A/N: This story is dedicated to the incredible, unparalleled APlumTwilight, who generously reads every word I write and offers beyond valuable feedback. Thank you!

Also - I do not own Harry Potter, though it would be nice if I did.


Draco Malfoy stands on the pavement outside the Leaky Cauldron with a small black suitcase. People hurry around him, absorbed in their own business. The sky is gray and heavy with rain. The colors and sounds are muted, as if washed away by the raindrops now dancing on the pavement. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he hurries inside, and finds an empty chair by a window facing the street.

He picks up his suitcase and places it on the ledge. The suitcase is his life, everything that he wants to take from his old life to put in the new. He wants to forget his old life, shed it like a snake sheds its skin, and emerge with a new skin, a new life, free of the sorrows and blunders and terrors of the nightmare he has lived until now, six years after the end of the war. He carries more baggage than most; the scar on his left arm, and the scars on his memory of being forced to torture, to kill.

By all rights a twenty-three-year-old man should be in his prime, whole and able. He should not have creases at the corners of his eyes, nor a ribbon of gray in his hair. Time has not been good to Draco Malfoy; it has aged him beyond his years.

A gust of wind flings the door open and Draco recognizes the figure in the doorway from his childhood. She is from an old pureblood family, the younger of two daughters, two years his junior, and it drives him crazy that he cannot remember her name. He flinches as she meets his gaze, embarrassed that she caught him staring.

"Can I sit here?" she asks, indicating the chair next to his. When he does not respond, she sits down anyway, pulling off her damp traveling cloak and placing it next to his suitcase. He glances at her reflection in the window. She is not beautiful, or even pretty; her features are plain, partly obscured by a sheet of strawberry blonde hair whose hue reminds him uncomfortably of the Weasleys. She sits in the chair beside him and does not talk, preferring to gaze thoughtfully at the rain.

The memories start coming back to him now, from a time when he thought life was a leisurely stroll in the manicured gardens of the Malfoy estate.

The Malfoy manor is the center of elite society, always full of the influential, the rich, the famous, and the sophisticated. His companion and her elder sister are frequently seen at the manor with their rich, aristocratic parents, the stereotypical invitees. Both girls have the same ruddy curls and sea-blue eyes, but the similarity ends there: The elder is pretty and full of energy. The younger is neither; she is quiet, even boring compared to her lively sister.

His companion's sister is Draco's age. They are always seen together, whether they are playing or talking or eating, and their little eastern screech owls know the way between their two homes with their eyes shut. Draco loves the sunshine of his little friend.

At school, they go their separate ways. Draco's new companion becomes Pansy Parkinson, while her tastes vary from month to month (the last he saw, she was flirting with Seamus Finnegan). That's the thing about sunshine - it's pretty while it lasts, but you can never count on good weather to arrive when you need it.

The horror first strikes when he turns sixteen, and only worsens in the following years. He is a tree jerked from the ground in a storm, in desperate need of an anchor to secure him to peace and sanity. He needs to deepen, reach out, find his place, but how can you do that if you have no roots? You can't hold a tree down with light. Pansy roots are too flimsy, so he makes do with Myrtle, though they are not much better and a poor substitute for his own.

As the harsh winds whip around him, he looks in desperation to those around him. He sees an aster being similarly beaten, but holding its ground. He thinks to call out to it, but it is too late.

"It's never too late," she says, and Draco's face flames. "There's nothing wrong in asking for help." Draco glares at her, a sort of it's-none-of-your-business-so-don't-lecture-me, and she shrugs, picks up her cloak, and gets up to leave.

He is too proud to ask anyone her name, so he racks his memory over and over, sifting through more than two decades of recollection. The rain begins to let up, people come and go, and still he sits in the chair by the window and thinks. It is only when the proprietress comes and asks him if he wants anything to drink that he finally comes up with the name.

Astoria Greengrass.


He rents a room above the Leaky Cauldron and muses all night. There's nothing wrong in asking for help. He wants to snort in derision - Malfoys don't ask for help. But with Lucius serving a life sentence in Azkaban, and Narcissa in emotional and mental shambles, Malfoy pride has all but disintegrated. As much as he hates himself for it, he wants help; he wants roots, he wants connection. He wants to ensure that he doesn't make the same mistakes he made the first time around.

He stands at the window and watches the owl soar over the moonlit rooftops, a simple message tied to its leg. He knows that in by sending that one piece of parchment, he's cast his reputation and dignity to the dust, but considering that he's already little more than a pariah in the wizarding world anyway, he hasn't got much to lose by sending an SOS.

At long last, the morning comes, and with it, a new letter tied to the leg of the exhausted owl, written in a loopy scrawl that Draco suspects must have given headaches to the Hogwarts professors. It's honest to the point of being blunt; the letter begins I've never been good at being tactful and diplomatic, so I'll be straightforward with you - if you want to re-establish yourself, you can't act like an arrogant Malfoy heir, and continues in this vein. He retroactively feels more than a twinge of indignation, but he appreciates the lack of sugarcoating.

She signs it with the distinctly informal, Love, Astoria. He's tempted to laugh, but he can't bring himself to do it. Love, Astoria means that she really cares, a rarity in the world of power-hungry aristocrats that he's grown up in. Right now, while he's trying to anchor himself to normalcy, he needs nothing more than someone to care, to help him grow from a stunted tree to a flowering plant with hawthorn roots - and aster flowers.