Chapter Forty Five
Myths and Legends
0o0
The unseasonably warm and sunny weather held for the next few days, as did Astoria's freshly recovered health. On Friday, Astoria found herself in the Room of Portraits with Maudlin, going over the final details of their plans for New Years Eve.
"That makes three teams," said Maudlin, checking something off on a piece of parchment he had brought along with him. "Six players, three teams. Right?"
"Mhmm," Astoria agreed, reclining peacefully with her legs thrown over the arm of a leather couch. The noisy clock on the mantelpiece ticked soothingly.
The last time she had been in this room, Cassandra had been inducting her into the Sisters of the Eastern Star and Astoria was surprised to find that, emptied of catty girls and with the fireplace unlit, she rather liked the lighting and the plush leather seating. Something about the smell spoke to her as well; a mixture of new dust and the binding of official leather books that nobody had read for half a century.
"You and I will be a team, of course," Maudlin was muttering, the point of his eagle feather quill just scraping across the surface of his parchment. "Alec and Draco? They're both blonde, they can play together. But what do we do about Luc?"
"What do you mean?" asked Astoria, straightening up and tearing her eyes off of the merry blue sky that was just visible outside the long windows. "You don't think Madam Maxime will let him leave the carriage?"
"What? No," said Maudlin, frowning at her across the coffee table they had littered with spare 'Potter Stinks' badges. "I hadn't even thought of that. I meant that he doesn't have a partner and we'll have to ask someone else to play. What about Zabini? Draco seems to like him."
As much as Astoria did not like the idea of Maudlin taking character references from Draco, the idea of having to spend the entire reenactment of a precious family holiday with Blaise Zabini struck Astoria as the greater of two evils.
"Why don't you ask Emilie?" Astoria prodded, hoping to guilt Maudlin into forgetting about Blaise by mentioning his often overlooked girlfriend.
"We're allowed into Hogsmeade tomorrow and I want to visit the pubs," said Maudlin, dismissing this suggestion at once. "Besides, knowing your luck, she'd bring Cassandra along and that would be all the fun destroyed, wouldn't it?"
Astoria contemplated this, knowing he was right but wishing to avoid Blaise's company just the same. "I could try Theodore?"
"Who?" asked Maudlin, tossing his parchment down onto the highly polished table before plucking up one of Draco's badges.
"Theodore. You've met him," Astoria insisted, a little offended by how little Maudlin seemed to care for any of her friends who did not have highly affluent and influential fathers. "He's usually reading at meals? I'm always talking about him-"
"Oh," said Maudlin, recalling Theodore at last. "That creepy boy who follows you about between classes? No, let's just have Malfoy find somebody. That seems easiest."
Astoria chafed at this description of Theodore but Maudlin had pulled out his wand in order to poke at the badge in his hand. Not wanting to break his concentration, Astoria waited for him to finish before speaking.
"You seem to think pretty highly of Draco's opinions these days," she commented warily, eyeing the newly transformed badge.
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Maudlin stiffly, not quite able to miss the hint of his implied washiness hidden in Astoria's comment. "Why shouldn't I? I usually agree with him. You're the one who likes to make things difficult."
Privately feeling that there were very few people in the world with a greater capacity for making things more 'difficult' than Draco Malfoy, Astoria fell silent, sensing that an argument on the matter would be pointless.
"You know," remarked Maudlin lightly, "the way you talk about Draco, I almost wouldn't be surprised to find out that you've been running around badmouthing me all over the school." It was a throw-away comment and Astoria could tell at once that he didn't really mean it, but she eyed him with a mixture of pity and irresistible amusement until he had finished transfiguring the badges anyway.
"Colors," Maudlin muttered. "We'll be needing team colors."
0o0
In accordance with the detailed plan that she and Maudlin had laid out the night before, Astoria was out of bed at precisely seven o'clock the next morning. It was earlier than Astoria was accustomed to being awake, as she had allowed herself to slip into a rather leisurely holiday routine of late, and there was something faintly magical about empty hallways. Shadows still clung to the corners of the corridors she sped down, drawing her eye toward the places that the prying fingers of daylight had not yet reached.
A bright, liquid line of sunshine along the distant horizon told Astoria that the clear weather of the past week had held on another day, but the icy puffs of breath that rose from her mouth warned her that the unseasonable heat had not. Everything, from the lake to the sentient suits of armor in the halls, seemed to have been struck by the stillness of a recent frost.
Satisfied that she had worn her warmest clothing, Astoria rearranged the winter cloak she was carrying over her arm and continued on toward breakfast, anxious to meet the day.
It was much warmer in the Great Hall and, if it weren't for the barren blue sky that clung to the vaulted ceiling, it would have been hard to guess what frozen silence awaited them outside.
Maudlin was already sitting at the Slytherin table, red-cheeked from his walk up the path. Beside him, Alec was nursing a mug of tea and staring across the room dully.
"Morning!" called Maudlin brightly, hardly able to contain his enthusiasm.
Astoria strode toward him quickly, incapable of stopping herself from grinning back.
"Filch will start letting people through the gates at eight," said Maudlin, mentally tallying up the forty five minute wait ahead of them. "Just enough time for the mail and a quick debriefing."
"Debriefing?" demanded Draco, his snide voice announcing his presence behind them. "I though this was supposed to be a holiday."
"Well, I mean..." Maudlin trailed off, chuckling darkly.
"Only technically," Astoria finished for him, trying very hard not to laugh herself.
"Fantastic," muttered Draco sullenly. Trailing in his wake, much to Astoria's surprise, was not Blaise Zabini but Graham Montague from the Slytherin quidditch team.
"What happened to Zabini?" asked Maudlin at once, the smile sliding off his face. "You haven't invited two people, have you?"
"No, I haven't invited two people," returned Draco snappishly. "Montague is Blaise's replacement because I was afraid Davis would trail along after Zabini, if I asked him. Wouldn't want to throw off the debriefing now, would I?"
Astoria clapped her hands together twice, secretly thrilled by this arrangement.
"Right," said Maudlin, patting down his pockets. "So we'll be breaking up into three teams-"
The mail arrived noisily overhead. Muffled by the clamorous swirling of wings, Luc managed to slip in silently and was already buttering a muffin when a large barn owl swooped down to deliver a packet of letters.
Suddenly doused in pumpkin juice, Luc sprang back up again with a snarl.
"Oh, look! Father's written," observed Maudlin, leaving off in his description of the rules in order to unfasten his letter.
"Filthy things!" Luc spat, patting at his damp shirt in a wildly useless attempt to dry it.
"Sit down, Luc," murmured Maudlin unconcernedly, slitting open the envelope with his butter knife. "We were just going over the plan..."
"Well, it doesn't matter now. I have to go back to carriage to change!" Luc insisted, but his complaints were met by deaf ears.
"I'll come along for the pub," said Alec evenly, "but I won't be roped into nonsense."
"What are you talking about, Alec?" shot Maudlin, his eyes sliding back and forth across the text of his letter. "You'll play with us and you'll like it."
"Look at me!" Luc insisted, shaking his leg until the juice that had been seeping into his socks splattered the floor.
Maudlin and Alec both glanced at Luc and then looked away again, entirely unconcerned about his drenched outerwear. Because Luc was a wizard and very prone to complaining, Astoria refrained from trying to help.
"Never!" declared Maudlin, discovering a grainy photograph taped to the bottom of his note. "Astoria, it's the very first Dionysus Day!"
Astoria peered at the photograph in his hand, entirely alarmed by the sight that greeted her there. It was, in fact, a well preserved depiction of Astoria and Maudlin around Christmas time, taken at an age before either of them had achieved a full five feet in height. Maudlin was wearing a bonnet and clutching a parasol. Astoria, with her little chin tucked in past her bow-tie, was sobbing nosily.
"Why would he keep this?" exclaimed Maudlin, perhaps experiencing the same stab of horror as Astoria.
"Did you tell him that we were planning to play again this year?" asked Astoria, more than a little disarmed by the visual of Maudlin in lace.
"No," Maudlin insisted. "He must have realized that we would both be together and sent it as a joke."
"He sent me that photo of all three of us in his office," Astoria pointed out. A link between Aston and their sudden, hitherto unconnected, aspirations to rekindle the old holiday began to form in Astoria's mind.
"Did he?" asked Maudlin, frowning slightly. "That's weird..."
"For God's sake!" muttered Alec darkly, putting the pieces together with admirable swiftness. "The future Monacan Minister of Magic and he's prompting this madness from overseas."
"Where has he been keeping this picture, though?" Maudlin pressed, disgust tingeing what would otherwise be healthy amusement. "You don't think he has it framed somewhere?"
"His desk drawer, probably," Astoria muttered, eyeing the bow-tie she was wearing with a pang of loathing. "I suppose he pulls it out and has a look at it every time he needs a good laugh."
Maudlin tutted.
"Can either of you be serious?" drawled Draco, hardly able to believe that the river of Aston's Mendel's amusement might flow so closely to waters of the impishly juvenile.
"You know, it wouldn't entirely surprise me..." Maudlin allowed thoughtfully, unable to tear his eyes off his bonnet.
"Really. You'd never know it," Astoria mused, "but behind that officious and formidable exterior of his, Aston's actually the worst sort of gleeful scamp."
Draco's blinking staggered, so thrown by this description of Maudlin's father that he did not even seem to be able to offer up a suitable insult.
"An absolute hobgoblin," Maudlin agreed, distracted enough by the photograph in his hands that it did not occur to him to defend his father's dignity.
Draco turned toward Alec, clearly wanting to see what his reaction to this might be before he decided to take the discussion seriously.
"But no matter," continued Maudlin briskly, remembering himself and dropping the photograph next to his plate. "We'll split into teams-"
"Merlin, you were an ugly baby, Astoria," sneered Luc, staring across the table at the now public photograph. "What's with the bonnet?"
"Thats not me," said Astoria flatly. "That's Maudlin."
"What?" mouthed Luc, his eyes misting over at this rare opportunity to properly mock his roommate.
"That's Astoria in the bow-tie, crying again!" snapped Maudlin churlishly. He fidgeted uncomfortably, clearly wanting to avoid the topic of Dionysus Day's past.
"What on earth compelled you to dress in drag?" drawled Alec, amused despite himself.
We didn't-" Maudlin broke off to compose himself. "We aren't cross-dressing. We're in costume. When we lost Dionysus Day, father made us perform on stage as punishment."
Draco's sneer would have been perfect if it had not been rendered so crooked by the way his mouth seemed to be hanging slightly open of its own accord.
"Three teams," Maudlin went on pointedly, "Astoria and I, Luc and-"
He was cut off again by Luc.
"You and Astoria can't be a team!" Luc insisted. "That's not fair. Two winners shouldn't be able to play together."
Maudlin let out a bitter laugh.
"That shouldn't be a problem," said Astoria grimly, trying not to smirk at the look on Maudlin's face. "We've never actually won."
"What?" scoffed Luc, so accustomed to being the butt end of Maudlin and Alec's jokes that suspicion seemed to come naturally to him these days. "I thought you said that you'd been playing this game for years."
"We have," Astoria sighed.
"We've just never won," burst Maudlin emphatically, clenching his hands around his fork and knife.
"Never?" prompted Malfoy, dumbstruck. "How is that even possible?"
"My father!" exclaimed Maudlin bitterly.
"Every year!" Astoria moaned, surprised to find that the memory of so much defeat was capable of retaining such painful clarity throughout the years. "He was vicious! It's never even been close."
"The last year we played was a near miss," attempted Maudlin. "We almost won."
"No we didn't," Astoria countered waspishly, "he was just toying with us!"
"And he punished you every single year for losing?" sneered Malfoy dully. "Why keep playing, then?"
"It's not like he was going to go easy on us just because we were children," breathed Maudlin defensively. "No, if we made the mistake of challenging him, he was going to make sure that we earned our victory."
"No handicaps," Astoria agreed, stopping herself just short of adding 'no survivors', feeling this was the type of petty melodrama she tended to associate with Pansy and Flora.
"This year will be our first victory," Maudlin murmured confidently, as much to himself as the rest of the table. "We should take a picture and send it back to father later, Ria. He tends to appreciate that sort of thing..."
Malfoy's look of incredulousness snapped into one of outright indignation. Somewhere in the distance, a clock chimed.
"It's eight," said Maudlin briskly, cutting off whatever scathing response Draco had been brewing. "Lets start moving toward the courtyard."
The winter day was just as brisk as Astoria had guessed it would be from the temperature in the halls. A bright, almost lunar sunlight seemed to be sapping the grounds of all their color and Astoria's breath rose in cruel clouds of mist in front of her.
"Hang on," Astoria murmured, pausing next to a stone archway to put her cloak on.
"Here," said Maudlin, passing Montague and Luc two enchanted badges. "You're Team Blue."
The badges Maudlin handed them had once born the legend: 'Potter Stinks', but they had since been altered so that they now more closely resembled the kind of gaudy brooches that a very unfashionable grandmother might find positively charming. Both pins were obnoxiously worked over with tartan and, in Luc's case, were a royal blue in hue.
"What are these?" gaped Luc in revulsion.
"Your team badges," explained Maudlin unconcernedly. "Put them on."
Draco's attention seemed to have been caught by the shape of the pin because he was regarding them with narrowed-eyed recognition.
"It's not like anyone is going to forget which team I'm on," Luc argued. "Why do I have to wear this?"
"Did you make those things out of my badges?" demanded Draco irritably, recognizing the bronze metal work.
"You have to wear the badge because you need to wear tartan in order to play," shot Maudlin, growing impatient. "I must have told you ten times already. Pin it on Luc, before I make you."
Draco's eyes flashed toward Astoria, wanting to make his annoyance known but Astoria refused to meet his eye, not wanting to encourage hostility.
"Team Silver," Maudlin went on, producing two more badges. "Come on, be good sports."
Draco snatched the badge out of Maudlin's hand and turned it over, searching for proof of suspected crimes against his handiwork. Alec, however, refused point blank to take his.
"I'm not wearing that," he murmured smoothly. "You're lucky I'm even going into the village with you."
"If you won't wear tartan, I'm leaving you at the school gate!" Maudlin insisted angrily, knowing that his command over Alec was much weaker than Luc.
"I'm already wearing tartan," Alec quirked, smirking crookedly.
"You are not," Luc jumped in accusingly, so bitter about having to wear the badge himself that the idea of letting Alec get away with cheating was too much for him to bear.
"I am," Alec lied smoothly, "just not in a place that I tend to display."
Maudlin studied Alec's face sternly, sucking on his teeth. "Montague, you're the one who is always going on about wanting a new broomstick, aren't you?" he asked, never looking away from Alec.
"I- yeah, I've mentioned it," responded Montague confusedly, thoroughly thrown by the entire morning's proceedings in a way that made Astoria feel certain that Draco had given him almost no warning about what his day was going to entail.
"I'll give you fifty galleons on the spot to pants Alec," offered Maudlin, his expression one of perfect calm.
For a split second, Montague seemed to weigh the merits of this offer in his head. He was eager for the fifty galleons but hesitant to lay hands on Alec, whose enviable sense of self-possession had the power to make people desperately want to be his friend almost as much as it tended to intimidated them.
After a brief pause, greed won the battle over dignity and Montague made a rushing motion toward Alec. Alec blinked and straightened up out of his lazy slouch, catching Montague by the wrist in a way that seemed to imply that the idea of another man reaching for his belt was not so much startling as it was annoying.
Alec snapped the badge out of Maudlin's waiting hands and shot Montague a cold look as he released him.
"Perfect," continued Maudlin, ignoring the queer tension he seemed to have provoked in all corners. "Astoria, here's your badge. We're in purple, so Team Mendel."
"Excuse me?" asked Astoria, hardly able to believe her ears. "Team Mendel?"
"The game started in my house," said Maudlin, losing all patience at last. "Team Mendel!"
"By both of us," Astoria countered fairly. "Why not call it team Greengrass?"
"Are you kidding?" asked Maudlin patronizingly. "What about my father? He played with us. That's two Mendels, one Greengrass. We're Team Mendel and our badges are purple. That's all there is to it."
Astoria took her badge moodily, noticing as she did so that Draco had yet to affix his pin to his shirt. "Fine," Astoria breathed, pinning the purple tartan swatch just below where the crease of her hood settled against her shoulders.
"It's the most sensible this way," Maudlin insisted.
"Oh, please. what do you know about sensible?" Astoria snapped back. "You wanted to call Alec and Draco Team Blonde."
Maudlin reached out and adjusted Astoria's pin until it lay flat, smirking triumphantly.
Filch was posted up near the gates with his clipboard and secrecy sensor at the ready. A small queue of shivering students had already arrived and were lingering about in the biting cold, waiting for Filch to finish prodding them with his sensor so that they could escape into Hogsmeade.
"We'll go to the Three Broomsticks first and then, after that, we'll see if we can get into the Hogs Head," said Maudlin, pushing toward the front of the line.
"You want to go to the pub before nine in the morning?" sneered Malfoy, looking privately excited by this idea, no matter what he said otherwise. He cut in line to follow Maudlin
The Third Years ahead of Astoria seemed to come to the consensus that they had given up enough turf because they closed the gap between themselves to stop her from moving in front of them.
"We have rank!" snapped Draco over his shoulder, turfing the Third Years aside rudely so that Astoria could slip between them.
Astoria did not see why they couldn't all just simply wait for their turn. The group they were standing in did not appear to consist of more than fifteen people, but Maudlin was in the kind of impatient rush that could not be assuaged by reason. Astoria had to wriggle (and the Third Years protested loudly) but she managed to pop out near the front of the line, staggering slightly.
Both Draco and Maudlin lifted their arms at the exact same moment to make room for her and their hands accidentally touched mid-air. Draco snatched his arm back, looking faintly put-out but Maudlin paused and glanced at Draco in surprise. A frown crossed his features, as though it had never before occurred to him that Draco might be conscious of Astoria's physical space. The look put her teeth on edge immediately.
"The owner of the Hogs Head will kick us out when he sees us," Astoria persisted, wanting to distract Maudlin as quickly as she could, afraid of what conclusions he might draw if he was allowed to study Draco carefully.
"Its bloody cold out," chattered Luc, unrolling the sleeves of his sweater as they started off down the wide track toward the village, passing the iron gates topped with winged boars.
Alec sighed dully. "Take your hat off, then."
"What good would that do?" remarked Luc, pulling his hat off his head doubtfully.
Alec's eyelashes fluttered almost self-punishingly until Luc understood.
"Oh," Luc startled. "Wait- does that count? Is that a point?"
"If we have to play, we may as well make sure that the dream team doesn't win," said Alec calmly, alluding to Astoria and Maudlin. "Put your pin on, Malfoy."
0o0
The evergreen trees that lined the road danced elegantly in the breeze, but by the time they had reached the bustling main street, Astoria was so cold that she could not open and close her hands properly inside her gloves.
Considering it was not yet noon, The Three Broomsticks was holiday-busy, and they all had to squash into a back booth together to avoid having to sit at separate ends of the bar.
Astoria pulled her cloak off the moment she felt the humid strain of so many layers of clothing begin to mount her cheeks in the form of a dull flush. Jittery from the temperature shock and the promise of a competition, everybody paused to dab at watery noses and grin at each other, all signs of the rocky start in the courtyard washed away by the walk.
Astoria slowly allowed her shoulders to relax, fully opening herself up to the concept of having a fun afternoon. Neither Blaise nor Cassandra had been invited, Astoria reflected gleefully. There was no reason that she should have to fake her enjoyment or force herself to be careful about every move she made. They were miles away from the nearest teacher and, with the exception of perhaps Luc, she was capable of finding everyone present to be amusing when she was of a mind to be amused.
When nobody could decide exactly what to order, Maudlin decided that a pitcher of something universally drinkable was the most intelligent compromise. Astoria allowed him to fill her glass with butterbeer whenever if became empty, refusing to be afraid of a slightly loosened tongue. It was only after two pitchers had been ordered and then consumed that she decided to pull her glass away and start refusing top offs until after lunch.
A Christmas tree was still situated nearby, its heavy ornaments glimmering merrily in the bright sunlight streaming in through the bar windows. When Luc, who truly could not hold his liquor, began to giggle and shout sentences at the top of his lungs, Alec charmed the tree so that hovered in the air and dropped back down to strategically block their party from Madam Rosmerta's view. This turned out to be a very good idea when, moments later, Maudlin attempted a prank that Astoria fell for and they both had to leap to their feet in order to do a jig.
"What in the literal hell are you two doing?" bellowed Luc.
Maudlin broke off from his feverish dancing just long enough to inform Luc that, "If we say the name of the prank backwards three times while we do a jig, we don't have to lose a point!"
Nobody seemed to have any response to this logic, so they were able to finish without interruption.
Soon, however, even the thick tree could not hide Luc's boisterousness. Maudlin paid their tab and they all stumbled back out into the white, frigid afternoon together.
"I say we try the Hogs Head," Alec remarked, his aggressive dislike for Dionysus Day softened by the beer and the lack of childish antics thus far. "Luc went in the fall. If he managed it, so can we."
Astoria turned to walk up the hill, her thoughts shifting to the very familiar goblins who were known to frequent that particular bar. Her eyes drifted up and down the street, searching for another idea that might manage to gain traction with the additional benefit of being closer.
"What's in there?" Astoria asked, pointing to burgundy door near the post office. Through the thin crystal slats above the door knocker, Astoria could just make out the sight of several tables laden with cutlery.
"It looks like a lounge," remarked Maudlin. "What's the place called?"
Draco shrugged, a little surprised to find that there could be eatery in Hogsmeade that he had never noticed before.
"It's probably private," said Montague, something cautionary creeping into his voice.
"So?" sneered Draco smugly. Perhaps he was remembering his last experience at the Hogs Head, because he too suddenly looked nearly as eager as Astoria was to avoid the place. "Maudlin's father is the next Minister of Magic in Monaco and my father has given so many donations to Hogwarts that even if the place is private, they'll have to let us in."
There was a touch of snottiness to this statement that Astoria would never learn to savor, but she suspected that Draco was likely very correct in his assumption. No establishment in Hogsmeade was likely to turn away Draco and Maudlin for fear of their greater family influence and Astoria had a faint idea that Alec's father was probably frightening enough to guarantee his entrance without any assistance from his more politically connected friends.
Montague and Astoria were probably the weakest members of their party as far as importance went, and even then, it was not as though their relations were unrecognizable. They simply suffered because Astoria's most prominent family members were all imprisoned and Montague's father was long dead. Montague's mother, to the best of Astoria's knowledge, had allowed herself to become a creature of obscurity but Astoria could not think of a single scandal that she had ever heard involving her name and Belladonna was certainly social enough to be relevant.
"Let's try it," said Maudlin, pausing in the middle of the road in a way that forced foot traffic to funnel around him. "It's closer."
Astoria was a hundred times more willing to face the scorn of a stuffy maitre d' than Ragnuk's gang of goblins and she was the first to step through the burgundy door. Draco and Maudlin followed, looking faintly impressed by her gumption.
They were greeted by a small welcoming desk, but the tiny chair behind it was vacant of any host. Beyond and toward the left, several tables were arranged around a fireplace. The crystal glasses laid out on the white tablecloths winked promisingly at them, reminding Astoria of sparkling teeth behind a coy smile.
On the right, a quaint den faced the street. Several elderly gentlemen were smoking pipes and playing chess amongst one another here, all looking very much the part of the unconcerned members of a local government. A staircase, well kept but old and narrow, served to separate these two rooms like a folding screen.
Alec chuckled under his breath and headed for a glass cabinet in the den that contained a bar. Curiously, perhaps because of Alec's naturally fearless buoyancy, not a single one of the whiskered gentleman batted an eye at him as he passed.
Draco's disbelieving gaze followed Alec across the room. He glanced at Astoria out of the corner of his eye before coming to some kind of decision and he darted out after Alec.
Alec had taken the time to dust off a glass, pouring a measure of something amber into it before dropping in two darkly colored whiskey stones. Draco did not seem to posses Alec's effortless ease, so he simply snatched the whole bottle in one swift motion.
"This isn't bad, you know," said Alec cooly, returning to the place where the rest of them were standing near the bottom of the stairs, savoring the drink in his hand.
"I've got the rest of it," said Draco, his eyes sweeping up the long staircase. "I say we get out of here before the butler comes back."
"What is this place?" demanded Montague tensely. "Why is one else talking?"
"It's a club of some kind," said Maudlin mildly. "Government, maybe? Who runs Hogsmeade?"
"We should explore," said Astoria, gazing upward at the long hall that stretched off the second floor and the twisting stairs that carried on beyond it. Something about the thin, unexpected dimensions of the place made Astoria feel relatively certain that the club housed about a million unexpected nooks and crannies and the three glasses of butterbeer she had consumed seemed to have left her with an urgent desire to see them for herself.
Draco seemed ill at ease with this idea, but not so strongly that he felt the need to say so. Alec laughed, entirely amused.
"No way," scoffed Montague. "If anyone catches us, we'll be packed off back to school."
"No we won't," said Astoria confidently, her eyes still lingering on the upstairs hallway. "The worst they'll do is ask us to leave. Pretend you don't know English, Maudlin. They'll think we're lost."
"We should at least figure out the name of the place," said Maudlin. "It'll be easier to convince the staff that were sent here, if we get stopped."
Alec put his drink down on the front desk and began to rummage about behind it boldly. Finally, he found a stack of dark red business cards with the words 'The Corner' written on them in loopy gold calligraphy.
"What do you think that means?" sneered Malfoy, glancing back toward the front windows. The answer was apparent from the view. The entire establishment seemed to be situated on a very crooked corner and had been built upward, rather than outward, on the smallest margin of land possible.
Alec pocketed one of the cards and retrieved his drink. "Let's have a look around."
They walked softly up the first flight of stairs, growing bolder when it became apparent that nobody was going to come flying out of a back office and scold them. 'The Corner' seemed to function partially as an inn, and most of the doors that led off the second floor appeared to have been given over to visiting guests.
Craving adventure with a side of privacy, Astoria continued up to the third floor, which was markedly thinner yet somehow seemed to contain twice as many sitting rooms and bed chambers.
"This place is bizarre," remarked Draco, staring into a bathroom that, along with all the usual pieces of furniture that bathrooms were known to contain, also hosted a set of luxurious red couches and a shelf of books dedicated to golf, held up by a tartan duck bookend.
Astoria seized the duck and held it up triumphantly, pleased with its pattern and coloring.
Draco tried to sneer but the unlikelihood of the tartan duck got the better of him and he had to turn away to avoid smirking.
On the fourth floor, Alec gave a sticky door a mighty shove and discovered a long living room with a glistening parquet floor. They were so high up and removed from both the pipe smoking men and the street traffic that making noise seemed safer here than it had anywhere else. Alec wedged the door shut again behind them.
"Only the British!" cried Luc effusively the moment the door had been shut. "This has to be the weirdest building that I have ever been in!"
Maudlin laughed, dropping onto one of the long couches. "Draco, do you still have that bottle? See if you can find glasses."
Maudlin rummaged about in his pocket for the piece of paper he had been working on the night before and flattened it out.
There was a large cabinet full of dishes next to an ebony colored grand piano at the far end of the room. Draco indicated the shelf and then made a motion toward Montague, who promptly went to fetch anything that looked as though it could hold liquid. He returned moments later with six crystal champagne flutes.
The sky outside had darkened while they had been exploring and by the time Draco had filled the last glass with whatever amber colored vintage he had nicked, a soft snow had begun to fall.
"What's that?" asked Astoria, leaning over the couch behind Maudlin, holding the crystal glass carefully.
"The score," he answered, holding it up so that Astoria could have a look. "We're in the lead by six points."
This was mostly thanks to Luc's intoxication and Montague's ignorance of the rules, but Astoria and Maudlin smiled at each other like greedy children anyway.
"Of course you have a score sheet," sneered Draco, coming to stand next to Astoria, eyeing the back of Maudlin's head in a way that was as contemptuous as it was calculating. "It's enchanted, I suppose?"
"Of course," said Maudlin. "I haven't needed to keep a tally, have I?"
"You haven't got Montague's name on the roster," Draco pointed out flatly.
"I didn't know that he would be playing," Maudlin answered, annoyed by Draco's tone.
"Lend me your quill," said Draco.
Maudlin shuffled about in his pockets before coming to the obvious realization that he did not have one because he had charmed the score sheet instead. Another black line inked itself into being next to Team Silver's second place tally. Maudlin swore.
Draco let out a low, scathing sound under his breath and walked over to where Alec was fiddling with the piano keys.
Astoria smacked Maudlin on the shoulder. He turned around at once and threw both of his hands up in the air resentfully.
"Don't get cocky," Astoria hissed, certain that nothing would incite Draco and Alec more than smugness on Maudlin's part.
"Why shouldn't I?" Maudlin hissed back. "It's not my fault if Draco's a sore loser. What's wrong with him, anyway? He can sneer at me all he likes, it's just a bloody game."
Astoria was not insensible to the hypocrisy of Maudlin calling Dionysus Day 'just a game' but the fact that he had noticed something faintly hostile in Draco's behavior toward himself was far more worrisome to Astoria.
Truthfully, Astoria had more than once before spotted this same undercurrent of confrontational bitterness on Draco's part, but Maudlin had always seemed to be blissfully in the dark about it. The fact that he had finally caught a whiff of this latent displeasure did nothing for Astoria's sense of well being.
Astoria turned to peer at Draco, who was plunking out the most miserable version of a Chopin waltz that she had ever heard in her life on the piano, and thought carefully.
"He's always been competitive," Astoria suggested smoothly, sensing something of a lie in her forced detachment. "We are too. It's the nature of the game."
"Yes, but it's our game," insisted Maudlin, buying Astoria's explanation wholeheartedly. "He should mind his manners!"
Astoria smiled soothingly and made her way over toward the piano, feeling the need to attempt some sort of damage control, although how peace might be achieved, she did not know.
"I didn't know you could play piano, Malfoy," remarked Montague.
"He clearly can't," commented Alec, wincing at Draco's musical butchery.
"Let Alec play," Astoria suggested, wanting to free Draco from his distraction. "He plays beautifully."
Draco paused and shot Astoria a snide look. "Yeah right. I'm not falling for it, Greengrass."
"Falling for what?" Astoria laughed lightly. "That's why he went to Beuxbatons instead of Durmstrang, you know. He was practically a child prodigy."
"Never!" Montague joined. "Don't get up Malfoy, she's already in the lead."
"It's true, actually," remarked Alec, polishing off his drink. "The old headmaster—this was before Maxime's tenure—was such a covetous pompiste that he agreed to take me all the way from Russia without a single complaint about my lengthy commute. I think he just wanted to make sure that Igor couldn't have me. Maxime couldn't care less, it seems."
It took Astoria a moment to realize that by 'Igor", Alec had probably meant Karkoroff. Whose left arm had been hurting him lately...
Draco eyed Alec appraisingly, perhaps sensing that he was the type of person who could easily be hiding a savant-like artistic talent. Still, Draco seemed quite unwilling to hand Maudlin any points if he could help it.
"I'll get up if you can tell me what I'm playing," Draco decided, eyeing Alec's empty glass and remembering his own near the sofa.
"You're trying to play Chopin's waltz number eleven in G flat," said Alec, smirking repressively. "Although Lord knows it was nearly impossible to tell."
Draco plonked the keys under his fingers and stood up, not even bothering to acquit himself rudely. "You play it, then."
Alec put his empty glass down and sat. He spread his fingers and the moment he touched them to the keys it became obvious that his hitherto hinted talents had actually been understated.
It had occurred to Astoria before that it was not so much Alec's memory for the notes that made him so remarkable to listen to; it was his fluid, staggeringly impressive grasp of timing. Nothing lurched and Astoria's ear never sensed the crooked tremor of a flightless flaw. It was as though Alec dreamed songs into audible melody. For a moment, even Draco, who probably could not actually care less about playing piano, fell silent to watch Alec's hands.
Lulled by the song and her champagne glass full of ill-gotten drink, Astoria reflected that everything about Alec, from his salmon pink linen shirt to the rather affected way that he was able to twist his hands, spoke of unattainable beauty. Everything except his actual face, at least. Draco had described Alec with a rare truthfulness when he had first met him at the Quidditch World Cup, before Alec's strange and inimitable glamour had had the chance to get the best of him.
Astoria strained to remember what exactly Draco had said and his words came floating back to her like a ghost: 'He almost looks like me. Of course, I don't wear pink and I've never run headfirst into a wall with my face...'
Astoria choked on a laugh and glanced at Draco. Draco's eyes flicked reflexively toward her the moment he realized that she was staring at him. He flushed, perhaps thinking that she had been laughing at his concentration on Alec's nimble fingering.
The music stopped abruptly. Alec had been distracted by Montague, who was rolling a loose-leaf cigarette of the same sort that he occasionally sold Theodore. "Roll me one of those and I'll make you the winner of Dionysus Day," he declared.
"What will you turn me into if I say no?" asked Montague, trying for a weak joke.
"Mittens," murmured Alec, smirking to himself as he poured another half measure from the bottle.
By the time they began climbing back down the flights of seemingly endless stairs, Astoria knew that she had drunk exactly as much as she was going to allow herself. Each floor seemed to be an exact imitation of the last, the details merging together like a narrow, strangely shaped mirage.
The front desk was no longer unmanned when they reached the ground floor. The receptionist cast them a very startled look as they slipped down through the front parlor. He called out after them but, with Maudlin leading the charge, they were all out of the door before the poor man could get up from his chair.
"Around here," called Luc, red in the face from laughter. "There's an alleyway."
They ducked down it and continued to run until they came out near the river, which was transformed by a layer of frothy looking ice. The soft snow seemed to be picking up. They all huddled together under the branches of a nearby tree, seeking shelter. Although it was only the late afternoon, darkness was creeping along the horizon. Their curfew would not be for several hours, but an early winter night was nearly upon them.
"Absolute madhouse," said Luc. "It's no wonder you lot have never heard of it. Who would stay there?"
Astoria shivered violently, watching as the smoke from Alec's hand rolled cigarette disappeared into the navy blue twilight.
"I thought it was hilarious," she chattered, thinking fondly of the bathroom sofa.
"You've always had an odd sympathy for the eclectic," mused Maudlin indulgently.
"More like for the crooked," said Draco coldly, somehow annoyed by Maudlin's amusement at Astoria's unique sense of taste. "Between old Nott Sr. and that weird room near the Astronomy tower, I'm not even surprised. You would enjoy the aesthetic of The Corner."
Something about the name of the ridiculous establishment they had just abandoned being used so formally provoked a jolt of laugher from everybody present.
Almost thankful that Draco had insulted her, Astoria ducked under the loose corner of his cloak for additional warmth, certain that nobody would think she had done so because he was especially fond of her. Draco let out a weird, nasal sound of annoyance but did not jerk away from her.
"Say, Maudlin, could I borrow your lighter?" asked Montague, his voice strained with unnatural coyness. Astoria blinked, prepared to shout out a warning but Maudlin had already reached for the lighter he did not own. Montague let out a whoop of triumph.
"The worst game," muttered Alec, shaking his head at the gathering darkness.
A particularly vengeful burst of wind parted the spiny branches of the tree and Astoria shuffled further into Draco's cloak, gazing enviously at Luc's barely visible hat.
"Do we go back to the castle?" asked Montague, finally taking stock of the intense chill.
"And do what?" wondered Maudlin, shuffling his feet to keep the cold from making them numb.
Draco leaned back against the tree trunk behind him, casting a wary look at Maudlin before tugging Astoria toward him again. Astoria readily tucked back under the corner of his cloak. Behind her, Draco's hand found her arm and lingered there, unseen.
Suddenly, it took everything Astoria had to focus on the conversation and Draco's hand at the same time. The fact that he was touching her underneath his cloak could easily be explained away by the chill or convenience, but Astoria had a sneaking suspicion that he had left it there because he had known Astoria would have shrugged him off if he had allowed the gesture to be visible. This bit of subtle awareness on Draco's part, no matter how trivial, was enough to make Astoria go still.
Not for the first time, Astoria reflected that the game she and Draco so often played was only fun for Astoria if she was the one refereeing it. The idea that Draco might have learned the rules so well that he had become capable of facilitating her weirdness was a little startling. On the one hand, it made her feel like a fraud, and she did not like the fact that this was something Malfoy knew how to provoke. On the other, it was almost fascinating that anyone could have observed her highly varied behavior with such devotion as to have been able to pick out a pattern in it.
Against better logic, and because she knew that they were about to move anyway, Astoria nudged back against Draco's chest. It was the only test she could think of that would help her decipher between an accidental gesture and an act of motivated cunning.
After a moment's pause that Luc filled with noise, Draco's shifted slightly to the side and his arm slid down so that she was tucked into the nook below his shoulder.
Draco laughed shortly at something Alec said but Astoria's chest was surging with a mixture of triumph and dread, and she did not hear the joke.
Immediately, Astoria found herself challenging the logic of what she was experiencing. Draco and Astoria barely even claimed to be good friends with each other around mixed company. How far did this willingness to touch her stretch? She had slept next to him after the Quidditch World Cup, but he had known that Astoria had no other place to go. She had essentially been a refugee and his actions could be chalked up as an act of kindness. At what point would obviousness make Draco recoil for fear of exposing himself? Or perhaps he wasn't thinking about his actions at all and Astoria's proximity to his body meant nothing to him? An explainable action triggered by the winter temperature?
Emboldened by the butterbeer, the cover of the falling darkness and Draco's relative inability to ask her what she was doing, Astoria felt about until she located his wrist and quietly slipped her fingers inside his sleeve. If he had been unconscious of what he was doing before, Astoria felt certain that this would be too pointed to miss.
Draco let out a weird breath, the only sign of recognition on his part, but said nothing about Astoria's reaching hand. After a lengthy pause, during which Astoria observed him like a master-brewer waiting to see what color her potion would turn, Draco subtly turned his arm over. Suddenly, Astoria's fingers did not have to fight to warm up against his skin. A second adjustment on Draco's part and her hand curled softly against the pulse just below his palm.
What are you doing? Astoria's mind seemed to demand slyly. Bad ideas don't even need time to gain a foothold around you, do they?
"We'll go back to the carriage, then," said Maudlin, nodding in agreement with Alec, who must have made the suggestion in the first place. Astoria followed them back out into the halo of streetlight, thankful for a reason to move out of the shadows.
It was a long, stiff walk back to the grounds. The evergreens that lined the road continued to sway, but their boughs had turned an inky emerald color and the dark spaces between the tree trunks sent shivers up Astoria's spine that had nothing to do with the climate.
She was very thankful indeed when they reached the carriage, although it seemed possible that the cold had seeped into Astoria's bones so many times throughout the day that she would never be able to properly warm up again.
Early evening arrived, maturing into a proper moonless void outside Maudlin's only dormitory window. Their pranks, such as they were, grew lazier and most of the efforts seemed to be made on Luc's part. Secure in her six point lead, Astoria tried to make herself comfortable in a chair until midnight.
"When my father becomes Minister, I might ask him to make Dionysus Day a national holiday," Maudlin drawled, glancing across the room at Astoria for support.
"Yes!" Astoria trilled gleefully. "We'll go around to all the Heads of Office and plead our case!"
Maudlin tipped his head back and laughed. "In the summer, though! We'd have to go in the summer, otherwise all of the blind old men would mistake you for father's accountant."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Astoria demanded, entirely taken aback.
"Just that you'd have more luck campaigning if you weren't wearing three sweaters, a cloak and a blanket," Maudlin scoffed, surveying the nest Astoria had created for herself in one of his purple armchairs.
"I'm cold," Astoria returned, stunned.
"So am I, but I'm not dressed like a groundhog," Maudlin scoffed. His eyes darted away, perhaps sensing that he had phrased himself poorly.
"Groundhogs don't dress," said Astoria coldly. "I'm a girl. Unlike you, I'll always be pretty, no matter what I'm wearing."
"You think you're prettier than me?" Maudlin demanded, ruffling slightly.
"Can you hear yourself right now?" Astoria asked, counting Draco's snide laughter as a vote of support.
"Yes, well," Maudlin blustered, fiddling with his tie. "I'm more symmetrical than you are, you know."
"That's not even a thing," Astoria argued.
"God," Luc groaned. "Is there anything worse than listening to two good looking people argue about who's prettier?"
"I'm not arguing," said Astoria, adjusting her blanket with as much dignity as she could muster, feeling very annoyed with herself. "It's not my fault Maudlin is so vain."
"That's ridiculous," Maudlin huffed, crossing his legs at the ankle.
"You're wearing velvet shoes!" Astoria snapped, unable to stop herself.
"You get angry whenever I'm better than you at something," said Maudlin haltingly, a mask of forced calm disguising the childish annoyance he could not seem to rise above.
"Better than me?" commented Astoria scathingly. "At what? Being symmetrical?"
"I'm good at plenty things. You just don't like to admit it," snapped Maudlin, actual color rising in his cheeks.
"Such as?" Astoria sneered, still feeling the comparison that had been drawn between herself and a groundhog rather keenly.
"I'm not going to list my skills for you," Maudlin sniffed.
"If this carriage was suddenly transported by Portkey to a barren wilderness, you would be the first person I would eat," Astoria decided, giving her blanket another rough flourish.
Plainly cheered, Draco slouched back in his seat, eyes bright with a glittering delight that he could not be bothered to conceal.
"Well, that would be a mistake," Maudlin sneered, losing his careful composure at last. "People would actually look for me. Nobody would care if you disappeared."
"The search party wouldn't know we'd eaten you," Astoria reasoned nastily. "You'd probably find a way to accidentally murder us before help could arrive, anyway. Killing you early would practically count as a public service. Wort case scenario, there's four other boys here. We could repopulate without you."
Luc howled with mirth.
"Who would you repopulate with?" demanded Maudlin sharply, thoroughly distracted by this notion.
"Alec," chose Astoria unhesitatingly, entirely certain that Alec would live the longest in any survival scenario if only because he did not need to rely on a house-elf to tie his shoes.
Draco sneered but Alec grinned at her from behind Montague's flailing, hysterical limbs.
"You'd kill me and have babies with my best friend?" demanded Maudlin, his lip curling as though Astoria had actually attempted to do just that. "It's nice to know that our entire childhood counted for so much, Astoria. What if I pulled a coup and had Alec butchered first?"
"Of course," drawled Alec wryly, "butcher the survivor first. That seems reasonable."
"You'd be stuck with my useless, velvet wearing stock then, wouldn't you?" Maudlin continued bitterly, more upset by this than he should be, even if the conversation had been calculated to annoy him.
"Or Malfoy's, more likely," Astoria shrugged, feeling that even Draco made for a smarter second choice than Maudlin.
"What kind of conversation is this?" demanded Luc, wiping actual tears of mirth from his eyes. "What's wrong with Montague and I?"
"He's hairy and you're stupid," Maudlin snapped, shooting Astoria a sour look.
Somewhere in the hallway, a clock began to chime for midnight, distracting Luc before he could respond.
"What's the score?" asked Montague at once. "How much did we lose by?"
"Pour everyone a nightcap, Alec," said Maudlin, heaving himself out of his chair. "I was going to let you choose the punishment, Astoria, but since you seem to keen on breeding with Team Silver—" Maudlin froze, his eyes arrested by something on the score sheet.
"What?" asked Astoria sharply, disliking the look on Maudlin's face immensely.
Maudlin opened his mouth and then closed it again.
"What?" Astoria repeated shrilly.
"You lost," remarked Alec pitilessly, not even needing to read the sheet over Maudlin's shoulder.
Astoria turned toward Maudlin, drowning in self-loathing for having become so distracted that she had lost track of the score.
"Alec won?" Astoria exclaimed, climbing out of her blankets.
"Luc and Montague did!" exploded Maudlin, positively beside himself. "They must have snuck up on us in the carriage! It shouldn't even count! That was some of the weakest mischief that I've ever seen!"
Luc leapt off the couch with both hands over his head, hollering his disbelief. For a moment, Astoria contemplated murdering him.
"Wait, do we get to punish everybody, then?" asked Montague, fighting to keep up with this unexpected turn of events.
"Just the losers," said Astoria quickly. "The middle team should be neutral."
"Works for me," said Alec, who had obviously been keeping a mental tally because he was smirking repressively. "You came in last."
"We should make them stand outside in the rain for three hours!" suggested Luc, taking to his new position of power with a trace of long-repressed cruelty. "How about I make you two sit alone in the Great Hall for the rest of the year? How would you like that?"
"They had to perform on stage as punishment for their first defeat," suggested Alec mildly, a strange glimmer in his eye. "Why not have them reenact the show for us? This is the last Dionysus Day, after all. It's almost poetic."
"Don't be childish, Alec," sniffed Maudlin feebly.
Astoria felt as though she had been plunged into a nightmare. She had been so certain of their inevitable triumph that defeat seemed to have struck her dumb.
"It was an opera," Maudlin spluttered. "You can't expect us to just sing an opera!"
"I'm not singing anything from H.M.S Pinafore!" Astoria sneered. The group fallen in to form a circle around herself and Maudlin. None of them looked at all sorry about watching them suffer.
"As luck would have it," Alec murmured, triumphant glee pulling on the corners of his mouth, "I've seen all the works of Gilbert and Sullivan. I do have such an ear for melody..."
"There's a camera in Cassandra's room," said Luc, "and a Kazoo in my trunk, if you want to play for them, Alec."
0o0
Well, I had real plans to dedicate the first half of this chapter to Dionysus Day and the second half to the start of spring term, but somewhere along the way I became too long winded for that. (I blame 'The Corner' and its amusing interior decoration for keeping everyone in Hogsmeade longer than they needed to be).
These types of chapters always make me nervous, though. They're super fun to write, but they tend to end up being removed from familiar settings and lack the full cast. We'll wade back into classes with the next chapter (and Rita Skeeter's article about Hagrid). The second task is approaching, so the goblins may make a reappearance as well. I'm toying with the idea of having Belladonna come to watch. I think it's high time she met the twins and it might be hard to contrive a scenario where they would formally visit Astoria at home.
SIDEBAR: I know some of you don't tend to like the drinking chapters, but as it was New Years Eve and at least half of the group is technically above the legal age (17), I had a hard time imagining that they would abstain. Apologies to anyone who was annoyed.
As always, reviews are an amazing treat. :)