Draco Malfoy sat where he always sat, and had time to wonder when everything had changed.

Because today, today he cared about the Sorting - in a way that parents would.

So, so much hinged on the words about to spew out of a natty-tatty old hat.

Draco had a list in his mind. Yellow, Blue, and Green. All the Muggleborns (save the actual first years - He'd saved who he could, not bloody everyone.), vested in families. Those families had been mostly Slytherin or Ravenclaw, true, but there were two Hufflepuff families included as well. Hufflepuffs tended to be pretty closeminded, at least when it came to Slytherins.

Maybe they'd been burned too much by Blacks? Everyone knew the Blacks were crazy, just like everyone knew the Malfoys were about the meanest folk west of the Channel.*

Draco tried to ape a constant interest that he didn't feel - when in reality, he was checking off names as they went down the list. Pansy's sister to Hufflepuff, and may she do that soppy house some good - put some starch in their stockings or some stiffness in their spines. Ashley to Slytherin, of course. Draco's mum would never have picked anyone else.

And Brooke, that former Ravenclaw, now in Gryffindor. She met his gaze with a mulish one of her own, nearing a glare. This was planned, Draco Malfoy knew, with dawning realization. He seethed through the rest of the feast. He was going to get to the bottom of why they had one of the youngest Muggleborns in Gryffindor, of all places.

Everything else had gone right, Draco tried to reassure himself, his frustration quintupling instead. Luna looks happy, Draco thought, as her fingers danced playfully in the air. Draco hated it when plans went wrong, and it was worse when stupid people interfered, thinking that they knew better than he did.

The mood in the Great Hall was interesting - everyone knew about the slaughtered village, and a considerable number of folk were sending concerned glances at Dumbledore and McGonagall (Draco would eat the entire table if there wasn't a rumor about Dumbledore draining firsties of their magic to give to Muggleborns. Hell, there was a time he'd have written that rumor himself!). A... different group of people was sending hard-edged glares at Draco, and the Slytherins in general.

Mostly Draco.

He wanted to preen, on some level. He was so well known for being a generalized problem** that when a problem occurred, they thought of him.

Absently, he spun a toering on his second toe - protection against Veritaserum, among other things. Enchantment was cheap when you were as rich as the Malfoys, and Draco had found it in a dusty corner of his house. Woe betide him if Father ever wanted it, of course, but that was highly unlikely.

Draco, as prefect, led Slytherin House out of the Great Hall. (well, after the older prefects). He restrained the urge to levitate that little Ravenclaw over

*Yes, I'm aware this is an Americanism. Can't you hear the Western in it? I liked it too much to change it.

**Pest, Draco, the word you mean is pest.

[a/n: Draco is Not Pleased. Draco has Work To Do. Leave a review?]