The Other Side

2. Astoria Greengrass- Light

Astoria Greengrass had committed the worst crime possible for a pureblood.

She did not believe.

Complete and utter faith in the cause was the requisite of all purebloods and death would be the next step if they were found to be disbelievers, death preceded by torture.

She had been raised to believe that her blood was purer than that of all others, that she was better than them all. Her family's wealth and presence in the Sacred Twenty Eight had cemented in her own belief of her superiority.

She did not deny that she had believed herself to be great, better than the 'Mudbloods' because she was a pureblood. She had believed just as much as her parents had.

But, then, He Who Must Not Be Named had come back. She had found out that they all worshipped someone who was nothing more than a half-blood. Did that not go against their very beliefs?

Then, she began questioning it all. She had seen so much death, so much suffering. They claimed to be making the world a better place, but they were doing so by killing, killing people who couldn't help who they were.

That was when she had reached the conclusion that everything that she had been raised to believe was wrong.

She knew her beliefs were the right ones, but she hated herself for it. Her parents, the society that surrounded her, all expected something of her, expected her and the rest of her peers to carry on their ideals and shape a whole new world.

She hated that she couldn't do that for them, she hated that she couldn't try.

She hated that she was a traitor to the people who had raised her with as much love and affection as they could.

She hated that, while everyone she knew and loved thrived in the darkness, she wished and wanted and hoped for the one thing that would make them wilt and fall and die.

Light.

Light had always been the only thing Astoria had ever wanted. In the darkness that had become her life, she was waiting for the light to illuminate her dark, treacherous path.

There were two sides to the war. One would see her wish as something to exalt over and the other as treason. Unfortunately, all whom she loved belonged to the side that would see her as a traitor.

But, honestly, was it that much of a crime to want to let a little light into her life?

Yes, with light came shadows because no light could exist without holding a little darkness inside, but light with its shadows was better than darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel.

The way she currently lived, Astoria was constantly feeling her way through the thick, unnavigable blackness with absolutely nothing to guide her way.

At least, with the light, she, who had been blinded by the dark, would be able to see. And, so, she craved the light as much as a prisoner craved freedom, the freedom to breathe pure, untarnished air for the first time in years.

The light was her oxygen, the light was what would keep her sane, the light was what would keep her from hating herself more than she already did for her betrayal.

She needed light, but she had only realized it when darkness had overcome her, had begun to suffocate and surround her, pressing her down with its inimitable heaviness.

Belief was something that had been thrust upon her and she was expected to simply accept it. On the surface, she had. But, underneath she had thrown off the weight of their beliefs and suddenly felt as if she was no longer carrying the weight of the world, that she was finally free from sharing Atlas's burden. She no longer had to reconcile what she was supposed to believe in with her own moral compass, with her own in-built sense of what was right right and what was wrong.

She had committed a grievous sin to the cause by no longer believing in it, but she was running out of reasons to care.

She detested them. She absolutely loathed most of them. The Dark Lord, Bellatrix Lestrange, Dolores Umbridge, Lucius Malfoy, Greyback, Yaxley. The only one of them whom she respected was Severus Snape and that was merely because of the other side of his personality, the one that he showcased to none but a select few. She had been one of the lucky ones, but she abhorred the side to him that she was seeing more recently, the one that showed faith in the schemes of the Dark Lord, the very schemes that she hated to hear mention of, although they were mentioned more than often enough, what with her parents being as strict believers in the cause as the Malfoys themselves.

Astoria was tired of pretending that she cared about what the Dark Lord wanted. He was nothing but a dictator that deserved to fall. He was nothing but a supremacist whose views desperately required correction. He needed to be brought down and slain like the dog that he was and she hoped that Potter would soon get around to doing it.

Astoria was foolishly hopeful. She was so completely sure that Potter and the others would be the Gryffindors that the world was used to them being, that they hadn't run away, she was so sure that she was almost definitely setting herself up for disappointment.

She was incredibly annoyed with her world and wanted change. Change was what they required, all of them, but especially the purebloods.

She was almost absolutely certain that the Light side would be the one to win the war. Her foolish hopes and dreams had culminated into this image of a perfect future, a future that was peaceful, a future without any discrimination, a future where everyone was equal, a future where the Dark Lord had been vanquished, a future where the entire world no longer had to live in fear of oppression.

A future that came only with the victory of her family's enemies. As traitorous as it made her, she wished for them to win rather than the Dark Lord that her parents supported.

Astoria wanted a life that was carefree, that was ordinary, that wasn't shrouded in darkness and murder and torture, as hers would be once they would come to recruit her to the cause, once they would attempt to taint her left forearm with the permanent imprint of her predecessors' foolishness.

There had always been one thing that Astoria wanted and this was not one of them. She wanted peace. She wanted tolerance. She wanted a world with no prejudice. She wanted safety. She wanted a place where she was secure enough to do what she wished to do without opposition and hate and the label of traitor.

She wanted light. She had always wanted light. There had never been anything she had ever wanted more than light.

But, most importantly, the one thing that took precedence over anything else was the simple fact that the light was not merely what she wanted or what the world wanted, but what all of them needed, what was a necessity, a safeguard to their rights, what they required more than anything else in the world, was the banishment of the darkness, darkness replaced by light.