Draco Malfoy's seventh year had not quite begun the way he had anticipated. He had envisioned the year beginning with a bang, yes, but not quite this big of a bang. The bang he wanted was one that had him strolling into the school with a pair of beautiful women, one on either side, and a few thugs clearing the way in front of him. The bang he received was one that had been significantly more humiliating, involving a Death Eater family procession into the Great Hall with Severus Snape at it's head and the Malfoy family at the very rear. They had then stood at the front of the hall with the least significant families the least visible. The Malfoys had been tucked behind the Goyles at the far left of the platform, well out of sight.
The year had progressed as expected. He had excelled in subjects he had never excelled in before. His years of growing up around Death Eaters had prepared him well for this type of education. Though his marks were high, the respect he had once secured from the other Slytherin students had fallen through the floor and he was just another fool to them.
Then he had noticed HER.
She wasn't exactly stunning, but she was pretty, in her own way. Her high cheekbones and dark intelligent eyes made her at least interesting to look at. Her dark brown hair fell around her face in loose curls and hid her features like a curtain as she stared at the floor while darting from class to class. He wondered if she ever wore sundresses.
December came and went and he had still not spoken to her, but his fantasies and curiosities had taken on a life of their own. He had pictured them dancing in the moonlight on the lakeshore, falling asleep in the shelter of an oak tree together on a warm summer night, and staring into one anothers' eyes in the library while pretending to study.
He had hoped to talk to her by St Valentine's Day. January had passed too quickly, though, and he hadn't been able to gather up the courage to speak to her. They sat too far apart in class to whisper to one another or pass notes and, because she was a Ravenclaw, they never were paired together in class for assignments. He didn't have the courage to talk to her outside of class. He didn't so much care for the house rivalry or his pureblood status- he was already shamed, what else did he have to lose?
On St. Valentines Day, he saw her tucked up on a windowsill, her knees to her chest, her chin resting on her knees. As he headed to class, he noticed that she wasn't moving. She wasn't going to class. He thought for a moment. He could continue down the hallway to Muggle Studies, but his other option was more appealing. He ducked down a side hallway.
The hallways cleared and he slipped back down the hallway where he had seen her. His pace slowed as he approached her window, wondering if she was still sitting in it, his heart racing. He stopped walking and stared at his hands, his thoughts racing as he tried to figure out what to say to a girl he knew nothing about and yet wanted to know so badly. His heart was pounding. He wondered if she could hear it.
He was rooted in place for a full minute as he tried to sort through the scenarios playing in his mind. He finally calmed himself and cracked a slight, rueful smile as he realised that it was entirely possible that she wasn't even sitting in the window anymore. He took one quiet step and then another. As he drew closer, he saw something in the window shift and a long, graceful leg drop down to the floor as she shifted positions and sat up.
His step faltered. The gentle swinging of her leg stopped. He froze.
"Shit," she muttered.
Draco took a deep breath and walked closer, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you."
She turned to face him as he stepped up to the window, "Are you here to say something incredibly snarky and then turn me into the hall monitors from hell?"
He quickly shook his head in protest, "Oh, god, no. I'd actually just..." His words failed him. Saying "I've watched you since the start of the school year and I think you're beautiful" just seemed a little too creepy, but he said it anyway. He wasn't exactly well liked by most of the school, it couldn't damage his reputation any further.
She stared at him, reading his face, his posture, and his fidgets, "You're serious, aren't you?" He nodded hesitantly and bit his lower lip as he turned to walk away. She practically leapt out of the window and placed her hand on his shoulder, "Wait...do you even know my name?" He shook his head. She giggled, "Cassiopeia." She realised her hand was still on his shoulder, "Oh, sorry...I didn't mean to intrude."
His eyes met hers as she quickly removed his hand, "No...it's alright. You're ok. You have a pretty name. I assume you know mine?"
Cassiopeia nodded, "Yep. You're Draco, but everyone just calls you by your family name."
He nodded, "I've never heard anyone call you by your first name, either."
She shrugged, "They all just call me Cassie. I hate it."
They stared at each other awkwardly before he asked the question that had been on his mind ever since he decided to approach her, "So...do you have a Valentine?" She knew it was a loaded question and it took her a lot longer than she intended to answer, "You don't have to answer, Cassiopeia. It's fine." He turned away again, intending to walk away.
She stopped him again, taking his hand this time instead of his shoulder, "You're not getting away from me that easily, mister." He looked down at her hand and then back at her face before she answered, "And no, I don't have anyone to spend the day with."
Draco smiled and spoke softly, "But I don't know you..."
Cassiopeia shrugged, "Guess it's a good a way as any to figure you out." She did not release his hand as she grabbed her satchel and then walked with him down the hall.
He still wondered if she wore sundresses.
In March, he proposed their first date. He asked her to meet him in the library at a very specific time at a very specific table between a very specific set of stacks. When he arrived, she was already waiting, her nose buried in a book, her hair hiding her face. He sat down next to her and waited for her to finish her page. She did, but she did not put down her book. She read the poem on the next page out loud, just loud enough for him to hear the inflection in her voice. He was captivated. When she finished and was about to close the book, he slipped his fingers between the pages and stopped her. He took the book, turned the page, and read the next poem to her. After his poem, she took the book back and continued their reading aloud. After an hour, she closed the book, kissed him on the cheek, and left to study. He sat on his own in the library, slightly blushed, staring at the space where she had been seated.
The Easter Holidays were not an easy time for Draco Malfoy. After the incident at Malfoy Manor during which his aunt attempted to murder his former classmate, he refused to speak to his family during meals and avoided the other Death Eaters as much as humanly possible. He tried to cease to exist without actually ceasing to exist. He took walks down the country lane in front of the manor, sometimes walking for hours in one direction only to realise how late it was and apparate back to within a few minutes of his family's home.
One day, while walking, he stopped in his tracks and looked up from the dust on his feet to see what he was walking by. Trees lined the lane, one side of it bordered by a dense woods, while the other side was open farm field, a distant church spire piercing the bright blue sky. He began to look up while he walked.
Another hour down the road, he came across a shack. It wasn't just a shack by comparison to the manor. The building was run down to the point where it had window replaced with oiled parchment paper and the roof appeared to have a large hole in it. Draco stepped off the road to explore.
He stepped onto the front porch and heard voices inside. Someone was laughing. A fiddle was being tuned. Someone else stroked the keys of a piano. He stepped off the porch as quietly as he could, but stopped leaving when he heard a familiar voice. On a hunch, he turned back and knocked on the door.
Cassiopeia answered, "Draco! Fancy seeing you here. Come on in, but do forgive the mess."
He stepped into a warmly decorated house no bigger on the inside than on the outside. Sunlight filtered through a spell cast to keep weather blocked from coming through the hole in the roof.
Cassiopeia gestured to the man with the fiddle, "This is my father. My mother is at the piano. They were just about to play, but if you don't mind, you're welcome to stay for a while." Draco nodded to both her parents and then to her, "Good! Follow me. I'll show you around." She took his hand and led him through the small house- living room, kitchen, one bedroom, bathroom, and a loft open to the living room below. The loft was Cassiopeia's space. She brought him to the back yard and they sat together in the sunlight on a weather-beaten bench in the garden as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing.
Her home was tiny, she had no suite of her own, but she was happy. Her parents played music. Her mother didn't wear makeup and prim suits, but wore blue jeans, a red t-shirt, and had a bandana covering the top of her hair, a long braid down her back. Her father wore soft brown cotton trousers and a light cotton shirt that looked like it belonged on a mediaeval peasant. They were both barefoot. As he thought about her parents, he began to notice what Cassiopeia looked like in the full sun and in her own environment, outside of the stone walls of the school. Her hair was a little more wild, tangled by the wind, her eyes were full of mischief and adventure, and her clothing floated and shifted with her movements. She was bare-armed and bare-footed and she was wearing a beautiful yellow sundress and was a part of the garden as much as the jonquils that basked in the sunlight that filtered through carefully cleared trees.
He smiled at her and she smiled back. She moved closer to him. He placed his arm around her shoulder. She tossed her long legs across his lap and wrapped her arms around him as she moved in for their first kiss. He embraced her and found himself, for the first time in his life, perfectly content as her lips met his.
When they returned to school, he felt hopeful. He sought her out and set a date in the library at the same place as before. He got their early and waited for her, but she did not arrive at the appointed time. He waited longer. He began to worry, both about her and he began to worry that he had done something to offend her. He doubted himself and he asked himself if he was reading far too much into the relationship. He tried to convince himself that he had no reason to worry because firstly, she was fine, and secondly, she and he were just friends and she didn't mean anything by not being there. It didn't work, he still worried, and she never made it to their date.
When he saw her next, she looked tired, ragged, and there were bruises on her wrists that she tried to keep hidden by her shirt sleeves. He caught her in the hallway after class and slipped her a note. As he asked, she met him by her window during Muggle Studies.
Cassiopeia met him, set her books in the windowsill, and leaned against the wall for support, "What do you want to know?"
He took one of her hands and used his other to brush her hair back from her face. In doing so, he discovered a bruise on her temple, carefully hidden by her curls. He kissed her forehead and then stepped back, unbuttoning the cuffs on her shirt sleeves. The bruises on her wrists were dark purple and wide, wrapped all the way around her wrist.
He carefully buttoned her cuffs before he spoke to her, "Cassiopeia, what is going on? Who did this to you?"
She squirmed, uncomfortable and scared, "Nothing that is any of your business."
Draco stepped back close to her and placed his hands on her shoulders; she winced and he removed his hands, stuffing them deep into his pockets instead, "That's not true. I love you, and that makes it my business when someone does whatever this was to you." In his head, he repeated, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" to himself as it dawned on him what he had said.
Her shoulders slumped and she covered her face with her hands, "Someone else wants me...and this is what they did to convince me they were serious. If I don't give them the answer they want by the end of the day, we might not make it to this weekend."
"What do you mean, 'we might not make it to this weekend'? Is someone threatening to kill you?"
She perched on the edge of the windowsill and tucked her knees up to her chest, hugging them tightly; her skirt slid to the side revealing light green shorts underneath, "And you."
He carefully unfolded her knees and smoothed her skirt over her legs before sitting down beside her and holding her close; he spoke straight from his heart and said only what he could assure her was true, "Cassiopeia, no matter what you do, or where you go, I will still love you. If you, like so many others, flee this place, I will come to find you after this is over. If you stay and you go to this other person to try to spare yourself, I will be waiting for you when you need me. If you take the abuse but refuse to go to this person, I will protect you the best I can, if at all."
She shook her head, "I can't do this." She began to cry.
He tugged a handkerchief out of his vest and wiped her eyes, "You will do what you have to do, but that doesn't change what I feel for you."
She sighed and nuzzled up to him, "Thank you."
He had no idea if she loved him in return.
It would be the first of May before he spoke to her again. The Great Hall was slowly filling as rumours of Voldemort's approach and Harry's return spread like wildfire through the student body. He ducked away from his housemates and sat down beside her at Ravenclaw's table. The other Ravenclaw girls went silent.
"Cassiopeia, can I speak to you for a moment?"
"Now really isn't the time."
Draco gestured to the head table, "Do you notice something missing?"
She shrugged, "The Death Eaters aren't there, but so what?"
"If that means what I think it means, then now might be all the time we have."
One of the other girls begged Cassiopeia to stay and another tried to convince her that he was only being dramatic.
He slowly unbuttoned his sleeve and pushed it up over the pulsing Dark Mark on his arm, "No, this is being dramatic. My skin is crawling- literally- as the ink moves. My bone feels like it is on fire, and every instinct in my brain tells me that I should claw that flesh right off my own arm. He's calling, and now may very well be all the time any of us have." The girls went silent.
Cassiopeia nodded to him as he carefully covered his arm and buttoned his cuff, "Then yes, you may speak to me for a minute- but I don't want to get in trouble for not being here when I should be."
He took her hand and led her out a side door into the low hallway beyond. He clicked the door shut behind them and walked a short distance down the hallway. They were a safe distance from the door and to a place where the only light came from the moonlight punctuating the black through tall, narrow windows. He kept to the shadows and kissed her full on the lips. She was startled, but kissed him back.
After she ended the kiss, she walked away to the window, "Good god, you had better be right about this being our only chance or else he is going to kill me."
"Who?"
She tugged off her vest and began to unbutton her shirt. He wondered if he should stop her. He wanted to see her undressed. He waited. She slipped the shirt from her shoulders, dropping it to the ground, and positioned herself in the light so he could see her battered body. Bruises and welts ran from below her waist, hidden by her skirt, up under her bra and over her shoulders. He walked around her. Her back was lined with long, deep scratches that almost looked as though they had been created by claws. There was no place on her back that was unbruised.
He had no idea if every bruise was from the same source, or if they were from the regular tortures dissenting students received at the hands of the Carrows. Whatever the answer was, he didn't care. He picked up her shirt and draped it over her shoulders as she started shivering.
"If you think that looks bad, you should see my thighs." Her fingers searched for the button on her skirt.
He stepped in front of her and wrapped his arms around her waist, stopping her fingers before she pushed the button through its slit in the fabric, "No. Not like this."
"We should get back to the Great Hall."
"Yes...but you should probably put your shirt back on first." He helped her into the garment and took his time sliding the tiny white buttons back through their holes. He watched as she tugged her vest back over her head. He straightened her collar as she shoved the shirt tails back under her skirt.
Once she was dressed, he kissed her again, this time in the moonlight.
Draco remembered being in a room of fire and flying out of it, dazed, rescued by an unlikely rescuer. He remembered death. He remembered desperation, and then he remembered being punched in the face by an arm coming out of nowhere and then everything went black.
When he woke up, he was still on the stairs, but the sounds of the battle were no longer echoing off the stone. The world looked fuzzy for a few minutes and his head was pounding. The castle was shaking, or at least he thought it was shaking, until he realised he was what was shaking, or, rather, being shaken. He tried to sit up quickly, but a gentle arm caught him across his chest and firmly held him in place. He was very disoriented, but he did not fight the arm. Another arm slipped under his shoulders and carefully guided him as he sat up, easing him vertical. The room started spinning. He pitched sideways and vomited. A hand rubbed his back as he shuddered and heaved. He heard something tearing and someone wiped the warm fluid from his chin and lips. He pushed himself away his mess and turned face his caregiver.
"Cassiopeia?" She was sitting one stair above him. He pressed up against her legs and rested his head on her lap, "What's happening? Where is everyone? Is it over?"
She stroked his hair as she explained, "I think Harry's dead. Everyone's outside. There's a group of people in the Great Hall taking care of the dead- moving them to safer places nearby. It's not over, but if Harry's dead, and what they say about him is true...it might as well be."
He sat up and stared at her. Her vest was long since discarded and her white shirt was burned and stained with sweat and blood. It was also significantly shorter, having been torn off clear around for rags and bandages. Her hair clumped in one spot on the side of her head, her scalp sticky and matted with her own blood.
Draco clung to her, childlike and terrified, "What do we do?"
She shrugged, "We could go outside with the crowd, we could stay in here and wait for the fight to come to us, or we could go down to the Great Hall to help with the bodies."
He wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his head against her, "I'm scared." Tears welled up in his eyes.
She kissed the top of his head and stood up, breaking his embrace. She stepped down to a few stairs lower than him and helped him stand. He wobbled as a wave of nausea washed through him. He caught the wall and leaned, breathing heavily, hoping not to vomit again. Once he was sure he could move without heaving, he slowly descended the stairs, following her.
When they reached the bottom of the staircase, she paused and warned him, "Careful- the floor's slick with blood and other things."
"What other things?"
"You don't want to know," she answered, her voice hollow.
They entered the Great Hall and were immediately put to work moving bodies.
As the battle came back into the castle, Cassiopeia and Draco huddled together in the room with the dead, clinging to each other and praying for their survival. When they heard the cheers of the others, they stayed frozen, unsure which side had won. It wasn't until one of their professors slipped into the room to mourn that they were aware of what had happened.
Draco went to find his parents. Cassiopeia left the castle and went to try to find one single spot of land that was not scarred by the battle, drenched in blood, or below a body blasted into a tree.
Mid day, after the dead had been tallied and families had been reunited, Draco wandered out to the grounds and found Cassiopeia under an oak tree by the lake. He sat down beside her, thinking no farther into the future than the next ten minutes. She curled up against him. It wasn't long before they both were asleep.
Months later, Draco found himself in Azkaban serving a five year sentence for conspiring to bring about the death of Albus Dumbledore.
Five years later, he re-entered the world with nothing to his name. His mother had died and his father had disappeared, unable to cope with the life he had left to lead. Draco was taken in by the Greengrass family, and, within a few years, married one of their daughters out of gratitude, respect, and possibly the slightest amount of love. He did his duty by her family and did as they wished by eventually bringing them a son, who grew willowy and graceful, but distant from his father. The Dementors of Azkaban had long ago erased Draco's memories of Cassiopeia.
One day, while walking down the lane, he came to a strangely familiar collapsing shack tucked back into the woods. Curious, he ventured through the tall underbrush growing in what had been a path up to the front door. Standing directly in front of triggered a memory of a young woman in a yellow sundress. He let the memory guide him and walked around to the back of the house. One of the walls had fallen outward as the roof had caved in and he had to carefully climb over the splintered wood to get to what was left of the back garden. He slipped and scraped his hand. He pulled out the splinters and pressed his bloodied palm into the cuff of his white shirt.
A memory of unbuttoning cuffs and bruised wrists flashed through his mind. It was followed by a memory of his head resting against a young woman's white shirt that smelled of dirt and sweat and blood and death.
He shook his head, unable to connect the images in his mind. As he rounded the back of the house, he was met by an unkempt hedgerow that had forced itself skyward, far taller than himself. He turned sideways and pressed through it, the boughs scraping his face and tugging at his hair. He asked himself why he was doing this, climbing through a hedge behind an abandoned house in the middle of the countryside, but his mind only told him that it was important and that he had to be where he was, so persist.
When he broke through the hedge, the first thing he noticed was the sheer abundance of overgrown underbrush tangled in the yard, flowing freely into the house and over its walls. As he carefully explored the growth, trying to find anything that sparked familiarity, he tripped over the rotted remains of a bench. He crouched down and brushed his fingers over the wood. Something about it was just out of reach, but so close he could feel it. Still crouched, he glanced around the rest of the yard, trying to figure out why the yard was giving him a strange feeling of contentment.
Something yellow caught his eye. Struggling through the underbrush was a small cluster of jonquils.
Suddenly, the pieces fell together. A spring day and a chance visit. A pretty young woman in a yellow sundress sitting next to him on the bench, her legs draped across his lap. A kiss.
Other memories of her began to fall in place. Reading to one another in the library. Bruises. So many bruises. A moonlight kiss. Fear. Rest under an oak tree.
Cassiopeia.
He stood up quickly and turned wildly towards the house, unable to control himself as he dashed into the collapsing structure. He searched what was left of every room before he calmed down and slowly exited back to the garden. He walked over to the little yellow flowers and dug his fingers into the earth around the plant. Gently easing the soil out from around it, he pulled the jonquil bulbs from the ground and took them with him back down the lane. When he returned to the home he shared with his wife and son, he planted the flowers in a large pot and set them on the front porch. He wondered if Cassiopeia had any children, and if his son would meet them at school. He wondered if he could convince his son to help him find her.
He walked into the house and was washing the dirt from his hands when his wife knocked on the bathroom door and very matter-of-factly told him that she really didn't see why they were still together, especially since their son was now away at school, and she'd really like to see other people. He'd long since repaid her family.
As soon as the paperwork was filed, he began his search for Cassiopeia.
His son found Draco's mission fascinating- a quest to find a mysterious long-ago friend that stemmed from a story he'd never heard because his father had never wanted to talk about the days before Azkaban. When Draco exhausted every venue to find her, it was his son who suggested using technology to look for her- perhaps she was on the internet.
In the little town where Draco was living in a small flat, his son found a coffee shop with internet access and one slow old computer tucked in a corner for public use. Draco peered over the young teen's shoulder as his fingers flew across the keys - a skill learned from his mother - Cassiopeia's name appearing in the search box at the top of the page. Click.
Cassiopeia Aster returned with a few hundred thousand results. His son put quotation marks around the name. Click.
One result.
Draco gripped the back of the chair as his son opened the page for a diner in London that claimed to be an "authentic American soda shop, straight out of 1957!". As his son scrolled down the page to the list of "our friendly wait staff, who will always greet you with a smile and a soda!", Draco closed his eyes and hoped against all odds that he really had found her. When he opened his eyes, his son had centred the page the picture next to the name.
"Is this her, Dad?"
Draco's knees buckled and he steadied himself on the chair as he looked into digital familiar eyes, "Yes...what does it say about her?"
His son read the caption, "Cassiopeia Astor has been working for us for nearly two decades. She makes the best malted milk shake in London. Not only are her malts irresistible, but our customers have been known to be so impressed by her friendly service that they have a hard time not asking for her number!'"
"Where is this place?" he asked. His son wrote down the address and then searched for it on the online map.
Before they logged off the computer, Draco took one last look at the photograph and wondered if she still had that yellow sundress and if she'd remember him.
It took him a few months to gather up the courage to visit the diner. The first time, he walked in with a hat tucked down over his eyes and took the table that was offered to him. He acted as invisible as he could. He ordered only coffee and left quickly, his payment on the table.
The second time, his son went with him. He requested to sit in Cassiopeia's section, but the waitress who seated them said there was no space in her area. He and his son had breakfast together and then left quietly. Draco never pointed her out to his son, but his son knew well enough which waitress had been his father's first love.
The third time he went to the diner, he went alone and again requested to sit in Cassiopeia's section. The waitress seated him and said that Cassiopeia would be along shortly. Draco hid behind the menu.
He heard her approach, "Sir, you need more time before I take your order?"
It took every ounce of courage in his body to lower the menu, "No, I think I'm ready."
She nearly dropped the tray she had tucked between her arm and hip, "Oh my god...'
He smiled, "At least you recognise me."
She nodded, "Yeah..." She tore a slip off her order pad and scribbled something on it, "Here's when I get off shift. Meet me out back. Anyway- what can I get you?" She took his order and went back to the kitchen.
He smiled and tucked the slip of paper carefully in his shirt pocket.
Out behind the diner, Draco leaned against a dumpster and waited. Every few minutes he took the slip of paper from his shirt pocket and checked the time on his watch. The seconds ticked closer. Five minutes. Three minutes. One minute. One minute late. Three minutes late. Five minutes late. He fidgeted and checked the time on the paper again. He sighed and wondered if she wasn't coming. The handle on the kitchen door turned toward the ground and the latch clicked. He stared at it, holding his breath. Cassiopeia pushed open the door and, as soon as it slammed shut behind her, tugged a cigarette out of her purse. She lit it with a charm, took a long drag, and sighed.
"It's been a long time."
"Nearly two decades."
She paused, tapping the ash off her cigarette as she walked out of the alley; he followed, "So what happened? You went to Azkaban and then what?"
He wondered how much of his life he wanted to tell her. Scenes flashed in front of his eyes. His wedding. The birth of his son. Papers for the court. His son's fingers flying across the keys.
"My mother was dead, my father was missing. Greengrass family took me in. Married their daughter. We have a son. He's a student at Hogwarts. Sweet kid- willowy and graceful like his mother. I didn't remember anything before Azkaban until I went for a walk and found the house you grew up in. It was the jonquils that brought the little flashes of memory together." He paused, "She told me we were through after I'd planted them in the pot on the deck."
She stood in silence and he wondered what she was thinking. Azkaban had deleted her. He had walked out of prison and into the home of the only family that would take him and he stayed there until he was no longer wanted. He wasn't sure he was wanted where he was currently standing, either.
"So how'd you find me?"
"My son found you. My ways weren't working. He knows how to use a computer. Fascinating device. He found your name on the screen about the diner."
"You mean the webpage?"
"Yeah. That's what he called it."
They stopped walking as they passed a park square and she waved for him to follow her in to a bench near the rose bed. She crushed out her cigarette and flicked it into the receptacle. They sat down and he shifted uncomfortably, unsure of what he could say or do to fill the silence. Hundreds of questions seemed to flit through his mind in the span of only a few minutes. He wanted to know everything. What had happened after his arrest? Had the man who had been abusing her kept her silent? Had she found her own way in the world? He didn't just want to know, he needed to know. His thoughts spiraled together into a cacophony in his brain that wouldn't let him sort one question from another fast enough to ask any of them. Was she married? Did she have children? When and how did she end up at the diner? Where did she live? Could he see her again? Did she ever think of him? Was he welcome where he was? Was this his only chance? What did she think of him? What was going through her mind?
When she broke the silence, she answered the one question that he hadn't thought to ask because he wasn't sure that he wanted to know the answer, "It was Amycus."
Pictures flashed through his mind. A bare back in the moonlight. Clawed flesh, bruises, welts, and soft skin blackened with blood just under the skin. He closed his eyes as his arms remembered clinging to a shuddering, terrified girl in a dark room surrounded by bodies, every quake of his own shaking causing her to twitch and whimper as her bruises jostled against him.
He said the only thing that he could think of as he took a deep breath and back against the bench, "Oh."
She lit another cigarette, her hands trembling slightly, "Yeah. Amycus. I don't want to talk about it."
He nodded, "Then we won't." More silence. The only sound either of them made was the soft crinkle of her uniform as she leaned forward to tap the ash off the end of her cigarette. All the other questions had fallen silent. He felt empty. His heart sank to his stomach and he stoically stared forward, unflinching, as he tried to keep back tears. Amycus had stolen life and joy from the girl his teenage self had loved. Amycus had scared her in more ways than one. Amycus had raped and beaten the bloom out of Cassiopeia. Draco wished that he felt righteously angry and that he felt consoled by the fact that Amycus was long dead, but the only thing that he could feel was a sadness that struck him through his core and left him feeling despondent and hopeless.
She interrupted his thoughts, "I'm glad that son of a bitch is dead. When the Daily Prophet announced his execution, I cut out his picture and burned it in the sink."
He tried desperately to think of something to say, but again, nothing happened. instead, he reached up and rested his hand on her shoulder, unable to speak. She glanced at his hand and ruefully smiled.
He said the only thing he could think of, "Can I walk you home?"
She stood up and he rose as well, "Sure."
His hands shoved deep into his pockets, he followed her out of the park square. After they walked a few blocks, she slipped her arm around his and her fingers crept down his wrist. He drew his hand from his pocket and she laced his fingers through hers. When they arrived at her building, she squeezed his hand before letting it go and kissed his cheek.
He watched as she slid her key into the lock, "Cassiopeia? May I see you again?"
He noticed her cheeks pink ever so slightly as the corners of her lips curled into a girlish grin, "Of course. Meet me Saturday at my father's house in the afternoon. I'll be in the back garden."
On Saturday, he apparated down the lane from the collapsed shack and walked hesitantly toward it. He had no idea what to expect from Cassiopeia now that so much time had passed. They had both changed significantly and he knew that he was far from the person he had been when they had fallen asleep under the oak tree. He had no doubt that she, too, had become a different person than the girl he had known at school.
As he approached the house, he noticed that shreds of the the oiled parchment paper still clung to the edges of the sagging and misshapen window in the front of the house. He made his way around to the back garden, once again pushing through the overgrown hedgerow that snagged his clothing and left fine red line scratched into his skin. He stepped through the hedge and immediately noticed that the bench was fixed.
The second, and more important, thing that he noticed was that on the bench sat Cassiopeia. Her arms were bare, her feet were bare, and her hair was just a little more wild. He sat down next to her and she tossed her long legs across his lap and wrapped her arms around him as she moved in for a kiss. He embraced her and found himself, for the first time in his life since the birth of his son, perfectly content as her lips met his.
She was wearing a beautiful yellow sundress.