Harry was, quite frankly, stunned.

When he'd initially seen Neville he'd marveled at the difference between the man he knew and the boy he found. He'd remembered Neville at eleven, of course, but knowing something was altogether different from seeing it.

The same principle held true with Malfoy, but somehow it was so much worse. Malfoy had changed much less throughout his school years than Neville had, mind you, but that did not stop Harry from having to physically force himself not to gawk.

Malfoy…was…eleven.

Eleven.

He was an incredibly young eleven year old boy with slicked back hair who, like Neville, had already changed into the Hogwarts uniform.

Honestly, he was kind of adorable—like what Harry imagined a baby ferret would look like.

Which was why Harry was so stunned.

From the very beginning Malfoy had been his constant antagonist, not so much deadly as relentlessly there to make his life just that little bit more miserable, even when everything else had for once stopped going wrong.

But looking at him now? Harry had a hard time remembering how Malfoy had riled him up so much in the first place.

Never mind, he'd just remembered—Malfoy was the very definition of a bigot.

But. Right now, he was eleven.

Harry held out a hand.

"I'm Harry Potter, nice to meet you."

Malfoy sneered (what was the point of sneering? No, really—why was he sneering?) "Draco Malfoy, heir of the Malfoy family line."

Malfoy was about to continue when Harry fully turned to face Neville, looking at him expectantly. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Malfoy jerk back surprised, and had to stop himself from smirking.

"Oh, um. I'm Neville. Um, Neville Longbottom." Neville forced out.

"I know who you are." Malfoy sneered (was his face just frozen like that?)

"Then why did you say who are you when you opened the compartment door?" Harry asked.

"Because I didn't know who you were!"

"Well, sure, but you knew who Neville was. Why didn't you say hello to him first?"

"I've never met him before!"

"So then why didn't you introduce yourself? In case he hadn't heard of you. Actually, why didn't you do that anyway?"

Harry was kind of enjoying this. Malfoy, on the other hand, was not. Neville just looked flustered and like he really wanted the conversation to be over.

"Everyone knows who I am!"

"Really? Everyone?" Harry asked.

"Yes, of course!"

Harry turned back to Neville. "So you knew who he was? The second he opened the door?"

Neville looked very much like he wished he was still being ignored. "Um… I mean, we've been to ministerial functions together."

Harry whipped back at Malfoy. "So you have met him before!"

"No I—" Malfoy suddenly cut himself off. He fully paused and took a deep breath. Harry was honestly kind of surprised—he hadn't known that Malfoy knew any techniques to calm himself down. Just as he was about to continue, though, Harry finally noticed the bookends. What were their names again…

"I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced. What are your names?"

Malfoy, apparently assuming he'd been the one addressed, looked an ugly mixture of confused and upset.

The taller one, who was closest to Harry, took Malfoy's silence as a sign to answer. "Umm… I'm Goyle."

"And I'm Crabbe."

"You only have one name? Like Madonna?" Harry asked. He knew full well they had first names (even if he couldn't actually remember anyone ever mentioning them… he needed to work on easily sorting through his memories. Wasn't one Vincent?)

"Gregory." Said the tall one.

"Vincent." (Ah-ha!)

"Nice to meet you!" Harry said. His neck was getting kind of uncomfortable by now—he'd had to crane it slightly to see around Malfoy, who had yet to push the door fully open—but he persevered. "Have you been introduced to my friend Neville Longbottom?"

Malfoy, apparently, had decided enough was enough. "I may have at some point met Neville, but I don't remember, so it doesn't count as happening!"

Harry stared at him. So much for him calming himself down. Let's see if he can be riled up a bit more… "You remember being born?!"

"Of course not!"

"So then… you weren't born?"

"Hi Neville." Both Vincent and Gregory said.

"Of course I was born!" Said Malfoy.

"But you just said that whatever you don't remember doesn't count as happening." Responded Harry.

"Um… hi." Responded Neville.

"I meant in terms of whether I knew Neville, not whether I existed!" Malfoy snapped.

"I'm Crabbe, and he's Goyle." Crabbe said.

"Pleased to meet you." Neville replied. (Poor Neville—neither Gregory nor Vincent seemed particularly put off that two conversations were happening simultaneously, and he was honestly unsure that Malfoy had even noticed, but Neville looked like he'd very much like them all to go elsewhere as quickly and efficiently as possible.)

"But you already said that you did know Neville, you just hadn't met him." Harry said.

"D'you want a chocolate frog?" Vincent asked Neville. Neville looked quite relieved. Chocolate solved everything.

"Yes, please."

Both goons muscled their way past Malfoy, the shorter one pulling out a handful of chocolate frogs as he did.

"Can I have one?" Harry asked. He loved being eleven—you could suddenly end a conversation with much less recourse than any later age.

"Sure. Keep an eye out for Agrippa, though—he's the one I'm looking for right now." Vincent handed one to Harry.

Malfoy glanced back and forth at everyone in the compartment, before sighing and flopping next to Gregory, leaving Vincent and Harry on one side of the compartment and the rest of the group on the other.

"Give me one too, will you?"

The next stretch of time passed in relative silence as the quintet munched on two frogs each and showed their cards around. Exactly four of the ten were Dumbledore, while the next most common was Hekate and Boudicca who both appeared twice—apparently he really was just that common of a card.

After professing that he had yet to start a collection—but only admitting the reason as needing to remain separate from the Wizarding public—the rest of the boys happily handed over all of their cards to him (not one was a card that none of the other boys had.) Harry himself hadn't really gotten into chocolate cards the first time around, but nearly everyone else had—there was no point in alienating himself further this time, even if it was over something as simple as a few slips of enchanted paper.

A few minutes after they had finished Harry stood up. "I want to go see if I can find anymore of my future classmates. Anyone want to come with me?"

Neville shook his head quickly. Vincent did too—a few minutes earlier he'd taken his Venomous Tentacula out of his trunk, wanting it to get some sunlight, and he and Neville had immediately begun talking about how amazing it was and how to care for it: Vincent had only gotten it last week, and his mother had warned him it would be taken away if it grew too much or died, so he and Neville were plotting together to figure out the ideal iron content in the soil, amongst other things.

Gregory, on the other hand, had fallen asleep.

That said, Harry had honestly thought that Malfoy would come along too—he had to have been going compartment to compartment before they had arrived at Harry's, and while Gregory had gone and grabbed their trunks when it became obvious they were staying, Malfoy couldn't have actually only been searching for Harry, right?

But Malfoy only waved him off. "I know everyone I need to know." Malfoy said. "I'm going to take a nap, like Gregory. My father told me that the welcoming feast takes forever, and it's best to get some shut eye on the train."

By the time Harry left the compartment the train had been underway for about half an hour. While none of the boys had talked much while eating, they'd all taken their time, showing each card in turn and letting the frog's enchantments go to work for a while before scarfing them down.

So Harry had had plenty of time to think about what to do for the rest of the train ride—blatantly working to boost Neville's confidence with Malfoy in the same compartment was a no-go, and honestly Neville seemed to be benefiting just from having someone else who liked plants to talk to. (Harry briefly contemplated the thought of accidently having placed Neville in with the snakes, before dismissing the idea. Eleven year old personalities were malleable, yes, but not that malleable.)

The idea which Harry had ended up seizing on was based on his reactions to meeting not only Neville and Malfoy, but Crabbe and Goyle as well.

Honestly, embarrassingly, he'd never paid much attention to Crabbe and Goyle the first time around. While they'd been rather prolific bullies, any action they'd taken Harry had mostly simply ascribed to Malfoy.

That said, he did remember a few choice facts about them. First, Crabbe was an excellent duelist. In fact, Harry distinctly remembered thinking it was his only skill. So his apparent interest in herbology was wholly unexpected.

Second, Goyle was a sadist.

This could not be denied. Even in (Harry's first) first year, Goyle had very clearly taken perverse pleasure in causing people pain, and while he had done incredibly poorly in nearly every class (he did not, for instance, pass a sufficient number of OWLs to go into sixth year), Harry had been reliably informed (by Ginny) that Goyle had made it to the top of the class in dark arts, apparently primarily due to his complete and total willingness to practice every curse possible on nearly any classmate—with his particular favorite being the cruciatus.

And yet, Goyle was also the boy who sat next to Neville and laughed as the other boy groaned about getting two Dumbledores in a row.

Goyle, Harry knew from experience, was capable of great evil. But right now he was eleven, and if Harry could only keep him smiling at other things, he could very well curb Goyle's desire to see others in pain.

So what about the rest of his classmates? How were they, at eleven, different than he remembered? And how could he use that?

New Elective Goal: Charm Offensive (250 XP)
Meet the majority of the rest of your future classmates, and leave them with a neutral or positive impression of you.

He turned back into the compartment for one last comment. "Alright. I'll be back at about half past twelve, okay? We can all have lunch as a group then." The compartment occupants—those awake, anyway—nodded agreeably, and Harry set off.

Harry and Neville had found a compartment about a quarter of the way down from the front of the train, and Harry knew from experience that the place where the engine was supposed to be was not for compartments, but rather meeting areas for prefects and slugs alike, which meant that Harry only had to go forward a single carriage before reaching the first compartment to check (he had also, as a matter of principle, skipped the first carriage of compartments following the prefects' meeting room—he had no current interest in meeting the prefects, and they (and their friends) always dominated that carriage.

Harry knocked. There was muffled giggling, but no one answered. He shrugged, whipped around, and knocked on the next door—there was no point in forcing a meeting, particularly as the majority of the train (around 6/7ths, in fact) would be filled with upperclassmen.

It took five tries before he got a compartment which opened.

"Hello, my name's Harry, and I'm a first year. I was trying to find some more of my future classmates. To say hi, you know?"

The girl in the compartment—at least third year, if not fourth or fifth, groaned. "What is it about me that attracts muggleborn firsties?"

The other two girls in the car, sitting opposite her, both frowned. They were quite clearly identical twin sisters.

They looked vaguely familiar to Harry—he could almost picture one of them, slightly older, wearing a Ravenclaw tie, but the only twins he remembered were Padma and Parvati and Gred and Forge. Still, they were quite clearly on the express, and given that they were his age, he highly doubted that his presence had somehow caused their parents to have twins instead of a single daughter, so it was just yet another sign that he really had to figure out how to arrange his memories.

"We were here first." One of the girls snapped, before turning to Harry and saying more calmly, "I'm Morag, and this is my sister Isobel."

Despite Morag and Isobel's very strong and thick Gaelic accent, the three had then spent a few minutes getting to know each other, despite the third/fourth/fifth year girl's (a Gryffindor, going by her scarf's colors) displeasure.

While both twins had very obviously put together the clues of Harry's identity quite quickly (and the irritated upperclassman, just as obviously, had not), both tactfully didn't say anything, and instead focused on which house they thought they'd go into (Harry said he'd be happy with any, and the twins both knew they were slated for Ravenclaw), what class they were most looking forward to (Harry said potions, for a laugh, and Morag and Isobel said transfiguration and history, respectively), and similar inquiries.

All in all, Harry thought as he retired back to the hallway, the meeting had gone very well. On top of that, it had made it incredibly clear that despite having MAX memory, until he learned how to properly use it it would be incredibly useless in terms of day-to-day nuances: yes, he did remember exactly where all the hocruxes—hocruxi?—were, but that didn't mean much when your job in preventing the end of the world seemed to have a hell of a lot more to do with politics than dark-lord hunting (for all that the latter was very important too.)

Nodding decisively, Harry turned and knocked on the door opposite the twins. He had, by his count, 67 more compartments to check, but at least he'd be a break in about an hour for lunch.

He'd brought as many muggle snacks as would fit in his muggle lunchbox, and he was very interested to see Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle's response to Sunny Delight—or Rainbow Drops.

He hummed as he walked down the corridor to the next door. This was much more exciting than primary school.