This seems random, but I'm setting the scene, so bear with me!

November, 1994

Fleur Delacour, Triwizard champion, made her way through the crowd. She was determined to get Cedric Diggory to go with her to the Yule Ball. Random boys began asking her, almost desperately, as she began to gather her Veela powers to do some, ah , gentle persuading. One boy, a red head, the one who seemed to hang over that child champion, Harry Potter, suddenly blurted a request, and Fleur couldn't help herself, she laughed cruelly, glaring at him. Then another boy, with light sking but a dark and clouded aura, also added his own request, but his wasn't wild, as though perhaps he wasn't affected by her Veela magic. "My lady," he said charmingly, "would you do me the honor…"

"No," she said shortly, not just because she had a real target in mind, but also because this boy, already over halfway to manhood, made her uncomfortable. She passed him by and put him out of mind.

She left behind a passive face, hiding a dark and dangerous seething mass of fury. At the Yule Ball, the gorgeous Daphne Greengrass was at his side, but even that was not enough to calm his anger, which steadily grew.

Fleur herself, flower of the court, finished school with the memory of the Tournament still haunting her. She returned to England to find closure, and fell in love. The Yule Ball became nothing more than a memory, while it consumed another.

_______

March, 1996- November 1998

Astoria looked at her longtime boyfriend. "You lied to me," she snapped. His mouth raised into a grimace, mocking her.

"What I do with my time is my own business."

She wheeled on him in fury. "If you're shagging someone other than your girlfriend, it's a problem, and it's your girlfriend's business as well, especially when it's her sister you're shagging," she hissed. "You told me you got over her, that she was never more than a date to the ball."

He merely shrugged. "You weren't available, by your own choice. You can't blame me for going elsewhere to get what my girlfriend should have given me freely."

Her hand acted of its own accord, slicing through the air to connect solidly with his face. For a moment, his black eyes sparked, she saw the emotions, and she knew she should be scared. She was scared.

"There is nothing wrong with me for choosing not to sleep with someone while still in school. You couldn't wait for me, and now you'll never have me."

She turned her back, half expecting a curse that never came. Two years later Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord once again, and her ex-boyfriend vanished. She wondered, vaguely, if he'd joined them, become a Death Eater, like so many other boys from the years above her. But then she couldn't wonder anymore, because she'd become something like a counselor to the younger students, at the request of Headmistress McGonagall, who'd taken over the running of the school until a more permanent headmaster could be found, and she could leave the school that held so many sad memories for her and her fellow teachers. At McGonagall's suggestion, Astoria had organized a program with a few guest speakers, to teach the younger students of the horrors of the wars. She'd been leary of inviting Draco Malfoy, but McGonagall had suggested him as well, and she had to admit that his perspective, as one of only two former Death Eaters not currently in Azkaban, definitely would hold some weight in the program.

He'd shown up silently, barely speaking to anyone as he walked the halls of his former institution. She'd shown him to his place and told him where he fell in the schedule with equal reserve. He'd followed speeches by Harry Potter and Andromeda Tonks.

Andromeda Tonks had escorted her nephew Draco onto the platform. "There is hope for this world," she told the hall, which had gone silent. The air seemed frigid with the response of the people within it, and Draco lowered his head to the floor. "And part of this hope lies with the actions of a few. Far more often than not, my nephew did not do as he should have. But when it mattered, when it counted, he acted to save the life of Harry and his friends, kept an ambiguity as to their identity that assisted their escape. He came here to speak with you on his change. He came not to ask for forgiveness for his actions, because he has been at least partly forgiven by those who mattered, whose lives he affected directly and indirectly. He comes to you willingly. Listen to him with respect." She squeezed his shoulder and glared at the crowd in a way that made her look more like Bella than she usually did.

"I don't deserve your respect," Draco corrected. "Nothing I've done was worthy of respect, although Harry would argue differently," he shrugged. "I am Draco Malfoy, and my actions led to the death of Albus Dumbledore. I acted out of fear for my family and myself, but I acted, and I am the only one responsible for my actions. I have Dumbledore to thank for my soul. I have never killed a man, but I have seen death, and haven't spoken for the part of the dead. I have been cruel."

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Death Eaters did what they did for heartless reasons. They took pleasure from the pain of others. If I might ask, how many of you are muggle born or half bloods?" A large percentage of students raised their hands, and he nodded. "I would have hated you once," he remarked easily, "because I'd been told from birth that I was better than you. I slapped a girl once for talking to me, because she was not worthy to look upon me." He said this all with a straight face, and Astoria cringed, remembering that day, back in her first year, when Draco and her sister were in their second. "I took pleasure from seeing her cry. I was heartless, for no reason. None of them deserved that, none of the people I treated cruelly. Back then, I was ruled by arrogance that was longstanding in my family. Later, I was ruled by fear that was new to me. I was used to being the highest, Slytherin's prince. Suddenly, I was the lowest on a totem pole, and that put me in danger. So I did things I regret. I lost someone I'd considered a friend, although I saw how my cruel treatment of them made our ties of friendship out of thread, instead of steel, when they turned on me, in the end. I owe my life to Harry Potter, a life I nearly lost in the fire set by my friend. It consumed him. He, like me, had lived for cruelty, for seeing the pain of others. He died trying to keep in place a cruel overlord. We did terrible things. We saw terrible things, we were terrible people. We lost part of ourselves in service to Him. I lost my innocence, Goyle lost his freedom, and Crabbe lost his life. Even on his side, there was no loyalty from the top down, it was only subservience. Life in his service was cutthroat. People in his service would work with you until you fell in his eyes. There is no honor among thieves, it is said. But there is less honor among murderers, following a sadistic dictator. In the end, I survived because I didn't choose a side, because I remained aloof, while people died for both sides. I survived because I hid, I appealed to both sides, and I was saved by others who were far more honorable for me. I was saved by the people I hated, the people my Lord hated."

"I will never free myself of the shame of my actions, but I hope I will find inner peace one day. The sounds of the battle will always haunt me, long after I can no longer hear anything else. My actions will haunt me, long after I am no longer able to move. I will receive judgment one day, and I can only hope that my attempts to redeem myself will help me. That talking to you, telling you that nothing good comes of hatred, for either side, will make a difference, will change something, will prevent you from taking a stand like Tom Riddle did, from gathering followers like my aunt Bellatrix. I hope to be half the man Sirius Black was, half the man Regulus Black became during his final act of rebellion against the man I still fear, months after his death. And I hope you hear my message and take it to heart. I hope you look at the child you used to hate and try to see the good in them. Reach out to the person you've scorned. You might be pleasantly surprised by what you learn when you take hate out of your life."

He hesitated. "My mother and I have been helping at an orphanage. A little girl there calls me her hero. She will be disillusioned one day, but to her, my sins don't exist. To her, I am simply the man who saved her brother from a fall from a tree that could have been deadly. Try looking through her eyes, for one day, seeing a person only for what they do that day, not for their prior actions or their House or their appearance or where their magical abilities come from. See them for them. Regain the innocence of a child, if only for that day, and use it to move past the horrible events that have occurred. Help the wizarding world move on."

He inclined his head to the crowd, murmuring thanks to them for listening to him. He slipped off the platform to a silent crowd. George Weasley was scheduled to go next, and he'd stood in the shadows looking thoughtful through Draco's speech. He was the one who started clapping, but Draco had already left, and didn't hear the rest of the hall join George. It wasn't the applause that had accompanied Harry's entrance, but it was something concrete.

Astoria, seeing George take the stage, decided to move off after Draco. She found him standing in the middle of a room off the Great Hall, the same room she remembered from her Sorting, six long years ago. Draco's back was turned to her, and his shoulders were shaking with silent sobs. Astoria stood back by the entrance, unsure of how to proceed.

"I'm not a good man, ma'am," he said, and she was surprised that he knew it was a woman who had entered. "You invited me here knowing that. But I have grown, I'm not completely ashamed to be caught crying."

He turned to her, grey eyes red. He showed no surprise to see her, so she figured he'd known exactly who she was. "You're a better man than they think you are," she finally decided to say, "and probably than you give yourself credit for," she said, suddenly sure that it was true.

He sighed, closing his eyes. "You don't know, don't understand."

"I could though, if you ever wanted to talk about it," she replied. "I'm sure you're short on understanding people in your life."

He'd just shrugged, but by that point she'd been intrigued. She'd sent him letters, until he'd replied. She'd initiated the friendship, though she never meant for it to go further. He'd confessed secrets of his life to her, his painful visits to Azkaban to visit his father and former best friend, the nights his mother sobbed herself to sleep, and later, when he trusted her more, the nights he'd sobbed himself to sleep as well. He spoke of his break-up with his longtime girlfriend Pansy, because she still held within herself the ideals of Lord Voldemort, and he couldn't deal with that. Astoria became his therapist as well, and she unconsciously began to move her studies in a similar direction, while her professors watched knowingly. Minerva McGonagall remarked upon it, one evening while hosting her dear friends Augusta Longbottom and Andromeda Tonks for a late tea, and the others had used their influence with the Ministry to begin a special division for Grief Counseling within St. Mungo's. When she'd graduated, Astoria'd been asked to head the division the year after it opened, provided she take courses in muggle and magical grief counseling during her first year, while Augusta and Andromeda co-headed in her place. Draco volunteered his time at St. Mungo's as well, and Astoria made a point of forcing him to eat once a day in the hospital tea room. They'd moved to an even closer friendship in person, and Astoria gradually realized how much she cared for the boy. It was unusual, and people questioned her judgment when she began asking the Malfoy boy to accompany her around town. It was Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, occasional volunteers with the magical hospital, who'd hinted to Draco that he ask Astoria out, and who'd informed Astoria that Draco felt unworthy of her when he'd laughed grimly and told them such.

So it was Astoria who'd slapped Draco across the face one evening when he'd escorted her home and nearly left without kissing her. It was also Astoria who'd kissed Draco firmly. It took awhile, but eventually she convinced him to cut himself enough slack to let himself love her back. She'd used every weapon in her arsenal, and Andromeda, observing Astoria's methods once during a routine checkup for Teddy, had to laugh at the similarities between Astoria and her own dear Dora, amused by the similarities between Draco and Remus as well, in steadfastly trying to save the people they loved from his own view of himself. "She'll win him eventually," she confided to Teddy, who'd babbled happily, spitting a little, and turned his hair green, "just like your mummy."

Astoria did, much to the confusion of the majority of the population. Such a bright and beautiful girl, wasting herself on that slimeball, they whispered. They'd judged her, her husband, and eventually her son, who walked his own path at Hogwarts and became a Ravenclaw, though he made friends with Hufflepuffs, Slytherins and Gryfindors alike, embodying the message his father had delivered years before his birth, the message Harry Potter himself preached. But there was too much of his Father in his looks, too much anger and hatred towards the family name, that the wizarding world would never understand.

____________________

February, 2000

Viktor Krum swung off his broom unhappily. Being back in England this weekend was bringing back painful memories of the Tournament, the ruined wedding, and the loss of a great girl, albeit to a good man.

"Hey, Krum" he heard a laughing bark from someone in the business, who were the only ones privileged enough to come to special practices like this one.

Viktor turned and was pleased to see a fellow seeker, Aiden Lynch, whom he had beat in his first World Cup, though the other team had walked away with the cup. "Ta only man ta Wronski Feint me," the man's Irish brogue brought a smile on the Bulgarian's face, even though he had to work twice as hard as usual to understand the English.

"Ya, that's right," Viktor replied. "How are you?"

"Good, man," the man's smile was quick and easy. "me last year, mate," he added, somewhat sadly. "'ad a couple o' injuries that are puttin' me out of the competitive sercles, but Ah've been asked to help train newbies for ta Irish team, and to stay on as a reserve o' sorts." He regarded Viktor with interest, leaning one arm on a railing and looking straight at Krum, his other hand resting on his hip.. "Come tad is party I'm t'rowing tonight. It'll be fun. Take yer mind off whate'er troubles have your face in t'at frown."

"I'd like that," Vicktor responded, and he meant it. And that night, when his new friend Aiden introduced him to his sister Caroline, Viktor was very pleased he'd gone. Three years later, he made his now best friend and almost brother-in-law his best man. And the world of Viktor Krum, famous seeker, was good again.

This evolved a lot from the original... I'm not sure I should have added his speech, or the after part. Originally Astoria's part ended with the ex-boyfriend leaving. But I like the idea of Draco trying to change. I promise, it will all come together in the end!