When Sam got home to Malfoy Manor, it was around the time the family was usually sitting down for dinner, not in the dining hall which was only for dinner parties, but the more normal-sized dining room next to the kitchen.
Beautiful lamps dotted all of the walls, casting a warm fiery glow on the dark mahogany table where some one-pot-pasta was sitting, still in the pot it was cooked in.
"You're home," Draco greeted Sam rather grimly as he walked into the room and sat down at the table.
"I see you've cooked dinner tonight father, how… charming." They both laughed looking at the state of their dinner table, which was usually lavishly covered in a range of strange and interesting dishes whipped up by Astoria.
"Well if you ever saw your mother try to clean the kitchen after cooking dinner, you would probably call that rather less charming. We've had a well-balanced system for many years and it was you, Sam, that disrupted that tonight."
Sam sat down at the table, unable to meet Draco's eyes. "I know, I'm very sorry for what I said, I had no idea what I was talking about."
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Draco nodded, accepting the apology, "And that is not entirely your fault - your mother never thought you would hear about Yatin and so never thought it necessary to explain what happened."
"His name was Yatin?"
"Yatin Bhagat." Astoria's voice called out clearly as she entered the room, "His name was Yatin Bhagat."
A silence filled the room as Sam waited for an indication of what to do next, were they going to explain things or were they going to move on and never speak of it again (which was rather a household habit at Malfoy Manor).
Astoria sat down slowly across from Sam and started spooning the slightly goopy pasta into a bowl, "Well, aren't you going to eat?"
Both Sam and Draco also filled their bowls and once they had looked around awkwardly for long enough, Astoria started to tell her story.
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"Yatin you won't be allowed back to Hogwarts next month. He Who Must Not Be Named has completely taken over and this Muggle-Born Registration Commission are going to find you and, and they could kill you."
Astoria and Yatin were arguing in a thicket of trees behind her family home. She knew the longer they spent out here arguing, the more likely they might be caught - she shivered to think of what would happen to Yatin then.
"Well what am I supposed to do Astoria, hideout with my parents where Death Eaters could track me and kill my entire family at any moment?"
Astoria through her arms around him and buried her face into his neck as she sobbed. They stayed like that for a while, just holding each other in fear. Where they were now seemed so far away from all the shy and tender moments of young love that had blossomed between them in fifth year.
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"You have to go on the run. Find some friends and stay out of the cities. There has to be other Muggle Borns trying to evade the Commission, if you stick together you'll survive and protect each other. Don't ever say You Know Who's real name - there's a Taboo curse on it and they'll find you straight away. And please, just stay safe."
Astoria then thrust a backpack at Yatin, it was full of all the supplies she could sneak out of her home without arousing suspicion.
Her Slytherin classmate had been with her through all her years of schooling.
It was awful to think of going back to Hogwarts with its new 'professors' the Carrows and Snape has headmaster, without him.
Yatin put on the backpack and they both gazed into each other's eyes for a heartbreaking moment, wondering if this was the last time they would ever see each other.
Astoria leaned in and caressed his face, before kissing him with everything she had in her - she needed him to know that he was loved, that something was waiting for him at the end of this war, that he had to come back to her.
Yatin kissed her back passionately, his hands entwining in her long black hair, pulling her closer, closer, closer.
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When they finally broke apart, they were both crying.
"When this war is over, I am going to find you and we are going to be together again."
"I know. I love you," he whispered gently.
"I love you too, so much."
They shared another chaste kiss in the dark before Yatin stepped back and apparated away with a loud CRACK.
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It was months before Astoria heard any news of Yatin, they'd cut off all contact to protect his safety.
When she heard his name over the radio on Potterwatch one evening, the breath caught in her throat as she listened alone in an alcove near the Slytherin Common Room.
She almost vomited from the wave of illness that crashed through her body when she realised what it meant, what had happened to him.
Astoria felt sick for days, walking the halls like the living dead, unable to eat or sleep.
No one knew what had happened to poor Astoria Greengrass to make her almost incomprehensible - but she kept going to class to keep up appearances in case any one suspected she might be harbouring rebel sympathies.
Eventually, she made it out of Hogwarts when the final battle began, devastated and sickened by the violence, and when the war was over, she purged all pureblood supremacy from her life.
She wouldn't hear a bar of it form her parents, she threw out every heirloom connected to it and even burned up a painting of her Great Aunt Andrea, known for screeching about muggle borns through the halls of her home every now and then.
She was never the same.
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"Yatin was killed by Snatchers while on the run in the North Wessex Downs. After the war ended, we managed to find his body… to bury it."
Astoria swallowed more tears as she tried to cease the stream that had been flowing down her cheeks as she relayed what had happened to Yatin.
"I just… I always felt like it was my fault. They locked so many muggle borns in Azkaban who were released afterwards. Some received the Dementor's kiss but others… they survived! I was the one who told Yatin to go on the run and that's how he died-"
Draco interrupted her as though he had done so, to say the same things many times before.
"Astoria you were both children. You were 15 years old, you had no idea what the Commission was planning to do to people - for all you knew they were murdering every single person who turned themselves in. You know it's not healthy for you to blame yourself."
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Astoria turned her face away to dab at her eyes with a lace-trimmed white handkerchief. She had brought it in advance, knowing she would need it.
"I have to live with my regrets and you have to live with yours Draco. That is a part of our lives since the war Sam, we are tormented every day with the decisions we made, because we were not on the right side…"
The ensuing silence made Sam feel rather entirely out of place. He didn't know how to deal with the trauma his mother had just shared it him, and the complicity they felt in the war.
He simply thanked Merlin that his problems were significantly smaller than the barbarity of the Second Wizarding War.
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"Mother I'm sorry for mentioning Yatin. I had no right and I was completely ignorant of the real reason you could never have been with him - he was taken from you by Voldemort and by pure-blood supremacy, and I am truly sorry"
A ghost of a smile graced Astoria's lips, "Thank you Sam. I married your father only after he had proved to me that the war had turned him away from pureblood supremacy, just as it had me, and we raised you without all that nonsense clouding your head."
After a slight eyebrow raise from Draco that only Astoria noticed, the prompt reminded her to begrudgingly add, "And I am sorry for being too critical of you and Rose - the times are changing and while I may never fully understand your decision, you are an adult and you can make your own choices about your love life. Far be it for me to try and involve myself in the world of a young 24-year-old wizard."
And with that they dug into the exceedingly average pasta Draco had made for dinner, Astoria being wiser than Sam to criticise it. She knew it might encourage him to suggest she clean the kitchen - and that was simply not happening tonight.