Summary: Astoria kept her heart guarded, locked up tight. But maybe, just maybe, there was someone who could worm his way in…

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Your, Mine, and Ours

You were in college, working part time, waiting tables

…

I was a flight risk with a fear of falling

~Mine, Taylor Swift

The war had changed her. She was a different person after it than she had been before. It wasn't like she was unaware of the darker side of the wizarding world, of the prejudices and hatred that lived and breathed in certain sections of the wizarding world. Those were the sections that she had grown up in. what had changed was her willingness to accept it as a part of her reality.

The war had taken that small, relatively unimportant part of the wizarding world and made them feel like they had real power. They were able to crawl out of the rocks and crevices they normally inhabited and live in the sunshine for the better part of the year. It was too much for her and, seeing no other option, she fled.

Astoria Greengrass, daughter of a noble, pureblood family that went back generations, was giving up on wizardry and hiding herself away amongst the muggles. What would the bigots say?

She started a whole new life for herself. Rented a tiny flat, the best she could afford, and got a job waiting tables at a small hole-in-the-wall restaurant. What time she wasn't working, she set out to explore the muggle world, to learn as much about it as she possibly could.

Astoria was almost totally immersed in her new world, her new identity. She was so in it that she never expected to see someone from her old world. Especially not him. So, when we walked into work on a Wednesday about six months after she left and saw Draco Malfoy sitting in a booth, she nearly turned around and walked right out the door.

''So, the rumours are true. You really are slumming it," Draco spoke as soon as she walked up to his table to take his order. She'd wanted to go home and curl up in bed and not be forced to interact with Draco but, her empty back account made her put on her apron and wait on him, the only customer in the restaurant at the time.

"I'd say staying in that despicable excuse for humanity would be slumming it. What can I get you?" Astoria responded. In her estimation Draco stood for everything that was wrong with the old world.

"You aren't wrong," Draco mumbled, "What is your soup special?" He asked his question in almost the same breath, as if he'd never spoken his precious words. However, Astoria had heard them and she was absolutely floored.

"I'm sorry. What?" Astoria asked, barely able to process what was going on. Draco, golden child of the vile, prejudiced wizarding world, should have been revelling. Sure, the Dark Lord had been vanquished. Sure, the aurors were rounding up all the Death Eaters. But those ideals had seen the light and it was harder to get rid of them once they had.

"I said, what is your soup special?" Draco responded, but when Astoria just continued to stare at him, he dithered. Before Astoria's confused, though still imposing, eyes, Draco's cocky, self-assured persona evaporated. His shoulders' hunched, his smile slipped from his lips, and he seemed smaller, somehow.

"I said that you weren't wrong. It may have taken me a while to figure it out, but that world, the one we were raised in, it is absolutely poisonous. You made a good choice to get out when you did."

"Wow," Astoria commented, finally in full control of her faculties. "I never thought I'd see the day. Is that why you're here? Trying to get away from it all?"

"Something like that," Draco mumbled, clearly uncomfortable with the current line of conversation. "Now, I think I'll go with the soup and sandwich." Astoria smiled and took his order back to the kitchen.

'Draco Malfoy, I never thought you'd be able to surprise me.'

Astoria thought that running into Draco on that day had been a surprise, but a once off. She hadn't expected to see him again, and then he showed up the next day. And the day after that. And the day after that.

It quickly became a routine. Draco would show up after the lunch rush when the restaurant was as dead as a doornail. Astoria would take Draco's order and then spend another hour or so talking about anything and everything.

All they would do was talk, mostly about mundane topics but yet, as the weeks passed, Astoria found herself doing something she swore up and down she would never do. Astoria was falling for Draco and that scared the living crap out of her.

Growing up, Astoria had been acutely aware of how unhappy her parents were. Living in the same house as them was as frigid as if she'd been living at the North Pole. Love and affection were not to be found anywhere in the Greengrass household and, as she got older, Astoria became her mother's confidant and found out why.

Her father, jovial and easygoing, had charmed her uptight mother. Entranced her to the point where she could think of no one but him. Dona, Astoria's mother, had fallen hard and fast. Then, about five years into their marriage, she found out that she wasn't the only one entranced by Alastair Greengrass. Far from it. Unfortunately, growing up in the aristocratic society of pureblood wizards, Dona couldn't just leave him. That would be worse than the whole world finding out about their marital difficulties.

So, Alastair and Dona Greengrass stayed together in an unhappy and loveless marriage and Astoria learned to guard her heart and not fall for an enchanting boy.

Then, along came Draco and he brought her under his spell without her even realising it. If she wasn't careful, he could make a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter.

What would she do then?

The End?