Malediction: the love and life of Astoria Malfoy

Chapter Eight

"Woah, woah, woah, wait -- you punched Pansy Parkinson in the face?" Holly said after I explained why I couldn't accompany them to Hogsmeade the next day. "Wicked!" she said, eyes wide.

Saturday night, she found me in the Great Hall and gave me a Honeydukes bag. "You should've gotten a medal of honor for punching pug-face, not a month's detention. Here, a small compensation for your services to the school, and I remembered that you went to town on those Pepper Imps on the train." She smiled, dropping the crumpled pink-striped bag in my palm.

She didn't know it, but it meant more to me than just a bag of sweets. I'm not sure what, but something, the kind of something that lingers between two people after it's been done, the first string binding a friendship.

I forced myself to make the candy last through at least a few of my detentions to make them slightly less painful. The following week was one I was dreading. Not because of the detions in question, no, because what next Saturday was.

September thirteenth, Daphne's eighteenth birthday. Or at least what should've been. No. It was her eighteenth birthday. It still was. It had to be.

I walked into Saturday detention -- today it was easy: cleaning the statues on the fourth floor hallway.

I liked that hallway; there wasn't much in it except statues, a balcony, and windows. Lots of windows, covering the wall with stone muntins separating the small glass panes into mandalas and patterns, all breaking up the warm, yellow light of afternoon.

It was a nice place to compartmentalize in, easy to get lost in other thoughts there, thoughts other than Daphne. Daphne. I was thinking of her again.

Another memory of Daphne surfaced while I was scrubbing a statue of Ignatia Wildsmith. I stopped and closed my eyes, still trying to remember every facet of the memory.

It was her tenth birthday -- she was so excited to finally be in the double digits. We always got loads of presents on our birthdays -- mother and father spoiled us.

It was the last package she opened. This one was her idea, she'd asked for it specifically. From under the pillow on the couch, she revealed another package, identical to the one she held, silver wrappings and matching bow. She handed it to me.

"Wha -- for me?" I asked. She smiled, and we tore open the paper on both boxes. Inside was a necklace, a small, silver heart pendant dangling from it. In her hand, a matching one. I was so excited.

Where had that necklace gone? I came back to reality and saw Ignatia Wildsmith's grumpy face staring back at me.

I mentally scanned my bedroom, or any other places I could think of -- of course doing no good, because, first off, when you think of the places an object could be, suddenly it gets imposed everywhere in your memory. And secondly, I was miles from home, so thinking where I might have placed an object eight years ago was really of no use.

Maybe I could ask Mother to look around for it, I'd send her an owl after I finish the statues. But how could I have been so careless?

I scrubbed Ignatia's bronze robes, hard, maybe thinking I could scrub the thoughts of the necklace away.

My face was scrunched up and my hair was flying away in a tangled mess around my head.

She gave me that necklace, and I'd just lost it. Poof, gone. Another thing I failed to do. Just like how I didn't take enough pictures of her, never made a scrapbook like I said I was. Maybe if I'd made a book, then I would have a plethora of pictures -- enough pictures to satiate the feeling of her face fading from memory.