Astoria of Slytherin: The Complete Series

by PerfidiouslySnatching

Astoria Greengrass and Draco Malfoy clash when they meet. (It's not Draco's fault Astoria's best friends with the only Muggle-born in Slytherin, right?) Their habit of keeping things from each other dies hard once the war creeps upon them. It takes some time and several mistakes, but they come to understand what it means to really love another person through thick and thin.

78. 4:16 Dumbledore's Army

Book 4: Astoria Greengrass and the Curse of Quennell Park
Song rec: "First Love/Late Spring" by Mitski

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"You're certain you want to do this."

Astoria nodded. She and Draco were standing in the Astronomy library. Astoria had charmed the putto statues to fly all over the room. Draco had placed protective enchantments over the bookshelves and scroll collections.

"I've cast darker things before," Astoria said yet again, having hesitated for what she felt was too long.

Draco took her hand and asked, "When you were little, did you ever play with a balloon by trying to keep it in the air?"

It was a farfetched question.

"Er, yeah?"

"Did you ever try it with more than one balloon, perhaps at a party?"

"Erm, I think so… What's that got to do with curses?"

"Dark magic feels like trying to keep several balloons in the air," Draco said. "It's not as hard as juggling, since they're full of air, but it demands your attention. You really have to mean it and exert control."

He had a much nicer way of putting it than Flora, who had made the whole thing sound akin to dragon taming.

"Draco, I've had to mean it when I conjured confetti or made a feather float. I'm fairly certain I'll know what to do."

"Well, you haven't done it yet."

"Well, you were asking me if I was sure I wanted to. It made me think you weren't ready. Are you ready, in case this gets out of hand?" she asked.

"I've been ready!"

"All right, all right."

Astoria tapped her wand to her side and raised it at the statues. She broadened her stance and gripped her wand tight. She breathed deeply.

"Okay."

"Okay."

"Syssorevounlitho."

Suddenly, three putti crashed into each other repeatedly until they had ground themselves into bits. Still more statues violently bashed themselves into the centre, breaking into pieces and making a larger stone. Astoria kept her wand in place until the last putto had been destroyed in the amalgamation. The boulder was already trying to get away from her and smash against the walls, but Astoria kept her focus and lowered it carefully. Professor Sinistra would kill her before this boulder did if the room was destroyed. Once on the floor, the boulder made every effort against Astoria to move of its own accord, but she kept control, learning how to move it in the direction she wanted. She could tell how much heavier the rock was. It was definitely more than just a sum of its parts, which reminded her of the increasingly-heavy Blood Magick text she'd had to return. She could crush a lot of limbs with this thing, including her own. Without her wand on it at all times, it was an indiscriminate weapon. She rolled the boulder all over the floor until she got used to it.

"My arm's tired now. Are you ready to cast a Shield?" she announced.

"Sure. Protego," Draco said.

Astoria had to relinquish control over the curse in order to cast another spell to stop it, which was the worst part. She had only a split second, which was why the enchantments and Shield were necessary. The moment she let it go, the boulder sped up.

"Reducto!" she shouted, and the boulder burst into tiny, inert pebbles.

She stared at the remnants for a moment.

"Draco, I did it!"

"You did!"

"Draco, I really did it! I used the Arts!"

"I know, I was right here!" he laughed.

Astoria fiddled with her hands excitedly. Then she Vanished the mess she had made. She and Draco tried to conjure more putto statues on account of the damage to them being irreparable. No one needed to know.

"Wait, Draco, yours are so lopsided!"

"No they aren't — oh."

Draco compared his side of the room to hers and realised the problem. It turns out he wasn't very good at making the putti look sweet and angelic; they looked like adult faces on babies' bodies. He tried again with more luck the second time, using Astoria's as references. Astoria flipped a few pages forward in her grimoire and found the Shield spell that she had seen both Theodore and her mother cast. When Theodore had cast this spell in the common room, even violent curses from other Slytherins were not able to crack it. When her mother had cast it, a monstrous form of a dragon had sprung out of its exterior and killed an attacking Death Eater. After consulting with Theodore, Astoria discovered the incantation was Protego Nidhogg. It had been created by the Nott family but eventually spread to Dark practitioners all over Europe. Theodore, as a member of the Nott family, had "permitted" Astoria to use it (she would have anyway), though he cautioned that controlling it was "almost as bad as Atmospheric Charms." He warned that the dragons that came out of it always aimed to kill unless directed otherwise and that he, for one, never let them spring forth from the Shield in the first place. Astoria remembered seeing her mother strain from using it and approached the spell carefully. Fortunately, it never hurt the people on the inside of the Shield apart from making them sore and winded.

"I'm going to cast Theodore's spell," she announced.

Draco became a bit fussy at her wording.

"Well, it isn't Theodore's spell. He didn't make it. I can use it."

"Hopefully, I can too. Are the enchantments still steady? Is the door triple-locked?"

"Yes and yes."

"Good. Stand right next to me, please."

Astoria could think of a thousand good ways to use this spell. It would take a lot out of her body to cast something so grand, so she used mental imagery to prepare herself. The Dark arts were like a perverse Patronus Charm. Her intent had to be sincere, and the memories of why she was pursuing such a thing had to be clear. She recalled Flora being forced to cast curses on their friend Montel, the wimpy Curtis Evercreech, and their new roommate Alexa. Amycus always picked Flora. Rumours had spread about her even though she had no choice. Astoria's anger bubbled. She envisioned the children who had been cut up by the Carrows lying in hospital beds. This had been going on for a month. She heard Rabastan's Howler screeching in her head.

"PROTEGO NIDHOGG!"

The Shield felt like it was coming out of her whole arm rather than the end of her wand. The muscles in her wrist involuntarily contorted as the spell gained momentum and discharged out like black ink in water. It had been a semicircle when Theodore was up against a door, but the spell adapted its shape depending on what solid objects were around the caster. Thus, in the open area, its magic rotated until she and Draco were entirely encapsulated by a black dome. It gave Astoria vivid memories of clinging to her mother and sister at Quennell Park. She pulled her carpal tunnel already, and her fingers were twitching. The Shield's motion created loud wind. She gathered herself together to make sure no dragons came out.

"I can't tell what you're trying to do! Do you want the full spell or no?" Draco asked.

"No!"

"Don't freak out, but I think you might be losing this one! Better stop!"

Astoria was about to take his advice when she felt her arm wrenched sideways by the force of the spell. Another layer of black had emerged, spiralling out from the bottom. It came to a monster's head at the top.

"Astoria, you can let this one go! Nothing bad happens when you release it! It's only doing this because you're keeping your wand up!"

Astoria didn't respond. She admitted that she had temporarily lost her hold, but once she had seen the creature's maw open as it circled round the Shield in search of prey, she became fascinated. She was really capable of making this. Merely saying the words and pointing one's wand didn't make this happen. Would her mother be proud? Had she finally lived up to the Greengrass name? Well, at least Rhiannon would think it was cool if she were here.

Astoria followed the outline of the dragon's body with her wand until she found its head and snared it with twofold the magic. With a gritty scream, she sent the dragon forth and tested how far it would go in the room. It fought her like a dog running on a leash, but she held the spell tight and whipped the monster back and forth against the enchantments in the room before bringing it back. Somehow, this wand that had been too much for her in the past was now not enough. Even though it was unnecessary to release the spell, Astoria coiled the dragon back over the dome of the Shield beforehand simply to practise controlling it. Then the whole spell dissipated. She heaved and stumbled over to the nearest telescope stool, which was actually not so near. Draco was bustling all over the place, checking for damage. There wasn't any. Astoria already knew.

"Holy salamanders, Astoria. How did you — Where did that — Where did you learn to do that‽"

"Alecto called my magic diffuse," she breathed.

"W-Well, she's wrong!"

Astoria Summoned her grimoire and took notes on her experience, writing with a thick nib over the maps and pictures already in the book. Draco was massaging her back as though she had been in a Muggle-style fight. She had no pain, but that didn't mean she didn't need this.

"Are you doing well?" he asked.

"A little lower, Draco. I'm a bit worn," she fibbed.

"Oh. That's understandable. You're not used to it."

"My wand is already."

"Mine protests with Dark magic. You have a dragon's core, though. Mine's unicorn. That must be why."

"Mm," she said, setting her head on the table as he continued to rub her back.

The ink from her notes was taking a long time to dry, and she zoned out watching it. Lamentably, if they wanted food, they'd have to go to dinner now. When they approached the door to unlock it, they saw two little noses against the leaded glass. Astoria's entire body felt like it'd shrivel from embarrassment. She opened the door and found first-years Chesna Borgin and Sedecla Burke, both with dropped jaws.

"What do you two think you're—" Draco started, but Astoria stopped him and swiftly gathered her composure.

"First-years have access to this room so they can borrow the large maps, remember? They're learning the constellations for the first time," she said. "How are you girls?"

"Er, erm, er, er…" Chesna said.

"You're not supposed to be doing that in here!" Sedecla piped at Astoria, putting her hands on her hips. "In fact, you're not supposed to be doing that at all!"

"Ah, you girls saw my spell?"

"Er, er…" Chesna said.

"We rightly did! We're telling on you to Professor Sinistra!" threatened Sedecla.

Draco was going to say something again, but Astoria flicked her hand at him.

"You are, are you? What will you say?" asked Astoria.

"I won't say a thing," Chesna said, and Sedecla glared.

"I'm going to tell her you were using Dark magic in the library!"

"I was? I suppose I shouldn't have," Astoria said.

"No!"

"Where should I have done it?" she teased.

"What? Nowhere!" Sedecla said.

"What sorts of things do your parents sell at their shop, Sedecla?"

"Er… Well, they, er…"

"They sell Dark things, don't they? At Borgin and Burke's?"

"I don't know, maybe! So what if they do!" Sedecla smarted.

"Well, Amycus and Alecto Carrow like to buy and trade things at that shop. In fact, I heard that the owners of the shop let them use a certain Vanishing Cabinet to come attack Dumbledore… And don't you sometimes sneak in there together and mess with the items your parents tell you not to touch? I wonder if Professor Sinistra should know about that, too. I heard she's very eager to give bad students extra homework."

Sedecla looked horrified at the prospect of more star charts. Chesna was sweating clear through her robes.

"Fine, I won't say anything if you don't!" Sedecla compromised.

"You won't say anything anyway. You don't remember my name," Astoria grinned.

"H-Hey! Hey!" Sedecla protested, but Astoria and Draco scooted past the girls.

"The maps you're looking for are in shelf B14," Astoria said, and the girls ran into the room away from her.

"I cannot believe you," Draco laughed.

"Oh, what I did was nothing. You were going to yell at them and make them cry!"

"I was not!"

"You were! You buy from their families' shop—"

"Whoa there!"

"—and you were going to yell at them, poor things!"

"You're full of it," he said, stealing a kiss, and Astoria stole several more.

"Ahem. Malfoy."

One of the patrolling Death Eaters was crossing their path.

"Selwyn," Draco said with a nod.

Astoria unwrapped her arms from Draco and looked away until the Death Eater meandered onward. She remembered Rhiannon and Hestia complaining about this sort of thing whenever it used to be Aurors who patrolled the castle.

"Is that your greeting, you nod at each other?" Astoria teased, as she was in a surprisingly elated mood after her success. "No secret Death Eater handshake?"

"Stop it," Draco said, rolling his eyes.

They talked about their "normal" classes on the trip back and complained about Professor McGonagall setting the same amount of homework regardless of the national calamity. As they were passing through the basement, they came across a large message written on the wall.

DUMBLEDORE'S ARMY, STILL RECRUITING

Cute. What a bad time to be holding that D.A.D.A. club. Astoria remembered Rhiannon having no luck getting accepted into that club since she was Slytherin, and she could only imagine that Slytherins were their outright enemy now. Draco was muttering unpleasant things; he quickly grabbed Astoria by the arm and led her onward.

"Draco, you're going to make me trip down the stairs. Let go of me."

"Then move faster," he said brusquely, freeing her arm. "They can't know I'm the first one who saw it. I'm hoping someone else catches it before my shift. I don't want to be the one to deal with that."

Astoria knew that Dumbledore's Army members had been the ones to hex Draco on the train for two consecutive years (she had helped fix him), but he would have been forced to do much worse to them in return.

"Why don't we go back and remove it, then? That way everyone wins."

"It's hexed, Astoria. Can't you tell?"

No I can't, Astoria thought with humiliation.

She trotted alongside of him until they reached the common room. Seeing that graffiti had ruined Draco's mood. It wasn't the vandalism itself, nor was it the message, but the memories of having to cast the Cruciatus Curse.

"I think I'm going to go to the dorm. I'll see you later."

He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into a quick sideways kiss. She wanted to squeeze him tighter, but the angle wouldn't let her. Draco knew that she would be there for him if he needed to talk. Astoria knew that he wouldn't want to.

On Wednesday, Astoria wondered how Draco was doing with Amycus's class whilst she was stuck in Alecto's. Cleverly, Alecto had not given them a required textbook. All of the books on blood purity were old and stuffy, and she wanted to appeal to fresh meat. Thus, she gave the students "readings" in each class that either directly endorsed blood purity or surreptitiously insulted Muggle society. Astoria, like most students, pretended to read them and then willingly failed the quizzes. Astoria's current standing in the class was "failing." The reading that day, though, had actually caught her attention due to the title "Gender in Muggle Society." There was a painting of a witch riding a black winged horse stark naked by Edward Hughes, a painting of another nude witch standing above an apparently dying animal called "Love Magic," and an abusive painting of naked witches, hags, Inferi, goats, bats, and Thestrals entitled "Witches Going to Their Sabbath." The next page depicted hags with warty noses, bare breasts, and screaming children. The text nearest the pictures read:-

"Witch" and "crone" are used as insults, whilst the equivalent "wizard" and "warlock" are not. "Wizard," in fact, may be used as a compliment, such as in "He's a maths wizard" (i.e., "He is skilled at maths.")

Muggles have entirely conflated witches with hags, using images of them as Hallowe'en costumes and decorations. Tradition states that witches are cannibals who prey upon Muggle infants. Other stories detail witches stealing children from their parents, sometimes leaving a monstrous "changeling" in their place. When not depicted as hags, witches are most frequently portrayed as nude goat-worshippers, symbols of lust, and evil temptresses of Muggle men (shown here).

Ew. That wasn't much better than being objectified by the pureblood system, was it? Alecto was a fraud (and not to mention, she was sort of a child-stealer herself), but those paintings were real and spanned across history.

There were worse things about Muggles and gender in that pamphlet than paintings. The Death Eaters were all wrong, but perhaps there was some worth in not marrying Muggles — that didn't mean anything had to be violent. Muggle-borns shouldn't be lumped in with this sort of thing, anyway. Astoria was very frustrated, though, when she discovered she had aced that day's quiz. Alecto was so excited that Astoria felt like retaking it just to fail.

Astoria and Flora were scratching their heads over N.E.W.T. Arithmancy when Draco showed himself that afternoon. He had no classes that day and was not in his uniform, but a sleek black button-down with a faint paisley pattern. His sleeves were rolled to his elbows — how Astoria was ever going to get back to Arithmancy, she didn't know.

"Would you two believe there are still Hogsmeade trips?"

"Hogsmeade trips?" Astoria uttered. She had nearly forgotten what those were. On top of all the other rules, they weren't even allowed out on the grounds, and now the weather had turned cold. Flora was intent on finishing a formula before acknowledging that Draco had arrived, and when she reached the solution, she said, "They're trying to give us a false sense of security. Students haven't exactly reacted to being dictated with overflowing pleasure."

"Theodore just hung the sign. I couldn't believe it. It's on the eleventh," Draco said.

Astoria did not immediately react to the hint. All of her memories of school trips to Hogsmeade involved Rhiannon, Pariah, the W.W.N. building, and full bags from Honeydukes. It wasn't going to be anything like a Hogsmeade trip without the music or her best friend. In their place were dementors and Death Eater guards. Flora had to be thinking it, too, since she wasn't showing the slightest trace of excitement. She dipped her quill again and kept on with Arithmancy.

"I know it's not the best circumstance, Astoria, but I'd like to take you on a proper date," Draco said sincerely.

That's right… they had never been on an official date together. They had had to hide their relationship the previous year for the sake of safety. So much for that notion. Not a word had come down from above chastising Draco for affiliating with a Greengrass now. How bashful they had once been when they had danced at her family's Christmas banquet. How young.

"I would like that, Draco," she said, touching the hand he had set on their table.

Why couldn't she ever have him without the world crashing down around them? It was always something. Draco played with her fingers absentmindedly but didn't take a seat.

"Flora, I think you should go. Well, not on our date," he joked, "but if you stay in the castle, you'll get cabin fever."

"I'm inoculated," Flora grunted.

"Well, depending on how Snape feels about the freedom, this might be the only trip we have," Draco said.

Flora shot a look at him that had "I'm still not your friend" written all over it. Where Astoria had been quite charmed by the look Draco had going on, Flora's eyes followed his revealed Dark Mark. He always kept it covered — it snapped Astoria back. Her mind, prone to this sort of thinking, shuffled through three scenarios. Was it an absentminded move because he was warm in the common room? Was it possible that he wanted to show off his Dark Mark? Worst of all, was the Mark burning and hurting him, twisting with the demands of Voldemort?

Oh. He had simply been warm. Draco noticed Flora's dirty look and tried to roll down his sleeves casually, though he looked distressed that the Mark was currently dark enough to be so noticeable. Astoria hadn't really thought he wanted to show that thing off; it had been her anxiety talking, but she felt badly for thinking it. It was just that Draco Malfoy used to be that kind of person.

Flora might not have been friendly with Draco; however, she was friends with Montel Davis and her own sister, so she later told Astoria that she would go on the Hogsmeade trip. Astoria hoped for the best for everyone, as she had a creeping feeling there was some ulterior motive to allowing the trip. Her fears were, for once, unfounded. Apart from the obvious patrol of Death Eaters round the village's parameters, there wasn't much amiss. The dementors were swirling alongside the foot of the mountains, sure to catch Harry Potter if he was mad enough to arrive here, but otherwise unobtrusive. Draco was practically on air due to the change in environment. Knowing Draco, Astoria fully expected him to take her to dinner and spend an unruly amount of money, but the first thing he did was lead her to a spot under a huge oak tree. It was cool and shady beneath the arc of branches, but the sun dabbled on the red-orange leaves. She thought she would conjure a nice park bench, but Draco beat her to something else. A thick fleece blanket fell gently over the grass. When he sat down, he held out his hand to her. She couldn't help but indulge. Draco leaned against the tree trunk, and she leaned her back against him. He kissed her head and poked his nose against her ear to try to tickle her.

"Your hair smells nice."

"It's Hestia's shampoo I'm using now. I'll tell her you're enthralled."

"You're in no position to tease me. You think I don't remember where you're ticklish?" he said, loosening the hold on her belly to put his hands right at the bend in her waist.

"AH! Don't!"

"What was that?" he threatened light-heartedly.

Astoria seized his hands before they could misbehave, but he nuzzled her neck so spiritedly that she nearly toppled sideways.

"Hm, I've found a new spot," Draco said.

"You have not — hey!" she flailed.

Draco hoisted her back upright and didn't torment her anymore. She leaned back again and took his hands in hers over the non-ticklish part of her stomach. The smell of autumn was everywhere, from the early-fallen leaves to the aromatic pines in the forest. Firewood smoke came from a few houses. She was so glad they had lucked out with nice weather and admired the blue sky. Off in the distance, there was a curved ring of mismatched clouds. So it hadn't been luck.

"Do you see the way those clouds look over there?" she conversed. "Those have been altered with Atmospheric Charms. Professor Sinistra must have worked all morning on that for us to have fair skies. Yet everyone is afraid of her."

"I happen to like her and be afraid of her," Draco said, admiring the cloud forms. "Oh, you got a leaf in your hair."

"That's better than an insect."

"Really, your hair does smell nice. What am I supposed to do if Amortentia starts smelling like this to me?"

"Hestia's only into women, so you're fresh out of luck."

"You know I discovered what that potion smells like to me last year."

"You're going to say it smells like me, aren't you? That's corny," Astoria grinned.

"What would you rather me say? It smells like your pheromones?" Draco cackled.

"Oh, Merlin, no," she said. "Well, mine smells like a summer's night air, and then melted chocolate, and then that Hallgraves Essence cologne you used to wear utterly too much of."

"Oh, I see how it is," Draco said. "How'd you know the brand? I hope I don't smell like someone else you know."

"I always sniff the samples in magazines," Astoria admitted.

"Well, then there's no proof it was me you smelled in Amortentia. You could have subconsciously desired one of those shirtless models on the cologne adverts."

"I'm certain it was you," Astoria said.

"Well, I smelt fresh fruit, and a large dinner roast, and Quennell Park, believe it or not," he said.

Astoria hadn't expected to feel so relieved to hear the words "Quennell Park" outside the context of the attack. It was her proof that it was still out there, still real. She had done some wild things to save it, even though its sanctity had been a lie.

"What does Quennell Park smell like to you? You've only been there once."

"It smells… sort of like a very rich pine… Well, the fire logs burning here in the village almost make me think of it, but not quite… It's like a homey cabin scent. Rain through an open window, maybe. Or an earthy garden-y sort of scent. I'm not sure. You always had it on your clothes, like you had brought the smell with your luggage."

"Oh," Astoria smiled placidly, "I suppose it's all those things."

Draco sensed her bittersweet grief and asked her about all the little things at her estate. She told him of all the best stargazing spots, the beautiful upper levels he hadn't seen, the library, her boudoir grand piano, the stables, the land. Everything.

Everything was empty.

Draco rested his chin on her shoulder and sighed. He always gripped the helm of his Occlumency, but every now and then, a reticent but burning something-or-other would trace along the brim of Astoria's cognizance. Astoria had no idea what exactly he thought; she wasn't even facing him, much less casting anything, but she felt pressed to tease him.

"Oh goodness, Draco," she faked a gasp.

Draco's dreamy grey eyes lit, and she felt him jolt just a tiny bit.

"Ha! Did you really pick up on that?"

I wish.

"Not the details," she feinted harmlessly.

She craned her neck back a tad more to catch his lips. He dived so fervently on the opportunity that Astoria forgot it was chilly out.

Draco did end up taking her somewhere to eat (they had to smarten themselves up after snogging before going anywhere), but it wasn't the tacky teahouse she expected. Astoria had never noticed that the upper level of Tomes and Scrolls Bookshop had a café; it turned out that was because the owners had recently opened it. They didn't have many customers for the café on account of their ill-timed business venture, so it was pleasantly private. The thick smell of coffee was invigorating and relaxing at the same time. The chairs were all mismatched and very soft. Smooth piano music played quietly, fitting the atmosphere of both the café and the bookshop below. It was rustic and bare-boned and wasn't a place either of them would call nice, but it served such a nice purpose that they forgot some of their table manners as they fell deeper into conversation. A solitary cuckoo clock was their only hint of the passage of time, and Astoria was reluctant to hint to Draco that he had the remnants of a marshmallow Carriage Wheel at the corner of his mouth after their modest meal.

They stocked up on more sweets at Honeydukes. Astoria was excited to find jars of comb-in honey from the end of the bee season. Draco bought her the remaining stock so that Slughorn wouldn't use them to trick her into coming to more of his club's parties. He also supplied her with sugared violets, crystallised pineapple, rose lokum, and spearmint gummies. She was so overcome that she nearly said "I'll pay you back" before remembering that Draco was too rich for his own good, and that she had absolutely no money in Gringotts. Was this how Rhiannon had felt on Hogsmeade trips before getting royalties from the record company? Because this was very humbling.

"You eat gross sweets," Draco smiled, scrunching his nose at her confectionaries whilst he bought himself chocolate creams and a box of Dragon Claws.

"Don't you want to try a sugared violet?"

"I might as well eat a leaf, Astoria. Thanks, though."

They walked by Dominic Maestro's, and Astoria took a moment to peek in the windows. Shining brass instruments floated above percussion instruments charmed to play themselves. In a whisper, Astoria told Draco all about how Pariah had started on the second floor of that shop. He told her his mother had wanted him to learn the clarinet, but he never cooperated. That sounded like him. Before curfew was called, Hestia and Montel crashed their date, running up behind them with a stack of colourful boxes.

"We got hot air balloons," said Montel.

"From where?" Astoria asked. However, Draco was more concerned that Montel and Hestia's arrest was imminent, and asked, "How large?"

"They're only yea high," Montel indicated with his hands. "Turns out the back of the old Zonko's has a storage shack they didn't clean out! Stuff's just sitting in there getting water damage, so we broke into it with some Hufflepuffs on watch duty. We've been handing out what we could salvage to third-years — not everything, mind. We've got to have some fun, too."

"Yeah, I put a pinwheel hat on Flora. She took it off and set it on fire," said Hestia.

"She did not," Astoria said.

"Oh, fine. She transfigured it into a teensy bird, and it flew off," admitted Hestia.

Hestia and Montel handed Astoria and Draco each a box. Draco waited until Astoria opened hers to join in. Astoria unfolded a small silk balloon. It was crazily coloured with red, green, and blue polka dots over top of big carnival stripes in purple, yellow, and orange. She followed the instructions in the box for attaching the tiny basket to the strings and setting the candle in the right spot. She and Montel had theirs ready whilst Draco and Hestia fumbled through it without reading the directions. They all waited for the magical flames they conjured to do their jobs.

"First one who Levitates it loses," Hestia said as they continued to wait.

Montel's took off first, followed by Astoria's. Draco had to wait a bit longer, and Hestia's didn't launch.

"You lose," Astoria said as Hestia Levitated hers to keep up.

They let them go way above their heads (though not high enough for the Ministry to panic over unauthorised aircraft), and guided them along the path. It was a simple pastime; Astoria admired how the magical flames made the patterns flash different colours. They raced them with a "no charms allowed" rule before going into the castle, and Draco's won.

"That was nice, actually," Draco said after Montel and Hestia gave the couple back their quality time.

"It was. Thank you for treating me to supper, by the way," Astoria said.

"Of course."

Since curfew was up, there wasn't anywhere else for them to go.

"We could stay out to do curfew roundup," Draco offered, "since I'm a… Death-Prefect… I guess."

"Better a Death-Prefect than a Prefect Eater," Astoria said, and they stretched out their day as much as they could.

Astoria spent too long psychoanalysing herself that night, wondering why she had warmed back up so quickly to Draco. He despised being a Death Eater, but he very much was one. How much had he grown because of this experience? Astoria felt like a completely new witch after watching the sun rise over the Sussex countryside alone. There were so many things she knew now, and she wasn't sure Draco was able to recognise the role that prejudice had played in starting this war. She wondered what volatile combination of loneliness and hormones had led her not only to salvage their relationship but also to be quite open about it in front of others. Was it because her family wasn't here to tell her otherwise? That she knew no one could stop her? Oh dear… Did she have some deep-seated power complex?

No, it's simpler than all that, she thought later as she sent out her Patronus to give him protection and company. She hadn't missed a single night.

---

The girls had made a habit of walking together throughout the castle so they would not be lone targets of current or future Death Eaters. However, they didn't think they would have to accompany one another to the lavatory of all places. One late afternoon on their way back from the library, Astoria stopped at the lavatory. There were plenty of other students round, so her roommates went back to the dungeons. Whilst Astoria was there, she heard the door open and saw a certain pair of degraded leather boots from beneath the stall door. It was Alecto, so Astoria was more than willing to wait in the stall until she left.

Alecto had only come in to wash her hands, it seemed. Astoria kept an eye on her boots and heard her run the tap at full spitting pressure. The sound of Alecto's handwashing was loud, and Astoria remembered many occasions when she herself had washed vigorously after coming into contact with fertilisers and other nasty substances in Herbology. Astoria continued waiting, but Alecto continued to scrub, and the water in the sink basin sloshed as if it were full. Maybe Alecto had been hit with a gross jinx. Served her right.

When the washing didn't stop, Astoria debated her options. If she remained in the stall, Alecto might catch on and accuse her of spying. If she walked out to the sinks, she would have to stand right next to Alecto.

Alecto wasn't leaving, though. Her breathing was staggered. Perhaps she was trying to clean a sore wound?

Astoria reasoned that it would be less suspicious to simply exit the stall and wash her hands than to continue hiding behind the door. Gathering her courage, she stepped out and walked to a sink a few places down from Alecto, who didn't react. Astoria had two conflicting instincts, one being to get out of there as soon as possible, and the other to see what was happening. She tried to do both in the same move, grabbing her bag and taking a solid look at Alecto as she turned to leave.

Alecto had the water as hot as it would get. Steam rolled up from the ceramic into her face. The sink would not drain as fast as the tap would run, and Alecto dipped her arms into the overly sudsy bowl. Her sleeves were rolled and her arms were absolutely scalded, and when Astoria saw her splash her face and neck with the burning water, she lost her ability to leave.

Alecto, stop.

When Alecto realised she was being watched, she cried in a combination of mental and physical pain. She addressed Astoria not as a superior, but childishly, like a tattler.

"One of them half-bloods sneezed on me."

A half-blood sneeze was no dirtier than a pure-blood sneeze, but Alecto was deep in ritual purification. Again, she splashed her face with dangerously hot water, which made patches on her plump cheeks. She pumped more soap into her red hands and scrubbed her neck, making her faded tattoo glisten vibrantly and the sensitive skin burn.

Stop, Alecto.

"D'you think I got it off?" the woman shook.

"Yes," Astoria said to get her to end this behaviour. She walked right next to the witch and shut off the water.

Alecto had her hands on either side of the basin, letting her face drip into it as she watched the bubbles pop and the water slowly gurgle down the drain. Astoria hated seeing this vulnerability in her. She did not want to be a nice person to Alecto, but she wasn't the type to leave broken glass on the floor, since it could cut somebody else.

"You could get Pepperup Potion from the Hospital Wing," Astoria reminded, though Alecto had made the place full.

The comment, meant in some confused way to alleviate, gravely complicated Alecto's decline at the sink, and she could have easily displaced Myrtle as the ear-shattering haunt. Watching Alecto sob, Astoria felt all she stood for get scrubbed, too. She had to smother her emotional response of undeserved pity, lest her very identity get washed down the drain along with Alecto's water.

"I just meant if you catch cold," Astoria squeaked.

"This ain't about the cold."

Alecto had scrubbed her hands until she could see the pure blood bead from her knuckles. The skin on her cheeks was seared smooth. Her rolling tears popped more bubbles in the sink, and she rubbed the raw spots on her hands, which made them worse. When she finally raised her eyes to her reflection, though, she breathed herself down to some level of calm.

"Be nice to have the ointments Hestia makes for this, but she won't give me none unless I make her. She don't love me," she divulged. "Our own niece hates us."

You made her hate you. She would have loved you — even you — if you truly loved her. You're not entitled to her, Alecto.

"I can't let Amycus see me like this. He'll worry. He'll know I was contaminated. He'll know I did this and couldn't stop."

Astoria thought of what to say. Alecto was too ashamed of the impurity of the event to go after the student who had sneezed on her. Whoever had done it, though, was in for brutal torture if Amycus found out. What would be the explanation? There wasn't a healing spell for this sort of skin damage. It had to be treated with medicinals.

"Say you were jinxed," Astoria offered, though her teeth grated angrily against her compassionate tongue.

Alecto put her hand over her mouth and cried, "But that'd be a lie."

You lie all the time.

Alecto inhaled, "I guess if — when — he asks, I'll say I was jinxed."

Oh. He'll still go after the one who 'jinxed' you, Astoria realised too late, and she berated herself endlessly for giving Alecto the idea. Another student would be harmed, and it would indirectly be Astoria's fault. Actually, no… Amycus would certainly go easier on someone who had supposedly used magic than if he discovered there had been half-blood snot all over his sister.

Astoria took a hard look at herself in the mirror, wishing her instinctive kindness away. Alecto and Amycus had been the children of people who systematically made them feel worthless, who literally beat into them what it meant to be pure-blood. This obsession with purity continued well beyond the old Carrows' self-imposed trip to the grave. Their daughter was harming herself with hot water at the chronological age of forty-six over nothing.

Flora and Hestia's father had been too young to remember the wrath of his parents over every indiscretion, nor was he old enough to face the same pressure the elder twins had. As a sibling, it was easy for him to reject Alecto and Amycus's authority. They hadn't had that opportunity to reject their parents. They had to be perfect, and that constant pressure and rejection had made them quite the opposite. Astoria and Daphne had been pressured heavily by their parents, too, but the Greengrasses never would have stopped loving the girls if they didn't live up to expectations. They never would have given them the silent treatment for days on end. They never would have backed the girls into a corner and beaten them. They never would have used the right words to put them over the wrong edge.

I don't want your memories, Astoria thought bitterly, remembering everything Alecto had spilled out in the hotel. I know how you got here, but that doesn't make you innocent.

"Don't use the Hot-Air Charm to dry yourself off. That will make you burn more," Astoria advised, betraying herself yet again.

Why do you do this to me?

Alecto's eyes welled afresh with something one might call gratitude in a normal person. Astoria quietly left before Alecto could drown her in her hell.

---

So this is what sympathy gets me.

Amycus's face was half-obscured in a shadow cast by a particular curve in the corridor, away from the condensation-covered windows. Astoria held her hand tightly against her wound, which both was and was not from him. It had been Astoria's turn again to take a hit from Flora in his class. Flora had been making great efforts to deal the lightest, flimsiest, and most stifled versions of curses she possibly could; however, given that the spells were so inherently nasty, things like this happened all the time. Flora was always reluctant, but she had shown so much reluctance to harm Astoria again that Amycus threatened to cast the Imperius Curse on her. Knowing that any and all curses would hit her fellow students with tenfold the power if she were Imperiused, Flora did as she was told.

Amycus would not drag Astoria back into the classroom. With the bleeding, she was now an inconvenience, not a toy. He wanted to go back in and play professor some more, not clean up blood. Her wound probably would not heal right, but she needed to go to the Hospital Wing before she became woozy. Amycus was not keeping her in this spot physically or magically. So why had she stopped when he pursued her out of the classroom and called her name in a raw stutter, tripping on her syllables? The blood began to escape her fingers. And yet there she stood.

Amycus acted like he wanted to speak to her, like he wanted his turn with the Legilimens. Maybe he wanted to "explain" his lesson, that this was how pure-bloods learn the ways of magic. But nothing happened. Whatever he wished to say had nothing to do with remorse, anyway. He would let her bleed again. Astoria at last took action to leave that she should have taken a whole minute ago. The moment she turned to leave, though, he closed the new space between them and intercepted her with a stern "Wait."

She shrunk back the moment Amycus's hands went to her throat. He ignored her show of fear and began undoing her day-worn tie with lumbering fingers.

"You're pure-blood, girl," he reminded her. "Wear these colours proudly."

Astoria wished she belonged to another House as she stood there frozen, expecting to be choked. Instead, Amycus tied a perfect trinity knot, which no Hogwarts student knew how to do. His icy hands left her, and his company soon after. Astoria ran down the corridor quickly now, trying to chase her sanity. The curse seared and throbbed again as she moved, and she dived for any support she could find with her other hand. A windowsill.

"Miss Greengrass? Oh dear."

It was Professor Flitwick. He was carrying a huge, buckled scroll-bag on his front side that was full of magic texts. He unbuckled it to get close enough to see her wound. She hoped there wasn't some charm she should have been able to cast that he would point out.

"Ah, this is the work of that Carrow wizard," said the professor.

Astoria was fascinated that he had been able to read between the lines of the injury. Professor Flitwick cast a few quick-fix spells to stop the bleeding.

"Er, Professor…"

"This is Dark magic, Miss Greengrass, so we'd best go to the Hospital Wing at once. Come along!"

"Yes, Professor, but erm, how did you figure that it was Amycus and not Flora? Flora's the one who cast it."

"Well… Well, for one, this is not like Flora's magic," he said abstrusely. "It is unwilling magic. I'm more concerned about getting you healed than holding a lesson at this time, but if you were to use a mirror, you would see the laceration is worst at the point of first impact. The rest of the wound gets shallower as it traced across your skin. Think of a cat jumping on curtains. Flora was already retracting her claws as soon as she did this. You poor girls. I feel so helpless."

"Do you know what Flora's magic feels like?" Astoria asked. "Can you identify students' magic? She had once said to me that she felt my magic, but I didn't know how."

"Magic does leave traces," said Professor Flitwick offhandedly. "Mind the staircase — it's due to move."

"I can tell when my mother is using magic," Astoria said, determined to stay on the topic, "and I think I can pick up on Professor Sinistra's. Yet I wouldn't know if my sister and my closest friends were using magic unless I saw them."

"You are always concerned that you are less of a witch than those round you, Miss Greengrass," said Professor Flitwick with a look. "Most people are simply not attuned to that. Traces of magic are passed down, I believe, rather than traded, so it makes sense that the ones you do recognise are from your dearest educators. I am particularly sharp when it comes to this sort of thing because I have to mark you all on performance. I can usually identify my current students' work with some context and detective work. Flora might be more sensitive than she lets on."

Traces of magic are passed down.

That was like what Flora had warned Astoria about Dark magic. The educator's intentions and the user's interpretations were in a constant struggle during the spell. But was it only her "dearest" educators' magic she was drawn to? There was another magic she couldn't mention.

"Thank you for explaining that to me," Astoria said.

"Oh, that's part of my job! Miss Greengrass, I must admit that I've wanted to say how sorry I was about your family, and I couldn't seem to think of the way to do it. I know there are some foul bullies in your House and didn't want to feed any fires they might have already set for you. Several of us in the staffroom had been talking about it, and none of us had the mettle to come to you. We were so terrified of — do forgive me — of it being like what happened to the McKinnons, that we didn't want to bring it up to you. I have heard that your losses were grave, but that many also made it to safety?"

Astoria was so touched that she had to recover her words.

"Er, yes! Yes, my… most of my family! I don't know where they are. Er, they thought I had died in the explosion, and they escaped. We — we lost Renshaw and his family and Uncle Faunus…"

Astoria then realised that Professor Flitwick had no idea what "the explosion" was, nor had he ever known Renshaw on account of him being a Squib. She had said this abbreviated version of the story so many times and wondered if it would ever stop coming out in stammers and cries. Professor Flitwick looked at her with great empathy.

"I am so sorry, Astoria. We all are."

She was sorry, too, for spending more time snapping at people than helping them understand. The people here did not know Renshaw and his family — Renshaw was Astoria's to lose — but as Professor Flitwick said, they had feared that Astoria was one of very few survivors. She wondered if she could bring Professor Flitwick any relief as he helped check her in to the Hospital Wing.

"Adamina and Sofronia, they were badly injured but got out," Astoria said, trying to think of Flitwick's Ravenclaws. "My father's okay. Valera Salem, Sylvester's wife, she's okay."

Well, Professor Flitwick had taught more than just Ravenclaws.

"Rhiannon left with them — she's okay."

Astoria didn't want to put it as "four deaths," since that cheapened the tragedy, but since the general public thought there were forty or fifty slain, she was at least able to tell the kind-hearted Professor Flitwick. Unlike the nosy students, he never cared a pin about why she was dating Draco or how she had become friends with the Carrows' nieces. He knew her nature was not cruel. In fact, Professor Flitwick would never have guessed that her wand currently cried to be nursed on Dark magic. The professor's concern for her and trust in her good character was so affecting that she nearly swore off the practice. That night, though, around the same time that Astoria was struggling to unknot her tie, a group of students from Dumbledore's Army broke into Snape's office to steal a relic from Godric Gryffindor. The ripples of their actions, too, were keenly felt. Snape reinstated the Umbridgian decree that had once threatened to ban Pariah, and any students that were allegedly meeting in groups were promptly interrupted by Death Eaters.

In a moderate breach of their act, Theodore came crashing down onto the sofa where Astoria sat. His distress compelled Astoria to offer him some crystallised pineapple, which he gratefully took.

"So, apparently, Dumbledore's Army is not important enough to bring out the big wands, but it is important enough to make Millicent and me ask the student body what they know about it! How are we supposed to do that? Millicent told me what happened to Marietta Edgecombe's face when she gave out their secrets!" Theodore exclaimed. "I hate this! I was never a prefect, and suddenly I'm Head Boy! Do you know how many people I have to talk to in a day now?"

"Er… that's quite inconvenient. Could you simply follow Millicent's lead?" Astoria suggested.

"Millicent told me it was too much work when Umbridge had her do it, and she definitely wasn't going to do it for Amycus. Someone has to report something back… she just made this job worse for me!"

"Hm… You could just tell Amycus things that are common knowledge."

"I'll have to. I'm not doing this dirty work," he said.

Astoria lost track of the Dumbledore's Army drama throughout the week as she tried to avoid getting mauled by the Carrows. However, the following weekend, when Astoria found herself in the Restricted section of the library once again, she overheard the Carrows talking as they browsed curses to cast on the students. (It was difficult not to hear them, in truth, which was sending Madam Pince into a panic attack). Astoria pretended to put her nose in a book but peered through the shelves to get a look at the pair. By the look of it, their weekend had been spent blowing their newfound income on designer clothes. They had certainly cleaned up, but having spent a lifetime scowling, they would never clean up nicely. Astoria inched closer to the view, holding a book to her chin.

"I still say Snape let them kids off too easy. Probably 'cause their leader girl's a redhead, eh? Snape'd never stand a chance," Amycus said, elbowing Alecto, and she squealed with laughter.

"Y'think this'll teach 'em their lesson?" he continued, indicating something in the curse anthology he was holding.

Alecto leaned to inspect it, but she wasn't impressed.

"Nah. We need to take this into our own hands, nice n' slow. What's that sleepwalking curse Rabastan can do? Maybe we could get her to come right to us," Alecto suggested.

"Whatcha lookin' at me for, Alliecat? I can't do it. Guess you can't either, if you're asking me," he teased. "Why don't you ask that pipsqueak Rabastan? Always such a nice bloke, ain't he?"

"Oh, 'nice,' sure! Why don't you ask Rabastan?" Alecto suggested right back.

"Hm. Why don't you ask Rabastan?" repeated Amycus with a grin. "And look him in the eye."

"Oh, stop it. You're not funny at all."

"I'm not? Well, you're laughing. You laugh at shit that ain't funny, Alecto?"

As if they were forty years younger than they were, they jabbed each other's shoulders back and forth and escalated into even more obnoxious laughter that was sure to make Madam Pince retire on the spot. Then, without external provocation, Alecto suddenly put her hand to Amycus's mouth to shush him and looked round with heightened paranoia. Though unsure how, Astoria thought she had been caught…

"Got company?" Amycus whispered.

"No, sorry, I—" Alecto broke off.

"It's just Pince stacking books over there, Allie, it's all right."

Even then, they stood very still, as if trying not to alert a motion-dependent predator. Astoria did exactly the same thing. She had not been seen, but she must have been sensed. After a long, still silence, the Carrows hewed their sudden ice. Alecto hatched a plan for Ginny Weasley.

"Well, would you like to Imperius her?" Alecto asked with ironic politeness, as if Imperiusing somebody was equivalent to the offer of a tea sandwich.

Amycus courteously turned down the sandwich.

"Your magic's got a nicer hold to it, Alecto."

"We've the same exact magic, Am," Alecto chuckled.

"Nah, if it was, I'd've talked you into takin' my O.W.L.s."

"We passed the same O.W.L.s!"

"Doesn't mean I wanted to take 'em, now, does it? And you did better."

Alecto had a logical counterpoint, "It'd have been more effort to get Polyjuice to work than to just take the tests."

"Ha! I know you wouldn't trust me to take yours, Polyjuice or not."

"Not at all. I seen you write 'this is a stupid question' on exams!"

"Why was you watchin' me when I was taking exams, Alliecat? Trying to cheat, eh? And you just said I wasn't capable. Well, if it was me takin' your O.W.L.s, Polyjuice wouldn't be a problem. I've already eaten enough of your hair over the years since it's always in your cooking," Amycus chortled.

"My cooking? Your cooking tastes like squirrel meat," grinned Alecto.

"Ah, well, I must not be putting enough hair in it for your taste," Amycus joked, rubbing his fuzzy head.

Though it wasn't for Madam Pince's sake, Alecto tried to control her giggling for the first time in five minutes. She clapped her hands together and said, "We got on a tangent."

"We did."

"What was I sayin' again?"

"Weasley," Amycus chimed.

"Weasley."

Ugh. Astoria had been biting her lip, hoping they would forget their diabolical plans for Ginny during their trip down memory lane. It was not so. The longer she stood there, the more exposed she felt, and she knew that anything they did to Ginny they could try on her first.

"Well, if you insist, I'd be glad to Imperius her," Alecto whispered.

"And what about them other two?" Amycus asked.

"Longbottom and that Loonybin are overdue for some punishment, so do what you like in class. I know it's Weasley whose idea it was. Parkinson told me Weasley was Potter's favourite squeeze."

"Oh, puke," Amycus fake-gagged. "Warn me, Alecto."

"Warn you 'bout what? The Boy Who Lived to Puberty?" Alecto rolled her eyes.

Amycus snorted with more insufferable laughter. His ugly grin creased dark lines through the auburn stubble on his face, and he asked, "So… what're you gonna make her do, Professor Carrow?"

"All's I'm doing is making her come to me. The rest won't be fun if she's Imperiused and can't remember it. I want her to be scared. I don't think we can beat any sense into her, but what kind of teachers would we be if we didn't try?" Alecto sniggered quietly. "We'll throw her back in the woods this time, at the far edge where that giant oaf can't find her. How's midnight sound?"

Amycus whispered something that Astoria was not able to catch. Damn it. Did that mean he agreed, and they'd come after Ginny near midnight? Or would they Imperius her now and act later? Astoria held her breath. She carefully watched to see where they were going, and when they walked left in their row, Astoria went right. She rounded the corner of the shelves just in time for them to leave the area. Astoria quickly put her book back and went to look for Ginny Weasley. She searched all the popular hangouts of the castle and found everybody except her. Astoria didn't want to ask people if they knew where Ginny was lest more rumours spread about her. After all, they'd probably say she was the one who cursed Ginny.

Astoria ran into Flora and Hestia on her way to the higher regions of the castle. They had been looking for Astoria in the Astronomy library. Since it was the weekend, Slughorn was letting the Slug Club make their own fizzy drinks in the Potions laboratory. Astoria could have used the diversion, but Ginny's safety was more important. The twins' safety was most important of all, since their involvement could prove disastrous. Astoria pretended she had N.E.W.T. Astronomy to do and continued searching the castle until she ended up lost. Unfortunately, she encountered the Death Eater Selwyn in a lonesome corridor on the sixth floor. He grilled her about why she was in that area when there were no classes and escorted her all the way back to the common room with a pinch under her arm. Astoria cursed her bad luck; she had spent all that time trying to look for Ginny to warn her, when she could have simply waited until dinner when Ginny would have been there! Why didn't she think things through when she was nervous?

To her dismay, she never saw Ginny's red head at the Gryffindor table, even though the Carrows calmly ate their dinner in plain sight. Astoria racked her brain trying to think of which girls Ginny hung out with, but the longer she stared at the Gryffindor table, the more the Gryffindors noticed, and the more they started saying things about her. Regardless, any other students who knew might also end up in danger, so Astoria considered her other options. She could tell Professor Sinistra, but she didn't want to put the professor on the Carrows' blacklist. The same went for the other teachers. Who knew what things the Carrows would report to Voldemort if the other teachers started going against their wills? Professors Sinistra, Flitwick, and McGonagall could easily take the Carrows, but all three of them combined could not beat Voldemort. Too afraid of what would happen to the staff if they tried to intervene, Astoria didn't tell anyone. By the time she had worried her way through every scenario, she was certain Ginny had already been Imperiused.

What do I do? What do I do?

Her dinner churned in her stomach as everyone round her went about their evening. Astoria nearly wished she had not been privy to the Carrows' conversation so that she wouldn't have to think about it so much.

What do I do?

Astoria opted to stay in the common room when everyone else settled in for bed. With Death Eaters on patrol, it wasn't like Astoria could try snooping round each room in search of an Imperiused Ginny. She watched the clock. She watched the Foe-Shard on her wrist, turning it in the light. It had Amycus and Alecto in it nearly every day. It also often showed the Death Eaters' faces beneath their masks, which wasn't always useful, since Astoria couldn't recognise them that way. As of right now, though, it was empty.

She looked at the clock again. If the Carrows saw through with their midnight plan, Ginny was already in the woods. Astoria walked toward the common room exit and checked her wrist again. There was nothing, which meant no one was standing outside. That in itself was a rarity. So Astoria trotted to her dorm room. She cast a Silencing Charm on her feet and sneaked in without a light. In the armoire, Flora kept a heavy travelling cloak with a hood. Astoria borrowed it and crept back out. She had never quite made up her mind that she was going to do this. Her body had simply started moving because her mind would not stop stalling.

Astoria hunkered down in a corner of the empty common room and tried to cast the same Disillusionment Charm that Theodore had cast on her to make her blend in with her surroundings at his house. It didn't work as well when she did it, probably because she didn't like to feel the icy cold on her body. At best, she looked similar to Quennell back when he used to be more see-through. She certainly wasn't invisible. However, when casting it again didn't make a difference, Astoria gave up trying and left the common room. Hopefully, with the combination of her black robes and the partially-effective Disillusionment Charm, she would go unseen in the dark.

She knew all of the doors in the castle were guarded by dementors, Death Eaters, or sometimes both. Astoria would have to find one without a Death Eater, because Death Eaters had the ability to see her. Her heart started its race, but there was no finish line in sight. Thinking of the dementors made her wonder why security trolls had ever fallen out of fashion. Astoria squinted into the tiny Foe-Shard again, and there was nothing yet. She moseyed out of the cold dungeons and up to the basement, where the kitchen and the small corridors always kept everything warm. Astoria convinced herself that the more casually she went about this, the better luck she would have.

I left my textbooks in the Astronomy library, she rehearsed in her head.

It was a pitiful excuse, so she would have to do her best to avoid any living soul. When Astoria heard a sassy meow, she felt her mission was all over. Mrs Norris, Filch's cat, had come to wait by the kitchens for scraps. Astoria hoped she wouldn't alert Filch of something to do (he seemed to amble the castle with a bored expression these days). Astoria tried to sneak round her to no avail; Mrs Norris actually liked Astoria's group and demanded attention whilst she waited for her scraps. She bellowed a great, multisyllabic meow and pawed at Flora's good cloak before plopping on her side and wanting her belly rubbed. There were few worse times for this to occur. To quieten her, Astoria knelt and silently petted the cat until she uttered a "mrrrp" of contentment.

Astoria was amazed she ever made it up to the Great Hall. This was not a good location, as it was a popular spot for Death Eaters to meet up between walks. As predicted by her Foe-Shard, there were no Death Eaters, so Astoria stayed as snug to the wall as she could whilst bustling out of there. The main entrance was stupidly tempting, but Astoria saw no fewer than four Death Eaters in her detector as she passed by it. Trying to stay out of any lamplight, Astoria went down a few corridors that led to the courtyard outside the Divination room. It was sure to be guarded, but the windows in the classroom would give her a good look at any other options.

Oh no.

There were so many dementors there, Astoria couldn't discern between the coven and the night's darkness. Her eyes wandered up to the sky as she struggled to think of her next move. She had a decent view of "the sea," an area of dim constellations with oft-nautical themes.

Water.

Boats!

In spite of her progress, Astoria strode all the way back down the hall, back through the Entrance Wing, and through the Great Hall, which was unlikely to be empty much longer. She shimmied past Mrs Norris in the basement, who was happily distracted with bits of chicken, and back into the dungeons. This was how she had been brought into the castle when she had first become a student, when she didn't know that she passed the common room of her House-to-be on the way up.

In spite of the dank chill, Astoria was getting warm under the cloak from her excitement. No Death Eater would sign up for boathouse duty. She felt the floor's incline change and walked to the fishy-smelling area. She checked her Foe-Shard as she approached. Nothing. Eventually, she came upon a mossy door. Doors were the biggest impediment, since they were loud to open, and she could not see what was behind them. Astoria was too afraid to test her luck, so she knelt in the corner and pointed her wand precisely at an eye in the wood.

"Defodio," she whispered, and slowly Gouged a small hole through which to peek. To her embarrassed shock, a great deal of magic came bleeding out of the door, making dark purple pools near her feet. So the door had been cursed… thank goodness she dealt it damage before opening it. Unfortunately, she had no way to clean up the evidence. Through the hole, she saw that there were two dementors stationed in the boathouse, one for each long dock. She hadn't a clue if they had been commanded to instantly Kiss rather than their usual play-with-their-food approach. She had to assume the worst. It plagued her to think how many of the full-grown creatures were roaming the woods after all those terrible mists last year. Astoria knew that a Patronus was brighter than a signal flare, but she didn't have a choice, and poked her wand through the door to get the dementors before they got her.

"Expecto Patronum," she whispered, trying her best to twist her wand the right way. It wasn't working very well; she had incorporeal ether forming, but not one of Pavo's feathers lit the boathouse. She cast him every night, so she assumed the problems were her limited range of motion and the two real threats down by the water. With some of the incorporeal spell in place, Astoria opened the boathouse door and shut it quietly behind her. The dementors knew she was there straightaway; if what they had could be called body-language, then it certainly turned hostile. Frightened, Astoria was going to attempt the full spell, but she thought that could cause more trouble. A corporeal Patronus repelled dementors, meaning that these two could float away from their posts and bring unwanted attention to where she was. Perhaps this was one of the few times an incorporeal one was best, so Astoria held up her wand and drew a circle, bringing the spell into a more certain barrier.

What am I doing? she thought scornfully as she took slow, dreadful steps down one of the paths. The dementors were floating all over, zigzagging past each other over the water, waiting for her. Astoria was doing her best to remain positive and collected. She wished she could call out to them and say, "I've got no soul! Fresh out! Alecto already ate it!"

Yes, Astoria had the Patronus, but it hardly seemed like enough to actually walk down there. Astoria thought she might blend in with the dementors from an outside perspective, since she had Flora's gothic travelling cloak and a Disillusionment Charm on her that made her quite spectral. It was too bad the dementors would know the difference. Astoria had written a myriad dementor essays over the past few years with resources saying there was nothing to be done about dementors except a Patronus, but she was willing to try anything. She sparked an idea. Far enough away still, Astoria briefly lifted her Patronus.

"Accio large fish," she said with her wand over the water, and it was not long before a great catfish jumped at the surface. Astoria shot the biggest Cheering Charm she had ever mustered at the fish and Banished it toward the dementors. She watched in joyous shock as the catfish continued to jump as though dancing, and the dementors were momentarily distracted by the energy of the Cheering Charm seeping out of a life form. Dementors could cause no real harm to animals, but they were attracted to it. They fluttered against the water to try to get a taste of human magic.

"Expecto Patronum," Astoria quickly re-cast, shrouding herself with the spell and running across the dock, which creaked in protest.

The dementors were much more interested in the real thing than the charmed fish and soon pursued her as she reached the end of the dock. Uncle Faunus once said that if chased by a swarm of bees, jump into water. Unlike him, Astoria was never a harasser of beehives and doubted water would deter a dementor. The lake was awful, but nothing down there was worse than having her soul ripped out. She would prefer not to be sodden and cold, and she knew her cloak was too heavy. The boats were too slow and would serve as evidence. The dementors had closed in during her stall and circled terribly on the outer range of her spell. She would have to make her next moves even faster than she had dealt with Lofthouse at Quennell Park. For a hair of a second, she let her Patronus go, and already she smelled the brothy oxtail soup from Alecto and the carrion bundimuns beneath Professor Sinistra's house. When she glanced at the dementor's dark grey hands, she saw the blood pooled in Renshaw's dead arms again…

"Glacius," she said firmly, and the surface of the lake turned to ice. "Expecto Patronum," she followed nearly in the same icy breath.

She slipped, slid, and stumbled over the ice she had formed atop part of the lake as the dementors followed close behind. They always missed their final stretch due to her incorporeal Patronus. Astoria did not look back at them, only forward at the first patch of land. She was so grateful to reach it, muddy, wet, and fishy though it was. When she looked back, she discovered the two dementors back at their stations. She wondered how long they had been back there and she had merely been feeling their presence. Apparently, they were unable to move beyond a specified area to keep the castle exits firmly guarded at all times.

Being near the lake, Astoria was on the wrong end of the castle from the forest. Even with her appearance muted and ghostly, she couldn't be seen circling the grounds, so she walked straight out to the edge of the property before moving toward the forest. From where she was, she could see no glinting Death Eaters' masks or pointed hoods and knew they would be totally unable to see her. After a long, knee-pain inducing walk, Astoria came upon the forest on the other side of the school. It had all been for this moment, so she didn't like how her nerves kept telling her not to go into the woods. She knew what the problem was; she was thinking of Quennell and his Horcrux more than the stories students passed round about detentions with Filch. Astoria stretched out her arm into the thicket.

"Accio Ginny," she said.

She knew the results. Summoning Charms weren't supposed to work on people.

"Accio Ginevra," she still tried for good measure.

Into the forest it was.

Somewhere near Professor Hagrid's cabin, there was known to be a pathway into the forest, so Astoria located it and headed inside. The air changed instantaneously, sweet and leafy and chilled. She walked, still in the reach of the cabin's hearth smoke for a time. She was on guard, but even though there were many a carnivorous creature in the wood, it was not quite as gut-wrenching as Quennell's death-place. Enough noises, though, made her think to turn and get Professor Hagrid, who had been in charge of Ginny's original detention. However, she knew he did not take kindly to Slytherin students as a general rule. He was also rather large and might make enough noise to attract the Death Eaters down to the grounds. Most of all, she didn't want to bring anybody to Azkaban with her if she were sentenced over this.

What am I doing?

Astoria was far enough into the coppice to light her wand. It made an eerie little circle just ahead of her, like a will o'wisp telling her to go in further. Hungry owls, one of the least dangerous things in the forest, were making the most commotion and likely masking the snorts, grunts, and footsteps of beasts. Astoria noticed herself attempting to Summon Ginny more frequently the further she went in, though it never did anything.

Alecto said they would put Ginny at the far edge. I bet she's off the path, too.

The singular woodland path was not much to speak of as it was, and to stray would have involved thorns in her legs, branches in her hair, and the saliva of animals three times her size dripping on her shoulder. She recalled Draco's story of being in here, and it comforted her. Though she had a tremble, she could nonetheless say that she was tougher than eleven-year-old Draco. He'd say she was mad for doing this, and he would be right. Every so often, the path would empty into a clearing where Astoria could see the sky. From the position of what stars she could see, she placed it at about two in the morning. She felt she had dug herself more than halfway through the forest and began wondering what it emptied out to on the other side, for no one ever spoke of it. Was it the rest of the mountains? The lochs? The void Tehom?

"Ginny!" Astoria called, though she figured the Carrows had cursed Ginny's voice out of her. "Ginny!"

Astoria did not want to call out again for fear of attracting predators. She had been waving her wand back and forth carefully on the entire hike, looking for a glint of red or a human shape. The Carrows had wanted to permanently traumatise Ginny without quite killing her, so it wasn't like they had thrown her into an Acromantula nest…

"Homenum Revelio," Astoria cast aimlessly round the ground for perhaps the fiftieth time on this trip, thinking Ginny might have been made invisible, too.

Each time she cast something, it felt like every creature in the deep could see and smell her, but she had made it so far from the dormitory for this stupid Gryffindor, and she wasn't going to turn back. She fondly remembered all the times she and Ginny had made fun of Pansy; it was one thing they could forever agree upon. Her heart was sinking as she inevitably thought she might be too late. Just because the Carrows hadn't exactly intended to kill Ginny, it didn't mean she hadn't died in the forest. Astoria wished over and over again that Ginny was alive somewhere as the howls and cries of species unknown sounded in the far valleys.

Astoria kept struggling alone as the path narrowed. It was grown with one season's worth of grass and often obstructed with fallen trees, which Astoria chopped up more loudly than intended. She heard terrible rumbling, but there was no storm. Perhaps she had left evidence in some way or another, and the Death Eaters were after her. She started reciting heavy magic in her head, the darkest spells she had absorbed into her grimoire. She would be in one piece by the end of this night at all costs. The rumbling continued, and Astoria kept looking up, hoping at some point, she'd see the offending storm system. Most of the time, though, the tree cover was too thick, and there never was a drop of rain. She kept moving, though she dimmed her wand light to almost nothing, only enough to see in front of her feet.

She heard a thunderous crack like the sound of a Stunning Spell and started running. It was so hard to tell from where the sound originated, but since she knew it wasn't forward, she kept going and going until the path all but disappeared. She fought her way through hanging vines, giant logs, spiderwebs, and animal burrows that dropped her down and threatened to sprain her ankles. All the while, she heard noises of something breaking tree limbs and snapping its way through the floor debris. Then she saw two yellowish light sources behind her right side. Two Death Eaters?

I killed Xavier Lofthouse and Caleb Price.

Astoria shook those two out of her head and got to business.

"Protego Nidhogg," she gasped as she ran, and the Shield trickled out of her body, down her arm and out the wand, but the blackness of the Shield made the dark forest impossible to see. What a poor decision; she was now destroying more woods by moving with the Shield round her than whoever was chasing her. Astoria felt the spell's offensive properties fight her to come out, the black dragon seeking violence to commit.

"Shut it already!" she told the spell immaturely, as though the dragon lurking in it was fully sentient, and she scrambled deeper in the woods.

Whoever was behind her was casting roaring spells that sounded nearly like the motors and automobiles in the city Alecto had kept her in. Astoria had never heard a spell like that and wondered if the Shield would be enough. She grew quite worried that if the dragon reared its head and brutalised the Death Eaters, she'd turn the Forbidden Forest into her own Horcrux or whatever the hell Quennell had done… Was that how that worked?

VRROOOOOM.

The two lights veered behind her so closely that they shone with blinding force even through the dark Shield. Astoria screamed, realising it was an automobile, but having no way to make sense of it. It hit her Shield hard and sent her flying backwards in the air. She held her wand with both hands close to her body in the hopes that the Shield would keep, and fantasy images of Theodore's mum dying from this exact thing flashed in her mind's eye. How was there a car here? Death Eaters would not drive a car, and the whole Hogwarts property was Muggle-proof!

THUD.

Astoria's Shield hit the top of the automobile before she did and helped to keep her bones in all the correct places. Before she could process anything that was happening, the automobile continued to speed through the woods, rumbling loudly against sticks, rocks, and bushes, which all flung from either side of the wheels and past Astoria's ears. She was screaming, but she could barely hear herself over the angry machine. She had to free the extra hand on her wand to grip the car somewhere, but there wasn't anywhere good to hold on. With the speed it was going and the fear of what any of this meant, it never once occurred to Astoria to jump off. She slid left and right and went airborne more than once when the car jumped — jumped! — over logs. Astoria was rapidly getting sick, and her head went all over the world in search of explanations. Namely, who was piloting this thing?

She flattened herself on her belly and, whilst the car continued weaving through the trees with unreal speed, she scooted carefully toward the edge, taking her increasingly angry Shield with her. She managed to peek her nose over the edge of the car for but a second… And there was nobody in it.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" she screeched, rapidly hoisting herself back to the top of the car and plastering her cheek against the cold blue metal. The Shield's dragon started spiralling out of her spell, and she was not of mind to do anything about it now; its snakelike body ended up trailing behind the car in the wake of the wind it kicked up.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

The possessed automobile performed manoeuvres worse than any Quidditch Seeker she'd seen, and she held on for dear life as huge tree limbs snapped against the outside of her Shield. Glass flew out from whatever was left of the car's windows, and the horn blared at Thestrals to steer clear. Astoria had no concept of time or space when the car halted, and she once again went airborne, this time flying forward off the machine and felling the tree she crashed into with the force of her Shield. Barely in her senses, Astoria stifled the rampaging dragon somehow and lay breathless next to the cracked tree stump. The car rumbled behind her, not moving an inch more than Astoria did in her shock. Her eyes rolled side to side and glossed with a whirlwind of fuzzy colours. In the lights from the auto, Astoria glanced upon something glinting silver behind a large thorny brushpile. Accepting the fact that in spite of her distress, she was physically unharmed, Astoria sat up. It was still very hard to see with the dark Shield she had, so she let it go and kept her wand ready to cast a normal one. Without the film of black between her and the environment, Astoria recognised the shining silver as being Ginny Weasley's pure-blood identification bracelet. The wrist it was on was thankfully attached to the rest of Ginny's body. Astoria wobbled over, motion-sick as could be.

"Ginny? Ginny!"

The thorny brambles completely encased Ginny, who was belly-down and covered in blood and mess. Although the thorns had likely ensured that Ginny had not been eaten by a monster, they were sired by Dark magic and prevented her rescue. Ginny was not in a Full-Body Bind Curse, but something Darker: the Paralysis Curse, which was twice as difficult to cast and would not wear off with time alone.

Ginny had not made a sound, but her eyes had been wide on Astoria the whole time. Astoria also knew the other curse that had been cast, and felt a deep pang, as it had been one of her favourites for her grimoire. It was called "Liar's Crib," a spell made ages before Veritaserum, and had a prohibitively long incantation. The victim would be pricked each time they lied, and the thorns were incredibly hot and painful. The counter-curse stood opposite; it was short and sweet, though highly specific to the spell. Even with D.A.D.A. training, no one was likely to know it unless they had studied the curse itself.

"Verum ariolum," Astoria said without pride, and the awful nest disintegrated.

"Finite incantatum," she followed, and Ginny squirmed freely, balling upon her knees and finally sitting up. She had to be terribly cramped, and she still wasn't talking. Astoria cast the counter-hex for the Silencing Charm to no avail. Given her history, Astoria tapped her wand a few times to her side and tried the same thing again. Then it was time to troubleshoot. Ginny was making frustrated motions at her which did not speed Astoria's rate of critical thinking. Ginny was utterly mute, so it had not been a mere Tongue-Tying Curse. She was making charades, holding both of her hands at her mouth and flinging them outward.

Trying the catch-all again, Astoria cast "Finite incantatum" right at Ginny's mouth to no avail. "Sonorus."

Ginny shook her head no and pointed at her lips. Maybe the Carrows had done a deed even more horrible and busted her voice box.

"Reparo," Astoria said with her wand at Ginny's throat, but Ginny threw her hands in the air in exasperation. (It hadn't seemed like as stupid an idea as Ginny apparently thought).

"Fine then! We'll do it this way! Specialis Revelio," Astoria said, smacking Ginny on the mouth with her wand.

Ginny's cheeks swelled and turned translucent, and the problem was shown briefly through her skin. The Carrows had hexed a wad of mud into her mouth and sealed it shut. How disgusting. It was like the playground-bully version of what Lofthouse had cast on Adamina. Astoria thought hard through a list of curses she had not bothered with, the ones that probably would have delighted the likes of Crabbe and Goyle.

Ah. This hex was developed in the 1920s to terrorise blood-traitors. It was a known favourite of racist schoolboys. Astoria didn't even know the incantation for it, but she remembered the counter-hex because one had to say a slur to do it; it was a teacher's enemy.

"Done with the dunglicker," Astoria said, doing a pert twirl with her wand.

Ginny's mouth opened, and she started spitting everywhere violently, indeed without missing Astoria. Astoria jumped out of the way and promptly cleaned herself to the sounds of Ginny's spitting. She wondered if she had frightened Ginny with her ethereal appearance, but that had to be nothing compared to what the Carrows had done.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING‽" Ginny finally made the words. "THAT'S MY DAD'S CAR!"

Ginny gripped her stomach and tried to stand up to meet Astoria eye-to-eye.

"ASTORIA, MY DAD'S CAR — WHAT THE HELL‽"

"HOW WOULD I KNOW THAT'S YOUR DAD'S CAR‽ IT NEARLY RAN ME OVER! WHAT DO YOU EVEN MEAN YOUR DAD'S CAR‽ WHERE'S YOUR DAD?" Astoria shouted in turn.

"HE'S AT HOME!" Ginny exclaimed as though Astoria had asked a stupid question.

"THEN WHY'S HIS CAR HERE — NO, NO, WHY DOES HE HAVE A CAR‽ WHAT'S GOING ON‽"

"YOU TELL ME, YOU'RE THE ONE WHO CRASHED IT INTO A TREE!"

"IF YOU DIDN'T NOTICE, I'M THE ONE THAT CRASHED INTO THE TREE, AND YOUR DAMN CAR IS FINE!"

"IT'S NOT MY CAR, ASTORIA!"

"WHY IS YOUR DAD'S CAR IN THE WOODS‽"

"I DON'T KNOW — MY STUPID BROTHER, PROBABLY — WHO KNOWS!"

"WELL THEN STOP ASKING ME!" Astoria wailed.

"WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU CRYING FOR?" Ginny hollered.

"ALL MY SUFFERING," Astoria wept overemotionally. "ALL MY SUFFERING, GINNY!"

Astoria teetered away and leaned on the cracked tree stump. She had started to cry after all, but she barely felt it. That just showed how much of a stupid cry-baby she was. She couldn't tell when it started or stopped. She laughed hysterically, and it didn't match her mood at all. She didn't even have a discernible mood at this point; she was experiencing the moment simply as "Ginny is alive and so am I."

"YOUR SUFFERING?" Ginny countered. "THERE'S BLOOD CAKED ALL OVER ME AND MY MOUTH IS FULL OF DIRT, AND WE'RE GOING TO TALK ABOUT YOUR SUFFERING‽"

"I JUST SUFFER SO MUCH!" Astoria howled, laughing wet things into her hands. "I JUST DON'T CARE ANYMORE! ALL THIS SUFFERING!"

"OBVIOUSLY, YOU WENT MAD IN THESE WOODS BEFORE I DID!" Ginny flailed round, walking in circles.

"WELL, WE'LL HAVE TO GET BACK OUT SOMEHOW!" Astoria yelled.

"I DON'T SUGGEST RIDING ATOP THE CAR AGAIN. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO SIT INSIDE IT, YOU KNOW!"

"I GET OUT ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT MUCH ABOUT CARS, GINNY!"

"YOU DON'T SEEM LIKE THE TYPE, THE WAY YOU CAME HERE RIDING IT LIKE A HORSE! I NEARLY PEED!"

"WELL, IF YOU NEED TO PEE BEFORE WE LEAVE, I SUGGEST YOU DO IT BEHIND THIS TREE, AND I'LL MOVE!"

"I DON'T NEED TO PEE, ASTORIA!"

"I'M JUST TRYING TO HELP!"

"BY CALLING ME A DUNGLICKER‽"

"THAT WAS THE INCANTATION!"

"OH, RIGHT! I BET YOU FRENCH KISSED THAT WORD RIGHT OUT OF MALFOY'S MOUTH!"

"GINNY, YOU NIT, I WROTE A SONG WITH RHIANNON CALLED 'DUNGLICKER!' I GET CALLED THAT ALL THE TIME BY DIANE CARTER!"

"WELL, I DIDN'T HEAR THAT SONG! WHY WOULD I HAVE HEARD THAT‽"

"WELL, THANKS FOR NOT SUPPORTING OUR MUSIC THEN!"

"OH MY GOD!"

Ginny whirled round in exasperation, still clutching her abdomen. In the car's headlights, Astoria saw heinous wounds that made Ginny's fluffy sweater stick to her body at little points of blood. Ginny behaved as though she were wandless, so Astoria got a hold of her Portkey-ride of emotions and approached her again.

"May I fix you up, please?"

"Oh, you tell me," Ginny said back with a small, sad voice.

Ginny looked like a warrior there between the headlights of the running car. Her long hair was a flame; her sweater a red flag of bloody history. She had dirt splattered on her face, smeared into thin lines from the elbow of her sleeve. Her eyes were a lighter brown than Rhiannon's. Astoria could look at anything in the world and somehow make it about Rhiannon by way of comparison or contrast. She missed her. She needed her in moments like this.

Ginny leaned on the leg less painful and the light cast her face a different way. Astoria recoiled; Ginny had heavy abrasions along her cheek that were highly reminiscent of the rug burn Alecto had given her in the hotel.

"Wh-What happened here? I'll fix it as best I can…" Astoria said, pointing not to Ginny but to her own cheek.

"Oh, this. This was when they cast the Scouring Charm. They said I needed 'cleaning.' Turns out it's a pretty harsh spell when it's not used on floors and countertops," Ginny sighed. "The Scouring was their favourite part."

Astoria conjured a wide bowl and filled it with water from her wand. She let Ginny dowse her face with it and then dumped the water into the leaves, freshening it again. She conjured a tiny rag and dipped it in the water, telling Ginny to clean any area that was not already trying to scab over.

"Shouldn't I clean out all the wounds?" Ginny argued.

"No, don't," Astoria cautioned. "If something gets infected, Madam Pomfrey can treat it easily, but if you reopen a wound from Dark magic that already scabbed, it will be like the spell is being cast on you again. I'm serious. Your body is trying to fight the magic."

"Nasty," Ginny said, shoving her hair out of her face and dabbing sore areas along her neck and arms. She grimaced several times, so Astoria conjured another small rag, dipped it into the water, and then froze it with a much less frantic version of the charm she had cast on the lake earlier. Ginny held the ice rag against her stomach. Her sore face… it felt like it had been rubbed against pavement…

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Ginny said defensively, and Astoria quickly averted her eyes.

She was reminded of the times Professor Sinistra had tried to evaluate Astoria's injuries by way of surficial Legilimency. She remembered having snapped at Professor Sinistra.

What an ungrateful person I am.

Astoria cast the Numbing Spell that Hestia had used on her after Flora's awful bone-breaker. Ginny claimed it helped whatever was wrong with her stomach, or maybe she was just trying to make Astoria feel useful.

"We'd best go," Astoria said to distract Ginny from the fact that she didn't know much healing magic.

They stared through the glassless front of the car, which really had a mind of its own.

"I'd never have found you without this thing," Astoria said, trying to talk herself into coming back into contact with the car more so than trying to reassure Ginny.

"All right. Well, I'm the one driving back," Ginny said distantly.

"No complaints there."

"Sort of means you have to get into the car, Astoria," Ginny said, climbing into the side with the wheel.

"I know that," Astoria snapped.

Her hand touched the cold metal and yanked the creaky door open. She used the wrist of her sleeve to wipe pine needles, assorted dead bugs, and squirrel-cracked nuts off the seat. Then she packed herself into the thing and held her breath. Everything smelt of plastic.

"Hi ho," Ginny said to the car. "Let's be off. Chop chop. Spit spot. Let's go. On now. Lift off. Take off. Go forth. Move. Drive. Presto. Up and away. Yip yip."

"I didn't have to use an incantation to get it to move," Astoria mentioned as Ginny rattled off another dozen phrases.

"Hey, I don't know what happened between you and this car, but I think the honeymoon's over, and I'm really going to have to drive it," Ginny said. "Give me a light so I can see the controls."

Astoria lit her wand.

"D, that must be for drive. There's P. Maybe for making Portkeys. R for rocketing? That's probably what we need."

"Didn't your dad teach you about this thing?" Astoria interjected as Ginny put a hand on the car's wand.

"No, my family was fined by the Ministry for this car! I haven't seen it since I was little! And Dad only got round to teaching the boys about driving before the world started ending! So no, the answer is no!"

Astoria held on to the side of the door as Ginny yanked the car's wand down to "R."

It was almost as bad as the trip there, and one worse aspect was that Astoria couldn't scream without looking like a fool in front of her Gryffindor accomplice.

"Point me!" Astoria said during the singular lull in the flips and cartwheels. "Ginny, we're going the wrong way! We need to go west, not south!"

"GREAT! The car's also driving backwards, if you haven't noticed!"

"Well, turn it back round!" Astoria yelled and got a mouthful of bowtruckes coming in through the side window.

"DON'T YOU RECKON I'VE TRIED THAT‽"

"HAVE AT IT AGAIN, WHY DON'T YOU‽"

Ginny set the car's wand to "D," and it went further into the air, threatening to crest the trees.

"NO, NO, NO!" Ginny shouted. "WHAT IF THEY SEE US‽"

"GINNY, I'M NOT THE ONE DRIVING! YOU ARE!"

"AAAAGH!" Ginny roared.

They were spiralling upwards into branches.

"Protego!" Astoria cast between her and Ginny's faces as the rush of bowtruckle-filled leaves came in from all sides.

"JUST — GO — BACK — TO — HOGWARTS!" Astoria screamed.

"IT'S LIKE IT DOESN'T WANT TO!" Ginny responded. "LIKE IT WANTED TO SAVE ME FROM THE SCHOOL, TOO!"

"GINNY, I"VE ALREADY BEEN A FUGITIVE THIS YEAR, SO IF YOU'RE TRYING TO ESCAPE HOGWARTS, YOU NEED TO LET ME OUT OF THE CAR FIRST!"

"GOT BIG PLANS FOR THE DEATH EATER POTLUCK, HAVE YOU‽"

"I'D SOONER DIE, IF YOU HAVEN'T GATHERED THAT FROM MY SHOWING UP IN THE WOODS AFTER MIDNIGHT!"

"ASTORIA, I REALLY CAN'T GET THIS CAR OUT OF THIS LOOP! I'M GONNA BE SICK!"

"YOU'RE A QUIDDITCH PLAYER!"

"THIS IS NO BROOM!"

"DAMN IT!" Astoria cussed, and she withdrew her Shield at the cost of a few pinecones and a wild bird entering the front of the car.

She leaned forward into the whirlwind and pointed her wand where most of the car's noise originated — the front, just beyond the window. If it had a mind of its own, then it would have to listen.

"IMPERIO!" Astoria spat, and the car puttered in seesaw fashion back towards the forest floor, where it remained floating a few feet above ground.

The bird fluttered out, leaving feathers behind. The bowtruckles scrambled to the floor of the car. Ginny let go of the wheel and grasped the sides of her seat, her jaw clenched.

"How is it that you look more scared now‽" Astoria griped.

"Let's just go!"

"HOG-WARTS!" Astoria shouted at the car as though it would have trouble understanding. "WESTWARD!"

They trundled along at a comfortable speed, rising and falling like a boat on water to avoid logs and branches. Astoria sat back and crossed her arms, enjoying the cool breeze as it brushed her hot forehead. The two girls said nothing, though Astoria kept wondering when Ginny would thank her. Thanks were definitely overdue.

"Er, Astoria… there's… Oh. OH! ASTORIA! DEMENTORS!"

Ginny was trying to cast a Patronus. Astoria shook out of her grouching and looked ahead. The mist had already got into the car, and there was a whole coven of them up ahead. Of course. Of course dementors. Enough was enough.

"WELL EXPECTO PISS OFF!" Astoria erupted, and the car took off and whizzed right over their ugly heads. Ginny kept looking back to see if they were following.

"They're gone," she announced after they had covered enough ground.

"Yeah."

Ginny had not asked a single question about how Astoria had got there, what it took to do this… There wasn't a word of thanks on Ginny's tongue.

Oh.

Speaking of tongues, Ginny's had been covered in dirt, and she had only rinsed it out with a bit of conjured water earlier. Astoria conjured a goblet and gave Ginny more water, since Ginny was too proud to ask. A lot of it ended up splashing on the car (a plant would probably grow in here soon), but Ginny had enough to rinse out her mouth again and spit out the window. Again, no thanks. So much for that.

Though tired, Astoria got a hint of smoke from Professor Hagrid's fire, and she stayed more alert so she would know when to stop the car. They approached the end of the forest downwind from his cabin rather than beside it. Close enough. Astoria was going to tell the car to stop, but it bent to her will alone, and she didn't have to say anything aloud. She and Ginny alighted the thing, and Astoria released the Imperius Curse. The car grumbled once more and retreated backwards into the bushes.

"I came out by the boathouse. There aren't any Death Eaters, but there are two dementors there, and they're pretty hungry since people don't go that way very much," Astoria disclosed.

"Yeah, we're not doing that," Ginny said.

"I'm going to make you less visible," Astoria warned, and hit Ginny with the Disillusionment Charm.

In contrast to when Astoria had cast it on herself, Ginny was nearly gone from sight. There was a faint hint of her red hair just in front of Astoria, as though she were looking through coloured cellophane. Her outline seemed to have some visible turbulence of magic, but other than that, she was out of sight. Astoria followed Ginny's footsteps in the wet grass, wondering what bright ideas she might have about getting back inside the castle.

"Do you know the Sticking Charm?" Ginny asked.

Did she know the Sticking Charm! Astoria knew the Sticking Charm, all right. During her home-schooling, before she could control her wand, her father had had her try sticking an autumn leaf back onto a tree in their front garden. Apparently, her Sticking Charms leaned toward the Permanent variety, because the leaf was still there, preserved perfectly and unable to sway in the wind. Father had not been happy.

"Hello? Astoria?"

"Yeah, I know it."

"Okay, we're going to get outside Gryffindor Tower and climb it."

"Hm? With what?"

"With our hands and feet. You're going to cast the Sticking Charm on us," Ginny said impatiently.

"Ginny, I did not agree to that."

"What's the problem? You've a better idea?"

"Er… we could conjure ropes. Perhaps I could Levitate you up there…"

"What good are ropes going to do when we'd have to use a Sticking Charm along with them anyway? And a Levitation Charm isn't going to get me all the way up there."

"Mine will," Astoria said. "Mine will put you in the clouds if I get frazzled enough."

"Listen, even if you get me up there, I'd have to nick one of my roommate's wands, hope it works, and then get you. You might think you can send me into outer space, but I'll own up to the fact that I won't be able to reach you once I'm up there."

"Hm. Well, erm…"

"What's the problem with Sticking Charms anyway? It's our best bet. Let's go."

"Ginny, erm, what if we stayed at Professor Hagrid's?" Astoria begged once the idea struck her.

"Two reasons. First, Hagrid will get all worked up, storm up to the castle to say what happened to me, and get himself in trouble. Second, a priss like you wouldn't last three minutes in there."

"Priss‽ Is that all I am in your eyes now? We used to get on fine before your boyfriend sliced Draco across the throat!"

"Astoria, look, be quiet, all right, we've got to get to the castle."

"Do you think a priss would go into those godforsaken woods at one A.M. and step in Thestral poo twice to come and get you‽"

"You know what, sorry! I just said that to get the point across. If you want real sleep, you're not gonna get it at Hagrid's. The dog slobbers everywhere, and you can hear Hagrid's snoring from Ravenclaw Tower."

"No, you really think it! You think I'm a prissy, stuck-up blue-blood," Astoria glowered. "Just because I'm with Draco doesn't mean I'm the same person as him. On top of that, with everything that's happened, he's really—"

"I don't care a pin about your shiny new boyfriend, Astoria! Let's get up this hill! Cast the charm on my feet so I can get to my room and sleep. Mer-lin!"

"You're doing an awful lot of telling me what to do when I risked my life to get you out of there! You're lucky you're still alive, Ginny! I don't know what was going through your head, bringing back Dumbledore's Army at a time like this! The only reason they aren't murdering blood-traitors like us is that there aren't enough pure-bloods left. We're still worth five Galleons if we're turned into the Ministry! Azkaban's a real place, you know!"

"Oh, you say 'five Galleons' like that isn't what your family cracks walnuts with!" Ginny exclaimed.

"Well, together, you and I are worth ten Galleons and six pure-bred babies apiece, so shut up around the Carrows!"

"You shut up! We need to be quiet and get back up there as quickly as possible!"

Astoria spent the entirety of their trek trying to cool herself down lest she glue Ginny Weasley to the outside of the castle for eternity. They stood in the nook between the curve of the tower and the castle's ground floor. It wasn't nearly the height of Astronomy Tower, but from the ground looking up, Astoria felt uneasy.

"All right. Cast it really lightly so I can move my feet," Ginny said.

"Well, I have to undo the Disillusionment Charm for a second so I can see your feet."

"Make it quick. I don't know how far the Death Eaters strut from the entrance points. And get my knees and hands, too. This is going to take a lot of upper body strength."

Astoria didn't exactly have upper body strength to spare for a task like this. Not to mention she hated heights and barely ever flew. Her stomach still felt the car ride. Well, thankfully, Ginny did not end up being permanently stuck to the castle and wiggled her way up a bit. Astoria re-cast the Disillusionment Charm on her and tried once more to cast a better one on herself. The third time was the charm, literally, and she was now invisible. It was not her best sequence of action; she had to feel for her feet and draw her wand directly to the tips of her knees to get the Sticking Charm ready. Regrettably, her left hand was the stickiest by far, and as she hoisted herself up onto the wall of the tower, she had to fight her hand off the surface every time.

"Where are you?" she asked Ginny. "Tap your foot so I can hear."

Ginny tapped one of her feet lightly. She was probably an adult person's length ahead. Astoria shimmied up the castle, one limb at a time. When she got to the rather pitiful height of eight feet, she felt unhappy, and at eleven feet, her head went light. She would still Stick even if she fainted, at least. Astoria shut her eyes. Her arms were so sore.

"Did you get stuck?" Ginny's voice fell from above.

"No…"

"How far down are you?"

"I don't know."

"If we get any further apart, we can't talk. I don't want to raise my voice, or they'll find us straightaway."

"Ginny, I know that."

"Well, keep up."

"I have twig arms and a fear of heights, Ginny."

"No kidding."

Astoria dug her nails into the stone. What a crude girl Ginny had turned out to be. Astoria should have left her in the woods.

"You doing okay still?"

"I flipping guess so," Astoria said.

"Keep your eyes shut and just follow the sound of my feet and hands."

"I can't see you with my eyes open anyway."

"No, but you can see the ground."

"Mm, don't remind me."

"I grew up doing stuff like this all the time. We'll get there okay."

I grew up pressing flowers and playing piano, Astoria thought grimly. Ginny came from a "one fork per person at the dinner table" kind of family. Actually, the Weasleys might have called dinner "lunch." Astoria had never once thought less of her for that, since however poor Ginny's family was, Rhiannon had been poorer. It was a sort of raised-nose envy, though. Ginny knew how to do everything. She was popular, tough, and always tried new things. Astoria, who had been taught to make good impressions, had never even got the hang of that. She just wanted a telescope and free time. A bowl of soup and someone to read with on rainy nights. Her left palm peeled from the stone uncomfortably.

"Almost there," Ginny whispered.

Yeah, then what? Going up this tower was opposite from the direction Astoria needed. With all the Death Eaters, sneaking downstairs from Gryffindor Tower was going to be worse than the woods. It was like this tower and the dungeons were deliberately far apart to keep the Gryffindors and Slytherins segregated. When they weren't, they ended up doing things like Imperiusing already-enchanted Muggle cars and crawling on the outside of the building like spiders.

"I'm at the ramparts outside the common room windows. I'm going to hoist myself over them. I'll let you know when I'm there and help you up."

The wind rustled Astoria's cloak and hair, and she tried her utmost to not picture how high up she was. As long as she didn't look down, her brain would only have its imagination to go by.

"I'd go right to my dorm, but if I came in through the windows, my roommates would all have heart attacks."

"Mine too," Astoria said to keep her mind and body off the ground.

"I didn't think you had windows in your dorm."

"I don't. That's why they'd have heart attacks."

"Very funny. Come on up."

Astoria grabbed the decorative stones and loathed how she had to move her body outwards in order to scale them. Astoria hoisted herself up with trepidation. Then Ginny pressed her hand directly on Astoria's nose and grabbed her cheek.

"GINNY!"

"Shush! I can't see you! Sorry! Where's your arm… There, I got you! Hop over already."

It was very narrow, but Astoria's feet hit a solid surface at last. Her toes were all scrunched and curled from pressing the balls of her feet onto the castle walls for so long. She Unstuck herself and her accomplice. She put her hands on the windows and started feeling round.

"Astoria, what are you doing? The window's got a curse on it," Ginny said.

"How do you know?"

"I just know. It feels like it."

"Oh, so you can feel magic, too?"

"Sorry? Yeah, I guess, I dunno. Look, just figure out what curse it is so we can get in."

"Specialis Revelio," Astoria said. "Erm, it's a Caterwauling Charm."

"Balls."

"I know the counter for one this small. I can't fix Hogsmeade, though, so don't ask."

"Why didn't you say something?"

Astoria actually had no counter-charm because there wasn't one. There was a certain way to trick the system with Dark magic, though.

"Stand back a bit," Astoria said.

"Not much room left, if you haven't noticed."

"I meant move down. There. Good."

Astoria wand-wrote some foul formulas along the whole edge of the window they sought to enter. This had not been her preferred breed of the Arts at first, but she had come back to it after being bound and strung up on the ceiling in one of Amycus's classes. As she set the numbers into the windowpane, a sigil began to appear and burn on her wand hand. With Astoria being more or less invisible, the sigil looked like it was floating in the air. The arithmancy represented the words "Caterwauling Charm," which was their obstacle, "Severus Snape," who, if not the caster, was the overseer, and "disobey." Dark magic, being somewhat alive, did the rest and had set a personal counter right into the palm of her hand. Magic like this could be used for far greater purposes, but Astoria felt wrong to entertain those ideas. She put her wand away and smacked her hand against the glass.

"Offendus finitus."

The Caterwaul died, and the window gave way, silently buoyant, as though it were a nothing more than a small bathtime toy to be pushed under the spigot. Astoria's hand shook, so she grabbed her cloak to stop the feeling.

"Don't just stand there. Go in," she mumbled.

"That was a lot more than a counter-charm, Astoria."

"Don't I know it. Go in."

"That magic's not good for you."

"Neither is chocolate cake. Get. In."

She heard Ginny crawl through the window and followed, shutting it behind her. The Gryffindor common room was decorated in red and gold and was very warm. It had big, soft chairs with pillows and mismatched rugs on the floor. The high ceiling drew Astoria's eye. The girls' and boys' stairs stood parallel, like the Slytherin common room, although there were more stairs to climb since they branched out into tinier turrets rather than weaving through the sub-terrain. Astoria made Ginny and herself visible again. They both looked like absolute messes.

"We should clean up," Ginny said.

"I have to go."

"No, you don't."

Astoria stared perplexedly at Ginny, who started walking up the stairs. She followed her yet again. Ginny's dormitory door opened for her without a key.

"You shouldn't leave your dorm unlocked in times like these," Astoria whispered faintly.

"Lock? We don't have keys, we have magic," Ginny said.

Salazar Slytherin had evidently not thought of how to personalise magic into the dormitory doors themselves, and all of his students ended up with inconvenient keys.

"Oh, well we have magic keys so that the Unlocking Charm doesn't work," Astoria said. "Sometimes we add to it, though, for more safety."

"Do you really need to do that?"

"Alecto's not my idea of a good cuddle."

"Ah. Yeah."

Ginny had four roommates, some of them new after the consolidation, and they were all asleep. Astoria cast the Muffliato charm temporarily so she and Ginny could use the bathroom. Astoria sat on an ottoman in the dark whilst she waited for her turn. She envied the spacious room, big enough to fit five four-post beds, five trunks, five nightstands and five desks, and plenty of space left on the floor. But it didn't have any of Hestia's experiments, Flora's books, or Rhiannon's loose-leaf paper. It didn't have music sheets or celestial maps or competing candle scents. The blankets were thinner up here, not huge and fluffy and full of pilling. Ginny had some medicinal creams to rub onto her wounds, and she came out smelling like herbs.

The Gryffindors' bathroom was too large. The ample space by the sink had lulled the Gryffindors all into cluttering habits. Given all the space to sit in the dorm, the tub served no purpose other than to bathe in. Rhiannon and Astoria never would have had to sit in a tub to have their overnight conversation about their respective hunger for Hestia and Draco. Hestia never would have been able to make a decent medicinal emulsion in a tub this large.

Well, Astoria was grateful to see any sink after the night she had. She washed her face and ran her fingers through her hair several times over to get all the plant bits out. She looked at the dark hair strands that had fallen into the sink and chuckled before wiping them out. None of Ginny's friends would ever come up with "Polyjuice gum" to crash a funeral with. Astoria cast a simple cleaning charm on her clothes. It wasn't as good as washing them, but it was better than nothing. Anything was better than nothing in this life. Ginny might have thought Astoria was a priss, but she had deep thanksgiving in her heart for small comforts after what she had been through. A lot of emotions had been flung back and forth.

Ginny and I didn't mean what we said.

Their actions were speaking much louder than their words tonight. Astoria conjured up a mattress to the best of her ability next to the closet. Ginny tossed her an already-existing blanket and extra pillows. Astoria nearly thanked her, but caught herself. She drew Flora's hood back over her head, huddled in the covers, and pretended with all her might that she wasn't there.

In the morning, Astoria woke to Ginny's voice. There was a thin layer of sweat and dirt on her body that made the day dreadful already.

"Greengrass got caught by the Carrows," Ginny lied to a concerned roommate. "I let her stay here."

Astoria pretended to be asleep again. She was so glad it wasn't a weekday. Her eyes moved across the floor, looking at shoes and clumps of dust under beds. The other girls left the dorm. Ginny stayed.

"I was thinking you should show up to breakfast, actually," she said, knowing Astoria was awake, "because your pair of Carrows and Snape's pair of Carrows are all going to look for you otherwise. Once Amycus and Alecto find out I'm not in the woods, they'll want to know what happened."

There were a lot of words in that sentence for Astoria's sleep-inert brain. Breakfast…?

Draco!

Astoria's conjured bed disappeared before she could get out of it, and she dropped to the floor. She had, for the first night, missed Draco's patrol shift. He had been without a Patronus all this time.

How could I forget that?

She knew how she forgot; few things had taken precedence over surviving the Forbidden Forest. Draco could have been wondering where she was since four in the morning! She hoped with all her heart that he hadn't raised alarm. Hopefully, he thought she had simply slept through it. Astoria didn't want to rush down to breakfast, though. She wanted a shower.

"Didn't mean to scare you like that," Ginny said. "I thought it would keep you out of trouble if you went now."

"No — that's not… I didn't remember to…"

Oh, Ginny doesn't care.

Astoria rubbed the back of her sore neck and recalled her date in Hogsmeade with as much detail as she could.

"Expecto Patronum," she said, and out of the shimmers sauntered Pavo, spreading his feathers wide in the room.

"Okay, Pavo, go… ugh, just go make sure Draco isn't panicking," she told the peacock, and he disappeared through the door.

Astoria turned and saw red pepper freckles and raised eyebrows.

"Why do you talk to your Patronus?" Ginny asked with a snide grin. "You named it, too? After a constellation?"

"Leave me alone," Astoria murmured, and she left for the bathroom. She couldn't hide in there forever, though, and she wasn't going to shower with the Gryffindor's stuff.

"My Patronus is a horse," mentioned Ginny when Astoria came out. "I wish we could have ridden it out of the forest."

"Mm, that would have been nice."

"Have you seen the peacocks at Malfoy Manor? Isn't that what your Patronus is?"

"I've never been there. Draco and I aren't really supposed to associate."

"My dad used to do searches there before the government fell. He hates the Malfoys to pieces, but he said he liked to see the birds."

"I'm no fan of the Malfoys," Astoria felt the need to say. "Lucius and my father hated each other. I'd like to give Lucius a piece of my mind for what he's done to his family."

Ginny stretched her legs under her blankets to even them out, then crawled over the top of them. It was an even quicker way to make the bed than magic.

"I think you'd better keep away from them altogether, really," Ginny said casually, as if those words did not bite and break the skin.

"Is that right? Don't you think I could say the same thing? Yours is on wanted posters," Astoria mentioned slickly.

Ginny looked up at her like there was salt in her eye.

"I haven't been able to contact him at all. I wake up every day not knowing if he's alive or what. He said he was breaking up with me to, you know, keep me safe and all that nonsense. I knew he didn't mean it, but either way, we're apart."

Interesting. So Harry Potter had faked a breakup to protect Ginny, whilst Draco was drawing Astoria closer to protect her. Both were pitiful attempts, not to mention unnecessary.

"That's very difficult," Astoria said. "I'm sorry, Ginny."

Ginny then stifled any vulnerability she might have shown.

"What was it like… when you found out Malfoy was…?" she asked Astoria.

Astoria remembered bending Crabbe backwards over a table, stepping on his hands, and casting Legilimency on him to get information about Draco's plans last year.

"It was bad," Astoria said, and the short summary almost made her laugh. "Well, after my family was attacked, I kept thinking, what if Lucius had been in that group? I couldn't control the thought."

"Yikes."

"Yeah."

Astoria stood in the warming sun awkwardly. It was bright in the room; she was thankful that the sun never woke her up in her own dorm.

"Ginny."

"Yeah?"

"I want you to stop plastering Dumbledore's Army all over the walls. Amycus is aiming to hurt Neville and Luna in D.A.D.A., and they'll keep doing things like this to you. There's no telling if you'll get your wand back from them. Professor Sinistra has spares from her parents."

"I'll figure out a way to get my wand."

"With your Dumbledore group? What did I just say?"

"Astoria, I can't live with myself if I don't do something! I'm trapped in this school, and the teachers can't do much, and the world is breaking apart out there! They're arresting and killing Muggle-borns. What I'm doing with the D.A. is a drop of water!" Ginny exclaimed, slamming a hand on her mattress.

"There are less stupid ways to die than a school club, Ginny!"

"You don't even know what we stand for! It's the same thing you want deep down, isn't it? But you're too scared, so instead of coming to talk to us, you've turned to Dark magic! Talk about a stupid way to die! Only a fool dies by their own wand!"

Astoria clenched her fists, but she felt the burn from the arithmancy sigil in her palm. It made Ginny's words hit harder. She looked at her hand. Her own Dark magic was going to leave a scar. At least it looked sort of like a flower.

"I could cast Dark magic a thousand times more safely than you and Neville could ever look at Alecto," Astoria said.

"You know what? You do you. I'll do me. Obviously, we're only fighting because we don't want to see each other hurt," Ginny said crossly.

"Oh, an impasse?" Astoria huffed. "Well, don't die getting your wand back. If I were you, I'd pretend the forest really did the trick, and I needed my wand for 'channelling my birthright' or whatever."

"Yeah, well, you're a Slytherin," Ginny said with a snort.

"Through and through," Astoria said.

"I guess I can't complain, seeing as you saved my life."

"You're welcome, Ginevra."

Ginny sniggered and threw a pillow at Astoria's back on her way out. Astoria hid in her hood to make sure Ginny didn't see her smile.