Just playing around, wanted to see how being reborn into another character would change the opening chapters. (My other HP story, "Empathic capacity of a teaspoon", is a Ron Weasley SI)

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

I came into the world silently, and lived the first year of my life as thus. Being the child of a presumably inner circle Death Eater was not an all-too-relaxing experience atmosphere-wise. Neither for me or my family. I imagined that my parents had me because they believed the war to be over.

And as I would later find out, it was. The ministry was kneeling at the feet of the Death Eaters, the populace secured, resigned to live under a new reign of dark wizards. Long reign the Dark Lord and with him, one of his trusted advisors, Lucius Malfoy.

Then, came the prophecy. I don't know what madness assailed Voldemort, but on his last step before finally crumbling the current government and establishing himself as the God-King of Britain, the man turned his back on the war effort to concentrate on disentangling the prophecy concerning him and one Harry Potter.

The war extended a year beyond my birth. My father was never present. My mother was nothing less than a constant companion, sure of her safety, yet still taking care of a baby in what basically amounted to a bloody civil war. I was only parted from her presence in the odd occurrences when Death Eaters roamed the halls of our manor. Then, I was mostly with my grandfather, Abraxas. Sometimes with but a house-elf as my only company.

I used the time where there were no expectations laid upon me to plan. I was in a new world, a new family, a new situation. It was the same old book though, which brought about some interesting musings about the creation process of alternate realities.

As I mentioned, my transcendent knowledge of my past life made me somewhat of a quiet child. Screams were only let out when it was utterly necessary and all in all, I behaved as the perfect gentleman. My family spoiled me, and I spoiled them. I received everything they could possibly imagine a baby wanted. And they received a child that managed to structure his sleep schedule in a way that did not cause my family to be woken up at ungodly hours by hand-wringing house-elves.

What a baby wanted, by the way, me in particular, was to be read children's stories. Mostly so I could learn about the culture of the wizarding world without tipping off my grandfather about further oddities in my behaviour. The man was the only one who suspected I was more than just a child whose good breeding had resulted in what most would have referred to as a genius.

Probably because he was the only one with actual experience in raising children before me. I imagined what Lucius must have been like as a baby and laughed. Mostly because I was unable to divorce the image of him as a young child and his overly long hair.

Not that we didn't get along, mind you. I loved all of my immediate family. My grandfather was simply the only one not completely besotted with me, and I often found him looking at me with a discerning gaze. A gaze that seemed to be calculating how much my oddness would benefit the house of Malfoy, a task I was very willing to take upon myself.

Family was family. Everyone else... was everyone else.

I had often contemplated how it would have been had I been born into old money in my last life. Well, now I had the chance to find out.

-/-

The death of Voldemort disrupted the quiet life I had lived up to that point... slightly. The absence of my father stayed consistent, although the reasoning behind his withdrawn behavior and the bags under his eyes changed. Before that, it had been long nights out fighting a civil war. Now it was long nights out consulting a lawyer and fighting the bloody battle of politics.

Nobody really believed his claims of having been held under the Imperius, but the Ministry needed money to build back up what the war had destroyed. They also knew that without Voldemort, my father would hardly step out of line, to once again roam the streets cloaked in black and masked in white.

Pay we did. Oh, how we paid. My grandfather was wroth with his disgrace of a son. This had all been his fault, after all. We were nobility. We did not go fight in wars. We funded them.

I quite agreed. War was inefficient. Cultural subversion and demoralization was a tactic much more likely to work in changing the fate of a nation.

The silver lining behind this entire affair was the fact that Lucius had, after his rather foolish debacle, grown into his own man, so to say. Realized the truth behind the Malfoy family tradition of not being a soldier for anyone's war, not even one's own. Well, that was the feeling I got at least, from watching and listening Lucius and Abraxas interact. The things said around babes... I wonder how they would have reacted if they knew that I understood what they were saying.

The entire situation soon blew over. Despite being the perpetrators of the war and being caught with our hand in the cookie jar, the Malfoy family got off clean. The only thing lost in the end was money that would replenish itself with the numerous streams of passive income, and some respect, naturally. I imagined that I would experience quite some hostility upon attending Hogwarts.

The respect I had for my family grew, and with it I allowed my love for them to grow as well. Having competent people around you made life more exciting. Politics was of little interest for me personally, but I imagined I would learn when taught. It was hardly a field I was allowed to be uneducated in as the presumed future Lord Malfoy. It was also my birthright. Politics that was, not the money. I would be foolish to deny it.

Just as I would be foolish to deny my other birthright. Magic. It was not a core, as many believed, and I was sure that I was one of the experts on the subject. The fact that I had lived several decades without one made distinguishing the connection I had to this new source of power very easy. What I was gifted with was a metaphorical rope with a bucket attached to it, with which I could laboriously draw upon the water of magic, hiding within its well.

I imagined that my bucket and rope would grown mightier as I too grew in age. At two, I was holding myself back by starting my study into magic with simple concepts.

But soon, I would tear apart the world with a simple flick of my wrist. To hold so much Might in the palm of my hand, I was not only Right, but Justice itself!

"Hahahahaha." I laughed madly, which caused a bit of an accident in my diaper.

Narcissa held me up and wrinkled her nose. "Did you make a biggie Dracypoo?"

Justice, soon, right after getting my nappies changed.

The other difference between this and my other SI HP story is that I wrote this now, with my three years of sporadic writing experience, whereas the other story was my first ever.