A big, big, big, big THANK YOU once again to the wonderful guest reviews :) So happy you're still enjoying their developing relationship and the little surprises the characters have to offer. I can promise that Narcissa definitely has a few more in store ;)

Chapter 21

Hogsmeade was covered in a thick, white layer of frost, its crystals glistening in the icy November sunlight. Astoria breathed in deeply, loving how the cold air stung inside her lungs. Winter had always been her favourite season and winter had come early to the remote Scottish village. If they were lucky, they were going to see snow in a couple of weeks.

"I still can't believe McGonagall agreed to this," Draco muttered next to her as they made their way through the wizarding village. Astoria watched him pull up the collar of his travelling cloak, though she wasn't sure whether it was because of the cold or because he didn't want to be recognised. Maybe, it was a little bit of both. "She actually said we could go in the forbidden section of the library?!"

Astoria grinned proudly. "I was a good student," she replied. "Of course, McGonagall agreed."

"I was also a good student!" Draco argued. "That woman still never liked me."

"Maybe that was because you were a prat."

Draco uttered a sound that was somewhere between a growl and acknowledgement, but Astoria paid him no attention until they reached the edge of the village. High above their heads, Hogwarts loomed in all its glory, half-hidden in thick, icy fog. Astoria uttered a sigh of happiness at the sight of it. It was almost like coming home. Wondering whether Draco felt the same, she turned her head to look at him, but found an unreadable expression on his face. Draco stared up at Hogwarts with something that looked like a mixture of longing and fear.

"Last time I saw Hogwarts it was little more than a pile of rubble," he said calmly. "I didn't think I'd ever come back here."

Astoria wasn't entirely sure why she did it, but before she could think better of it, she reached out and felt for Draco's hand under the heavy sleeve of his travelling cloak. Carefully, as if giving him the opportunity to pull back, her gentle fingers wrapped around his soft, warm hand.

"Merlin's beard, Greengrass," Draco uttered, but the amusement was audible in his voice. When he finally turned to look at her, he was smiling. "Your fingers are icicles."

For a moment, they just stood there, grinning at each other. Maybe it was because of the proximity to Hogwarts, her old school, maybe it was the cold weather, maybe it was the fact that her heartbeat sped up just a little, but right here, right now, Astoria felt a little like a schoolgirl once again. It was as if the last few years had been erased from her mind and she just wanted to pull at Draco's hand and run back to Hogwarts, to experience what it was like to be a carefree teenager once more with all its childish freedoms and reckless emotions.

"Shall we go?" she asked and Draco nodded.

"I don't know how else I can make it plain to you, Ms Greengrass," McGonagall stated loudly and firmly. "No. Absolutely not. Over my dead and rotten corpse will I let a former Death Eater into the forbidden section of the school library to study the Dark Arts."

"But your letter-"

"Was directed at you, not Mr Malfoy." Her former teacher glared at her. "And if you were smart enough to omit the fact that Draco Malfoy would be joining you, you should have been smart enough to know that my answer would be no."

"Let's go," Draco said and gave her hand a gentle tug. He hadn't let go since they had locked hands at the foot of the mountain. "I told you I wasn't welcome here."

"No," Astoria replied harshly and turned back towards Professor McGonagall. "In our graduation speech, you said all students would be welcome to come back anytime. All students. If that's not the case, you should have said your favourite students are welcome to come back. Or that everyone who had never made a mistake was welcome to come back."

"Mr Malfoy never even graduated from this school," she argued.

"And what would have happened if Draco had stood in front of the gates a year after the war, asking your permission to come back and finish his education?" Astoria demanded to know. She had known that Professor McGonagall wouldn't just let Draco use the library, so she had come here well prepared for a fight. "Would you have allowed that? I don't think so."

Looking uncomfortable, McGonagall shifted her weight from one foot to the other.

"Help will always be given at Hogwarts to those who ask for it", Astoria went on. "That's what Dumbledore always said, wasn't it? Apparently, that was a lie, too."

For a moment, Astoria expected her former teacher to shout, but after inhaling deeply, Professor McGonagall pointed towards her desk at last. While she took the chair behind it, Astoria and Draco sat down on the freshly conjured seats on the other side of it.

"Ms Greengrass, you are asking me to trust Draco Malfoy with the most dangerous knowledge in the entire world," McGonagall said gravely. "The Ministry purge destroyed all books about the Dark Arts outside of these walls. So what we have here can not, under any circumstances, be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. Now, Draco Malfoy has a record and I am fairly certain that there were conditions to his acquittal and allowing him access to these books constitutes a breach of these conditions."

"I can vouch for him," Astoria said immediately. "I was his healer at St. Mungo's and even though I'm not allowed to share the details with you, I can promise you that Draco has no bad intentions."

Still, her former teacher glared at her through the lenses of her spectacles. "I'm afraid that's not good enough, Ms Greengrass. If I allow Mr Malfoy access, and that is a big if, I will need full disclosure. No details omitted."

"But-" she tried to argue, however, Draco cut her off before she had a chance.

"I'll do it," Draco said simply. "I'll tell you everything. You can use Veritaserum on me if you don't take my word for it, but I have one condition."

McGonagall raised her eyebrows, prompting him to continue.

"You will not go to the authorities," he demanded. "Whatever you hear, you have to let me handle this on my own."

McGonagall leaned a little bit closer, her eyes narrowed. "You do realise that this request doesn't make you sound any more trustworthy?"

"Please, just hear us out," Astoria almost begged her. "You won't regret it."

When the teacher's shoulders sank, Astoria knew she had won. And if McGonagall was willing to listen, she would be willing to grant them access.

An hour later, she and Draco entered the forbidden section of the library, just as Astoria had planned it. With the promise that no book would leave the library and they wouldn't share their newly acquired knowledge with the outside world, they could finally get to work. Casting a careful look at Draco, Astoria stepped deeper into the library, yet she couldn't help but notice that he looked a little drained. Coming clean in front of McGonagall couldn't have been easy for him and he wouldn't have done it had there been any other way. Yet once his story was done, their former teacher had nodded and given them permission to search the library. Still, Astoria could almost feel the old shadows that surrounded Draco had been called back to life by retelling his story.

"Are you okay?" she wanted to know.

Draco spun around and for a moment, he looked as if he was surprised to find her there. So engulfed in his own memories, he had clearly forgotten about her presence.

"If you say yes, I'll punch you," Astoria warned him. "Don't lie to me."

He chuckled softly and granted her a smile. "I will be," he said. "I just don't particularly like reliving my past. Now, let's get to work."

She watched him draw his wand and cast the spell to summon Acheronian Magics, but nothing happened. Astoria hadn't expected it to.

"This part of the library is magic-proof," she explained. "So students can't mess with the books. We'll have to do it the old-fashioned way, I'm afraid."

Even just the forbidden section of the Hogwarts library was much larger than the libraries of her cottage and Malfoy Manor combined, so searching for the book they needed turned out to be tedious work. At first, she had hoped that Draco would remember the shelf where he had seen the book for the first time, but even though the Ministry had allowed Hogwarts to keep all of the volumes, that hadn't stopped them from searching every single shelf. The result was a completely new system that didn't follow any rules Astoria knew of. There was no alphabetical order, no books by the same author were ever found in one spot and after searching for a few hours, she could only guess that the lack of a system was meant to discourage people from looking for anything. If it hadn't been important, Astoria was sure that it would have worked on her. They hadn't finished searching even a quarter of the forbidden section.

"That's it!" Draco exclaimed.

Astoria, who stood on a ladder to search the upper shelves, turned her head downwards to look at him, hopeful that he had found the book at last.

"I'm in purgatory!" he continued angrily. "That's what this is! I'm being cleansed from my sins in the most tedious and annoying way!"

Despite the whiff of disappointment, Astoria found herself chuckling. "You're always so dramatic."

"Yeah, I'm also right," he muttered and stuffed another book back onto the shelf. "And hungry. I'm very hungry and I doubt McGonagall will let us come into the Great Hall for dinner."

Given the fact that their former teacher had been extremely reluctant to let them in at all, Astoria also figured that they would be pushing their luck by asking. More hours and many shelves later, however, she regretted it a little. The sun had set completely and the sparse light from the lanterns barely illuminated the books at all. Astoria found it increasingly hard to read the titles without the help of her illuminated wand and also increasingly hard to ignore her growling stomach. Maybe, they should have asked McGonagall whether they were allowed at least in the kitchens.

A sudden noise startled her and Astoria spun around to see Draco glide down the ladder on the other end of the shelf. He had offered to climb up once they had covered about half of the library. However, seeing as they hadn't made much progress since, Astoria guessed that they could easily do this all night. She dreaded that prospect.

"Dibly!" Draco called out as he made his way towards Astoria. Then, facing her, he went on. "I sincerely hope elves are allowed in here. Otherwise, I'm going to starve and I'm not being dramatic."

Astoria couldn't help but agree.

Luckily for them, Dibly appeared seconds later with a loud plop and the elf's face lit up as soon as she had spotted them.

"Young Master Malfoy!" she exclaimed. "And Ms Greengrass! What a pleasure to see you both!"

Bowing deeply in front of her, Dibly's nose touched the library floor and Astoria smiled in return. She had liked Dibly from the beginning. "The pleasure is all ours," she replied, "especially if you could help us out."

"Yes," Draco threw in immediately. "Dibly, could you please get us some sandwiches and some butterbeer?

The elf bowed once more. "It will only take a moment, sir!"

And with that, the house-elf vanished.

With a sigh, Astoria let herself slide down the shelf until she touched the floor. Stretching out her back and legs, she could feel the previous hours in every single one of her bones. Wordlessly, Draco sat down next to her and from the look on his face, Astoria guessed that he felt the same.

"When this is over, let's not do something like that ever again," he said.

Blowing the air out between her teeth, Astoria agreed. "Deal."

Luckily for them, Dibly reappeared seconds later, carrying a large tray full of delicious smelling sandwiches and two bottles of butterbeer.

"You are a saviour!" Draco exclaimed instantly, taking the tray out of her hands to place it on the floor in front of him and Astoria. They both instantly reached for the food while Dibly Disapparated.

With both of them incredibly hungry, the sandwiches had gone in no time and a few minutes later, Astoria and Draco found themselves still sitting in the same spot, clutching their bottles to take an occasional sip and definitely feeling too lazy to get back up and resume their work. There seemed to be a wordless agreement between them to stretch their little break for as long as possible.

"I bet it's in the last shelf we're going to check," Draco said after a while. "The thing you're looking for is always in the last place you actually look."

Astoria snorted. "Naturally. You don't go on searching once you've found it."

Draco turned his head to look at her, his expression somewhere between amused and annoyed. "Don't be smart, Greengrass," he said.

A soft nudge between her ribs made her giggle.

"Stop it," she complained half-heartedly. "I'm not being smart, I'm just tired. Why can't we just summon the silly book?"

With a sigh, Astoria dropped her head on Draco's shoulder without even realising what she was doing. The exhaustion and shared jokes had somehow led her to believe it was okay and when she was already afraid she had overstepped her boundaries, she felt Draco rest his head against hers as well.

There it was again, that giddy feeling she had received when she had taken his hand in Hogsmeade. That little flutter inside her stomach which was only increased by Draco's presence. It was strange, knowing that they hadn't spent much time together up until a few weeks ago, knowing that she had only scratched the surface of who Draco really was, but she couldn't deny that she was comfortable in his presence. When he smiled at her, when he jokingly called her by her last name, Astoria had the feeling that he really, deeply appreciated her like she had never witnessed with any other human being. Draco was the first who didn't take her for granted.

"You know," he said carefully, "even a silly task like this… I don't… I mean, I don't hate it cause I'm doing it with you."

"You still hate it a little," Astoria replying, chuckling softly. He wasn't especially good at expressing himself, but she still grasped the meaning behind his words. She felt the same way.

"We should probably continue," he reasoned.

With another sigh, Astoria closed her eyes. "In a minute."

Something had woken Draco up. He wasn't sure what, but he became increasingly aware of a persistent backache and a stiff neck that could only have been the result of a rather unhealthy sleeping position. Still, he didn't dare to move because Astoria was fast asleep on his shoulder and the heat of her body made the skin of his arm tingle in the most pleasant ways. If he shifted only a little, Draco knew that he would wake her up and he wouldn't do anything that caused her to move.

Then, with the brutality of punch, something smacked him hard in the face. His head collided with Astoria's, who also uttered a surprised sound of pain, and both sat up straight to stare right into McGonagall's angry face. Looking down into his lap, Draco realised she had thrown a book at him.

"Mr Malfoy, Ms Greengrass, I hereby revoke your library privileges," she informed them sternly.

"What?!" Astoria asked sleepily. "But-"

"But you have known since your first year at Hogwarts that food and drinks are not permitted inside the library and you still disregarded the rules. Please, read your book quickly and leave as soon as you are done."

Finally, Draco gathered his thoughts to the point that he was able to discern the title of the book McGonagall had thrown right into his face and, as it turned out, she had found Acheronian Magics a lot quicker than they had. But then again, she also had the advantage of knowing her own library.

As soon as McGonagall's footsteps had vanished, Draco cursed under his breath. "She could have helped us find it last night," he muttered.

Sighing heavily, Astoria reached for the book and opened it in her own lap. "Honestly, at this point, I'm grateful she still helped us at all."

Draco watched helplessly as Astoria flicked through the pages of the large volume. He tried to be patient, but he still couldn't help tapping his fingers nervously on the library floor. In just a few moments, they would find out what he had given to the secret society and it would decide whether they were going to do something extremely dangerous or not.

When Astoria finally lifted her head, the look on her face already said it all. The soft lines on her forehead, the little wrinkle between her knitted brows told him that it was bad. Just how bad it was, Draco couldn't have known.

"So?" he asked carefully. "Do we go after the book?"

"We definitely go after the book," Astoria confirmed gravely.