Draco Malfoy arrived with the sort of procession eleven‑year‑olds never learn to stage by accident: a practiced confidence, a family name like an opening chord, and an expression that measured everyone in the room as if they were either ladders or obstacles. He paused at my compartment door and tilted his head the way someone testing a new blade's balance might. Then he stepped in, and I let him.
Children are easier to shape than adults—soft clay warmed by flattery and impatience. I matched him with a tone equal parts amused and approving, and his guard folded. He wanted approval more than anything else I could give him; he wanted someone who looked at him and reflected back the person he imagined himself to be. I gave him that reflection.
Conversation with Draco is an exercise in currency: family, reputation, wagers about who will sit where and which House will dominate the next decade. I fed him tidbits of taste for influence—just enough to make him feel both superior and included. I let him watch Harry when necessary, letting small looks and calibrated praise do the rest of the work.
Harry surprised me by being kinder than I expected, and Draco surprised me by listening like a man who knew how to observe weakness and catalogue advantage. By the time the countryside blurred into the spires of the castle, the three of us had arranged our positions like pieces on a board. Draco and I found a strange, efficient camaraderie; Harry found comfort in the exchange, and I supplied the small kindnesses he had been starved for.
Crabbe and Goyle never came in.
They waited outside like thoughtless statues, their presence functional and uninteresting. Truthfully, I had no need of them as minds. Muscle is useful, yes—but muscle without shape is noise. Crabbe and Goyle were young liches of family tradition: bred for brute loyalty, not utility. There are ways to refine such things—diet adjustments, strength conditioning, even memory architecture to teach reflex and obedience—but it was a long investment for uncertain returns. Their most useful role was social: a public show of strength for Lucius's son, a security blanket for Draco to keep his status.
I filed them as a maintenance problem and moved on.
There was a question that lived beneath every polite conversation on that train and in that compartment: where would Harry be sorted?
My old life had made the choice clear once: Slytherin. That sliver of destiny had fitted nicely with ambition and cold strategy. In this life the variables were different. Grindelwald's tutelage, the Elder Wand in my hand, the Palantír in my library—these gifts rewired my calculus—but there was a social calculus I could not ignore. If Harry landed in Slytherin, the configuration of influence would look tidy: I would have access to a public axis of power and a private hinge of fate. If Dumbledore manipulated the Sorting Hat and pushed Harry into Gryffindor, I would have to adapt.
Both outcomes have merit.
Slytherin Harry would be easier to recruit openly. He would be in my House, in my orbit, and I could surround him with friends who normalized my ambitions. Gryffindor Harry would be a quieter prize—harder to reach, but potentially more useful as someone whose sympathies swung public opinion because of the symbolic courage of the House. If Gryffindor made him more heroic, it also meant he might attract the Order's attention sooner.
So I planned for both.
— If Harry goes to Slytherin, I double down on proximity. Make Draco a reliable friend, place subtle mentors in the right places, and begin secret sessions under the guise of discarded homework and shared confidences. Gentle nudges. Quiet favors. A taste of power gradually given.— If Harry goes to Gryffindor, I craft a perimeter. Recruit Neville as a quietly competent ally from belief and relief, use Fred and George for influence via spectacle, and plant Hermione with a steady drip of research opportunities crossed with moral calibrations—rewards wrapped as intellectual privilege. In that scenario I must be more patient: influence across Houses means winning reputations rather than ownership.
I let Draco know, in carefully veiled phrases, that ambition is a long game and that his family's status would flourish if he learned the art of discretion. He preened a little at the idea of being seen as the one who knows how to walk between courts—pretending to shrug while loving the suggestion.
Harry's laugh was soft in the compartment. "Slytherin sounded scary," he said once, the child's truth cutting through every strategic calculation. I answered with a truth of my own, shaped to comfort: "Everyone finds something scary at first. Most of it is only other people's opinions."
He nodded, and I felt the small, delicious sensation of a useful seed having been planted.
Strategy is not always grand gestures. Often it is composition: who is allowed to sit in your circle, which faces you show to the world, and which you keep behind a guarded door. Crabbe and Goyle can remain visible muscles while I cultivate minds. Draco becomes the social conduit. Harry becomes either a public pivot or a private hinge. Hermione will be approached through curiosity; Neville through tutoring and kindness; the twins through the lure of profit and invention.
Later, I will decide whether to invest the hours to reshape Crabbe and Goyle's reflexes and intellect. They are not pressing problems yet. In time, if loyalty proves brittle, I will replace them with constructs that don't think but follow perfectly—enchanted brutes with mirrored loyalty and no ambition of their own.
For now, the compartment door remembers who I permitted and who I denied. It will keep secrets the way a good servant keeps loose silver: quietly and without accusation.
The castle loomed as the train slowed and the sky tightened like a bow. I stepped out with two parts of a plan and a single rule in my head: keep the center warm enough so people wish to come close, and cold enough so they do not notice the knives hidden in the hems.
The game begins in the common room, but it is won in the small rooms where boys whisper and make promises. I intended to be very good at listening.