The Malfoy cursed child (twin of draco si)

[azukugames]

Ryuto Malfoy had long since stopped finding the English countryside beautiful. He'd seen it too many times — through too many carriage windows, too many Ministry galas, too many early-morning escapes from his father's expectations. Now he pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the Hogwarts Express and let the rolling hills blur into green nothing while his brother's voice cut through his quiet.

"I know for certain we'll be sorted into Slytherin," Draco announced, as though it were a foregone conclusion and the rest of the world simply hadn't caught up yet.

Ryuto didn't look away from the window. "You will be, maybe. I'd prefer Ravenclaw. Or Gryffindor, honestly."

The silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.

"Gryffindor," Draco repeated, as if the word itself had offended him. "You'd shame the entire Malfoy name. What if Father disowns you?"

Ryuto finally turned, offering his brother a smile that held no warmth whatsoever. "Oh no. Anything but that." He let the sarcasm sit for a moment before continuing. "At least then I wouldn't spend the next decade waiting to be handed off in some marriage contract. Father will use me as a bargaining chip sooner or later — we both know it."

Draco opened his mouth to respond, but a knock at the compartment door cut him short.

The door slid open to reveal a round-faced boy clutching the doorframe as though it were the only solid thing in his world. His eyes were red-rimmed, his expression equal parts hopeful and defeated.

"Sorry to bother you," Neville Longbottom said. "Have either of you seen a toad?"

"No," Draco said flatly. "And frankly, Longbottom, I'm surprised you even received a letter."

Ryuto jummped out his seat

"I'll help you look," he said, stepping past Draco without a backward glance.







They moved through two carriages before Ryuto spoke, keeping his voice low and even.

"What have I told you about confidence?"

Neville pulled at the hem of his robes. "I know, I just — I'm not sure I deserve to be here."

"That," Ryuto said, "is precisely the kind of thinking that makes everything harder than it needs to be."

They nearly collided with a girl rounding the corner from the opposite direction — bushy brown hair, an impressive stack of books tucked under one arm, and an expression that suggested she had already read all of them at least twice.

"Sorry, Neville," she said, slightly breathless. "No luck with Trevor in this section either."

"We could ask an older student," Ryuto offered. "There may be a Summoning Charm that would help."

The girl's eyes lit up immediately. "You're right She straightened and extended her hand. "I'm Hermione Granger."

"Ryuto Malfoy." He shook it without hesitation. "And please for the sake of my sanity ignore everything my brother says about Muggle. borns."

Neville nodded earnestly. "The rest of Ryuto's family are… not exactly welcoming.

Ryuto said nothing,







Several carriages back, a boy sat alone with rather more going on inside his head than his expression let on.

This is all completely surreal, Harry Potter thought, watching the countryside flash past. Of all the lives to be reborn into.

He tuned out Ron Weasley's enthusiastic commentary on Chocolate Frog cards and turned his attention inward. The wand in his pocket felt familiar in a way it probably shouldn't for an eleven-year-old who had only just retrieved it from Ollivander's. Then again, he wasn't quite a typical eleven-year-old.

I've managed to build a foundation with wandless magic, at least. I just wish I'd had a chance to choose something more useful at the start. He exhaled slowly. For now, I'll go with the flow.

What struck him as odd, though

as the journey wore on and the train filled with the noise of excited first-years was that not a single person had come to his compartment asking about a missing toad.

Strange.







Back in Hermione and Neville's section of the train, Ryuto had accepted the offer to share their compartment and was leaning back against the seat with his arms folded, looking precisely as comfortable as someone who had spent a lifetime making the best of whatever room he was placed in.

"How is Uraume doing?" Neville asked, settling across from him. "It seems unfair they couldn't come with you."

"They're at the Manor," Ryuto said. "Mother and Father weren't going to allow a first-year to bring a personal retainer to Hogwarts without a considerable argument, and I didn't have the energy for it."

Hermione looked between them. "Who's Uraume?"

Neville hesitated, then said, a little carefully: "Don't be alarmed, but they serve Ryuto. Faithfully. Very faithfully."

Ryuto offered a more measured explanation. "I found Uraume when I was eight. I'd gone for a walk on my own — which I did often, as the Manor isn't exactly a warm place — and they were alone. Abandoned. Seven years old." He was quiet for a moment. "I brought them back with me. My parents protested until Uraume demonstrated a talent for magic. They also have an ability I've come to think of as ice manipulation — something well outside ordinary wizarding magic." A faint smile crossed his face. "And their cooking is considerably better than anything the house-elves produce."

"They're loyal to you specifically?" Hermione asked, her tone more curious than alarmed.

"Only to me," Ryuto confirmed. "That has never changed."










The Great Hall was every bit as magnificent as the books described, though Harry found it difficult to focus on the enchanted ceiling when there was so much else demanding his attention.

He watched the Sorting with detached interest — Draco Malfoy striding to the stool with the confidence of someone who had already written the outcome — and then, before the Hat had even touched his head, it called out Slytherin to a ripple of applause from the green-and-silver table.

Then another Malfoy approached the stool.

Harry hadn't expected that.

The boy was blonde, like his brother, but carried himself differently — less performance, more self-possession. Where Draco walked as though expecting applause, this one moved as though the applause was simply irrelevant. He sat. The Hat took a moment that stretched noticeably longer than his brother's. Then

Gryffindor.




The red-and-gold table was stunend. Harry blinked.

He leaned toward the nearest person and asked quietly, "Who is that?"

Hermione Granger, who had been sorted moments earlier and was still adjusting to her seat, answered without looking up from her programme. "Ryuto Malfoy."

Draco has a brother, Harry thought. The realisation settled over him with the particular weight of something that was going to matter eventually. What other surprises has this world been saving?

He turned back to the front and filed it away for later.

There would be time.










Author's Notes:

• Harry Potter is a reincarnated soul — a fan of the series in his past life with a passing interest in anime. He suspects he may have landed in some kind of AU, and he is not wrong.

• Ryuto Malfoy was semi-knowledgeable about Harry Potter in his past life. He was born with the Shrine technique — Sukuna's innate ability — and has spent his childhood mastering it in secret. Uraume is his retainer: absolutely loyal, stoic, gifted with ice manipulation, and an exceptional cook.

• Uraume serves Ryuto exclusively, much as in canon. Their loyalty is unconditional and has never been tested, because it has never needed to be.

 

[azukugames]

The first week at Hogwarts Followed the he had expected

Ryuto Malfoy had already learned it.
Breakfast. Classes. Whispers. Lunch. More classes. More whispers. Dinner. The whispers followed him there too.

He had expected Slytherin to be cold. He had not expected Gryffindor to be worse.

Monday. Transfiguration.
Professor McGonagall had barely finished explaining the theory of inanimate-to-animate transformation before Ryuto's matchstick developed the faint outline of a needle at its tip. By the third attempt it was complete thin, silver, and perfectly proportioned.

McGonagall paused at his desk. She examined it without expression, then set it back down.
"Adequate," she said, and moved on.
From two seats over, he heard it low enough that it was probably meant to stay that way.
"Show-off. Typical Malfoy."



Tuesday. Charms.
Flitwick was enthusiastic to the point of wobbling on his stack of books. The class was attempting a simple cleaning charm which most of the first-years were treating as though they'd been asked to levitate themselves.
Ryuto got it on his second try.
Hermione got it on her first, which earned her a different set of looks entirely Ryuto caught one of the Gryffindor students at the edge of the classroom shoot a sideways glance at her that he recognised immediately.





After class, walking back toward the corridor, Neville fell into step beside him, still clutching his wand with both hands as though it might escape.
"You made that look easy," Neville said.
"It wasn't especially difficult," Ryuto replied. "The wrist motion is the part people overcomplicate. Keep your elbow still."
Neville tried it in the corridor, without anything to levitate. The motion was cleaner. He looked quietly pleased with himself.
Ryuto said nothing, which was as close to a compliment as he generally got.

The whispers were louder today, or maybe he was simply paying more attention. A pair of third-year Gryffindors two seats down
close enough that they couldn't have been trying very hard to be discreet.
"I still can't believe we got a Malfoy instead of Potter."

"I know. And he's in our house. Should've been in those damned snakes' house where he belongs."

Ryuto kept his eyes on his porridge.
Hermione had gone still beside him, her spoon hovering over her bowl. Neville was staring fixedly at the table.

"Don't," Ryuto said, quietly.
"They're being awful," Hermione murmured.
"Yes," he agreed. "They are. And responding to it gives them something to repeat."

He took a measured sip of pumpkin juice.
"I've been navigating this since I was old enough to attend Ministry functions," he continued, his voice even. "It's less about the name and more about the fact that I don't behave the way they expect a Malfoy to behave. t."

Hermione frowned. "That shouldn't make it acceptable."
"It doesn't," he said simply"


Across the Hall, at the Slytherin table, Harry Potter was developing what he suspected would become a long-standing habit of watching Ryuto Malfoy.
Almost a week, he thought, nudging a piece of toast around his plate, and half the school is still talking about the Sorting.
He understood why. He'd seen it too — Ryuto sitting at the Gryffindor table with Granger and Longbottom while his brother held court at Slytherin. The divided house. The name that was supposed to mean something specific. The boy who apparently hadn't received that particular memo.
Just who is Ryuto Malfoy?

The dungeons were cold, which Ryuto had expected. Snape was theatrical, which he had also expected. What he had not fully prepared for was the particular quality of Snape's attention — the way it moved across the classroom like something searching for weaknesses.
"Ryuto," Neville whispered from beside his cauldron, "I think I've added too much—"
"Stir counter-clockwise," Ryuto said, without looking up from his own work. "Three times. Then add the porcupine quills. In that order."
Neville obeyed. The colour corrected itself.
Snape swept past. His gaze dropped to Neville's cauldron, then to Ryuto's — the latter producing a clean, steady simmer — and moved on without comment. Which, from Snape, Ryuto was choosing to interpret as neutral.
After class, in the corridor, he let the mask slip. Barely.
"I hate Snape," he said, under his breath.
Draco materialised at his elbow, which was somehow always slightly alarming. "How can you hate him?" he whispered, scandalized. "He's our godfather."
"I'd take issue with anyone who served the Dark Lord willingly," Ryuto said. Flat. Final.
Draco's expression flickered. "He serves the one who will save us from losing our way"
"Oh, spare me." Ryuto kept walking. "Anyone with sufficient willpower can choose their own way. The Dark Lord isn't a solution. He's a leash with better branding." He glanced sideways at his brother. "I don't know why I was sorted into Gryffindor. I've asked myself that more than once. But I know this if he ever returns, I won't bow to him. Not for Father. Not for anything."

Draco was quiet for a moment. "Father sent a letter. He says to be prepared. For when Christmas comes." He paused. "I suppose we simply see things differently."
"We do," Ryuto said. There was nothing cruel in it. Just fact.

From around the corner of the corridor, Harry pressed himself against the stone and breathed slowly.
He hadn't intended to eavesdrop. He'd been heading to the library and had simply stopped

when he'd heard the name. The Dark Lord. The quiet, certain refusal.
So he won't bow to anyone.
Harry turned it over, the way he turned most things over carefully, at a distance.
What makes him that certain? What does he know that makes him that confident?
He filed it away. Third time this week. The file on Ryuto Malfoy was getting thick.



Ryuto had found it on his third day, which said something either about the Room or about how badly he'd needed it.
He stood in the centre of the open space — stone floor, high ceiling, three training dummies arranged at varying distances — and let the tension of the week leave his shoulders in one slow exhale.
Then he raised his hand.
Dismantle.
The technique moved the way it always had — invisible, instant, a pressure in the air that resolved itself in the clean bisection of the nearest dummy. Two clean halves. He studied the cut.
Too wide. He was still overcorrecting when he wanted precision.
He reset his stance.
Dismantle.

Better. Narrower. The second dummy lost an arm at the joint exactly where he'd aimed.
He ran it again. And again. The Room was patient in a way that Malfoy Manor had never been. No one walked in to question what he was doing. No one sent letters asking him to stop. No one reminded him that unusual abilities were better kept quiet until they could be made useful to someone else.
Tch. He flicked his wrist, sending a cutting arc toward the third dummy that carved a diagonal line from shoulder to hip. As if I'd ever let myself be made useful to someone else.
The Dark Lord. His father's expectations. The Gryffindors who resented his name. The Slytherins who resented his house. The whole structure of this world pressing inward from every direction, expecting him to bend.
He raised both hands. Let the energy build not yet Cleave, not the version that adjusted to a target's resistance, but he was practicing the feel of it. The reach. The way it wanted to expand outward and needed to be directed.
He thought about what mastery would actually look like. Not using Shrine the way blunt

instrument got used the way he suspected most people in his position would have, wielding something powerful and calling it enough. He wanted to understand it. Every application. Every limit. The way Cleave calibrated. The way Dismantle travelled. The as-yet untouched territory of what the technique could do in a world built on entirely different magical principles.
There was something here that no one else had. Something that wasn't tied to a wand or a bloodline or the favour of some resurrected monster who thought suffering was salvation.
He sent another Dismantle across the room. Clean. Exact.

The strongest wizard on earth, he thought, without drama, without performance. Just the quiet certainty of someone who had decided.
I'll get there. And then I'll do whatever I want.
He stayed until the candles burned low, practicing in the dark.