Haha, I'm not really supposed to be on the computer this late, don't tell anyone...
DISCLAIMER AND RATING: I do not own any aspect of the Harry Potter franchise. I am not J.K. Rowling or Warner Bros. I do not have any claim over the characters, their personalities, or actions. I just like making their personalities bounce off each other in these little tales called fanfiction. So please, don't sue me. I can't afford it right now. Rating: PG thru PG-13. Astoria gets angry...
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So, I'm trying to get Draco and Astoria to tone down on their dramatics a little. I was reading through the previous chapters and thought, 'Oh my God. All they ever do is fight. How can this happen if all they ever do is fight?' And yes, now, finally: Occlumency, Part Two. It's here! It's kicking!
So, here it is. Hope I don't disappoint.
Occlumency, Part Two
by Shu of the Wind
***
Astoria angled her broom around the goal posts again, relishing the feel of the bristling February wind on her face.
Flying had always meant a great deal to her, far more than any of the 'suitable activities for a young lady of pure blood' that her stepmother had harped on ever since she'd married Astoria's father. Her mother had taught her how to fly, using her experience as a Seeker for the Welsh International Quidditch Team to direct Astoria as a little girl. It had been the one thing that she and her mother could both fully comprehend without ever saying anything; by the time she'd turned six, her mother was already comfortable with Astoria accompanying her in complicated dangerous maneuvers like the Wronski Feint – something that had terrified Astoria's father – and Astoria had already started planning out her life as a internationally ranked Quidditch player. Daphne had had a talent for flying, too, but even she admitted that she had had nothing compared to Astoria and her mother.
And then her mother had died, falling from her broomstick at nearly two hundred feet in the air, and her stepmother, Niobe, had come into the house, with her strict ways and upright manners. Daphne had changed her habits, acclimated, but Astoria had refused to stop flying – or doing anything that she damn well pleased, as long as it was within the bounds of reason.
She wondered if that was why her stepmother always looked as though she was sucking on lemons when Astoria was around.
She'd tried out for the Slytherin Quidditch team the year before, and managed to make reserve Beater. She'd enjoyed smacking the Bludgers with a bat, but the inherent sexism of the Slytherin team had kept her from making any sort of official position, despite the fact that she had been far better than the others who had tried out – she'd managed to smack someone with a Bludger ten times out of ten. Goyle had only managed it three times.
Damn Urquhart.
Of course, now considering what she was doing, being on the Quidditch team would have taken up too much of her time. Made it impossible to keep a low profile.
Astoria whipped her broom around, sliding to a stop in midair. She'd been supposed to meet Malfoy this morning, for the first reinstated Occlumency lesson, but she'd come early. Just because she now had Occlumency in the mornings didn't mean that she now didn't need the Saturday flights which had calmed her for so many years. In fact, it meant that she probably needed them more – spending any sort of time with Draco Malfoy without having been absolutely clean and calm beforehand would have probably resulted in murder.
The air felt clean and pure against her face. She rolled, heading down to run her fingers along the grass of the pitch, still going as fast as she could; the blades felt like little needles against her fingertips as she pulled past them, and she yanked her broom up again as a familiar figure walked through the other end of the pitch, not carrying a broom.
She angled down to the ground, swung off of her broom, and stood in front of him, nervous. "Malfoy."
He grunted. Clearly, he didn't take early mornings well.
He looked less grey than the last time they'd met here, less thin. For some reason, the argument seemed to have allowed him to eat again; he was clearly content with the explanation she'd offered him. But it was also clear that he was furious and embarrassed at having blown up so obviously, Malfoy who prided himself on his control, and Astoria couldn't help but feel a slight prickle of apprehension all through her body as he glared at her broomstick, her heavy cloak, and her windswept hair.
"What the hell were you doing?"
"Flying," Astoria snapped back, put automatically on the defensive. "What's it matter to you?"
He sneered. "Nothing. Why should I care?"
She bit her tongue so she wouldn't snarl anything back. As much as she wanted to shout at him for acting like such a complete and total git, she also knew that he wouldn't be willing to continue teaching her Occlumency if she did. So she just scowled, and remained silent.
"You know the basics of Occlumency." Malfoy said, clearly pleased with himself for having irritated her so early in the morning. "The other side to it is Legilimency. It's easier to defend and protect your mind if you know both."
"That wasn't what we agreed." Astoria began, but he narrowed his eyes at her.
"You blackmail me into teaching you, you're going to learn what I damn well have to teach." Malfoy said snidely, staring at her broomstick again. "And if you're not going to fly away, it's probably a good idea for you to put that down. If it drags you away during the middle of this I'm not going to help you."
She hastily put the broom down on the referee's bench, feeling stupid, and had just opened her mouth to ask a question when she realized that Malfoy had pointed his wand at her.
She felt the spell hit her in the belly like a fist, and at once memories began to flash through her mind – her mother, blonde and gentle and talented, giving Astoria her first broomstick – the wedding of her father and Niobe, with Astoria sitting in the background, a rebellious twelve-year-old all in black to mourn the forgetting of her mother as Daphne acted as flower girl – the interior of the well she'd fallen in as a child, sour and black and moldy, the water filling her mouth – the face of the third-year she'd tortured, the first time she had been forced to torture anyone, tears pouring down his cheeks as he screamed and screamed –
She focused hard on the mind linked to her own and snapped the connection, and the world came back into focus. Malfoy lowered his wand, his eyes glittering; he looked a little paler than before.
"Better." He said finally; he obviously begrudged the word a great deal. "Who was the black-haired woman?"
"My stepmother." Astoria said through gritted teeth. "My mother died when I was eight. Niobe started hanging around my father a year later, and it took four years for her to convince him to marry her."
Her hatred was apparent in her voice. Malfoy's eyebrows rose, but he said nothing about it; after a moment, he shook his arm once to loosen it and pointed his wand again.
"Legilimens!"
This time, Astoria was prepared for it; she could fight back. The reel of images from her past – Daphne, laughing at a ridiculous haircut that Niobe had given her; her mother, gliding through the air like a bird – had only just begun when she shook him out of her mind, and pulled her own wand from her pocket, ready to defend herself if she had to.
"How is this a lesson?" She panted, pointing her wand into his face. Malfoy didn't lower his, so she was certain it would have looked as though they were dueling to anyone who walked onto the pitch at that moment.
"When someone wants to invade your mind, you're not going to get any warning." He spat. "And you're probably not going to have a wand. Put it with your broomstick."
"I'm not letting go of my wand." Astoria said, calm again. "Sorry, Malfoy, but I don't exactly trust you."
For a moment, fury filled his face, and she relaxed – he wasn't really Malfoy if he wasn't completely and utterly incensed – but then he nodded, jerking his head.
"Fine. Put it in your pocket, then, if you're going to be so paranoid. I'm not about to kill you, it would bring up too many questions and I haven't seen anything of value."
His tone clearly stated that he would have said 'Yet' if he had been speaking to oh, say, the Carrows. Struggling to keep her temper – she had always been good at it, but for some reason, Malfoy made it nearly impossible to do – Astoria stowed her wand back into the pocket of her cloak, wondering if she was making a terrible mistake.
She had to throw him out of her head eleven more times – for a total of thirteen – before he was finally willing to acknowledge that her defenses weren't bad, and allowed her to graduate to casting the spell on him. Astoria fumbled her wand from her pocket, staring at him. He looked a little pasty at the thought of letting her into his head again, when it had clearly affected him so badly the last time; Astoria couldn't resist a snide comment.
"You're not much of a teacher, Malfoy, if you're not willing to take what you dish out."
His face contorted a little. "You're not a very good student, if you think I care about you seeing what's inside my head."
From his expression, it was quite obvious that he did care, and that he didn't want her near him at all. Astoria hesitated, wondering whether she ought to call this off; then she steeled herself, and pointed her wand.
"Legilimens."
She'd done it once before, by accident, but not without him fighting it, so to make her way inside without encountering any kind of rebellion was more than a little unnerving – it was downright frightening. The pupil swallowed her whole, and suddenly, she was in Borgin and Burkes, watching as younger Malfoy and his father – her stomach boiled at the sight of Lucius – speaking quietly with Mr. Borgin.
She'd only been into Borgin and Burkes once, and that had been a very long time ago. She stared around the shop, her eyes widening as she caught sight of the enchanted necklace which had nearly killed Katie Bell; a skull; a cabinet that she recognized. This was where the plot to assassinate had begun. This was where the first Vanishing Cabinet had been hidden.
The scene changed. Now it was a courtroom, last year, the trial of Lucius Malfoy and the jeers and boos of the Ministry and Wizengamot. A soft hiss sped around the room as Rufus Scrimgeour lifted his hand and said, in a loud voice, "Guilty," and sitting next to the younger Malfoy, Astoria saw a tall woman with light blonde hair stiffen. She watched as her husband was pulled away, and Lucius stared right back at her, paler than the whitest ghost. Their eyes didn't leave the other's until the dementors had pulled Lucius Malfoy into a back room and shut the door. And next to her, Malfoy's hands were shaking...
It changed again...Malfoy with his arm held out, and wands pressed against the pale skin...darkness building beneath it, into the Dark Mark that she hadn't seen until now, a memory...
Poisonous words spat at Gryffindors and Slytherins alike, the way he dominated the House that both of them had been sorted into. Pain and suffering he'd caused. Granger, slapping him across the face in third year, an incident that Astoria, a first year, had witnessed and stared at...the torture of Thorfinn Rowle, the death of Charity Burbage, the imprisonment of Ollivander and Lovegood – Lovegood, Lovegood was at the Malfoys' – The hatred of Potter he embraced, as a Death Eater, a son of a Death Eater...Potter's spell tearing into him like knives, the cold wet floor of the bathroom slamming into his back as blood pumped from him –
Astoria pulled away, shaking her head slowly back and forth. Malfoy said nothing. He simply looked at her.
Without a word, she pulled back a hand and slapped him as hard as she could across the face.
She knew that if it had been anyone else to do that, Malfoy would have probably whipped out his wand and hexed her to death – not figuratively, either. But he simply stood there, his head jerked to the side from the force of her palm, and Astoria wondered how long he would remain there if she just walked away and left him.
"You don't feel guilt about them, do you?" She asked, in a trembling voice. "Not all those people you hurt. You don't feel remorse. You don't care how deep your words cut. And then when you get hurt for it you rail and storm at the world and pretend it's not your fault."
He stared at her, neither confirming nor denying the statement.
"You're a bully." She said, hard as stone. "You've always been nothing but an absolute bully."
"You're a liar." He replied. For once, he didn't look furious at her insult. "You've been nothing but a liar and will be nothing but that for as long as you live."
"I know what I am. At least I'm honest about it." She pulled back. "I wonder if you can understand the difference."
"I can understand." Malfoy snapped, clearly irritated at the insinuation.
"You have Lovegood." She spat the words, and Malfoy looked horrified; he'd clearly been hoping she hadn't seen that little memory. "You have Lovegood imprisoned in your basement?"
"I don't." He said quickly. "It was Yaxley's idea –"
"Does that matter?" Her voice was growing louder and louder. "You absolute hypocrite!"
"What could I have done to stop it?" He shouted back. "Tell Yaxley that she wasn't welcome here? I'm sure he would have liked that!"
"But she's in the basement!" Astoria repeated, stunned that this didn't seem to matter to him. "How long has it been since she's seen light, Malfoy? How long has it been since she's had anything to eat except – whatever the slop is that you're feeding her? And Ollivander, why him? What did a harmless old man –"
"I had nothing to do with that. That was –" His hand jerked, and with an odd hissing breath, he fell quiet again, and Astoria suddenly knew just who had captured Ollivander, and stopped yelling, staring at him; he seemed to be shaking.
"Do you think I want those people in that house?" He asked, his voice low and shaking and mixed with anger and fear; he glanced over his shoulder, as though afraid the Carrows were listening in, and it was clear that he didn't mean Lovegood and Ollivander when he spoke again. "Do you think I want them there? Do you think I enjoy having them in the house where I grew up, Greengrass?"
"That's not what I –"
"I want all of them out of my house!" He snarled at her. "And you can't possibly understand how much I want that! But we failed Him," his voice shook at the words, "and that means we need to be punished."
She stared at him for a moment, unable to say a word. It was, possibly, the first time that Malfoy had willingly mentioned He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and his family's involvement. She'd forced it out of him over Christmas break, and he'd mentioned the Dark Lord when he'd screamed at her the week before, but never in this way. For a fleeting moment, he looked less like a bully and more like someone being bullied, like he had last year – a small-time thug, ruler of the school, who, the instant he had truly stepped out of it, had found someone crueler, viler, and far more brutal than he was.
He had found the Dark Lord.
"So now you know how they felt, Malfoy," she said quietly, stepping forward. When she touched his shoulder, he flinched violently, but she didn't remove her hand, wondering why she felt more pain than she would have if she'd simply pitied him. "All those people you hurt. You know how it felt to be terrified by someone stronger than you, older than you, worse than you." She sought his eyes with her own, and when he finally looked at her, let the scowl fade from her face. "How does it feel to be the one being bullied?"
After a long moment, she moved her hand from his shoulder to his chest, listening to his heartbeat with her fingertips. It was proof that he was a human being, a thinking, feeling person, far more than any invasion of his mind would have told her. She couldn't really explain why she'd set her hand there, but now that she'd placed it, she seemed unable to pull it away, and her fingers were tingling with the feel of it.
She jumped forcibly when his hand covered hers, but didn't pull back, and it was the library all over again – both of them unwilling to give or receive any sort of comfort, but doing it anyway, like it was out of their control completely.
Finally, his grip loosened, and Astoria pulled back, looking him in the eye again.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Malfoy," she said, quietly, and without a word, she collected her broomstick and left again, unnerved by the fact that he hadn't pulled away.
So, they were less dramatic this time. I think they're warming up to each other a little. ^.^