I was quite restless that night, receiving so much information pertinent to one's future would do that to a ma-, eer child. I had never noticed having any inclination towards occlumency, and one would think I knew best right?

Well apparently not, the proof that grandfather had brought to bear had been quite immense. There were several enchanted items in our mansion that read the mind of the afflicted to better cater to their needs. Some of my toys for example.

My blanket and plush snake were enchanted to change their colour in accordance to my unspoken wishes, but they'd never done so.

There was a ward cast around my parent's bedroom, that should have alerted Lucius of anyone nearing with evil intentions, but I had simply strolled through and dumped egg batter on my sleeping parents without them being alerted.

When I thought about occlumency, I thought about an attacker and defender, one trying to get into the mind of the other, and the other clearing his mind to prevent the attacker from taking off with any useful information.

My occlumency wasn't like that, I was apparently a stealther. A very rare bred of occlumency that while hard to learn, could manifest as a talent in a line laden with mind magic. Like the Malfoy's for example. The ratio of people born with the talent and those who learned the method were, according to my grandfather, 13 to 1.

A stealther was someone who, as the name implied, was simply invisible to mind magic instead of having to actively defend against it. Therefore it was plausible for me to never have even noticed I had the talent, the other method of determining it was the fact that all natural occlumens were more intelligent than their peers, but I'd simply chalked that up to my reincarnation.

I doubted I was receiving any boost to my cognitive faculties though, the original Draco certainly hadn't had the talent, and while one should take everything said in the books with a gigatonne of salt, I was fairly sure the original would have informed everyone of his superiority.

I knew that if I wasn't born with the talent. It must have been a result of my reincarnation. I'd already been fully aware while in the womb of my mother, hardly something a fetus brain was capable of facilitating. No, my thought processes and memories weren't stored in the brain, they were stored in my soul. A brain would decay after death after all, taking all its knowledge with it. A soul however, was eternal.

This also explained the fact that I needed less food to function than one would assume, the brain took up almost a fourth of the energy a body consumed after all.

The memories of how the actual melding between soul and knowledge had occurred, were murky though. Understandable, considering reality had been twisting in on itself at the time.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

I chuckled, I truly was brainless wasn't I. I considered branching out with my research to find out how exactly the fact I was probably controlling my body through my soul affected my biology, but decided against it.

It worked, and wasn't that all that actually mattered? Knowledge for the sake of knowledge, what a pathetic way of spending one's time.

Knowledge was nice and all, but only really feasible when applicable to real life, and the knowledge that would soon be bestowed upon me would be anything but useless.

With the advent of my magical talent, my grandfather had apparently decided it was time to start my education. With him, I would practice my wandless magic, or sorcery as I preferred calling it, and the mind arts.

Now occlumency was not something applicable to me, the only use I could ever find in it, was if I managed to actively drop the talent concealing my mind, so I could interact with certain magicks.

But my grandfather insisted that I start learning legilimency with him, since if I had a manifested talent on the defending side of the mind arts, surely I would at least be slightly talented in the attacking side of it.

I couldn't fault that logic, made of false premises as it was. I was unlikely to disappoint my grandfather anyway, my more mature outlook meant I would excel in any task I took upon myself, in comparison to my peers at least.

Additionally to that particular bit of tutoring, I would also start learning some rather outdated languages.

My grandfather had informed me, smiling all the while, that while I now had access to the non-magically strenuous part of the library ( too strenuous for me was everything but potions apparently), I effectively only had access to less than a third of that.

I had, intellectually known that the Malfoy's predated William the conqueror, but I had seemingly been unable to bring that knowledge into the logical conclusion, that a lot of the books in our library were in fucking middle English, an absolute hogwash of a language, ancient Greek and Latin.

Some were also in French and German, but I already spoke of those languages and wouldn't need tutoring. I had simply told my grandfather I would attempt to learn both of them independently, my reasoning for that being the fact that the were languages popular enough there was widespread literature that could help you master them.

It seemed I would be putting another block of unearned achievement onto the pyramid of that made up my life.

I sighed and turned my thoughts onto the last tidbit that had come up in our conversation. Namely blood rhetoric, it all made sense really, genetic traits were inheritable, why wouldn't magical strength accumulate? But Dumbledore and Voldemort were still odd enough that I would need to put some research into the topic. While the explanation that blood-mixing provided for a larger bell curve with a smaller average made sense, I would still rather see for myself.

My grandfather was hardly unbiased after all, and while one should espouse one's superiority even if it was not true, I liked having some actual truth behind my boasts.

The loss of potential magical power to blood mixing was a hefty one, if it was indeed true, not really worth the slightly bigger chance of gaining a manifested talent in one's child.

But what if the muggleborn in question was magically powerful enough to trump even some purebloods? Then the only issue left to solve would be the teaching of wizarding traditions. People had immigrated successfully before, the chance rose the younger one started as well.

And nobody could ever say that Hermione Granger was incapable of learning.

I would have to see.