when they became villains [draco malfoy] {book 2}

Summer 1997 - 172

The place Astrid found herself in was much cleaner than it had ever been in the dreams He made her see. It wasn't rotting. There wasn't blood. It was a simple posh room with nothing but two armchairs and a fireplace in it, yet still, she knew the dream was His doing.

The Dark Lord was sat in one of the armchairs, sipping a drink and, when she turned on her axis for a possible escape, she realised everything else around was black, meaning she had no option but to walk over to sit next to him. 

He didn't look at her when she came closer. He didn't look at her when she sat down on the black leather couch. He didn't look at her when she accidentally hit her knee against the table between them and then tried to suppress her need to curse at the pain. 

He never spoke a word.

Once his eyes finally met hers, it all changed.

With a strong painful pull, Astrid was yanked through time and into a different place.

Blinded by the sharp sunlight in her eyes, at first she saw nothing, but when her eyesight adjusted, below revealed a crowd, all listening to her. Her mind dissociated from her body and Astrid's consciousness floated like a ghost as she watched a tad older version of herself raising her chin at the crowd. She was stood on a wooden pedestal in a posh city square. Guards at her side, she was dressed in finest silks, her fingers filled with rings of silver and diamond as she spoke in the name of the Dark Lord and held a wand in her hand to send a spell that made the Dark Mark appear in the air above her head. The crowd cheered.

It was the sound that first got distorted. The cheer got distorted into a blumber of questions and when she understood that, the image turned into cameras and flashing lights. Question after question, she was asked about the war and she responded with easy arrogance, standing the way Narcissa had taught her.

Suddenly the image changed again and the thought of Narcissa morphed into the other Malfoy adult whom she now held at wandpoint as he kneeled at her feet, expressing his sorry.  The man cried and she showed him no mercy.

Then Astrid walked the corridor of Hogwarts. Alone, her dark robes flailing behind her, she took step after step confidently and, all as one, the students looked at her in fear. Astrid saw the face of Susan Bones and the girl was the most terrified of them all. Astrid felt powerful. Astrid did have all the power.

Astrid slept in a grand bed in a private tiny castle of her own. She had the closet of all things black she had ever wanted, and even grander was the room for all her rings and jewellery - bought and acquired by herself and the money she had gotten from her own achievements. As a loyal deatheater. As a leader.

Astrid Ninomae could become that leader.

* * * 

It was the first day that summer that Astrid had been allowed off Malfoy grounds. Without any Malfoy supervision. Though followed by two other men who looked much cleaner than the average deatheater she saw living in the Malfoy Manor.

At first, Astrid didn't understand why she had been sent out to buy herself schoolbooks in the middle of July - exactly 46 days before the new school year even started. She had expected her first outing to be exciting, but the constant feeling of the discreet wand at her back had hardly left her so. So she walked with a constant frown on her face, glaring at all the people that kept throwing suspicious glances at her, which was pretty much everyone on the street they walked.

Just like most streets in the Wizarding World, the one they walked to get to the bookshop was a cobbled one. Nineteenth-century houses lined the sides and just as she always had, Astrid thought it absolutely ridiculous the 'superior' wizards lived in such an old-looking place. It was posh and expensive, of course, but so very old-school. It was cloudy and at times Astrid felt a light drizzle of rain over the top of her head. Her dark coat swished behind her back, warming her more than she would've liked to and the black beret on her head looked funny. She had tried to take those clothes off, but instantly she had gotten both scolded by her two bodyguards and pain from her father had been sent through her head.