❝ Why can't we be more than friends, Draco?
-Why can't we be more than friends? Merlin Astoria, figure it out. I am fucking social pariah. Your friends, your family, your fucking parents who adore you, would never approve. ❞
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T W O F I G U R E S W E R E walking down a long, abandoned hallway of the Greengrass Manor, portraits on the walls curiously eyeing the peculiar pair.
The girl was wearing a dress made of glowy golden fabric. It bunched tightly at her bust and flowed like fire down to her feet. She was broadly smiling up at the taller blond, who seemed thin and malnourished, lips slightly parched, twisted up into an inept smile.
He seemed small, despite his towering height.
Draco Malfoy truly felt small, but standing next to Astoria, that no longer mattered.
"You really prefer fire whiskey over Butterbeer?" Astoria asked Draco with a raise of her brow as they slowly walked down the hall, away from the loud chatter of her and Daphne's rambunctious friends.
His smirk turned a little mischievous as he spoke, "The first time I had fire-whiskey I didn't know how potent it was but I didn't want to seem like a little bitch. And naturally, I had to drink more than Crabbe and Goyle..." Draco's words suddenly tapered off as he reminisced on that memory— those days with Goyle still alive. He bit his lip and forced himself to continue despite the flashes of Goyle's body on fire flickering in his mind.
"I was around six or seven glasses in, enjoying a much better tasting Butterbeer when quite suddenly, I was just vomiting. The Butterbeer I was drinking ended up mixed with my vomit on the dorm floor and the bottle shattered on the wood. Merlin, it was fucking disgusting, and I've never been able to drink Butterbeer since."
Astoria was giggling beside him, only stopping to speak. "First of all, I can't believe I've never heard this story. Secondly—you could only manage six glasses? From this side you do seem like a little bitch."
Draco sent a withering glare at his companion."I was thirteen Astoria— and of course you didn't. I threatened Crabbe and Goyle with the good 'ole standby: My father will hear about this!"
"Really?"
Draco grinned and shrugged. "Nah. I had gotten really good at the Furnunculus charm and threatened that I'd hit them in their sleep if they ever mentioned it again."
"That's effective, I suppose," Astoria drank from her glass, the red wine staining her lips.
Draco mocked her gesture as they continued down the twisting hallway that never seemed to end. He hoped it wouldn't.
At the emptying of Draco's glass, Astoria sloshed even more in, and then did the same to her own glass.
"Are you trying to get me drunk, Astoria?" Draco asked bemused, tipping the glass back as he took another sip of the elf wine. It was good wine, one of Draco's favorites in fact, and he was glad to finally be sharing wine with someone other than himself.
