Book 3: Astoria Greengrass and the Legilimens of Hogwarts
Song rec: "Rhiannon" by Fleetwood Mac lol
Note: Astoria casts a pretty obvious Patronus, and Draco and Rhiannon try to interact without throwing anything at each other.
Clarke (Rhiannon Clarke) forked the end of her wand in her D.A.D.A. class, right in front of Snape, and it was all anyone talked about in the common room. She came back the same day with a paler, more polished wand, and once the drama subsided, talk of the upcoming Quidditch match took over. The match was between Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, so it wasn't the most exciting in Draco's opinion, but the students had so much cabin fever that anything could become news. Draco would have liked the excuse to get outside the castle, but he needed the privacy to work on the Vanishing Cabinet. He, Crabbe, and Goyle took only a few moments to scout where the professors were near the Quidditch pitch before going inside. Draco worked on that stupid cabinet as long as he could, once again sacrificing sleep and a full meal. He did have other things to try to balance, namely Defence Against the Dark Arts and the return of his ex, Pansy (if those things could be considered any different).
The day after the Quidditch match, Draco sat in the common room to try to work on his essay on the Imperius Curse. He was also trying to sense the mood of his fellow Slytherins upon Pansy's return because it was hard to say how deeply Pansy had cracked… and if she would let out Draco's secret. It didn't look like anything was different, except Pansy was now hanging out with the fifth-years who tended to bully Astoria's group: Diane Carter, Imogen Stretton, Olivia Shardlow, Chiyo Akiyama, and Tracey Nettlebed. Hopefully, for their sake, they didn't have any big plans to gang up on Astoria, because Draco was not merciful after having heard about the pieces of glass being lodged in her neck.
The essay on resisting the Imperius Curse was not an easy one to write. First of all, it was one of Snape's essays, but secondly, Draco's personal experience with the curse was making him uneasy and unproductive. In his fourth year, Moody (Crouch, rather) had been casting it left and right as a "demonstration," and Draco had not been able to resist it then. Although now a skilled Occlumens, he figured that that did not have much to do with the Imperius Curse and had no idea if he would be able to resist it if it ever came to that. When he wrote about resisting the Imperius Curse, he felt weak and stupid. But Madam Rosmerta sure wasn't able to fight it off, either; Draco had her Imperiused to the moon and back. It felt disgusting in all honesty, and he tried not to interfere with her daily life when he didn't need her. He could not completely trust her since she had bungled up both the necklace and the mead.
Draco was further side-tracked from his essay by thoughts of what exactly he should do after fixing the Vanishing Cabinet. He did not know which reinforcements he should bring to help him kill Dumbledore. That wasn't saying that Draco intended to sit back and watch the show. He felt capable of duelling Dumbledore, though he could not have been more aware of his chances of losing. He didn't have a set of rules to go by, but it must have been that as long as Draco formulated the plan and dealt the final blow, it would be okay. Draco's family would be okay. That must be it.
Draco had a mere four classes to handle and Apparition lessons, but McGonagall and Snape had set out to make the work as unnecessarily time-consuming as possible. He didn't learn by writing essays; he learnt by casting spells. Yet as soon as he turned in a Transfiguration essay on the genetics of Metamorphmagi, he had one on the laws for Animagi. As soon as he turned in the essay on the Imperius Curse, he found the empty parchment of yet another dementor essay staring him in the face. He couldn't be bothered with it immediately, for he was picking up the pace with the Vanishing Cabinet.
The cabinet, having finally been mended beyond the point of danger of leading to a void, became very temperamental and would not transport more than a Knut or a spider at a time. Progress, therefore, was not any excuse to be optimistic, and on top of that, Draco increasingly felt like he was being watched. He felt it no matter where he went, even in his dormitory, and feared the unknown limit of the Dark Lord's powers. At the eleventh hour, though, he still had some fear of the marks Snape would give him for a nearly empty dementor essay and hurried to the library. To his disgust, everyone else in his class must have procrastinated, for all the decent texts on dementors had been lent out. Draco attempted to start an argument with Mrs Pince, the librarian, about how it was her job to stock enough copies to support a student body, but she was utterly unmoved and simply Quieted his voice down to a volume she preferred. No one else had quite the excuse that Draco had for putting off this essay. Why did nobody understand this?
"You should manage your time better, young man," said Mrs Pince. "But since you are in such a bind, perhaps you could find somebody with a copy of Professor Sinistra's book on the subject. It was quite popular."
"Professor Sinistra's book?" Draco asked, dumbfounded that she had written anything unrelated to astronomy.
"It's that, or you will need to learn to share," the old woman said smartly, shooing him along.
Draco happened to know one person who had accumulated a collection of dementor books and news articles, because she was the only one in the school who had a dementor obsession. But he wasn't about to share with Rhiannon Clarke. He was too proud to find somebody with Sinistra's book, though, and figured it wouldn't be so bad to try his luck in the Astronomy library. Even though dementors had nothing to do with Astronomy, neither did Sinistra's shopping lists, notes to self, coffee mugs, or yearbooks, which he had found in there before when looking for books on meteor showers. She likely had a copy of her own book in there, and who knows, maybe the blueprints of her house.
Going all the way to Astronomy Tower gave Draco a chance to clear his head. He deliberately chose a route that would not make him think about the cabinet. His heart sank when he realised that two weeks had flown by since his and Astoria's… walk. They had lingered a little and flirted during the journeys from the dungeons to Astronomy Tower, but it was too infrequent. He wanted more. He wanted to know just why she hadn't been more forward since then. Was it their reputations? Their safety? She hadn't lost interest, had she? Pansy had never been suave enough to make him guess like this. Pansy had always been vocal about Draco's disappearances in the castle. That Astoria, though… Maybe she knew he liked the wait.
He was getting close to the Astronomy library and appreciated glimpses of the sunset coming in through the thin windows scattered in the stairwell. He continued to follow the spiral of the tower's staircase and found himself face-to-face with something squat and glowing. It wasn't Myrtle. It looked like one of his grandfather's peacocks, especially with the pale glow. He would have thought it was an omen if he wasn't in such an inexplicably good mood all of a sudden.
"Look! There he goes, down the stairs! Pavo, where are you off to?"
"Astoria, you don't have to name your Patronus. It's a spell."
"That's enough, Flora. I'm naming him Pavo. The Delta Pavonids are due to shower in a couple of weeks — it's only appropriate. Ah, look at his feathers! How delightf— oh, hello, Draco!"
"Hello."
Astoria's eyes gleamed in the light from her magnificent Patronus as it displayed its feathers clear across the stairwell. It could not have been the little-known Delta Pavonids that awarded her such a bird. Nor could it have been vanity. It was her nobility and beauty, and maybe a faint memory of Draco's peacock-feather quills… he was in an overconfident mood.
"Malfoy? What are you doing here?" the other twin asked as she and Clarke caught up.
"I'm going to use the library."
"We're practising Patronuses up here," Clarke said securely, her new wand ready for a Patronus… or something else.
"I can see that. Nice work, Astoria," Draco said.
"Thank you!"
"On a related note," he said only to Astoria, "I'm looking for books on dementors for my D.A.D.A. essay."
"And why are you looking up here?" Clarke cut in defensively.
"As a matter of fact," Draco said, trying his best to stay close to the Patronus to calm his irritation, "I was told Professor Sinistra authored a book on them. I was hoping to find a copy."
No matter how much he tried only to look at Astoria, Clarke increasingly treated the conversation as though it was both with and about her. Astoria's Patronus had worn off; it was all up to him to stay civil now.
"We got copies, but what sort of essay would you need that book for?"
"I just told you. A dementor essay. Snape gobbles them up. And it's a dementor book," Draco puffed out.
"No, it's not your average dementor book," Clarke said brusquely. "I've got dementor books out me ears. They're in the dorm. Catch me later and I'll give you one."
Draco was surprised that Clarke would be so willing to offer him anything at all, but he also caught on to the subtlety that she did not want him to have her copy of Sinistra's book.
"What is her book, then?" Draco asked Astoria, who was finally able to get a word in.
"Thirty Things to Expect from the Dementor's Kiss," she said.
"Thirty?" Draco echoed. "Your soul's gone. What's more to expect?"
"Twenty-nine more things," Clarke said darkly.
"Lots of dementor talk going on in my tower," Professor Sinistra called down from above.
Everyone waited for the professor right there on the stairs, gaping upward at the imposing sound of her footsteps. Draco didn't know how the woman never tripped on all these stairs with the length of her robes' train.
"I cast a Patronus, Professor!" Astoria announced.
"That's excellent, dear. I'm very proud of you. I always knew you could," Sinistra said, but she sounded more relieved than reaffirmed. "What form did it take?"
"A peacock."
"That must have been very pretty. I'm sorry to have missed it. You'll have to show me again sometime — no, not now. You and Rhiannon go help Flora and Hestia with theirs."
Once certain that the girls were gone, Professor Sinistra put on exactly the face she had when she was about to tell people to stop playing with the astronomy equipment. Her voice was soft, but Draco was not comforted. He always had to do extra work to keep her Legilimency out. Based on when Draco employed a blocking or diverting tactic in Occlumency, he could tell the strength of the invading opponent. Sinistra's reach felt like it could go further than Bellatrix's, but it was not as bad as Rabastan's.
"My book is primarily about my husband's experience," Professor Sinistra said straightforwardly. "It's not that I don't want you to read it. If I wanted it to be a secret, I would not have published it. However, for the purpose of your essay, you would do better to use a general dementorology book that Miss Clarke has so generously offered. Otherwise, Professor Snape might think you're a plagiarist."
"He'll still think I'm a plagiarist if she gives me a book everyone else has used," Draco griped. "I have to turn this in tomorrow."
"Then say in your essay they can't be dissected. Cite me as an interview. You'll be the only one with that piece of information."
Draco considered for a minute that she might have thrown him that shocker to distract him from Occlumency, but then he understood why Sinistra had had so many entrances in the Azkaban visitor log. No wonder people called her Sinister Sinistra, even before the Azkaban breakout. It was in her very character. To attempt dissection of a dementor, and within the prison walls, she must have known some thoroughly Dark magic. She both frightened and amazed him. Draco sorely wished she was on his side instead of in her own bizarre world.
When he arrived late at dinner, he had an unwelcome view of Astoria surrounded on all sides at the table. She had the Slytherin table all mixed up and was sitting with her myriad cousins, whilst Clarke and the Carrow twins sat off to the side and rolled their eyes. Draco walked parallel to the table, back and then forth, trying to decide if he had the guts to sit with her when she was with family.
"I wish we could go! We always seem to miss it by a few days!" Adamina Kippling moaned as the clan hovered over bright, silvery letters.
"Why don't they just wait till Easter holiday if they really wanted you there?" Flora cut in. "Or at least not get your hopes up with invitations. They know you can't come because of school."
"We don't do things that way," said Asenath Greengrass impatiently. "It's always the Equinox."
"What do you want, Malfoy?" Adamina said, having noticed his slow return trip.
Her tone of voice and the ten Greengrass eyes suddenly upon him awakened his defences. Two of those eyes were Astoria's, though. It would be okay.
"Another one of your spring festivals?" he asked rhetorically.
"Yes, our cousin Renshaw is getting married," Astoria smiled. "They were a bit behind schedule with the invitations."
"Let me guess. Renshaw the twentieth?" Draco said, still not spotting a good place to sit.
"The eleventh!" Astoria laughed. "He's actually Renshaw the eleventh. Sylvester's the twentieth, isn't he, Asenath?"
"Yeah, and twentieth in the queue to get my Quidditch tickets, too," the Gryffindor said, still sorting through her special delivery evening post. "These seats stink."
"Would you care to sit down, Draco?" Astoria asked.
"No, thank you," he said, trying to get her eyes to follow his so she would know all of the glares he was receiving. She caught on.
Draco was getting antsy for both the book Clarke promised him and to spend time with Astoria after dinner. He lingered in the common room to wait for them, with blank parchment ready, rueing the amount of time he was losing and wondering if he looked stupid. Clarke and the twins did not notice him, but Astoria did, and asked him if he still needed the dementor book. When he said yes, something in the twitch of her lips told him that he should not have been using her as a mediator and should have reminded Clarke himself. But, outwardly, Astoria said that they were going to bring back their homework to the common room, and she would ask Rhiannon to grab the book.
SMACK.
Draco must have nodded off in the few minutes of quiet. Clarke had charmed the book to land as loudly as possible on the desk in front of him and was uttering another spell. When he looked up, she had her wand pointed hard on the cover, causing it to ripple.
"This'll come back to me when you're finished with it."
"How can you be so sure when I'm finished with it?" Draco said at once, half tempted to swat that fancy new wand of hers off the book before she ordered it to bite him in his sleep.
"Snape always has essays due the first class of the week, and yours is tomorrow, innit? So tomorrow night," Clarke said, and she waddled over to where the others set up for homework.
Draco had seldom let the presence of Astoria's friends stop him from talking to her before, but he was admittedly nervous now. He had finally won her over. But there was a good chance that Clarke would do something to make Astoria go off about Muggle-born-whatever again. There was a good chance being next to Astoria in general would distract him from his essay. It wasn't looking like the best idea. Still, he slid into the chair next to her.
She stacked the books she wasn't actively using and made room for him. He chose his favourite peacock-feather quill to use, a jab at her staring friends. They saw it. He made sure they understood.
Astoria was hard at work on Arithmancy. She was going to do well on her O.W.L. for that. She was going to get a nice job as an astronomer with that sort of thing on her résumé. She would be a philanthropist and get things named after her. She would get married on the Vernal Equinox and teach her children not to be afraid of ghosts. And to not be afraid of people who were different. That was her future without the Dark Lord.
The Carrow twins were getting help from Clarke as they crammed for a Muggle Studies test. Hestia and Clarke had been dating, which was the only reliable way Draco could tell which one was Hestia. They were saying a lot of Muggle words Draco didn't care to know. Draco did not like a single one of Astoria's roommates, but he wished they would all survive the war. He hoped that he would never be ordered to kill them the way he was ordered to kill Dumbledore. They hadn't done anything to get killed for. They weren't a match for the Dark Lord like Dumbledore was. They ought to be able to go about their lives.
Heather Thatcham arrived and asked Draco if he was still working on his dementor essay, too. He looked at the long roll of parchment that only said "Dementors are." Heather sat down at the table with all of them. She had a copy of Sinistra's book. Heather was one of three blood-traitorous roommates of Pansy. Reading the book, Heather remarked that she hadn't known Moody was Barty Crouch. It was a stupid comment. Nobody knew that at the time, and Draco realised Sinistra hadn't known it, either. That's how Crouch got away with it and brought back the Dark Lord… because Sinistra hadn't known.
Draco generated an introduction to his essay. He looked in the book. He wrote a first paragraph, too. Pansy and Blaise walked by. They saw him. He looked in the book. They went to their rooms. Draco wrote a second paragraph. This was tiring.
"You have good penmanship," Astoria mentioned, looking all worn from the Arithmancy.
"Really? Snape's docked points for my handwriting before," Draco recalled.
"Professor Snape has the script of a nine-year-old girl," Astoria said.
"That's oddly specific."
"Well, it's frustrating when I can't read his feedback on my essays."
"I've got essays back that said 'No' in red ink and nothing else," Clarke said. "And others that say 'Yes' and nothing else. I hold 'em side by side and try to see what I did differently."
Draco looked in the book. Heather had been reading Sinistra's tragedy but not writing anything. Draco reminded her of the time. Heather scratched out an outline. Astoria and Flora were taking a break and talking about what to do for Clarke's birthday. They accused Hestia of trying to keep Clarke all to herself. In a way, he knew the feeling, because he wanted Astoria all to himself. The other ones were insufferable. He was trying to get an essay done. He looked in the book.
"It's the little ones' curfew," Astoria said randomly.
No, wait, it wasn't random. Draco was supposed to do curfew roundup. There were five other Slytherin prefects. One of them was Tracey Davis. She was sharp.
"They don't have this essay," Draco said. "I'll try to get final curfew."
He did not. He was still 10 inches off from the required length of this essay. Snape always used a charm to universalise the size of students' handwriting before he marked papers, so writing larger wasn't the answer. Heather and Flora had left. Hestia had fallen asleep at the table. Astoria's eyes had glazed at all the numbers before her. Abruptly, she shook her head and wrote 72 in the middle of a decagram.
"Why seventy-two?" Draco asked because he knew she was too tired to really do the work.
"I… I don't know. That's the internal angle. That's not what she's looking for, though. I'll never understand the antiprisms in the N.E.W.T. classes if I can't do this."
Not having the right kind of ink, Astoria tried to take the number off with her wand. It put a clean hole through the parchment. She stared at it. Her lips parted.
"It's zero," she said certainly. "Zero."
"That's a long way from seventy-two, Astoria," Clarke said. "Vector won't take an hole for an answer."
"I'm certain it's zero."
"Oh, here…" Clarke huffed.
Clarke tore a piece of parchment from her roll, lay it atop Astoria's, and said "Meld," with her wand swishing to and fro. Astoria, with utmost focus, redrew the centre of her decagram and put in a zero. Draco knew she needed to get to sleep soon, but with Clarke present, he couldn't bid her goodnight the way he wanted. He cut a piece of parchment and drew a decagram, trying his best to keep it looking like a star. He wrote, "I'd rather be doing Astronomy" in the centre. At this point, he had to tell Astoria not to look. He took his wand, cut out the figure, and Transfigured it into a pin. He had made many a glowing Potter Stinks badge this way, and couldn't forget to make this one glow, too. He tapped Astoria on the shoulder, and she opened her eyes. She smiled and put it right onto her satchel for everyone to see, possibly even Professor Vector. When she set her satchel under the seat and moved back in place, her leg touched his under the table. It stayed that way. The press of sleep ultimately overpowered her at half past midnight.
"Shall I bring Hestia?" Astoria asked.
"Don't wake her," Clarke said.
Astoria didn't understand the ambiguity and said, "Propriopausa" with her wand pointed at Hestia.
"What the hell did you just cast on my girlfriend?"
"Oh, it stifles the senses," Astoria said. "I didn't want to wake her when we moved her. Should I not have?"
"I mean… no? But get on with it. It's too late now. Don't take this the wrong way none, but never aim anything at us again after ten o'clock. I never know with your magic."
"I'm sorry, Rhiannon. Are you coming?"
"Twenty more minutes. I have Astronomy I put off."
"That… oh that's going to take you more than twenty minutes, Rhi."
"Not if I do it my way."
Astoria rolled her eyes and mobilised the tranquilly sleeping Hestia in spite of Rhiannon's request for her not to cast magic.
"Goodnight, Draco. Good luck," Astoria said.
"Thank you."
Rhiannon monitored Astoria's care of Hestia the whole way back. That was really it. Draco still had a conclusion to write, and Clarke still had Astronomy. They were at the same table. There was nobody else in the common room. There were plenty of other tables for this girl to go. She stayed. Draco held the dementor book in one hand and drummed the fingers of his other on the table. Maybe he should move. He didn't like her kind.
"There's something between you and Astoria," Clarke accused.
Oh yes there is.
"What are you on about?" he mumbled.
"I'm on about the Fudge Flies zipping round you two's heads. I want to talk to you about it."
This couldn't be good. Nothing with Clarke ever was. Draco seriously considered whether or not he had to sit here and listen to this sort of thing from a Muggle-born. He didn't, but she'd go crying to Astoria otherwise. He and Clarke needed to keep as far away from each other as possible to keep the peace. That was how things were. Draco was stone silent. He positioned his quill to write, but he did not have any ideas. Clarke ignored the gesture, where someone else might have taken the hint.
"I don't think she's going to tell me about you. Because, y'know, whenever it comes up, I'm against the idea. The problem is I don't have room to talk no more. I'm with Hestia. Her aunt and uncle are Death Eaters, both of 'em. Of course, Hestia's different from you. So I want to know if you're going to take Astoria seriously."
"Yes, I take her seriously," said Draco angrily. "I'm trying to work, Clarke."
"I don't think you understand," Clarke said, and she started rummaging in her bag.
Draco didn't have much choice but to pay attention to what she was doing, just in case she tried to pull a fast one on him. They did not like each other. That was how things were. Clarke found what she was looking for and dipped her head low, so that her messy ponytail spilled into her face. Draco was expecting something when she looked up, but he wasn't expecting this.
Rhiannon Clarke was holding a broken Death Eater's mask. It was cracked from below the left eye to the bottom right jaw, with huge chunks missing. Draco was alarmed, firstly, that Clarke had come into possession of such a thing, but what he really couldn't place was how she had found such a fine one. Draco's own mask was so plain one might think it was a theatre prop. This one was engraved with tree branch designs. The leaves stood out with gold veins against the silvery mask. Only Bellatrix's rivalled it in rank. Draco clenched his fist.
"What are you doing? Where did you get that mask?" he hissed.
"Familiar? This was Professor Crouch's," Clarke said.
The metallic mask seemed to ring very faintly as she tilted it, like it held magic. Draco was aghast. His hand was ready should he need to draw his wand. A Mudblood in possession of a ranked Death Eater's uniform… what a sight. Clarke was known to do things without reason, but this was not one of those times. There must have been some spell on the mask that prevented it from being Mended. Clarke looked like she actually feared further damage to it as she gently set it atop her Astronomy homework.
"I showed you this because I wanted you to see how outwardly pretty it was. But the story behind this mask, and how I got me hands on it, is anything but pretty. You and me both know what happened to Crouch in the name of his master. Professor Sinistra busted this up beyond repair. One day, it'll be gone. She don't know I saved it. She don't want these memories."
Clarke wrapped her hands on the sides of the mask piece and looked down.
"I think this mask is a good example of what it's like to be a Death Eater."
"You've got to be kidding me… Your kind has no idea—" Draco said.
"I have an idea, Malfoy. It all seems very appealing. Just like this pretty mask. It's nice-looking to be a Death Eater in a certain type of crowd. It looks like it'll benefit you. You and like-minded people. But it's broken. It's a broken system with broken ideals. That's why the faithful ones like Crouch die, the stupid ones like the Carrows walk free, and the ones with families at home wait in prison for Lord What's-His-Name to remember to come get them."
This Mudblood bitch is talking about my father…
"Don't get cross with me, Malfoy. I only mentioned it to make a point. If my dad was in prison — which he might be, who knows — he'd never even think about me if he got out. Your dad, that's the first thing he'd do. He'd come home to you. Your dad actually likes you and he's been stopped by a broken system. It was a mistake."
"I suggest you get away from me," Draco seethed.
"Listen to me, Malfoy. You can't follow in his footsteps! Your old man wouldn't even want you to, at this point! This war is already ugly. And I know what you're thinking — 'this Mudblood has no right to talk to me!' I got every damn right if you're gonna get involved with my best friend! I don't want her to end up devastated, you hear? She sees something in you. I dunno what. But if she sees it, it's because she's a sweet person, and you're not going to take that away from her by following Lord Moldyfort. I don't want to see you become a Death Eater. I could care less what you do, but I care a lot about Astoria, and—"
"Clarke, dammit, you've made your point!" Draco groaned, gripping his forehead.
"But I've not really rammed it home yet!" Clarke said, standing.
Draco stood in turn. They drew their wands at each other. It happened so fast. There was too much emotion between two people who couldn't bear each other. Draco felt the muscles in his shoulders and back tighten and his nerves prickle clear to his wand hand. Clarke, though, was casual, and flipped her new wand side to side in her hand. Then she laughed to herself. She didn't even give him the honour of facing him when they had been itching for a duel not moments ago.
"Do you know anything about wands, Malfoy? The wand chooses the wizard. I might have had an off-brand wand before, but this one was made by Ollivander. And it worked when it was handed down to me. What that means, and what I'm trying to tell you, is that my blood's got nothing on my magic. You might not like me because of my culture or whatever, but it's all fake, that blood guff. And Astoria will tell you the same."
It would have been easier to believe that Clarke was lying about the mask. But she wasn't. She didn't want to talk to him as much as he didn't want to talk to her. She would not have kept him this long just to lie. People weren't supposed to know about the Death Eater paraphernalia she had, either. She had revealed these things to him to talk him out of becoming a Death Eater. Clarke wanted to make an example of Crouch and Sinistra because she didn't want that to happen to Astoria. She was trying to get Draco to see the fault in the ideology. How futile. Little did she know that Draco hadn't had a choice. It was too late. It was too late for him and Astoria. He swallowed both his pride and emotion in his dry mouth and sat back down at his essay.
Draco could not admit that he was wrong, though he felt it in his growing headache. He was wrong to cling to the bright side of his dirty mission — that he would be a revered and powerful Death Eater at the end of it. It was all he had in the face of his and his family's mortal danger. Thinking that he was better than Clarke's kind was all he had left. It was less of his parents' teachings now and more of something desperate. It was wrong — he knew it. It was a desperate cling to any power at all in a powerless situation.
Rhiannon Clarke did not know the Dark Lord's power. That was why she could say things like this. She could present Draco with this information in the hopes that he would become something better for her friend. But he couldn't. He couldn't be better for Astoria.
"Do you think she means nothing to me?" he asked when he could not return to his work.
Clarke was ignoring her Astronomy homework, which still lay blank across from Draco underneath the Death Eater mask, and was throwing chocolate wrappers into the fireplace as she ate.
"I don't know what she means to you, Malfoy," she said quietly. "I only know what she means to me."
Draco listened to the louder crackles when the chocolate wrappers hit the flames.
"I've never had someone like her," he said.
"Me neither. I wanna make sure she's happy with you like I am with Hestia. Hestia's family's got Death Eaters. But they got nothing on us."
"That's because Hestia's family doesn't know about you two," Draco corrected.
Clarke was eating two chocolates at a time.
"You're right. Hestia's family doesn't know, and I don't got a family."
"Well, our families don't know, either. And they won't," he said, but he didn't know why he thought that made sense.
"So then Astoria's safe?" Clarke asked childishly. "Not like the dead people in the papers."
"Yes," said Draco, just as dumbly.
"Well, that's what I care about."
"Me too."
"Well, then… Er, good talk, Malfoy."
Clarke gathered up her things and left. She was a lot of disagreeable things, and this had been anything but a good talk, but she cared about Astoria. Draco respected that.