#sidenotegreengrass

[beeezie]

All We Are

Astoria's painful memories surrounding Christmas during the war clash with Draco's insisting that she help him decorate his tree. Feelings are messy, trauma is messier, but it all (sort of) comes out in the wash.

December 2001

It’s not every day your world ends.

At the core of it, that’s really why I don’t like Christmas. Christmas in my fifth year was the day my world ended and a part of me died. We’re a few years removed from the war, now, so I feel pretty confident saying that that part of me is just… gone and never coming back.

I didn’t go home for the holidays the year the Carrows had taken over the school. I’d been too worried about what might happen while I wasn’t there. I’d ended up spending it frantically trying to learn healing spells from my textbook while my friend Eliza drifted in and out of consciousness on our bathroom floor because an aspiring Death Eater had used sectumsempra on her for being a halfblood.

He’d been a shit wizard, so Eliza hadn’t bled out in the corridor, but the memory of her crying, “Astoria, please don’t let me die” as she lay on the cold stone floor still haunted my nightmares. We were lucky that Anthony Goldstein had come across us - I’d already suspected he was a Potter sympathizer, but that night had confirmed it. My friend probably would have died sobbing in my arms rather than just stuck in St. Mungo’s for trauma after the war had ended if he hadn’t helped us.

Of course, the stairs had let him carry her up to our dormitory, which had been disconcerting for a number of reasons. I’d filed that away as being a problem for another time and then cornered him two days later to get his help with laying every spell possible into the door to stop people from getting in.

I guess what I’m saying is that Christmas had some problematic memories attached to it, even aside from my never much liking it in the first place. I was far enough removed from the war that talking about Christmas didn’t make me anxious anymore, but I still didn’t much like it.

My boyfriend seemed to feel differently, though.

“So I got a Christmas tree,” he told me when we were out getting drinks a week and a half before Christmas. He was about a week overdue for a haircut and three days overdue to shave his beard. I was okay with both of those things - I hadn’t realized that I was the sort of person who liked the vaguely-scruffy look on men before I’d started dating him, but I did. The blue sweater he’d worn under the deep green pea coat currently slung over the empty chair next to him suited him, too - it brought out his grey eyes and made him look a little less pale.

I’d been about to pick up my glass. Instead, I pulled my hand away and studied him. I had no idea what kind of response he was looking for. “Oh,” I said eventually. It was only after his face fell that I realized he’d been genuinely excited and trying very hard to mask it.

“It’s a small tree.” His finger circled the edge of the coaster, and the words spilled out of his mouth a little too quickly to feel natural. “Really small. I was just wondering if you’d help me decorate it.”

I weighed my options. On one hand, I didn’t like Christmas, but on the other hand, I did like my boyfriend, even if it had taken me months to adjust to being friends with a reformed Death Eater and longer to come to grips with wanting to date him. “No Death Eater ornaments?”

He let out a breath I hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “New ornaments,” he confirmed. “I promise. Nothing from my parents. We can go to the winter market tonight and pick some out.”

I watched his finger, which was still circling the coaster. “Draco, you know that Christmas really isn’t my thing, right?”

“I know,” he said. “If you don’t want to, it’s fine. I just thought I’d ask.”

I took a swig of my hard cider. “Yeah,” I said after a minute. “Okay.”

A smile broke across his face, and pushed his chair back. “I’m getting another. Do you want another?”

“Sure.” He paused on his way past me to press his lips against my forehead; when I leaned into him, he ran his fingers through my shoulder-length brown hair. My favorite bartender winked at me from across the room as she filled up our glasses - she’d called his feelings for me long before I’d been aware of them - and I smiled back at her.

It wasn’t uncommon for us to sit in the bar until it closed, but today we headed out to the winter market in Diagon Alley after we finished our next round of drinks. It was pleasantly chilly without being frigid; I was warm enough in jeans and a thin sweater underneath my red, knee-length coat, and while my socks and gloves were both thick, I hadn’t needed to charm them into staying warm.

Diagon Alley’s winter market goes up on December 7 and comes down on Christmas Eve, and it’s almost impossible to be sad in it - the red and white striped tents spiraling around to the circle of food venders is a sight to see, and the smells that fill the air as you get close are enough to make your mouth water. Small flurries erupt over the top of the tents. Sometimes they’re just flurries, and sometimes they spell out words and names like the cheap advertising gimmick the cold practical Ravenclaw in me knows that they are.

The sentimental part of me doesn’t much care. It’s still pretty.

We cut through the little gaps in between the tents to get to the center - it was cold enough that I wanted something to warm me up, and I suspected that Draco agreed. We bought two enormous sugar cookies in the shape of Hogwarts and two cups of perfectly warmed apple cider. I’d finished my cookie and was halfway through my cider by the time Draco was finished checking his for poison. “Good?” he asked, shoving the small potion bottle back into his pocket.

“Really good,” I said, taking another sip. Judging from the look on his face when he bit in, he agreed with me.

After we’d finished, we wandered through the stalls to scrutinize the ornaments. “What about this?” I asked him, holding up a miniature snitch. “To fly around the tree, I mean?” Its wings fluttered slightly, and he grinned and held out his hand.

When we’d been in school, I’d idly wondered whether his main interest in playing Seeker was showing up Harry Potter. Dating him had disabused me of that notion.

I turned back around to scrutinize the rest of the ornaments. “What about this?” I suggested, pointed at a bright red ball with a silhouette and the caption ‘The Chosen One’ underneath it.

“Seriously, Astoria?”

“Well, you said he was sort of your friend these days.”

His nose was still wrinkled. “Yeah, which is not the same thing as putting Potter on my fucking Christmas tree. Try again.”

I turned away from him, not even bothering to hold back my grin. Teasing him was too easy to be sporting, but it never stopped being fun.

When we left, we had a strand of blinking blue lights and a dozen ornaments, including the snitch. He’d vetoed my attempt to get a miniature lion to perch on the branches, too, but he’d finally ended up okaying a sphinx so I’d stop bothering him about getting something lion-related.

“You do know that you’re not actually a Gryffindor, right?” he asked as we climbed up the stairs to his flat. “Like, you were sorted into Ravenclaw.”

I shrugged. “Barely.” I glanced back at him just in time to see him wince - he still wasn’t thrilled about the revelation that I’d nearly been a hatstall. We came to a stop in front of his door, and he stuck the key in the lock and whispered the spell to unlock the door.

“Why do you keep reminding me of that?” He tossed the bag onto his couch and pulled off his gloves.

“Because it’s fun to see your reaction.” He rolled his eyes, and I threw my arms around his neck. “I think the better question is, why are you dating someone who was almost a Gryffindor?”

His hands rose to my waist, and he leaned in to brush his lips against mine. “That’s why,” he said softly. I stuck my tongue out at him, and he grinned. “Come on. You said you’d help.”

For someone who had apparently wanted my help decorating the very small tree sitting on the dark-stained table he kept in his living room for the rare times he actually ate at a table, he was very, very particular about where the ornaments went. When we were finally done and he was scrutinizing the tree from across the room, arms crossed, I collapsed onto his couch. “Did you actually want my help, or did you just want to spend time with me?” He grinned but chose not to answer the question, which was answer enough. Just as he was moving the coiling green snake to a different branch, I noticed a very formal-looking invitation laying on his side table. “Draco.” He glanced over at me. His expression, which had been uncharacteristically light-hearted just a moment before, darkened when he saw what was in my hand. “Can I?”

He sighed. “Yeah, you might as well. I’m getting a beer. Do you want one?”

I nodded, and he stalked off toward his kitchen. I turned my attention to the invitation. The parchment was thick, and the script kept turning slightly different shades of green.

Draco,

You are cordially invited to the Malfoy Manor for a Christmas Day celebration. Please confirm your acceptance by owl.

We look forward to seeing you.

Sincerely, Narcissa Malfoy

I looked up just as he came back into the room. “Did your mother really write this?”

He handed me one bottle and took a long swig from the other. “Yeah,” he said, sitting down next to me. “Along with a much more personalized guilt trip a few days ago.”

I battled with myself for a moment. Compassion won out over hating his family after I took a sip to console myself for not going with the latter. “You’re not going?”

His lips were pursed. I wasn’t sure if it was because he knew how tempted I’d been to call out their Death Eater affiliations or the existence of the Death Eater affiliations in the first place. “No,” he said after a long pause. “I’m not. I told her that in November. Their friends hate me and would be probably celebrate if someone killed me, and I hate their friends and keep trying to put them in prison. She just…” He shook his head and took another drink. “I’m meeting up with Theo a couple days later - I can’t wait to hear how many people bitched about me where she couldn’t hear them.”

“Didn’t he just get engaged to Daphne?”

Draco winced. Becoming friends with me had significantly soured his opinion on my estranged sister. “Yeah, well. That lapse in judgment aside, Theo’s not a dick, okay?”

“Then he’s definitely thinking with his dick, if he’s marrying my sister.”

Draco let out a loud snort, leaned forward to put his beer down on the table, and slid over to wrap an arm around me. “Yeah, well, I don’t think I’m in the position to judge anyone for thinking with his dick.” I made a face at him, and he leaned in to kiss me.

His lips were soft, and for a moment, I lost myself in the kiss. When he broke away to move down to my neck, though, I said with as much sarcasm as I could muster through the haze filling my head, “Good to know that -”

“Astoria?” His hand was starting to creep up the inside of my leg, which made it very difficult to concentrate on anything else. “Stop it.” I gave up on the prospect of picking a fight; kissing him was much more fun, and I did know that my boyfriend liked me for a lot of reasons, most of which didn’t involve his dick.

I reached for the bottom of his shirt, and then thought the better of it. “Draco?”

“Mm?”

“Can we - I just was wondering whether - you have a bed, right? Not, like, in a having sex way, it just…”

His eyes darted toward the door to his bedroom. We hadn’t actually had sex yet, and I wasn’t planning on changing that tonight, but there was still something that felt different about making out on a bed as opposed to the couch, which was probably why we hadn’t done it yet.

When we laid down on his bed, it was exactly as strange as I’d thought it would be. As soon as I pressed my lips against his, though, I forgot about the strangeness - we’d been dating for long enough that when his tongue brushed against mine and his hand trailed up my leg, it didn’t just feel good (although it did feel good) - it felt safe.

“Draco?” I murmured again when we broke away from each other. He raised his eyebrows. “Can I - can I stay with you tonight, maybe? Like, here? With you?”

“In my bed?” I nodded. “With me?” I nodded again. “Fuck yes.” Our lips met again, and I rolled onto my back. He followed me, positioning himself in between my legs to thrust his hips against mine. As our kiss deepened, I reached for the bottom of his shirt.

He stripped it off and tossed it on the floor. The band around his forearm was green today, which I found both endearing and ridiculous - I knew he’d claim that it was just in keeping with the holiday spirit if I pointed it out, and he knew that I’d see through that to his stupid Slytherin pride.

When he reached for the bottom of my shirt, though, I hesitated - I still don’t love my arms being bare. He ducked his head to brush his lips against my neck. “You don’t have to,” he murmured into my ear. “And if you do, I promise I won’t comment on - on anything. I just really like your tits.”

My face immediately started to get warm, and he grinned at me. “Go ahead.” I stretched my arms above my head again. “I think you like making me blush, though.”

“I really do.” He tossed my shirt to the side, and I arched my back so he could reach around and unhook my bra. True to his word, he didn’t comment on the fresh cuts as he ran his hand up my arm and leaned down to my chest. When his mouth closed around my nipple, I let out a gasp. “But I love making you moan,” he murmured as he moved to the other breast.

“You’re good at it,” I managed to get out. Between his tongue and the feather-light touch he was using on the crook of my arm, my mind wasn’t in a position to articulate thoughts very well. He didn’t seem to notice when I reached down to unbutton my pants, but when I lifted my hips to push them off, his gaze jerked downward and he let out a hiss. “Touch me,” I breathed, kicking my jeans to the floor. He didn’t move; we hadn’t done this before, and I seemed to have taken him by surprise. “I said -”

“I heard you.” He trailed his hand down my stomach, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. I hadn’t thought he’d hesitate -  he’d always been very clear that he was quite happy to go as far as I wanted to go, which meant both that he wasn’t pushing me and that he wasn’t the one putting the brakes on.

There was something about that approach to sex that I found very comforting. The formative years where most people started having sex and figuring out what they liked in a partner had been shrouded by the war for me - first the trauma of the war itself, and then the trauma of the aftermath. I’d had my first kiss with Emma Dobbs by the Quidditch pitch at Hogwarts toward the end of my fourth year, and it had been nice, but then Dumbledore had died and the world had fallen apart and Emma had fled to New Zealand.

Nothing had been the same after the war, and Draco was the only boy I’d ever kissed. The reverse wasn’t true, and the less I was wearing, the more self-conscious I felt about it.

“I should get you in your underwear more often.” He leaned in to kiss me again. “You’re beautiful.”

I felt my face get warm. I didn’t always deal well with sincere compliments, but it didn’t seem like a good use of my time to argue with my boyfriend about whether he thought I was pretty, especially since the bulge in his trousers felt to me like a pretty convincing confirmation of his sentiment. “Thanks.”

He slipped a finger underneath my underwear and glanced at me. When I nodded, the rest of his hand followed, and he let out a loud groan. “Fuck, Astoria. You’re so wet.”

I wasn’t sure whether it was his touch or his words that were more thrilling, but the combination jolted through me and left me whimpering into his chest even before his thumb found my clit. He slipped one of his other fingers into me and leaned in to bite down gently on my neck. When I gasped and threw my head back, he started to move his thumb a little faster. “Do you usually get this wet when we make out?” he asked softly. I nodded. “Good to know.” He slipped another finger inside of me, and I moaned again. “Next time, maybe I should see how you taste.”

I felt a very pleasant shiver go up my spine. He was very good with his tongue in general, and I doubted that oral sex would be an exception to that rule.

He let himself fall next to me. “Don’t stop -” I started to say, and then I felt his fingers slide back into me and his thumb renew its movement.

“Roll onto your side,” he said softly. “It’s an easier angle for me.” When I did, he edged closer - I could feel him through his jeans, and his hips were moving with in time with mine. He used his free hand to sweep my hair back from my neck, and after a moment, I felt his lips against it. I closed my eyes as his fingers started to move faster, and I lost focus on anything that wasn’t his body and my body and how good everything he was doing felt. The pressure reached a tipping point, and I cried out as the vibrations spread through me.

When I opened my eyes and twisted around to see his face, he was grinning. “Fuck,” I said. “I - fuck. That was good.” I rolled onto my back, and he pressed his lips against mine. “Thanks.”

He studied his hand. “You know, I don’t think I want to wait until next time to see how you taste.” My stomach lurched as he ran his tongue along one of the fingers he’d had inside me.

I didn’t even try to keep the skepticism out of my voice. “Do I actually taste good?”

“Mm. Do you want me to prove it to you? Because I will.” His gaze swept down my body again. “Fuck. Seriously, can I eat you out next time?”

My stomach did another flip. “Sure. I - er - do you want me to - you know?” His eyebrows knit together, and wrinkles appeared in his forehead. He clearly didn't know what I was talking about. I could feel my face burning, but I tried again. "Doyouwantmetogetyouofftoo?"

I said it in a rush, but his eyes widened a little, and a sigh escaped his lips. "I mean - do you want to?” he asked. “Because if you want to, fuck yes.”

Sarcasm usually didn't work on Draco when it came to this sort of thing, so I bit back my snark and said, "Yeah. I do." He opened his mouth. “I’m sure."

I’d never seen my boyfriend naked before. Over the past month or so, we’d started to get into the habit of taking off our shirts, and I’d definitely grown to sympathize more with all the girls I’d overheard giggling in the lavatories in school about him. I had disagreed with them at the time, because he’d been a Voldemort-sympathizing prat entirely too obsessed with showing Harry Potter up, and unlike some people, I’ve never been able to look past who a person is to their appearance. Now that Draco was a Voldemort-opposing prat who was sort of friends with Harry Potter, though, I could appreciate the way his hair fell in his eyes.

I could also appreciate the leanness of his chest, and the subtle flex of the muscles in his arms as he tossed his jeans and boxers aside. I’d never found dicks to be particularly attractive, but there was definitely a jolt in my stomach at the site of his.

He’d noticed my hesitation. “Astoria, you really don’t -”

“I want to. I’m just… just processing.”

He stretched his arms over his head. “I can understand that. I’m very attractive.” I stuck my tongue out at him, though I did feel a little better that he wasn’t so secure in himself that he was above making jokes to mask anxiety and insecurity.

Especially since both were things that I seemed to make him feel, which made me feel a little less self-conscious about my lack of experience.

Knowing that he was also nervous below the bluster helped give me the courage to climb on top of him. He immediately let out a very loud groan. “You know your underwear is soaked, right?” I started to rock back and forth, and he moved his hands up to rest on my hips. “Why are you still wearing them?”

“Because if I take them off, we’ll definitely end up having sex.” He made a face. “How - how do you want me to do it?”

“However you want.” He slid one of his hands over to start touching me through the thin cotton.

I whimpered and started to rock harder. “Can I suck it?”

He was beginning to breathe much more heavily. “Fuck yes.” As I edged down the bed, he added, “Um - put your lips over your teeth, okay? When you put it in your mouth?” I made a face at him, and he winced. “Sorry - I just don't know what you know.”

That part I had known, but I was fairly certain that there were plenty of things I didn't know, so I didn't mock him. “How will I know if what I'm doing is right?”

“I’m so hard for you right now that I don’t think you can do it wrong.”

I ducked my head down and ran my tongue up his length. I was rewarded with a loud groan, which gave me the confidence to be a little bolder. "Fuck," he said as I took him past my lips. "Oh, fuck.” I began to bob my head up and down, and he groaned again. I started to look up at him - I was curious to see what expression was accompanying those sounds - and he gasped, “Please don’t stop.” I pushed my head down further, and his hips jerked upward. “Fuck,” he said again. “Next time you suck me off, I want to go down on you while you do it.” I felt myself tighten a little at the thought, and I whimpered into him. His hips were moving faster now. “I want to make you come, and then I want to feel those lips on my cock as I slide into you.”

I moaned again. My heart was starting to race; there was a not-insignificant part of me that wanted to pull my underwear off and climb on top of him so he could do just that. I hadn’t gotten comfortable telling him what I wanted to do with him yet - it just felt awkward in all the wrong ways - but if his talking like this was having this kind of effect on me, it was probably something I should try.

“I want to tease you until you scream,” he said. “And then I want to bury my cock in you and grab your hips and fuck you until you collapse and all you can do is moan and beg me not to stop.” I felt his fingers in my hair. “Oh, fuck, Astoria, yes.”

I didn’t stop until he tapped my shoulder. “Astoria,” he rasped, “I’m about to - you should -” I stopped and looked up at him just in time.

He let his head fall back and closed his eyes for a moment, still breathing hard. When he didn’t say anything, I asked, “I - was that okay?”

He snorted. “Did you hear me?” That made me grin. “Hand me my boxers. Yes, Astoria, that was more than okay.”

I reached down to grab them off the floor, and he wiped them across his stomach. “I just - I know I’m not - I’ve never done that before, and -”

He tossed the now-dirty boxers back on the floor. “Astoria, you have no idea how often I’ve thought about you sucking me off. Believe me when I say I’m not disappointed.”

I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Okay.” He sat up to reach over to his drawer, and I added, “You talk a lot.”

He snorted as he pulled a clean pair of boxers on. “Yeah, well.” He bounced back onto the bed. His chest was still damp with sweat, as was the sheet where he’d been laying. “Do you mind it?”

I shook my head, and he reached out to grab me. “Thanks,” he said, wrapping his arms around me in a bear hug and burying his face in my hair. “That felt amazing.”

I could feel my face starting to get warm again, so I changed the subject. “I - I was thinking,” I said. “Why don’t you come to dinner with us? For Christmas, I mean? Since you’re going to be alone?”

When I twisted around to look up at him, he had a wary expression on his face. “Who’s ‘us?’”

“My brother’s family. Maybe my parents - I dunno, they might be doing something with Daphne, they did Christmas with us last year. It’s not really a huge thing for us, anyway. My brother and Addison do it for the kids more than anything else.”

I wasn’t sure he’d processed most of what I’d said after “parents.” He’d frozen as soon as that word had come out. “Your parents,” he said. I couldn’t read his expression. “You want me to meet your parents. Don’t they hate me?” I shrugged, and he let out a sigh. “Okay. Yeah.” After a moment of hesitation, he added, “Could I - I mean, do you want me to stay over on Christmas Eve? If I do that?”

I didn’t answer him at first. The honest answer was that I would like that quite a lot, especially after tonight - but I also had plans on Christmas morning. “I have something to do earlier in the day,” I said after a long pause.

“What do you have to do?”

It was an honest question, and he was really just curious, and somehow, that made the memory hurt even more. I looked away from him and rolled onto my stomach. There were things I didn’t like to talk about with anyone, and Eliza was one of them. The bed shifted under his weight as he sat back down. When I felt his fingers rest lightly on my shoulder, I stiffened, and he pulled his hand away.

After a few minutes of silence, he sighed. “So I’m pretty sure this is about your plans on Christmas and not anything I said while you were blowing me, but reassure me.”

“It’s about Christmas.��� I buried my face in a pillow.

“Okay.”

We sat in silence for a few more minutes. I tried to calm my hammering heart and dug my nails into my palms, which only helped a little but was the best I could do right now, since I was quite sure that my boyfriend would be very upset if I went into his bathroom to hurt myself rather than talk to him about my feelings - and besides, it was a bad habit I really was trying to break irrespective of his feelings on the subject. I didn’t know what he was thinking.

He spoke first. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” My voice was still muffled by the pillow.

“Astoria, please talk to me.”

I wanted to ignore him. I wanted to want to storm out. That was usually my reaction when people tried to make me talk about things I didn’t want to talk about. His voice wavered a little at the end, though, which reminded me that he actually was a person who cared about me quite a lot, and that was why he was pushing me to talk.

And anyway, he’d been a Death Eater. I still felt a little like he deserved to have what he’d been a part of rubbed in his face.

“I’m seeing my friend. She’s in St. Mungo’s.”

I turned my head to look up at him; from the suddenly-tense look on his face, he’d understood the subtext there. “The war?”

“Yeah.” I swallowed. “I stayed at school for Christmas that year because I was afraid to go home and have - have something awful happen. Some stupid Slytherin cursed my friend Eliza - you probably didn’t know her - and she started bleeding.” I felt strangely disconnected from my body; it was definitely me talking, of course, but I didn’t feel anything at the words. I just felt numb. “She bled a lot, and she was begging me not to let her die, but I didn’t know how to make the bleeding stop. I tried everything, I just - I didn’t know.” I stopped talking; the numbness was retreating as quickly as it had taken hold, and the fear and anxiety I’d felt that night was flooding back to me, overwhelming all of my senses. I could even smell the blood. “I think - I think she would have died, if one of the Potterclaws hadn’t come across us. He got us back to our dormitory and fixed her, but it - everything was just - it was too much. She tried to kill herself a few months after the war ended. She’s - she’s doing better now, but she’s been in St. Mungo’s ever since. I dunno if she’ll ever be well enough to leave.” I hesitated. “My brother said someone in your year sort of recovered from the - the shell shock from the war after she was in St. Mungo’s for awhile, and she’s working for the Ministry now. So maybe.”

I heard Draco take a deep breath. I wondered if he knew who’d gotten out. I wondered if he knew who’d cursed her. If he knew either, he didn’t share. “I’m sorry.”

Something about that response made my blood boil. ‘Sorry’ was just so inadequate for what had happened. “Like you didn’t know they were doing that,” I snapped. “You have no idea how it feels to get cursed like that -”

“Actually, I know exactly how that particular curse feels.” His lips were pressed together. I readied myself to tell him off about the Cruciatus Curse, because it couldn’t kill you and there wasn’t so much blood overpowering your senses and invading your space, but he ended up surprising me. “Sectumsempra, right?” I stared at him for a moment before nodding. “Yeah, I had it used on me, and believe me, that’s not something you forget.”

He didn’t seem to be joking. “What are you talking about?”

“Potter used that on me in our sixth year, and I almost died. Maybe I would have, if Snape hadn’t found us.” When I didn’t respond, he sneered at me. “Yeah, Saint Potter did some shitty stuff, too. I was a prick, but at least I never tried to kill him.”

He seemed sincere, and I hated it. “Well, you did try to kill Dumbledore,” I shot back. “Everyone knows that.” The look on his face made me regret saying it, but I didn’t apologize.

“You know, the endless rendition of everything I’ve ever done wrong is getting old,” he snapped. “For fuck’s sake, Astoria, if you’re going to be my girlfriend, maybe cut me a little slack and let the rest of the world treat me the way I deserve.”

I opened my mouth to tell him off, and then I closed it again. He wasn’t right, but I didn’t know that he was exactly wrong, either. “That’s who I am, though. You knew that.”

I was expecting the fight to escalate - he hadn’t seemed especially combative since we’d become friends, but he’d had a reputation at school for having a bit of a temper. When he spoke, though, there was genuine pain and uncertainty in his voice, not anger. “Do you even like me?”

I would have felt better if he’d insulted me. I couldn’t think of any other time that he’d sounded anywhere near this vulnerable, and it made my stomach squirm in a very different and far more unpleasant way than it had been earlier. When I looked up at him, he was starting at the wall. “Of course I do.”

“Maybe you should act like it, then.” He didn’t meet my gaze, and I looked away.

There was a reason I hated talking about feelings. I wasn’t very good at it.

He sighed and ran a hand over his face. “Look, I know I deserve to have it rubbed in my face, and I know that people on my side hurt people you care about - hurt you.” He glanced down at the scars crisscrossing my arms, and I hugged them closer to myself. “And I know there were plenty of people my age - and younger than me - who were a lot braver than I was. I just - I just wish someone would stop giving me what I deserve for long enough to give me what I need. I was scared, Astoria.” His voice cracked when he said my name. It felt like a punch in the gut. “I was scared that he would kill me and kill my mother, and the only person from your side who offered to help ended up dead. It’s not fair to expect comfort from you, but I don’t really - I don’t really have anyone I can ask, and I don’t know where that leaves me.”

I wanted to ask him who’d offered to help him, but I let it go. “I used to like myself, you know, and now I don’t.” Tears filled my eyes, and I stopped talking. After a moment, I felt his hand on my shoulder. I didn’t shrug it off; I was still angry at him, but I was less angry than I’d been, and I wanted comfort more than I wanted to yell at him. “I’m always afraid now. They made me a coward.”

To my surprise, he let out a snort of laughter. Before I had the chance to get offended, he said, “Are you seriously telling me that the war fucked you up by making you a coward? Astoria, if You-Know-Who’s supporters couldn’t make you back down, nothing can. You’re not a coward. You’re one of the bravest people I know.” I wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t. The silence had just started to become uncomfortable when he cleared his throat. “Can I hold you?”

I considered that for a minute, and then I nodded. The bed squeaked a little as he lay down next to me. When his arm circled around my stomach, I pushed myself closer to him. His grip tightened, and he rested his head on mine.

“Sometimes I wish I didn’t like you,” I told him. “I didn’t think I would. I do, though. You’re my favorite person other than my brother. I didn’t think I’d ever trust anyone ever again, after - after the war, and after what Daphne did. But I trust you.”

“I know you do.” He kissed the back of my neck. It was a different kind of kiss than the ones he’d given me earlier, but I’d found that I liked his comforting kisses as well as the passionate ones. “You know, sometimes spending time with you gives me whiplash. How the fuck did we go from you blowing me to fighting about the war?”

I shrugged. “You used to be a Death Eater. I don’t like Death Eaters. Sometimes we fight about it.” I heard him take a breath, and I added, “Don’t say that you’re not one anymore. I know that. If I didn’t know that, I wouldn’t be here, and you’d never see me in my underwear.”

“If only you’d told me sooner,” he said lightly. I elbowed him, and I felt rather than heard the laughter in his chest. “Look, I know you like solutions, not apologies. Do you want to be alone on Christmas Eve?”

There was an unspoken heaviness between us right now that had nothing to do with our fight and everything to do with my problematic coping mechanisms - but he knew enough to know that stopping me from cutting myself rather than stopping me from wanting to was just a selfish way to make my feelings not his problem. He thought my feelings were his problem, so he tried to take care of them rather than just the symptoms of being sad. That was one of the reasons I trusted him.

I shook my head.

“Will having me there help?” he pressed.

I considered that. “Yes.”

“Okay. Why don’t I plan to stay with you on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day? When you go to St. Mungo’s, I’ll make myself scarce, and if you decide that I’m not helping, I’ll just leave.” I rolled over to study his face. There wasn’t a trace of anger anymore - he just looked concerned.

I nodded. “I - thanks.”

He let out a breath I hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You’re my girlfriend. Supporting you is in the job description.” I rolled my eyes, and he leaned in to kiss me. It was somewhere between a comforting kiss and a passionate one, and it reminded me that there really was a reason I’d decided to date Draco Malfoy. He was sometimes a bit of a prat, but he’d somehow turned into a decent person underneath that, and he really was good at making me feel a little less alone.

A/N: Sorry this was a bit later than expected. There was a lot of editing/fine-tuning - hopefully it was worth it!

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories @hpfanfictalk (organized chronologically)

[beeezie]

When deflection meets sarcasm

Astoria: What, just because we’re fucking now you think you can ask me anything?

Draco: ... yes, just because we’re fucking now, I think I can ask you anything.

[beeezie]

The Open Air

banner by mortar&jade @shadowplay-resources

Astoria gets an unexpected birthday present from Draco Malfoy.

I usually got a drink (or three) with Draco Malfoy on Thursday  evenings. This Thursday was no exception. We were in a quiet pub in  Muggle London, on the grounds that witches and wizards who hated him  were less likely to find him there, and for once, I hadn’t even tried to  instigate a fight.

Draco Malfoy had genuinely become  one of my friends - which was particularly noteworthy because I didn’t  really have very many friends these days - but he’d still been on the  wrong side. Picking fights with him made me feel better about being  friends with a former Death Eater, especially since he usually said the  right things even when I pushed him. I’d spent five months waiting for  the mask to slip; in that time, he’d occasionally tried to make excuses  for himself, but he hadn’t said anything to imply that he still thought  of Muggleborns as scum or could have been tempted away from his job helping my brother track down dark witches and wizards at the Ministry.

That  was probably as good as I could have expected, and I didn’t think it  was just an act. He struck me as a good liar, but he’d also gotten very  drunk around me, and when I’d needled him then, he hadn’t broken down  and started being the pureblood supremacy prat he’d been in school.

I  still didn’t entirely trust him, not yet, but I was adjusting to the  idea that he might not be a morally bankrupt asshole anymore.

“Do you want another, or are you ready to call it a night?” he asked after he’d drained the rest of his glass.

I  looked down at my empty cup. It had been my second. He’d just finished  his third. “Don’t you have work tomorrow?” He shrugged. “If you can  stick around a little longer, sure.”

He grinned and  grabbed my glass. I pushed the money for my drinks across the table and  watched him lean on the bar while the bartender refilled our glasses.  She said something to him as she set them down in front of him, and he  threw back his head and laughed. When he’d turned around to start back  toward me, she caught my eye and winked.

“What’d she  say?” I asked. This wasn’t our first time in this particular pub, and I  liked this bartender - when she’d discovered that Draco was not, in  fact, my boyfriend, she’d told me that he wanted to be and then started  flirting with me herself. If I hadn’t been so disillusioned with  romance, I might have flirted back. Instead, I’d just told her that I  had no idea why my parents had named me Astoria but that I liked her pixie haircut.

Draco’s skin was fair enough that even  though it was the middle of August and the pub was fairly dimly lit, the  sudden glow in his cheeks was noticeable. “Nothing,” he said, sliding  into his seat and putting one of the glasses down in front of me. I was  about to press him when he blurted out, “Your birthday is this weekend.”

I stared at him. That was the last thing I’d expected him to say. “Yeah, I know it is. How did you know?”

“Your brother mentioned it.”

“Oh.”

He  gulped down part of his beer and then shoved a hand into his bag. “I -  look, it’s not a big deal or anything, I was just in Diagon Alley the  other day and…” He yanked out a package and handed it to me. “It’s not a  big deal,” he repeated. “I just - I saw it and it made me think of you,  I guess. So happy birthday.”

I took it from him. I wasn’t quite sure what to say - he’d even actually wrapped it.

Before  I could gather my wits, he added, “Don’t open it now - like I said,  it’s not a big deal. I just didn’t want to forget to give it to you.” He  glanced down at the money. “It’s fine,” he said, shoving it back toward  me. I opened my mouth, and he added, “Look, just call it part of your  birthday present.”

I could feel my face starting to get  hot. I never minded drinking his beer when I was at his flat, but  somehow, there was something in me that still balked a little at the  idea of him buying me anything in public. It somehow felt different than  raiding his fridge. “Thanks.”

He shook his head. “It’s not a big deal,” he said for the fourth time.

“So you’ve said.”

He snorted and picked up his glass. I did the same.

By  the time we finished that round, I was genuinely drunk. It was also  nearing 11:30pm, so I also knew that he probably couldn’t stay out much  later, which was unfortunate, because I wasn’t quite ready to head home.

“You  don’t have time for another, do you?” I asked anyway. He twisted around  to examine the clock. When he turned back to me, I could see the answer  on his face. “It’s fine,” I said quickly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“No,”  he said quickly. “No, I just - I shouldn’t have another, I have to be  up at 7:30. If you want another, though, I’m good to sit here with you.”

The  right answer would have been that it was time to call it a night,  because I really didn’t need to drink any more than I already had and he  had work the next day. I knew that.

“Okay,” I said anyway. The smart response could go fuck itself. “But I’m paying for my drink.”

He  rolled his eyes, but he didn’t object when I grabbed my glass off the  table and made my way up to the bar. “Hey, Kate,” I said. “Can I have  another?”

She took my glass and started to refill it. “Just one?”

“Yeah. He has work tomorrow.” I hesitated for a moment, and then asked, “What did you say to him before? He was smiling.”

Her  perfectly shaped eyebrows drew together in thought. “Oh,” she said  after a minute, taking the money I was handing over. “I was just teasing  him about whether he’s asked you out yet. He’s easy to get a rise out  of.”

Three years ago, the idea that I would be sitting  in a Muggle pub with Draco Malfoy while the bartender teased him for  being “easy to get a rise out of” would have boggled my mind more than  Voldemort really being gone had.

But there it was.

“I’m  glad you’re my friend,” I told him as soon as I got back to the table.  He jerked his head up to stare at me - he seemed genuinely startled. “I  wish you hadn’t been a Death Eater -”

“There it is,” he muttered, though he didn’t look away from me.

“- but I know you’re trying to be a good person now, even though people keep trying to kill you for it, and - and I don’t  know. I keep waiting you to slip up and be an awful person again, but  you keep - you keep not slipping up, not really.” He had the strangest  look on his face now, but I kept going. “And I really do know that it’s  been hard, but you keep doing it anyway, so you probably are a good person now, and I’m glad that you’re my friend.”

It  took him a minute to respond, and when he did, he sounded vaguely like  he had a cold. “I’m glad you’re my friend, too, Astoria.” I took a sip  of my cider, and he shook his head. “Oh, fuck it - can I have half of  that?” I poured some of my cider into his empty glass, and he grinned at  me. “Cheers.”

We didn’t end up leaving until well  after midnight. To my surprise, he didn’t duck down the quiet side  street the way he usually did; when I cocked my head to the side, he  gave a good-natured shrug. “I should sober up a little before I try to  Apparate. I’ll walk you home.”

“It’s more than twenty blocks. Don’t you have to be up in seven hours?”

He shrugged again. “I’ll be fine. You probably shouldn’t be walking alone, anyway - you can barely walk in a straight line.”

He  was exaggerating, but he wasn’t exaggerating by enough for me to feel  like arguing with him would be at all productive, so I let him fall into  step with me without any further objection.

I’d just  locked my door behind me when I heard the loud crack outside. I picked  my way around the clutter on my floor to collapse onto my couch. Before I  could open the package he’d given me, though, I heard a soft knock at  the door adjoining my basement flat with the rest of my brother’s house.  I set the package aside and took the stairs two at a time.

When  I opened the door, my brother Brendon was sitting at his kitchen table.  He was wearing his pyjamas, but his eyes were as alert as ever. “Hey,”  he said softly. “I heard someone Apparate outside, and I just wanted to  make sure that you were okay.” When I slumped into the chair across from  him, he let out a snort and pointed his wand toward the cabinet. “Drink  this,” he said, shoving a glass of water across the table.

I made a face at him. “Is it that obvious?”

“Mm. Tell me you weren’t Apparating like this.”

I  shook my head. “No, it was my - it was just Draco. He walked me home.”  My brother’s eyebrows rose, just a bit, and I sighed. He knew that Draco  and I were at least sort of friends, and they clearly talked about me  at least occasionally if my birthday had come up, but it still felt odd  to admit to my war hero brother that I was friends with a former Death  Eater.

True to form, though, Brendon didn’t comment on  my choice of company. Instead, he glanced at the clock and said, “He’s  got a meeting with me in about eight hours. If he’s late because he was  out drinking with my sister until one, I’m going to give him so much  shit.”

He went back upstairs a few minutes later, and I  retreated back downstairs. This time, I kicked my shoes off before  collapsing onto my couch and grabbing the unexpected present. When I  tore the wrapping paper off, I found a book titled, Don’t Look Under the Bed: A Witch’s Memoir of Dust Bunnies and Ghouls.

When I opened it, an envelope fell out. Inside, there was a blank piece of parchment and a note.

Astoria -

The  parchment is charmed - if you write something on it, it’ll go to me. (I  charmed it myself, so don’t get tense, nobody else is going to  intercept it.) I got the idea from something Potter said a few days ago.  It’s fine if you never want to use it - I just thought I’d give it to  you in case you did, since neither of us has an owl right now.

Happy birthday. I hope you like the book.

- Draco

I  sat back and rubbed my face with my hands. I was both genuinely touched  and extremely confused. Rather than try to untangle that web of  emotions, I picked the book up and flipped it open.

The  first chapter was about the author’s sincere childhood belief that dust  bunnies turned into kneazles when the clock struck 11:32pm and her  attempts to gather them together without being caught by her parents. It  was witty and engaging and exactly the sort of book that I would never  be able to read in public, because people would wonder why I kept  laughing.

After I finished the first chapter, I put the book down and leaned over to rest the parchment on the table.

I like the book a lot - I can’t stop laughing. Thanks.

I folded the parchment back up, expecting that he’d already be asleep. To my surprise, it glowed a minute later, and when I looked at it, he’d written something back. I thought you would. Like I said, it made me think of you.

Shouldn’t you be asleep? We could’ve gotten another round if you were going to be up anyway.

I didn’t bother to pick the book back up, and as I’d expected, more words appeared on the page almost immediately. Yeah, I probably should be. That was quickly followed by, I meant to ask - I’m sure you have stuff with your family on your birthday, but if you wanted to get breakfast or drinks or whatever. I was about to point out that that wasn’t a complete sentence when he added, You’re probably busy, and we were out late tonight anyway. It’s fine.

My  heart was suddenly hammering. I’d mostly ignored Kate both times she’d  mentioned that he wanted to ask me out, but between a random birthday  present and offering to spend part of my birthday with me, I was  starting to think that she might have a point. I considered clarifying  the point with him, and then realized that I wasn’t sure what I wanted  to clarify, because kissing him seemed like something that could be  interesting to do at some point.

After a couple minutes, I decided to write back, That would be nice, actually, as long as you don’t mind if it’s late.

Late is fine. Just let me know.

I put the parchment aside and picked the book back up. My heart was still  racing, but I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a bad thing.

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories @hpfanfictalk (organized chronologically)

[beeezie]

The Way You Say My Name

I don’t really know how I got to the point where I was sobbing and alone in my brother’s basement with a Death Eater, but there it is.

I don't really know how I got to the point where I was sobbing and alone in my brother's basement with a Death Eater, but there it is.

Well, that's not quite true. He was here because he was one of my only friends, and because we'd recently started kissing each other sometimes, and besides, he'd told me in no uncertain terms that if we were going to be kissing each other, he wanted me to stop calling him a Death Eater.

Which was fair enough, really, since it wasn't quite accurate.

The afternoon leading up to it was nerve-wracking, though. I'd only ever been to his flat, but having him at mine seemed like it was probably the thing to do at this point, even if it was just a flat in my brother's basement that didn't have a proper kitchen or anything. At the same time, I didn't really want him to judge me for how messy it was. (If he was going to judge me for living in my brother's basement, well, there was nothing I could do about that, and he knew that about me, anyway. He worked with my brother, and my brother was most of why he'd started talking to me in the first place.)

So I spent half the afternoon cleaning my flat. Magic was only so useful when you didn't really know where you wanted to keep half of your belongings - they hadn't invented a spell that could figure that out yet - and that was most of why it was so messy. I did leave myself enough time to try, discard, and have to refold ten different outfits after deciding on a black skirt, leggings, a deep red shirt (with long sleeves, it was always long sleeves, even in the summer, and not just because it hid the sheath I kept my wand in for easy access), and a sweater (since it was winter, after all). I even managed to put on makeup. The end result was both me and my flat looking vaguely pulled together, which was really nothing short of a miracle.

And as it happened, I probably hadn't needed to worry. As soon as Draco stepped through the door, he looked around and said, "There's too much red in this flat. You're right, Astoria, you are half Gryffindor."

"And you really have hit rock bottom." I closed the door behind him, waved my wand, and shoved the deadbolt back into place. I heard him unzip his jacket behind me and toss it onto the chair next to my door that generally served as my coatrack.

When I turned around, he was leaning on the wall just to the left of the door. I hoped he'd stay out of the line of vision of my mirror; he was dangerously close to it right now, and while I didn't care if it insulted him, I'd prefer that he not know how much time I'd spent cleaning the flat and checking myself in the mirror. With my luck, that's probably what the mirror would focus on.

Especially since there really wasn't much about him to insult today. He was wearing long sleeves, too (it was always long sleeves with him, too, though for different reasons), and the green suited him. His hair was slightly windswept in a way that looked good rather than just messy, and it didn't seem like he'd shaved since the last time I'd seen him.

And his smile really had grown on me.

"So what are we today?" he asked, and my heart started to speed up.

It was a valid question. In the past couple months, he'd comforted me and played with my hair after one of my wake-up-dead nightmares, and we'd kissed on six separate occasions. We'd also seen each other and reverted back to our pre-kissing dynamic several times, and had a few other strangely in-between encounters where we weren't kissing but there was much more physical contact than I usually had with people. There wasn't even a clear progression or a reason why sometimes we pretended we'd never kissed. It was just a lurching series of steps with no defined destination.

"We're kissing today." There were butterflies in the pit of my stomach, which was strange, because I still wasn't used to having butterflies in my stomach over anyone, let alone a Death Eater.

Which I really had promised to stop calling him, and thus far, he'd refused to kiss me if I did slip, so I kept that comment to myself.

He shoved himself off the wall, closed the distance between us in two steps, and leaned down to kiss me. He was very good at it, which didn't help my butterflies.

When we parted, he glanced toward the couch. "Er - shall we?"

"It's red," I pointed out as I followed him across the room. "You'll be kissing a blood traitor half-Gryffindor on a red couch. That's below rock bottom."

He shrugged and collapsed onto it. "Kissing a pretty girl is never rock bottom, and you did end up in Ravenclaw in the end." He reached out and grabbed my hand, and I let him pull me onto the couch. "I missed you," he said into my neck as he wrapped his arm around me.

He smelled good, and his shirt was unexpectedly soft. "Yeah. I missed you, too."

He snorted. "With that tone, I believe it." I elbowed him. He started playing with my hair.

Whatever my relationship with Draco Malfoy was, it was definitely a little dysfunctional. He seemed to like me anyway, though, and internal conflict aside, I really did genuinely like him, and it felt like that was probably what mattered.

I twisted around and pulled his head toward mine. "You taste good," he murmured when I broke the kiss to climb on top of him. "You taste like vanilla."

"I don't know why."

He grinned. "Sure you don't."

This seemed like a conversation that could only embarrass me, so I kissed him again. He clearly wasn't very invested in teasing me, because he immediately slid his tongue out to brush against mine, and one of his hands started to slide up my back.

He tasted good, too - like peppermint. He'd clearly been hoping that today was going to be a kissing day.

I pulled away, and he grunted a protest. When I yanked at the bottom of his shirt, though, his lips curled upwards into a grin, and he pulled it over his head and tossed it to the side.

Judging by the deep blue band covering his left forearm, he'd been hoping for this, too. I leaned back in to kiss his neck rather than comment on it, and I felt him give a sigh of relief. Reformed or not, that mark had been a source of contention since he'd first stumbled across me in the Three Broomsticks months ago. Even knowing how much information he'd passed to my brother since the war and how much the blood purity assholes wanted him dead because of it, it still bothered me that he'd ever let the mark be put on him - and that he'd even bragged about it, once upon a time.

"Kiss me," he said softly, and I did.

Then the door at the top of the stairs opened. "Astoria, are you eating with us?" my brother called down.

Draco jerked back, and his face went white. "I - no," I called back, scooting backward to let him stumble off the couch and start searching frantically for his shirt. "I'm not hungry."

Something in my tone must have sounded off, because there were footsteps on the stairs, and then my brother's face appeared over the bannister. "Are you okay?" Then he caught sight of Draco. I didn't turn around to look at him, but from the look on Brendon's face, Draco had not succeeded in finding his shirt. "Ah. Are you sure? You're both welcome to join us."

I glanced over at Draco. He was, indeed, still shirtless. "Maybe," I said.

Brendon shrugged. "Dinner's in ten." He looked past me. "We do try to be fully clothed when we eat, though," he said mildly. "I can't think how your shirt ended up over there."

As soon as he closed the door, Draco whirled toward me. "No!" he hissed. "No! I am not eating with them!"

"It'll be fun," I said. I was starting to genuinely warm to the idea. He started shaking his head, and as he circled around the couch to grab his shirt off the floor, I grabbed his hand. "Oh, come on. You like my brother. You keep saying so."

"Yeah, at the Ministry," he snapped, though sank onto the couch next to me rather than grab it. "When I'm working with him. Not at his kitchen table right after he's caught me making out with his sister."

"He didn't see us making out."

"Right. I was just hanging out without a shirt on because that's what I do with all my friends." I opened my mouth to ask whether he had any other friends, and he held up a hand to cut me off. "Don't say it."

I inched closer to him. "Please?" I said. Somewhere along the way, I'd realized that Draco was invested enough in our friendship that he was fairly pliable when I pushed an issue, and that tendency had become significantly more pronounced since he started kissing me - comments on Death Eaters aside, anyway, which he did reliably put his foot down on these days. I trailed my fingers up his right arm, and he made a face.

"Astoria, I'm serious."

I leaned in to press my lips against his chest, and he twitched. "Please?" I repeated. "I'll -"

He cut me off. "If you're about to try to bribe me, don't."

"Okay," I said, a little surprised by his vehemence. "But - please?"

He let his head fall back, and he stared up at the ceiling. "How much do you actually want me to, and how much of this is just you having way too much fun making me feel awkward?"

I considered that. "At least half."

He made a face. "Astoria, this is going to be really awkward."

I pulled my sweater over my head. From the look on his face, he wasn't expecting my shirt to be quite so low-cut.

"This is also bribery," he pointed out, though his objection to the principle didn't seem to be enough for him to tear his eyes away from my chest.

I leaned in to kiss him again, and he groaned.

"I just want to point out that doing this and then expecting me to go make nice with your family is fucked up. How am I supposed to think about anything else?" I opened my mouth again, and he made a face. "Fine. But you're a pain. I mean, you're worth it," he added quickly when I hugged him. "But you're still a pain."

He wasn't totally wrong about dinner - it was a little awkward. My brother managed to make a couple pointed comments that had Draco nearly as red as my shirt, and while my sister-in-law avoided making similar comments of her own, the curve of her mouth when my brother did told me that she was in no way inclined to intervene. The respite only came when my three year old niece Johanna started insisting that she hated broccoli, despite having declared it her favorite food ever the night before. After that, Brendon had his hands full - once she really got going, he was usually the only person she'd even sort of listen to.

Draco hovered after he was done just long enough to thank them and offer to help clean up. When he was waved off, he beat a hasty retreat back down the stairs. I was about to follow him when my sister-in-law stopped me.

"I know Brendon says that he's changed." Addison kept her voice low enough that neither Brendon, who was clearing the table, nor Johanna and their son Alec, who were now arguing loudly about what the best Quidditch position was, could hear. "I just want to check that you're sure about this - and that you're being safe."

From anyone else, that would have made me blush, but the look in Addison's deep brown eyes was pure and good-hearted concern - and I also knew that the kind of "safe" she was talking about wasn't just about sex.

"I am," I said. "I promise."

She smiled. "If you want to talk about it, just let me know. Brendon isn't always the most subtle person in the room." That made me smile, too, and she jerked her head toward the door. "Go on, then."

Draco's face had faded to an pale pink by the time I got downstairs. "Oh, come on," I said from the foot of them. "It wasn't that bad."

He made a face. "Yeah, no, your brother asking me what our plans for the night were and where I got my shirt from in front of his kids wasn't awkward at all."

I made my way across the room to join him. "Well, thank you," I said, settling back onto the couch and leaning against him.

"Mm-hmm."

Something occurred to me, and I twisted around to look at him. "Why didn't you want me to bribe you?"

It took him a minute to remember what I was talking about. When he did, he sighed. "Because I want you to want to do whatever we're doing, not use what you think I want as a bargaining chip. You're my girlfriend, not some prize." My eyebrows shot up, and he groaned. "That's not - oh, fuck off."

"That's not very nice," I teased. "You should be nicer to your girlfriend."

"Fuck off," he repeated. "And I know you're not stupid, so don't start acting like it now. What would you call this?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. I mean, we don't always kiss." He rolled his eyes, and I sighed. "I dunno," I said again. "I didn't really think about it. I just know that I like you, even though - you know."

"Even though I used to be a Death Eater?" I made a face, and he sighed. "Yeah. I know."

"They keep trying to kill you, so I feel like it's probably okay for me to like you anyway."

"Only you would see assassination attempts as a good thing." There was a smile in his voice. Before I could respond, his lips were on mine again.

He wasn't pushy - he never was - but he'd also started to figure out what I was comfortable with and how to make me squirm. When he ran a hand up my side, I whimpered into him and pulled at the bottom of his shirt.

"Your door is locked this time, right?" he whispered as I pulled it over his head.

I nodded and started running my hands up his bare chest. He groaned, crashed his lips to mine again, and started to trail his right hand up the inside of my thigh. He stopped a hands-length from where my legs met.

The way he kept rubbing my leg made me wish that he hadn't. My hips, which had started to move without my being aware of it, seemed to concur.

This was significantly more involved than we'd ever been before. It was also the first time I'd ever been remotely this involved with anyone - the only other person who had ever had their hands where his were was me.

That was probably why I took leave of my senses. When I pulled my sweater over my head, my shirt came with it.

He let out a deep groan, and his mouth immediately went from my neck to my chest. While I hadn't exactly planned on getting quite this undressed, I was glad that I'd worn a new bra anyway. His hand started to creep up my thigh again, and I whimpered.

Then his hand stilled. "Fuck, it got dark fast," he said, fumbling for his wand, which was laying on the table in front of the couch. Before I could stop him, he pointed it at the orb along the far wall.

The light didn't flare, exactly, but it provided enough light to be a problem, because when he turned back to me, he caught sight of my arms.

My arms have been a scarred mess since that awful, awful year at Hogwarts. It was harder to see the extent of the scarring in the very dim light, and his focus hadn't really been on my arms in the first place.

It wasn't very dim anymore.

"Astoria, what happened?" His voice shook on the last word. I was already scrambling off of him and groping for my shirt, but he caught hold of my wrists. "Stop," he said. His grip was loose enough and his voice was gentle enough that some of the blind panic quelled, just a little. "I'm not - I'm just asking."

"The Carrows happened," I snapped. This was exactly why I avoided short sleeves in front of anyone, even Brendon. "If you kept your arms crossed in front of you, it was harder for them to slash your chest or your stomach when they cursed you, and you didn't have to sit through class with - with everything showing. Since you were still bleeding, they didn't much mind. That's what your side did." I spat the last sentence at him. Anger was replacing the panic now, which was just as well. Anger was easier to deal with.

He let go of my wrists. I tried to read his face, and was disconcerted to find that I couldn’t. “That was a few years ago,” he said, and I realized that he’d seen the inside of my arms, too. Even with my wand strapped to my arm, enough of the scars and scabs and cuts were visible. Objectively, they’d caused much less damage; that they were self-inflicted was disturbing enough to most people that the objective extent of the injuries didn’t mean shit. “Some of those look new.”

I could have lied and told him that curses didn't always heal properly. He might have even believed me. I settled for defensive honesty anyway. "Those are none of your business."

He studied my face for a minute. Just as I was about to break the silence, he said, "I'm sorry." His voice cracked at the end. "I really, really am. I wish I could take it back."

"Did you do that to anyone?" It hadn't occurred to me to wonder that before now - everyone had known Draco Malfoy was an actual Death Eater, and that had been reason enough for us to give him a wide berth without hearing anything specific - but something about his tone made me think twice.

"No!" I must have looked a little taken aback by his vehemence, because he sighed. "No. I - by the time that was a thing that people were doing, I was done with hurting people just to hurt them. I'm not saying I never hurt anyone - I did - but I didn't slash them up for fun." He looked down at my arms again. This time, he didn't stop me when I drew them back toward my body. "But I didn't stop the people who did, and I probably could have - and I was on their side. So I'm sorry."

I was glad he didn't say that he'd been young. He'd tried to use that excuse before, and I'd pointed out that he'd been older than I was when I'd fought in the Battle of Hogwarts on the right side. He hadn't had a response to that, and he hadn't used that justification since then.

He'd focused on my face for a moment, but now his gaze had gone back to my arms. Even pressed against my body, the angry red scars criss-crossing my outer arms were apparent. I didn't need to look down now to know that. He swallowed hard. "I - I wouldn't let anyone do that to you." His voice was halting. "Again, I mean. I promise."

I jerked away from him, and he flinched. "I don't regret it," I snapped. "I don't need protecting. If I had to do it all again, I'd go through it all every time."

"Jesus. You really are half-Gryffindor." I didn't respond to that. I'd come to realize that he was right about that - and more importantly, that I was proud of it. "Astoria, you were fifteen."

"The Carrows didn't want to kill purebloods," I spat. "I could get away with it. And you weren't stepping up to do it - you were too busy helping them."

He looked away from me. "Yeah, I was." His voice was so soft I could barely hear it. "I've been trying to make it right for years, and I'm sorry. There's not really anything else I can say." After a moment, he took a deep breath. "Should I go?"

The words were forced, and it couldn't been clearer that he didn't want to. I considered it, and then I shook my head. "No."

"Should I stop calling you my girlfriend?"

Those words were also forced. I could see him swallow, but other than that, he was still. I couldn't even see him breathing. I gave it significantly more thought, but eventually, I shook my head again. "No," I repeated. I heard a sigh of relief, and after a moment, he reached out to close his fingers around my shirt. I dropped it and let him toss it behind me, and we sat there for a minute.

"I'm sorry, Astoria." Now he was looking at my face. "I don't have the words to tell you how sorry I am."

I took a deep, shaky breath; my vision was starting to blur. "I know," I said. "You wouldn't be here if I didn't."

He gently put an arm around me, and I let him pull me toward him. The feeling of his bare chest against my back felt stifling and comforting and strangely intimate all at once, and I wasn't sure how to feel about any of it, other than that I was pretty sure that I didn't want him to let me go. "Is this okay?" he whispered, and I nodded.

"Would you do it again?"

He sighed, but he didn't try to play dumb or dodge the question. "No," he said after a moment. It was long enough that I knew he'd genuinely thought about it, but not too long to piss me off all over again because it wasn't a question that should require much deliberation. "I'm not a prat anymore. I would still want to protect the people I care about, but I'd find another way."

"Your father is a terrible person. He doesn't deserve to be protected."

I heard him swallow, and his grip on me got tighter. "I know. But it's not really about what people deserve, and I'd still do the right thing." He buried his face in my hair. "I think I'm about to start crying," he said after a moment. "I'm not looking for sympathy. I just can't help it."

"Don't get snot in my hair," I said automatically, and he managed a half-hearted chuckle. "Draco, I know you're sorry, so stop saying it. I wouldn't be talking to you in the first place if I didn't, let alone have you here."

"I don't know what else to say."

"Well, figure it out," I shot back.

He thought about it for a minute. "I care about you," he said. "A lot. And I won't react like that again. I just - I didn't realize how much they hurt you." He hesitated. "And if you - if you need to talk, instead of - you know - you can talk to me."

"Instead of cutting myself?" I supplied. His body stiffened, and I felt a perverse sense of victory. "I usually don't anymore. Nights are just still hard sometimes."

"The nightmares?"

He'd seen me after the nightmares once. It hadn't been pretty - though it had indirectly let to us kissing for the first time, so there was that. "Usually."

He sighed. "I mean it. Even if it's the middle of the night." He hesitated. "And I promise I won't judge you or - or get angry, or anything - if you don't. I just - I'm there if you need me." He squeezed me. "Is that better than an apology?"

"Yeah," I whispered. The tears were starting to sting my eyes again. "That's better."

"Good, because I mean it." He sighed. "I really do care, Astoria. You're one of my favorite people."

"You have terrible taste in people."

"So do you."

That broke through the mood enough to make me laugh, and after a moment, so did he. We probably laughed harder than was warranted, but when we finally stopped, everything felt a little less awful.

"It's getting late," he said. "Should I-"

"No. Stay." I turned around to look at him. He hadn't been lying about crying - his face was still wet. "But not - like, not in a sex way. Like, maybe in a kissing way, later, but not a sex way."

"Astoria, I'm going to assume it's not in a sex way unless you tell me otherwise. You can stop saying it."

His voice was so dry and exasperated that it made me giggle again. "What you were doing before was fine, though. I'm not in the mood anymore, but - but that was fine. When I am."

He didn't need to think about what I meant by that. "Just fine?" he asked. The look in his eyes and the slight curve to his mouth made me shiver. "If it was just fine, I won't -"

"No! You - you should."

He grinned. "So I haven't completely wrecked my chances with you?" I shook my head, and he kissed me. His lips were soft, and he didn't linger. It was a comforting kind of kiss, not a sexual kind of kiss, and I'd discovered I liked them both. "Good," he said softly. "I really do care about you."

"Stop saying that. I heard you the first ten times."

Related stories: +Sidenote: Greengrass series (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass series @hpfanfictalk (chronologically organized)

[beeezie]

The Way You Say My Name, Redux

I don't really know how I ended up dating a traumatized and combative girl who had very nearly been a Gryffindor, but there it is.

When Astoria had invited me to come over to her flat, I hadn’t really thought through all the possible implications of doing so. Given that she’d been in mine loads of times since we became friends and especially since we’d started kissing, it seemed like finally inviting me to do the same was probably a good sign, and I’d left it at that.

Given that she lived in a flat in her brother’s basement, I probably shouldn’t have. I really didn’t have anyone to blame but myself when her brother - who I worked with - had walked in on us kissing.

It’s not like I wouldn’t gone and kissed her anyway, but I probably would have had the presence of mind to double check that she’d locked the door first.

And as it turned out, Brendon Greengrass’s snarky comments were the least of my issues.

I wear long sleeves because I have a dark mark that I can’t get rid of and wish I didn’t have. I had wondered why Astoria did the same thing, since I knew that she’d never been a You-Know-You sympathizer, but I’d never pressed the issue. Astoria could be a little skittish and temperamental, so I tried not to say things that would just get her tense and pissed off.

I’m not used to doing that. It’s an interesting experience that I really could have done without.

It wasn’t that I was stunned to see that she had scars on her arms. I wasn’t an idiot, and I hadn’t been so self-absorbed at Hogwarts that I’d somehow failed to notice that a lot of people on my side were torturing a lot of people who weren’t. I’d been focused on other issues and other worries, but I had noticed. It was jarring to see how many and how many there were, but their existence?

No.

I hadn’t been expecting to see the considerably newer scars and half-healed cuts on the insides of her arms, though, underneath the wand she kept strapped to her forearm.

Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Astoria has never been the healthiest person in the world, which I liked, in part because I’m not the healthiest person in the world, either. She drinks too much, and I know that she drinks too much, and I know that she uses me to enable her drinking too much.

I also know that she’s too anxious and suspicious to get as drunk as she does around me with someone she didn’t trust. That shouldn’t make me feel as good as it does, since I know that part of it is that she’s a little self-destructive and doesn’t think that I’ll stop her.

“Astoria, what happened?”

It was really my own fault when she tried to bolt.

I reached out to grab her wrists. “Stop it,” I said softly. “I’m not - I’m just asking.”

Some of the tension left her shoulders, though when she looked up at me, it felt like her eyes were piercing straight through me. “The Carrows happened,” she said harshly, and I suddenly felt that familiar pit in my stomach open up. “If you kept your arms crossed in front of you, it was harder for them to slash your chest or your stomach when they cursed you, and you didn’t have to sit through class with - with everything showing. Since you were still bleeding, they didn’t much mind. That’s what your side did.”

I knew all of that. I did. I’d just never had my girlfriend lay all of it at my feet quite like that and in quite that tone before.

I let go of her. “That was a few years ago,” I pointed out. “Some of those look new.”

“Those are none of your business,” she snapped.

It was such a quintessentially Astoria answer that I almost smiled.

Almost. There were dozens of reasons not to the stretched across both of her arms.

I’d worked with the people who hurt her so much that years later, the war was still everything, still at the forefront of her mind, still taking its pound of flesh.

I’d helped them. They’d sat at my parents’ dinner table with me and laughed about hurting people. They’d laughed about the curses that still lingered on her, and even if I hadn’t found it very funny then, I’d smiled, too.

I couldn’t have forced a smile now if I’d wanted to.

“I’m sorry,” I said after a moment. “I really, really am. I wish I could take it back.” And then I let her guide the conversation away from hurting herself, back onto everything that I’d done wrong and all the ways in which I’d royally fucked up during the war.

I’m pretty sure that Astoria thought that my letting it go was a sign of maturity and respect.

It wasn’t. I’m still a coward when it matters. All that’s changed is what I’m afraid to lose.

Apparently, my traumatized and somewhat combative girlfriend who had very nearly been a Gryffindor had moved to the very top of that list. Objectively, there was definitely irony in that, but just now, I couldn’t see the humor.

Written for Winding Arrow's November 'POV Change-Up' exercise & @rumples-tumbles‘s 'Character Vignette' Challenge, both at @hpfanfictalk.

Related stories: +Sidenote: Greengrass series (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass series @hpfanfictalk (chronologically organized)

[beeezie]

Night Light

Daphne let the Imperius Curse she’d cast on our sister slip because she’d known I’d see it for what it was.

And she’d been too slow.

I've always had an interesting relationship with my sisters.

Part of it is that I'm so much older than they are; my time at Hogwarts only overlapped with my sister Daphne's by a year, and by the time Astoria was heading off to Hogwarts, I was planning my wedding.

Admittedly, I did marry young.

Still.

Despite that, I've always been close to Astoria. I see a lot of myself in her. She's idealistic and driven without being criminally stupid.

When I got to Hogsmeade before the battle, I'd expected to find Daphne there. She's never had much moral fiber - she's the sort of Slytherin who gives the rest of us a bad name. I'd been surprised to find Astoria with her, though; they'd never been close, and I knew that Astoria wasn't a coward. I'd have bet anything that she'd never have left the school, at least not of her own volition.

But then I'd called to them, and she'd looked up at me, and I'd realized that she hadn't left of her own volition. There was an uncharacteristic blankness in her eyes before she'd shuddered, and then her eyes were the same as they'd always been - alert, darting around the street, examining the throngs of people, and glancing toward the castle.

There were bigger things to deal with just then, so I let Daphne slip away - you always have to keep your eye on the prize, because in the end, it's not about the people, it's about the cause - and took Astoria back to the castle to fight. Our parents weren't happy with that afterward, but fifteen is old enough to make your own decisions about whether you want to take a stand against genocide and torture, and she was competent enough to hold her own in a fight - and besides, after being terrorized for a year, she had the right to fight back.

I knew, though. I deal with dark magic and dark creatures for a living - I've been sticking my nose where it might get cursed off since I was a fourth year. It's who I am. Daphne let the Imperius Curse she'd cast on our sister slip because she'd known I'd see it for what it was.

And she'd been too slow.

When I saw Astoria the following Christmas, it was in Hogsmeade. Hogwarts wasn't exactly full of good memories, so preferring it to Daphne's company spoke volumes, as did how much she twitched and jumped at every loud sound or sudden movement.

So I walked her back to school, gave her a hug, and went home to my wife and children for a somber Christmas.

Then I went to see Daphne.

She immediately opened the door when I pounded on it. That, more than anything, more even than the reputation for blood purity and dark arts sympathizers this part of town had, spoke volumes. Normal people - moral people - would have been far, far more uncomfortable with someone hammering on the door than Daphne was.

She looked irritated, not scared.

"To what do I owe this pleasure?" she asked. Her voice was cold; Daphne has never much liked me.

But then, I didn't much like her, either. "Can I come in?" She hesitated, so I added, "I don't think you want me saying what I have to say in the hallway."

She sighed and stepped back.

The difference between my sisters is remarkable. Astoria had always had a strong will, but the war had turned her skittish and uncomfortable in her own skin. Her face was gaunter than it had been, and while she never wore short sleeves, I knew she had scars crisscrossing her shoulders and arms.

The Carrows had always liked blood, and Astoria had never learned not to talk back.

Daphne, on the other hand, looked healthier than anyone had the right to less than a year after the war. From what I could see, her flat was orderly - I could just see her kitchen down the hall, and there were no dishes in the sink and nothing on the counter. Even the blanket on her couch just to my right was neatly folded.

It was the cleanest and more pristine residence I'd seen since before the war, and while she was clearly irritated, there wasn't a hint of anxiety in her face as she crossed her arms and stared at me. "What do you want?"

I leaned against the wall and shoved my hands in my pockets. "I want to talk about Astoria."

She took a moment to process what I'd said - and how I'd said it. Then the blood drained from her face. "You knew?"

I felt vaguely satisfied that she was finally feeling fear. She should have been feeling it years ago and for different reasons, but still. If the specter of Azkaban was what it took… well, then the specter of Azkaban was what it took.

"Of course I knew," I snapped. "This is what I do. You think I can't recognize what the Imperius curse looks like on my own sister?"

Her jaw tightened mulishly. "Fine. Yes. I did. She was fifteen, Brendon - she didn't have any business there! You shouldn't have brought her back."

"She had no business there? Or no one did?"

Daphne looked away from me. Her bangs shielded her eyes, but I didn't need to see them to know that the wheels in her head were spinning. "For fuck's sake, Brendon, neither of you did. You're purebloods. You would have been fine no matter what happened. I couldn't have done anything about you, but I had to try to save her. She was fifteen!"

Our parents had objected on the basis of her age, too. I had given them the same reply I gave to Daphne now. "Fifteen is old enough to decide whether you want to watch a genocide without doing anything."

Our parents had had the sense to drop it, because they knew I was right. Daphne didn't, because she thought that I wasn't.

"A fifteen year old isn't any good in a battle," she snapped.

I didn't bother to argue - attacking Astoria's competence was just a deflection, and I wasn't stupid enough to fall for it. "Is that the issue? Or did you just want to avoid explaining away both of your siblings fighting the Death Eaters?"

She scoffed, but I could tell that I'd hit a nerve. "What do you want?"

"I want to tell you to stay away from her," I shot back. "Or I'll wreck your life."

She opened her mouth, and then closed it again. I waited; I wasn't going to fill the silence for her. Daphne had always been better at twisting the words of others than making her own arguments. After a minute, she fell back on her favorite out: appealing to the authorities. "The Ministry wouldn't like that."

I didn't point out that I was part of the Ministry. She knew that - she'd just always been in the habit of going over your head if she didn't like what you were saying. I wasn't sure if she knew exactly how high she'd have to get to go over my head - we didn't talk much - but Daphne had always been so entitled that she'd have assumed she could do it anyway. Instead, I shot back, "Well, Daphne, that's an advantage to being on the right side. The Ministry tends to believe you over traitors."

Her eyes darted past me. It was a small thing - Astoria wouldn't have noticed it - but I knew that I had her. "It would come out," she insisted. "It would."

I shrugged. "That's another advantage to being on the right side. The Ministry tends to prioritize punishing traitors. I'd get a two week paid suspension and a slap on the wrist while you screamed your lungs out day and night in Azkaban. That seems like a fair trade to me."

There was no way out - and from the way she was shivering, she knew it, too.

"Fine," she snapped. "I'll stay away from your precious baby sister." She stalked over to the door and yanked it open. "Get out."

I smiled and straightened up. "Gladly." Before I stepped over the threshold, I looked at her. Her lower lip was trembling. "And when Astoria does tell me, I'll make sure to remind her that there's no timeline on charging people for using unforgivables."

"Get out."

As soon as I stepped outside the flat, she slammed the door in my face.

I was glad she'd been paying attention.

Written for @rumples-tumbles ‘Character Vignette’ challenge at @hpfanfictalk​.

Related stories: +Sidenote: Greengrass series (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass series @hpfanfictalk (chronologically organized)

[beeezie]

Kite Flying

The threat of a werewolf-choreographed assasination plot leaves Draco hiding out in a cottage by the sea. Astoria decides to join him.

(or, kisses were like kite flying; I knew we'd sail or sink)

I used to be a morning person. Then the war happened, and I learned to be afraid of the dark. The day wasn’t safe, either, of course, but night was always worse.

Now I’m not a morning person. Sometimes I can’t even get to sleep until the sunlight starts to stream through my window.

It is what it is.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed just before noon, I found that the envelope I kept over my fireplace was glowing. I slumped over to it and yanked out the parchment inside.

Astoria -

Can’t do drinks tonight - sorry. I have to lay low for a little while.

“Ugh,” I said out loud. Snatching the quill off the mantle, I made my way over to the table to scribble a reply.

That sucks. I can’t just come to your place?

I tapped the parchment with my wand and was about to get up when it started to glow again. After a minute, more words etched across the page.

I’m not home - better safe than sorry.

Before I could respond, more words appeared.

Don’t laugh, but I’m staying in a cottage near some Muggle town. It apparently belonged to someone in the Order of the Phoenix.

That did make me laugh as I wrote out, That’s poetic. They’ll protect just any Death Eater who gives them information, won’t they?

Now I did get up - I knew that he’d probably take a little while to respond. He usually did when I called him a Death Eater.

After I’d showered, I checked the parchment again. There was new writing on it, but the paper itself was still warm - he had taken awhile to respond.

He’d ignored my jibe. He usually did when I called him a Death Eater.

It’s Fideliused - Potter’s the secret keeper. If you want to keep me company, track him down - it shouldn’t be too hard, he said he had business with your brother today. Fucking werewolves.

I deliberated about that as I got dressed. On one hand, I was bored - my part-time job at the Ministry was not particularly interesting, and my four day weekend started today. Drinking was also one of my favorite hobbies, and I didn’t particularly like drinking alone.

At the same time, I wasn’t entirely sure that I wanted to admit to anyone other than my brother and his wife that I was actually spending sufficient time with Draco Malfoy that I knew where he was hiding out and that I wanted to keep him company. And I especially wasn’t sure that I wanted to admit it to Harry Potter.

When I exited my basement bedroom into my brother’s kitchen, no one was home. I decided to take that as a sign that I should just shrug off the whole thing and made the responsible, adult decision to have an ice cream sundae for breakfast.

I was just finishing it when the front door slammed. I stiffened. Only my brother slammed the door like that, and besides, my sister-in-law and their kids had probably already been whisked off to an ‘undisclosed location’ provided by the Ministry that morning. She didn’t particularly like the monthly disruption surrounding the full moon, but as my brother said, better safe than sorry. He’d gotten plenty of threats about what werewolves would do to his family.

And now that there was no longer ‘a sign’ taking the decision out of my hands, I had to decide whether it was worth asking him about Harry Potter.

“Tori?” he called out. “You here?”

“In the kitchen!” I put my ice cream bowl in the sink, pulled my wand out, and summoned the tin of coffee. By the time he walked in, I had a pot ready.

He grinned at me. “Thanks. I’m been up since five - long fucking day, and I’m nowhere near done.” He poured himself a mug and gulped about a third of it down. “Do you have anything going on tonight?”

I hesitated. “I - I was thinking I might go over to Draco Malfoy’s.”

“Again?” His blond hair was shielding his eyes, which made it even harder to read his expression than it usually was. “You’re spending a lot of time with him recently. Anything I should know about?”

“I’m not Imperiused, if that’s what you’re asking,” I snapped.

Brendon’s face broke into a grin. “No, that wasn’t what I was asking,” he said once he’d finished laughing. “I was asking if you were dating him. I don’t think Draco Malfoy could cast an Imperius curse if he tried these days.”

“Oh.” I collapsed back into my chair. “No, I’m not.” I half-wished that I hadn’t brought it up at all. My brother was a war hero. He’d said that he didn’t mind Draco Malfoy these days, all things considered, but it still seemed to me like a Death Eater was a Death Eater, and for a Slytherin, my brother has never understood moral relativity.

Then again, for a Ravenclaw, neither have I.

He slid into the chair across from me and reached out to touch my arm. “I’m just curious. I told you you could stay with me for as long as you wanted. That wasn’t conditional. I’m not your father, and I don’t pretend to be - you can spend time with whoever you want without justifying it to me.”

“He’s kind of a Death Eater, though,” I pointed out. I kept my gaze on my brother’s fingers; I didn’t want to see his disappointment.

When Brendon didn’t respond, I let my eyes flick upwards. To my surprise, there didn’t seem to be any judgment on his face; he just seemed to be choosing his words carefully. “I wouldn’t call Draco Malfoy a Death Eater,” he said finally. “Dark mark or not.”

“Well, he doesn’t usually argue with me when I call him that.”

“You call him a Death Eater to his face?” I shrugged. “And he invites you back?”

“Yeah.”

“He must be desperate for company.” I stuck my tongue out at him, and he grinned. “Look, Astoria, I trust your judgment. I always have, and I always will.” I managed a tight smile back, and he squeezed my arm once before getting up to refill his mug.

I steeled myself. “Apparently he’s hiding out in some cottage somewhere. He said that Harry Potter was the secret keeper.”

Brendon snapped his fingers. “Oh, I thought I heard something about that this morning when I was talking to Seamus Finnigan - there’s talk of his starting a new dangerous creature division, and he was picking my brain. I’ve got a meeting with Harry in a couple hours - if you want to tag along, you can ask him.”

I considered that for a moment. In the end, not wanting to spend the evening alone in a quiet house decided me.

The promise of free alcohol didn’t hurt, either.

“Yeah,” I said. “Okay. Are you heading right back out?”

He shook his head. “I need to take a nap - I doubt I’ll have time to sleep tonight. I’ll call down before I leave.”

When I retreated back to my flat, I checked the parchment. Draco hadn’t written anything else. I considered writing back to him, and then decided to do my makeup and read a book instead. When Brendon called down, I tapped my wand to the parchment before making my way toward the stairs.

The words had disappeared by the time I closed the door.

To his credit, Harry Potter seemed remarkably unphased when he got to my brother’s office and found me there. After he’d confirmed with my brother that I really was Astoria Greengrass, he told me where the cottage was. When I asked, he even told me why Draco Malfoy was hiding there in the first place.

I wished my brother luck with the werewolves and set out on my way. The sky was starting to turn orange when I climbed up the hill to the cottage. The view of the ocean was breathtaking; the wind whistled across it and up the cliff, tossing my hair this way and that. I stood there and breathed in the salt air for a moment before slipping inside the gate and knocking on the cottage door.

Despite the fact that he’d explicitly invited me to join him, Draco looked surprised to find me standing there. “Hey,” he said, stepping back to let me inside. “I wasn’t really expecting you to show up. You actually admitted to Potter that you talk to me?”

I shrugged and pulled off my boots as he locked the door behind me. “Yeah, well.” I followed him into the living room and flopped onto the grey couch. “Tell me this isn’t a sober hideout.”

He snorted and ducked into the kitchen across the hall.

While he was gone, I studied the room. The furniture seemed to be in decent shape, and outside of his wand laying on the table, there was no hint of magic in the cottage at all. There was even a television on a solid metal stand across from the couch.

That was smart. You never knew what kinds of spells magical people might lay into the goods they sold.

“Why don’t you have your wand with you?” I asked him as soon as he walked back into the room, bottle in hand. My wand was always with me - usually, I kept it strapped to my right arm under the sleeve of my shirt. He glanced at the table, and I said, “In here isn’t with you if you’re in the kitchen. Harry Potter told me that you were here because you’ve pissed off some werewolves again and they want to rip you to pieces. You should have your wand.”

“Worried about me?” I shrugged again. “Potter wouldn’t tell anyone by choice, he’s built up a resistance to Veritaserum, and if You-Know-Who couldn’t Imperius him, nobody can. I think I’m pretty safe.”

Situations like this always hammered home the fundamental difference between me and Draco Malfoy. I always had my wand with me, even when I was with my brother, and I trusted him more than anything. I couldn’t imagine feeling safe enough to leave my wand unattended.

“He told me where you were,” I pointed out.

“I told him he could if you came asking. He wouldn’t have otherwise, no matter who your brother is.” He offered the bottle to me, but when I reached out to take it, he pulled it back. “Fuck,” he said. “Sorry - I opened it. I wasn’t thinking. I’ll get you a different one.”

“It’s fine,” I told him before he could vanish through the doorway again. “Just give it to me.” He hesitated, and I snapped my fingers. “Seriously, just give it to me.”

He handled the bottle over, looking genuinely surprised. “Sorry,” he said again. “I know you don’t like open bottles.”

It was true. I didn’t. Open bottles were scary, and he’d always known that without having to be told. That was probably why I wasn’t bothered this time.

I shrugged and took a drink. “Just don’t poison me.”

He chuckled, grabbed his half-empty bottle off the coffee table, and did the same.

The trouble with Draco Malfoy was that I actually did genuinely like him, despite his history. I still felt conflicted about that - I’d never liked him at Hogwarts because he’d been a bit of a prick, and we’d been on opposite sides at the Battle of Hogwarts because I had a moral compass and he didn’t (or at least, he hadn’t then). Our first post-war encounter had been fairly tense, too - I’d tried to hex him and gotten him thrown out of the Three Broomsticks - but things had improved since then, especially since I’d personally witnessed multiple people try to kill him for the information he passed to Harry Potter and my brother.

Growing up in a Death Eater family apparently meant to that you ended up being privy to quite a lot of useful information.

Whatever his regrets and whatever he’d done to try and make up for it, though, I still knew that there was a dark mark lurking under his perpetual affinity for long-sleeved shirts. I knew that he’d used unforgivable curses, and I knew that he’d still been on the wrong side because he’d been a coward. I wished I’d ended up friends with someone else who didn’t have that baggage.

So I compensated by calling him a Death Eater and insulting his family on a regular basis. It was a balance that made me feel a bit better, and while he clearly didn’t like it, he’d (mostly) stopped objecting to it.

It was probably a little toxic, but that was the war. It left scorch marks. At least he understood things like not opening bottles for me, even if he was too stupid to keep his wand on him no matter what.

And I did like having a friend. I’d lost a lot of friends during the war.

“So,” he said. “You seriously told Potter that you wanted to spend time with me?”

“Well, it was this or sit at home. I think Brendon was just as happy, anyway - he doesn’t feel like it’s ‘his place’ to make me go hide around the full moon, but I know he wishes I’d just keep Addison, Alec, and Jo company rather than do my own thing.”

“So Slytherin’s very own war hero thinks that I’m a safe person for his sister to spend time with.” He took another swig. “I’m honestly not sure whether I feel flattered or insulted.”

“You can see his logic, though. You’re basically a defanged snake.” The expression on his face made me giggle. “How do you still have information left to give the Ministry? You’ve been doing this for years, and I bet no one talks to you anymore.”

He shrugged. “Can you remember everything about your childhood in demand?” I shook my head. “What if I asked you about your seventh birthday party, or your first Christmas after starting Hogwarts?”

“We didn’t really celebrate Christmas.” He rolled his eyes, and I sighed. “I see your point.”

He hesitated. When I tried to stare him down, his grey eyes looked away from me. I was surprised when he elaborated - he usually wouldn’t have. “And I was - I mean, I was one of them. That can be… useful.”

He usually tried to avoid talking about this sort of thing, probably because it sometimes opened up old wounds that led to my yelling at him about being a Death Eater and his family being evil. That could still happen, of course, but the Ravenclaw in me was curious.

“How?”

He sighed. “If I keep talking, is this going to lead to another fight? Potter literally barged into my flat this morning because of a ’credible threat’ from some werewolf extremists. He considered it urgent enough to wake me at 4am. Very few people know that I’m hiding out at all, and only two - well, three, including you - can actually get here. I’ve had a long day.”

“I won’t start a fight.” He looked skeptical, and I jerked my head toward his empty bottle. “That’s empty, though, you know.”

To my surprise, he got to his feet and made his way back toward the kitchen - though I saw him roll his eyes before he turned around. He came back with two bottles, popped the top off the first, and put the second in front of me. When I raised my eyebrows at him, he grinned. “Well, was I wrong?”

“No.” I took another swig from my first bottle - it was more than half gone. “I promise I won’t start a fight.”

He slumped backward on the couch and made a face. “I don’t know, Astoria. I know how they think. I can talk like them. You don’t - you didn’t grow up in a proper pureblood house, not really, and you weren’t even in Slytherin. You don’t get it. Sometimes I watch interrogations, and I catch things about the war that other people don’t - little inconsistencies, or things that they couldn’t know unless they were there. If I use Polyjuice, I can play the part convincingly. I can tell Potter or Granger or your brother things that throw people off the stories they’ve rehearsed. Stuff like that.”

I wasn’t quite sure what to make of that - or of the fact that he’d never brought it up before - so I asked a benign question instead. “Why just them?”

The smirk that had always pissed me off in school started to spread across his face. “No one else wants to deal with me. They seem to think that I don’t play well with others.”

That made me laugh again. It also made me feel a little better about being friends with him, and I let him steer the conversation onto more light-hearted matters.

After I’d finished my third drink, I got up to use the bathroom. When I got back to the living room, he was taking another swig of his fourth bottle. I threw myself back onto the couch just as he put his bottle back on the table and leaned back.

When he grinned at me, I was suddenly aware of how much closer I’d ended up to him than I’d initially intended. The smile faded from his face, and he studied me for a moment.

If I was being entirely honest - which I try not to be about things like this, as a rule - I had wondered what it would be like to kiss Draco Malfoy before, and from the look on his face, it seemed like the feeling was mutual.

I wouldn’t say that my heart skipped a beat, but there were definitely butterflies in my stomach as he bent his head toward me.

Then he snapped backwards. “Oh, no.” He scrambled off the couch, hands in the air. “No. If I touch you while you’re drunk, your brother will either kill me or hex my balls off.”

“He will not.”

Draco took another step backward, even though I hadn’t moved at all. “Oh, yes he will - and even if you weren’t drunk, he wouldn’t want a Death Eater touching his sweet baby sister. Fuck, you wouldn’t want a Death Eater touching you if you weren’t drunk, either.”

“I’m not drunk,” I told him. “I’m slightly tipsy.”

He sneered at me. “Oh, well, that makes it okay, then.”

He’d always been sardonic. It amused me now more than it had when we’d been in school and he’d been a Death Eater.

“You’re very dramatic,” I told him. “If you don’t want to kiss me, you don’t have to kiss me. It doesn’t need to be a big thing.”

“It doesn’t need to - for fuck’s sake, are you serious right now?” He pushed up his sleeve and thrust out his arm. The dark mark had lost most of the definition I remembered them having in the war, but it was still unmistakable.

I flinched. I’d seen it before, but only rarely - he didn’t even eschew his long sleeves when it was warm out.

“That’s what I thought,” he snapped, pulling his sleeve back down and collapsing back onto the couch - this time with far more distance between us. He was practically sitting on the arm.

“So you don’t want to kiss me, then?”

He let his head fall backwards. “Isn’t it about time for you to go home?” he asked listlessly as he studied the ceiling.

“It’s fine if you don’t. I was just curious.”

“For fuck’s sake, yes, Astoria, of course I want to kiss you. You don’t actually want to kiss me, so let me change the subject to something that’s not my nonexistent sex life rather than rubbing it in my face.”

“I’m rubbing something in your face now?” His face turned bright red, but before he could respond or stalk off, I added, “And since when is your sex life nonexistent?”

I could hear his teeth grinding together. There was a part of me that was aware that I was probably pushing him too far and that I might actually be causing him genuine discomfort.

That part of me was not big enough to overcome the three drinks I’d had.

He was probably right. I probably was drunk.

“Since school,” he said through clenched teeth. “Most girls these days aren’t lining up to sleep with someone who has a dark mark, and I don’t want to fuck the ones who are. Seriously, Astoria, I know you like fucking with me, but cut it out. I don’t want to talk about this.”

That did make it through the haze. “Sorry,” I said after a moment. “I didn’t realize it would bother you so much.”

“I need another drink,” he muttered, shoving himself off the couch. “How did I end up with you as my best friend?” My face much have shown my surprise, because he rolled his eyes. “Oh, fuck off. It’s just by default. You’re pretty my only friend - you already knew that.”

He stalked off to the kitchen.

“Get me one, too!” I called after him.

“No!” he yelled back. “You definitely don’t need another!”

He probably had a point, so I took the water he gave me without arguing with him.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that going home was not really an option. Even if it had been a good idea for me to wander around outside the night before the full moon when I’d been drinking (which it probably wasn’t), I wasn’t in any condition to Apparate. I was in the habit of not worrying about that, because he generally could once he’d sobered up a little, but the whole point of his hiding out was not giving anyone the opportunity to tear him apart, which going outside just before midnight undoubtedly would.

When I pointed that out to him through a yawn, he made a face. “Yeah, that occurred to me about an hour ago,” he said. “I haven’t slept in the bed yet - you take it. I can crash on the couch.”

As soon as I’d closed the door behind me, I flipped the switch at my wrist, and my wand slid into into my hand. I tapped it against the solid silver band I wore around my wrist twice and whispered, “Staying here to play it safe.” Then I pushed my wand back into place and reset the catch.

I hate sleeping in my clothes enough that I seriously deliberated sleeping in my underwear, but I ultimately decided against it - I hate being vulnerable even more than that, and being mostly naked and asleep in an unfamiliar place was basically the definition of vulnerable. Instead, I just stripped off my sweater and crawled into bed.

Sleep did not come easily. I should have expected that.

It didn’t take long for my eyelids to start to feel heavy, but before I’d actually fallen asleep, I realized that there was something wrong. I don’t know how I realized that there was something watching me, but I knew that there was. At first, I thought that it was actually in the room with me - the shadows seemed longer and darker than they had just a few minutes ago - but then I heard something just outside the window. When I let my eyes drift in that direction, there was a dark shape standing just within my line of vision.

My wand was still strapped to my forearm, but when I tried to reach down to undo the catch again, I found that I couldn’t. My limbs were as heavy as lead; I couldn’t even roll over. The things outside - there were two of them now - started scratching on the window. I tried with every fiber of strength that I had, but I couldn’t move a muscle.

Then I remembered: I wasn’t alone in the house.

I wasn’t alone in the house.

I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I tried again, tried yelling louder - but all I got was deafening, oppressive silence.

The scratching intensified. They were nearly through -

I realized I could move again when my scream finally made it out.

Footsteps crashed down the hall, and then the door flew open. I was on my feet and lurching toward the wall - you always wanted your back to a wall when you were dueling, I remembered that - when I recognized the voice. “Are you okay?” he asked breathlessly. His wand arm was outstretched, and I could see the moonlight glinting off the wood.

With the surge of pure panic gone, my legs gave out. “Window,” I croaked from the floor. His wand immediately went toward the window I’d heard the scratching at. There was nothing, and I realized what must have happened. “Nightmare.”

He muttered something, and I felt something whoosh by me. The spell clearly confirmed that there was no one else here, because after a moment, he pocketed his wand and knelt down.

I was still shaking. I didn’t have those kinds of dreams often - the ones where you’re caught between dreaming and waking - but when I did, they were awful.

“Can I do anything?” he asked without touching me.

Unfortunately, now that my panic had become slightly less acute, I was (slowly) starting to process the situation.

It was not ideal. For one thing, Draco apparently didn’t sleep in a shirt, and the angry black blotch on his arm was made all the more apparent by how pale he was in general. For another, he wasn’t the only one who usually wore long sleeves for a reason, and my scars from that hellish year at Hogwarts were still visible - as were other, more recent scars.

I shook my head, though I hadn’t even really processed the question. The mark on his arm was occupying all of my attention; it reminded me of a lot of things that I didn’t need reminding of right now.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him glance down. He sighed. “I’ll be right back,” he said, straightening up. When he re-entered the room, he was wearing his shirt again, and he also had a cup of water in his hand.

That was certainly better, but when he offered me his hand, I still cringed when I took it and let him pull me up off the floor.

“Do you want some water?” His voice was so soft I almost couldn’t hear it over my heart pounding, and it took me a moment to process the question. Once I had, I nodded and took the glass he offered to me.

“Thanks,” I managed to get out. “I’m - I’m going to go wash my face.”

He stepped aside to let me shuffle past him.

Washing my face didn’t really help to banish my panic or slow down my heart; when I got back to the room, I was still on the verge of bursting into tears. Draco seemed to be inspecting the window closely. When he heard my sniffle, he looked over at me and said, “There doesn’t seem to be anything out there.”

I shuddered. “It was a nightmare,” I said again. “I - I get them sometimes.” He nodded and glanced toward the door. Before he could say anything else, I added, “Please don’t leave me alone.”

He took a couple hesitant steps toward me, and I burst into tears.

To his credit, Draco dealt with the entire situation fairly well; I let him guide me toward the bed, and once I was laying down, he gently pulled a coherent answer about where he should be sitting out of me. He rested one hand - not the dark mark hand, I made sure of that - lightly on my shoulder and didn’t pry into the nightmare until after I’d stopped shaking.

“What happened?”

I shuddered again. “It’s just - it’s a thing I get sometimes. I get caught between being asleep and being awake - I can see the room, but I can’t move my body, and some of the things I see or hear aren’t there. Usually it’s shadows or monsters just outside the room trying to get in, or in the room looking for me - a couple times I’ve really thought that it was a lethifold or a dementor. It… it feels kind of like I woke up dead.”

He hissed as I choked back another sob. “That sounds awful,” he said. “Have you - can’t the Healers do anything?”

I shook my head. “They say that since it doesn’t actually hurt you and isn’t that common, it’s not worth the resources to figure out how to stop it.”

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they’ve never seen someone after one,” he said dryly. I rolled over to look up at his face, and immediately wished I hadn’t; the genuine concern was disconcerting all on its own.

“Sorry,” I forced myself to say. “Did I wake you up?”

“No. I was just about to go to sleep.” He tentatively started to run his hand across my upper arm. It felt vaguely comforting. “I tried to cover it, you know,” he said after a long moment. “The mark, I mean.” I stiffened a little, and his hand stilled. “I hate it. Nothing takes, though. I even tried a Muggle tattoo shop. Had a hell of a time explaining what it was in the first place, let alone why it absorbed everything they tried to put near it.”

“Oh.”

He sighed. “I just know that it’s not helping right now, and I’m sorry.”

When I was younger, my impulse would have been to automatically tell him that it was okay.

Older me didn’t have that impulse, so I didn’t say anything. When it was clear that I didn’t have anything to say, he resumed rubbing my shoulder. “Is that okay?” he asked. “I mean - is it helping?”

“It’s fine.” My heart rate was finally starting to slow down. “I hate those dreams,” I whispered. “Can you just - can you stay until I fall asleep?”

“Yeah.” His fingers trailed up to my hair and started to play with it. “Yeah. I can do that.”

A year ago, I would not have thought that I’d be able to fall asleep in the same house as Draco Malfoy, let alone the same room as him.

And certainly not in the same bed as him.

I did, though.

When I woke up, the sunlight was streaming through the window that had left me so distressed the night before. It banished the tall shadows from every corner of the room, leaving it bright and lively. When I glanced down at my wrist, I saw that my brother had responded. Thanks for letting me know. Stay safe.

I grabbed my sweater off the chair and pulled it over my head before plodding down the hall. I stopped in the bathroom, brushed my teeth with my finger, and continued on toward the living room. I found Draco - who looked very much awake - buried in a book.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly.

He looked up and smiled. “Hey. Did you sleep okay?”

I nodded once and then collapsed onto the couch. “Sorry about last night.” Now that I was closer to him, I noticed that his hair was a little damp, and he was wearing a different shirt - this one was green rather than black. It suited him - he didn’t look quite so gaunt in it.

He shook his head. “It’s fine. Really.”

I felt like I probably ought to wait at least an hour or two before poking fun at him, given what he’d done the night before, but I was so unaccustomed to not poking fun at him that it felt decidedly odd. After a moment of awkward silence, I blurted out, “Can I say something?”

The smile faded from his face a little. “What?”

“I wasn’t trying to fuck with you yesterday,” I said. His eyebrows knit together for a moment, and then realization dawned on his face. He immediately looked away from me, and I could see his cheeks start to flush. “I’ll drop it now. I just - I wasn’t.”

There was a very long pause. I wished I knew what he was thinking; his face gave nothing away. “Why did you say it, then?”

“Because I wanted to kiss you. Is that really that hard to believe?”

“Of you?” His voice was skeptical. “I’ve noticed that you’re very anti-Death Eater. You call me a Death Eater on a pretty regular basis. I have a dark mark, and you flinch whenever you see it. So yes. It really is that hard to believe.”

I winced. I could see his point. “Well, I did. Do. Whatever. And I’m not drunk anymore.”

Now he glanced up at me. His grey eyes had narrowed a little. “Did, or do? Those are two very different things.”

I steeled myself. “Do.”

He swallowed audibly. “Oh.” He tossed the book onto the table and inched toward me.

Now my heart was hammering for entirely different reasons. “If you still want to, I mean.”

A smirk was starting to spread across his face. It was equal parts profoundly irritating and vaguely endearing. “I do,” he said. “So maybe you should kiss me.”

This was not something I had very much experience with, and my nerves showed it. “Well, why don’t you kiss me?”

“Because you’re a lot more prone to panic attacks than I am, and I think you’ll be a lot less likely to panic if you’re the one initiating it.”

That was an entirely too reasonable answer, though I wasn’t sure how I felt about his thinking about it enough to come up with some kind of strategy. It’s not that I thought it was a bad thing, of course - it was just an odd thing, and under normal circumstances, I’d had wanted to mull it over in my head for a little while before deciding how I felt about it.

Right now, though, his eyes were on me, and I could remember his fingers in my hair as he sat with me while I tried to fall asleep, and mulling it over didn’t seem like an appropriate use of my time.

Kissing him held promise, though, so I lunged forward and pressed my lips to his. When I pulled back, I studied his expression. He was smiling again, so I leaned back in. One of his hands trailed up the outside of my leg, and when I opened my mouth, I could feel rather than hear his groan as his tongue brushed against mine.

I had just decided that I quite enjoyed kissing him when he pulled away from me. “Do me a favor.” When I leaned back toward him, he put up his hand. “I’m serious.”

“What’s the favor?”

His eyes drifted down to my lips for a moment. “Stop calling me a Death Eater. It’s not exactly a turn on.”

“Fine.”

“I’m serious,” he repeated. “And I have a name. If you want to swap saliva with me, you should use it once in awhile.”

I considered him for a minute. “You’re using the situation against me,” I said at last.

“Yes,” he agreed. “I am using the fact that you apparently want to kiss me to stop you from calling me a Death Eater. I’m a monster.” I tried to shove him, and he took advantage of my momentum to pull me into his lap. “Promise,” he whispered in my ear. I felt his lips against my neck, and I shuddered.

Draco Malfoy’s sex life might have been nonexistent as of late, but he clearly knew what he was doing.

“Okay,” I managed to get out. “Draco.”

He snorted. “For a girl who’s literally sitting in my lap, you’ve got a talent for making my name sound a lot like a curse.”

“Your name probably should be a curse.” He rolled his eyes, and before he could initiate another kiss, I added, “I don’t want to - I don’t want to have sex or anything. Right now. Or - or, like, tomorrow. Or anything like that. Just so you know.”

The playful grin on his face was immediately replaced by attentiveness. “Understood.”

“Like, pants are good.”

“Yes, Astoria, I understand what sex is.”

“I just - I want to make sure I’m being clear. I mean, you said that you were deprived of sex or whatever.”

He shrugged. “I don’t care what I’m deprived of.” When I screwed up my face to study him carefully, he held up his hands. “I’m serious. I really don’t.”

I didn’t see a lie in his eyes. I suspected that Draco Malfoy was a decent liar when he wanted to be, but even so, I didn’t think that he was lying to me.

“Okay.” I glanced at the clock. “I - before we - I should probably go. Maybe - next week?”

His smile faded, and he nodded once.

Just once.

“I just - I don’t have clothes,” I said quickly. I wished I did - but the idea of continuing to kiss him when I hadn’t been able to shower and wash my hair was not an appealing one. “Or a toothbrush. Or - or anything, really.”

“No, I know. It’s fine.” He hesitated for a moment, and then said, “You could always come back, if you wanted. Or bring - bring clothes here, or something.” I considered that, and he said in a rush, “It’s just that I’m stuck here for a few more days, and I wouldn’t mind company. You don’t have to. And I’m not - I don’t mind sleeping on the couch. Really.”

I considered that for a moment.  “Yeah. I think maybe I will.”

I had not realized that I was capable of making Draco Malfoy smile quite that broadly. I had also not realized how much I’d like it when he did.

Written for @meggonagall‘s ‘Conjure Your Patronus’ challenge at @hpfanfictalk.

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories @hpfanfictalk (organized chronologically)

[beeezie]

The Hammer to Fall

Astoria's brother teaches her to resist the Imperius Curse.

During the war, there were a lot of people on the wrong side who loved the Cruciatus Curse. They liked the way that their cruelty masqueraded as strength of will when their chosen victim screamed, and they liked the way that it didn't leave marks.

But the Carrows had always favored discipline that drew blood.

Alecto had always had her wand out. She pointed with it. She gestured with it. She mimed casting curses as she talked about "those filthy Mudbloods" (or just "vermin" - she'd liked that even more, because it made her feel clever as well as cruel). Sometimes she cast spells while she did so, and whoever was in her path would feel a sudden sting on their shoulders or calves (or face, especially if you were both pretty and a half-blood). Sometimes she didn't. It was impossible to tell until someone sucked in a gasp.

It was never clear whether an audible reaction irritated her or thrilled her. Sometimes, it seemed like it was both. You were damned if you were stoic, and you were damned if you cried out.

There was really only so much any of us could do to control our reactions, anyway. It hurt. Reacting to that wasn't voluntary.

I was lucky I was pureblood, I suppose, and that my parents were blood traitor sympathizers rather than Weasleys or Longbottoms. One of the girls I shared the fifth year Ravenclaw girls' dormitory with wasn't so lucky. They didn't actually kill her, but she'll probably never leave St. Mungo's.

Of course, she's in good company. Apparently they're expanding the long-term care wing again. There are too many people who still aren't in any position to leave.

I hadn't walked away unscathed, of course. I've never been good at keeping my mouth shut, and they had a tendency to throw comments about my blood traitor brother around when they thought I needed to be intimidated. Since I love my brother, it didn't have quite the effect they were looking for.

And so I ended up on the receiving end of Alecto Carrow's curses more often than most purebloods would have. I learned early that if I hugged my arms around myself, just as a rule, I'd be more likely to avoid having my shirt shredded, and if she ruined your clothes, she made you just... sit there. Even if it was cold. Even if you were a girl.

There are still ugly red scars criss-crossing the outside of my arms, but at least I never had the experience of shivering in that ice-cold classroom with my chest on full display to everyone who cared to look.

The scars are worth it.

And I'd always said that the scars were enough, and that I wouldn't add to them like some of the people I knew in school had started doing. The Carrows had already tortured me. Why would I do it to myself?

After going through another cluster of nightmares, though, I'd decided that digging my nails into my arms wasn't much different than taking a knife to them.

I was wrong. It was different. It was just different in the wrong direction, and that had made it much harder to stop.

It's not that what I was doing was causing me serious injury. I'd had much worse. They were just scratches. It's just that when you've gotten to the point where you're scraping layer by layer of your own skin off and feeling that strange, undefinable, toxic sense of relief as it starts to sting and the thing red line of blood becomes more pronounced...

I mean, you're really not in a good place.

And that was a line I'd said I'd never cross, and now I kept crossing it, and that should still mean something.

So I sat with myself for a little while, rehearsed my request in front of the mirror, and then trudged up the stairs that led from my little flat to my brother's kitchen. Thankfully, he was alone at the table, adding sugar to his coffee. Judging from the lack of footsteps overhead, I suspected that my sister-in-law had already left with their son and daughter for the day.

That was really just as well. I didn't need witnesses for this.

"I want you to teach me how to throw off the Imperius Curse," I told him without preamble.

Brendon's eyes went from his coffee cup to me, and he put the sugar down. "Good morning to you, too."

I crossed my arms. He didn't ask me to repeat myself - he never did. I knew he'd heard me.

"Why now?" he asked after a very long pause. Something in his delivery made me hesitate, and he sighed. "Sit down," he told me, jerking his head toward the chair across from him.

I tried to read his face as I settled into the chair. It was carefully neutral - his eyebrows were drawn together just enough to convey polite interest without suggesting significant concern, even though I'd just asked for something fairly outlandish.

He took a sip of coffee, and I realized that he wasn't going to say anything else until I gave him an answer. I'd been rehearsing an answer to "why?" in the mirror for the past day; it hadn't occurred to me that he'd want to know about the timing rather than the principle.

"My nightmares aren't getting any better," I said after a moment. "And I think - I think it'll help if I know that nobody can control me like that."

He put his cup down, pushed his messy blond hair back from his face, and studied me. "I agree," he said after a moment. "But I don't know that I'm the right person to teach you."

I hadn't expected that, either.

"Why not?"

"Because I don't think that having me curse you - even to teach you - is the best way to get rid of your demons."

Realization hit me like a ton of bricks. "You know." I had a sudden urge to flee back to the relative safety of my flat, even though I knew that that wouldn't solve anything - the last thing I'd wanted was him knowing that I'd been too weak to resist the Imperius Curse when it had mattered so, so much.

He sighed. "Astoria, this is what I do, and I know you. Of course I know."

Now I was replaying that awful, awful night in my head again. My sister and I had never really been close, but I'd never been afraid of her until she'd cornered me after the evacuation order had been given. I still remembered how cold her voice had been when she'd realized that I wanted to stay and fight, how certain she'd sounded when she said that our brother was on the wrong side.

And then she'd raised her wand.

I'd realized that something was wrong by then, of course, but I didn't get my wand before she brought hers down. I'd been too trusting. I'd been a fool.

I've changed since then. I don't trust people anymore. Anyone can be a liar.

My wand is never in my pocket, either. I always have it strapped to my forearm in a sheath. If I release a catch or flick my hand in a certain way, it slides into my hand. I've practiced over and over, until I was sure I could do it right. I've practiced laying down, I've practiced standing up, and I've practiced while brushing my hair. I've even trained myself to use utensils with my other hand, and I've mostly stopped eating meat so I don't have to use both hands when I cut it.

The war was never over. Not for me.

"Why didn't you say anything?" I asked.

He leaned back in his chair. "I assumed that if you weren't telling me, it was because you weren't ready. There's no timeline on charging someone for using an Unforgivable."

I didn't point out that I had no proof that she'd done it - that the word of a damaged girl barely out of Hogwarts wouldn't convince anyone, and memories were never really reliable. People had learned that the only way you could really trust a memory was if you already trusted the person - memories can be manipulated, and once one person figures out how to do it right, how to do it convincingly, the knowledge spreads like wildfire. It's easier to learn than to invent. Most of the would-be Death Eaters at school had been shit at inventing things, but they'd been quick learners... and even though we'd been better at inventing, all the creativity in the world couldn't stop them from sometimes making us want to die because there was no way out.

I didn't point that out because if I did, he'd point out that he'd seen it, too, and his word was proof enough. My brother was knee-deep in a lot of Ministry secrets. People liked him.

And more importantly, they trusted him.

"I'm sorry," I said instead. "I - I should have been stronger."

He shook his head. "Astoria, you were fifteen. There aren't a lot of fifteen year olds who can resist the Imperius Curse."

"You could," I spat out. It was an old hurt; I'd long since lost count of how many times I'd played out the scenario in my head, imagining what he could have done in my shoes, even if he'd been fifteen. He could tell, too - there was something resembling pity in his eyes, and it hurt almost as much as the memories did.

"Maybe," he said after a moment. "Yeah. But Tori - this is what I do, and I didn't have the same psychological bullshit wearing me down for a year. There was a reason so many witches and wizards were clamoring for the Carrows to face the dementor's kiss."

I looked away from him. "Still."

He sighed. "Daphne isn't going to come bother you again, if that's what you're afraid of."

"What do you mean?"

He didn't answer right away, so I sneaked a peek at him. He was smiling, but it wasn't the pleasant smile I was used to seeing on his face. It was the smile of a predator. I didn't usually see my brother in that light; it was disconcerting, though not necessarily in a bad way.

"Let's just say we had words," he said after a moment. "And she saw the error of her ways."

"You blackmailed her, you mean."

He didn't respond to that directly, which more than anything told me that it was true. I felt like it probably shouldn't please me as much as it did, but I had limited investment in the moral high ground these days, at least when it came to Death Eater sympathizers. "I really don't know that I'm the right person to teach you," he said. "I meant that. I can talk to someone at the Ministry -"

"No!" His eyebrows shot up. "No. I - it has to be you. I don't trust other people."

He studied my face for a moment and sighed. "I'll think about it."

In the grand scheme of things, he really didn't think for very long, but when you're waiting on something that's so emotionally charged and intimidating, waiting any amount of time can drive you to madness. Consequently, I was jumping out of my skin when he knocked on my door a couple nights later and said without preamble when he reached the bottom of the stairs, "Okay. I'll teach you."

Before we started, I had to sign an affidavit that I was okay with it. The Ministry was apparently very strict about that now - they recognized the validity in teaching people how to resist the curse, but they wanted to keep very close tabs on who was using it - and how often. I had my doubts about how useful it really was - wouldn't dark wizards just not report it? - but Brendon insisted, because he had to "set a good example."

So I signed the paper.

I'd expected having the Imperius Curse cast on me to trigger flashbacks or give me panic attacks. After all, just about everything else that reminded me of Hogwarts did, at least some of the time. To my surprise, though, neither of those things happened. It was just something that was happening.

Maybe it was different because it was my brother. Maybe I was in denial and would pay the price for this eventually. Whatever was really going on in the back of my mind, though, it wasn't bothering me right now, and that's what really mattered.

Especially since actually resisting the Imperius Curse was not going well.

I've heard from other people that it can be a pleasant sort of sensation in the moment, at least until you're released from it. Then the memories of all the terrible things you were forced to do and how you lost touch of everything that made you who you were come flooding back, and you're never really the same.

I hadn't been forced to do the terrible things others under the effect of the Imperius Curse did, but even so, there'd been no part of the experience that was pleasant. There's nothing soothing about cowardice, and as the fog had permeated my limbs and made me follow my sister through the passageway, I'd been trapped inside my mind, hammering on the metaphorical walls to try and find a way out.

I hadn't been able to.

"I don't get it," I said, flopping down to sit on my couch after my fourth failed attempt. "I don't. I'm so angry, and it just isn't working."

Brendon sighed and sat down next to me. "If you're angry, that's probably the problem." I twisted around to stare at him, and he shook his head. "Tori, the easiest thing in the world to do is redirect anger. That's how people get turned into mobs - it's how genocidal maniacs rise to power. It's easy to take someone's anger and twist it to your own devices. You don't beat the Imperius Curse by being angry."

"Oh." I drew my knees up to my chest and rested my head on them. "So how do you beat it, then?"

He considered that. The room was so still that I could hear the clock ticking. "Be the immovable object rather than the unstoppable force," he said after a minute. "Beating the Imperius Curse isn't about knocking the other person down. They have the power, and you can't take it from them - you can just make it disappear. It's about planting your feet and deciding that they can't make you move. Does that make sense?"

"I think so." I bounced to my feet. "Let's try again."

I promptly forgot about his advice as soon as he waved his wand, and I tried to fight the compulsion to sit down as I'd fought the Death Eaters and the acromantulas that night, after Brendon had rescued me. As my legs bent beneath me, I tried to imagine myself as wildfire raging through a forest, burning down anything in my path. I was lightning in a thunderstorm, striking out against anyone who thought that they could control me.

I ended up on the floor, anyway.

Brendon lowered his wand. "Immovable object, Astoria," he called. "Stop trying to beat me."

I scrambled to my feet. "Immovable object," I muttered to myself. "Right." This time, when the compulsion hit me, I tried to stop myself from fighting back. Instead, I dug in my heels and tried not to move. When he told me to sit down, I didn't howl my frustration - I just tried to focus on the compulsion itself. No, I said to myself. I felt my legs start to buckle again, and I lost my composure. "No!" I shrieked as Brendon lifted the spell again.

"Do you want to stop for the day?" he asked.

"No!" I shoved myself back to my feet. "Again!"

He crossed his arms. "Remember: immovable object, not unstoppable force. Take a minute. You're too angry right now."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He wasn't wrong about me being angry, but I'd never been good at meditating. When I'd managed some semblance of calm, I nodded to him. Don't tell me what to do, I thought to myself as he lifted his wand.

This time, when the spell hit me, my no did break through. I didn't try to push back - I put every ounce of energy I had into letting it roll off me and dissipate like smoke.

And this time, it worked.

I didn't fight off the curse perfectly, of course. After less than a minute, I wobbled and ended up falling onto my hands and knees.

But I fought it off well enough to not sit down, and that was enough. I'd practice until I got it right, but now I knew I could.

I wouldn't describe my feeling there as happy, not really. It went deeper than that. I knew deep in my bones that no one would ever be able to control me like my sister had ever again. I was satisfied. I was proud.

And that was better than happy.

Written for @meggonagall​‘s ‘Conjure Your Patronus’ challenge at @hpfanfictalk​, because Astoria is a damaged girl.

Related stories: +Sidenote: Greengrass series (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass series @hpfanfictalk (chronologically organized)

[beeezie]

The Only Honest Color

I don’t really know how I got to the point where I was entirely too drunk and alone in a Death Eater’s flat with him, but there is is.

Well, that’s not quite true. I got here because I lived through the Second Wizarding War. Nothing about the Second Wizarding War was easy, and I developed coping mechanisms accordingly. Those coping mechanisms weren’t suited for the time of (relative) peace that followed it, but by that point, they’d become second nature, so it was hard to break away from them.

When Draco Malfoy had come upon me in the Three Broomsticks one evening and insisted on trying to talk to me, I hadn’t been interested in anything he had to say until I learned that he’d come up to me because he’d just gotten out of a meeting with my brother. I’d decided to let him talk to me, and he’d told me that he was passing information to my brother about some of his “old contacts”  from the war. Once I’d confirmed that, I’d decided to meet him at the Three Broomsticks the following week to do it again.

That second encounter had started in a cordial enough way, devolved into an argument when I called his father a Death Eater and his mother a blood purity lunatic, and ended with some wild-eyed witch trying to stab him in the neck with a knife for passing information to the Ministry of Magic.

I still didn’t like Death Eaters, and I still found Draco Malfoy to be a little off-putting, but his being the target of assassination attempts was vaguely endearing, so when he’d asked whether I wanted to do it again next week, I’d said yes despite the rancor.

Our conversation that time had been largely shallow, which I didn’t like. Shallow conversations make me feel uncomfortable, because they usually meant that someone was trying to hide something. On the other hand, he’d nearly been poisoned, which I did like. Witnessing multiple attempts on his life had definitely leant credence to the idea that he really had genuinely fucked over some of Voldemort’s supporters, which meant that he probably wasn’t that bad. When he’d said that he was planning to lay low for awhile, I’d offered to come to his flat for a drink the following Thursday instead.

I didn’t get drunk the first time, obviously. I’ve grown to be somewhat self-destructive, not outright stupid. I might have the second time if I hadn’t stormed out cursing Death Eaters before finishing my first drink.

(I can’t curse Slytherins. I love my brother too much. Otherwise I might, though. Every house has its morally bankrupt assholes - I no longer spoke to one of the girls I’d shared my dormitory in Ravenclaw with because she was prided herself on being “above” emotions during the war - but Slytherin seems to have the most.)

When I knocked on Draco Malfoy’s door the next Thursday, he answered it almost immediately. “Hey,” he said, stepping back. “I wasn’t sure you’d come. You were pretty pissed at me last week.”

“If you don’t want me to be pissed at you, don’t be a dick.” I slouched down the short hallway and threw myself onto his couch.

“I wasn’t - oh, whatever.” He leaned against the doorframe. “What do you want?” I shrugged and brushed past him into the flat, and after a moment, the door closed behind me. I turned into his living room, and he continued down the hallway to the kitchen.

The flat that Draco Malfoy was currently living in had seen better days. It had seen worse days, too - it wasn’t dilapidated or anything - but the carpet was fraying just a little, and there were scuff marks on the door and by the single window on the far wall. He hadn’t bothered to fix them - I doubted that he got enough company for anyone to notice, though I’d have thought he’d be vain enough to not want to live in such squalor.

His furniture was nice enough, though. Only the best, for Lucius Malfoy’s little Death Eater son.

“Here.” His footsteps had been quiet enough that I hadn’t heard them, and I was always on high alert. That made me feel a little uneasy.

“Thanks.” I took the bottle from him and took a swig. “Any attempts on your life this week?”

“Not that you care, but yes. Some incompetent witch tried to shoot a killing curse at me. Thankfully, she had shit aim and probably couldn’t have given me a nosebleed even if she’d hit me.”

“I care.” He gave me a skeptical look. “Not much, but I do. I’d probably go to your funeral.” He snorted and took a sip of his beer. “It’s good for you, you know.”

“Having people trying to kill me is good for me?”

I shrugged. “You clearly need practice being brave. Now you’re getting it. Congratulations. That’s what happens when you’re less of a scumbag than you used to be.”

I half-expected him to get pissed at me, but he let out a loud snort instead. “You sound like a Gryffindor.”

“Well, the Sorting Hat considered it.” His eyes flickered over to me for a moment before going back to his beer. “My sorting took awhile.”

“Yeah, I think I remember that.” He shook his head and drained the rest of the bottle. It was fairly impressive, though I would never have admitted that to him. “The mighty really have fallen.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snapped.

“I’m sitting here in my Fidelius-ed, untraceable flat in Muggle London getting drunk with a girl who was almost sorted into Gryffindor. This is kind of the definition of rock bottom.”

“Better that than a girl who <i>was</i> sorted into Slytherin,” I snapped. Part of me regretted it; my brother was a Slytherin. Most of me didn’t; my sister was a Slytherin, too.

He put his beer down on the table loudly enough that I jumped. “Okay, I need you to clear something up for me.”

“I need you to not make loud sudden noises or stupid demands,” I shot back. “I thought you were scarred by the war just like the rest of us, and didn’t your mother ever teach you to ask nicely?”

For a moment, I thought he was going to start going on about my insulting his stupid blood purity asshole parents again - and, like, forgive me for not being a fan of cowards. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. I took a swig of my cider while I watched him, curious to see whether he was about to pull the typical bullshit that he’d always pulled in school or if he really had changed.

“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I didn’t realize.”

I shrugged and took another long drink.

“Can I ask you something?” He sounded much more measured now.

“Yes.”

He hesitated. It was entertaining to see Draco Malfoy be tentative for once in his life - between that and the free alcohol, coming over tonight was worth it all on its own. “Why don’t you like your sister?”

I studied him more closely. My sister was not a topic I liked to get into, not even with people I was close to - and while I didn’t have very many close friends anymore, I wasn’t desperate enough to consider a Death Eater a close friend, especially not someone who was as entitled as Draco Malfoy.

At least he’d stopped being quite so vain, though. His trousers were torn at one of the knees, and he needed a haircut; his blond hair hung over his eyes, and it looked messy. Not attractive, intentional messy - just hadn’t been combed today messy.

“I need another drink,” I said.

He sighed, reached over to grab my empty bottle, and plodded back down the hallway to his kitchen. It occurred to me that he was using a lot less magic than I’d have expected him to. I wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that.

“Here,” he said when he got back, thrusting the bottle in my face. I grabbed it and took the bottle opener from him, and my opinion of him went up just a little. I hated having people open bottles for me - you never knew what they might put in them - and he seemed to have picked up on that all on his own.

I glanced at his perpetual long sleeves when he turned around. That always helped center me every time I started thinking that Draco Malfoy might be a halfway decent human being.

He had a dark mark. Good people would die before they let someone give them a dark mark. I felt like I was qualified to say that, too; no one had ever tried to give me a dark mark, but I’d been through enough shit during that year that I could comment on the gist of the thing, especially since my brother had not been popular with Voldemort’s supporters.

To put it mildly.

“Why don’t you like your sister?” he repeated, sitting down on the other side of the couch.

“Because my sister is a terrible person.”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted. “But she’s still your sister.”

I waited for him to finish, and then realized that that was all he had. “So?”

He sighed and took a swig of his beer. “I don’t know. I mean, family is family, isn’t it? If they’re looking out for you, you look out for them.”

I had no idea how to respond to that. It was one of the most ridiculous things I’d ever heard, and there was so much that was wrong with it that I had no idea where to start.

Looking out for people wasn’t the default in the first place - doing the right thing was. And having the same blood didn’t entitle you to a damn thing if you weren’t a good person who did the right thing, and my sister was a bad person who had done awful things. But if he didn’t understand that, even <i>now,</i> I didn’t have a chance in hell at convincing him.

I still had to push back, of course. Sometimes it wasn’t about convincing people that they were wrong - it was about making it clear that what they were saying wasn’t okay.

“No,” I said after a minute. “Family doesn’t mean anything if you’re not a good person, and you don’t look out for other people if it gets in the way of doing the right thing.”

“Maybe you don’t. I do.”

And this was why Draco Malfoy was not actually a decent human being, even if he was putting on a good show. “Why are you passing information to the Ministry, if you’re so focused on family loyalty?”

He sighed and brushed his hair out of his eyes. “Because I did a lot of things I wish I hadn’t had to do, and I owe it to the people who recognized that I didn’t like them.”

“But you don’t regret them.”

“I don’t see that I had much choice. They were going to kill me. They were going to kill my parents.”

I drained the rest of my cider and stood up. “You’re disgusting,” I spat at him. “I can’t believe I’m listening to a Death Eater justify himself. The least you could do is feel bad about it. People died because of you.”

When I tried to take a step, I realized that I’d had far too much to drink in far too short a time. My stomach was hurting, and my head was spinning.

“Sit down,” Draco Malfoy said. His expression looked almost concerned. “Look, of course I feel bad about it - and whatever my reasons are, I’ve helped the Ministry put a lot of people away, and I’ve nearly died because of it. I’m not a coward.”

“Anymore.” I didn’t sit down.

He sighed. “Anymore,” he agreed, though it was only after a very long pause. “Look, I’m going to get you some water. Sit -” He stopped himself. Please sit down. You can’t really Apparate or walk in this shape, and I’d be a shit person to let you. After you have some water, I’ll take you home if you want.”

The addition of ‘please’ made it a request rather than an order, so I sat. When he returned with water, he collapsed on the couch again as I sipped it. I felt like I should probably thank him, but he was still a Death Eater underneath it all - our conversation had made that clear - so I didn’t.

“If it makes you feel better, it’s not like I got out of the war easy,” he commented. He was staring at his half-empty bottle, which he’d left on the side table, but he didn’t touch it. “I got cursed, too. I wouldn’t ever cast <i>those</i> on someone else again, no matter what. For fuck’s sake, I do have <i>limits,</i> Astoria.”

“What, did some first years give you a nosebleed?” I took a sip of water. “My heart is bleeding for you, really.”

“I didn’t ask for sympathy - and you know that I’m not just talking about a nosebleed.”

It took me a minute to process that. After my brain caught up with my ears, I frowned at him. “You’re lying,” I said after a minute.

“I’m not.” I was too dizzy to really properly focus on his face, but his voice sounded serious. “Do you want me to take you home?”

I was irrationally irritated that he’d drop that kind of bombshell and then try to get out of elaborating. “Who?” I shot back, ignoring his question entirely. “Which ones?”

“The Dark Lord. My aunt. My father. The Cruciatus curse. The Imperius curse. That’s probably part of why my mother betrayed them, there at the end.” He glanced over at me. “I haven’t told anyone that, and I’d appreciate it if you’d keep whatever snarky comments you’re about to make to yourself. Let’s get you home.” He made to get up.

“That’s why I hate my sister,” I said in a rush.

That made him stop, and after a moment, he collapsed back onto the couch. “What do you mean?”

“She made me leave, before the battle. I didn’t want to, so she used the Imperius curse on me. Brendon - my brother found me, and she was too much of a coward to maintain the spell in front of him. She knew he’d be able to tell. So she let it go and he brought me with him anyway, because he said I was old enough to decide what I cared about and competent enough to give them a fight.”

Draco Malfoy closed his eyes and rubbed a hand across his face. “That explains more than it doesn’t,” he said slowly.

Apparently, once I started talk about this, I couldn’t stop. “Then she made fun of me for not being able to throw it off when my brother could’ve. That’s why I left home.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Of course you couldn’t.” There was significantly more feeling in his voice than I’d have expected. “You were - what, fifteen?” I shrugged, and he took that for the yes it was intended to be. “Your brother was already in his twenties and he was specifically trained in defense against the dark arts.” He shook his head. “All right, I take everything I said about family back. I don’t hate my father, but I still don’t like to see him. It’s not a thing you forget. And I’m glad my aunt is dead.” He reached out, very tentatively, to squeeze my upper arm gently. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“Nobody knows,” I said. “Nobody can know. I don’t know why I told you.”

“I can keep a secret.” He looked at my mostly-empty glass of water. “Here, I’ll get you some more water. Then we’ll get you home.”

I watched him retreat down the hall one more time. Having unforgivable curses used on you didn’t make you a decent human being by any stretch, but like assassination attempts by blood purity assholes, it did seem like a good start.

Even for a Death Eater.

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (HPFT)

[beeezie]

Talking War Over Breakfast

“I bumped into Draco Malfoy last night.” I was sitting at my brother Brendon’s kitchen table; his wife and son were out, but his two year old daughter Johanna was racing around the kitchen at breakneck speed. “Jo, you’re going to hurt yourself!”

“No I’m not, Aunt Tori,” she insisted, brandishing her toy wand. “I’m going to fight the Death Eaters.”

I looked back at my brother. His dark brown hair was hanging in his eyes, which gave him a deceptively sleepy look, but I could see the traces of a smile as he watched his daughter. “Good example,” I muttered to him.

He shrugged. “As long as she’s fighting, right? The war’s never really over, Astoria - we both know that.”

I suddenly felt very warm. It was the we, I know that it was; I’d always had a slight case of hero worship when it comes to my brother, and it was dramatically elevated when he became Brendon Greengrass, Slytherin war hero extraordinaire - and the reason I got to go back and fight the people who spent a year terrorizing us.

And for letting me live with his family so I never had to see our sister.

Having him treat me like an equal - like someone who knows things - always made me feel like I was doing something right.

“Expelliarmius!”

My brother’s smile widened. “Expelliarmus, Jo, not expelliarmius.”

“Okay, Daddy.” She pointed the wand at him. “Expelliarmus!”

“Good!” He got to his feet, scooped her up, and deposited her in her chair. “Eat your cereal, and then Aunt Tori and I will take you to the menagerie.”

Her spoon flew into her bowl.

“So you met Draco,” my brother said, looking back at me. “How did you like him?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I still think he’s a smug little prick.” He glanced at Johanna, and I winced. “Sorry.”

“Mm.” He frowned. “He is, but he’s given us a lot of good information. I’m not saying he’s the best person in the world, but he’s definitely not the worst - and if he keeps feeding the Aurors and Werewolf Capture information, I don’t care whether it’s mostly out of guilt.”

“Do he really get death threats?” I asked. Malfoy had said as much the night before, but I hadn’t really believed him.

Brendon looked a little taken aback. “Oh yes,” he said. “He’s had people make genuine attempts on his life - he keeps getting their friends arrested and thrown into Azkaban. He’ll probably be laying low for awhile.”

“Why is he doing it, though?” He’d wanted to meet up with me again, and I’d said yes. Self-destructive tendencies aside, it would be nice to go to that meeting armed with some information that was actually helpful.

Brendon shrugged. “Guilt. That’s my guess. I think that Draco Malfoy was a spoiled little boy who got in way over his head and didn’t really understand what all the words his family spouted off really meant, and when he did, he didn’t have the stomach for it but couldn’t think of a way out.”

“He’s a coward.”

“Well, he was.” Brendon drained the rest of his juice and pushed his chair back. “I’m not sure he is anymore.”

The discussion had made me feel a little less guilty about my vague plans to meet Malfoy again - and on purpose, this time. I wouldn’t have considered it in the first place if he hadn’t offered to buy me alcohol, but still. It sounded like he probably didn’t have plans to poison it. That was a positive.

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (HPFT)

[beeezie]

Dead Eyes and Red Eyes

Astoria has to be careful about how much she indulges her vices.

The best coping mechanisms for getting through the day are usually the most unhealthy ones.

The war was hard on me, you know. Sometimes when I say that, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Most of the time, though, I’m just stating a fact, as emotionally distant as the color of the sky or whether the flowers are blooming yet. I try not to feel much of anything anymore, but sometimes I can’t stop the memories from breaking through. Usually it’s late at night or when I’m bathing - when there’s nothing to distract me from my thoughts.

So I alternate between having dead eyes and red eyes.

But I have to be careful which vices I indulge, and how much. My parents still haven’t quite forgiven me for walking out on them after my sixth year, and I feel like they’d jump at any excuse to lock me up. Maybe they’d forgive me if they knew that I couldn’t bear to stay in their house any longer because my older sister - a frequent visitor - had cast the Imperius Curse on me to make me evacuate the school before the Battle of Hogwarts.

She’s never apologized, either - not for that, not for anything. The day she came to my parents’ house and mocked me for not being able to break free of the curse was the day I left. She said that if I really cared, I’d have done it. 

I’m not sure that she’s wrong, and that haunts me most of all, I think. She was right about our brother - her spell barely would have phased him. Brendon’s always had a stronger sense of will than I do.

That’s probably why I haven’t told him what she did. Brendon’s always been my favorite sibling, for all that he’s eight years older than me, and he’s gone so far beyond the call of duty with me. He took me in when I left and fixed it with my parents so they didn’t haul me back - I still don’t know what he said to them, since he hasn’t volunteered it and I don’t want to ask them, but it must have been pretty persuasive. I don’t want him to feel like he’s wasted his time on a weakling.

And if he knew, he’d feel like he had to do something about it, and I don’t want that, either. He’s done enough for me. I don’t want to impose or put him in a situation where he’ll get blamed for further ripping apart our already-dysfunctional family.

I’ve found that I really do enjoy alcohol. It’s my coping mechanism of choice. Brendon’s been asking me pointed questions about my weight loss and my picking at whatever food he puts in front of me rather than eat it, but it really is just in a no-appetite way, not in a starving myself way. I’ve also caught him glancing at my wrists when I push my sleeves up to play with his kids, but I don’t do that, either.  I’ve got enough scars on my arms and my shoulders for a lifetime, and I’m not adding to them myself.

I have to be careful, though. I can’t drink so much that I can’t fake sobriety if I see someone I know. If I had a safe place - a quiet place - to go to when I’d had too much to drink, I’d probably drink a lot more.

But I don’t, so I don’t.

I don’t know why I’ve come to the Three Broomsticks tonight. I hate Hogsmeade - it has too many memories. I guess I just hate people more, and on a Wednesday evening, this place is a lot quieter than the Leaky Cauldron. 

I’ve got to find new pubs.

I’m staring into my mostly-empty glass wishing I had more gold when someone stops in front of me. From the way he’s carrying himself and the way his Muggle trousers hug him, I’m pretty sure he’s a man. 

During the war, a lot of people spent a lot of time wearing Muggle clothes to blend in, and they’ve stayed in fashion. It’s a pretty shitty consolation prize, but it’s something.

His arms are completely covered by the long black sleeves of his shirt. I consider that for a moment, and decide it’s inconclusive; some people have scars from the war because they were on the good side and got tortured, and most Death Eaters who escaped being sent to prison don’t like to show off their Dark Marks anymore. More people have scars, but fewer would stop to bother me, so it’s really a toss up.

I don’t particularly want to talk to whoever it is, though, so I don’t look up. As a rule, I don’t particularly trust very many people at all right now, but I especially don’t trust men who aren’t my brother. Men are usually quicker to jump to violence and torture.

“Hi.” He’s keeping his voice low, but it’s a little familiar. “Can I join you?”

I don’t answer him. I want him to go try to pick up some other girl, preferably in some other pub, and engaging these sorts of people in conversation always just encourages them to keep talking, even if you’re giving them a flat-out “no.” If you just refuse to acknowledge them, they’re more likely to go away quicker.

“Astoria, right?”

My heart skips a beat. I still don’t look up, but I begin considering my escape routes. My wand is in my pocket and would be quick to retrieve, but I’ve had too much to drink to apparate. He’s between me and the door. Maybe a stunning spell - but that would make a scene, and I don’t want a scene.

“I just…” he trailed off. “I just wanted to know if you wanted company.”

Now I do recognize his voice. “Not from Death Eaters.”

He turns and walks away. Before I can allow myself to feel some measure of triumph, I hear his voice at the bar, and I realize that he isn’t actually leaving me alone, he’s just getting us both a(nother) drink. I do want one, but not badly enough to take it from a Death Eater’s dirty gold.

Probably. We’ll see how quickly I can get him to leave. If he’s not here to see me drink it…

He returns, slides one glass over to me, and sits down to join me at my round little table in the back of the pub. Thankfully, he settles in a couple seats to my left rather than right next to me - I don’t want to rub elbows with a Death Eater, especially not one who takes being called that as an invitation to sit down next to me.

It wasn’t one.

“Death Eater isn’t a compliment,” I tell him. I try to make my voice ice, but it comes out more sullen than cold. Daphne’s always been better at that than I am. Maybe it’s a Slytherin thing.

“I didn’t take it as one.”

Daphne was mad about Draco Malfoy for more than a year - every other thing that came out of her mouth was about him and his hair and his family and how brilliant he was at Quidditch. Our brother was the only one who could stop her dead in her tracks - the first time she’d started getting breathy and doe-eyed in Brendon’s presence, he’d asked in a tone that really was ice what on earth she’d want with a Death Eater’s brat.

She only stopped talking about Draco after he started fucking that bitch Pansy Parkinson. Those were the rumors, anyway.

Now he was sitting at a table with me, and I wished he’d go away and start bothering my sister instead, wherever she was.

“I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I get that a lot.”

“That’s what happens when you lose. If you were in Azkaban where you belong, you’d have plenty of people to talk to. I hear they’ve even gotten rid of the dementors - it’s probably downright cozy.”

When he doesn’t say anything, I finally glance up at him. He has the same bored, apathetic, above-it-all look I hated back in school - and that was before he became a Death Eater.

“It was complicated,” he says after a long pause. “You were there, you know it was complicated.”

I snort and finish my beer. “Genocide is literally the exact opposite of complicated. Why are you bothering me?”

“You look sad.”

I don’t like the way he’s staring at me. It reminds me of the dungeons at Hogwarts - chaotic and unpredictable and prone to leave you with scars that keep part of you locked down there forever. Unlike the dungeons, however, there is a way out here - he cleared the path to the exit when he sat down. I have a choice. I can leave.

“Wait.” He can tell that I’m about to leave rather than drink his stupid beer, though he has the sense not to grab me. If he did, I probably would have cursed him without even processing what I was doing.

Not that I would have felt bad about it once I had.

“Please,” he says.

I grab my wand out of my pocket and point it him. The blood drains from his face, and his hand twitches, though he doesn’t actually reach for his wand. “Push up your sleeve,” I hiss at him.

He starts to push up his right sleeve, and I press my wand up against his throat. When he swallows, it pushes my wand back just a little, and he seems genuinely afraid. It gives me a strange sense of pleasure that I can return to him just a little bit of what his friends did to us. “You know what I mean.”

He shoves my wand down toward the table and yanks up his left sleeve in one quick, fluid motion. I can see why he’s wearing long sleeves - the mark is still clearly visible, though it’s become blurred and fainter than I recall them being during the war. Back then, the Death Eaters would openly display them as they strutted around cursing people. They wanted everyone to know that they were You-Know-Who’s most special lapdogs.

I bring my wand back to his throat. I feel eyes on my back and the pub has suddenly gotten a lot quieter, but I don’t look away from him. No one is trying to stop me, at least. They must recognize him.

He shoves my wand aside again, and a few blue sparks land on the table and scorch it. This time, someone at the bar does shout something. “Hey, leave her alone!”

He peers around me incredulously. “Leave her alone? She’s the one holding a wand to my throat!” He slams his hand down on mine as I make to raise my wand for a third time, and then the wall behind us shakes as a flash of red slams slams into it just to the right of his head. My breath catches in my throat - this is what I didn’t want, this is exactly what I didn’t want, and now everyone’s making a scene and I can feel my heartbeat in my ears. I know I should cast something, but he still has one hand over mine, and I can’t lift my wand up enough to do anything useful. He snatches his wand out of his back pocket with his other hand, and another flash of red light slams against an invisible wall that has sprung up just in time. The resultant explosion of light has left me momentarily blinded, and my wand slips from my grasp as my legs crumple.

I can hear him shouting something at them, but I don’t know what he’s saying. All I know is that after a minute, the lights stop flashing, and he’s kneeling down to hand me my wand. “Sorry,” he mutters, keeping his wand pointed upward. “I just - your brother said you were still getting past the war, so when I saw you and you looked sad… yeah. I’ll go now.”

He rises, and I look up at the room. A mirror on the wall directly across from us has been smashed by one of the deflected spells, and the tall, broad-shouldered man tending the bar tonight is red-haired by nature and red-faced with fury. His wand is still up.

“Wait,” I say quickly. “What about my brother?”

Draco glances over at the man by the bar. “See?” he yells over. “She’s fine. For fuck’s sake, she pulled her wand out and pointed it at me!”

The man points to the door with his wand. “Out!”

Draco stomps over to it. Just as he yanks it open, I struggle to my feet and rush after him. “What about my brother?” I yell as the door is swinging shut.

When I burst through it, he’s standing there with his arms crossed. “Thanks for getting me kicked out.”

“You’re a Death Eater. I don’t care. What about my brother?”

He turns and starts to walk down the street. The orbs floating ten feet above us have started to glow since I went into the pub. “Yeah, that’s a really good way to get someone to share information with you.” He turns around and starts striding down the street again. “Oh, and a word of advice,” he calls over his shoulder. “Don’t point your wand at someone when you haven’t even decided on a spell.”

I feel my face start to get hot; the fact that he’s turned his back on me says everything about how much of a threat he deems me. Before I can say anything, a door creaks open behind us, and the bartender sticks his head outside. “Is everything all right, miss?”

I turn back. “Yes, thank you.”

He peers into my face, and I realize that he’s wondering whether I’m under the Imperius Curse.

I hear Draco’s voice behind me. “For fuck’s sake, she followed me. Look, that’s Brendon Greengrass’s little sister. If she goes missing, feel free to report me to him.”

I feel pins and needles break out across my shoulders, and as they start to run down my arms, I shudder involuntarily. The very last thing I need is my brother hearing that I was drinking alone in the Three Broomsticks. “I’m fine,” I tell the bartender. “Really.”

“Be careful around him,” he says. “I’ll be listening. If he tries anything, just yell.”

His voice isn’t soft, and I’m sure that Draco can hear it. When he ducks his head back inside, he leaves the door propped open, despite the cool night air.

I would have preferred to remain anonymous, but I suppose it’s comforting to know that people are still wary, still paying attention, and they’d defend me if I needed them to.

Against my better judgment, I start to trot after Draco. “You know,” he says, “all I wanted to do was get a few drinks before the death threats start coming again. Now I’m going to the Hog’s Head, which I do not particularly like, and I want to have a couple drinks in peace.”

“What death threats?”

He glances over at me when I catch up to him and lowers his voice. “When the head of Werewolf Capture asks you for information on the Dark Lord’s followers and you actually give it to him, you’re probably going to get death threats. I’ve already had three people try to kill me for information I gave to Potter and Granger. This’ll be my last drink out for awhile.”

“You gave my brother information tonight?”

He shrugs. We’ve reached the Hog’s Head. I’ve only set foot in it once - when I had no other choice - and there’s a reason for that. The bay windows are so dirty that all I can see of the inside are indistinct shapes and a flickering light, and even in the faint light, I can see how rusted the handle of the door is. He opens it with his sleeve rather than his bare hand and turns to look at me. “I’ll buy you a drink if you’ll be halfway civil.”

I stare at him for a minute. He doesn’t seem to be about to hurt me - he gave me back my wand, after all, and he probably wouldn’t have done that if he’d wanted to hurt me, even with the big red-haired man shouting at him. I still don’t like him, but that makes him seem marginally less awful now, and I’m genuinely curious about the death threats. “Fine,” I say.

He lets out a snort as he kicks the door open. “That’s gracious of you.”

When we’re sitting at a table, mugs in front of us, I start toying with the remnants of a wax candle that have melted into the wood rather than ask him again. I feel like he wants me to, and I don’t want to give him what he wants. His ego needs to meet more people he can’t manipulate.

He’s so twitchy, though, that after a moment, I can’t help but say, “You really are scared, aren’t you?”

He shoots me a dirty look. “Yes, Astoria.” He gulps down a sizable portion of his beer. “Like I said, people have literally tried to kill me. Some more than once.”

“Your information is that good? Even now?”

“The Dark Lord used my parents’ manor as his base for over a year, and my parents were always part of his inner circle. Yes, even now.”

“So why not give it to them all at once?”

“I don’t know what they need all at once, and I don’t have access to everything all at once, either. I give them what I can when they need it.” He takes another sip of beer. “Then people call me a blood traitor and try to kill me for it. I keep my head down, they forget, and then the cycle starts again.”

“So why do you do it?” I haven’t even touched my beer yet. I’m too interested in what he’s saying.

He shrugged. “Because I fucked up, and I owe Potter and Granger for keeping me out Azkaban.”

“So why’d you help my brother?”

“Because I still fucked up, and Brendon Greengrass gives Slytherins a good name.” He finished his beer. “Are you going to drink that, or just look at it?” I grab the mug and pull it closer to me, and he pushes his chair back. “I’m going get another one, then.”

I take a sip and glance around the room. It was deserted when we walked in, other than the old bartender, and and it’s stayed deserted. That’s probably just as well, if he’s worried about assassins.

I’m not sure whether he’s being honest with me or just spinning me a tale of lies.

He drops back into his chair, refilled-mug in hand. “So why are you sad?”

I take another sip. "It's none of your business.”

“Fair enough.” He shrugs and changes the subject.

When we leave half an hour later, he asks, “Are you okay to Apparate?”

“I’m fine.” I wish I wasn’t, but I am. I wouldn’t have let a Death Eater touch me even if I wasn’t, though, whether or not it turns out that he’s passing information to my brother. I should think up an excuse to ask him about it.

Draco hesitates. “Do you want to meet me at the Three Broomsticks? Next Thursday?” I open my mouth to say no, and he adds quickly, “I’ll buy.”

I hesitate, and after a minute, what comes out instead is, “I guess.”

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (HPFT)

[beeezie]

Fools and Heroes

If there was one thing Astoria Greengrass couldn’t stand, it was a sanitised ending.

The evacuation order had been given. Astoria knew that she had to leave.

She just didn’t want to.

A loud buzz had filled the Great Hall, and there was a steady stream of students rushing for the doors. She allowed her friend Celeste to pull her halfway down the Ravenclaw table before she stopped and slipped out of Celeste’s grasp.

Celeste paused and looked back. “Astoria, come on.”

Astoria glanced up at the High Table, where several of their professors were looking especially grim, and then over at the Gryffindor table. Professor McGonagall was already striding along the table, snapping at various underage Gryffindors who did not seem at all inclined to leave.

“Astoria.”

She refocused on Celeste. Her friend was clearly torn; she didn’t want to leave Astoria, but the fear that had been clouding her eyes for the past hour was starting to blossom across her entire face. Her dark hair accented just how pale her face had become, and beads of sweat were pooling on her forehead.

Even if they had been of age, Celeste would have left. She didn’t have the strength to fight anyone. She had always been more focused on books than war. Astoria rather thought that Celeste saw the war as a deep inconvenience to her studies rather than the serious struggle it really was.

She forced herself to follow her friend toward the great double doors of the Great Hall. She felt the eyes of everyone who had remained at their tables on them, and she couldn’t help but feel like they were watching her.

That was ridiculous, of course. Unfortunately, knowing that logically didn’t stop her from feeling that way.

In the congestion, several students passed and got between her and Celeste. Celeste did not look back. She probably didn’t want to know whether Astoria was still with her, so she wouldn’t feel guilty about not going back.

Astoria paused on her way to the stairs. As students who were far more eager to leave streamed by her, she felt a pit beginning to grow in her stomach.

She was underage. She was supposed to leave. She had an excuse for not staying, for not fighting, no matter who won this battle. No one would judge her. No one would blame her.

But no one would care about her, either. No one would be helped by her.

Besides, leaving now... leaving now would be like closing a book just as you got to the best part, and having your friend spoil the ending before you could pick it up again. If she left now, she would never know the real ending of this struggle, just the bits and pieces that managed to surface through the spin the winners put on this.

And if there was one thing Astoria Greengrass couldn’t stand, it was a sanitised ending.

She took a deep breath, brushed her dark blond hair back from her eyes, and followed her classmates toward the staircase. When she reached it, however, she slipped by the stairs leading upstairs and safety and down the stairs to the dungeons.

She hadn’t gotten very far, however, when she heard footsteps behind her. They echoed off the stone walls, and she felt a shiver run down her spine.

She had never liked the dungeons.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

She forced herself to turn to face the one person she least wanted to see right then. “That’s a stupid question.”

“And you’re a stupid person.” Her sister’s arms were crossed, and she was surveying Astoria with pursed lips.

“Don’t you want to know?” Astoria asked. Desperation she hadn’t been conscious of feeling filled her voice. “Don’t you want to know what happens?”

Her sister’s expression didn’t change, but when she spoke, her voice was full of scorn. “What do you think is going to happen? That they’re just going to sit there and let you take notes if you just say, ‘I’m not on anyone’s side, please don’t hurt me?’”

Astoria stared at her. “Of course I’m on a side,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

To her surprise, her sister didn’t speak. Astoria had assumed that her sister had agreed with her, but maybe she shouldn’t have. Daphne had always been more reticent, less eager to get involved, less willing to commit to anything than either Astoria or their brother ever had been.

Astoria tried a different tack. “You know he’s going to be here,” she said softly. “You know he’ll be coming.”

This time, Daphne flinched. “Brandon can do what he wants,” she responded. Her voice wavered a little, and she swallowed hard. “I certainly can’t stop him, and neither can you.”

“Why would I want to?”

Daphne’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Because he’s on the wrong side.”

Astoria’s heart began to beat more quickly, and she had to clench her robes in her hands to control the tremor in her hands. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of her sister. “But-”

Daphne shifted slightly. “And so are you. I can see it in your face. You don’t want to stay here because you’re curious. You want to stay here to fight.”

Astoria began to move her hand slowly toward her wand, which was currently stowed in her back pocket. “What of it?” she asked defensively. “So will Brandon.”

“I can’t do anything about our brother.” Daphne's eyes gleamed in the darkness as she smiled. “But I can do something about you.” She raised her wand, and before Astoria could retrieve her wand from her pocket, Daphne said, ”Imperio.”

Related: +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Drastoria stories (tumblr) | +Sidenote: Greengrass stories (HPFT)