wanting to go to Gryffindor are far too un-Gryffindor.
"It's the best."
"Dumbledore himself graduated from there."
How could a Gryffindor possibly say such things? Draco pursed his lips. It sounded far more like something an ambitious Slytherin with a drive for excellence would say.
He opened his compartment door and found that Crabbe and Goyle had finished eating again and were now sprawled across their seats, their chubby faces beaming with satisfaction, burping loudly.
"Didn't anyone tell you that Hogwarts has a banquet? I heard it's very lavish. Can your stomachs even hold it all?" Draco was in a good mood and teased the two gluttons mischievously, and, unsurprisingly, he was rewarded with their shocked and disappointed faces.
"No! No one told us there was food at Hogwarts!" Crabbe cried, pounding his chest.
"Aren't we just supposed to sleep at school?" Goyle blinked, looking blank.
Draco looked at their utterly dejected faces and couldn't help shaking his head inwardly. Then he began to put on his robes.
Once the train came to a complete stop, a massive crowd surged toward the doors and spilled onto a small, dark platform. All the first-years followed the burly Hagrid down a steep, narrow path.
The muddy path was difficult to walk on, and the first-years slipped and stumbled constantly. Every few steps, someone would slip and fall. The girl walking in front of Draco, for example, was wobbling along in a way that was nerve-racking to watch.
Hermione Granger was in a terrible state. She stumbled through the darkness, trying to keep up with Neville, when suddenly the toad in his hand jumped down and landed at her feet, almost making her step on it.
"Trevor!" Neville called, turning back to look for it. He searched all around, and finally, to his despair, saw that the toad had hopped away into the dark woods beside the path.
"No!" Neville cried out in anguish, reaching out in vain as he watched the toad's defiant figure vanish into the distance.
As for Hermione, in her effort to avoid both the toad and the heartbroken, heedless Neville, she stopped short, but her momentum carried her forward, and she was about to fall headfirst into the slippery mud.
At that moment, someone behind her grabbed her collar and pulled her back upright.
She turned around in alarm and saw a glimmer of platinum in the darkness. It was the boy she had met in the train corridor—Draco.
"Thank you." Still shaken, she whispered to the boy, her arrogant manner gone, replaced by a hint of embarrassment in her voice.
"Little rascal." In the pitch-black, cold air, over Neville's wailing about the loss of Trevor, he said calmly to her, "Grab my sleeve."
Hermione hesitated for a moment, but did not move.
Draco was certain that the little girl in front of him was the original Hermione Granger: her athletic ability was practically zero, and she could trip over perfectly flat ground. At the same time, she was too proud to accept help from anyone in public, or rather, to openly admit what she was bad at.
—Unless you exploited her weakness, "not wanting to lose face in front of others," and used it against her.
"Grab my sleeve," Draco repeated, adding lazily, "if you don't want to show up at the Sorting Ceremony covered in mud in front of the whole school."
"Well—thank you." Hermione was horrified by the scene he described. She quickly grabbed the sleeve of his robe and stepped in behind him.
I have to admit, this is much safer now, Hermione thought.
This boy, Draco, always seemed able to find the smoother, less bumpy parts of the road in the dark, which made things a little easier for her than walking on her own—just a little.
The boy in front of her was feeling rather smug.
It was a rare sight: Hermione Granger obediently tugging at his sleeve and following behind him like a well-behaved little pet—a complete satisfaction of what remained of Draco Malfoy's wicked sense of humor.
After walking for a while, amid a chorus of complaints and no end of panic, the first-years finally reached the end of the path.
"So beautiful..." he heard Hermione whisper behind him.
It was indeed beautiful. This was the magnificent Hogwarts Castle before the Death Eaters put it through its baptism of fire.
Towering spires stood tall, twinkling with starlight. Tranquil, magnificent, and beautiful.
Once they reached level ground, Hermione released her grip on Draco's sleeve and thanked him again in a low voice.
"Pleasure," he said briefly.
Immediately afterwards, she, like the other first-years seeing this sight for the first time, rushed to the edge of the Black Lake, gazing at the vast expanse of water and the shimmering, dreamlike castle on the opposite shore.
The first-years were making a great deal of noise, all exclaiming loudly.
Draco stood silently at a distance, watching it all and feeling like an outsider from another world. Returning to Hogwarts, he could no longer feel the excitement he had felt in his previous life; only a few vague emotions welled up from the bottom of his heart.
According to tradition, the new students would cross the lake by boat, just as the four Founders had. Draco didn't rush to board a boat. Instead, he observed quietly, wanting to see who Potter would be traveling with.
He had to pay attention to these details. Longbottom's perpetually disappearing toad served as a reminder.
He remembered that in his previous life the toad had been nowhere to be found on the train, and Longbottom had cried and sobbed the whole way, which was quite annoying. It wasn't until just before they entered the castle that Hagrid found the toad while checking the empty boats.
In this life, he had impulsively helped Hermione find it ahead of time. But it had still run away, and Longbottom was still crying and wailing, as if he could not escape the fate of the "lost toad."
Just as Draco was pondering this in silence, Potter, Weasley, Hermione, and Longbottom boarded a boat, exactly as in his previous life.
As things stood, it seemed that as long as he didn't interfere, fate wouldn't change, Draco thought.
Even when he did interfere, fate seemed to adjust itself, trying to put everything back in its original place, like the lost toad.
He would have to see whether Longbottom's toad turned up on its own.
Draco chose a boat at random and, together with Zabini, Parkinson, and Nott, rowed across the mirror-smooth surface of the lake toward the cliffs, passed through the curtain of ivy covering the cliff face, and arrived at the entrance on the far shore.
The first-years rowed on along a dark tunnel, complaining about the dim light. Finally, they reached a place resembling an underground dock and climbed onto a rough shore of gravel and pebbles.
"Where are we?" Hermione asked anxiously as she climbed out of her boat. Draco, who had come ashore not far from her, was listening for any sign that Hagrid had found the toad, as he had before.
No one answered her. The students were busy disembarking, and all seemed somewhat bewildered by the dark, damp, chilly surroundings.
"We've reached the dock under Hogwarts," Draco whispered to her. "We still have a little further to go."
"Oh, it's so dark and damp in here," Hermione said worriedly. "I hope it's not like this in the castle. I don't like dampness."
She would most likely hate the Slytherin common room, Draco thought.
After waiting a while, he still hadn't heard Hagrid find the toad, so he had no choice but to follow the main group up a tunnel through the rock and finally out onto a flat, damp meadow in the shadow of the castle.
"Trevor!" Longbottom's excited voice rang out at that moment—he had found the toad on the grass.
Interesting, Draco thought.
So with his intervention, things could still change subtly. Just as in his previous life, Longbottom had found the toad, but the time and the place were different.
Fate in this life was not immutable. It could still be "shifted" by human effort.
This was good news. The most terrifying outcome would have been for fate to remain stubbornly fixed under his influence.
That would have meant that no matter how hard he tried, he would have to relive all the terrible things from his previous life.
Now everything seemed to be taking a turn for the better, Draco thought.
At that moment, a glimmer of light rose unexpectedly in the depths of his silent heart.
He couldn't let his guard down; he needed to try again and observe more closely.
The matter of the toad was too insignificant; there were far more important things to influence. He had to find out how much he could change the world, and how far fate could be shifted.
The entrance hall of Hogwarts was brightly lit. The new students waited outside the Great Hall, listening to Professor McGonagall go on about the history of the school, the four Houses, and the House Cup, and then watched her leave.
Potter stood not far in front of Draco, with Weasley and Longbottom beside him. "How can they possibly sort us into Houses?" he heard Potter ask, looking rather silly.
"I think there has to be some kind of test," Weasley answered. "Fred said it hurts, but I think he's joking."
That Weasley kid was exaggerating again, Draco thought.
Almost all the first-years were terrified by Weasley's statement.
No one dared to speak after that.
Draco heard Hermione muttering to herself, seemingly reciting spells she had learned in advance. Her earnest, worried face made him smile.
"Nothing to make a fuss about," Draco said to her, clicking his tongue, a dismissive look on his face. "It's just a hat."
"A hat?" Hermione turned to look at him.
"A tattered old hat that can think and talk. People call it the Sorting Hat," Draco said knowingly.
Hermione was skeptical. Could he be lying? How could an ordinary hat think, let alone sort people into Houses?
She didn't have to wonder for long. As the students, led by Professor McGonagall, walked through a double door into the magnificent Great Hall, reality quickly proved the boy right.
Hermione soon spotted the patched, worn-out pointed wizard's hat, dirty-looking, sitting on a four-legged stool at the front of the Hall. Suddenly, it opened wide—a rip near its brim like a mouth—and began to sing a song to the students. Afterward, it even bowed to each of the four tables, which were now clapping enthusiastically.
"Susan Bones!" Professor McGonagall began calling out names from a roll of parchment.
"You were right," Hermione said to the surprisingly calm boy. "But will it really sort me into the right House?"
"Hufflepuff!" the hat shouted. The table on the right clapped and cheered.
"It's not that simple. The four Founders poured their ideas into it, just so it could choose the right students for their Houses." Draco tilted his head slightly and said to the girl beside him, "It sorts students into Houses according to their talents and qualities."
"Seamus Finnigan!" A boy with light brown hair sat on the stool for almost a full minute without a word.
"Why is it taking him so long?" she asked, her voice tinged with worry.
"Gryffindor!" That was when the hat finally made its decision.
Draco was about to answer when he heard Professor McGonagall call out from the front of the Hall, "Hermione Granger!"
"Go ahead," he said hastily. "When you put it on, try to think of your favorite House. It will respect your choice."
Hermione practically ran to the stool and hurriedly put the hat on her head.
"Gryffindor!" the hat called out. Draco watched silently as she ran to the table on his left, to enthusiastic applause and a warm welcome.
He had only been lost in thought for a moment when he heard Professor McGonagall calling his name. Just as in his previous life, that old, patched, dirty hat called out "Slytherin" before it even touched Draco's head.
Nothing unusual.
A satisfied smile came to Draco's lips, and he finally felt relieved.
The hat, though shabby, was no ordinary hat; it seemed capable of reading thoughts. Although he had already shielded his mind with Occlumency, that might not work against it. He believed it was best to keep these memories hidden.
Draco walked effortlessly toward the Slytherin table—a route he had traveled countless times in his previous life—though he could not ignore the voice of the red-haired brat among those still waiting in line for their Sorting. Weasley was busy brainwashing Potter in his usual way: "...those bad wizards all come from Slytherin."
That idiot Weasley. Draco hadn't provoked him this time, so why was he still so prejudiced?
Now look at that—who was discriminating against whom?
He didn't hear what Potter said to Weasley. All he knew was that when Professor McGonagall read out "Harry Potter," a considerable stir went through the students of Hogwarts.
Potter, of course, went to Gryffindor, where he sat opposite Hermione.
As for Hermione, she kept turning to look at him. Ever since the hat had called out "Slytherin," she had been watching him with a slightly surprised expression, as if she hadn't expected it.
What was she surprised about? Had she thought he would end up in Gryffindor? Draco glanced at her impassively, but Hermione had already turned away, engrossed in a lively conversation with a red-haired upperclassman from Gryffindor.
Potter was sitting where he could see Draco at the opposite table. He gave Draco a shy smile in greeting.
Not bad, Draco thought calmly. Potter hadn't been corrupted by Weasley to the point of glaring at every Slytherin.
Potter quickly integrated into the Gryffindor crowd. The first-years tucked heartily into the food on the table, chatting excitedly with upperclassmen from their Houses, trying to make themselves at home as quickly as possible.
Slytherins, on the other hand, greeted one another in a more reserved and aloof manner. Lively conversation did not come quickly to them—the usual approach was a fake smile, an introduction, and a handshake.
Life in Slytherin was a brutal survival contest. Slytherins were used to judging one another's worth by surname and the strength of a handshake, and later they would rank themselves by comparing their magical strength and estimating each other's usefulness, just as they had in his previous life.
Draco exchanged pleasantries with everyone, getting to know the Slytherin classmates of his previous life all over again. However, the moment no one was looking at him, the smile that never seemed to reach his eyes vanished. He gradually turned his attention to something else, because sitting next to him was the Bloody Baron, the Slytherin House ghost.
To most of his classmates, the Bloody Baron was a terrifying ghost with hollow eyes, a gaunt face, and silvery bloodstains on his robes. But for Draco, this was the perfect opportunity to talk to him.
"Greetings, Baron." Draco chose his words carefully. The Bloody Baron stared blankly at him without responding.
Marcus Flint, a fifth-year diagonally across from Draco, was amused by his attempt. He shrugged and decided to give the clueless young Malfoy a heads-up: "Give up. He's always like this. Most of the time he's not really thinking straight. Even when he is, I've never seen him pay any attention to a student."
"Baron, how many House Cups in a row has Slytherin won?" Draco smiled faintly at Flint, not giving up on getting a conversation out of the Bloody Baron.
To the Slytherins' surprise, the Baron turned his withered face toward Draco, his empty eyes seeming to blink, and said in a hoarse voice, "Six in a row."
Flint raised an eyebrow at Draco.
Slytherin had always revered strength, and that strength was measured not by age but by ability of every kind.
A first-year Malfoy had gotten the Bloody Baron to speak right away, an unusual feat that left a deep impression on Flint.
For Draco, gaining Flint's attention ahead of time was a pleasant surprise. Flint was always arrogant and domineering, looking down on everyone; earning the respect of the Slytherin Quidditch captain wasn't as simple as buying him off or donating a few brooms.
Seeing that things were going well, Draco stopped trying to talk to the Baron. He turned his attention to a steaming hot steak that had just been served.
He intended to take things slowly and methodically with the Baron.
The Bloody Baron was not a ghost who spoke often; that one sentence alone was enough to astonish everyone.
Winning over the Baron would be a long process, but being reborn, Draco had no shortage of patience. Only by gradually gaining the Baron's trust could he obtain the information he wanted.
What he wanted was information about Ravenclaw's diadem.
In the month since his rebirth, Draco had turned this over in his mind for a long time, and from a myriad of scraps of information and memory he had formed a hypothesis: was the diadem that Potter grabbed in the Room of Requirement the same one Ravenclaw had lost so many years ago?
If the hypothesis held true, then this mysterious diadem was something both the Dark Lord and Potter were interested in.
It was too important to ignore.
Draco knew where it was, but he wasn't in a hurry to get it.
Before understanding the situation, a Malfoy did not act rashly or recklessly put himself in unnecessary danger. That was also a principle upheld by Slytherins.
The diadem was strange; it might be imbued with powerful and dangerous dark magic, so it should never be touched rashly. Besides, it had stayed obediently in the Room of Requirement until his seventh year, so Draco wasn't worried about it running off somewhere on its long legs.
To find out whether his assumptions were correct and what the diadem was for, he needed to find the right person, pry open the right mouth, and obtain more information.
Ravenclaw's diadem had been lost for a very long time. After a long think, he decided to start with the ghosts—which inevitably brought him to the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady.
If anyone in the world knew even the slightest thing about Ravenclaw's long-lost diadem, no one was more qualified to speak on the subject than Rowena Ravenclaw's daughter, Helena.
Judging from the timeline, Helena might still have been alive when the diadem disappeared.
Draco knew that the Grey Lady's real name was Helena Ravenclaw, though she did not like being called that.
The simplest way would be to ask the Grey Lady directly about the diadem. However, she was very shy and avoided people, so unless he could offer something compelling enough, he would have no chance of getting her to talk to him.
"I'll have to take a roundabout approach. First, I need to break down the Baron's defenses, since there's a secret connection between him and the Grey Lady," Draco thought. "The Baron may be a ghost of few words, but he doesn't avoid people. There's still hope of getting a conversation going."
Draco had learned of the secret between the Baron and the Grey Lady quite by chance.
The Baron liked to moan and mutter atop the Astronomy Tower. In his memories, on the terrible night Dumbledore was murdered, Draco had brushed past the Baron on the Astronomy Tower.
At that time, the Baron, gaunt and wasted, had painfully murmured a name: "Helena..."
The three tallest towers at Hogwarts are Ravenclaw Tower, the Astronomy Tower, and Gryffindor Tower. What the three have in common is their expansive views.
Anyone who had spent time in the Astronomy Tower would probably recognize the Ravenclaw Tower in the distance.
Ravenclaw Tower happened to be the place where the Grey Lady most liked to stay.
Over the years, few at Hogwarts had mentioned how the Bloody Baron and the Grey Lady had died, or why they had become ghosts.
However, Draco knew that only wizards whose obsessions lingered became ghosts. Over the centuries, very few wizards had chosen to remain as ghosts, precisely because they could find no true happiness in that form—only immense suffering.
It was less a form of living than a form of confinement. As Draco followed the well-fed Slytherins down to the Slytherin common room, he kept turning it over in his mind: the two of them must have a story to tell.
What exactly had happened between them?
These two enigmatic ghosts were both so reserved, neither daring to speak, that the students of Hogwarts had only a vague idea of their story; no one had ever bothered to learn about them in any real detail.
But Draco could make some guesses: for a long time, the Bloody Baron had been gazing at the Grey Lady—Helena Ravenclaw—from the Astronomy Tower with a pained expression that was either deep-seated hatred or profound love.
Or perhaps both?
Was the blood on the Baron his own, or someone else's?
The depths of the Black Lake were completely silent, and the famous giant squid swayed gently and fell into a deep sleep.
On his four-poster bed in his Slytherin bedroom, amid the soft lapping of waves against the window, Draco gazed at the silver lanterns hanging from the ceiling, drowsily speculating about the relationship between the Bloody Baron, Helena Ravenclaw, and Ravenclaw's diadem, until he drifted off to sleep.