Astoria meets her husband at her sister's wake.
She doesn't know it at the time of course. All she sees at the time is a pale boy with a drawn face and old eyes.
They don't speak. Astoria watches him though, from beside her parents.
She watches him approach her sister's coffin. Her sister's closed coffin. Daphne jumped from a eighth story window. Her body was broken beyond recognition.
She watches him place one, pale, boney hand on her sister's white coffin. She sees him speak. She can't hear him. She's too far away. She imagines he says something kind though. He looks sad enough when he turns away to have said something kind.
Pansy Parkinson is wailing in her ear. Astoria tries to feel bad. She tries to feel bad for all of Daphne's classmates that fill the pews. They are sad. But they weren't there. They let her sister try and make it back to the common room alone. They didn't try and protect her.
But he was there. Astoria knows that he was there during the battle. It was all over the Prophet. His whole family was there. Astoria wonders what it must be like to be hated, as she watches the ministry officials on either side of him lead him away from the coffin and back to his chair. She wonders if he feels as alone as she does.
Astoria bumps into him after the funeral. Maybe on accident, maybe a little on purpose. The ministry officials size her up, and she stares back at them, unblinking. They cannot scare her, nothing can anymore.
She turns to him, "I know you were there."
He looks at her for a second, and looks away.
"I know you found her body. I know that you told them it was her."
Astoria knows this because no other Slytherin was there; no other student had spent as much time with Daphne as the boy before her.
"Yes." it's a whisper, but he answers her.
"I just wanted to say thank you." He looks up at her quickly, as though he can hardly believe his ears. She can hardly believe her words.
The ministry officials lead him away. Astoria watches them go.
Five years later, Astoria Greengrass marries Draco Malfoy. This time, he thanks her.