A/N: This is Beater 2 of the Chudley Cannons checking in for Round 11 of Season 4 of the QLFC.

Word count (before A/N): 2637 words

Prompts: 1. (dialogue) "I'm bored. Play with me!" 12. (word) pancakes 15. (word) shatter

Self-inflicted prompt: "Who know s/he could fly without a broom."

Also, we had to start and finish the fic with the same word.

I am not JK. I just dabble in her world.

Good, thought Draco. Bloody fantastic.

Draco took a deep breath, letting his shaking hands rest in his lap. He held his thin, long fingers hidden beneath the library table, concealing their constant tremor from wandering eyes. So much had happened since the Battle of Hogwarts. So much to his family alone. The last thing he needed was to have it blabbed to that cow Skeeter that he had permanent nerve damage, which caused his hands to shake incessantly.

"Please," he pleaded with his synapses. "Just stop." They hadn't been this bad in weeks. Draco balled his fists, his gaze stuck on his lap. Maybe if he just closed his eyes and concentrated…

"You alright?"

Draco's head snapped up, his eyes locking on the young woman in front of him. She hadn't been there before.

"Sorry," she slipped into the chair opposite him. "I didn't mean to startle you. It's just, well, you looked like you were in pain, and I wanted to… sorry?"

She had dark black hair and vivid, green eyes. But Draco couldn't place her. He realized that he was probably scowling at her, which caused her to stop talking, but he didn't care. No one talked to him anymore, not after everything that happened during the war. And that was bloody well fine with him, because he didn't need anyone.

"I can see I'm not wanted," she spoke again. The girl made to get up, but something inside Draco made him reach out his shaking hand to stop her. In the small second it took for his pale hand to grasp hers, Draco suddenly realized that maybe he did want someone to talk to. Just for a little while, anyways.

"Sorry," he said, pulling his hand back. To his own astonishment, he kept it relatively still. "I was trying to figure out who you were."

She sank back into her chair, a small smile playing at her thin lips. "Astoria Greengrass. You knew my sister, Daphne. She didn't - well she didn't want to come back."

"I don't blame her," he muttered. His mother had begged him to stay home, especially with his condition. Plus, after his father was taken into custody, Draco was all she had left. But Lucius deserved worse than a prison cell, and Draco wanted to leave Hogwarts knowing he was educated for the real world. Not brainwashed and bullied into dark magic like before.

"Why did you come back then?" Astoria asked. Draco felt his heart pounding in his ears. Who was this person, this stranger, sitting in front of him? Where did she even come from and why was she talking to him? He felt his hands start to shake even worse.

Just as he was about to tell her to piss off, however, his mouth dried up. He didn't want her to go. She was the first person to talk to him since term started three weeks prior. The first. Including the professors.

So he told her.

"I remember that!" Astoria was giggling. They were standing at the top of the Astronomy Tower. They had been kicked out of the library almost instantly for being too loud - though Madam Pince only told Astoria to leave - and the pair decided to take a walk. The sun was nearly setting, casting long and smooth shadows over the walls. Draco leaned on the edge of the balcony, watching smoke climb from Hagrid's hut in the distance. A weight hung in his chest, years of guilt pulling at his heartstrings. His hands, which he had stashed away in his pockets, were shaking again.

He turned to look at the giggling Astoria. He had just finished relaying to her his time spent as a ferret in his fourth year.

"I was in second year," she smiled at him. They were standing close to each other. It may have been September, but the autumn winds were biting at their faces already. "I was walking to Charms when it happened. I'm sorry, I'm still laughing!"

She tried to hide her smile behind her hand, but Draco didn't care. Her smile was quite radiant, if he had to describe it. "It's fine. I was a prat back then, deserved the whole thing. Hell, I'm worse than that now."

Astoria stopped laughing. "That's not true. You're trying to be better. I can see that right now. In fact, I think I just spent all afternoon getting to know that's not true."

"Yeah," he said. But he couldn't really find it in his heart to agree. He looked at her again. She stood almost a foot shorter than him but was only two years his junior. She had told him lots of stories about her and Daphne who was in his year. But something was still bothering Draco. "Why did you speak to me?"

A light pink color rose on Astoria's cheeks. "Well, like I said. You looked like you were in pain, and I was worried…"

Draco bumped her with his elbow. She turned to him and he did the same so that they were looking directly at each other, him staring down into her emerald eyes and her tilting her sharp chin up to him.

"I mean, obviously I know who you are. Who your family is," Astoria didn't even blink. "And I see how your so-called friends have been ignoring you and how even the professors won't look you in the eye. Hell, Pince made it sound like I was talking to myself earlier, like I was some crazy person.

"Plus…" her head dropped down so that Draco was staring at the top of her head. He could hardly breathe, waiting for Astoria to finish. "Plus, you saved me from a Cruciatus last year. And I had a lot of those thrown my way."

Tentatively, Astoria rolled the sleeve of her jumper back. Draco saw angry, red scars extending up the inside of her arm, criss-crossing past where he could see, hidden by her robes. Instinctively, he pulled down the corner of his left sleeve, his hands surprisingly firm in their actions.

"I like Muggle culture," she said as if she was naming the ingredients off one of Slughorn's instruction sheets. "And the Carrows weren't very keen on hearing me stand up for my half-blood friends last year.

"One day, in the hallway, I was defending a muggleborn who didn't return - someone said they hoped she was dead - and I told them that was a horrible thing to say about a person. Someone's child. I know - not very Slytherin of me, but I didn't care, I was fed up. And Alecto told your friend to shut me up," Astoria finally looked up at Draco again. "We're all people. Just people, at the end of the day."

"I stopped Crabbe right before he cast the curse," Draco said. He remembered the incident well. He had just returned back to school from Easter holiday, had just witnessed his aunt torture Hermione Granger, had finally felt the last piece of humanity break inside him. And Crabbe looked all too happy to put Astoria in her place. He couldn't bear it happening again. "He's dead now."

Astoria's eyes widened slightly, "I'm sorry to hear that. He was still your friend."

"Not a very good one."

"Still… I'm sorry," she whispered.

Her face was tilted toward his again, and they were oh so close, and she had been so nice to him. He leaned down slowly, watching carefully as Astoria's eyes started to close. He let his hands shakily rest on her hips as their lips gravitated forward, like a magnetic pull.

But the quiet illusion they had built all afternoon crashed around them when a shrill voice called out, "Draco! I'm bored. Play with me!"

Draco felt his disappointment shatter around him like broken window glass, swallow him like a black hole. He stepped back from Astoria, pocketing his hands again. The younger girl had fear rising in her eyes. Draco stepped in front of her, guarding her from the two forms that currently blocked the exit.

"Pansy, you stupid cow," he spat at the pug-faced girl in front of him. "What could you possibly want?"

Pansy smirked at him, while Nott laughed beside her. These people, these spawn of Death Eaters, somehow made it back into the school for a repeat of their seventh years too. Draco felt his hands shaking so fast in his pockets, he was afraid they'd twist off at the wrist.

Bloody neurons, he damned his condition.

"What're you doing with the bloodtraitor?" Nott's voice was cold and calculated. "She better than us, Malfoy?"

"Excuse me, but -" Draco was cut off.

"First of all, bloodtraitor? I most certainly will not be called something so idiotic, thank you," Astoria stepped out in front of Draco, her nerves clearly gone. "Second, have you even spoken to Draco since term started? Because I highly doubt that."

"Quiet down, girly. Draco had to be taught a lesson," Pansy smirked again. "And I think he knows better now."

"A lesson?" Draco repeated, his hands still shaking in his pockets.

"Of course," drawled Pansy. "Why else would we leave you be for weeks on end? Come on, Draco, have a little bit of sense in that big, dumb brain of yours."

"Your mum gave up, Malfoy," Nott said. "She lost us the war. You couldn't just waltz back in here like nothing changed, now could you?"

"Of course things have changed, you ignorant buffoon!"

"Ignorant, am I?" Nott smiled, an eerie grin creeping from ear to ear. In the low light of the setting sun, his face appeared almost demonic in nature. "I don't think I'm the ignorant one, traitor."

Draco reached for his wand. In a flash, he had it pointing at Nott while simultaneously the two Slytherins blocking the exit had their wands pointing at him. Draco had stepped in front of Astoria again, knowing full well Pansy and Nott would not hesitate to hurt her to get her out of the way.

"You don't deserve to live, Malfoy," Nott snarled. "Your family brought about the death of our Dark Lord."

"We could have had it all," Pansy added. "But you were too soft, Draco. Too stupid to see how good we would have it -"

"He was killing children, Pansy! He was torturing innocent people for his own selfish quest to be immortal!" His hands shook violently, his wand flicking around, back and forth, aiming at Pansy then himself. Pansy, himself. Pansy, himself.

Draco took a deep breath, hoping to control even one of his fingers.

"Bloody hell, what's wrong with you?" Pansy's wand hand started to drop, but Nott kept his trained on Draco. "What are you doing?"

"I -" Draco looked around him, searching for any sort of grounding. He spotted Astoria, beside him, gazing up at him again. Her eyes didn't hold pity or disgust, like Pansy's did. Astoria's showed determination and trust. Her own hand slid up the length of his extended arm, her small fingers wrapping around his wrist. Slowly, Draco was able to calm his usually involuntary movements so that he was back to a small twitch instead of a full-out spasm.

"That's what the Dark Lord did," he motioned to his still-outstretched arm with his head. "He tortured me until I had permanent nerve damage. Irreversible. He was so utterly upset over my family losing Potter during the Easter holidays that he tortured me until I couldn't even use my own bloody hands. Because that's the man he was. Vindictive, mutilating. Hateful."

"You're lying," Nott yelled. Draco could see the boy starting to lose his cool. Draco too had gone through a period of denial before he realized the Dark Lord was horrible. Throughout Draco's whole life, he was taught that the Dark Lord knew all, was far better than any wizard alive, and had absolute power. When Draco started to see just what "absolute power" meant, he was appalled. He threw up. He started to care more about making it to the next day alive instead of to the top like he had been promised.

"Typical, Malfoy," Nott screamed. "You'd say anything to save yourself!"

"Theo, maybe -"

"No, Pansy. No." His voice was seething with anger. "My father is in Azkaban because of his mum. Yours is, too! And we're forced to be here, to take Muggle studies and Reform classes instead of being worshipped like we were supposed to be!"

"I've had enough of this waiting around shite. It's time to finish you off, Malfoy, and let the Dark Lord completely finish what he started here in his afterlife," Nott raised his wand even higher. "Avada Ka -"

Pansy shrieked. Nott, however, never had the chance to finish what he was saying, because suddenly, his body was flying through the air and out the open windows of the Astronomy Tower.

"THEO!" Pansy ran to the balcony, her eyes trained on the boy as he soared higher and higher above Hogwarts, screaming the whole time. Draco and Astoria, too, turned to watch the Slytherin boy fly even with the moon. Then, he came hurtling towards the earth at record speed, and Draco felt his own breath hitch in his throat.

That is until he saw Nott slowing down just as his body hit the lake. Moments later, Nott's head popped up, bobbing, as he made his way to the shore. Pansy turned and ran down the stairs of the tower. A few minutes passed before Draco spotted her rushing toward the lake, too.

"Huh," Astoria said. "Who knew he could fly without a broom."

She looked up at Draco, a mischievous glint in her eyes. Draco, in turn, looked down at his wand, hanging limply in his hand. It definitely wasn't him...

"Did you -"

"I've been told I'm quite excellent with nonverbal spells."

"Bloody brilliant," he smiled. Then he realized that he had been about to kiss her before his stupid old cronies bombarded them. Maybe if he was in Gryffindor he'd be able to kiss her now, but Draco didn't want to. Not after all that. In its own time, in its own right, that kiss would happen. Because Draco hadn't felt this elated since he was a small child.

So, instead of trying to find their lost moment again, Draco offered a new one. "Are you hungry? I think we've missed dinner."

"I'm starving," she grinned.

"Excellent," he said. "I know -"

"- how to get into the kitchens?"

"Er, yeah," he pocketed his wand again. They started walking toward the Astronomy Tower stairs. They'd have to walk pretty quick at this hour to avoid Filch and his stupid cat.

"Everyone knows how to get into the kitchens," she laughed. Then Astoria slid her hand into his own, and for once, Draco couldn't feel any movement in his joints. All he felt was the sweet, simple pressure of Astoria's own hand in his. "I hope Winky can whip up some of her pancakes. They're my favorite."

"For dinner?"

"Breakfast for dinner is the only dinner that should exist," she winked at him. Draco laughed, letting the peace of being alone together surround them once more.

"I'm glad you sat with me today," he said after they descended the final set of stairs. "It's been -"

"Lonely?"

"Yeah."

"Well I'm glad you talked back," she smiled again, this time pausing in her stride beside him. Her hand hadn't left his once. "Thank you."

Astoria stood on on the tips of her toes and kissed Draco's cheek. Draco couldn't help but grin all the way down the hall and well into his plate of blueberry pancakes. Things were pretty damn good, all things considered, thought Draco. Pretty damn good.