Growing trees with interlacing branches

Astoria was fourteen when she had her first real conversation with Draco Malfoy, she never expected to end up dancing with him that night during the yule ball, but as it was, you could always trace their few subsequent contacts, to the only acquaintance they had in common.

Gregory Goyle.

When it came to Astoria, her relationship with Malfoy's right hand man was passive at best, he wasn't really Astoria's friend, not in the sense where she sat with him at lunch or shared her personal thoughts, oh no, but they did share a few classes, which, in retrospective, forced them to work together on more than one occasion.

All Hogwarts knew that when it came to the Slytherins, none where more "academically challenged" (aka, stupid and brutish) than Crabbe and Goyle, but while pudgy Crabbe managed to only get held back one year on certain classes, Goyle hadn't been so lucky with Arithmancy, transfigurations and ancient runes (to use his words "studying was for nerds..and Ravenclaw scum"), which was how Gregory Goyle, a fourth year, ended up taking second year classes with Astoria and the rest of the Slytherins of her age.

Astoria could have gone without the friendship of Slytherin's scariest gorilla, but it seemed that when it came to being paired up for joint assignments, her classmates obviously had it against her, pairing up at lightning speed and sticking that mumbling brute to the only girl in class he wasn't liable to bully (Because Astoria had Daphne who was friends with Pansy, who was dating "prince Draco" aka Goyle's boss).

As the madness with the triwizard tournament went down, Goyle began, unconsciously taking the blame whenever one of their assignments got botched, grumbling and cursing their professors for not teaching "him" better, granting Astoria total absolution for her mistakes in the process, Astoria knew it wasn't intentional because he never seemed terribly aware that he was doing it.

Maybe he was used to it, she supposed, after all when one didn't have much brains it was normal to assume that it was your idiocy that screwed things up in class and not your partner's, especially when said partner was a lowly second year. Nevertheless fourteen year old Astoria was always left with the feeling that she owed Gregory Goyle something. After all she came out of her classes blissfully unscathed and he got tons of homework (that he obviously would not even try to do himself) whenever SHE screwed up their runes.

And as a Greengrass, Astoria HATED, to feel indebt to someone, that's probably what made her forcefully pull Goyle's robe after watching him get rejected for the twentieth time in a row a week before the yule ball and told him in no uncertain terms that she was now going to be his date, to save him from further embarrassment.

She'd been so young back then, subtlety goading Goyle to take her to the yule ball purely out of selfish motives, wanting the glory of claiming to be the only second year in Hogwarts to land an invitation, promising to make him look handsome and clever, hoping he was dumb enough to take the bait.

He did agree of course, Astoria was nothing if not good at brokering win-win deals to benefit herself and get what she wanted

Eventually it turned out that apart from being a brute and an idiot, Gregory Goyle was also a lazy clothpole, which did make Astoria's job easier, because he walked when she told him to walk and let her do whatever she wanted with his allowance as soon as she mentioned ordering his dress robes. For Astoria, working with Goyle was as easy as leading a sheep.

On the day of the ball, while Malfoy kept complaining about Pansy and his hair, Crabbe sulked over not having a date and everyone stressed over their clothes, Astoria knew Goyle (for once) felt confident about himself while eating his mountain of food in the common room. She after all had handled everything, from the perfect dress suit to make him look less frightening, to the corsage he would give her once they arrived downstairs, the second year girl micromanaged their night to the very last minute and Goyle seemed glad he didn't have to do anything other than show up and look good.

She remembered prince Draco's mocking "You coming Goyle?" while Pansy Parkinson laughed like a harpy at his side (because at the time that's all Astoria knew them to be, Prince Draco and Pratty Parkinson, the ruling couple in the Slytherin house), but neither waited for his reply because like everyone else, they assumed he was going stag with Crabbe, she even saw Goyle clench his fists in anger, knowing everyone in Hogwarts was probably laughing at him behind his back too (especially his friends) must have been a hit to his inflated ego

"Meh let them get there early anyway Gregory, you just wait until I'm done with you" a not-yet-ready Astoria exclaimed angrily peeking out from her place behind a big chair in the common room, running up to her dorm and showing up minutes with a book of beauty spells and a box of labeled "Handsome Monsieur potions& more" honestly you would think Goyle would have been a bit wary to put himself in the hands of a second year witch but this was Daphne's little sister and Goyle wasn't very smart to begin with. So much like all the men in Astoria's life he let her have her way.

To be fair Astoria was fourteen, pushy but not mean so she simply sat him in a chair, mumbled some spells, doused him in some potions and sent him to get dressed, it wasn't a hassle, not when, by the time he was done, he'd given her enough time to get ready as well.

Astoria remembered that night, because it was the first time she sat with the older Slytherins, Goyle ended up looking as good as he ever would, in black dress robes that disguised his bulging stomach and brought the attention a little too obviously to his bulging arms, enough hair potions to make his scraggly brown hair look nice and silky and a dose of clear-eye charms to make him at least SEEM intelligent, Astoria wouldn't deny she was proud of herself, she'd turned a meaty gorilla into...a good looking gorilla that could pass for a human.

She herself was wearing a gown that made her look older, designed of a shimmering blue-green fabric that changed colors under certain lights, her hair (let down in waves) sporting a halo of green gemstones and the trademark Greengrass choker in her neck, back then she'd felt happy with what she accomplished in such a short time.

Goyle's effort to look good certainly didn't go unnoticed by his boss (and the older Slytherin girls to an extent) who nodded at him as tough he'd finally done something right and proceeded to order him around. Astoria let them be, happily accepting the offers to dance that came from the odd Slytherin boy and the dashing Dumstrang students. And then...Draco Malfoy himself asked her to dance.

He did it mainly because he wanted to get a read on the brat that fooled everyone into believing Goyle was boyfriend material (she played her part so well, smiling and laughing, as tough Gregory Goyle was the most charming partner ever) "So Greengrass, who would have thought Goyle liked second years"

"Yes, its strange isn't it? I always thought he was more interested in Millicent Bulstrode than in me" She lied letting him twirl her around "of course Gregory must have told you that he only brought me as his date to make you and Pansy look good, he thought it would please you" her voice was beautifully diplomatic, always saying what she knew people wanted to hear, once again painting Goyle as something he wasn't and Draco saw through her act

"And what about you? Do you think I'm pleased little Greengrass?" He taunted looking straight into her blue eyes "because it seems to me that all Goyle did was bring a prettier girl than Pansy just so he could rub it in my face"

"Maybe he didn't think it through, after all, like you said, I'm only a second year, insignificant at best" Astoria tried to avoid pointing out that it didn't take much to be considered prettier than Pansy Parkinson " my sister Daphne is here too and you don't seem to have a problem with her or her partner"

Blonde, statuesque Daphne, who'd spent better part of the night dancing with Theodore Nott and glaring at her little sister "Daphne knows her place, you on the other hand don't know yours..." Draco threatened

"I on the other hand consider this dance over" Astoria said noticing that the music had thankfully stopped, smiling affably she made a curtsey "it was a wonderful dance heir Malfoy, I'll try to be more mindful of my place in the future" She said politely, although her voice held the slightest hint of laughter in it, as did the way she pursed her lips and her eyes sparkled with held-back mirth

"Be sure that you do" Draco ordered, but Astoria's back was already turned, gliding towards Goyle, once again slipping into her role of the perfect ballroom partner

He was sixteen and a world away from her, looking at things through dark-art tinted glasses, but it was the first time he noticed Astoria's eyes.

After the triwizard ball Draco noticed them again, mostly because for all his buff and intimidation, Goyle developed a small familiarity with the little blue eyed second year, he ignored it out of disinterest, because as long as Goyle did his job and didn't embarrass him, Draco barely paid him a modicum of attention, yet every once in a while, Goyle could be found hovering like a harbinger of doom over the second year Slytherins and those where the times Draco felt specially annoyed with him.

Astoria as pointed out before, could have gone without Gregory Goyle's presence in her life, but neither did she actively discourage his hovering, he was a brute and a Neanderthal, but as things started becoming worrisome in magical Britain, Astoria welcomed the wide berth people gave her and her friends just by virtue of being "sort of acquaintances" with the school's second greatest bully.

Goyle was nice to her (in his own way) during the classes they shared and she was nice to him in her own way too (like the way zookeepers were nice to domesticated killer grizzlies), so if the big brute formed some sort of weird attachment to her, she wasn't going to question it, not when he showed his interest by silently walking next to her during hogsmade trips and intimidating any big Gryffindor that tried to scare the younger year snakes.

By the time Astoria's third year started, Goyle became a fixture in her life as constant as her sister. When he wasn't trailing Malfoy or practicing quidich, he had a habit of drifting in her direction and staring at her (Daphne said it was creepy) sometimes even going as far as to exchange a few non-threatening sentences with her before starting to spout Malfoy-loving propaganda to the rest of her year, but Astoria didn't mind, she liked to think it was his strange way of showing friendliness (she summarized Goyle's mind worked that way and wasn't capable of anything else beyond it).

When Umbridge started the whole "Inquisitor squad" thing, Goyle was the first one to covertly push Astoria to the back of the Slytherin common room "you are not going to be part of this inqui-sy-tar thing" he'd mumbled crossing his beefy arms over his chest when she tried to protest "You stay quiet Astie, that wo-u-man isn't good" he'd said as firmly as he could, dragging Daphne away from her friends and glaring at her "You! You take care of her" he ordered before turning around and signing up on Umbridge's squad thing with Draco and Crabbe

It was around the end of the year that Draco began to notice that Goyle often pulled the tiny girl away from the "little kids" table and shoved her hard in the lap of her older sister, Draco even joined in the laughter sometimes, and while everyone considered it just another day in the life of Goyle-the-bully, only Daphne seemed to realize that it was Goyle's backhanded attempt at keeping Astoria safe, after all, even a dimwit like him knew that the dark lord was recruiting Slytherins from the younger years, and it was a given that if Astoria was seen sitting with the fifth years, in between Goyle and Daphne, she'd be left alone.

Draco saw Astoria too, drifting in and out of the peripheral of his vision, sometimes with Goyle, sometimes with Daphne, quietly skirting the line between blood traitor and death eater.

He never told anyone but he was the only one that saw Goyle hug Astoria on the train platform that day at the end of their fifth year. He'd been impatient, cursing at Crabbe for letting Potter get away when he saw them in the distance, it was the first time Draco Malfoy saw Goyle show any type of caring towards another human being other than Draco himself, and also the moment he understood that the Greengrass sisters wouldn't be coming back to Hogwarts the following year.

Astoria was fifteen the last time she saw Draco Malfoy, standing like a lone snake in the distance, watching with haunted eyes as Goyle gave Astoria one last bone-crushing embrace. For a moment he looked lost, envious maybe, she saw the way he looked at them, so sad and pained, that at one moment she wondered if he was thinking about Goyle's future as a death eater and what they were all giving up in the war...

Draco was seventeen and from his vantage point, he saw Astoria's watery eyes meet his. Reminding him that for all their faults, once upon a time older Slytherins used to pledge to protect their own against any threat. It was the first time he ever felt he'd failed someone he didn't know.

The memory of that little third year dressed in periwinkle green, saying goodbye to everything she knew, would haunt him for a long time. Because that day on the train platform Draco met her eyes and knew that much like that little snake life as he'd known it would be over too once he got home.

The following year, the dark lord was back, too many people disappearing, Draco took the dark mark and no mention of the Greengrass family was heard among them, both death eaters and members of the order ignored where the wealthy family vanished to and only the dark lord with his endless thirst for power cared about their whereabouts. Goyle never mentioned Astoria again after he took the dark mark with Crabbe and Draco, but Malfoy knew, that if he himself could not manage to forget about the little blue eyed brunette, then probably, neither could Goyle. Then the Great War happened and by the time he saw her again...everything had changed

Astoria's family fled from Britain at the first sign of trouble, the wealthy answered to nobody and Astoria's parents did what had to be done to protect their children, absconding with their daughters to America and as far away from the Potter boy as they could. Astoria and her elder sister enrolled in Salem Institute for Witches under fake names, siphoning as much information as they could from the daughters of the American ministry officials, and reading about the war in the Looking Glass Gazette (An American version of the daily Prophet) watching telly and dying inside little by little. By the time Astoria returned to Scotland and received Goyle's letter, everything had changed.

It was a simple note, but it might as well have been a novel considering Gregory's literacy problems

"I will never forget the preety girl that dressed me up like tha cover of Witch Weeakerly because saw haulf of tha school reject me, if this reaches yu Astie, I'm glud you are alive" -Gregory Goyle

And tough Astoria didn't know him well, she still broke down and cried

The next time Draco Malfoy saw her, she was twenty, clutching a large bouquet of peonies and gently putting them on Goyle's grave, he didn't recognize her at first, not wearing those sunglasses over her eyes and clothing better fit for someone muggle, but the moment he approached her, he knew.

"Did you know him well?" He asked, startling her from her contemplation, Astoria turned to look at him, surprised to find him in the Goyle family mausoleum after all those years, he no longer looked like the idol from her friends' fantasies, his blond hair looked longer, shaggier, he had circles under his eyes and while he certainly appeared to be as handsome as he'd been at seventeen, Astoria could tell that the years after the war hadn't been kind to him

"No, I guess I didn't, not really, at least not in the ways that mattered" she confessed looking down at the marble headstone with Goyle's name carved in it "but he was a friend"

Draco accepted her answer, feeling quite the same way about his former goon, he too, hadn't known Goyle, when one's parents where death eaters, any friendship they forged was superficial at best "it might not offer you much comfort, but I did I try to stop him, I know it doesn't excuse anything but I didn't order him to cast the Fiendfyre, I told him not to"

"I know Draco you don't have to say anything" she said cutting him off with a half shrug "and well, Gregory wasn't the greatest boy in Hogwarts, he probably caused quite a few deaths too and died trying to cause more, but he...he protected me and my sister, in his own way, he kept us from being targets, and I owe him, I owe him flowers at least" Astoria explained motioning to the peonies, knowing that she was by far the only person that remembered to visit Goyle's grave

"Just like in the yule ball" Draco pointed out, when Astoria looked surprised by his admission he shrugged "Goyle told me what you did, one time he got drunk on firewhiskey, said that you forced him to sit down through four hours of stinky beauty spells" putting his hands in his pockets he kicked a rock in her direction "he used to look almost normal when he forced himself to talk to you"

"Normal for an imperious obsessed death eater you mean?" She said remembering the cruelty Goyle often boasted about having inflicted, Draco winced at her cold tone, looking away with noticeable shame "Sorry, that was crass, you don't really look like the Draco Malfoy I knew, so it's easy to forget...about your, um you know" she mumbled embarrassed, casually pointing to his arm, where the dark mark lay hidden underneath layers of sleeves

"Well then you must be the only one capable of it, these days, I swear if only I too could forget what I did, then looking in the mirror might be easier each morning" he wasn't even in wizard robes, dressed in non-descript pants and shirt, a jacket slung casually over his shoulder like a muggle, yet he'd never looked more like an aged war veteran, than when he stood there openly admitting to something that he'd seldom voiced out loud "the nightmares of what I did still manage to haunt me at night, but what where we supposed to say to the dark lord when he was killing people left and right? "Sorry master, I really didn't sign up to assassinate Dumbledore, I'm just here for the free dark magic course" Merlin, I didn't even know I could say no"

"I don't know if it was easier or worse for people like me, you are the first person I meet that talks openly about it" Astoria whispered with shame " Everyone pretends it didn't happen, my own sister acts like the war is only a figment of my imagination, my father is proud, infuriatingly proud Draco, he says that surviving the war with our family intact just proves how much better the Greengrass bloodline is" And Draco understood she wasn't talking to him, no, her slightly hysterical tone hinted at something she'd wanted to just get off her chest for a long time " better than who? The mudbloods that fought our war for us? The blood traitors that lost half their families for standing up to a madman? Or the purebloods like Goyle that got killed because they thought Voldemort was the path to greatness? Tell me who exactly we are supposed to be better than, because I lost all my friends to the avada kedavra and right now I don't feel better than any of them"

"I don't either" And Draco no longer saw the little second year that had tricked Goyle into taking her to a fancy party, or the silent third year nervously keeping her head down whenever he passed her in the hallways, no this time he saw a young woman who's views about pureblood society had been as challenged as his views on Dark Magic, so in an action uncharacteristic for him, he took her hand and squeezed it "Nobody should be proud of it, look at me, I made his life miserable for seven long years and Harry Potter still managed to save mine, I keep wondering where exactly I should go from there, but I can't come up with anything, hell I can't even bring myself to apologize to him without feeling like a hypocrite...I screwed up lives Astoria! Some people will never see their children again because of me, I intentionally singled out random classmates to die"

"Do you have nightmares about them too?" She wondered as tough he'd spoken her own thoughts out loud, four years after the final battle and she'd never told anyone about her night terrors, not even to her sister

"I hear their screams every night, begging me to stop hexing them, feel the ghosts of dead souls trying to crawl into my bed, calling my name, bursting from their graves to drag me to hell, some nights it gets so bad that I wake up in the dead of the night wishing they could do it, just to get it over with, but at least those nights are better than the ones that send me back to memories of Voldemort's reign of terror" Draco nodded "You? Do you dream about Goyle and the others when you are sleeping safe and sound in your pretty bed at home?"

"Yes, I see them dying one by one, even when I wasn't there, in all my dreams their dead bodies beg me not to leave, they beg and plead for me to stay, to please not to abandon them in Hogwarts, "why Astoria? Why didn't you try? I thought we were friends" the corpses always ask "why?", and I'm a coward because I don't answer...not even when Gregory asks the question" she dropped to the floor then, sitting in the ground by Goyle's grave, running her hands through the ground as tough she wished the dead to reach out and grab it "but I can't tell anyone, because nobody ever talks about it, everyone keeps judging me, I mean why should I be allowed to be sad? I'm a pureblood girl and I'm alive right? So obviously I'm not allowed to feel grief, not when the friends I grieve where so obviously the bad guys"

Draco dropped to the ground next to her and nodded in surprised understanding "nobody wants to remember the war now days, especially not with a pureblood and we can't even be honest amongst our own kind without feeling censorship from our parents" he sighed, running a hand through his hair "but if it helps Greengrass, you can always talk to me"

"You don't mind then? Me being such a bad sport about everything"

"Hell, this is the most honest conversation I've had in four years, of course I don't mind!" he shot back, lifting her chin with his fingers to meet her eyes "Don't ever apologize for your opinions, at least not to me"

"That's the nicest thing someone has ever said about me, thank you" And for the first time in a long while Astoria smiled "Do you want to eat something Draco? My house is a short apparition away"

He chuckled, as far as dinner invitations went, hers left much to be desired, but he agreed all the same "Might as well, the sun is almost setting" dusting himself off, he asked for her address and waited untill she'd dissaparated to follow her suit

Astoria lived in a big mansion north of Glasgow, he wasn't surprised by the sheer size of it, after all, as was traditional in pureblood societies, she'd probably been deeded a household of her own sometime in her teens, what did surprise him was that, for all intents and purposes, she lived alone. Fablegreen House was easily the same size as Malfoy Manor and tough Draco himself also chose to move out of his parents ancestral home as soon as the war was over, to him it seemed like a waste of great magnitude for a girl like Astoria to live so isolated.

She invited him for tea, and her house elves made a nice meal, they discussed the war at length that afternoon, him with his demons and her with her survivor guilt, they talked for what felt like hours, like broken pieces of a jigsaw puzzle left unfinished for years, opening up the wounds inflicted during their teenage years because they both finally found someone that shared their beliefs and doubts

They reminisced about Goyle and their own struggles with morality over their education years, about Daphne and Theo, now married and still defending the bigoted ideals of their parents, they talked about politics, magic, literature, in one night Astoria learned more about Draco Malfoy than she'd ever learned in years. And Draco realized that for all he claimed he wanted to be alone, actually talking to someone honestly felt as good as any pepper up potion.

That night when he left, Draco realized just how lonely she'd been since everything went down with Voldemort, it took a long talk with someone who barely knew him. To admit to himself that he missed having human contact, he'd been purposely isolating himself because he was afraid of another catastrophe, so much he forgot to live, and he told her as much.

So it wasn't surprising when after much deliberation, Astoria Greengrass decided to cautiously befriend Draco Malfoy. After all she might have been late when it came to Gregory, but Draco, he was still alive.

Draco really hated to feel like a project of hers. Mainly because her habit of micromanaging annoyed him to no end, she was quiet too, entirely too quiet actually, when she wasn't holding startling interesting conversations with him, she had a habit of "enjoying the silence" that drove him mad, he summarized she was the kind of girl that if she didn't have something meaningful or interesting to say, preferred not say anything at all but it was maddening all the same.

You see Draco had come to hate silence after Voldemort's defeat, it reminded him of wizards too scared to speak and empty streets filled with ghosts, he liked to fill the silences that followed him post-war with long hours the Wizarding-Goblin stock market and attending loud competitive quidich games, he enjoyed places with noise (not the Weasley kind of noise mind you, but purposeful, competitive noise) like dueling conventions and broomstick racing events, heck he'd even entered them a time or two

Astoria hated silence too, but her mind was less crowded than his, she never tried to fill her silences, she just transformed them into something she was familiar with. Drawing, knitting, making tea, working on her spellwork, reading, writing, planning, sewing, meditation, plotting Astoria did all those and tough Draco hated it when she sat next to him and refused to humor him with small talk, he endured it.

He endured a lot of things he didn't like about her, her micromanagement, her silences, her habit of visiting him at unholy hours in the mornings, the way she manipulated people (sometimes without even trying), her taste in music and good lord when she did give in to small talk, she was a terrible gossip. Draco didn't even know why he put up with her.

But put up with her he did, whenever she invited him for tea (another habit of hers he disliked because her house was a mausoleum of silence) he went anyway, whenever she asked if she could come with him to one broomstick racing game or other, he took her, in fact ever since Astoria started with her stupid "project" he'd been taking her to lots of places.

So what if she had opinions he liked, what if she was elegant and entirely too beautiful to be taken seriously when she voiced them to others, what if she laughed whenever he tried to insult her and clapped her hands whenever she got him to smile. He absolutely didn't like her!

Except he secretly did.

Therefore falling in love was easy, so very easy.

Astoria was always surrounded by people, she was the daily prophet's resident pretty face, the unmarried Greengrass girl, the sweetling, the rich heiress that had a habit of sponsoring new businesses with her money, inventors, designers, authors, architects, so many supplicants flocking to her on daily basis in order to win the favor of the Greengrass foundation, but they never heard what she had to say, they didn't think she had anything to say at all, yes people surrounded her, but she always felt alone.

Maybe that's why she liked Draco, why she of all people didn't hold his past against him, she didn't think she could, he was gruff and demanding and really really grumpy on bad days, but he heard her, more so he agreed with her, in a world where Astoria felt like a traitor to both the pureblood society and the post-war reformers because she didn't agree with either of them, Draco didn't blame her.

Astoria knew that many things pureblood people did were wrong, like prosecuting mud-muggleborns and teaching their children to hate people they didn't even know, in fact she herself in her adulthood found that most of the people she liked quite a lot had at least one muggle parent, she also didn't agree with pureblood families turning their backs of family because of who they associated with.

but she did love her legacy, the history behind the pure bloodline that made up her family, hundreds of generations devoid of a drop of non-magical blood, so many witches and wizards that left their mark so Astoria could be proud of her birthright, she wanted to tell her children about how her thrice great grandmother once cast a spell capable of putting an entire kingdom to sleep and how the tapestries on the walls of her family's estate meant that they were part of something bigger, generations in the making, because that's what it meant for her to be part of a great and noble house.

Draco was the only one to ever tell her that it was okay to be proud of her family line but not want to keep their ideals, he even said he wanted to be proud of his bloodline too, because yes, she was right when she viewed it as a good thing, being a pureblood meant that they were part of something genealogical, that didn't have to mean they should do everything by the pureblood book, because look where it got their ancestors?. All this time he'd been so angry at his family, at his status, and his life, but when Astoria spoke, he realized it didn't have to be that way.

Some people say falling in love is like planting a seed and seeing how it grows, with Astoria and Draco it was more of a case of growing together, bickering constantly, reading the newspaper and sharing their points of views with each other, visiting some graves and making some amends in the process.

He didn't say "I love you" when he got on one knee, he said "years ago, I said you didn't know your place, do you think you could find that place at my side Astoria?" and he smiled, because Astoria loved it when she got to coax a smile out of him, just to see those eyes fill with tears again like they did that time at king cross, but unlike then, this time she was nodding in happiness.

"I think I wouldn't want to find any other one" Astoria laughed through her tears "really, I'm awfully sure I've wanted you to be the father of my children for quite some time now"

"So I was late in asking?"

"Very" she replied pulling him up from the ground because, honestly a marriage proposal wasn't worth dirtying his dress robes for "but you smiled and it makes you ten times more handsome so you knew I wouldn't say no"

"So I did, these days I seem to be doing it a lot when you are around"

It wasn't the most romantic of proposals, he proposed on a whim during dinner, not fancy or thought out or filled with pretty words, but it was so Draco to remember the first insult he paid her that Astoria couldn't help but think it was the perfect way to start a marriage.

One day years later, Draco would sit his young son in his lap and tell him the story of the arrogant prat that thought he knew it all and the little girl in the green dress that was trying so hard to be a grown up, he'd tell little Scorpius about how two people found a way to grow together against all odds, about wars and mistakes, he'd explain to a child the story of his youth so he wouldn't make the same mistakes he did, then he'd tell him how he found someone who loved him for who he was when he smiled, how one girl looked at him and willingly forgot to look at his past, because she believed in his future, yes one day he'd tell Scorpius stories, great stories, while Astoria watched him and their son from her seat at his side, smiling with pleasure at the picture they both made.

One day they would both give their son the kind of parental love neither of them had during their youth. And all would be well.

An: I wrote a one-shot based on my entire Drastoria head cannon