Day 4-Draco:

He was awoken by Astoria, excitedly moving about her cell. She was stretching and jumping, and attempting to do pull-ups on a bar installed above her bed. Draco rolled over and watched her for a moment—for someone who was rather short, she was muscular and strong all the same.

"What's going on?" He mumbled as she counted under her breath, but just loudly enough that he could hear her. He wondered if she did that on purpose—just to wake him up. He had the feeling that as cheeky and brisk as she was, Astoria was incredibly lonely. Twenty-Two. Twenty-Three. Twenty-Four. Twenty-Five. Her arms quivered on the last pull-up, and then she swung down to the floor with a graceful landing, balancing on the balls of her feet.

"It's a Wednesday," she said with a grin. She wiped the sweat from her brow, and then stared expectantly at him.

"And that's important because…?"

"Oh, I forgot. I'm really trying to slow down for you, I am."

"I'm sorry I didn't get the how-to-survival guide for Prison," Draco quipped.

"Ah, Snake Boy bites back," Astoria shot back. "Every other day we get to shower. And I got skipped on Monday because they brought you in. So, most disgustingly, I have not showered for about four days now."

A shower. Draco nearly salivated at the thought of such a thing. He hadn't showered in months, just dipped his body in rivers during the summer, and when it had grown too cold to do that anymore, he had warmed pans of water over bluebell flames and had painstakingly given himself a sponge bath—it had taken ages.

"I know," Astoria said aloud, recognizing the desire for luxury on his face. She grinned and grasped the bars. "They give you soap and everything, and it isn't bad at all. At least, mine isn't—it smells like gardenias."

"A shower though," Draco replied, just as eager as she was. "They're not like…mass showers, are they? People won't…" he paused, looked around, and whispered the end of his question with an embarrassed tone. "See me? I don't want people staring at me."

"Self-conscious?" Astoria questioned.

"The opposite," Draco said, absent-mindedly rubbing the inside of his left arm. The dark mark was still there, faint, but visible all the same. He threw an arm behind his back as Astoria eyed it curiously. He wondered if others saw it, if it would give him any power—or in prison, a reputation he didn't want. Who knew what would give others a mean to talk? What if the Dark Mark, in a dark wizard's prison, was a rallying symbol?

"Don't worry about it," Astoria replied. "We're the only two people in this whole place."

"What?" Draco asked, unsure if he had heard her correctly. "The only two?"

"That's right. I overheard the guards talking about it one of the first days I was here. Apparently, this was supposed to be an overflow prison for those under twenty, but it seems that you and I are the only ones who fit into that category, or the only ones that were caught." She shrugged and fanned her skin, which glistened with flecks of sweat. "But I don't mind it. This place, at least. We might be alone, but it's a converted old Palace. Like a muggle one. Apparently this belonged to some muggle Queen, Elizabeth or something like that. She was imprisoned here by her own sister, but for a prison, I'd say it's not bad at all. Our showers are huge."

"God," Draco breathed, watching her chatter away. He was taken aback by her cadence of her own situation—here she was praising the showers when she was locked up in a cell away from the outside world. "How are you okay with this?"

"I think I'm going to have to start limiting your questions." Astoria rolled her eyes. The door at the end of the hallway clicked open, and Draco could heard the heavy footsteps of a pair of guards approaching. She stared at him for a moment, and then bit down on her bottom lip, her eyes relenting. "I'm not okay with it," she whispered loudly as the volume of the footsteps increased. "But I have to make it seem like that."

Day 126-Astoria:

There was one female guard in the entire prison. Her name was Enid, and she was awful and disgusting, in Astoria's view. She was built like a man, with wide, burly shoulders and thick legs, one of which could probably outweigh Astoria's whole body. Enid had a mole in the center of her upper-lip, and there was a hair growing straight out from it, with a small curl at the end. Enid repulsed Astoria, and she was cold to boot, so Astoria decided to make her job as miserable as possible.

"Enid, won't you be joining me in the shower today?" Astoria began to ask as Enid and the male guard, Joseph, lead her and Draco down the hall and down a flight of stairs, towards the showers. "I know you'd like it."

Draco let out a soft scoff behind her back, and Astoria grinned. Enid's cheek twitched with anger and displeasure, and her grip on Astoria's upper arm tightened. Astoria breathed in deeply.

"Enid, you haven't been using my soap-on-a-rope, have you? You smell an awful lot like gardenias, and unless you've been rolling around in the ground outside, I'd think you're trying to smell like me. I won't have that, Enid, you know there can only be one of a kind."

Enid didn't reply, but Draco's scoffs of amusement increased behind her, and Astoria could feel his breath floating over the back of her neck. This was the closest proximity they had been in since he had been delivered into the prison, so close that if Astoria turned around, she could rub her cheek against his. Even kiss him, if she pleased.

This was how close they had been when they first met. Astoria had been hurrying to Defense Against the Dark Arts when she was a first year. They had a new Professor that year, Hogwarts always did. Although this Professor seemed collected and kindly, Astoria had a feeling he harbored some sort of hostility against the Slytherins, as he seemed to favorite the Gryffindors. She vowed not to be late to this class, vowed not to give Professor Lupin more of a reason to favorite those shallow and arrogant Gryffindors.

Astoria had been hurrying up the stairs towards the Great Hall, making a beeline out of the dungeon, when someone bumped into her. The great oaf, Crabbe, had spilled her books out of her hands, and they went flying everywhere, landing pages down on the dirty stairs. She had nearly screamed an explicative expressly forbidden from her vocabulary, courtesy of her parents, but a tall, pale, blonde boy had quickly scooped the books up and shoved them back into her arms without a second glance on her.

Thank you, Astoria had said to him, but he was busy berating his friend and had not noticed her words.

God, Crabbe, Draco had said. I didn't know being so large meant you were part troll. Your coordination is almost as bad as Potter when he's on a broom.

"Get in," Enid suddenly barked, pushing Astoria forward. They had arrived at the showers. There was a large, round entrance room, and then beyond that, another smaller room with a sitting chair. There was no door between these rooms, merely a screen to distort the figures beyond. At the end of the second room was the entrance to the shower, closed off with privacy glass. There were a series of windows set high around the round room, casting brilliant light onto the Spanish-tiled floor. Astoria's feet squished delicately against the tiles, and she breathed in relief.

She stepped into the second room, with Draco behind her. Joseph set him down in the sitting chair with a warning look, and then glanced at Enid. She nodded, and he unlocked the shower door. Astoria stepped inside and shut the door behind her, then stripped off her clothes.

"You have to talk to me," she told Draco as she threw her clothes over the top of the shower door. "You see how Enid and Joseph are standing outside that room?"

"Yeah," she heard him say dubiously. "How come they're out there?"

"Prisoner privacy," Astoria said as she turned on the water. It streamed over her body and she squirmed in pleasure as the water pounded down on her aching back. "But we need to keep talking loudly enough so they know that we aren't trying to escape, kill ourselves, or trying to have sex."

Draco's response was a short stutter, and then he mumbled: "How would we kill ourselves? I don't even have a razor. They don't even give us silverware."

Astoria reached over towards the far wall, where two jars were suspended in mid-air, when she placed her hand under one, it spurted out a small stream of shampoo, which she lathered into her hair.

"Yeah, I think they believe we can die if we swallow enough shampoo." Astoria breathed in the perfume-y sent of the shampoo as tendrils of steam wrapped around her body. "I'm glad I got to shower today, I miss the water very much."

"I miss the lake at school," Draco admitted. "I liked seeing it from the common room windows."

"That's right," Astoria said as she reached for a spurt of conditioner. "I once saw the Giant Squid from my dormitory window when I was a first year. Scared the life out of me. I thought I would never sleep again." She paused as she rubbed conditioner into her hair.

"Astoria?" Draco asked.

"Oh, yes, sorry!" She shouted over the water. "But I miss the water at home, too."

"Where did you grow up?" He asked.

"Hastings," she called back. "My mum and dad had a big estate on a cliff. My sister and I…when we were little we drove my mum mad by cliff diving. She hated it, thought we were going to drown. There were merepeople there too. My sister hated them, found them creepy…but I didn't mind them. The water spoke to me all the same."

The water shut off quickly. It had an automatic timer, to make sure that the prisoners didn't get too used to comfort. Astoria sighed and raised a hand to her hair. Traces of conditioner hadn't washed out of her hair.

"Oi, is there a towel out there?"

"Erm, hold on." Draco moved around, she could hear his feet squelching on the floor. Second passed, which turned into a minute. Goosebumps began to line her skin. Impatient, Astoria ripped open the door to look for herself. Draco turned to face her, a towel grasped in his hand, and his eyes grew wide when he saw that she made no attempt to cover herself. Astoria placed her hands on her hips.

"Well?" She asked. "Are you just going to stare or hand me my damn towel, Snake Boy?"

Draco handed her the towel wordlessly, and then looked up at the ceiling, though Astoria knew that isn't where he wanted to look at all. She wrapped the towel firmly around herself, and then moved aside, allowing him entry into the shower. Her clothes, she realized, he had folded neatly over the arm of the chair. She turned to thank him, but before she could, Draco jumped into the shower and closed the door tightly behind him, shutting her out.