Draco was the first to admit that he was quite lucky to have gotten out of serving any time in Azkaban after everything that had happened. Of course he wanted to go to prison way less than he had wanted to join the Dark Lord. Still he was a Slytherin so he had never voiced the thought, and his father had once been the Dark Lord's right hand man, which meant that Draco didn't really have another choice, no matter what the old headmaster said. Dumbledore might have been a better man than his father portrayed him, but he obviously hadn't been all powerful and he definitely wouldn't have been able to save him and his mother from the horrors of having the dark lord in their home. He was extremely lucky that the Wizingot turned over a new leaf and actually investigated before throwing everyone in prison. He was a bit disturbed at how little he remembered the two days he spent under Veritaserum being questioned extensively on everything in his life. After that the Wizingot had declared him not guilty on all charges and had returned to him the entire estate, even that which they had acquired upon his father's arrest and imprisonment.

Although Draco was the first to admit he got lucky, he wasn't about to piss his secant chance away. So he decided to take the remedial classes that Professor McGonagall was offering and while studying for his NEWTS he would decide what he wanted to do with his life. So until then he just had to lay low and stay out of trouble, which largely implied he had to avoid the things that might cause old and definitely bad habits to crop up. So in essence he had to avoid most of the Hogwarts populace.

Draco was actually a bit surprised at how easy it was to do just that. In fact it was almost disgusting how easy it was to avoid pretty much everyone in the school with the exception of his teachers and a few Slytherin who just wouldn't leave him be. In fact he even managed to go several weeks without attending a single class, thanks to a convenient headache that cropped up during the day and he avoided meals because he simply had too much to do and if Pansy still wouldn't let up he would say if he was hungry he would just stop by the kitchen. He heard a few whispers from Slytherins saying that the rest of the school thought him a coward and he was faking it, and he couldn't deny that all of his supposed ailments were something that could have just been in his head.

Still none of that mattered because he was only a point behind Granger in every class, except for potions which he was actually a point ahead! He was also managing several correspondents with his mother and various 'family members' that had popped up now that he officially held the title of the head of the Malfoy estate. He was also managing the Malfoy Estate so efficiently that his father's Solicitor had even questioned why he was still employed, since he had nothing to do, which meant Draco didn't fire him as he had been considering and gave him a small raise just to keep him from getting another job. He had also discovered several vaults that the Gringots goblins had neglected to mention they were charging him more than twice what they were worth and with a few threats of moving all of the gold in said volts to a bank in France, Draco managed to get the prices down so low that even Weasley could afford to buy one if he saved up for a decade or two. His father might have been a bit disgusted as he had often boasted that if the entire Weasley family saved every single dime they made their entire lives they still couldn't afford to buy one of the smallest of the Malfoy vaults, but Draco decided that he much preferred being efficient over being arrogant, and he was being very efficient of late.

Draco had already successfully brewed six of the eight highly difficult potions that the ministry required before a wizard could be given the title of a Potions Master. He was also working on several charms that could effectively earn him a spot on the board of inventors, a very exclusive charms group that included only the brightest and the most promising students, although weather he accepted that position or not would be entirely based on whether the Weasley Twins were accepted into the group, and that surprisingly really had nothing to do with the feud between their families and more to do with the fact that his aunt nearly killed one of them and quite frankly they scared the shit out of him. He had written letters to the French, German, and even the American magical Embassies, and had managed to get offers of several high ranking positions that he could easily take on without interfering with his other plans.

He had even begun writing an extensive book on Purebloods, and he was even being careful not to even hint that Purebloods were better than muggle-borne. He was simply going over the different lifestyles and principles that most pureblooded families held, and had held for centuries. He even was working on explaining how initially the whole term mud-blood had come about, and how the initial term used had been muddled, because the purebloods had been afraid that certain traits, such as foresight or Parsletongue would die out since they were inherited from their parents. He was surprised that the more he tried to explain how his forefathers had thought, and 8how his father had taught him, that he found more and more flaws in certain arguments. It wasn't long before what he initially thought would be a single formal book turned into an ongoing project that already was enough to make up three books, but he couldn't actually finish it until he got a few facts he had forgotten from a few books that had gotten misplaced during the war and thus Draco had to wait while the goblins tried to find replacements.

Draco had been journaling extensively about everything he had accomplished and had made endeavors to plan out where he could go with said accomplishment, although he still wasn't certain where he wanted to go. He had more energy than he had in years and he felt like even the spells that had seemed impossible before seemed like mere child's play. Everything was going amazing, and he was finally starting to believe that he really had gotten his secant chance and that he would succeed in being a better person than his mother and Severus had secretly asked him to be. Everything was perfect, until suddenly the rug seemed to be pulled out from beneath his feet.