Astrid Orla Clearwater, Wizarding royalty and well known all over the world. You grew up listening to stories about the potters as they were your parents best friends. What happens when you find your best friend from when you were newborns, separate...
Song for this chapter: The Marauders map by The Remus Lupins February 12th 1994 📍The Corridors at midnight
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It was always at midnight Astrid found her throat to grow dry, slowly closing and breaking into an irritable fit of coughs. Often she would lay in bed and ignore the scratching of her throat—until Hermione or Parvati groaned in disturbance and she was forced up from her bed
Always she'd reach for her Quidditch bag and drain the quarter of water left in it, stale—if water could be—and never cold or enough to soothe her
Then she would sigh and accept defeat, trudging down to the common room, half awake, eyes screwed shut and hands feeling her way down the steps
She had done this so often she knew every step—sixteen stairs to the common room—and she knew to keep to her left so she didn't bump into the small wooden table that held a lamp, she knew to watch her step with the rug—always bunched up.
She fully opened her eyes after rubbing them into another dimension for a solid five minutes, drowsing in and out of a slumber rather than sleep.
Staring at the jug that held water she pressed the blue button, watching bubbles thrust up the water jug as water began to pour into her paper cup.
"Perfect" a familiar voice made her physically jump—water sloshing to the side of her cup and onto her slippers
"Harry" she groaned, glad that at least it wasn't Sirius
He spared no time in pulling her behind him, on some sort of mission as he held his illuminated wand before them and the map with it
Astrid glanced at her water cup, on the floor once again as they rushed out of the portrait, into the cold castle, dark and eerily quiet
"Where are we going?" She pressed her fingers against her throat as she rubbed up and down, frowning at the feeling that was reappearing—sure to get them in trouble if she broke into a fit of dry coughs
He hushed her before letting go of her hand and instead thrusting the map into her hands, pointing at a marking of a person named 'Peter Pettigrew'
A name she knew well, from hearing of it at the Malfoy's a limited amount of times and from her parents—more like her fathers personal diary she had read when she was ten—and from how long he had mourned the man and his other friends for. Into her youth, into Elio's teens. Too long she thought.
"Lumos" she watched a speck of light form at the tip of her wand, brought enough to see without getting in trouble with the sleeping portraits
They watched the map, eyes bouncing off walls to catch the approaching man, Harry's hands shaking and hers wrapped so tightly around her wand—her knuckles were growing white
A dead man couldn't be at Hogwarts
They took small steps, Astrid's right hand holding the sleeve of Harry's hoodie as they kept their eyes peeled open, not blinking.
