"So, who are you doing your history paper on? Your father, am I right?" asked Samuel Zabini.

Al didn't even look up from his arithmancy homework. "You can read my project after I'm done with it and Professor Binns has marked it, same as every other. I won't discuss it or tell you who I decided on."

Sam shook his head. "I don't understand, it's not a big thing. I mean, come on, this is for history. I will do my project on the Prewitt brothers. Lots of information and they didn't live very long. Should be easy.

Since Al won't tell us, who did you decide on, Scorpius?"

The Malfoy heir didn't even have to think about that. "Regulus Black. My grandmother is willing to tell me everything about him I need to know and you don't find many projects on him."

So Al had not been the only one to browse through the old projects.

Binns had all the old projects divided after the person, all staked up in his classroom. Every time somebody new was sorted in, the space for that just appeared.

And the projects that got an O were marked on the outside.

Everybody was allowed to read them. The Idea was that if they knew what happened and knew about the people something like that wouldn't happen so easy in the future anymore.

The idea that everybody after him could judge his work was one of the reasons for his decision to invest a lot of time and energy in this.

That and because he wanted to be recognized for his work. He didn't just want to be the son of Harry Potter or of Quidditch star Ginny Potter or brother of the great James Sirius Potter, not that Albus thought his brother was great in anything but being a git.

With a sigh he stopped writing and looked over his Arithmancy work. If he finished this today he would have the whole afternoon tomorrow with Snape.

The former Headmaster had decided on a nice little room in the dungeons with landscapes instead of portraits.

It was conveniently near the common room but not in an used corridor. With the vast dungeons and sub-dungeons the Slytherins had more than enough space. Everybody who wanted to be on his own could do that without a problem.

"I don't know what I should write in my homework for Muggle Studies." commented Scorpius.

Malfoy was pretty good in Muggle Studies for somebody who knew only the theory, but he wasn't as good as in his other classes and it irked him. But then he was the best in Wizarding Culture. Both were mandatory in Hogwarts for all pupils now. Muggle Studies to make the wizards understand more about the Muggles and that they could find their way around Muggle Britain and Wizarding Culture because a lot of things were considered known that the Muggleborns couldn't know coming from a completely different backround. The only ones that benefited these lessons before were the muggleborn Slytherins with Snape as Head of House.

The changes made to the curriculum of Hogwarts, St Mungos and the training of the Aurors were something Al had already written. It wasn't something he had needed help with, everything could be found if you just did the work of looking.

Al wanted help with the information that couldn't be found in the books: the how, the why, the interactions between the sides, the factions belonging to the sides and the factions between each other. It wasn't just history but politics.

The moment Al decided on Snape he realized the opportunity it gave him.

He thought how much he could rattle perspectives with that.

And he planned his work.