I used to be a morning person. Then the war happened, and I learned to be afraid of the dark. The day wasn't safe, either, of course, but night was always worse.
Now I'm not a morning person. Sometimes I can't even get to sleep until the sunlight starts to stream through my window.
It is what it is.
When I finally dragged myself out of bed just before noon, I found that the envelope I kept over my fireplace was glowing. I slumped over to it and yanked out the parchment inside.
Astoria - Can't do drinks tonight - sorry. I have to lay low for a little while.
"Ugh," I said out loud. Snatching the quill off the mantle, I made my way over to the table to scribble a reply.
That sucks. I can't just come to your place?
I tapped the parchment with my wand and was about to get up when it started to glow again. After a minute, more words etched across the page.
I'm not home - better safe than sorry.
Before I could respond, more words appeared.
Don't laugh, but I'm staying in a cottage near some Muggle town. It apparently belonged to someone in the Order of the Phoenix.
That did make me laugh as I wrote out, That's poetic. They'll protect just any Death Eater who gives them information, won't they?
Now I did get up - I knew that he'd probably take a little while to respond. He usually did when I called him a Death Eater.
After I'd showered, I checked the parchment again. There was new writing on it, but the paper itself was still warm - he had taken awhile to respond.
He'd ignored my jibe. He usually did when I called him a Death Eater.
It's Fideliused - Potter's the secret keeper. If you want to keep me company, track him down - it shouldn't be too hard, he said he had business with your brother today. Fucking werewolves.
I deliberated about that as I got dressed. On one hand, I was bored - my part-time job at the Ministry was not particularly interesting, and my four day weekend started today. Drinking was also one of my favorite hobbies, and I didn't particularly like drinking alone.
At the same time, I wasn't entirely sure that I wanted to admit to anyone other than my brother and his wife that I was actually spending sufficient time with Draco Malfoy that I knew where he was hiding out and that I wanted to keep him company. And I especially wasn't sure that I wanted to admit it to Harry Potter.
When I exited my basement bedroom into my brother's kitchen, no one was home. I decided to take that as a sign that I should just shrug off the whole thing and made the responsible, adult decision to have an ice cream sundae for breakfast.
I was just finishing it when the front door slammed. I stiffened. Only my brother slammed the door like that, and besides, my sister-in-law and their kids had probably already been whisked off to an 'undisclosed location' provided by the Ministry that morning. She didn't particularly like the monthly disruption surrounding the full moon, but as my brother said, better safe than sorry. He'd gotten plenty of threats about what werewolves would do to his family.
And now that there was no longer 'a sign' taking the decision out of my hands, I had to decide whether it was worth asking him about Harry Potter.
"Tori?" he called out. "You here?"
"In the kitchen!" I put my ice cream bowl in the sink, pulled my wand out, and summoned the tin of coffee. By the time he walked in, I had a pot ready.
He grinned at me. "Thanks. I'm been up since five - long fucking day, and I'm nowhere near done." He poured himself a mug and gulped about a third of it down. "Do you have anything going on tonight?"
I hesitated. "I - I was thinking I might go over to Draco Malfoy's."
"Again?" His blond hair was shielding his eyes, which made it even harder to read his expression than it usually was. "You're spending a lot of time with him recently. Anything I should know about?"
"I'm not Imperiused, if that's what you're asking," I snapped.
Brendon's face broke into a grin. "No, that wasn't what I was asking," he said once he'd finished laughing. "I was asking if you were dating him. I don't think Draco Malfoy could cast an Imperius curse if he tried these days."
"Oh." I collapsed back into my chair. "No, I'm not." I half-wished that I hadn't brought it up at all. My brother was a war hero. He'd said that he didn't mind Draco Malfoy these days, all things considered, but it still seemed to me like a Death Eater was a Death Eater, and for a Slytherin, my brother has never understood moral relativity.
Then again, for a Ravenclaw, neither have I.
He slid into the chair across from me and reached out to touch my arm. "I'm just curious. I told you you could stay with me for as long as you wanted. That wasn't conditional. I'm not your father, and I don't pretend to be - you can spend time with whoever you want without justifying it to me."
"He's kind of a Death Eater, though," I pointed out. I kept my gaze on my brother's fingers; I didn't want to see his disappointment.
When Brendon didn't respond, I let my eyes flick upwards. To my surprise, there didn't seem to be any judgment on his face; he just seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "I wouldn't call Draco Malfoy a Death Eater," he said finally. "Dark mark or not."
"Well, he doesn't usually argue with me when I call him that."
"You call him a Death Eater to his face?" I shrugged. "And he invites you back?"
"Yeah."
"He must be desperate for company." I stuck my tongue out at him, and he grinned. "Look, Astoria, I trust your judgment. I always have, and I always will." I managed a tight smile back, and he squeezed my arm once before getting up to refill his mug.
I steeled myself. "Apparently he's hiding out in some cottage somewhere. He said that Harry Potter was the secret keeper."
Brendon snapped his fingers. "Oh, I thought I heard something about that this morning when I was talking to Seamus Finnigan - there's talk of his starting a new dangerous creature division, and he was picking my brain. I've got a meeting with Harry in a couple hours - if you want to tag along, you can ask him."
I considered that for a moment. In the end, not wanting to spend the evening alone in a quiet house decided me.
The promise of free alcohol didn't hurt, either.
"Yeah," I said. "Okay. Are you heading right back out?"
He shook his head. "I need to take a nap - I doubt I'll have time to sleep tonight. I'll call down before I leave."
When I retreated back to my flat, I checked the parchment. Draco hadn't written anything else. I considered writing back to him, and then decided to do my makeup and read a book instead. When Brendon called down, I tapped my wand to the parchment before making my way toward the stairs.
The words had disappeared by the time I closed the door.
To his credit, Harry Potter seemed remarkably unphased when he got to my brother's office and found me there. After he'd confirmed with my brother that I really was Astoria Greengrass, he told me where the cottage was. When I asked, he even told me why Draco Malfoy was hiding there in the first place.
I wished my brother luck with the werewolves and set out on my way. The sky was starting to turn orange when I climbed up the hill to the cottage. The view of the ocean was breathtaking; the wind whistled across it and up the cliff, tossing my hair this way and that. I stood there and breathed in the salt air for a moment before slipping inside the gate and knocking on the cottage door.
Despite the fact that he'd explicitly invited me to join him, Draco looked surprised to find me standing there. "Hey," he said, stepping back to let me inside. "I wasn't really expecting you to show up. You actually admitted to Potter that you talk to me?"
I shrugged and pulled off my boots as he locked the door behind me. "Yeah, well." I followed him into the living room and flopped onto the grey couch. "Tell me this isn't a sober hideout."
He snorted and ducked into the kitchen across the hall.
While he was gone, I studied the room. The furniture seemed to be in decent shape, and outside of his wand laying on the table, there was no hint of magic in the cottage at all. There was even a television on a solid metal stand across from the couch.
That was smart. You never knew what kinds of spells magical people might lay into the goods they sold.
"Why don't you have your wand with you?" I asked him as soon as he walked back into the room, bottle in hand. My wand was always with me - usually, I kept it strapped to my right arm under the sleeve of my shirt. He glanced at the table, and I said, "In here isn't with you if you're in the kitchen. Harry Potter told me that you were here because you've pissed off some werewolves again and they want to rip you to pieces. You should have your wand."
"Worried about me?" I shrugged again. "Potter wouldn't tell anyone by choice, he's built up a resistance to Veritaserum, and if You-Know-Who couldn't Imperius him, nobody can. I think I'm pretty safe."
Situations like this always hammered home the fundamental difference between me and Draco Malfoy. I always had my wand with me, even when I was with my brother, and I trusted him more than anything. I couldn't imagine feeling safe enough to leave my wand unattended.
"He told me where you were," I pointed out.
"I told him he could if you came asking. He wouldn't have otherwise, no matter who your brother is." He offered the bottle to me, but when I reached out to take it, he pulled it back. "Fuck," he said. "Sorry - I opened it. I wasn't thinking. I'll get you a different one."
"It's fine," I told him before he could vanish through the doorway again. "Just give it to me." He hesitated, and I snapped my fingers. "Seriously, just give it to me."
He handled the bottle over, looking genuinely surprised. "Sorry," he said again. "I know you don't like open bottles."
It was true. I didn't. Open bottles were scary, and he'd always known that without having to be told. That was probably why I wasn't bothered this time.
I shrugged and took a drink. "Just don't poison me."
He chuckled, grabbed his half-empty bottle off the coffee table, and did the same.
The trouble with Draco Malfoy was that I actually did genuinely like him, despite his history. I still felt conflicted about that - I'd never liked him at Hogwarts because he'd been a bit of a prick, and we'd been on opposite sides at the Battle of Hogwarts because I had a moral compass and he didn't (or at least, he hadn't then). Our first post-war encounter had been fairly tense, too - I'd tried to hex him and gotten him thrown out of the Three Broomsticks - but things had improved since then, especially since I'd personally witnessed multiple people try to kill him for the information he passed to Harry Potter and my brother.
Growing up in a Death Eater family apparently meant to that you ended up being privy to quite a lot of useful information.
Whatever his regrets and whatever he'd done to try and make up for it, though, I still knew that there was a dark mark lurking under his perpetual affinity for long-sleeved shirts. I knew that he'd used unforgivable curses, and I knew that he'd still been on the wrong side because he'd been a coward. I wished I'd ended up friends with someone else who didn't have that baggage.
So I compensated by calling him a Death Eater and insulting his family on a regular basis. It was a balance that made me feel a bit better, and while he clearly didn't like it, he'd (mostly) stopped objecting to it.
It was probably a little toxic, but that was the war. It left scorch marks. At least he understood things like not opening bottles for me, even if he was too stupid to keep his wand on him no matter what.
And I did like having a friend. I'd lost a lot of friends during the war.
"So," he said. "You seriously told Potter that you wanted to spend time with me?"
"Well, it was this or sit at home. I think Brendon was just as happy, anyway - he doesn't feel like it's 'his place' to make me go hide around the full moon, but I know he wishes I'd just keep Addison, Alec, and Jo company rather than do my own thing."
"So Slytherin's very own war hero thinks that I'm a safe person for his sister to spend time with." He took another swig. "I'm honestly not sure whether I feel flattered or insulted."
"You can see his logic, though. You're basically a defanged snake." The expression on his face made me giggle. "How do you still have information left to give the Ministry? You've been doing this for years, and I bet no one talks to you anymore."
He shrugged. "Can you remember everything about your childhood in demand?" I shook my head. "What if I asked you about your seventh birthday party, or your first Christmas after starting Hogwarts?"
"We didn't really celebrate Christmas." He rolled his eyes, and I sighed. "I see your point."
He hesitated. When I tried to stare him down, his grey eyes looked away from me. I was surprised when he elaborated - he usually wouldn't have. "And I was - I mean, I was one of them. That can be… useful."
He usually tried to avoid talking about this sort of thing, probably because it sometimes opened up old wounds that led to my yelling at him about being a Death Eater and his family being evil. That could still happen, of course, but the Ravenclaw in me was curious.
"How?"
He sighed. "If I keep talking, is this going to lead to another fight? Potter literally barged into my flat this morning because of a 'credible threat' from some werewolf extremists. He considered it urgent enough to wake me at 4am. Very few people know that I'm hiding out at all, and only two - well, three, including you - can actually get here. I've had a long day."
"I won't start a fight." He looked skeptical, and I jerked my head toward his empty bottle. "That's empty, though, you know."
To my surprise, he got to his feet and made his way back toward the kitchen - though I saw him roll his eyes before he turned around. He came back with two bottles, popped the top off the first, and put the second in front of me. When I raised my eyebrows at him, he grinned. "Well, was I wrong?"
"No." I took another swig from my first bottle - it was more than half gone. "I promise I won't start a fight."
He slumped backward on the couch and made a face. "I don't know, Astoria. I know how they think. I can talk like them. You don't - you didn't grow up in a proper pureblood house, not really, and you weren't even in Slytherin. You don't get it. Sometimes I watch interrogations, and I catch things about the war that other people don't - little inconsistencies, or things that they couldn't know unless they were there. If I use Polyjuice, I can play the part convincingly. I can tell Potter or Granger or your brother things that throw people off the stories they've rehearsed. Stuff like that."
I wasn't quite sure what to make of that - or of the fact that he'd never brought it up before - so I asked a benign question instead. "Why just them?"
The smirk that had always pissed me off in school started to spread across his face. "No one else wants to deal with me. They seem to think that I don't play well with others."
That made me laugh again. It also made me feel a little better about being friends with him, and I let him steer the conversation onto more light-hearted matters.
After I'd finished my third drink, I got up to use the bathroom. When I got back to the living room, he was taking another swig of his fourth bottle. I threw myself back onto the couch just as he put his bottle back on the table and leaned back.
When he grinned at me, I was suddenly aware of how much closer I'd ended up to him than I'd initially intended. The smile faded from his face, and he studied me for a moment.
If I was being entirely honest - which I try not to be about things like this, as a rule - I had wondered what it would be like to kiss Draco Malfoy before, and from the look on his face, it seemed like the feeling was mutual.
I wouldn't say that my heart skipped a beat, but there were definitely butterflies in my stomach as he bent his head toward me.
Then he snapped backwards. "Oh, no." He scrambled off the couch, hands in the air. "No. If I touch you while you're drunk, your brother will either kill me or hex my balls off."
"He will not."
Draco took another step backward, even though I hadn't moved at all. "Oh, yes he will - and even if you weren't drunk, he wouldn't want a Death Eater touching his sweet baby sister. Fuck, you wouldn't want a Death Eater touching you if you weren't drunk, either."
"I'm not drunk," I told him. "I'm slightly tipsy."
He sneered at me. "Oh, well, that makes it okay, then."
He'd always been sardonic. It amused me now more than it had when we'd been in school and he'd been a Death Eater.
"You're very dramatic," I told him. "If you don't want to kiss me, you don't have to kiss me. It doesn't need to be a big thing."
"It doesn't need to - for fuck's sake, are you serious right now?" He pushed up his sleeve and thrust out his arm. The dark mark had lost most of the definition I remembered them having in the war, but it was still unmistakable.
I flinched. I'd seen it before, but only rarely - he didn't even eschew his long sleeves when it was warm out.
"That's what I thought," he snapped, pulling his sleeve back down and collapsing back onto the couch - this time with far more distance between us. He was practically sitting on the arm.
"So you don't want to kiss me, then?"
He let his head fall backwards. "Isn't it about time for you to go home?" he asked listlessly as he studied the ceiling.
"It's fine if you don't. I was just curious."
"For fuck's sake, yes, Astoria, of course I want to kiss you. You don't actually want to kiss me, so let me change the subject to something that's not my nonexistent sex life rather than rubbing it in my face."
"I'm rubbing something in your face now?" His face turned bright red, but before he could respond or stalk off, I added, "And since when is your sex life nonexistent?"
I could hear his teeth grinding together. There was a part of me that was aware that I was probably pushing him too far and that I might actually be causing him genuine discomfort.
That part of me was not big enough to overcome the three drinks I'd had.
He was probably right. I probably was drunk.
"Since school," he said through clenched teeth. "Most girls these days aren't lining up to sleep with someone who has a dark mark, and I don't want to fuck the ones who are. Seriously, Astoria, I know you like fucking with me, but cut it out. I don't want to talk about this."
That did make it through the haze. "Sorry," I said after a moment. "I didn't realize it would bother you so much."
"I need another drink," he muttered, shoving himself off the couch. "How did I end up with you as my best friend?" My face much have shown my surprise, because he rolled his eyes. "Oh, fuck off. It's just by default. You're pretty my only friend - you already knew that."
He stalked off to the kitchen.
"Get me one, too!" I called after him.
"No!" he yelled back. "You definitely don't need another!"
He probably had a point, so I took the water he gave me without arguing with him.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that going home was not really an option. Even if it had been a good idea for me to wander around outside the night before the full moon when I'd been drinking (which it probably wasn't), I wasn't in any condition to Apparate. I was in the habit of not worrying about that, because he generally could once he'd sobered up a little, but the whole point of his hiding out was not giving anyone the opportunity to tear him apart, which going outside just before midnight undoubtedly would.
When I pointed that out to him through a yawn, he made a face. "Yeah, that occurred to me about an hour ago," he said. "I haven't slept in the bed yet - you take it. I can crash on the couch."
As soon as I'd closed the door behind me, I flipped the switch at my wrist, and my wand slid into into my hand. I tapped it against the solid silver band I wore around my wrist twice and whispered, "Staying here to play it safe." Then I pushed my wand back into place and reset the catch.
I hate sleeping in my clothes enough that I seriously deliberated sleeping in my underwear, but I ultimately decided against it - I hate being vulnerable even more than that, and being mostly naked and asleep in an unfamiliar place was basically the definition of vulnerable. Instead, I just stripped off my sweater and crawled into bed.
Sleep did not come easily. I should have expected that.
It didn't take long for my eyelids to start to feel heavy, but before I'd actually fallen asleep, I realized that there was something wrong. I don't know how I realized that there was something watching me, but I knew that there was. At first, I thought that it was actually in the room with me - the shadows seemed longer and darker than they had just a few minutes ago - but then I heard something just outside the window. When I let my eyes drift in that direction, there was a dark shape standing just within my line of vision.
My wand was still strapped to my forearm, but when I tried to reach down to undo the catch again, I found that I couldn't. My limbs were as heavy as lead; I couldn't even roll over. The things outside - there were two of them now - started scratching on the window. I tried with every fiber of strength that I had, but I couldn't move a muscle.
Then I remembered: I wasn't alone in the house.
I wasn't alone in the house.
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound came out. I tried again, tried yelling louder - but all I got was deafening, oppressive silence.
The scratching intensified. They were nearly through -
I realized I could move again when my scream finally made it out.
Footsteps crashed down the hall, and then the door flew open. I was on my feet and lurching toward the wall - you always wanted your back to a wall when you were dueling, I remembered that - when I recognized the voice. "Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly. His wand arm was outstretched, and I could see the moonlight glinting off the wood.
With the surge of pure panic gone, my legs gave out. "Window," I croaked from the floor. His wand immediately went toward the window I'd heard the scratching at. There was nothing, and I realized what must have happened. "Nightmare."
He muttered something, and I felt something whoosh by me. The spell clearly confirmed that there was no one else here, because after a moment, he pocketed his wand and knelt down.
I was still shaking. I didn't have those kinds of dreams often - the ones where you're caught between dreaming and waking - but when I did, they were awful.
"Can I do anything?" he asked without touching me.
Unfortunately, now that my panic had become slightly less acute, I was (slowly) starting to process the situation.
It was not ideal. For one thing, Draco apparently didn't sleep in a shirt, and the angry black blotch on his arm was made all the more apparent by how pale he was in general. For another, he wasn't the only one who usually wore long sleeves for a reason, and my scars from that hellish year at Hogwarts were still visible - as were other, more recent scars.
I shook my head, though I hadn't even really processed the question. The mark on his arm was occupying all of my attention; it reminded me of a lot of things that I didn't need reminding of right now.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him glance down. He sighed. "I'll be right back," he said, straightening up. When he re-entered the room, he was wearing his shirt again, and he also had a cup of water in his hand.
That was certainly better, but when he offered me his hand, I still cringed when I took it and let him pull me up off the floor.
"Do you want some water?" His voice was so soft I almost couldn't hear it over my heart pounding, and it took me a moment to process the question. Once I had, I nodded and took the glass he offered to me.
"Thanks," I managed to get out. "I'm - I'm going to go wash my face."
He stepped aside to let me shuffle past him.
Washing my face didn't really help to banish my panic or slow down my heart; when I got back to the room, I was still on the verge of bursting into tears. Draco seemed to be inspecting the window closely. When he heard my sniffle, he looked over at me and said, "There doesn't seem to be anything out there."
I shuddered. "It was a nightmare," I said again. "I - I get them sometimes." He nodded and glanced toward the door. Before he could say anything else, I added, "Please don't leave me alone."
He took a couple hesitant steps toward me, and I burst into tears.
To his credit, Draco dealt with the entire situation fairly well; I let him guide me toward the bed, and once I was laying down, he gently pulled a coherent answer about where he should be sitting out of me. He rested one hand - not the dark mark hand, I made sure of that - lightly on my shoulder and didn't pry into the nightmare until after I'd stopped shaking.
"What happened?"
I shuddered again. "It's just - it's a thing I get sometimes. I get caught between being asleep and being awake - I can see the room, but I can't move my body, and some of the things I see or hear aren't there. Usually it's shadows or monsters just outside the room trying to get in, or in the room looking for me - a couple times I've really thought that it was a lethifold or a dementor. It… it feels kind of like I woke up dead."
He hissed as I choked back another sob. "That sounds awful," he said. "Have you - can't the Healers do anything?"
I shook my head. "They say that since it doesn't actually hurt you and isn't that common, it's not worth the resources to figure out how to stop it."
"I'm going to go out on a limb and say that they've never seen someone after one," he said dryly. I rolled over to look up at his face, and immediately wished I hadn't; the genuine concern was disconcerting all on its own.
"Sorry," I forced myself to say. "Did I wake you up?"
"No. I was just about to go to sleep." He tentatively started to run his hand across my upper arm. It felt vaguely comforting. "I tried to cover it, you know," he said after a long moment. "The mark, I mean." I stiffened a little, and his hand stilled. "I hate it. Nothing takes, though. I even tried a Muggle tattoo shop. Had a hell of a time explaining what it was in the first place, let alone why it absorbed everything they tried to put near it."
"Oh."
He sighed. "I just know that it's not helping right now, and I'm sorry."
When I was younger, my impulse would have been to automatically tell him that it was okay.
Older me didn't have that impulse, so I didn't say anything. When it was clear that I didn't have anything to say, he resumed rubbing my shoulder. "Is that okay?" he asked. "I mean - is it helping?"
"It's fine." My heart rate was finally starting to slow down. "I hate those dreams," I whispered. "Can you just - can you stay until I fall asleep?"
"Yeah." His fingers trailed up to my hair and started to play with it. "Yeah. I can do that."
A year ago, I would not have thought that I'd be able to fall asleep in the same house as Draco Malfoy, let alone the same room as him.
And certainly not in the same bed as him.
I did, though.
When I woke up, the sunlight was streaming through the window that had left me so distressed the night before. It banished the tall shadows from every corner of the room, leaving it bright and lively. When I glanced down at my wrist, I saw that my brother had responded. Thanks for letting me know. Stay safe.
I grabbed my sweater off the chair and pulled it over my head before plodding down the hall. I stopped in the bathroom, brushed my teeth with my finger, and continued on toward the living room. I found Draco - who looked very much awake - buried in a book.
"Hi," I said awkwardly.
He looked up and smiled. "Hey. Did you sleep okay?"
I nodded once and then collapsed onto the couch. "Sorry about last night." Now that I was closer to him, I noticed that his hair was a little damp, and he was wearing a different shirt - this one was green rather than black. It suited him - he didn't look quite so gaunt in it.
He shook his head. "It's fine. Really."
I felt like I probably ought to wait at least an hour or two before poking fun at him, given what he'd done the night before, but I was so unaccustomed to not poking fun at him that it felt decidedly odd. After a moment of awkward silence, I blurted out, "Can I say something?"
The smile faded from his face a little. "What?"
"I wasn't trying to fuck with you yesterday," I said. His eyebrows knit together for a moment, and then realization dawned on his face. He immediately looked away from me, and I could see his cheeks start to flush. "I'll drop it now. I just - I wasn't."
There was a very long pause. I wished I knew what he was thinking; his face gave nothing away. "Why did you say it, then?"
"Because I wanted to kiss you. Is that really that hard to believe?"
"Of you?" His voice was skeptical. "I've noticed that you're very anti-Death Eater. You call me a Death Eater on a pretty regular basis. I have a dark mark, and you flinch whenever you see it. So yes. It really is that hard to believe."
I winced. I could see his point. "Well, I did. Do. Whatever. And I'm not drunk anymore."
Now he glanced up at me. His grey eyes had narrowed a little. "Did, or do? Those are two very different things."
I steeled myself. "Do."
He swallowed audibly. "Oh." He tossed the book onto the table and inched toward me.
Now my heart was hammering for entirely different reasons. "If you still want to, I mean."
A smirk was starting to spread across his face. It was equal parts profoundly irritating and vaguely endearing. "I do," he said. "So maybe you should kiss me."
This was not something I had very much experience with, and my nerves showed it. "Well, why don't you kiss me?"
"Because you're a lot more prone to panic attacks than I am, and I think you'll be a lot less likely to panic if you're the one initiating it."
That was an entirely too reasonable answer, though I wasn't sure how I felt about his thinking about it enough to come up with some kind of strategy. It's not that I thought it was a bad thing, of course - it was just an odd thing, and under normal circumstances, I'd had wanted to mull it over in my head for a little while before deciding how I felt about it.
Right now, though, his eyes were on me, and I could remember his fingers in my hair as he sat with me while I tried to fall asleep, and mulling it over didn't seem like an appropriate use of my time.
Kissing him held promise, though, so I lunged forward and pressed my lips to his. When I pulled back, I studied his expression. He was smiling again, so I leaned back in. One of his hands trailed up the outside of my leg, and when I opened my mouth, I could feel rather than hear his groan as his tongue brushed against mine.
I had just decided that I quite enjoyed kissing him when he pulled away from me. "Do me a favor." When I leaned back toward him, he put up his hand. "I'm serious."
"What's the favor?"
His eyes drifted down to my lips for a moment. "Stop calling me a Death Eater. It's not exactly a turn on."
"Fine."
"I'm serious," he repeated. "And I have a name. If you want to swap saliva with me, you should use it once in awhile."
I considered him for a minute. "You're using the situation against me," I said at last.
"Yes," he agreed. "I am using the fact that you apparently want to kiss me to stop you from calling me a Death Eater. I'm a monster." I tried to shove him, and he took advantage of my momentum to pull me into his lap. "Promise," he whispered in my ear. I felt his lips against my neck, and I shuddered.
Draco Malfoy's sex life might have been nonexistent as of late, but he clearly knew what he was doing.
"Okay," I managed to get out. "Draco."
He snorted. "For a girl who's literally sitting in my lap, you've got a talent for making my name sound a lot like a curse."
"Your name probably should be a curse." He rolled his eyes, and before he could initiate another kiss, I added, "I don't want to - I don't want to have sex or anything. Right now. Or - or, like, tomorrow. Or anything like that. Just so you know."
The playful grin on his face was immediately replaced by attentiveness. "Understood."
"Like, pants are good."
"Yes, Astoria, I understand what sex is."
"I just - I want to make sure I'm being clear. I mean, you said that you were deprived of sex or whatever."
He shrugged. "I don't care what I'm deprived of." When I screwed up my face to study him carefully, he held up his hands. "I'm serious. I really don't."
I didn't see a lie in his eyes. I suspected that Draco Malfoy was a decent liar when he wanted to be, but even so, I didn't think that he was lying to me.
"Okay." I glanced at the clock. "I - before we - I should probably go. Maybe - next week?"
His smile faded, and he nodded once.
Just once.
"I just - I don't have clothes," I said quickly. I wished I did - but the idea of continuing to kiss him when I hadn't been able to shower and wash my hair was not an appealing one. "Or a toothbrush. Or - or anything, really."
"No, I know. It's fine." He hesitated for a moment, and then said, "You could always come back, if you wanted. Or bring - bring clothes here, or something." I considered that, and he said in a rush, "It's just that I'm stuck here for a few more days, and I wouldn't mind company. You don't have to. And I'm not - I don't mind sleeping on the couch. Really."
I considered that for a moment. "Yeah. I think maybe I will."
I had not realized that I was capable of making Draco Malfoy smile quite that broadly. I had also not realized how much I'd like it when he did.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading! Reviews are always very much appreciated. 3
If you're interested in reading more about Astoria (and her friendship with Draco), please check out my stories 'Fools and Heroes,' 'Unforgivable,' 'Dead Eyes and Red Eyes,' and 'The Only Honest Color.'