Chapter Nine: Sentence

"Nott's been asking about you," said Blaise one day, as they strolled outside for their lunch break.

Story had to take a deep breath before she could calmly speak. "I thought he was in Azkaban?"

"He and Goyle were released early for pleading guilty and for good behavior," said Blaise. "He wanted to know if I knew what you've been up to- evidently Daphne doesn't tell him where you live, and he knows we work together."

"Daphne doesn't know where I live," said Story. "None of my family's ever been to the flat. I visit them." She sat down on a large, smooth rock and opened her bag lunch. Blaise joined her.

"Do you want me to tell him?" asked Blaise.

"You may tell him I live in London, but please don't give him my address," said Story. "Please also mention that I have a big, muscular, protective boyfriend who lives close to my apartment."

Blaise chuckled. "Will do. Also, have I mentioned that your boyfriend is dreamy?"

"Yes, you have. Far more than I've wanted to hear about." Story had introduced Blaise and Eogan one evening when she had Eogan over for dinner in her flat. Ever since, Blaise had brought to her attention the fact that "your boyfriend is hot/cute/attractive/other variations on the sentiment of good-looking" every time she had spoken with him since then.

"Is he cuter than Neil?" she asked him.

"Nobody is cuter than Neil," said Blaise.

"I'm glad you think so," said Neil, sitting down and joining them. Blaise flushed. Story was internally delighted. "I am pretty cute, aren't I, Toria?"

"Absolutely adorable," said Story. "You're both cute." She took a bite of her sandwich. "But not available, which is fine by me. I'm happy with Eogan."

"Bring him by some time," said Neil lazily. "We need a new male model."

"Blaise is much better-looking," said Story. "And anyway, Eogan has a job. He works in Flourish and Blotts. Tall, dark-ginger curls, wicked smile. My property." She was still a little unsettled by the fact that she could discuss boys with Blaise and Neil, but she was getting used to it.

"Duly noted," said Neil. "Can I look at him?"

"Eyes above the waist," said Story, and they all laughed.

That night when she and Blaise got home, a familiar figure stood waiting outside the building, arms crossed, eyes hooded. They both stopped and looked at Theodore Nott, who pushed himself from the wall and came over to them.

"Hello," he said, and Story could hear the roughness of three years of Azkaban on his voice. He had grown a beard, and his hair was long, but he was clean, and he wore acceptably clean clothes. "Blaise, Astoria. Mind if I come in?"

"Whose apartment?" said Blaise. "It's good to see you, Nott- three years is a long time."

Story said nothing. She could feel a slight edge of fear, a sense of danger, coloring her very mixed emotions. She looked at Theodore Nott and his glittering dark-green eyes, at the cruelty in his face, and her body told her to run, get the hell away, find Eogan and hide from this man.

"You have separate apartments?" said Nott, his voice surprised. "I thought you were flatmates."

"Er," said Blaise, glancing at Story.

"I live on the floor above Blaise," said Story, walking past both of them and unlocking the door. "My place is a mess, do you mind, Blaise?"

"Not at all," said Blaise graciously. Story walked up the stairs faster than both of them- she knew Blaise was walking a little slower than normal, to give her more time, and she was grateful.

She sat down on her couch and closed her eyes, burying her head in her hands and breathing slowly. Nott was back. Once upon a time he had been Theo, and then she had seen that he had wanted to hurt people, to kill them, and then she could not think of him that way.

She opened her fridge and took out a bottle of firewhiskey. She had it there for the very few occasions when Eogan was over and they could both afford to get a little bit tipsy- but never drunk. Story never let herself get drunk. She poured a small amount into a shot glass and swallowed the whole thing; it gave her fortitude, as the cold-yet-warm liquid burned her throat. She closed the bottle and replaced it in the fridge, then changed from her sweater and skirt into a T-shirt, jeans, and a clean set of robes. She cleaned the makeup off her face and brushed her teeth, so that they couldn't smell the alcohol on her breath, or at least not much of it, and she padded downstairs to Blaise's flat.

Nott sat on the couch, his long, clever fingers toying with his wand. Blaise was throwing together a meal. Neither of them were talking. Story took the chair, even though Nott was pointedly sitting to one side on the couch, leaving room for her. She forced her jittering nerves to calm down and smiled politely at Nott. "How are you?"

"Oh, I'm all right," said Nott. "It's been a long three years. Nothing I couldn't handle." He smiled cynically. "You've kept busy though- I've seen you in the papers a lot. Beautiful, as usual."

"Oh," said Story. "Thank you."

There was a long pause, and then someone knocked at the door. "Astoria? You in there? I knocked on your door but nobody was there-"

It was Eogan. Story felt a huge sense of relief flood her gut and she went to the door and opened it. Eogan stood there, smiling. She hugged him and breathed in his new-book, crisp-parchment, dry-ink smell, then kissed him and led him into Blaise's flat.

"Oh, hello, Southers," said Blaise, friendly. "Nott, this is Southers. He's with Toria."

There was a pause as Eogan and Nott looked each other up and down. Story had told Eogan about Nott and his attentions to her. Eogan was not inclined to like Nott, but he merely nodded. Story had Eogan sit in the chair, and she perched on the arm of it until Blaise protested that she was wrecking his furniture, and Eogan laughingly pulled her onto his lap.

"How long have you been together?" said Nott, his tone not angry or jealous, just mildly curious.

"Two years, more or less," said Eogan. One of his hands found hers and she smiled at him.

Nott nodded. "Are you living together?" he inquired.

"No," said Story, "though we've considered it." She curled closer to Eogan. The closer she was to him, the safer she was.

He held her tightly as well, tighter than usual. Story wondered if he was jealous of Nott, or if he just wanted to rub it into Nott's face. That would be like Eogan.

Nott didn't stay very long after they ate the casserole Blaise had made. He merely hugged both Blaise and Story, not the way he had used to hug her, and he shook hands with Eogan, and then he left.

"That was sufficiently awkward, wasn't it?" said Eogan with a chuckle.

"Quite so," agreed Blaise. "If I'm not mistaken, he appears to be quite cut up that you aren't available, Toria."

Story rolled her eyes. "I've told you lot it's never been like that. He's just a friend. A misguided, slightly psychotic friend, but a friend nonetheless."

"You sure can pick 'em," said Eogan, snickering; she smacked him on the arm.

"I'm expecting company," said Blaise, "so head on up to your hutch, little rabbits."

Eogan held her hand very tightly as they walked upstairs; when the door was closed behind them, he said quietly, "I want to talk to you about somethin'."

"What's that?" she asked him, as they sat on the couch. He didn't immediately pull her close; he just sighed and stared at the ground, wringing his hands.

"I didn't go into work today," he said eventually. "I had an appointment at St. Mungo's. I've told you about the migraines, yeah? They won't go away, no matter how many Headache Potions I take."

She nodded.

"It's cancer," said Eogan softly.

"Well, that's fixable, isn't it?" she asked him. "Just a couple of appointments, they shrink it and remove all the bad bits?"

He shook his head. "It's on my brain," he said. "It's gotten so it's pressin' on my skull an' brain. It's been there since I was a lad, apparently. If they try to shrink it or Vanish it now, the extra space in my skull will fill up with water an' I'll die by- by drownin'." He shuddered.

And then she understood. "And if they do nothing-"

"I'll die a more natural death, but I'll be gone by June anyway," said Eogan hoarsely, looking up at her.

There was a horrible aching in her chest. She loved Eogan, and he was going to die.

"You don't have to be with me, if you don't want to," he said. "You can find someone healthy, someone who'll love you an' can take care of you-"

"Nonsense," said Story briskly. "I'll take care of you, silly. We'll start by having you move in here."

"They also told me," he said, before she could continue, "that part of the tumor is close to some of my major veins, in the back here." He touched the side of his neck. "If we do anythin'... that gets my heart rate up too much, it could burst the tumor an' I would die anyway."

Story nodded, and she felt an inexplicable sense of relief. They would probably share the bed, because Eogan had a bed, but they wouldn't have sex. She hadn't been sure if she wanted to lose her virginity to Eogan or not.

He was crying softly. She gathered him into her arms.

"You're going to be fine," she whispered. "I've got you, dear. I love you."

"I won't be fine," he said, "but I'll love you always."

She couldn't cry. There was just this horrible aching in her chest, and she would miss him horribly when he was gone.

He moved in the next day. She was warm at night in a real bed with Eogan curled next to her, although they didn't do anything. He had given her permission to tell Blaise and she did. She did cry when she told Blaise; he hugged her and held her and informed her that everything would be all right.

When Eogan moved into her apartment, they began making the tabloids, as they appeared going out of the apartment to Disapparate to work, or in a cafe drinking coffee. Rita Skeeter generally wrote the good things- surprising, considering how Rita Skeeter's job was generally to make the lives of the famous miserable- and a few nasty things appeared, written naturally by Pansy Parkinson. She began getting owls and Floos about interviews; she initially turned them all down. She didn't want to talk about anything.

But then came the one article that wrecked her resolve to remain a private individual; a nasty letter was sent into the gossip column and published in its entirety, claiming that Astoria Greengrass was involved sexually with Eogan Southers, Blaise Zabini, and Theodore Nott- all at the same time. The letter was anonymous, but Story knew one person who disliked her enough to write something like that: Scarlett Lympsham. She wrote a return letter to the Daily Prophet, calmly worded but crisp, so that they would understand her point: her sexual life was her business; Theodore Nott was an old acquaintance (but not a friend); Blaise Zabini was a business associate (but not gay); and yes, she was in a relationship with Eogan Southers, one of a romantic nature, but they were to redact the article and letter or she, Astoria Greengrass, would sue. And lately, what with the photo shoots and more or less becoming the pinup model of the Wizarding world, she had plenty of money to do it with. She even swallowed her pride and wrote a letter to Hermione Granger, who had a great deal of influence with the solicitors in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Granger was quite nice about it, informing her that she would be perfectly in the right to sue. She suspected that Granger, despite the fact that she had been two years older, much more intelligent, and in possession of a more straightforward code of morality, would have been very willing to be her friend. The Weasley girl, too, perhaps. She admired Ginny Weasley for her incredible courage and devotion to those she loved.

But it was very stressful, the slander, the gossip, the speculation, the hate mail and the fan mail alike. She began to lose weight. Neil was pleased at first- models were thin, after all, and cooking with Eogan meant hearty Irish dinners. Then the weight loss increased. She was tired, irritable, annoyed. She didn't visit her family on the weekends, and only talked to Blaise at work. She spent her work hours working and her free hours with Eogan. He didn't have that much time. She owed it to him.

In February she woke one morning to his panicked hands shaking her, telling her that he couldn't see anything. She tested him as thoroughly as she could before Apparating with him to St. Mungo's to have them check. The tumor had expanded to the part of his brain that processed images, evidently; his eyes were working perfectly, but his brain did not see, and therefore he did not see.

They discussed the future that night. Eogan would quit his job. He would stay at home while Story worked. If they went anywhere in public, he would wear sunglasses. They would preserve their secrets as long as they could. Slytherins did that.

She lost more weight, and was glad that Eogan couldn't see her. She looked like a skeleton. One morning she brushed her hair and a clump of it fell out. She reattached it with magic, but something like fear fluttered in her heart, that maybe Eogan's death would kill her too. But she did not let that fear do more than flutter. She left it alone, to sit and quietly die.

The secret was not kept for long. Blaise knew, of course; she couldn't keep secrets about Eogan from Blaise, not when he was the best friend she had at this point and not when he lived a floor below them and worked with her on a daily basis. One evening in April she and Eogan were walking in Diagon Alley; she was pretending to hold onto his arm, but she was really guiding him around obstacles. A few reporters and photographers followed them; generally, Story liked to ignore the reporters and ask the photographers what kinds of cameras were they using, and what enchantments did they use. This infuriated the reporters- they were supposed to ask the questions, and the photographers responded eagerly, knowing that Story was a photography buff and was interested in their cameras.

But then Rita Skeeter came walking up, and she made a nasty innuendo in her sugary-sweet voice, her blonde curls pinned so tightly to her head that she looked like a shower puff, and Eogan had snarled something at her, losing his temper. Astoria forced herself to forget the exact words, because she tried as a general rule to keep herself from reliving painful memories. But the woman had moved while he was speaking, and he had kept shouting at the same spot, and everyone had stared, and Story had gripped his arm tightly, whispered his mistake, and they had Disapparated back to the flat. That night, she wrote an official statement and owled it to the Daily Prophet.

They didn't use it, although they apologized, informing her that her owl had been lost among the others. Rita Skeeter's story claimed that Eogan Southers had gone blind due to an injury he had sustained during the battle of Hogwarts, and that this injury had apparently also affected his vitality, and that was why he and Story were not sleeping together, although they shared an apartment. Story sent in another official statement, with Eogan's permission, explaining the real reason, that he was dying, that he had cancer, and even that they couldn't have sex because it might possibly kill him. She couldn't, of course, resist the little bit of snark at the end where she added that "readers who take Ms. Skeeter's assumptions, most of which are made by her Quick-Quotes-Quill and her own perverted imagination, seriously are likely to be equally hoodwinked by the claims of former Death Eaters as Merlin's own pureblooded descendants- didn't Dumbledore himself claim that there are no wizards of perfectly pure blood left in the world?"

The letters she got for that were staggering- she didn't read them all, but she very much appreciated the ones from her parents, scolding her for being so rude to Ms. Skeeter, and the one from Daphne, laughing at her; her very favorite was the one from Bill Weasley. It was a note hastily scribbled on parchment, but it read "Glad to see someone's put the hag in her place. If you ever need a favor, owl me. I owe you for the laugh. -W. Weasley, Shell Cottage, Dorcester." She hung that one on the fridge with a Sticking Charm.

In May she requested an indefinite leave of absence. Neil had her shoot several months work of photos in as many days, and then he allowed it. She stayed home with Eogan. They listened to Celestina Warbeck, whom they both hated, and the Weird Sisters, who Eogan liked and Astoria didn't. They made pancakes for every meal and took naps on the couch. Sometimes when Eogan slept she slipped into the bathroom and stared out the window and the Muggles passing below. They didn't know, that her world was coming apart at the seams. They didn't know, they couldn't know. She envied them for it. But they had worlds of their own, too. Some of them had to know what it was like- what it was like to have everything you had ever thought to be true taken away, to be told that no matter how clever you were, how pretty, how kind, bad things would happen to you. Even if you were a good person, bad things would happen.