Chapter 2
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It wasn't the first time Astoria had been angry at the circumstances in which she found herself and it certainly wouldn't be the last. She knew she should consider herself lucky that she was alive, but the fact of the matter was that she was alive and thus couldn't help but feel angry at her powerlessness.
Her parents were gone, the war having stolen them in senseless violence – or so her uncle told her. She was not so naive to think it hadn't been done deliberately; someone had planned the fall of the last neutral Greengrass's and she would never believe it was the freedom fighters who had been blamed. They did not seek to annihilate purebloods – only Voldemort.
Thinking of the terrible man-thing who held such an iron fist in her life for all that she had never met him, anger bubbled in her once more.
Purity was a myth, a phantom, an ideal that could never be fulfilled. They were a dying breed, those families who could still claim purity, and one day they would be extinct. It was the way of the future. It did not mean they would ever lose their culture, the nobility that defined the core values of the wizarding world, but fear was a nasty thing. Fear of the unknown, of the loss of power. It'd driven them to a world full of nothing but fear and pain.
Astoria hated her uncle, her cousin. She loathed those she'd grown up with who had taken the mark; could they not see how they killed themselves a little every day? Could they not see they were slaves? Her skin was yet unblemished and she thanked whatever deity was out there that it was so. She would die before her time, to be sure, but at least she would die her own person.
The door clicked open and Astoria shifted on the window seat to spy who might have disturbed her quiet. Her cell.
"Astoria, Father would have you in the gentleman's lounge." Daphne's lips curled into a smirk that Astoria did not trust. Her cousin was duplicitous and ice cold, as frigid as the presentation she gave; gloriously tall, blond and beautiful in wintry sort of way.
"I shall be down momentarily. Thank you, Daphne." The words were polite, pleasantly neutral, and Astoria hated every moment that she had to hide how she felt.
When the door clicked shut behind her cousin, Astoria's gaze went back to the window and the frost covered grounds below. It was just as desolate and hopeless out of doors; the sky was an endless cloud of murky gray that was as ominous as her summoning.
She knew why she had not died with her parents. They wanted Michael. They wanted her bastard half-blood brother, leader of a group of freedom fighters – the last bastions of the body that had once called themselves the Order of the Pheonix and Dumbledore's Army. They wanted Neville and Ginny and Roger, Lisa and Luna. There were so few of them left now, all broken up into small groups.
Most had died in the war. Harry had fallen, Ron Weasley too. It was said Hermione Granger was yet alive, but it'd been over a year since she'd been seen. Astoria shouldn't know these things. She shouldn't know how many her brother traveled with, or that they hadn't been more than a fortnight at their last safe house before the Death Eaters had found them. She shouldn't know that Roger was badly injured and they weren't sure if he would make it or not, not without the medical care so badly needed that they couldn't get.
Voldemort despised Muggles and everything to do with them, but he was thorough; every Muggle hospital was riddled with spells and alarm wards, every train station and major port, the same. The International Apparation stations were corrupt. She feared the day she would no longer receive messages from her brother – feared more that she would be notified he had been found. Either meant death, and there was little other reason to keep trying when everyone she loved was either dead or hunted, all the others she had once had faith in now branded with the Dark Mark and aligned with those who had murdered her family.
Sighing, Astoria pulled her gaze from the looming storm on the horizon and slipped from the window seat. The black silk of her dress whispered against her skin and her heels made a light tap against the stone floor. She looked a ghost framed in the color of the night, the hue stark against her moonlight skin, but she'd worn no other since her papa had died, since Michael's mother, her mother, had gone with him.
Devon would be wanting her and her uncle was not a patient man; she did not care to sport the evidences of his displeasure, not this eve. The bruises covered with cosmetic charms from the last she had displeased him had not yet healed.
oOo
"You have been briefed then," Draco commented idly, hands clasped behind his back as his eyes skimmed over Devon Greengrass, assessing this man who would murder and sell his family.
"Thoroughly, and we are happy to serve." Late fifties, peppered hair, cunningly aware dark eyes and a hard set to his mouth. But for the cold assessing gaze, he was nothing Draco might have imagined as Daphne's father; his blond yearmate was as fair as this man was dark. Despite the coloring of the family, Draco could see that Devon was a shrewd man, canny. It was certainly obvious why Voldemort had accepted him into the elite ranks after the war. Neutral, the Greengrass's had always been, but it was plainly obvious that Devon had chafed at straddling the fence for so long.
He was very plainly of the same ilk as many of the Marked. Perhaps that was why he'd murdered his own blood - the only thing standing between him and whatever glory he perceived – to be of the Dark Lord's elite.
It made Draco wonder at why he'd spared his niece at all. Though, he knew better. He could see the sharp cunning in the man standing across from him; he had seen value in his niece. She was another expendable pawn in his quest for power. Such betrayals of family from a clearly sane man made Draco sick, though he did not let the thought show on his face or countenance.
"I will be sure to affirm the Dark Lord of your allegiance," Draco finally said with a small nod, attention drawn from the man framed in the flames of the fire, to the door when it clicked.
Whatever he'd been expecting, the small woman framed in the doorway was not it.
He'd known Daphne, though they hadn't ever been close. Daphne was tall and lithely beautiful, all the shades of his mother and himself; fair from her white-blond hair to her ice blue eyes.
The woman in the door looking from himself to Devon was warily hesitant, delicately small, and dark in every way Daphne was light but for the ivory pale of her skin. She was pretty and he wondered at why he might have missed her when they were in school, though he hadn't ever been prone to pay any attention to the younger years.
He was not done studying this woman he was to marry, not at all, but Draco stirred into motion and strode across the room, swept his robe away in a flourish and lightly grasped her hand to press a light kiss to her knuckles. "Miss Greengrass," he murmured by way of greeting. "The room is warmer for your presence. Thank you for joining us."
When he slid his gaze up to hers, he did not miss the startled surprise etched in her features and he was unable to stop his eyes from traveling to the slight part of her lips.
Astoria's dark, alarmed gaze followed Draco as he stood to his full height again. Something was amiss. Draco was one of the favored and that he was in her uncle's home, that her presence had been requested ... it did not bode well and a chill went down her spine.
Draco's mouth nearly turned down as he saw fear flash in her eyes.
"Why don't you come further in into the room, my dear. We shant bite you," Devon cajoled, the warmth of humor touching his voice.
Astoria knew it for a lie, or more, for truth caged perfectly in the deception of humor. Her uncle would bite. She'd felt the sting of his anger on more than one occasion since she'd come to live on the main estate with him and Daphne.
"Yes uncle, of course," she murmured softly, dropping her gaze from Draco demurely and shifting to the side to pass by him.
"Allow me?" he said, offering her his arm.
Again, Astoria felt unease slither through her, but she knew she could not show it, not in this room, not with these men. So she nodded and slid her hand into the crook of Draco's arm, murmured a soft, "thank you."
Draco watched her longer than he likely should have. She was hiding. He knew she was hiding things, but there was more to it than that. He did not expertly maneuver around the most frightening men and women in their world without having learned to read every nuance of a person.
"I'm glad you find Draco acceptable as an escort," Devon said then, pulling their attention to his person.
"Yes, uncle?" she ventured, unsure, frightened and angry all at once for the smug victory she could see in his features.
"Yes, dear niece," Devon continued as they came to stand before him near the grate, the flames licking at the shadows in the candlelit room. "Draco Malfoy looks for a pure wife who would give him pure children, a woman who will yield as she ought."
The smile that curled his lips was not friendly, but ominous, and gooseflesh covered every bit of bare skin at both the way her uncle was looking at her and the implications behind his words, the hint he'd not yet solidified with truth. He was teasing her for sport; another reason to hate him.
"He has asked for your lovely hand in marriage, dear niece, and I have found your acceptance an honor to the family."
She went still. Astoria had known something was coming, but the reality of it filling the air, accepted by fate, was earth-shattering.
Draco knew how such things worked, had seen worse than this little tête-à-tête, but still, something about the situation, the way Devon Greengrass was looking at his niece, so obviously helpless and scared, did not sit right with him.
He'd watched his Aunt Bella torture, had expertly dispensed the Killing Curse himself, and had seen Voldemort torment prisoners for information. Little had he seen blood turn on blood. He did what he must to keep the power that enabled him to live and navigate the new order, but blood was what it was all about. The war had been fought for blood. Draco did not truly believe purity was the way of the world, but might made right and he was with the mighty. His family had always come first though. Or it had, once upon a time. His mother would be disappointed in him and his father.
It was the guilt ridden thought that had him covering the tiny hand in the crook of his arm with his own and offering the shocked and shaken woman at his side a softer look than her uncle. "It would be an honor," he said, surprised that he meant it.
What that suggested, he did not know. There was still Ginny and his mission, but he could offer small mercies.
"You don't even know me?" she breathed, wide eyes shifting from her uncle to Draco. "What would behoove you to marry me? I am the lesser of the heirs, daughter of the younger son. I am orphan now," she could feel the hard, angry gaze of her uncle and Astoria rushed to add, "taken in by my generous uncle. Would not Daphne be more suitable for the honor as Mrs. Malfoy? Your house is great and I am but-"
"Astoria." It was one word, but Devon's voice cut her off.
Draco felt her tense, tremble, then go unnaturally still. "Come with me, to Malfoy Manor," he interjected, knowing in that moment that the lure of elsewhere would be this little snake's undoing. It was startlingly clear to him in that moment that she was prisoner here, and though there was no marks on her pristine ivory skin, Draco was no fool. They were somewhere. "Come meet my father and see what I should give you."
Astoria knew there was more to this set up. They were both up to something, but her dark eyes shot to Draco at the invitation.
To be away from the Greengrass estate, from her uncle and her cousin. To be away from Devon's heavy hand and Daphne's biting words about her step-mother, her father for adopting a 'half-breed' bastard. Perhaps into another prison, but at least it wouldn't be this one.
Even though she knew something was amiss, that there was only ill-intent here - she knew of the hasty marriages that had been going on, knew that this sudden proposal could only mean her own peril in some way - despite it all, it gave her hope that it might be better if she was away from this soul-sucking, desolate place where her uncle and cousin knew enough of her family to make every dig more painful than the last.
"Yes," she said then, the word breathless and rushed. "Yes," she said again, warmth filling her for the first time in longer than she could remember, warmth for a hope she'd only held kindled in her heart for her brother and his survival. "I am honored to accept your proposal," she said, bright eyes finding Draco's. "Our family is honored to share blood with you."
He'd known it would be her undoing; she'd said the perfect words, what all pureblood women were taught to say, but Draco's attention was only focused on the glowing tint of pink at the height of her cheeks, brightening her eyes. She was exhilarated, happy for this change. He knew why, an easy deduction, but in that moment, Draco realized Astoria Greengrass was beautiful.
A cruel, satisfied smile curled Devon's lips. "And so it shall be."