"What's your name?" The little girl frowned, and I scoffed at her. The lines on her round face deepened, her almost pink curls bouncing round her face. She blew a strand of the strawberry blonde ringlets from her eyes and smiled sweetly.
"I'm Ria." She said softly and I felt a smile creep to my face.
"Draco..." I had barely gotten the word out before Astoria's hand was in mine. She sat down on the grass, her pale yellow summer dress floating out around her, and I followed suit. Ria held her hand out and a vibrant turquoise butterfly landed gently on her outstretched fingers. The little girl smiled and stroked the quivering blue wings, and the butterfly seemed to lean into her tiny forefinger. She smiled and held it out to me, where the beautiful creature - the butterfly, not Astoria - took flight and soared toward the willow at the end of the Greengrass garden. Ria just smiled and blew a kiss to the blue butterfly, her eyes reflecting the summer sunlight and shining with tears of happiness.
That was the first time I saw Astoria cry when she was happy.
-
Ria danced up to the stool, a smile small on her little face. Daphne and I both waited with baited breath as the hat was placed on her pink crowned head, and I saw the eleven year old smile. The hat gave it's verdict, and I deflated with relief, as did the elder Greengrass sister. Ria gave the hat back to the deputy headmistress with a flashing grin and skipped over to me. She smiled at Daphne and positively beamed at me, swanning over the take the empty seat next to me. Her curls seemed to shine I the candle light, and I wrapped an arm around her tiny shoulders, whispering -
"Welcome to the club, Ria." She looked up and beamed at me, her seemingly bottomless eyes shining, and kissed my cheek.
It was then that I decided that Astoria Greengrass was my best friend.
The day I realised I loved her, she had dyed her hair blue.
Ria stumbled down the steps from her dorm in floods of tears, several chunks of her hair dyed a deep, almost black blue.
Daphne gasped and went absolutely nuts at Astoria, who just looked up at her with tears working down her face. The elder of the two kept screaming at her sister, who simply let her face crumple and Daphne shout about her reputation. I reached my limit when Daphne grabbed her side fringe, the majority of which was dyed, and pulled it. Ria moaned in pain and hot tears spurted from her eyes as she tried to wrestle her hair back from her elder sister. I ran over and gently pried Daphne's fingers away, who backed away when I glared at her. She sent one last scathing look at Astoria before turning away from the petite girl.
Ria buried her face in her right hand and let one last sob rack her tiny frame before she turned away.
I grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face me, her long blue fringe falling over her deep brown eyes at the sudden movement. Her cheeks glowed slightly in the wavering light of the lake and I wiped a tear away before tucking her fringe behind her ear. She looked up at me, shocked, and took a deep, ragged breath. I leant down and whispered, right in her ear,
"I love it." Ria smiled sadly up at me and shook her head, taking my hand in hers. I tilted her chin up and pressed my lips to hers, coming to terms with what I should've done when she was seven and I was eight.
When I pulled away, tears were still slowly working their way down her cheeks, and for a moment I was afraid. She cupped my face in her hands and pulled me down, for the second in a long, long chain of kisses.
It took me years to realise she was crying because she was happy.
The last time I saw my Ria cry was the day she was killed.
It wasn't in full glorious battle, or of natural causes or old age... She died when a Muggle shot her with a Muggle gun in a Muggle city.
Astoria had our son held on her hip, and he was patting her seven month baby bump. Ria smiled her 'I'm the mother of this beautiful child so ha' smile and kissed Scorpius' hair, walking just before me into an alleyway.
There was a bang and a thud and the sound of our son crying.
When I reached her, she was lying on her side with Scorpius some feet away from her, seemingly unharmed. My son's face was grazed and bleeding where he had gone flying out of Ria's arms, but he was otherwise unhurt. He grizzled but I left him for a moment, turning my wife onto her back.
There was a bullet hole right where the baby started and she ended.
I sobbed and her eyes cracked open, a tear rolling down her cheek.
She sat up slightly and I slid my arms underneath her, cradling my Ria as she began to die in an alleyway in Cardiff.
"She's gone." My wife suddenly whispered, and my heart lurched in my chest as I realised she meant the baby, her baby, our baby. I kissed her face and we sat for a few more minutes like that, the two of us clinging to each other and crying like there was no tomorrow.
Which, of course, there wasn't for Astoria.
Her eyes started to close and my breathing quickened, panic starting to seize me.
"No, no, Ria... we have so much to do, you and me, yeah? And we've only just begun."
"A new world," she breathed, and I remembered a conversation of ours when I promised I'd take to a new world, a better world. "It's beautiful."
She looked at the dark grey sky, her eyes glassy and unfocused. A single tear splashed onto the cold, wet pavement.
"Remember..." Ria muttered, and her eyes closed.
A familiar looking blue butterfly wafted through the air. The butterfly stopped, and so did Astoria.