❝ Why can't we be more than friends, Draco?
-Why can't we be more than friends? Merlin Astoria, figure it out. I am fucking social pariah. Your friends, your family, your fucking parents who adore you, would never approve. ❞
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S H E W O U L D N O T S A Y G O O D B Y E .
She refused to. So as Death came to meet her in the late evening, the edges of dawn just peeking over the horizon, she raised her eyebrow at the hooded figure and folded her arms. There was a standoff for a few moments and she could've sworn she saw Death's mouth lift into a humorless smirk.
And then, Astoria Greengrass woke up.
Her gaze was unfocused and blurry, and the sharp smell of antiseptic and familiar, brewing potions mixed all around her. She blinked several times before everything fell into sharp focus.
Her sister at the end of her bed. The white curtain pulled around them. The soft sunlight sprinkled all over. She squinted her eyes.
"Astoria!"
A pair of arms wrapped around her tightly, and her vision once again blacked out as someone completely covered her upper body. She breathed in the familiar scent of her sister and hesitantly wrapped her arms around her.
"Daphne..." Astoria clung to her older sister, her only sister, finding deep, irreplaceable comfort in the familiar feel of family. She breathed deeply, clinging to her small semblance of peace, though it started to shrink as flashbacks of her last night spun in her brain. She jerked away from her sister.
"What— what's going on?"
Her fingers tightened around the thin sheets over her body, her childhood blanket covering her feet, and panic began to swell in her chest. She looked up, focused on the sheer white sheet that surrounded her hospital bed.
"Am I— am I in fucking St. Mungo's?"
Even though it was posed as a question, she need only take a glance around to confirm her suspicions. There was a useless St. Mungo's mug on her bedside table, edges of green robes passed behind the thin curtain, and she could even recognize the smell of her very own ward— Long Term Residents and Permanent Spell Damage, where she came to work every day.
Daphne's eyes were brimming with sympathy, it seemed to spill over into every crevice of her face. "Yes, my love. You're in St. Mungo's. You were tortured and..."
Astoria hardly listened, as the red flash of the Cruciatus curse flashed behind her eyes, Draco's frozen body—
"Where's Draco?"
Daphne's mouth opened and closed, her eyes panicked. She gently pulled her sister's hands towards her and interlocked their fingers.
"What's happened to Draco?" Astoria demanded, her voice becoming panicked.
"Draco's okay, Astoria," Daphne said calmly.
A part of Astoria's soul relaxed.
"Where is he, then— he wouldn't just leave me here..."
