Sweets: The Tale of Astoria Greengrass

Gold Dust Woman

She ran deeper and deeper in, until she no longer knew where she was. She'd found an old pavilion with stone benches and a cracked circle in the middle with carvings of fish and water lilies there. Astoria could hear the babbling of a brook as she sat under a trellis covered with wisteria.

She looked down to her shoes— once pristine lavender flats, now stained green up and down the sides with grass. She pulled them off, and let her toes touch the bare grass.

"Haven't been here in a while."

Astoria looked up to see Draco entering the clearing, looking flushed, as if he had followed her. She stood up, not sure what to say, knowing that her eyes were red and she was breathing hard from the running and the crying, and she looked flushed herself. She was aware of her brown curls frizzing up, of everything wrong with her.

"What do you want?" Astoria demanded.

"I don't think I'm much help to Pansy right now, so I went after you instead," Draco said, shoving his hands at his pockets and looking at his feet as he strode forward.

Astoria crossed her arms over her chest. "Is that all I am to you? A replacement for Pansy?"

"No," he answered.

Astoria took a deep, shuddering breath. "Everyone will think this was my fault. I never meant to care for you."

"Neither did I," Draco admitted. "It's just. . . I haven't known what I really wanted for a long time, not since my sixth year."

"Since you joined the Death Eaters," Astoria said, her voice low with condemnation.

"Yes," he said. "I decided to go with what seemed easiest, marry the one girl who I knew would want to."

"Even though you never loved her," Astoria realized. "And she loved you! She loved you! And you just threw it in her face! You're horrible!"

"Like that's a surprise," Draco said in Arctic tones as his posture straightened, to look more like his father. He stepped closer to Astoria, and she resisted the urge to take a step back.

"I believed you were a good man," Astoria said. "Somehow, I believed you were capable of being more than a monster. I guess I was wrong."

Draco flinched, those cold gray eyes hardening like steel. He stepped forward and reached for Astoria, but she stepped back and moved her hands up her arms as a soothing gesture.

"Don't touch me!" she shouted, turning her face away. She couldn't look at him. Draco froze, and then pulled his hands back into his pockets and looked down at the cracked pavilion.

"I thought I did," Draco murmured. "I thought I loved her. That was before you came into things. I didn't really know what love was until you. When I realized I'd never loved Pansy in the first place, it was too late. I've done a lot of evil in this world, Astoria. I realize that now. The one thing I haven't done is break a promise. And Pansy, even after everything, I still regarded as a friend. I'd have kept my promise to her if that's what she wanted."

"Why can't you realize you have choices, Draco?" Astoria asked, looking to him again, a softness in her eyes. "You could have told her how you really felt much earlier. You have control over your life. I know you think you don't, but you are capable of making decisions."

"I know that," Draco said, but his voice sounded uncertain.

There was a silence in the garden for a moment except for the babbling brook and clouds rolling through the sky.

"I do still believe you are a good man," Astoria said, after a moment. "I didn't mean that part. Or at least, I still believe you could be."

"You believe in me then more than I ever could," Draco said.

"I do," Astoria said, offering her hand to him. He accepted it, and they looked at each other for a moment, gray to brown, eye to eye. Bells in the trees rustled, creating a soft melody of a lover's dance.

"We should dance," Astoria said, looking to the stone pavilion a few feet away. Draco looked to it, then back to her, and there was understanding between them. He led her to the pavilion and they began to twirl around on the stone. The dance was effortlessly graceful and coordinated. Astoria had never danced with a non-family member before, never mind someone she might even love.

The bells only stopped when the rain came down in one large burst, drenching them both.