So I have a up! On there you can have early access to stimulation theory chapters, depending on the tier you get, you could have access to the entirety of a Harry / Katie smut story around 30K words, as well as the first few chapter of a this story!
I'm also about to post a chapter in a long story about Harry / Pansy put pansy is a huge fucking Tsundere about it.
For my longer more serious stories I don't think I'm going to keep much to a set schedule, the smut is more of a fun project for me. The long ones I want to make perfect.
W w w . p atreon . com / Cal_the_wandcrafter
Just delete the spaces!
Astoria Greengrass was going to die.
This grim truth had been an unrelenting shadow over her life, lurking in the corners of every thought, coloring her every breath with a sense of finality she had never escaped, and from which she would never be free. From the moment she was born, she had been marked—cursed by an ancient, merciless affliction, passed down through the bloodline like a malignant inheritance. The origins of the curse were lost to time, shrouded in secrecy and forgotten grudges, perhaps the bitter legacy of some ancestor's ancient sin, or the venomous retribution of a long-dead rival. It didn't matter. What mattered was that the curse had chosen her, lying dormant for centuries, only to awaken in her veins with cruel precision.
The moment the curse began to manifest, when Astoria was no more than a helpless infant, her father, Cyrus Greengrass, resigned himself to her death long before she even understood what it meant. As soon as the telltale signs of the curse appeared in Astoria's second year of life—the faint, silvery veins tracing her pale skin, the feverish fits that left her gasping for air—her father had seen her not as a child, but as a living specter, a fragile embodiment of death itself. In his eyes, Astoria's fate was sealed. He had ordered her funeral robes to be tailored before she could form a full sentence.
Her sister, Daphne, too young to comprehend the oppressive grief that pervaded their home, mimicked the heavy silences around her, sensing the unspoken gloom in every hushed conversation. The manor was full of whispers—servants exchanging nervous glances, neighbors who muttered rumors of dark family curses whenever they passed the estate. Even as a child, Astoria felt the weight of it, though she couldn't yet name it.
Only their mother, Cassandra, refused to surrender to despair. Cassandra had been a force of nature—an Unspeakable in the Department of Mysteries, who devoted herself tirelessly to unraveling the secrets of ancient magic. When her daughter's life was threatened, she turned her brilliant, desperate mind toward the impossible: breaking the blood curse that had haunted the Greengrass line for generations. Cassandra worked in secret, day and night, pouring over cryptic texts, consulting forbidden tomes, and delving into the darkest corners of the magical world in search of a cure that did not exist. The house became her laboratory, cluttered with ancient scrolls and arcane ingredients, the air thick with the metallic tang of potion fumes.
Astoria remembered her mother's gentle voice, soothing her during one of the many sleepless nights. "You're not going to die, love. I'll find a way. I'll save you." Cassandra's fingers would brush lightly through her daughter's hair, though her eyes, hollowed by exhaustion, betrayed the weight of her impossible task.
But defying fate always came at a price, and Cassandra's relentless search for a cure consumed her. One night, Astoria was woken by a terrible crash, the sound reverberating through the manor like a shattering spell. By the time she reached the door to her mother's study, the room was a scene of devastation—potion bottles smashed, books scattered, and Cassandra herself, lying motionless on the floor, her wand still in her hand. A spell gone wrong. A counter-curse backfired.
The silence after her mother's death was different. It was a deeper, more final thing. Not the heavy, waiting silence of fear, but the crushing emptiness of something irrevocably lost.
Her father's apathy quickly turned to cruelty after that. A man broken by his own inner demons, Cyrus had long since drowned his hopes and sorrows in the bottom of a whiskey bottle, and in his eyes, Astoria had become the reason for everything that had gone wrong. The curse was no longer a mark of tragedy, but a personal affront. She was the reason Cassandra was dead, the reason he had lost the one person who had held any meaning in his life. His grief, his hatred, and his bitter regret all found their target in her frail, cursed body.
He no longer simply ignored her. He punished her for existing.
Astoria's earliest memories of her father were of silence—his distant, hollow gaze that seemed to look right through her, his absence as he disappeared for days at a time, leaving her alone in the vast, empty manor. But after Cassandra's death, the silence turned to sharp words, to shouts and accusations, and then to blows. She learned quickly to make herself small, to blend into the shadows, to avoid him whenever he staggered down into the damp basement, reeking of whiskey, his face twisted in a mask of rage.
"Astoria!" His voice was always a warning before the inevitable violence that followed. The heavy thud of his boots echoed through the narrow stone hallway that led to her dark corner of the manor. She could hear him long before he appeared, his voice slurred with drink, each step an unspoken promise of pain.
Astoria, no more than eight years old, hid in the shadows of the basement, pressing her thin body against the cold stone wall, trying to make herself invisible. She knew it wouldn't matter. He always found her. And when he did, it would hurt.
"You—" Cyrus's voice was ragged, broken. "You're why she's gone." His footsteps slowed as he neared her hiding spot, and Astoria felt her heart race, the panic rising in her chest like a flood. She could hear the clink of glass bottles in his pockets, the faint swish of his wand as he stumbled closer. "You think you'll survive this curse? You think you deserve to live when she's dead?"
Astoria said nothing. She had learned long ago that words only made it worse. She bit down on her lip, hard enough to draw blood, and stared at the ground, waiting. His hand lashed out, catching her by the arm and pulling her violently to her feet. The force of it sent a shock of pain shooting through her small frame, but she made no sound. She had learned not to cry out.
Cyrus shoved her against the wall, his breath hot and sour on her face. "You took everything from me," he hissed. His eyes were wild, unseeing, lost to the grief that had long since consumed him. He shook her, once, twice, before releasing her with a shove that sent her sprawling onto the cold floor. "You'll die like the rest of them," he muttered, turning away. "You'll see. You'll die just like the others."
Astoria didn't move. She lay there, curled in on herself, listening as his footsteps retreated into the distance, disappearing up the stairs. Her body ached, but the pain was familiar now. It was part of her life, like the curse, like the darkness that surrounded her. She stared at the damp stone beneath her, watching as the shadows flickered and danced in the dim light. The house had always been cold, but down here, it felt as though the very walls were closing in, pressing down on her, suffocating her.
--
The nightmares came every night. They always started the same: a long, narrow corridor, stretching endlessly before her, the walls slick with moisture, the air thick with the smell of decay. The floor was uneven beneath her feet, the stones wet and slick, and with each step, the sound of dripping water grew louder, as though the house itself were alive, breathing, waiting.
In the distance, shadows moved. They were not people, but something darker, something older, their forms shifting and indistinct. She could hear their whispers, soft at first, then louder, a language she didn't understand but somehow knew was meant for her. Their voices called to her, beckoning her to join them.
But she couldn't move.
Her feet were rooted to the ground, heavy as lead, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't run. The figures drew closer, their whispers growing louder, more insistent. Their faces were hidden, obscured by the darkness, but their eyes—glowing faintly in the gloom—pierced through her. She felt their cold hands on her skin, pulling her, dragging her down into the shadows.
And then she would wake.
Her life was a cycle of nightmares, both waking and sleeping. The cold, damp basement of Greengrass Manor became her world, the only place where she existed, forgotten by her father, her sister, and everyone else. She wasn't allowed to join Daphne in the upper rooms, wasn't allowed to sit at the family table. The house elves had been ordered to ignore her, and when her father and sister went out into society, she was left behind, alone in the dark, chained like an animal to the plumbing in the basement.
On the rare occasions she ventured outside, her father made sure her public appearances were brief and carefully monitored. She had learned quickly that no one cared about the bruises, the hollow look in her eyes. Among the pureblood families, the suffering of the weak was met with indifference. The marks on her skin were easily explained away by the curse, and even if anyone suspected the truth, they turned a blind eye. It wasn't their problem.
Life blurred into a monotonous haze of cold, hunger, and fear. The walls of the manor were her prison, the silence her only companion. There was no escape. No reprieve. Each day was another step toward the inevitable—another day closer to death.
Yet in the darkest corners of her mind, Astoria began to find a strange, twisted solace. She understood, in some perverse way, that her suffering was part of something larger than herself, an ancient narrative woven through the blood of her ancestors—a tale of vengeance that had outlasted generations. She was the vessel through which this curse was made manifest, a living testament to the pain and hatred that had plagued her family for centuries.
In her loneliness, she began to draw strength from this knowledge. The rage simmered beneath her skin, fueling her resentment toward her family, her lineage, the very blood that coursed through her veins. Every bruise became a badge of honor, every scar a reminder of her resilience. She promised herself that one day, the curse would claim her life, but she would not go quietly into that dark night. When it came for her, she wouldn't die alone. There would be others who suffered as she had—others who would bear witness to her pain, who would feel the echo of her anguish long after she was gone. She swore to herself, she would never die alone.
And then she met Harry Potter.